Three Days in Limbo

Alli Snow

"Only a brave person is willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers." -Rodan of Alexandria

Day Two

Teyla bathed hastily in the water room, carefully alert for the sound of approaching footsteps, but when she returned to the bedroom Miarpia was already there, holding a fresh armload of slate-blue cloth and looking sullen.

“Thank you,” said Teyla with all the kindness she could muster, taking the clothes with a tentative smile, remembering the way Colum had spoken of her. Surely Miarpia’s upcast eye was no more her fault than Colum’s moods and fits were his. Genetics. And this was only the life she had been born to, raised to.

Miarpia narrowed the one eye that responded to her commands, untouched by Teyla’s effort. “I saw the men when they were taken to the cells yesterday,” she said. “It is a pity that two of them are spoiled. Nyri and the other keepers would never permit our blood to mix with that of the old ones.”

Teyla repressed a sigh of relief and nodded as though this made perfect sense. At least John and Rodney would not have to worry about being exploited for the sake of their genes.

And did Miarpia’s words mean that she knew where the men were being held… where the cells were? This opened new possibilities.

“The other one, though,” Miarpia continued, deliberately smoothing down her tightly-laced bodice, “the big one… could he be convinced to buy his life with his cooperation?” She sniffed. “Already there has been talk among the breeding women of finding a way to bed him, and I intend to be the first.”

Teyla tried to image any of this and could not. In fact, the notion was so absurd that she almost laughed aloud. Instead she focused on the clothing, intently admiring the satiny fabric and hand’s span of ivory embroidery. “The one you speak of hates the lords of flesh more than anyone I have ever met,” she explained calmly. “I believe he would die or kill, or both, before being so coerced.”

Miarpia grunted, visibly disappointed. “A waste, then. But at least it will not all be a complete loss… if Colum can convince you to lay with him.”

Her words were pointed and deliberate, and Teyla very carefully said nothing at all.

Later she was escorted to a dining room to break her fast with Colum. From her sense of the architecture and the view from the windows, Teyla was certain that she had been moved to one of the smaller, square buildings further up the hillside, no more than a kilometer from the Hall of Arthere.

But where were the cells?

Colum was unfailingly polite during the meal; they were alone in a modest room with an ocean view, seated across from one another at a carved wooden table. Most of the engravings seemed to be stylized renderings of the hand-heart sigil, curling over the rounded edges and spiraling down the exquisitely sculpted legs.

She touched the nearest etching. “This is beautiful,” she said, simply to make conversation, trying not to think about what poisons Miarpia or another jealous woman might slip into her meal.

“It is Arthere’s Sign,” said Colum around a mouthful of biscuit and fruit sauce. He raised his free hand and held it, fingers splayed, to his bare chest - displayed today by a heavy white shirt which drew a deep V from shoulders to navel.

It was clear enough. The space over the heart was a Wraith’s favorite place to feed, and the perpetually uncovered chests were a sort of unspoken invitation. I am here, they said. I am yielding. Take me, for I am yours.

He was still watching her, so she raised her hand to her own chest and held it there. The pulse in her wrist seemed to double-time to the one which beat beneath it.

The food tasted like ash in her mouth.

She had been given a small serrated knife with a marble handle to cut the biscuits. When Colum was not looking she slipped it into the folds of her skirt, and then in the waistband behind the sash.

After the meal they walked down to the cluster of halls near the water. There was a direct path that followed the Donyph River, Colum explained, but the road they look descended in a series of gentle switchbacks. This almost doubled the distance Teyla had estimated, and the trip was terribly awkward.

Awkward primarily because Colum did seem to realize that anything about this situation was strange. He chatted amicably about Rnaer, how there had once been another settlement on the other side of the mountain called Xeol, but that the two villages had ultimately merged to combine their genetic resources.

He spoke of the rain that so often fell - and indeed even now the sky was thick and swollen with clouds - and the vastness of the forest. He went on to tell her about his father, who had died not long ago of a trouble in the heart, and his full-sister, who had been given to the lords when she was six years old.

Teyla tried to ignore this grotesque image and said, quite idly, “My captors were drawn to Rnaer because of rumors you possessed machines… machines that had been created by the old ones.”

Colum toyed with fate by walking backwards down the curving path; one missed step and he would stumble off the trail and down the embankment, perhaps to his death. Perhaps was the problem, or else Teyla would have eagerly given the necessary shove. If he survived the fall, however… “It was something brought here by the people of Xeol, back in Arthere’s time,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Many would have happily destroyed it, but Arthere realized that it could be used to communicate with the lords.”

“Communicate?” she asked, trying to sound awed and impressed, not wary and sickened.

“Yes. In fact, it is likely that Mother has already sent them a message. The men who brought you here will surely be of interest to them, for there is no way to reach this world without understanding the old ones’ technology.” He eyed her curiously.

“I was drugged for most of the trip,” Teyla offered by way of explaining her ignorance.

He nodded, turned and kept walking a few meters ahead of her. It would be easy to take out the biscuit knife and plunge it between his shoulder blades, or better – slit his throat like a wild animal. Leave his body in the underbrush. There was nobody else along this part of the trail.

Her hands itched.

But Miarpia had seen them leave Colum’s home. They had also passed several men on the switchback; they had all looked Teyla over with hungry eyes, hungry smiles. Perhaps the houses they passed were not empty as they seemed. Perhaps they were being watched at this very moment, and that made Colum – and his elevated status as Nyri’s son – as much her protector as her warden.

She could kill one man. She could kill two or three. But she could not fight against more, armed with a mere biscuit knife, and expect to emerge unmolested.

Teyla thought she had lived with fear all of her life, and so she had. But she had become intimately familiar with the specter of death, and this… this was very different indeed.

She stared at Colum’s back and wondered again at his readiness to believe that she was one of them, his continued insistence that she was not his enemy, when every part of her soul cried out that he was wrong.

“Come,” he said now, reaching back and taking her hand. “I want you to see the Hall of the Faithful.”

The deepening clouds stirred overhead.

* * *

Wherever they were, there was a leak. Water had trickled in during the nighttime storm and now everything was just damp enough to be uncomfortable as hell.

John was going insane. He had been on this planet for just about twenty-four hours by his reckoning – they had taken his watch as long as everything else of value – and in this cell for most of that time, and he was going insane. Telling himself that eventually Elizabeth would send someone after them did not help. Picturing tearing Colum limb from limb, while briefly diverting, was also no help. Playing Prime/Not Prime with Rodney was liable to send him into a catatonic state.

There was no way out. No chink in the rough-hewn stone walls any larger than the ones that had let in the rainwater. No weakness in the locking mechanism of the door. Their captors could pass food and water in – and chamber pots out – for just as long as they felt like it. Or they could simply leave all three of them to die of starvation, languishing in their own filth.

No, he reminded himself. If that was the case, Nyri wouldn’t have fed them at all. She would have trussed them up somewhere and thrown away the key. They were being saved; eventually they would be released, taken to the Wraith equivalent of the banquet hall, and that was when they would have their chance.

John knew that the situation was desperate when “waiting until the life-sucking aliens get here” was the lynchpin of his whole strategy.

He cleared away the damp pine needles – Rodney was concerned about mold spores – and did push-ups on the cold stone floor. Then sit-ups until his muscles burned. Ronon, grim and silent, followed suit. Rodney declared that when the time came to make a mad dash for the jumper he wanted to be good and rested.

John caught Ronon’s eye but said nothing. If they were able to escape, their mad dash would not be to the jumper. Not at first. There was no way they were leaving Rnaer without Teyla.

After a while it started to rain again. Water seeped in and began to dampen the walls, and then came the maddening drip, drip, drip of a ceiling leak somewhere down the black hallway.

Rnaeran water torture.

He was going to go insane.

* * *

Nyri accompanied them to the Hall of the Faithful, but not until after she barked at her son – all the while staring squarely at Teyla – “Have you lain with her yet?”

“Mother, please,” said Colum through clenched teeth.

Teyla met and held Nyri’s gaze.

So. The other woman was not as sanguine about Teyla’s addition to the family as Colum had made it sound. This came as no surprise, although she deeply wished that mother and son had shared the same dementia.

No, Nyri was smart, that much was obvious. Was it possible she knew full well that Teyla’s captors were in reality her friends, her comrades, and simply did not care because… because Teyla represented an empty, healthy womb waiting to be filled?

Nyri’s dark eyes said as much. They said I know the game you are playing, and I will play it too because it benefits us both. But if you do not play by the rules, my rules, then there will be nothing to stop me from doing to you what I would like.

The air was thick with loathing.

Colum did not notice this, or pretended not to. How deep did his oblivion run? Was he merely embarrassed by his mother’s inquiry, or was his tightly-strung please truly a plea for more time, time to let the game run its course?

Miarpia knew too: knew that this was only a game, that Teyla was only a piece to be moved by the other players. What name did the Earthers give for a strategic element, easily sacrificed? A pawn.

I am a pawn, between mother and son, between a scorned woman and her would-be lover. They see my lies and they do not care, because my lies make me compliant, a partner in my own corruption.

The small sharp knife was warm and ready, pinned between the slate-blue skirt and her skin. Teyla’s mind filled with the image of steel parting flesh, spilling blood, but whose flesh was it? Whose blood?

Nyri’s? Colum’s? Miarpia’s?

A Wraith’s?

Her own?

She had never made a claim to precognition. She rejected it now.

The Hall of the Faithful, like that of Arthere, was another white building with white walls and floors, a perverse attempt at purity; it was not a building at all. It lay beyond a thrice-locked door in a corner of Arthere Hall, and its inner walls were formed with rough hunks of stone, dark and primal.

Teyla followed Nyri down the staircase, with Colum at her back, and felt that she was walking to her own sacrifice.

Past two more sets of doors, the air was just as cool but had now become abnormally dry, as though something were drawing the moisture away. It smelled of pine and cedar wood, smoke and spice.

There was no electricity here. Someone had come before them to light the candles in the center of the room, on a dais large enough for a person to lie upon. The floor was dirt; whoever had lit the candles had also drawn upon the sand strange lines and curves, using an ochre powder as the medium. She had seen these symbols in Colum’s books and stepped carefully over them.

There, upon the dais, not quite covered by the tall black candles, was the hand-heart sigil.

I am here. I am yielding. Take me, for I am yours.

She expected Nyri and Colum to sweep the candles away, wrangle her atop the dais and pin her there with inhuman strength as a Wraith emerged from the deepest shadows.

Please, no.

It did not happen. But as her eyes adjusted to the dim, flickering light, Teyla noticed something about the perimeter of the room. It was circular, unlike anything else she had seen in Rnaer, and every few feet it was studded with… something.

Intrigued despite herself, she squinted. Darker slabs against the dark stone… no, niches… person-sized alcoves. And inside them were people.

Only they were not people. The candlelight caressed the dried and desiccated features of corpses somehow pinioned to the wall behind them. Bodies long ago sucked of life and drained of juices, mummified; upon the crumpled paper of their chests she could still make out the imprint of a hand.

This was no sigil. It was a death-wound.

And the room was vast. There were dozens of alcoves, and they all appeared to be filled. An army of death, created by the lords of flesh and left to watch over this place.

One cadaver, seen from the corner of her eye, seemed much smaller than the others. Had it shrunk in on itself as its vital tissues were consumed? Or was these the remains of Colum’s young sister?

Nyri and Colum had gone reverently to their knees. Their eyes were closed, their expressions tranquil, their faces tilted towards the unseen ceiling.

After a moment, Teyla knelt as well. Her hands trembled as she touched the sand, but only for a moment. In her mind’s eye she saw in the alcoves a different set of crumbling husks, identifiable for all that they were withered half to dust.

Rodney. Ronon.

John.

* * *

Another drip had developed in their cell. They put an empty chamber pot beneath it for a while, to catch the falling water, but it only made a louder, more mind-warping sound. John considered throwing it out – they were going to need that pot eventually – but decided that the collected rainwater might be even more precious.

For a while they were masochists and talked about their favorite foods. Neither the troll nor her minions had brought them anything else to eat, and John’s first meal was still splattered across the floor. He had seen nobody since Colum Vius’ ghostly appearance in the dead of night, and now he rather doubted that it had actually happened.

Rodney had not yet died from mold spores, but he was fairly confident he might, given time.

Time. Time was on their side here. Elizabeth would send someone. She had to. Except that they had expected to be gone as many as three days, if the Xeolians had after all been the good guys. Three days was an eternity of time.

How many Wraith could arrive in three days, drawn by some subspace signal or simply the stench of John’s fear?

What could these sons of bitches do to Teyla in three days?

Time was the enemy. Time was a monster.

“Seven thousand, two hundred and forty-three,” said Rodney drowsily.

“Prime,” said Ronon.

* * *

Teyla was not permitted to see John and the others on the second day; after the shock of the Hall of the Faithful she dared not ask again, and in any case it was probably a punishment for having denied Colum the night before. Nyri already knew the worries that festered in Teyla’s heart.

They walked back to Colum’s home in a steady drizzle and arrived just after the sky had darkened, streaked with coal and violet. In the bedroom, Miarpia threw a gown of ebony silk and lace at Teyla’s feet and stalked away, slamming the door behind her.

The biscuit knife was secreted beneath the mattress. It seemed a more pitiful weapon every time she looked at it.

She ate with Colum in the same dining room, in the same chairs. The hillside and the ocean beyond the window had faded to muted shades of gray, all blurring like waterpaints in the ceaseless rain. Miarpia brought plates of food and tall flutes of drink from another room, looked at Teyla accusingly and Colum not at all, lit a bevy of candles lined along the windowsill and a single taper on the dining table, and left in a cloud of resentment.

Miarpia had been brought into this small household as a breeding woman, Teyla reflected, to carry Colum’s child once Nyri talked him into it. She did not think that Miarpia had looked forward to this with any great excitement, but being replaced by Teyla – an interloper, someone different, someone suspect – had made her long for what she had lost. In mere hours that longing and loss had intensified into bitterness and anger, and it was only a matter of time until she lashed out.

Teyla thought about the first time she had seen Colum, standing straight, handsome and smiling in the primeval forest, and she thought about him on his knees in the ochre sand.

You are welcome to him.

The food was surprisingly good, warm and hearty, but the candlelight spoiled any appetite she might have had. Earthers insisted that eating by candlelight was intimate and romantic, but Teyla suspected that for the rest of her life it would remind her of the wizened corpses standing watch in the Hall of the Faithful. Besides, the man sitting across from her inspired no romantic thoughts. She pushed her food around the plate.

Colum, on the other hand, ate heartily. “Not hungry?” he asked, surprised.

Teyla shook her head, endeavoring to look shy and embarrassed. Let him think that she was too flustered by his company to concentrate. It did not matter.

“Try your drink, then,” he encouraged, gesturing towards the delicate stemware, half-filled with amber liquid. “Miarpia ensures me she’s especially good at mixing it.”

She returned his smile and lifted the glass to her lips. The first swallow of liquid was cool and sharp, teasing the tongue, burning the throat and trickling into her near-empty stomach like honeyed fire. Teyla coughed, surprised.

Colum smiled. “Good, hmm?” For the first time she noticed that his glass was filled with a different liquid, sparkling burgundy in the flickering light.

Teyla had been forced through enough false Genii harvest festivals to know the taste of moonshine. This was similar to – but still markedly different from – any fermented beverage she had ever tasted. There was something else, something added that was sweet and herbal.

He is trying to drug me.

She wished she had not left the knife in the bedroom. They had not been given any with this meal, and Teyla wondered if Miarpia had noted the missing blade.

“Very nice,” she responded, trying not to look like a woman with evisceration on her mind. “Since you mention Miarpia…”

“Yes?”

Teyla pantomimed another sip, a simple ruse that would not work for long. “Will she stay on in this household, now that… that I am here, or will she leave, go elsewhere?”

Pensively, comically, Colum rested his chin in his hand. “It certainly makes life much easier, having her here,” he allowed. “If nothing else she makes a fine house mother. And there may come a time, after you are with child, that she does not seem as repellant to me as she does now.” He chuckled as though he had made a witticism.

After another false sip, she carefully swallowed down bile. “Many things are possible,” she said evenly. “And she has spoken highly of you.”

“Has she?” Colum brightened. “She is a good girl; that much is true. But she is not a fraction as beautiful as you are, Teyla,” he said fondly. “Then again, no one in Rnaer is.” He drummed his fingers on the engraved table. “Maybe I should have her moved to Joreu’s house. Their fathers are somehow related, but she has always been civil to him.”

How was she going to leave this table without finishing what was in her glass? She was sure, one way or another, that Colum would not permit it. “What if… Miarpia did not want to bear this Joreu’s child?”

“What is that?” Colum frowned, puzzled.

Teyla’s mouth was so dry that she almost wanted to take a drink. “If Miarpia, or any other women here, did not wish to bear a certain man’s child… or any child at all… what would happen to her? What would your mother say, as a keeper?”

His frown deepened as he considered. “I suppose… as keeper she would say that the woman had no choice in the matter. We are all of us but parts of the whole that is Rnaer, and to continue to serve the lords we must ensure Rnaer’s survival at any cost.”

“And yet you have fathered no children,” Teyla reminded him, softening the statement with a smile she did not feel in the least.

Colum chuckled again. “No whole children, no. But perhaps that was because I knew in my heart that you would come into my life. I was saving myself for you.” He looked highly amused by the notion.

The dining room had once been pleasantly warm, Teyla was sure of it. Now all she felt was cold, cold on her skin and cold in her marrow, and she wanted to tell the genial man before her how he disgusted her, how she would happily, with her own two hands, make it so he could never create another child again – so he could never even make the attempt. The men with Wraith stunners, whoever they were, could surely not be nearby. Even if Miarpia somehow alerted them, it would take time for them to arrive from the lower complex in this weather.

But what if they did not have to leave the lower complex? What if they had been given instructions by Nyri to go instead to the cells, which were surely somewhere near the Hall of Arthere, with more lethal weapons than mere stunners?

Elizabeth had once used the term “hostages to fortune” when discussing the civilian members of the expedition, those who were not trained in combat or even self-defense. Teyla now felt she understood the phrase much too well.

“You are very kind,” said Teyla. If she ‘accidentally’ spilled her drink, would he call in Miarpia to mix another? Perhaps not, if he did not think it needful.

She reached out for the glass without looking at it, intending to brush it with her fingers, send it clattering to the floor. She rehearsed her words, Oh, I am so very sorry…

A man cleared his throat; Teyla startled, nearly tipped the flute from sheer startlement, and followed Colum’s lead as he looked towards the doorway. “Ncan. What is it?” he snapped.

The man was older than Colum, his hair and clothing darkened by water. These people had never heard of rain shields; umbrellas, the Earthers called them. “Sorry to interrupt,” Ncan said, not sounding sorry at all, “but Ser sent me up with news, and Miarpia thought you should know…”

Colum growled, looked apologetically at Teyla, and stood. “I will not be long,” he promised.

“I will be here,” she answered.

He did not leave the room, merely stood in the doorway speaking with Ncan in low tones, but his back was turned and it was all the opportunity Teyla needed. She tipped a little of the drink into her food, which she already had no intention of eating, a bit into the liquid wax collecting around the candle’s base, some more onto the hem of her skirt – she hoped the stain would not show on the dark fabric – and most of the rest she spilled quietly on the floor. The rain masked the sound, and the small puddle would hopefully seep through the slats between the boards.

When Colum turned back around Teyla appeared to be finishing the dregs. She smiled muzzily at him, wondering what exactly had been mixed into the drink and how Colum would expect someone under its influence to act. And how she was going to escape from this predicament. “Is anything wrong?”

Colum shook his head, looking annoyed, but smiled when he saw her empty glass. “The two nearest rivers, the Opyr and the Vica, tend to flood their banks when the rains are constant. Alone they little more than streams, but when they combine forces they can be rather fearsome.”

“Are we in any danger?”

He waved a hand. “Worry not. The worst flooding always happens further down the hill. The worst we might suffer is a washed-out road, and we have enough supplies here to last us many days.”

Somehow, Teyla was not comforted. “That drink was lovely,” she said, slurring her speech slightly as she had witnessed drunken people do. She had never been thusly inebriated; control was far too important. “How is it made?”

With a rather smug expression on his face, Colum sat and rattled off the ingredients; none of them struck Teyla as suspicious until he came to the final. “And of course it would not be the same without Dragon’s Tail.”

“Dragon’s Tail?” she asked tipsily.

“You have never heard of it? Well, I suppose you would not have. It was originally brought from the hills of Xeol… a marvelous plant. Wrinkled leaves, yellow and white flowers, but the most amazing part is the large root. Arthere was the one to discover that it increased fertility in women.” He gave her a mischievous smile.

If it was the plant Teyla suspected – Athosians and many of their trading partners called it Split-Root – she was not surprised. Split-Root was typically used to help ease the ways of the injured and sick who were in great pain, but among the curious and irresponsible it was also said to cause hallucinations and other forms of insensibility.

Increased fertility… ha. She had no doubt that a woman who drank Miarpia’s mixture would, if nothing else, become less opposed to the notion of being fertilized. “Imagine that,” she replied, smiling dazedly.

He took her to the bedroom, where another cluster of lit candles was waiting, casting trembling light over deep shadows.

This time there was no love-talk, no declarations of how happy he was to have met her, no remarks about her beauty. Before the door had even closed behind them he was kissing her eagerly, his hands entangled in her hair, his body so close that she could feel the heat coming off it in waves.

She could not kiss him back, not for the sake of deception, not for her own life; it was simply not in her. Fortunately he seemed not to notice, or perhaps all the women he had bedded responded like this.

As he kissed her and pawed at her she stood as though frozen… and then, when a thought occurred to her, sagged against him, turning her face away to say, breathlessly, “I feel… dizzy.”

“That is natural,” said Colum excitedly, his fingers working on the stays of her dress. Let him work. She was good with knots.

“I am not so sure,” she responded, trying to sound weak when she was really as taut as a bowstring, leaning more heavily against him; he was forced to abandon the stays in order to keep her upright, then changed his mind and lowered her to the bed. “I feel so tired…”

The candlelight quavered across his tanned skin as he loomed above her. His eyes were dark with desire but his fine lips twisted in a frown, and then Teyla closed her eyes and could see nothing more of him.

She let her muscles go loose, her body utterly boneless; she stilled and softened her breathing. It was lucky he had draped her so nicely across the bed; in a more tenuous position she would have had to slither to the floor in order to make it believable.

It appeared, she hoped, as though she had simply passed out… perhaps from the wrong combination of alcohol and Split-Root in her drink.

“Teyla?” he asked after a moment, his tone fearful. Maybe he was wondering if he’d killed her.

She breathed gently, regularly, hoping he would not fret his mother – or anyone else – for help, choosing to avoid potential embarrassment.

This was where she would discover if she had judged him correctly. Would he continue trying to undress her, determined to impregnate her no matter how repellant the means? Or would he let her be?

If it was the former it seemed her only option was to kill him. Surely there was no other way to stop him and reconcile her deception, other than the fact that she simply did not want to sleep with him.

The woman has no choice in the matter, he had told her at dinner. Was this only his mother’s opinion, or his as well?

Silence and stillness dragged at the passing seconds. Teyla felt that her thundering heartbeat must be audible to him even over the sounds of rain and wind; she knew that he was still staring down at her, and it was hard not to squirm.

Finally, finally, he gave a resigned sigh and said something like, “…blood of the lords…” which may have been a Rnaeran curse. He stood and left the room, slamming the door behind him. A key turned in the lock with an almost imperceptible snick.

Still she dared not move.

Somewhere in the darkness two rivers became one, and raged.

Only after the candles had burned out – and still Colum had not returned – did Teyla dare pull herself further up the bed, huddling against the pillows and listening to the endless drum of water upon the roof and against the windows.

Teyla knew the meaning of the word ‘limbo’, although the term as it was used on Earth had no place in the theology of her people. She knew this because of a discussion she had had with Laura Cadman - one-time resident of Rodney McKay’s mind - following a strange Earther party where somebody had tried to dance beneath a low pole held by two of his friends, while he learned dangerously far back. The man had ultimately fallen on his behind, and everybody had laughed.

Laura had described herself as a “lapsed, very lapsed, lapsed almost to the point of nothingness Catholic”. Among other things, she explained, good, non-lapsed Catholics believed that limbo was a place where souls went after the body’s death… not all souls, just the ones who had not been especially evil or especially worthy of eternal reward. It was ultimately up to the Catholic god to determine their fate. “At least when you wake up in limbo,” Laura had chortled, “you know you weren’t bad enough to be sent to Hell outright. So there’s that. And no, I don’t know what that has to do with trying to contort yourself under a stick. Personally I don’t see the appeal.”

This was limbo. Hell would be a Rnaer without anyone like Colum, Rnaer without anyone who cared anything for her. Hell would be days and nights as Nyri’s property to be shared out among the elite of the faithful. But limbo also had a very limited appeal. How much longer could she deflect Colum’s interest, avoid Nyri and Miarpia’s wrath, and save the others?

Eventually Elizabeth would wonder where they were, and she would send somebody to retrieve them. But when? And what would the rescue party find when they at last arrived?

It rained throughout the night.

* * *

John woke from a dream in which all four of them had returned to Atlantis, safe and sound, and Rnaer had only been another chapter in the long horror story known as the Atlantis Expedition. Until one day he noticed that Teyla was holding a small bundle against her breast, smiling and cooing, and John asked to see it, and when he looked down at the baby it was not a baby at all but a Wraith, and it was not nursing. It was feeding.

“Nightmare?” asked Ronon as John shook himself awake, shuddering.

“Yeah.” By the single light he could see Rodney slumped in his corner, sleeping. Drooling.

“That happen often?”

John pushed himself up, groaning at the stiffness in his joints and the dampness of his bed. “Actually, back on Earth, before all of this, I was always an insomniac. Everyone else in the house would be asleep but I’d just lie there, staring at the ceiling until dawn. Then I’d have to try and catch naps wherever I could.” When he’d been a kid that had meant dozing off during English class. And math class. And science class. His teachers had hated him. “The funny thing is, now when I go to bed I’m always out like a light. At first. Then I have some weird-ass dream about bugs or Wraith,” or Sumner, “or some other damn thing, and I wake up.” And then he would just lie there until the sun came up.

He glanced towards toward Ronon’s corner a little sheepishly and cleared his throat. He hadn’t meant to say so much.

“I know I have dreams,” said Ronon, his voice heavy with exhaustion. “They say everybody does. But I don’t remember them. When I sleep it’s just a blank.”

“Lucky,” commented John.

“Maybe. Except sometimes I get the feeling that all the nightmares I’ve put off remembering are going to hit me all at once, and it’ll drive me crazy.”

The rain drummed on.

In this windowless cell, John only knew that morning had come because it was when he was finally able to drift off into troubled sleep.