Paring: Daniel/Jack, slash
Rating: PG
Spoilers: er...nothing really.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Still
Summary: Vala, Daniel and Mitchell decide to take up piracy and must deal with Jack when he finds them.
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Love and Larceny
She was tired of the constant suspicion. Of course, she was often under suspicion, but this time she hadn’t actually done anything and it was making her antsy. She wanted to earn the others’ disregard for her, not win it by default. So she planned and plotted, habits hard broken, and began to draw her future.
She wouldn’t do it alone this time. It was too dangerous out there now. SG-1 had given her a bad reputation and if she was going to be stuck with it anyway, she was going to take some of them with her. Sam and Teal’c were out of the question. They were too loyal, too honest and scrupulous. They would have to be kept out of the loop. This made her unexpectedly sad; friendship was friendship, after all, but at the same time, she knew it must be done.
She selected three targets and began her manouvers.
She comes to him as a friend, warm and open. Their relationship still has edges of their original hostility, but that is mostly out of habit. The world, several worlds in fact, has not been good to them, and their defences are hards shells because of it. She knows this about him, so she knows exactly how to break in.
It was surprisingly easy to turn Daniel. The news that the SGC would no longer be focusing any effort on dismantling the Lucian Alliance had come from Woollsey, the worst possible source. A few select words, “oppression” and “manipulation”, and Daniel had practically become convinced that the idea was his in the first place. They would steal a ship from Area 51, and they would be off into space, fighting the good fight again.
Daniel missed fighting the good fight almost as much as she missed her independence. The Goa’uld had taken a lot out of him and, in the end, he had only been indirectly involved in beating them. And then the Ori had come and Daniel was tired. He missed winning occasionally and wanted a life that didn’t change with every election or shift in policy. The world had long ago forgotten him. He hadn’t published in years and even if his name still carried any weight, he couldn’t publish what he knew.
But out there…out there he had a reputation. And she was quite happy to incorporate it into her own.
She came to him as a woman. She staged a carefully planned seduction that was not entirely sexual, though it did promise potential for that. She was ready to tell him why she needed him and why he would be better off out there. He was ready before she got there, even if he didn’t know exactly what for.
Cameron and Daniel were more similar than she’d thought. Cam had worked hard for SG-1, but it wasn’t what he wanted. He thought he would be saving the world. Instead, it was one loss after another and every time he walked away, he almost wished he couldn’t. The obstacle she faced with him was his loyalty to the American military.
She didn’t underestimate herself very often, but she definitely guessed short in terms of Cam’s regard for her. She’d been prepared to sleep with him, that wasn’t really an issue, but he offered to follow her before she made her move. Daniel had spoken to him, and when Cam found out she would be going with them, he agreed to the plan.
Cameron was needed for this because he was more of a tactician than Daniel, and thought on a larger scale than she did. Daniel could talk his way out of anything and she could cause a distraction like nobody’s businees, but Cameron could orchestrate a frontal assault. They would need a few of those to get themselves established.
She never got to Jack. Things happened quickly at the end and before she knew it they were off the planet and on the run. But he came looking for Daniel, and Daniel brought him in. It wasn’t her plan, but the result suited her well enough. Jack was the piece of Earth that ensured no one else would come try to “apprehend” them. Now they played for keeps.
Jack made her nervous. He was the one person who could make Daniel go home, the one person Daniel would turn himself in for. It was a gamble, and it might have cost them all their freedom, but Daniel won out and Jack joined their fight.
It struck her as funny when she thought about it. She'd had no idea what lure she was going to use on him, and then it turned out that the one thing she could offer him was the first thing she bought. Daniel had learned to keep secrets since they left Earth, but she could usually read him anyway. For a while, she doubted her ability to read people, and then she remembered that she trusted these particular people and only had to focus on the rest of the universe.
She worried at first that Jack would turn them in. Then she saw the looks that passed between him and Daniel and knew that nothing would tear them apart again.
She’s built them a castle out of grains of sand and used each of them as mortar. The structure won’t hold if they fall apart, but together, the sun will bake them into something that will withstand the ages.
Sometimes she wondered what they would do when the Lucian Alliance was gone. She wondered if a galaxy at peace would make them regret the choices they had made and the world they had abandoned. She knows that there will always be another evil, but their hope is wearing off on her and she can’t help thinking. She has always dwelt on the worst case scenario and she has always lived in the now, she’s taught them all how to do that and now they are a team.
It was home now, out here on the run. They wouldn’t go back even if they could.
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finis
GravityNotIncluded, May 18, 2007