[wip]

[dizzy]

Vala stares down at the stone in her hand.

It's a pretty stone. Shiny and nicely rounded. It'd make a pretty necklace.

She imagines it on a chain - something thing and elegant, but sturdy.

"You stole it."

She doesn't look up at Mitchell. She heard him come in. She could have hidden away the stone, distracted him with a smile and a shimmy. Had it been Daniel, she might have. But she knows the way Daniel's footsteps fall and knows how they differ from Cam's.

She closes her hand around it and looks up at him. "It's not worth anything."

"You still stole it." Mitchell takes a seat, not beside her but across from her in a chair that he drags across the room. "I thought we already went over this."

She looks up at him and frowns. "I said it's not worth anything, no one will miss it."

"Vala." He sighs, exasperated. "Come on, work with me here. You took it for a reason."

She opens her mouth, ready to snap out something sarcastic and misleading just to throw him off. Maybe an insult, maybe a come on. He is looking particularly good in that blue shirt...

But nothing comes out. She huffs and looks back down at the stone. "It used to belong to me."

"Uh-huh."

"Not me." She clarifies. "Que'tesh. It belonged to her."

Mitchell doesn't have anything to say to that. She looks him straight in the eye, expecting disappointment, disgust or recrimination.

Instead she sees... nothing.

Well, not nothing. There's sympathy, maybe. Just a little bit of it.

"Where'd she get it?"

Vala smiles, crooked and humorless. "Oh, you know her, life of the party. I'm sure someone gave it to her. Baal or Yu... he quite fancied me."

"Her." Mitchell says, quietly. For a split second he reminds her of Daniel.

Vala ignores him.

"Her." Mitchell says again, insistently.

"Her." She rolls her eyes. "Fine, he fancied her."

"You're lying."

"What?" Her jaw drops, offended. Her fingers close back around the stone. "Why on earth-"

"Don't know. That's what I'm tryin' to figure out. I mean, it's not like you're responsible for anything she did."

He says it in such a way that she knows he's trying to lead her.

There is a lie quick on her tongue but for the second time it slips away.

"Que'tesh saw it on a young maiden and wanted it. She had the girl beheaded."

Mitchell at least has the decency to look repulsed now.

"Oh, it wasn't really over the stone. It really is worthless, I wasn't lying about that. The girl was... pretty. She was pretty. Very pretty. And there was this man... Que'tesh wanted him, but he wouldn't let go of the girl. Din, His name was Din and he held her hand. I... I don't even remember her name. Actually, I'm not sure I ever knew it. But when he picked up her hand - it made Que'tesh... she didn't like it. Jealous, I suppose? That word is - it's not entirely right, but..." Inside her, the feelings churn, memories like a ghost that don't really belong to her but affect her all the same. "She had the girl killed and then the necklace cleaned and brought to her."

Mitchell doesn't stop her, which is almost more cruel than kind. When she's finished she shuts her mouth abruptly and casts her eyes downward.

He reaches out and pries the stone from her grasp. He flips it up in the air and then catches it neatly. "Why'd you take it?"

She shrugs.

"You really want it?" He stares at her, persistent. He holds it up for her to see, gripped between this fingers. "You want keep it? Nice little memento?"

She blanches, and then shakes her head, tipping her chin down momentarily as she regroups. She looks back up at him.

"I'm gonna take it. Get rid of it," he tells her. "You okay with that?"

"It's not mine," she says, quietly.

He just nods again, and then the stone is out of sight, disappeared into his pocket. He gets up and looks down at her. "Don't steal anything else."