Three Days in Limbo
Alli Snow
"He tells himself over and
over again in any choice presented to him, 'Prefer the hard.' This holds good
not only in great matters, but also in very small, in fighting by the frozen
Day Three
Teyla woke
late in the morning, embarrassed to note the angle of the morning light through
the windows and surprised to see that someone had left another change of
clothing at the foot of the bed. She had
not thought that she would sleep at all, and she was a little shocked to
discover that someone had entered the room without waking her. Maybe the small amount of Split-Root she had
ingested had affected her after all.
She pulled
on the clothing: a white skirt with a sheer blue overlay and a satiny white
bodice with a low, square-cut neck and long sheer sleeves. For the first time Teyla noticed that these
offerings of clothing had been getting progressively more elaborate, and she
did not think that it was Miarpia’s doing.
Running
her fingers through her hair and using the sash from the black dress to tie it
back from her face, Teyla wished she had a mirror and immediately rescinded
such a petty little hope. Her face
burned. So Colum liked to see his women
finely attired; if she ever felt any softness towards him for his consideration
she need only remember what he had been prepared to do to her only hours ago.
She put
the small knife in her bodice.
When she
tried the bedroom door, she found it unlocked.
Out in the hallway she could better make out the gentle, omnipresent
sound of falling rain and the harsher tones of men’s voices coming from the
front of the house. She was certain that
one belonged to Ncan, thought longingly of the door and the switchback road and
the path to the jumper, and went to the dining room.
Colum was
already there, seated, eating a biscuit and staring into space. Miarpia was there as well; she looked over at
Teyla, and Teyla stifled a gasp.
It was not
the eye; she was used to the eye by now.
It was the bruise on the other side of her face, the normal side;
swollen, mottled purple and blue and other less-definable colors marred the
skin from jaw to cheekbone.
“Teyla!” Colum had noticed her standing in the doorway
but paid no attention to what she was looking at, or how stunned and disgusted
she must have appeared. He gestured to
the empty chair across from him. “Have a
seat, please. Miarpia?”
Teyla sat,
not knowing what else to do. Miarpia
vanished for a moment and then returned with a warm plate of food.
Her
movements were slow; she carried herself gingerly. Colum watched her dispassionately as the
plate was sat down and the woman stepped away.
“You asked me what I would do with her,” Colum said, addressing Teyla
but clearly speaking to both of them. “I
cannot in good conscience send her to Joreu’s household, where she might
indulge in another fit of jealousy.”
“Jealousy?”
Teyla interrupted, pretending surprise and wondering furiously if she had a
duty to exonerate Miarpia. The Rnaer’s
battered face betrayed no emotion.
“Colum, I am sorry, but I remember little of what happened after dinner
last night.”
He
grunted. “I know. That is why I am having Miarpia sent to the
crèches. After her duties are finished
tonight. Perhaps she will be less
destructive there.”
Teyla
stared at her plate. Caught in the
lie. Her ruse to ward off Colum’s
advances had had consequences she had not foreseen. She was not sure what the crèches were, or
why it would be a punishment to be sent there, but it was a punishment and no
mistake. “Are you sure that is fair?”
she asked quietly.
Colum
frowned at her. “It is the way things
are done here,” he said sharply. “Now
eat. We are going to the cells today.”
* * *
John had
fallen asleep, at long last, in the dark little prison room surrounded by soggy
pine needles. He woke up somewhere
different: in a larger chamber made of familiar stone blocks, his face mashed
into an astoundingly hard stone floor, one set of restraints around his ankles
and another around his wrists; a sturdy chain lead through both sets of
manacles and then through a formidable iron ring set into the ground.
Overkill much?
Ronon and
Rodney were trussed up much the same way, still unconscious, left sprawled in
awkward and uncomfortable positions on the floor. Otherwise he was alone in the chamber, so he
got right to pulling and twisting this way and that on the chain, the cuffs,
the ring, everything. The only thing he accomplished was making
enough noise to wake the other two.
Rodney
blinked blearily and stared down at his shackles. “What the hell is this?” Ronon made a guttural noise that translated
to something similar and the two of them writhed around, trying the exact same
things John had and with the same amount of success.
“I think
they stunned us while we were asleep and moved us in here,” said John when they
were done. He looked around the room –
low ceiling, two lit sconces, small barred window way up high showing a bleak
gray sky – and then back at the others.
“Probably didn’t want to risk Ronon getting loose and tearing off some
heads,” he added, because from the look on the big man’s face he was in the
mood for decapitation.
Rodney
squirmed around on his ass. “I think I could tear off a few heads at the
moment,” he said petulantly. “Well,
maybe not with actual hands-on tearing, but what I wouldn’t give for Laura
Cadman and a couple handfuls of C4 right about now.”
“I’m going
to tell
“Be my
guest.”
“Fine. I’m going to tell Cadman you said that.”
“Oh, you
wouldn’t dare.”
“Quiet,”
Ronon snapped. “I think I heard someone
coming.”
There was
a doorway – no door – in the wall across from the one they were bolted to. John looked towards it with no small amount
of trepidation, expecting a Wraith to come striding through the shadows, hungry
hands outstretched. Was that was this
room was? A chow hall? Somehow he would have expected a little more
ceremony, a little more macabre romance from a cult of Wraith worshipers, but
he didn’t pretend to have detailed knowledge of their society’s inner workings.
“I don’t
hear anything,” Rodney whispered after all of five seconds.
“Shh!”
Someone
walked into the room, but it was not a Wraith.
It was Teyla.
The fact
that she was there, walking, looking unharmed and unrestrained, appearing
subdued if not entirely calm, dressed in a scaled-up version of the Rnaeran
fashion they’d seen on their way into town… it all made his brain stop working
for a few seconds. Long enough to notice
that she had been closely followed by Colum, that smiley bastard, and right on
his heels was his evil bitch of a mother, looking fatter and uglier than he
remembered.
John and
the others clambered to their feet, which was not an easy task in their present
condition; Nyri and Colum watched with amusement snapping in their eyes. Teyla’s expression was flat and unreadable.
“You see?”
said Nyri, nodding at them contemptuously.
“They are secure. You have
nothing to fear.” Who was she talking
to?
“You’re
okay,” said Rodney, sounding as shocked as John had felt.
“No thanks
to you,” Teyla snapped after the space of a heartbeat. Rodney made a brief wounded sound while John
and Ronon traded grave expressions. “If
I had been left in your hands I would have doubtless be dead by now. Do not feign relief at seeing me.”
She was
acting, or she was brainwashed. They had
brainwashing on alien planets, didn’t they?
Only one way to find out. “Of
course we’re relieved,” he said loudly, overriding Rodney’s protestations. “We went to a lot of trouble to track you
down the first time. I’d hate for that
to all be for nothing.” His tone was
sarcastic and the words harsh, but the meaning behind them undeniably true.
“You need
not worry,” she said acidly, coming a few steps closer. “Colum and his people are keeping me safe
from the likes of you.” Translation: she
wasn’t a prisoner, but she wasn’t free to come or go as she pleased.
Ronon was
giving Colum the Satedan version of the Evil Eye. “How honorable of him.”
John
looked at Nyri. “What makes you think
you can just take our property and get away with it? There are laws about that kind of thing where
we come from, you know.”
The woman
opened her mouth to reply but was overridden by Teyla, who stepped towards John
despite Colum’s murmuring protest. From
this angle the Rnaerans could not see her face, but they could see his; he
locked himself down, schooling his expression into an amalgamation of anger and
yearning as she snapped at him. “Neither
the laws of your people nor those of the old ones hold any sway here. We look to the skies for the lords of flesh,
and nothing you do can stop them.”
The Wraith
were coming. Did she know for sure or
was it just a guess? It was hard to tell
simply by the intensity of her expression.
“Is that a fact?”
“It is,”
Colum interceded, although he did not leave his mother’s side. “And when they arrive we shall have the honor
of giving you to them as proof of our perfect loyalty. If you are somehow one of the old ones, the
lords will enjoy ripping the knowledge from your mind before they devour your
soul. I hope they do it in the Hall of
the Faithful,” he added fervently. “It
would be a pleasure to witness.”
John
looked back at Teyla. Her face was
ashen, drawn, but her voice remained strong.
“I wish to see it as well,” she claimed.
“I’ll
fight them,” John answered, trying to make it sound more like a threat than a
promise.
“I would
be surprised if you did not.” She stared
as though trying to burn holes into him with her eyes, trying to use the Wraith
telepathy she had inherited to send a message, mind to mind. “It would be so out of character. I cannot remember the last time you have done
something so out of character.”
Out of
character. She was trying to tell him
something, pass on some information… no.
If it was only information she wouldn’t be looking so desperate…
wouldn’t be sidling closer, trying for all the world to appear she was
threatening him. Out of character. Okay, so what was the last time he’d done
something crazy and stupid? Assuming she
didn’t think that crazy and stupid were actually in character for him… crazy and stupid… inappropriate… the last
time he’d done something inappropriate with regards to Teyla?
You are showing a considerable leap
in ability, Colonel Sheppard.
You can call me John when we’re off
the clock.
Very well… John.
It was
hard not to give her a questioning look, but he couldn’t, not with Colum and
Nyri watching him like lawyers waiting for the opposition to make a mistake so
they could object.
Ah, so listen. While I’ve been lying there the past few
weeks, I’ve been remembering things.
Some things I might have done that you could call out of character.
Colum let
out a loud sigh. “Teyla, we should
go. These… pitiful excuses for men are
not worth your time, or mine. You have
seen them, now we can go.”
Teyla’s
look intensified. Now, she mouthed, her hands hovering near her waist.
Jesus. I hope this is what you had in mind.
She’d come
close enough – and his chain gave up just enough slack – that he was able to
dart forward, grab her with his manacled hands, and press his lips hard against
hers before the Rnaerans even knew what was happening. He held her tight and she made a good show of
struggling against him, her hands on his chest, moving lower, fumbling against
the waistband of his pants even as she pulled her face away with a very
believable cry of anger. Then hands were
pulling her away, Colum’s hands, and there was someone new there, a man with a
Wraith stunner slung over his shoulder.
Ronon was trying to get closer, to grab the stunner, but the new man saw
him coming; a hard blow to the temple took him to the ground at just about the
same time that Colum managed to extricate Teyla from John’s awkward grasp.
“Something
to remember me by!” John called out as she was drawn back towards Nyri.
Colum
punched him in the face. John stumbled
back, barely avoiding falling on his ass, and caught Teyla’s eye one last time
before Nyri ushered her from the room.
Got it.
What he
hadn’t exactly counted on was being stunned.
Again.
* * *
“Sickening,”
declared Colum. “Completely
sickening.” He looked at Teyla, and she
would have liked to pretend that there was concern in his eyes, but it was
probably just spite. “When you were their
prisoner, did that man abuse you?”
Coming
from Colum, this statement went past absurdity into a realm of complete
ludicrousness. “He would have liked to,”
she said evenly, trying not to wince as the sound of a stunner firing came from
around the corner – one, two, three times.
“But in their own ways they are a people of laws, and they would not
permit it.”
“Sickening,”
said Colum again. “That one – Sheppard,
is that his name? – he worries me. The
big one is strong,” he continued as Ncan rejoined them, stunner in hand, “but
he’s not the leader. Not the smart
one. I do not like the idea of them all
being stored together, even if it is only for another day. I want Sheppard put in a different cell.”
Ncan
looked surprised. “But you know how long
these cells have been neglected,” he said in a low tone, as though ashamed of
the fact. “On this entire level… broken
locks, holes in the walls…”
“Then put
him down in the second level,” Colum snapped.
“Come, I will pick it out myself.
I won’t be long,” he promised Teyla and Nyri, and then he was stalking
off back down the hallway with Ncan at his heels, and the two women were alone.
For a
moment Teyla tried to pretend that Nyri was not
there, tried to ignore the impulse to run back into the other room and see for
herself that John, Ronon and Rodney were okay, tried to simply focus on the
prison around her.
It was an
underground structure just outside the walls of the Hall of the Faithful, with
a much older, almost prehistoric feel to it.
As Ncan had said it had obviously been neglected – the Rnaerans truly
did not often get visitors – and many of the internal walls were crumbling,
cold iron gates falling into disrepair, and according to Colum the lowest of
the three floors had collapsed altogether.
The idea of John being alone in one of the second level cells gave her a
chill, as though he were being prematurely buried.
Other than
its poor condition, there was very little about the prison that was
noteworthy. A spiral staircase led down
into it, twining from the surface to the bottom of the impassible third
level. The entrance was simply a hole in
the ground not far from the covered storm drains, with a stone-marked path
which led to a back entry of the Hall of Arthere. From there, Teyla intuited that those enemies
marked for death would be taken to the Hall of the Faithful, the dais, and
their fate.
She
wondered if their bodies would be displayed in niches, but felt it was not
likely. That was an honor reserved for
the faithful, surely, not allies of the old ones.
“It seems
your friends are very worried about you,” said Nyri in a suspiciously honeyed
voice. In the eldritch light cast by
wall-mounted lamps her worn face looked even older, and somehow inhuman.
Teyla
regarded her warily. “I told you, they
are not my friends. They are…”
Nyri spat,
actually spat on the stone floor between them.
She scowled, deepening the shadows around her eyes and mouth. “My son may have deluded himself into
believing as much, girl, but I am not a fool.
And if you think you have tricked anyone else into believing you are one
of us, you are sadly mistaken. Even
Colum knows in his deepest heart that you are nothing but a whore, abandoning
your companions to their fate while you warm his bed. What would the old ones say to that, do you
think? Cooperating with the enemy? Trading your body to the Wraith so that you might live?
I know what my lords do to
traitors.”
“They seem
to do the same thing to their faithful,” responded Teyla, surprised by her own
outward composure when every fiber in her body cried out for her to strike the
old she-beast down.
Nyri
smiled thinly. “When our souls enter
their own, they know the faithful for what we are. We will live on forever as a part of them,
until the end of time, as the hands of the lord stretch from one side of the
universe to the other.” Her eyes briefly
glazed at this rapturous thought. “The
souls of the unfaithful, the souls of the old ones and their kin, they are
merely devoured, their minds torn to shreds, their strength sustaining the
lords but not becoming part of them. The
difference is not in the method but the final outcome, girl. When you die it will mean the end of you, no
matter what allegiance you might claim.
But take heart that your children, if they are chosen, will live
forever.”
Teyla’s
equanimity teetered on the verge of collapse, the voice in her mind urging
violence growing stronger all the time.
But even if she could free the others from their chains, there was no
way she could get three full-grown, unconscious men to the jumper without being
caught. “I am not Colum’s whore,” she
said slowly.
“You mean
he hasn’t yet bedded you,” Nyri jeered.
“That is no surprise. But tonight
he will, and you will let him.”
“I will
not.”
“You
will,” Nyri said again. “Because the
message I sent to the lords said that we had prisoners. It did not say how many. When they arrive, tomorrow or the next day or
a season from now, perhaps there will be three servants of the old ones here to
be fed on. But perhaps there will only
be two.” She leaned in. “Perhaps I will go to one of your friends…
perhaps Sheppard, alone in his cell, dreaming of escape. There are ways of disabling a person without
using a stunner, you know. There is a
drug which will immobilize but leave the victim alert and with full
sensation. So he would feel what was
happening when I cut his heart from his chest.
And he could hear me as he died, hear me tell him that what was being
done to him was because of you.”
Teyla did
not doubt that this woman could gouge the heart from a living man’s chest. She supposed that Nyri would enjoy it, would
feel that it was as close as she could ever come to being a lord herself, would
be pleased to present the organ, skewered on the sharp point of a dagger, to
Teyla personally.
And that
would still leave two more hostages to fortune.
Nyri
slapped her across the face, backhanded, bone of knuckles ringing against the
bone of jaw, and Teyla found herself unable to retaliate.
She could
still feel the warmth of Sheppard’s lips against her own… or she imagined she
did. She could see Rodney and Ronon
standing there, staring at her as though they’d never seen her before.
“Tonight,
girl,” said Nyri.
* * *
John was
getting tired of waking up and not knowing where the hell he was.
No sconce
this time. No light at all. He had to explore his surroundings by touch,
which was difficult when every single nerve ending was still tingling from the
aftereffects of the stunner. Eventually
he decided that he’d been tossed in a completely different cell, this one even
smaller – about seven feet by ten – with no lighting at all, an even narrower
gated doorway, and no pine needle mattress.
Well, he wasn’t exactly upset about that one.
The good
thing was that the small knife Teyla had shoved – handle-down – into his
waistband when he’d kissed her was still there.
Colum’s goons hadn’t found it when they’d moved him.
The bad
thing was that John had absolutely no idea what to do with it.
* * *
News had
spread that a message had been sent to the lords, and despite the fact that no
one seemed to know when they would arrive, the occasion apparently called for a
festival. Men and women swarmed through
the streets, breathlessly exciting, preparing places for food and music.
Nyri
seemed to have better uses for her time, and left Teyla under the ‘protection’
of a man called Joreu. She remembered
the name; Joreu was mean-eyed and silent, choosing not to assist with the
festival preparations, instead leaning against a wall and watching Teyla
intently as she helped wipe down dinnerware and mend tablecloths.
The entire
time she strained her senses towards the sky, seeking either the preternatural
alarm of approaching Wraith or the benign hum of a cloaked jumper making a low
pass, but no visitors arrived from the sky, or from anywhere else.
When Colum
and Ncan emerged from the prison they promptly vanished again. Teyla could not imagine what duties were
expected of a keeper’s son and his hireling, and she tried not to dwell on it.
Evening
began to seep in, darkening the clouds from silver to steel-gray, and it began
to rain again. Nobody seemed to mind;
they put up tents and awnings and went on just as cheerfully, glancing over at
Teyla with expressions sometimes bemused, sometimes repelled. Nyri was right; nobody believed in the flimsy
pretense Colum had invented, maybe not even Colum himself. But they were willing to pretend because they
needed her – her womb, her genes – and what damage could one unbeliever truly
do?
Miarpia,
in her last night as a member of Colum’s household, came to fetch her. They walked back up the switchback road in
silence, through the dark drizzle, and more than once Teyla had to bite back an
apology. She wondered again about the
crèches.
Inside,
Teyla changed into dry clothes, the same foam-green dress she had been
presented on her first day. Miarpia
mutely brought her a tray of dinner, then left.
Through
the open window she could hear the shouts and happy cries of revelers, braving
the rain and the swelling rivers to celebrate the coming of the lords. It sounded as though everyone in Rnaer might
be gamboling up and down the streets, toasting their immortal souls and
watching the skies for lights.
No. Not everyone.
Colum
arrived shortly after the sun had set, still wet, dripping on the woven mat;
his eyes sparked like flint and he closed the door behind him.
Teyla
stood, facing him, watching the smile of possession slide over his face. His shirt clung to him like a second skin,
molding to the elegant curve of muscle and jut of bone.
“Take off
the dress,” he said, blowing water from his lips.
She could
not do this. She simply couldn’t. Couldn’t not
look past his fine features and exquisite body, couldn’t not see the darkness within. Could not see herself in the bed of a man she
had met two days ago, a man who worshiped the Wraith as truly as she now prayed
to the Ancestors, a man who had abused Miarpia, a man who only wanted to plant
his seed in her belly.
Give us three days before you come
looking, she had
asked
Others
from the city would come; it was a surety.
And as long as they arrived before the Wraith – which was not sure but
possible – they would be rescued, these people punished in whatever way their
rescuers saw fitting, and all would return to rightness.
As long as
all four of them were still alive.
She had no
doubts that if she refused Colum he would go to Nyri… or perhaps he would do it
himself. A clever drug or the assistance
of Ncan and a few others like him; they would hold John down and they would
kill him, and then nothing would ever be right again.
She could
not do this. But she also could not
expect anyone else to suffer further for her decisions.
Colum
peeled off his shirt; it dropped to the floor with a strange clatter. “Take it off,” he said, his voice rough. “Or I will do it for you.”
Her
stubborn soul cried out fine, do it
yourself, determined that she would not be – or even appear to be – a
willing party in any of this. Not
anymore. But she had seen the bruises on
Miarpia’s face, and the way she carried herself so stiffly, and she reminded
herself that defiance was fine… but compared with broken bones – or worse –
when she might need to assist in her own escape?
She would
not rouse his anger. She would give him
no reason to retaliate against the others.
If it was
the only thing she could do to help them, so be it.
So she
took off the dress, and he closed the space between them in a single stride.
His hands
were cold; she shivered as rainwater chilled the skin that he touched. He touched all of it.
He
disrobed swiftly, surely, and pinned her coarsely to the bed, her head caught
against the pillows at an awkward angle.
He made pleased sounds as she writhed against him, trying to gain a more
comfortable position, trying to keep the breath from being squeezed from her
lungs by the solid weight of him, trying to shrink away from the surface of her
skin and leave him holding nothing but a shell.
He ran his
palms across her body and kissed her neck in a halfhearted effort, but in truth
he did not want her participation. This
was fortunate, because it took everything in her to merely submit. She would die before she responded to his
touch.
She tried
to remember the taste of tuttleroot soup, the distant, gentle sound of her
mother’s voice, the cool sea breeze coming off the ocean.
She shut
her eyes against the brief pain, the disgusting wrongness of his moving within her.
She saw
his shirt, falling to the floor faster than any piece of fabric ought to, even
when saturated.
The feel
of the staves in her hand, the wood worn smooth by a hundred hours of use, the
slits of her skirt rippling against her legs, the rare sound of laughter
filtering through the halls of Atlantis.
He levered
himself up on his elbows, straining, his breath hot and sour against her face.
She tried to
remember why she was letting him do this.
Ronon,
Rodney, John. They all came to mind as
Colum thrust against her, panting, pawing, but it was John’s mouth she imagined
she felt, his eyes watching her cross a room, his heart impaled on a dark
blade.
Colum’s
voice rose and fell against the susurration of the rain, and she wished that
she could close her ears to it, numb her skin, extinguish her mind like the
flame of a candle.
The ocean
crashed against the docks, a sound she thought she would never become
accustomed to, a sound she now missed with all her heart.
A cold,
dark maw, filled with glistening fangs.
Thrusting,
thrusting, gasping in her ear.
It went on
forever.
And then
it was done.
For a few
moments he simply lay there atop her, boneless and replete; Teyla could not
breathe, did not try, held herself perfectly, perfectly still lest she spur him
on. After a long while he rolled off
her, groaning satisfaction, breathing heavily, a stupid smile on his handsome
face. He did not speak to her, did not
acknowledge her, closed his eyes and laid back, limp and sated.
She
reached back for the nearest pillow, held it in two hands, and then pressed it
down over his face.
Colum
shouted, or tried to, but the fabric and stuffing and the howl of the wind and
the murmur of the rain all muffled his voice.
He pushed
her off, or tried to, but Teyla knew enough about the weak points of the human
body to hold down his weakly bucking form.
He tried
to grab her hair, her face, anything in reach, but stopped after she broke two
of the fingers with a simple one-handed twist.
It was
nauseating, crawling on top of him, touching him skin-to-skin after what had
just happened. But this time she was in
control.
After
perhaps half a minute he stopped struggling, but it was an old trick. Teyla held the pillow firmly across his nose
and mouth until she was confident, until the fight went out of him and his head
lolled.
For a long
moment she stared down at his hateful, beautiful face, overcome with the
knowledge that everything she had done since she had first awoken in this room,
every deception, every act of cooperation, collaboration, including what she
had just let him do to her, had just been undone by a single act, a single
impulse.
Teyla did
not check for the warmth of breath or the pulse of heartbeat. She did not mind if he expired from lack of
air. She did not intend to be here when
the body was found.
His shirt had dropped to the floor
with a strange clatter.
The rain
outside was not just rain anymore; it had intensified to a storm, as it had the
previous night. The night the river had
flooded. If any revelers had not given
up their revelry and gone back home, they would surely be swept away, drawn
down into the sea.
But she
would not, because she had a task in mind.
There was
a tightness in her chest, an ache in her marrow that she knew all too
well. She could not wait any longer.
She could
still feel the revolting slickness between her legs as she reached for her
dress, thought longingly of hot water and soup and a scrubbing cloth, but she
feared that once she entered the water room she might not be able to
leave. She slipped into the light
garment, ignoring the discomfort as best she could, promising herself a good
long soak in the hottest possible water just as soon as they returned to
Atlantis. All of them.
Retrieving
Colum’s shirt from the floor, Teyla felt the weight almost immediately. There was a small pocket sewn into the side,
and this was where she found the key: large, gray, the same sturdy metal that
comprised the gates and locks of the Rnaeran prison.
With a
quick look back at Colum’s motionless form, Teyla crossed to the door. The metal latch slipped through her sweaty
hands the first time; she cursed and tried again. A delicate snick, the door swung open, and she found herself staring into
Miarpia’s one good eye.
Maybe she
had been drawn by Colum’s muffled yells.
Her eye focused over Teyla’s shoulder, no doubt seeing the body on the
bed.
Teyla
caught her breath, hating the idea of assaulting the already battered woman but
willing to do what was necessary.
And then
Miarpia stepped aside.
Wordlessly,
Teyla slipped into the hallway, clutching the key, unable to look away from the
other woman. “Thank you.”
Miarpia’s
expression was hard, unreadable. “Take
the
Teyla
blinked in surprise. In this weather,
any direct trail down the hillside would be dangerous, especially one that
followed a river. It could be a trick, a
way to avoid a physical confrontation that the other woman would surely
lose. But in the dim light, the bruises
on her swollen face were still vivid, and Teyla sensed no malice, no deception.
She left
the house through the front door. Ncan
was not there.
* * *
The sound
of falling rain was softer here than it had been in his former accommodations,
which logically meant that he was further away from it. If he really was underground – and he had the
unfailing sense that he was – that meant he had been put in a cell even deeper
in the earth. This in no way improved
his mood.
John had
tried working the blade of his knife into every small crack his hands
encountered, wiggling it gently in the lock of the gate, concerned about
breaking it off inside the lock and
possibly trapping himself in here forever.
He could not decide if Teyla had slipped him the knife with a specific
purpose in mind – like killing a Wraith before it could feed on him, causing a
distraction, something like that – or if she had simply taken advantage of the
opportunity to broaden their horizons.
She probably hadn’t known that he was going to be put in solitary.
Maybe she
wanted him to be able to slit his wrists rather than die of thirst and
starvation, if that was the Rnaerans’ game.
And wasn’t that a lovely
thought. He put it quickly from his
mind.
There was
nothing to do but wait. Wait for rescue,
wait for attack, wait for a change in the situation; wait in limbo. John hated waiting.
* * *
The path
running down the hill alongside the Donyph River was paved, thank the
Ancestors, and in some places the large conifer trees to each side had been
whittled down to handholds, with knobs like rough newel posts, and Teyla clung
to these as she made her way down.
She was
soaked to the skin in minutes, half-blinded by the sheer volume of the rain,
half-deafened by the sound of the wind in the trees and the steady fall of
water surrounding her. And then there
was the river, which had looked so small from the jumper, an insignificant
little tributary that did not gain real mass or speed until it joined with the
others. But the storm and the night and
the fear in her heart made it seem that a huge, vicious creature made of water
and stone was racing alongside her, determined to beat her to the bottom.
Teyla saw
no sentries, but that did not mean they were not there. Even in a community which appeared placid and
content, there would always be those who were eager to use the cover of night
in nefarious ways. It was part of
humanity. She did not think that a
community of Wraith worshipers who conceived children with their cousins would
be an exception to this.
Besides,
maybe Nyri had posted them to keep a watch for one person in particular.
She
slipped, she cursed, but most importantly she kept pushing on, and without her
quite realizing it the pathway leveled out at the plateau where the public
structures were clustered. The streets
were not all paved here, and the modest courtyards between buildings certainly
were not, and the rain churned sand and silt into mud and slime, washing the
white buildings clean even as it dirtied everything else.
In some
places the storm system worked quite well, channeling water into v-shaped
ditches and encapsulated metal tubing, all angling downhill towards the river
mouth. She remembered that one of the
largest drains ran alongside the entrance to the prison.
Electric
lights above the doors of the various Halls and in the center of the attendant
courtyards provided the only illumination besides the sickly gray-green glow of
the clouds. It was in a circle of wan
amber light that Teyla saw the first sentry, a slender man armed with a Wraith
stunner. She stopped, ankle-deep in mud,
and then sneaked to the nearest wall, intending to put the entirety of a
building between the two of them.
The
cacophony of the storm made it unlikely that she would be heard, and the heavy
rain limited visibility even in these more sheltered areas, but she was alone,
unarmed, and disinclined to take chances.
Slowly she
edged her way around the rectangular building – from the outside Teyla could
not tell if it was the Hall of Arthere or some other damned place – and found
herself surprisingly near the road they had taken from the beach. The road up which Colum had led them.
Remembering
his easy smile, remembering the way she had held the pillow over his face,
Teyla felt a brief but misplaced pang of pity.
She squelched it.
Intent on
avoiding one sentry, she stealthily turned a corner and found herself staring
into the surprised eyes of another. Or
perhaps he was just a fellow out for a walk in the rain, or perhaps he was one
of the evildoers she had considered earlier; in either case he was not armed,
and he was surely more shocked to see her than she was to have run into him.
It was
hard to find sure footing on the pavers, slick with mud and pooling water, so
she simply ducked out of his reach the first time he grabbed for her, slid under his arms the second time, elbowed
him neatly beneath his ribs and then sharply across the face. He slipped back, struck his head against one
hard white wall, and collapsed in a limp-limbed heap without uttering anything
louder than a dismayed gasp. Teyla
paused to ensure he was truly unconscious, then continued.
No time,
no time. She had to hurry, free the
others and retrace their steps to the jumper.
They had to hurry; the Wraith were coming.
The Wraith
were here.
They
appeared through the skeins of rain like phantasms, like nightmares.
Tall thin
bodies; stockier, stouter forms. Both
types had come, those Aiden Ford had called “infantry” and the ones he had
termed “generals”, the eyeless and the dark-eyed, the grunts and their
commanders. There was an endless choice
of terms to differentiate between the two but for Teyla it did not matter
because both types would cull and feed with the same effect. If there was some kind of caste system among
the ranks of the Wraith it mattered naught to their victims.
She had
been soaked to the skin since she had left Colum’s house, but now for the first
time she was truly cold. The emptiness
that seemed to grow from the seed of her ability was wrenched into a crevasse,
a chasm, as she watched them approach through the storm’s sickly glow.
The one in
front saw her, saw her despite the strafing storm, despite the darkness.
They were
not approaching from the direction of the beach, but from the mouth of the
river, as though they had followed it and then the storm sewers to Rnaer rather
than taking a path long committed to memory.
Teyla wondered how many years had passed since the lords’ last visit.
Like most
predators, they would give chase if she ran.
She could not run.
Their
silver hair was dampened by the rain but not darkened; if anything it took on a
more unnatural radiance. Their skin
seemed paler, and by contrast their eyes black pits in the centers of their
faces. “Like sharks’ eyes.” John had compared them thusly, and of course
that made no sense to Teyla, the Pegasus Galaxy seemingly without sharks, and
she had chalked it up to Earth popular culture.
The Wraith
approached slowly, like something raised by dark magic from a fresh grave.
John.
When the sentries saw their lords coming they would surely not freeze
like she had, for they would not fear.
They would run to Nyri and Nyri would happily escort the Wraith to the
prisons. And then it would be too late.
Still she
could not move.
And the
Wraith did not quicken their pace, neither the leader nor the ones who
followed. The one in front simply stared
at her, and she might have thought him utterly expressionless except that the
closer he came the more clearly Teyla could
read an expression.
Awe.
She had a
sudden flash of intuition, or maybe it was the latent telepathy that bound them
together despite themselves, but in either case she sensed it: disbelief
growing into pleased acceptance. This
Wraith had heard of a land where the humans would not offer chase, where they
would in fact offer themselves and their children up for the taking, and he had
not believed it, but then he received the subspace beacon – Lantean technology
and worth following – and now it seemed that this, this was the fabled world,
the land of the feast, where they were worshiped rightly as lords. As gods.
Teyla
dropped to her knees in the mud.
She saw
the hand-heart sigil in the mind of the creature; it was known as the symbol of
this mythical planet, and it pleased them.
The leader
stooped down. He placed his hand
lightly, curiously, over her chest. She
knew that he must be able to feel the frantic pounding of her heart, but
perhaps he thought her only excited, enthusiastic. The other Wraith had stopped. They were simply watching.
His skin
was cool, greasy, and something bristled and squirmed in his palm.
Somehow,
the sound of the rain and the wind had all faded away, noises blurring until
they were more like static in the far distance.
There was an old song, one of the oldest, to ward off evil, but she
could not bring it to mind. She closed
her eyes and waited.
There was
a glad cry. And then another. A shout, not of alarm, but of exhilaration.
Teyla
opened her eyes.
The Wraith
who had stopped before her, who had touched her as though seeking communion,
had risen and walked on. The others,
grunts and generals alike, trailed in his path, some of them sparing her a
soulless glance, others ignoring her altogether.
The
sentries – or someone else – had seen that their lords were here. The babble of voices rising above the sound
of the storm, which had returned in all its impersonal fury, made Teyla imagine
the entirety of the settlement swarming down the road to greet their grand
visitors.
Teyla
pushed herself up out of the mud and ran.
Terror had
sharpened her mind; she found the entrance to the prisons faster than she’d
hoped. Rounding a corner, there it was:
a rectangle of darkness set into the ground beside the Hall of the
Faithful. Teyla stepped over the
drainage pipe – it was at one of its larger points here, almost as wide across
as the length of her arm – and circled the gap until she found where the stairs
began. There was no door, no lid, and
the rain came straight in, making the metal treads dangerously slick, but there
was a handrail and so she hurried down into the darkness without hesitation.
The spiral
staircase descended down into deeper gloom but Teyla stepped off at the first
level, blinking in the darkness that seemed even more absolute than the night
outside. There were lights, as there had
been on her visit the previous day, but they were old and dim as though
sustaining on the merest reserve of power, and the black stone walls and the
bare stone floor – submerged beneath about two inches of water - seemed all the
darker by comparison.
She did
not call out their names for fear of alerting the wrong person – it made sense
that they would leave guards, did it not? – but hastened down the narrow and
ominous hallway as fast as she dared.
The cells she passed were all empty, and she did not know where they had
originally been imprisoned, and—
Somebody
grabbed her arm and she swallowed a shriek, instinctively pulling away,
imagining Colum smirking at her from the shadows.
“Teyla!”
“Teyla?”
Terror
turned to relief so abruptly and so completely that she almost wept. Ronon and Rodney stared through the bars at
her, backlit by a flickering lamp mounted on the wall; they looked damp and
miserable but otherwise fine and thank the Ancestors they were alive.
They were
alive.
Rodney
squinted into the dark corridor. “Did
Teyla
shook her head. “I am afraid that I am
the rescue team.” She looked at her
other teammate, who had not released her wrist.
“It is me, Ronon.”
“I know,”
he said shortly, his eyes aflame. “Are
you okay? Did they hurt you?”
Teyla felt
a burning in the back of her throat.
Ronon’s words were pointed, his eyes sharp, and it made her acutely
self-conscious, suddenly worried about what he might know. She had assumed – naively, perhaps – that
what had happened in Colum’s bedroom this night might never be known to another
soul. But by the look in Ronon’s face,
and the sudden evasiveness of Rodney’s expression, she realized that this might
not be the case.
It did not
matter. She would worry about it later,
she decided, and she shook off Ronon’s grip.
“I am here,” she declared, fishing the key out of her bodice. “That is all that is important.”
She
inserted the key into the ancient lock and turned, turned hard, worried that
this was the wrong key or the lock was irreparably damaged, but then something
hidden in the mechanism fell with a resounding clunk. The gate swung open
and the two men gratefully pushed through it.
“We don’t
know where Sheppard is,” said Rodney with a pained expression. “They stunned us again and when we woke up…”
“I believe
he was taken to another cell on the second level,” said Teyla, gripping the key
hard. She had never thought until that
minute how much she had assumed Colum had been telling the truth, that he and
Ncan hadn’t simply killed John while he lay unconscious. Colum had not liked that they had
kissed. “This way,” she said, motioning
them back down the hallway.
“Are the
Wraith here?” asked Ronon, kicking up a geyser with each footfall. They were both from Pegasus; he could
doubtless read the fear in her eyes and know immediately what it meant. For Teyla, there had always been two kinds of
fear in her life: the fear of regular dangers, like fast-moving water, and
dangerous animals, and poison fruits, and heights, and then there was the fear
of the Wraith.
“They just
arrived,” she said finally, wondering if she would ever be able to speak of
what had happened on the surface, mere minutes ago. They reached the stairwell. “If Nyri has her way I am sure they will be
here soon.”
Maybe it
was because she had been thinking of Nyri.
Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was something greater, more
powerful, like the Ancestors she imagined, to this day, watched over the new
inhabitants of their city. For whatever
reason, as she went to step onto the spiraling staircase she looked up instead
of down, and that was when she saw, silhouetted against the gray-green storm
clouds, the dun hair, the porcine eyes, the familiar barrel of a gun…
And for
the rest of her life she never quite knew how none of the woman’s shots struck
true; they erupted into the prison, clattering off stone, striking sparks from
the metal stairs, ricocheting around them like a deadly swarm of insects. Ronon yanked her back from the opening and
tried to push her behind him, as though he were bulletproof while she was not,
and she was most certainly not because she felt a sudden blossom of fire in her
arm, looked down, saw no bullet hole, no spurting blood, just a shallow furrow
from shoulder to elbow that was only bleeding a little, as though the heat of
the bullet had cauterized as it passed.
Then the
cacophony stopped, and Rodney was trying to pull her further back down the
hallway, and Ronon stood crouched in the darkness, somehow preparing himself
for the next barrage… and it came, but it was different. The ear-splitting report was more muffled,
the ting ting ting of metal striking
metal was not as close, and Teyla realized what Nyri was doing an instant
before the other woman succeeded.
The storm
drain.
The steady
trickle of rain water that had been coming down through the uncovered entrance
was suddenly a torrent as the drain was breeched. Perhaps not all the water rushing through the
pipe was drawn down the hole by gravity, but a lot of it was; it rushed down
the stairwell like a new-born waterfall, splattering over the treads, sheeting
off the handrail, loud and huge and busy, pouring over the lip of the entrance,
frothing white in its fall, taking the path of least resistance.
Down into
the second level.
Perhaps
the obstruction blocking the third level was not watertight, and the deluge
would seep through it, departing harmlessly into that unreachable
darkness. But then again, perhaps it
would not, perhaps it would flood the second level, and then the first, and
perhaps that was what Nyri had intended.
“Give me
the key,” demanded Ronon.
Teyla
gaped at him, stared down at the key, grateful beyond measure that she had not
dropped it when the bullets began to fly.
Something in her rebelled at passing it off to anybody else, not because
she could not trust anyone else but because she had started this – surely, she
must end it. “I…”
But Ronon
had already pulled off his boots. “I’m
the stronger swimmer,” he said shortly, which thanks to the incident on M1H-782
they knew to be true. Before she could
think of another reason to stop him he grabbed the key from her hand, hesitated
for a moment on the threshold of the staircase-waterfall, and then plunged in.
Nyri did
not shoot. The weight of the water on
his head and back did not pitch him down the shaft in a deadly, uncontrolled
fall. But he vanished all the same.
Rodney put
his hand on her shoulder, the uninjured one, and she assumed he was trying to
pull her back, again, to some dubious safety.
She tried to shake him off, impatient, agonized by the few seconds of
waiting that had already passed, and she heard him say, “It’s going to be
alright.”
* * *
At first,
the staccato bursts of gunfire were heartening.
John stumbled to the barred gate, as though staring through the darkness
would tell him anything, and imagined an armed rescue team from Atlantis coming
to storm the gates of this creepy little burg.
He didn’t care who it was, and he didn’t particularly care who they had
to go through to get them out, as long as Teyla wasn’t anywhere in the line of
fire. Maybe later he would feel bad for
this disregard of life, but right now he was pretty okay about it.
Then he
realized that the shots were close, really close, like someone was firing down
into the prison. And with the potential
for ricochets, nobody in Atlantis’ military contingent was that stupid, unless
maybe they’d brought back Kavanaugh and put him
on the rescue team, and John was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything to piss
off
Any good
feeling whatsoever vanished when he heard the rush of water, and a decidedly
bad feeling took its place when he realized his boots were submerged.
But that
wasn’t the end of it.
A cold,
wet wave swept over his knees, almost knocking him down; he clutched at the
bars for support, hissed as the chilly water crept up his thighs, and decided
that of all the possible ways of dying, drowning in a tiny, pitch-black room
probably wasn’t the worst way to go, but it wasn’t what John would have chosen,
either.
The water
level rose inexorably to his waist and showed no signs of slowing. “Hey!” he yelled into the lightless corridor,
the closest he would let himself come to help
at this stage of peril, although his voice was unusually high and tight and
rebounded weirdly against the stone.
He thought
about taking off his boots, which would make it easier to swim, but he wasn’t
sure if that was something he could do in complete darkness while
half-submerged. Besides, he could cling
to the gate if it went over his head, and if it went too far over his head…
If he died
here, he was going to haunt the living hell out of these people.
Coldness
swirled around his legs, splashing across his chest, and he swallowed down panic
as he shook the gate. Water had not turned the iron to putty,
unfortunately.
“Sheppard!”
He was
hearing things. He’d already drowned,
and for some sick reason the last memory his dying brain had chosen to reply in
the final moments of life was one of Ronon yelling his name. He was dying, he was hallucinating, but when
in
A vague
dark shape moved against the void at the gate, and John’s eyes strained to see
what was, ultimately, unseeable. “Is
that you?” asked Ronon’s voice, sounding a little winded.
“No, it’s
my evil twin. Can you get me out of
here?”
“I’m
trying to feel for the lock.”
“It’s down
here to the right.”
“Your
right or my right?”
Jesus, he
thought desperately, as the water level reached his collarbone. This is actually the blind leading the
blind. Suddenly, drowning in a tiny dark
cell didn’t seem nearly as bad as drowning in a tiny dark cell with salvation
literally within reach, all because it had never occurred to John to shove a
penlight up his ass.
Clunk.
“I got it,
it’s open.”
John
pushed, and Ronon pulled, and he was out in the corridor and wishing he had
taken the time to take off his boots because the water was within inches of his
mouth and nose and it was surprisingly hard to swim with weights on your
feet. He wouldn’t have even known which
way to go, except that Ronon grabbed him by the arm and started moving in one
direction with determination, and John had to either figure out a way to keep
up or risk amputation.
And there,
there was a faint light, dim and further muted by the water filling the entire
level. It was a staircase, he realized
as his foot touched one metal tread and his ankle banged into the lip of
another. He was in some kind of vertical
stairwell, and water was pouring in through the opening, down the shaft,
filling the second level but not yet the first.
Half swimming, half-climbing, he pulled himself up behind Ronon, not
quite noticing when the weight pressing in from all around him became a weight
only pounding down on top of him. Then,
when he stepped off the stairs, out of the shaft, there was no weight at all
except for the heaviness of his sodden clothes.
“Nothing
like cutting it close,” said Rodney, half-hidden in the poorly-lit
corridor. He nodded at the water which
had already begun to bubble up the shaft.
The second level had filled, and if Ronon had been even a minute later…
“There has
been no sign of Nyri,” said Teyla, “but I do not believe it is wise to leave
yet.”
What?
Double-takes
were a cliché, but he did one anyway.
There she was, standing in the shadows next to Rodney, dressed in
something green and dripping, her hair plastered to her head, looking cold and
miserable. Looking for all the world
like she’d hoped to return to the group without her absence being much
noted. Everything that Nyri had said to
them – and a few things she hadn’t, things that John had imagined despite
himself – came to mind, chased themselves around his head, but there she was,
standing in front of him, looking… well, not great, but alive and unharmed,
except for a red streak on her arm.
John
wanted to be a complete moron and walk up and touch her – somewhere
appropriate, of course – just to make sure that she was really there, that he
wasn’t actually hallucinating this time, except that if he was imagining the
sight and sound of her why wouldn’t his brain be able to recall the feel of her
as well? Besides, Rodney was responding
to what she had just said, and John didn’t put much stock in shared hallucinations. “How can we not leave? The water’s rising; she’s smoking us out of
our hole, only… not with smoke!”
Teyla shivered. “The Wraith are still out there and we are
without defense.”
“I
wouldn’t say that,” muttered Ronon, flexing his hands, but he was also watching
the water rise – more slowly now; it was only just beginning to lap at their
ankles.
“There are
too many,” said Teyla vehemently. “We
stand a better chance of surviving if we stay here as long as possible.”
John
really didn’t like the idea of hiding out down here, just waiting for a Rnaeran
army – complete with Wraith processional – to come traipsing down here whenever
the mood struck. “Teyla…”
Her eyes
snapped with frustration, impatience, grief.
“I did not save you all from your fates merely to see you die because of
foolish haste. Believe me when I say
that if you go up those stairs now you will
die.”
And the
fact was he believed her.