1. “Good bye, Jacen. I really don’t care to see you around this time.” She thought she was telling the truth. Life certainly was simpler when he wasn’t around. But the squeezing hand around her heart as he turned away told her she’d lied.
2. “I’m fine with the way things went. What we did was for the best. It had to be done.” SG-1 needed to hear that. But inside her was a voice so loud, so clangorous, so piercing that she was astonished they could not hear it. “Foul!” it said. “Foul! Unnatural! Undeserving! What kind of a mother are you, that you worked to kill your own child?!”
3. “No, that’s okay. I know it’s an illusion, and it can’t possibly hurt me. You go ahead, Muscles!” Yes, her mind knew that the curtain of fire was not really there, that this was just another test of resolve on the way to the prize, but her body knew differently. It could still feel the terrible consuming heat of the prior’s fire, the agonized pain of seared lungs, the cloying choking smell of burning hair and flesh. Daniel was too consumed with curiosity to be concerned with anything but what lay behind that roiling curtain. Mitchell had already forged on ahead. Sam was using all her powers of concentration to overrule her senses and instincts with her intellect, but Muscles would watch, and he would know. Best to send him through now.
4. “You’re right, Daniel. I was just having a joke at your expense.” And as long as he let her keep her back to him, maybe he’d believe it, and she could keep her dignity. There was a weird sense of déjà-vu to this whole situation, although she knew she’d never offered herself like that before.
5. “You know, I never really had this before. It’s nice to have friends.” Cassie, who was in town for the weekend, put the heaping spoonful of whipped cream and fudge covered ice cream in her mouth and grinned in agreement.
Sam stopped riffling through the bag from Victoria’s Secret, where she was trying to retrieve her receipt to put it in her wallet, and took in the sight of Vala and Cassie and the food court table with its sundaes and crumpled paper napkins. It had been so long since a Girls Day Out had meant more than two girls. Not since Janet.
“Yeah,” she agreed. This is nice.”
She gave up on the receipt and started in on her own sundae.
Four Times Vala Lied and One Time She Didn’t
2. “I’m fine with the way things went. What we did was for the best. It had to be done.” SG-1 needed to hear that. But inside her was a voice so loud, so clangorous, so piercing that she was astonished they could not hear it. “Foul!” it said. “Foul! Unnatural! Undeserving! What kind of a mother are you, that you worked to kill your own child?!”
3. “No, that’s okay. I know it’s an illusion, and it can’t possibly hurt me. You go ahead, Muscles!” Yes, her mind knew that the curtain of fire was not really there, that this was just another test of resolve on the way to the prize, but her body knew differently. It could still feel the terrible consuming heat of the prior’s fire, the agonized pain of seared lungs, the cloying choking smell of burning hair and flesh. Daniel was too consumed with curiosity to be concerned with anything but what lay behind that roiling curtain. Mitchell had already forged on ahead. Sam was using all her powers of concentration to overrule her senses and instincts with her intellect, but Muscles would watch, and he would know. Best to send him through now.
4. “You’re right, Daniel. I was just having a joke at your expense.” And as long as he let her keep her back to him, maybe he’d believe it, and she could keep her dignity. There was a weird sense of déjà-vu to this whole situation, although she knew she’d never offered herself like that before.
5. “You know, I never really had this before. It’s nice to have friends.” Cassie, who was in town for the weekend, put the heaping spoonful of whipped cream and fudge covered ice cream in her mouth and grinned in agreement.
Sam stopped riffling through the bag from Victoria’s Secret, where she was trying to retrieve her receipt to put it in her wallet, and took in the sight of Vala and Cassie and the food court table with its sundaes and crumpled paper napkins. It had been so long since a Girls Day Out had meant more than two girls. Not since Janet.
“Yeah,” she agreed. This is nice.”
She gave up on the receipt and started in on her own sundae.
So true, she thought. So true.