The Roots That Clutch 6

Heading Home

by Tittamiire

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/ast/tittamiire/rootst06.php
Summary: The team head on back home.

Vala didn't have any intention to stay, but she didn't ask to be dropped off at a planet with a Stargate either. No one pressed her for a decision and she didn't give one and she ended up going home with them by default. She wasn't sure why. She pretended that it was because she was injured and she needed the Doc's care and that was partially true, but she could have taken care of herself. Being trusted, albeit in a limited way, was an unusual experience that she wanted to explore a little further. Not that she voiced that. She bugged Daniel, she teased the ever tolerant Teal'c, she harassed Siler with questions too quickly for him to answer, she pretended to help Sam and she purposely used questions to drag out her check-ups with Janet. There was no ulterior motive in her intentions; she just enjoyed the feel of someone else's hands on her skin whose only desire was to care for her. It was novel.

A couple of days into their journey home Vala felt the ship drop out of hyperspace. Teal'c's attempt to teach her the Tau'ri game of Poker was going either very well or very badly depending on your perspective and he appeared relieved to have an excuse to get away. Vala followed him without hurry, curious, but knowing that she was unlikely to be needed. She wandered after them and stuck her head into the room that most people seemed to hang out in when they weren't anywhere else on the ship. Sam was in there. For variety she had a pen in her hand and paper on the table, instead of the usual piece of miscellaneous machinery. Her eyes were focussed in the middle distance and Vala coughed to disturb her. Sam stirred and frowned at her.

"What's going on?" Vala asked and eased herself carefully into the chair across the table.

"Oh, we're stopping at a planet with a Stargate that we have a message box on. There are occasionally people around the galaxy that we want to talk to, but not invite home."

"Aah, anything big?"

"Probably not, but we don't know yet. The Colonel and Teal'c have gone down to check."

The radio on the table crackled and then spoke, "Carter? Doc? Report to the ring room. We're on our way back."

Sam grabbed the radio and stood up from the table at the same time. She was half way out of the door before she managed to reply with a remarkably calm, "Yes Sir."

Vala stood up and followed her out of curiosity and because she didn't have anything better to do, but she walked more slowly through need while Sam virtually ran through the Alkesh. Janet overtook her before she'd gone too far down the corridor.

The lights of the rings were fading as Vala reached the doorway and she hung back, keeping out of the way of any potential danger, but wanting to see what was going on. She heard movement and Sam exclaim, "Dad."

Vala stepped forward and peered around the doorway into the room. Teal'c and Martouf were setting a stretcher down and Sam was already running towards it.

"Dad?" Sam repeated as Janet joined her and began checking 'Dad' over.

Vala stepped closer and she felt the edges of the tingle that indicated the presence of a symbiote in the room, which was explained by Martouf.

"Your Father will be fine," Sam's Dad reassured her, except it was the voice of a symbiote and Vala started and stepped back in surprise, kicking the wall. Sam's Dad was a Tok'ra? It made sense, given the available facts, but that didn't make it any less of a shock.

"Your father's duplicity was discovered by the Goa'uld he was attempting to bring down. We're unsure of how, but it seems likely that the betrayal came from within our own ranks. We would prefer if Jacob and Selmak were out of harm's way while we solve this problem."

"We should get him somewhere more comfortable," Janet said. She stepped back and allowed Teal'c and Martouf to pick up the stretcher. Vala stayed pressed back against the wall and watched them as they passed her. Sam walked close to her Dad's shoulder and spoke to Martouf.

"Someone betrayed him?"

"We are unsure. It isn't unknown for the System Lords to attempt to infiltrate our ranks, but it is rare that one of them would remain undiscovered long enough to gain useful information."

Sam put her hand onto her Dad's shoulder and squeezed gently.

Jacob and Selmak were settled into a small room of indeterminate use on the Alkesh and Martouf and Janet bustled busily in and out and conversed in hushed tones about his condition. Vala attempted to eavesdrop to no avail and eventually resorted to tracking Daniel down. He had a few Goa'uld tablets and reading devices that he seemed to be working his way through.

"Old communiqués and coded messages," he explained, "I said I'd go through them and see if anything is amiss that might lead us back to our double agent. You know what they say about a fresh pair of eyes."

Vala frowned at him.

"We say it at least. Do you want something?"

"Just wondering. Sam was the unwilling host to a Tok'ra right?"

Daniel nodded, but looked slightly defensive and puzzled.

"But her Dad became a willing host? I mean, was he one before? How does that work?"

"He wasn't. It was because of the Tok'ra that took Sam as a host that we learned the Tok'ra existed. Jacob became a host willingly to cure him of a life threatening disease, at Sam's suggestion in fact."

Vala shook her head.

Daniel frowned at her again, questioningly this time. He had a frown for every occasion.

"I was a host once. To a Goa'uld, but nonetheless I can't imagine how she could put her Dad through that."

"The Tok'ra are different. You should talk to Martouf, Lantash, Jacob or Selmak sometime."

"Maybe," Vala conceded, but she knew she wouldn't.

~~~

The Alkesh settled gently onto the ground and Vala felt the slight bump as they landed on the solid ground.

She could hear the footsteps and energised voices of everyone else on board heading towards the exits.

"We're home," Daniel said simply and offered a hand to help her up. "Shall we?" he asked and she nodded once, accepted his hand and then followed him through the ship with more than a little trepidation.

The first thing Vala noticed when she stepped off the ship was the sound of children. There were a lot of children running up the hill towards them and followed by a smaller group of adults. Some of the children were attached to specific adults (there was no mistaking Harriman's daughter for example, she even had the same glasses as her Dad, where the heck did they get glasses from?), but a lot more seemed to just be around in a kind of swarm that ricocheted excitedly between different adults.

Vala was surprised to see a toddler reaching eagerly for Sam from the arms of a young woman who was trying to simultaneously keep hold of the squirming child with one arm and hug Janet with the other. Siler was being greeted by his wife and four children. Teal'c was greeted by someone who could only be his son. Even Jack walked confidently across to a gangly teenage boy to clap him on the shoulder and then crouch down to get swamped by the horde of children. Daniel appeared to be the only one without anyone running to greet him, at least at first. Eventually attention was turned to him and hands were waved and at least one small child wrapped his arms briefly around Daniel's thigh, but there no desperately clinging embraces coming his way. Beyond the crowd of people saying hello Vala could see a cluster of wooden houses, surrounded by a scattering of cultivated fields that blended into woodland. Birds sang in the trees, crickets chirped in the long grasses and in general the sight was very green.

The group slowly turned and walked down away from the Alkesh. Daniel amongst them and Vala followed a little way behind him for lack of anything better to do. She received many curious looks from the planet's residents, but no malicious or even suspicious look came her way. Apparently having the trust of this handful of people was enough for everyone else to accept her without question. It was Daniel that dropped back to keep her company after a little way. There was a track that led the way through walled fields, some with crops growing in them and some with groups of an unfamiliar animal that looked at Vala with the uncomprehending eyes of a creature whose only concern was finding the best patch of grass. There were yet more people in the village, apparently not everyone had run up to the Alkesh to welcome the returning heroes and there were more shouted greetings and waves.

"Home," Daniel said proudly with a gesture of his arm to encompass the village as they got closer to it.

"This is your base? But Sam said you'd had a fallen out and were rebels."

"We are. This is home. The base at the Alpha site is a different place." Daniel looked at her and weighed something up before he started explaining further. "Our world was going to end. We knew it was coming. We, our team, had been evacuated to the Alpha site along with earth's best and brightest. Sam and I were still working on finding a way to prevent the end. Jack was supposed to take command of the Alpha site, but he had other ideas. He didn't know how to fight directly; I don't think there was a way. He and Teal'c disappeared from the base. We didn't know where they'd gone, but we were working so hard that it wasn't important. It was all for nothing because the end came anyway. Then, amidst the despair and grief Jack and Teal'c appeared again. They had an Alkesh. I still don't know where he'd got it from, but he'd taken it to earth and contacted a bunch of people and told them to get to Colorado and then filled it with even more people. As many as he could."

"You saved your family and friends?"

Daniel nodded, "And as many other people as we could. We had a chance that no one else on our planet did. There was nothing we could do to prevent the destruction and we couldn't save everyone. Wouldn't most people have done the same?"

The question was clearly rhetorical so Vala didn't answer. He seemed to be attempting to justify their choice and she suspected that she was the first true outsider to see this place. Daniel's eternal empathy ensured that he would always see things from other peoples perspectives whether he wanted to or not and he feared that they would be judged harshly. The very fact that he cared about Vala's opinion both amused her and pulled at something deep inside her. Daniel didn't know her, but he assumed a lot of things, good things. A part of Vala wanted to knock his expectations down from the foundations so that there was never a chance she had to live up to them. She was controlling that urge now and taking the opportunity to dabble in the idea that she was a good person.

After a few quiet seconds Daniel went on with the story, "Those in charge of our base were livid with him for bringing more people to the base. Then they were angry with us when we stood by him. They wanted us to give up and stagnate on that base. So we left and came here."

He stopped talking and frowned at the village thoughtfully.

"Why do you even leave?" She asked him.

He smiled wrly and glanced at her, "We have to fight on." He said it in a joking tone of voice, but there was a level of seriousness there as well.

"You guys are all crazy," Vala informed him in a stage whisper and got a genuine smile for her efforts.

"Aah, Vala," Janet was calling and doubling back in the crowd, "how about we give your burn a new dressing before the celebrations start?"

"Celebrations?"

"Oh yeah," Daniel said, "Welcome home party, we don't need much of an excuse."

Janet gestured to a small building a little way up the hill and Vala followed her. There was a bench along the wall of the building and Vala took a seat while Janet disappeared inside for a minute and then reappeared with gloves and supplies.

"There are a lot of people," Vala commented as she pulled her shirt up. There seemed to be even more now that they were all gathered in the village's centre and bearing large quantities of food and drink. Janet nodded to her and peeled the existing bandage off. Vala winced as the odd bit of scab snagged on the gauze.

"Some of them came with us from earth, a lot of them in fact and others we just picked up along the way."

"The best and brightest," Vala said, remembering the phrase that Daniel had used earlier.

Janet shook her head, "These weren't. Well the Colonel, Sam, Daniel, Teal'c, Harriman, Siler and I were lucky enough to be evacuated, but the rest of those who came with us from earth weren't. Jack rescued them." She tied the new bandage snugly and stepped back from Vala a little to admire her handiwork. Vala rolled her shirt back down, but remained sitting on the bench for the moment.

"Jack got into trouble for that, a lot of trouble. The Alpha site had limited resources and a strict limit on who could be evacuated there, which sort of made sense when it was a theory." She sat down next to Vala on the bench and looked down across the gathering that was looking like graduating into a party sooner rather than later.

"In practice we couldn't live with the thought that we'd done anything other than save as many lives as possible. Better for a hundred to survive and struggle than for fifty to live in relative comfort."

"And all the children?"

"Some of them are from earth, but a lot of them we've just collected along the way. Like Lise," Janet said with a nod towards the toddler who was currently standing in Sam's lap and conversing intently with her about whatever it was that was vitally important when you were three years old. "They stopped off at a planet they'd visited before in the hope of reaching an agreement whereby they could trade for use of their naquadah refining facilities only to find that the planet had changed hands and the new ruling Goa'uld had slaughtered the inhabitants as an example. Sam found Lise in the ruins of what had once been a busy town. They only found a handful of survivors on the entire planet and they couldn't exactly leave them." Janet pointed next to the gangly teenage boy that Vala recognised from earlier, who was demonstrating his skills with a Bashaak to Jack. "Kirlnor's parents were murdered and he was on the verge of pledging his allegiance to the Goa'uld responsible and receiving his first prim'ta when Jack and Teal'c interrupted. Not intentionally. They were looking for something entirely different, but they freed him from a life of slavery. R'yac is visiting for a short while and when he leaves Kirlnor will go with him to work with the rebel Jaffa."

Vala looked at her newly bandaged ribs, "Where do you get antiseptic from?"

Janet paused before she answered, "We have some friends. They were supposed to protect us, but they couldn't. When we explained our intentions of settling down here they gave us some gifts. We can make what medical supplies we need, including tretonin for Teal'c. You must have heard of that. They also helped us set up home here and made sure we weren't going to starve in our first winter. Then they respected us enough to leave us alone," Janet answered carefully.

"It doesn't exactly make up for not protecting you and letting your world get destroyed."

Janet pressed her lips together into a thin, pale line and shook her head, "No, it doesn't."

~~~

The party wasn't that bad. There was food, drink and music of a fashion (Siler started singing). Vala ate a great deal and avoided the alcohol. She lingered by the fire as slowly people began to turn in and wondered if there was a spare bed handy.

As the evening wore on the group around the fire shrunk. Siler and Harriman wandered off with their respective wives. Jacob and George both claimed an old man's right to an early night, though they stood together a little way from the fire talking quietly together before going their separate ways to bed. Cassie collected the soundly sleeping Lise from Janet's lap and carried her to their cottage. The Colonel's ex-wife (now that was complicated) was one of the earlier ones to bid them goodnight. Sam's brother waved good night to them and others, many that Vala couldn't remember the names of, departed too until there was only the Colonel, Teal'c, Daniel, Sam, Janet and herself sitting around the fire. It was dark and quiet and Vala's side hurt. Perhaps she should have turned in a long time ago, but there was something mesmerising about the energy of this group. Daniel had a stick and he occasionally poked the fire as he gazed thoughtfully, almost moodily, into the flames, Vala watched him the most. The Colonel was slouched deep in a chair and gazing intently up at the stars above them, looking for something. Sam was sitting on the cool ground with her head on Janet's knee, she was a tangled collection of gathered limbs and her eyes were closed, but she wasn't asleep. Janet sat up on one of the benches around the fire with her fingers in Sam's hair and her attention focussed on the woman at her knee. Teal'c watched the others and shared a knowing glance with Vala at the scene. This wasn't boredom and this wasn't waiting, rather it was relishing and savouring a short period of time.

It was the Colonel who broke the moment, moving suddenly and sitting upright. He rubbed his face and glanced at the fire and then the sky again.

"It's late," He declared and pushed himself up out of the chair with unconsciously exaggerated difficulty and stiffness.

"We can make up a bed on a bench," Janet offered Vala from across the circle, "or we'll kick Cassie out, one of the two." The last suggestion sounded like a joke, but at least the problem of where to sleep had been solved.

Vala got up from her seat and followed the two women away from the fire. Sam had tight hold of Janet's hand and they were walking almost as if they were joined together. It had been obvious they were a couple on the ship, but here on the planet it was at a whole different level. There was much more physical contact. Vala stopped and look back at the abandoned fire. Teal'c had walked one way, following R'yac's earlier path and Jack and Daniel were walking companionably towards a small cottage together. Jack was the one who appeared to have rescued all the others who made up the village and Daniel was one of the most caring people Vala had yet to meet. Yet, he and Daniel seemed to be the ones who were alone.

"They've lost a lot over the years," Sam said at Vala's elbow, nearly making her jump. She stepped up to her side and watched with her.

"They don't have anyone?"

"It works though, they're okay."

In the end it was Lise who was put out by Vala's visit. Not that the little girl so much as stirred when Janet scooped her up from the bed and carried her into Sam and hers bedroom to settle her down in there instead. Cassie tugged an extra blanket from a cupboard and chucked it across to Sam, who caught it and then hovered over Vala as she eased herself gingerly onto the bed.

"It isn't the Ritz," she said apologetically.

"What's the Ritz?"

"Uh, never mind. You got everything you need?"

Vala nodded, "Night."

"Night," Sam told her and disappeared into the bedroom.

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