Chapter Text
It’s the perfect storm. That’s all it is.
“You’re telling me that you don’t have a single name picked out.”
His fingers play over her feet, press into the deep arches where muscle knots harder than bone, trickles them down the side and swirls them around her heels where she carries most of her weight, as he’s told her many times before.
“Superstitions, darling.” Cups her hand under her mouth as she bites into a rather crisp cherry tomato that starts to dribble out of control.
He shakes his head at her, while she tries to save her lunch. “I don’t know.” Rough pads stretch out the bottom of her feet molding the skin and the muscles forward than back, trying to reconstruct her pre-pregnancy balance is a feat of its own. “Gotta be some kind of superstition if you don’t have a name waiting.”
She hasn’t told him about Adria, or about husband one through four for that matter. Daniel seemed like enough drama for the moment since he’s become a rather permanent fixture on Atlantis. The storming season adeptly came early, not unlike a certain archeologist, effectively grounding the Hammond and its crew including Samantha, who is a bit disappointed at delaying her trip back to Earth and a certain General who slid a ring on her finger the last time she was there, is more than enthused about possibly being present for the birth. The downside to the whole equation is a whingy little doctor who’s not settling down resulting in throw-ins with each scientist on staff, including herself.
“Conversation for another day, right?” Fingers ring around her ankles and she involuntarily splays out her toes stretching her legs to her knee. Shovels another forkful of spinach into her mouth and only nods out an answer, her cheeks puffy with food and her body relaxing after almost two endless months of drama. He chuckles spreading the balls of her feet and then compacting them, does the same with the toes. “You know, one of these days you’re going to have to answer at least one of my questions.”
“Mmm,” she takes a swig from a water bottle and places it back behind her on the side table. “Not likely.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I’ll just use my body and distract you with seduction.” Wiggles her hips and they both know it’s as a joke because her stomach rivals a beach ball and sits on her as an almost separate mass.
“Now that is not fair.” His hand trails over her heel to cup her shin squeezing just gently enough to identify where the strained muscles are. “You’re going to win every fight.”
“As I should.” She leans forward from the arm of the couch, her stomach acting as a hurdle between them, but she collects some leafage from her bowl and reaches forward for him to eat. He does but his nose twitches and flares at the onslaught of vegetables. “You need to start eating better because I’m going to want you around for a while, especially after last night.”
He beams, she knew he would, and he deserves to. Doesn’t think she’s been that exhausted after a roll in the sheets since she was Qetesh and taking dozens of lovers at once. He knows about that, large face falling flaccid as she told him what happened, how she saw it all but couldn’t stop it, how the villagers beat her until the To’kra stepped in, and he kept her eyes the entire time, during the entire ordeal from when she was plucked from her betrothed to when they placed her down on a commerce planet with a pat on her back and a wish of good luck as her bones still mended.
At the end of her tale, he slipped his large hand into hers. “You have a kind heart, so people take advantage of you, but you’re strong. Stronger than me, with the exclusion of my mother, probably the strongest person I’ve ever met. I’ll tell you that I’m here for you, but you know that and you don’t need me, you just need this—” and he touched her temple softly, his fingers tickling over her skin, cupping her cheek, tracing her lips.
“You know,” he still chews on the same mouthful of salad, same sickly expression still pulling at his face every time his teeth meet. “Ronon is a good name for a boy or a girl.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have your own child named after you?” Stabbing the fork again around the basin of the wooden bowl.
She told him that she didn’t expect anything from him, understood the situation was for lack of a better term, sticky, and that he didn’t have any responsibilities towards her or the baby as far as she was concerned. His mouth crashed onto hers cutting her sentence short, drowning her words with his tongue as he flipped her underneath him. “You need to start raising your standards.”
His hand smothers her stomach, even in its bulbous state. The baby kicks and punches, shivers and jostles inside of her, a bigger little marble in a smaller pinball machine. She has feet in her ribs, but she laughs because she’s happy, and going to have a baby and she’s safe, and may be a bit infatuated with a good man.
“Ahem.” Daniel clears his throat from the doorway of her office. They hadn’t heard him enter, nor know how long he’s been present for. He stands in his SGC gear as is protocol, with his hands in his pockets watching her try to spoon feed a man who is a foot taller than her as he plays with their baby.
Her baby.
“Danny Boy,” Ronon stands in greeting, lifting her legs off him as if they were bed covers. He leans over and snatches the last spoonful of salad with his mouth, knowing she’ll be going for second lunch in about ninety minutes. “How’s it going.”
“Oh, not to bad.” His voice is tense and she understands why it would be, but he did lie to Samantha about needing a particular book from the expansive Atlantis library which got him shipwrecked. “Dr. McKay and I have actually made headway translating what he has called the spear of destiny—”
“The Ori oar?” A bit of water dribbles down her chin as she swigs from the last bit of her drink. She wipes it away with her black shirt sleeve and sits adjusting the material over her stomach. At least she can wear a large in men’s fatigue pants, but finding shirts is starting to drive Colonel Shepperd crazy.
“Or that, yes.” Daniel slides her a stern look, and Ronon crosses his arms, leaning back against her empty examination table. He takes notice, “I—ugh—We wanted to get your input on the Ori part to ensure the glyphs had been properly translated.”
“Daniel.” She places her hand on the arm of the couch, using it as leverage to stand but doesn’t make it on the first try. “You—” tries again but falls back onto the soft cushion. He steps forward to help her, but Ronon stays stationary, “You—” and rolling forward a bit, she lands on her feet a little less gracefully than a gymnast. “Have read the Book of Ori more times than I have.”
Daniel’s voice holds a slight tone of irritation, “Yes, but I didn’t live in the Ori Galaxy for almost a year.”
Ronon’s eyebrows twitch, trying not to react to the information. Although he handled last night’s revelations well, his brain is still probably trying to file it correctly.
“Well, you’re definitely the more proficient reader.” Imbued with a sudden sense of unease, not due to the conversation and the information exposed within it, but the room, the ambience is prickled with electricity, a static ringing around the walls and she tries not to let it distract her from Daniel being Daniel.
“Well I didn’t give birth to the Orici.”
The pithy rebuttal never escapes her lips, nor does she get a moment to gauge Ronon’s reaction and hopefully satiate him by promising to explain later. Doesn’t see him point a finger at her and knowingly whisper the word ‘superstition’ because he doesn’t need it explained because he already understands. Doesn’t tell Daniel that with his attitude he’s a parent to no one and nothing, least of all the baby attached to her or the five flowered purple plant in the corner.
“Vala,” chides her for not answering him directly because instead she floats around the periphery of her office, sensing something off.
When she doesn’t answer, just continues to sway, her eyes directed up at the ceiling, hearing screams. Are those screams? The sounds of weapons and crying, painful crying, Ronon sticks to her side, nudges the side of her head with his. “Hey.”
“Can you hear that?”
“Are you okay?”
“What?” his voice pulls her back and she’s staring into his eyes, the color of them settles her heartbeat.
He pulls her hands off her stomach, something she didn’t know she’d been doing. “What’s wrong.”
“Vala.” Daniel’s on her other side, angling his head the same direction as hers to hear what she does. “What did you hear?”
“There’s—it’s hard to explain. Like electrical? An electrical current or static, hissing like—”
“Like staffs.” Daniel exclaims before her office door bursts in, she ducks her head into Ronon’s chest and after slivers of wood skitter through the air. He herds her behind him.
“Go.”
“Go where?’ Eyes wide, eyebrows up, hands not big enough to protect her full stomach.
“Anywhere.” Daniel answers for him, picks up a shard of wood ready to possibly bludgeon someone, but he doesn’t move an inch before the Ori solider indisposes him.
They shoot Ronon in quick succession, two, three, then four times, until he topples to his knees and his torso slaps against the ground with a resonating thud. The arm gun got them, and usually two is enough to kill, but looking down at his body, he still breathes shallowly.
There are seven soldiers in the room, each with shiny silver armor and pinchy little spears and staffs. They back her up against her desk, her thighs pressing into the wooden edge and she smiles nervously at them.
“Mother of the Orici.” They bow before her and her eyes flicker left than right trying to route an escape but she’s burdened and no where near as lithe as before. “We’ve come to take you home.”
“I—I am home,” she flashes a grin, trying to sift through the pairs of eyes, searching for Tomin’s dull gray but doesn’t find him.
“The Ori armies have waited patiently for you to deliver us a new leader.”
“No. No. No—” tries to scurry behind her desk, out the window, down the tower, but they cut her off at each pass forming a prudent semicircle so she cannot move more than a foot in each direction. She lost one child to them, not another “—No. No. No. No.”
She’ll die before another—
It becomes clear she’s not as keen to deliver the second Orici as they are to receive it, the leader, the orator, hits her once with a very light stun and she crumbles to the ground, conscious enough to feel a familiar pain strike through her stomach as they carry her away.