Happy Happy Fun World: Land of the Pharaohs

[cityship]

Land of the Pharaohs, where it's Ancient Egypt all year round. "Experience the authenticity of Ancient Egypt, in the present!"

How about Anubis, the god of fertility and harvest? Seth, the goddess of love?

Or if someone took what they thought it looked like from storybooks and every incorrect paper ever and jammed them into an unholy theme park. You can ride the sarcophagus down through a river ride (watch out for the fake alligators). watch performers juggle canopic jars, or go through the haunted pyramid (made of fake gold): watch out for traps and mummies! There's also camels, lots of camels. Watch out. They spit.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. It only goes downhill from here.

Comments

[valaunbound]

"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.

[hi_there_aliens]

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?

[valaunbound]

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."

[hi_there_aliens]

"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..."

[valaunbound]

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.

[hi_there_aliens]

"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."

[valaunbound]

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.

[hi_there_aliens]

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."

[valaunbound]

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?

[hi_there_aliens]

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."

[valaunbound]

This was so hard. Vala had already done this with Daniel, and it'd happened so long ago she was a different person now. She couldn't use it to garner sympathy anymore like she'd tried the first time, she didn't have it in her. She couldn't use him like that, not now. But everything she'd said back in his bedroom at the SGC had been true. Yeah, she'd lied when he rejected her and turned it into one big double bluff, but...

Why was she even comparing it to then? This was completely different. "It's easier to not talk about it, Daniel," she replied ruefully with a small grateful smile.

"At least not now anyway." She smiled again, forcing a refreshed brightness through in her voice. She didn't know if she'd ever be ready to dredge it all up, because that meant she risked some of the suppressed memories coming back, and she knew they were there. Athena had proven that much, only very recently in fact. She didn't think she'd ever be ready for those.

(and on the way to Indulgence Cove?)

[hi_there_aliens]

Was it? Pretend it didn't happen and it would go away? If life's problems were only that easily solved. He thought clamming it up would've helped too, with Sha're, but in the end, talking had helped him deal with the loss. Putting everything he had into finding her did the rest. Mostly. Jack somehow knew he needed to talk, sensed it with an innate, if rough, empathy that Daniel never would've guessed Jack had. Jack didn't have to, but he spent the night drinking and listening to a geek prattle on and on about Abydos, the year spent there, this cultural detail, that ritual.

Then apparently he must've dozed off on the beers. Daniel woke up at one point in morning, tucked away in the guest room like a kid tired out from a road trip... which was a little more embarrassing than he'd have liked.

What it came down to was it helped, more than Jack would ever know. If she wanted to talk, Daniel was there. Vala hadn't completely blown him off, just essentially said 'not yet'. "The offer's out there whenever you're ready. At least give it a chance." Daniel said. "Just...don't blame yourself. You didn't do anything to deserve what happened to you."