trans_9 | Happy Happy Fun World: Land of the Pharaohs

The guard glared at Vala with every single eyeball and did his best to look extra menacing. All he needed to do was pound all three fists into the other three palms to complete the image. Vala might be just a little cruel there with the sarcasm, but the thing was, she... might be right about the guard's job picking up. Tailing the two of them was probably the most exciting thing to happen to him all day. Daniel felt a tiny grimace of a smile coming onto his face. He tried to stop it before it came out. Daniel didn't want to smile, because he still wasn't happy with how shore leave was going, with Vala at the moment, but, and the smile threatened to grow, Vala did have a way with words that was pretty...well, pretty special.

Daniel pretended to clean his glasses until he got the urge under control.

"We wouldn't need our friend here if you'd just paid like everyone else," Daniel settled the glasses on the bridge of his nose. They continued through the crowd, passing through another archway, this one depicting Cleopatra as an exceedingly well-endowed, four armed Elizabeth Taylor. If she'd been born a naga. "Now stop baiting him. Can we at least try to enjoy the rest of the day?"

Not that Daniel was so far, aside from the non-Stacy food. They came out into a plaza. The first thing they were confronted with was a sign proudly proclaiming "Welcome...The Valley of the Gods, Mortals", followed by a line of towering statues leading up a cause way to what was a barely passable scale replica of the Great Pyramids.

"I wasn't baiting him, unless of course he can lip-read, which I highly..." Vala stopped herself from continuing, clamping her lips together hard and very obviously. Enjoying the day was hardly going to happen if she kept arguing with him, even if she was right.

"Absolutely! So Valley of the Gods it is then, with copious amounts of enjoy." Although how a tribute to a bunch of power hungry false gods was supposed to be fun, she really wasn't sure. Religion of any description didn't sit well with Vala, for obvious reasons. She raised one cynical eyebrow at the grandiose statues ahead, a faint look of disdain for them on her face.

Yes, Vala, it's better for everyone if you just don't assume anything at the moment. Besides, Daniel didn't think the guard needed to be able to lip sync to get what Vala's insolent wave and smile meant.He knew exactly why he was tailing these two guests. Daniel hated to say it, but they deserved it. Vala did at least. It wasn't like being pinned for something she didn't do. And she was lucky to get the guard detail. The manager and security wanted to keep them both in a cell until shore leave was over or kick them back up to Stacy.

Daniel studied the statues. He thought he could see Anubis, but why he was portrayed as having the relics for fertility and the harvest was beyond him. He looked at her, catching the disgust on her face. With the way Vala said the name, you'd almost think she didn't want to continue. Since she did have some experience with the Goa'uld, she knew more than the average person did about them, how they operated. Yeah, 'Gods'.

"You're the one who wanted to come." Even with the Goa'uld taking on some gods, it didn't have to mean they were all Goa'uld. Even if they were, it was possible to study them by taking a step back, try to look at it with an academic eye.

Edited 2011-10-22 02:22 (UTC)

"Okay so I wanted to come, but not for..." Vala shrugged it off, it was only a load of statues representing history. "Stop making sense," she smiled wryly. "I hate it when you do that." She was still smiling though, the comment was much more affectionate than accusatory.

It was then that Vala spotted Ray. The Sun God, apparently. He was a fat jolly type, and seemed to resemble Santa Claus. She might have never met Ra, but this was definitely nothing like she'd heard. Both eyebrows shot up in amused disbelief, before slowly turning her head sideways towards Daniel with much the same look. "I think they got some details wrong somewhere."

Edited 2011-10-22 11:21 (UTC)

That did get Vala a small, genuine smile. "I can't help it." Most of the time he liked to think he made sense. He didn't always.

Daniel drifted up to the statue. It was fat, topped with a grinning hawk-falcon, and looked a lot more like Santa Claus that it ever should. If it wasn't for the giant sun disc (not even placed the right way, Daniel cringed) on his head or the scarab beetle with one too many legs, Daniel would never have guessed who this was supposed to be.

"Is this supposed to be Ra?" he asked incredulously. Daniel looked to the inscription, as if hoping it would prove him wrong. The God of the Moon, Ray, bringer of plague and war. Daniel looked back at the statue, the not-Ra. Even Vala looked like she couldn't believe it. "No kidding. The only thing they got right was the name. Ra was nothing like this!"

Ignoring the fact that they got the basics wrong, Ra wasn't the god for plague and war, that was Resheph, Ra hadn't been anything like what Egyptian mythology and the rest of the academic world thought he was either. He'd been something more. Ra was gone, but Daniel didn't think he'd ever forget the encounter for the rest of his life. Ra wasn't this. He'd been supremely confident, which made sense considering he claimed he was a god, and uncomfortably beautiful, in a way that you couldn't help but watch him. It was in how he carried himself, how it affected his looks. It didn't look quite right; more like watching a cobra weaving towards you than another human being. Daniel suspected it would've looked wrong no matter what body Ra had worn.

Edited 2011-10-22 11:50 (UTC)

"I have no idea." Vala scoffed with a laugh, but she was clearly more amused by the whole fiasco than offended. Which wasn't the reaction she expected Daniel would have. If there were more like this, then Daniel was going to presumably go on and on and probably at a million miles an hour with no pause for breath. If they were to get to the end of the row today then Vala would have to literally drag him from each statue before he wrote a thesis on the inaccuracies.

"I think this statue would provide endless entertainment at a System Lords convention though." She could just imagine them all polishing their egos over what a joke he'd been made to look. It was also a ploy to get Daniel to just laugh and move on.

This wasn't funny, this was a travesty! It wasn't like Daniel cared if it pissed the System Lords off. This wasn't about them. What he did care about was the mockery it made of an entire culture and his own line of work. And people paid for this! Daniel had just gotten done explaining the purpose of the Jungle Cruise and the intent behind it, and sadly enough, even the Jungle Cruise got more right than this place. But the point was people wanted to see the idea of Egypt without actually having to go to Egypt. This was so far from Egypt and Egyptian culture that it might as well be another planet entirely. Why even bother calling it Land of the Pharaohs? He couldn't see a single thing right. Not one. Zero. How hard was it to get at least one detail right?

"Are you kidding, they might have gotten one giggle out before Ra killed them for the insolence." Daniel told her. He strode up to the statue, spine radiating wounded academic pride. "I mean look at this! They have Ra holding a cow uterus-"

At least, he thought it was one, if someone tried shaping it from a bendy straw.

"- which is not only completely incorrect, it's a symbol that belongs to Meskhenet, a goddess of childbirth and fate, along with..." Daniel trailed off, eyebrows furrowed as he caught a glimpse of something. The archaeologist leaned forward. Was- was that a birth brick in Ra's hand too?

Right, well that worked a treat. Vala stood, arms crossed hanging back as he failed to raise even the tiniest of smiles and went in for the kill instead. As Daniel verbally tore apart every last detail the statue had to offer, and possibly risked a heart attack in the process, Vala simply rolled her eyes and chose to focus her attention on the pink sky instead. It was actually very pretty she considered, and that cloud was almost shaped like a chalice. She imagined it studded with jewels and winking at her as the sunlight caught the jewels' facets.

"Travesty." She interjected from behind him, to assure him she was paying attention, then returned her attention to the now full blown imagined Treasure trove in the sky.

"-It is a travesty!" Daniel agreed. He moved down the line, and rather rudely motioned towards another sculpture. "And this- they ripped this from the Discophoros and just jammed a kitten's head on it. I've never seen any Egyptian statue utilize this much contrapposto or show nearly the same attention to musculature, even when you take the Raherka and Meresankh sculpture into consideration. The Egyptians valued stability, permanence, and capturing the essence of a person, not necessarily capturing the illusion of life or a likeness to this extent. While they did experiment with it, it never quite caught on as much as it did with Greek and Roman sculpture, whose values-"

Daniel seemed to forget Vala was there, or if he did remember, she was temporarily relegated to the status of lecture student, which was, in his world, listen until he ran out of breath. Daniel was on a roll.

Edited 2011-10-23 09:54 (UTC)

Technically Vala wasn't there. Vala was rolling around in cavern of treasure now, in fact she was back at Avalon and lamenting all the stuff she really should have taken and just ignored Cam's orders. She was only 25% tuned in to Daniel, enough to add "The contrapposto is simply shocking" though. Whatever the hell that meant.

Maybe if she wandered ahead, he'd be forced to catch up. She considered grabbing him and physically forcing him along, but that risked him actually engaging her rather than ranting to the ether. She edged along towards the next statue, and went back to her 'happy place'.

Daniel faltered and looked at her sharply, because contrapposto, was, if anything, not exactly 'shocking' or riveting, which meant she didn't understand the concept, which he found hard to believe, it obviously spoke for itself, or....Was she even listening to him?

They came to another section of statues and Daniel forgot all about whether she was paying attention or not.

"This is supposed to be Aphophis?" Daniel sounded like he was ready to start again.

Vala had just shrugged at the pointed look, then given him a sombre nod complete with furrowed brow. It was supposed to come off as engrossed in the subject matter and academic, it probably came off more as mockery.

Oh God, not again! Right that was it, she couldn't pretend any more. Vala rolled her eyes behind his back as he approached the Apophis, smacking the park map against her forehead dramatically. "I think we've established that any authenticity is an abstract concept by now, Daniel." Ooh that sounded quite good, she preened a little before continuing.

"Is it really necessary to go through these verbal diatribes each time though? I mean I've been patient, but I think I might die of boredom and/or old age before we reach the end."

Daniel's spine couldn't possible go any straighter but it tried anyway.

"They're not 'diatribes'," He was trying to educate her and get himself a vent for the frustration at the same time. He liked to think of it as a rant with dual purpose. The way Daniel saw it, and just about everything, was that it couldn't ever hurt to learn something new. The more you know, right?

Unless it was quantum theory or astrophysics. Not that he wasn't willing to give it a shot. He gave it a shot. It just... usually went over his head most of the time, but Sam, for some reason, seemed to get a kick out of it, and who was he to judge here? He liked digging around dead civilizations.

Daniel waved to the sculpture, encompassing everything that was wrong with it in a circle. he was going to pretend he didn't just hear Vala say he was boring her. "You dragged an Egyptologist to the worst example of what someone thought Egypt was supposed to be. What did you think was gonna happen? I can't just turn my brain off."

"I didn't drag you." Vala's mouth dropped open in disapproval of that statement. "If I recall, you were more than happy to come here. And forgive me for not being able to look into the future Dr Genius Daniel Jackson, but how was I to know it would be about as historically accurate as a.. as a... well a historically inaccurate thing."

Vala had issues taking the blame for things she was fully aware she'd actually done, but she could hardly be held accountable for this.

"They're all wrong! I think you've made that quite clear, and as much as my heart bleeds for your poor offended Egyptologist sensibilities, can we just move on... please." Vala sighed heavily, shoulders dropping in defeat towards the end of that little outburst.

"I wanted to get off base," just to get that out of the way here. But he would've been just as happy, if not happier, continuing work on the Taleen dig artifacts. "Not... this." Because getting dragged here, getting his foot stepped on, and nearly getting jailed along with Vala was his idea of fun.

Daniel's face had gone from wounded pride to offended, with a healthy dose of indignant to round it out. If he wanted to hear this kind of sarcasm and patronization, he'd go hang out with SG-3, or better yet, annoy Jack into one of his pissier moods. He folded his arms. Keeping his mouth shut on everything wrong with the statues, much less the park's accuracy, was, in his mind, about as good as accepting it as is.

The archaeologist's jaw worked as he looked at the Apophis statue. It was a visible effort on his part not to say anything about the fact it was carrying a snake entwined in an olive branch, as if he was trying to channel Athena. "Fine. Why don't you lead the way?"

"Gladly," she said with as much bite as his 'fine' had been delivered. "Besides, I think if you continue you're likely to suffer from heart failure and I'm not having that on my conscience. Yes they're all horribly wrong, but you can't change that Daniel," she tried to reason more gently and sympathetically to his frustration.

"Come on, I suggest we pick one of the other places. Maybe Land of the Pharaohs wasn't one of my better plans with hindsight."

Vala whirled around, looking for the quickest way out and that's when she saw a statue she really didn't want to see. It hit her like a slap to the face and momentarily she was paralysed on the spot. Of all the Gods and Goddesses they got wrong, this one was uncannily accurate, at least as far as Qetesh's most recent host was concerned. She swallowed hard and looked away.

"Now." There was a sudden urgency in her voice and she attempted to usher Daniel off in the other direction. By usher it was more a forceful hand applied to the small of his back.

Edited 2011-10-25 02:01 (UTC)

Vala might be right, he couldn't change anything, but keeping his mouth shut about it was almost impossible. He was going to get a heart attack if he didn't vent. Or implode a few blood vessels in his brain. She seemed to read his face like an open book because she shut him down before he could even start again. Taken by surprise, Daniel bit his lip, stopping the Apophis correction before it could come out.

He had to agree with her, this place wasn't a good plan at all. Leaving and looking somewhere else; finally, a good idea. The best one she had all day.

They started to leave when she glanced away, and then went completely still, right before she practically shoved him down the path, as if they had a squad of Jaffa coming down on them.

"What-Vala-!" Daniel didn't particularly care to get manhandled, and he wasn't ready for the hand planted in the small of his back, only a slide away from his ass, as if she was perfectly used to it and it was perfectly natural for her to be this familiar. Her reaction wasn't normal. Was something wrong? If the guard was doing something, like coming after them or getting more guards, he wanted to see it coming. The archaeologist wormed away and turned around. His head craned up.

The statue, and it was undoubtedly Quetesh, judging from the dress and what she carried, looked strangely like Vala. Practically a spitting image. Eyebrows knit, Daniel looked at her then back at the statue. What the hell?

Edited 2011-10-25 06:11 (UTC)

There might as well have been a squad of Jaffa on their back as far as Vala was concerned. Actually no, that would have been preferable. She wouldn't have frozen if that had been the case, her mind would have been working overtime to come up with a plan. This crisis had her floundering much more.

"Just let's get out of..." she started to protest when he stubbornly objected, and then he was looking right at her. Right at the gut wrenchingly accurate statue of Qetesh. The Goa'uld that had controlled her every action for more years than she ever wanted to remember. The Goa'uld that had been memorialised in this sham of a park in her image. The Goa'uld that had slaughtered tens of thousands of Ba'al's Jaffa in her body and the Goa'uld that had made her watch as men and women alike died in crippling agonised torture at her feet.

Vala's eyes glazed over, stiffening her jaw to bite back any tears. She refused to get emotional about it. "What?" she snapped at him caustically, "I'm sure they got that one wrong too, just like all the others."

"You think so?" Daniel slowly said. His eyes hadn't left the statue, taking in the face, the outfit. His doubt, all the little suspicions were compressed into just three words. Out of everything he'd seen in the entire park, everything had gotten mashed together, none of it actually right, and this was the one statue had everything as it should. Bearing a handful of snakes and a lotus flower, Quetesh stood on a lion, with Resheph and Min flanking her. Just as she was supposed to, except for the part where she looked just like Vala. She even had Vala's angular cheekbones, but there was an air of cruel disdain on her face.

This couldn't be some freakish coincidence, because why her, out of everyone in the entire universe? It wasn't even an amalgamation of faces or just an accident. Probably because it wasn't one. Unless he was completely jumping to conclusions, it really left a few possible answers.

He finally looked back at her. "Vala..."

Vala didn't know where to look. She certainly didn't want to look at Qetesh, that made her think about it all too much and remember things she didn't want to remember and just a quick glance at Daniel as he took in every last detail with that shell shocked look on his face told her that she couldn't look at him either. All she wanted to do was run, pretend it never happened, all of it. They could just walk away and not mention it again, right? That was an option.

"Can we just go, please? I thought we'd agreed we were leaving." Her voice cracked as she spoke, the flippancy she'd intended on portraying failed miserably.

"Yes it's me." She turned her head, looking anywhere but at Daniel. Voice thick with emotion. "I was a host. But now I'm not. Wasn't that a great story? Now can we go?" She started to walk away briskly, not wanting him to follow and wanting him to all at the same time. She wanted nothing more than for that just to be the end of it, but she knew that wasn't likely.

Edited 2011-10-25 11:39 (UTC)

"You were a host?" he echoed.

Vala, for all her cheek and bravado, couldn't quite hide the way her voice broke. Daniel looked at her, suddenly seeing hints of the vulnerability under the surface. Maybe it had always been there the entire time ever since he met her, and Daniel had been oblivious, blundering on and mouthing off when she shouldn't. Even after meeting Jara, Eva, and Kendra, he should be better at spotting it. He chewed the inside of his cheek. Maybe that was part of why she latched onto him, besides the familiarity. And Daniel had only given her a hard time. After what she survived, she deserved a lot more than that. Like someone willing to listen.

He took one last look on the statue, at the stone eyes and cruelty in them, and then hurried to catch up to her. She didn't have to hide it. No one thought she was weak or at fault.

"Vala, wait."

Her stupid body was reacting with all those ridiculous cliched signs of emotional stress without her permission and she was fighting to suppress them. Above the noise of the crowd and the park her heart constricted tightly, thudding almost audibly and the hot pain behind her eyes stung as she stared defiantly ahead to hold it all in and back.

She walked quickly enough so that by the time he'd catch up with her she'd have a grip on it... just. Cautiously she glanced at Daniel sideways when he was almost caught up and tagging her shoulder. She used to find this so much easier before her time at the SGC, she could brush it off because nobody cared. There was nobody interested beyond wanting to blame her for it, so it was easy to shrug and deny all responsibility. But now she did have to hide it, because if she gave in to it, it would ruin her. She'd lived with this long enough to know that wallowing did no good and despite his best intentions he could never understand, not fully. She was the one who had to live with the fact that she'd not been able to stop any of it.

"On the bright side, I can heal your ribs at least," she said with an eyeroll. Vala's tongue slipped into her cheek and she gave him a curt abrasive mockery of a smile.

Edited 2011-10-26 14:16 (UTC)

Geez, would it kill Vala to slow down? Daniel nearly lost her in the crowd, and the last thing either of them needed was for Stacy to take off without her, stranding her here. Daniel caught sight of Vala's streaked head zipping in and out and fought to keep it in sight as he pushed through the crowd after her. The guard also pushed to keep up with him, but unlike Daniel, made no effort to weave through the crowd. The alien gamely bulled through the crowd at a steady pace, and anyone who got caught in the way was shoved past. Suddenly the guard detail didn't matter.

Finally, Daniel caught up with her. He expected a lot of things, none of which was Vala turning on him as if they'd shared a private joke. It was like she ran hot or cold, and it left Daniel floundering.

"I don't care about my ribs," Daniel sputtered. Yes, they hurt. They were healing. It was nothing compared to what just happened. He'd just found out she'd been a Goa'uld host, and obviously the experience had been traumatic for her. It would for anyone. "I think we should talk."

Talk, talk, talk; yes because that'd be fun. Vala hadn't even wanted Daniel to know, never mind sit down and have a nice chat about it. "What's there to talk about?" She shrugged it off with as much ease as she could muster. "It won't change anything, unless you need to know more details before you decide whether to hate me or not."

Because that was the core of it for Vala, deep down she hated herself for it despite knowing it was out of her hands. But there was always a choice and if she'd just fought that much harder, done something sooner... "Seven years. Seven years, Daniel. I hardly think I can cover seven years over a cup of coffee."

Daniel didn't know anything about her, he didn't know how hard she'd worked to change, he knew nothing about how she'd risked her life to stop the Supergate, how she'd thrown herself in front of an Ori staff blast for him. He had no reason to forgive her. That stupid statue had blown it for her before she'd had chance to make him like her. What was the point of even trying?

Daniel couldn't look any more stunned or puzzled. "Why would I hate you?"

Maybe he'd reacted strongly to the mummy and the scam, but he didn't hate her. He didn't even know what he thought of her. Conflicted, and that was before the Quetesh statue. He didn't hate a lot of people. It wasn't that he was some saint. Daniel was anything but. There was room for hatred in his life, but most of it was reserved for one Goa'uld in particular.

Vala didn't seem like the spilling-her-guts type, so maybe she'd always kept it bottled inside. Not that it was his business, he was a stranger, and she certainly was within her rights to tell him to go to hell, but maybe she did need someone to lean on. "None of it was your fault. I just thought..." the sentence trailed off awkwardly. What did he even want? He wanted to help her, and at least, he thought it started with talking, with human support. Someone was willing to listen and not judge her. He just didn't know if he was doing it right. "I just thought it might help to talk to someone."

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valaunbound - 2011-10-27 21:33 (UTC) - Expand

(and on the way to Indulgence Cove?)

hi_there_aliens - 2011-10-28 04:52 (UTC) - Expand