All the little sounds of the station faded into a blur of white noise. Breathe.

Legs crossed, shoulders relaxed, Teyla kept her eyes closed and her body still, the hammering of her heart in her chest. They had discussed it over and over again, they had argued about it, and none of them had come to any personal conclusion about the experiment, she thought. The official conclusion was that it would proceed as planned, from the moment it had begun with the capture...

Something crashed. Teyla opened her eyes, took another couple of breaths, and started again.

The experiment would proceed as it had been planned out. The decision had been made, there was nothing further for her to do until she was called upon to play her part. Deep breath. In, out, in again.

Her nerves calmed but it did nothing for peace of mind. The whole experiment seemed uncanny and unnatural. Turning a human into a Wraith had seemed unthinkable until Sheppard had been attacked by the Iratus bug, and now they were turning a Wraith into a human. And was that unthinkable? It was happening, so, clearly not. And yet a part of her still claimed vehemently that it should have been.

What would happen when it awoke? Would it remember? Would it know where it was and who? Or would they be able to mold it into their own image of a soldier, and thinking about it in those terms made Teyla shy away from the rest of that thought. It was even possible that it would not be able to survive the experience, that it would die for lack of nourishment or out of some other medical difficulty that Dr. Beckett had not foreseen. Teyla almost hoped for that. It would make everything so much more simple.

No, she chided herself. That was not the way to think about another living being, even a Wraith.

But how was she to think of it? She found it difficult to think of it, now, as anything but a Wraith. She thought that might change once they saw what their experiments had wrought. Maybe. She hoped. It would make it very difficult if they had worked so hard, if they continued, and it was still a Wraith.

It. She had to stop thinking of it as it. It was a he. It was a male of its species, soon to be for all intents and purposes a male of her species.

Which, she admitted with a small smile to herself, could be difficult all on their own. Would he survive to be that difficult, in those ordinary ways?

The cheerful little chirp broke her concentration, not that she had much of it in the first place. Teyla sighed, going over to the communicator. "Yes?"

"He's awake."

Sheppard. Of course, he would've been the first to have been notified when the Wraith awoke. Teyla shook her head, wondering how that meeting had gone. "I'll be right there."

No one had specified the order in which the meetings were to take place, although she had hoped to be somewhat at the head of the group. Heightmeyer treated everyone with the same sort of distant compassion, and Sheppard was a professional and a soldier whose ability to maintain calm was not in question. But Dr. Beckett was a physician of medicine, not highly experimental research, and everyone had agreed that Ronon was to stay far away until the Wraith was released. She ran over the scenarios that she thought would greet her, in her mind.

There would be soldiers there, if not on the inside of the room itself than surely standing post at the outside of the doors. Dr. Beckett might be there, or might be watching from the observation deck. Perhaps Sheppard would insist on accompanying her. Teyla smiled a little at that thought; he could be quite protective.

But for all that, he didn't seem to be there when she entered the observation deck. Beckett was sitting at his computer, most likely typing up the notes from whatever conversation had resulted from the man's awakening.

"I heard he was awake."

Dr. Beckett agreed. "Complete amnesia, he doesn't remember a thing."

And that was a good thing, wasn't it? She moved over to the window, looking down at the young man on the bed. The very young man, somehow younger than she had expected. Perhaps it was the white hair simulating age, but she had expected him to be older. More tired, less vital. Even sitting up in the bed he exuded a kind of powerful restlessness.

"May I speak with him?" She asked, turning back to look at Beckett.

"Of course."

Teyla started to go, and then frowned. He looked exhausted, at the end of his strength, emotionally if not physically. "You need to rest," she told him. If Weir had not, which Teyla then thought she had. And Beckett likely had not listened.

Indeed, this time, he only nodded. Teyla shook her head slightly, flashed him a rueful smile that knew well the impulse to push oneself beyond one's capabilities if only because there was work that absolutely needed to be done.

There were, indeed, guards outside the door.

Sheppard didn't look happy about Heightmeyer's decision to turn Michael loose from the infirmary. Under the circumstances, Teyla could understand. Although their brief meeting had gone rather well by what she had envisioned, that didn't mean he wouldn't suddenly regain his memories and run loose through Atlantis. And she didn't know what he'd do then.

Still. "Do you want me to introduce him to his quarters?" It was, she realized afterwards, a strange way of putting it. Everything about this was strange; she was introducing an amnesiac former Wraith to his new identity as Lt. Michael Kenmore.

Sheppard thought about that for a moment. "Might as well, you seemed to get along with him pretty well." Not, it seemed, that Sheppard was happy about that.

Teyla nodded. "He is a stranger in what should be his home, it is not hard to imagine what he must be feeling right now." That was the wrong thing to say. Sheppard stiffened.

"He's an amnesiac Wraith. There's not much there to feel sorry for."

Teyla just shook her head and started walking down the corridor, with no reaction when John fell into step next to her. "If we think of him as Wraith, we will treat him as a Wraith, and then the experiment will be subverted by our own reactions."

"Maybe it should be," John muttered, and shook his head when she gave him a look for it. "I'm not saying we should scrap the whole plan, I'm just saying, once you see him start getting up and walking around Atlantis it starts looking like a worse and worse idea."

There wasn't much that Teyla could say to refute that, so she didn't try. "We have come this far, it does not seem to me that it would be a good idea to simply stop here. Or to continue with any less care than we have taken up to this point."

"You've been talking with Beckett again, haven't you?" But Sheppard smiled when he turned to look at her, stopping at an intersection, and she smiled slightly back.

"I think that it would be worth our while to continue, at least a little while longer."

Sheppard nodded. "All right. But be careful," he added, turning and heading down a different corridor. "We still can't be sure that he's safe."

Teyla watched him go until he had rounded the corner and was out of sight, and then continued on to Michael Kenmore's quarters. Of course he wasn't safe, she reminded herself, nothing about this was safe. That didn't mean that she had to treat the man as though he would explode or break if she handled him improperly.

There were guards on duty at his quarters already. Unnecessary, she thought, but she nodded to them anyway and went in.

The quarters were plain and devoid of most things that a man from Earth, at least in Teyla's experience, would have. No personal touches, no little things from home. Even she had little things from home in her quarters, and her home had been destroyed time and time again. She drew up details from his imaginary background.

"What sort of a thing would a man from Texas carry with him to a distant outpost?" she asked, poking her head out of the door.

"Er," the man looked to his fellow, who shrugged. "I don't know, a whiskey bottle?"

Teyla didn't like the thought of giving him alcohol. In addition to which, the good soldier Michael was supposed to be would not have whiskey simply standing around. "Some sort of toy or personal item, something..."

"If he was from ranch country, he might have a cowboy hat."

"Would you get me one, please?"

It seemed like a silly thing to do, and clearly neither of the guards knew what she intended by that, but it made her feel better. A little thing to give Michael the idea that he was a person, and not simply a soldier with a name and number and nothing else about him. A little bit of a personality to build off of. To...

No. Not remember. The only person he would remember being was a person they didn't want him to become again.

She resumed her circuit of the room, fingertips brushing over each surface. There was, at least, a picture of his so-called parents there. By the bed, where it probably belonged. No picture of any other loved ones, but he wouldn't be the first person to have no siblings and no lovers he wanted to remember. Perhaps Michael Kenmore had been a religious man. She would have to ask Sheppard or Beckett about any particular faith they might have knowledge of.

And then the young man was back with a cowboy hat, a large tan thing that looked somewhat ridiculous. "Thank you," she smiled at him.

There was very little time left. She would have to make do with what was there, or whatever else she could think of that could be gotten in a hurry. Perhaps some dishes; Sheppard and McKay, she thought, both often took their meals late in their quarters when there was no one to share the mess hall with and they had been working into the small hours of the night. She fetched those few items, had just enough time to set them somewhat haphazardly in the rooms, and then it was off to fetch Michael "home."

Sheppard walked her to the infirmary. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, looking at her with something between guarded concern and curiosity.

"I am sure that I am the..." Only one suited? Only one qualified? She wasn't sure how to explain the certainty she felt, and gave up on trying after a moment. "Best person for the job."

"All right," Sheppard shrugged, and opened the door in such a way that Michael would have barely caught a glimpse of him as he stepped to one side and most of the way behind one of the soldiers.

Michael looked up as she entered, smiling. She had never seen a Wraith smile before with anything other than deadly glee upon feeding. And he was human. And his smile was full of warmth and life, things she had never before associated with the Wraith. It was far too easy to relax.

"Dr. Beckett has pronounced you fit to return to your quarters," she explained. Even though Beckett had probably told him, himself. "But since you..." And she hesitated, not sure how to say it.

"I don't remember where I lived, if that's what you mean."

If the amnesia worried him, she would never have known it from that shrug and easy smile. He even had kind eyes, a gentle expression, but she could take the time to be confused about it later. Startlement was not the way she would respond to a fellow soldier in distress.

"I thought I would offer to accompany you to your quarters."

"Of course," he accepted, gratefully, and slid down from the bed.

It was easier to pretend she was only a little bothered by the guards, instead of by the man who walked by her side. She led him to the door, smiled politely at the guards as they took up their posts outside, and showed him in. "These are your quarters."

He looked around, finding everything unfamiliar. Of course he would, it was the first time he had been in this room, no matter how many nights Lieutenant Michael Kenmore had spent in that bed. Teyla wondered for a moment what they would have done if amnesia hadn't been a side effect.

And now he was looking at her questioningly. She took the ridiculous thing from him with a tiny smile. "It is a cowboy hat. You come from a place called Texas."

"Texas." He repeated it after her, his mouth shaping and tasting the sounds of the name. "Huh."

Texas was as alien to her as it was to him, but at least he knew that. She wasn't from Earth; it was safer for her to give him what she knew of his background, less likely to be contradicted. Was that a part of Weir's plan, she thought suddenly, with something like a chill.

Never mind; he had picked up a photograph of two elderly people Sheppard had decided looked like his parents. He frowned at it, trying to pull nonexistent memories out of a ravaged mind, then looked at her.

"They are your parents," she explained. It didn't seem to explain anything at all.

Michael frowned, setting the picture back, and Teyla thought that of all the things he had failed to remember or recognize, that this bothered him the most. Was he simply taking his reaction from her own, her own troubled family history? She thought not; she thought that there was something instinctive inside of him that sought out familial bonds. Which meant that it was something of the Wraith, which meant that she didn't want to think about it right now.

"You will remember them," she found herself saying, one hand resting lightly on his arm. "In time."

"You think so?" He looked so skeptical, so worried. Even afraid.

Teyla nodded. "I do." And it was a lie that closed off her throat, sealed her mouth into an awkward smile, so that there was nothing for it after a few more minutes but to make an excuse and beat a hasty retreat. She tried not to look at his reflection in the glass as she left, standing in the middle of a strange and lonely, empty room.

Her people had excelled in adapting what they had to hand, to make it fit into their lives. That was no less true for Wraith fighting techniques, as well as her own people's traditional stances and moves. It might have been a gamble. It likely was a gamble, but if he thought he was remembering something or had some skill at something, he might feel less idle and useless. He was already starting to show signs of restlessness.

And the fighting moves she was teaching him were not so dissimilar from Wraith moves. Moves that, even if his mind had been wiped clean, his body should remember.

"Defend..." Slow and careful. At least at first. "Defend, parry. Strike."

He was doing all right. And perhaps it was because he was doing all right, or perhaps it was because she couldn't quite forget what he was, even for a sparring session.

The next series of blows came without verbal cues, and fast. Too fast for him to catch up or keep up but she knocked him to the ground anyway. And felt a little good about it. And then felt guilty about feeling good.

"Ow..." He clutched at his chest where she'd hit him, rolling onto his knees.

Her tone was something of an apology. "It is all about catching your opponent... off-balance." A lovely choice of words, that. She kept her mask up, a fighting instructor. Sparring partner. A friend.

It was somewhat startling to realize that she really did feel as though she could be his friend.

"You succeeded." He was still out of breath. She didn't move to help him up, but she wouldn't really have moved to help Sheppard up either unless they were done for the day. And she and Michael were far from done.

He pulled himself to his feet after a moment, at least appearing to be ready to try again. She wouldn't give him a chance to change his mind. "Now you try."

Michael shook his head. "I can't do those moves." He sounded so certain of that. It was strange, coming from a Wraith. Which was when she realized that it felt strange to be thinking of him as Wraith.

Confusion and ambivalence could only harm them both. She backed up a pace or two, took a stance. "Oh yes you can."

"You keep saying I'm a good fighter..."

The way he looked at her. Offhand, but with so much trust. She nodded, perhaps a little breathless herself. "You are. Very good."

"All right," he shrugged. They resumed.

Physical memory, she was reminded, came back much quicker than other types. On the next pass his movements were smoother, more instinctive, and he made a little exclamation of delight to find he really could do this, as she'd said. Another pass, and this time she went on the offensive again, following up the sequence of moves she had taught him with the attack she'd used before. This time, he was ready for her.

The blow to the chest was blocked, and before she realized that the kick had been deflected as well he had caught her by the leg and interrupted her attack, his other hand on her chest and now he was pinning her to the floor. With his hand on her chest. Like a Wraith.

She had barely enough time to register the he was not draining her life away, that his pleased laughter was that of a human who had learned he could perform a particular task or movement, that there was nothing sinister about this at all. And then Ronon had him, grabbed him, lifted him by the throat and held him against the wall, his feet nearly a foot off the floor.

"Ronon!" She had to stop this. "We were sparring as part of his physical therapy, let him go."

Everybody held their breath. Except Michael, who was choking.

"NOW!"

Ronon dropped him. Michael landed on his feet but quickly fell to his knees, struggling for breath. "I'm sorry," he gasped out, and Teyla wondered if she should find it strange that those with the first words out of his mouth. Again, instinctive. Why did it surprise her so much that a Wraith should apologize for anything?

"I'm sorry," he said again, but Ronon was gone already. "I didn't mean..."

Teyla shook her head, moving over to him, her hand moving to his shoulder as he stood and before she realized. "You did nothing wrong," she told him. It was important that he know that. "Ronon is..." but she couldn't think of any word to explain what had just happened. Not any word that was sanctioned by Weir and wouldn't endanger the lie.

"Ronon is very aggressive," she decided, even though it was clearly an understatement and an inadequate explanation at best. "And he is very protective of me. He may not believe you are fully recovered."

Michael nodded. He understood protective, it seemed. Teyla still wondered, although by now her mind was too full of thoughts to wonder on any particular one of them for long.

"You said we were friends," he asked, straightening and looking up at her. "Does that have something to do with it?"

Teyla started to protest that it didn't, and then stopped. She truly wasn't sure. Not that she and Michael had been friends before, but that they were friends now, that might very well have something to do with it. And what that said about her, and Ronon, and Michael, that was another one of those things she didn't want to speculate on.

"It might," she said, with a smile. He gave her some sort of look she couldn't decipher yet and dropped it.

They began again, slower, this time. There were no more large dramatic moves, and they went at half speed. They were both cooling down from the excitement of a few moments ago, by mutual and unspoken agreement. She taught him a couple more routines, and went over them with him at the same slow pace to make sure he remembered them all. He learned very, very quickly.

As the minutes slid by and put distance between them and Ronon's outburst, they both grew more relaxed. She offered, after he'd paused to towel off his face and neck, to stop.

"No way," he grinned. "This is the best I've felt in days."

That was only slightly unnerving. She smiled back, inclined her head. They started again, faster, this time.

He quickly became no more than another sparring partner to her, any one of the Marines on the base, any one of her people on the continent. They exchanged blows, back and forth, just hard enough to be felt and careful not to do any real damage. He was smiling more, she noticed. And not the sort of smile that delights in violence, just a smile of a man accomplishing something. It was even attractive on him, and just as she thought that she realized it must have shown on her face.

Because the next thing he did, the next time he had her pinned to the wall, was to kiss her.

Instantly, almost, she remembered what it was like when Sheppard had done this, in very much the same circumstances. Except that Sheppard had been a human who was turning into, essentially, a Wraith. And Michael was a Wraith who didn't know he was anything other than human.

And Sheppard had been so much more aggressive. Taking her, holding her head in place, where Michael barely moved except to cover those last few inches of space between them and place his lips on hers, shyly.

And when she didn't kiss back he retreated.

"I'm... sorry." This was much more embarrassment and less choking. "I thought we were, I mean..."

"No," Teyla smiled a little. "We were never anything more than friends." Although she could certainly imagine being more than friends with a soldier who approached her with such care. If not in the realm of likelihood, then certainly in the vicinity of possibility.

"Well, at least I can blame that on my amnesia?" But he seemed relieved that she wasn't offended.

"It was very flattering," she agreed. "Even if it was not as appropriate to our relationship as you thought."

He laughed a little, and Teyla realized he was actually blushing. "Maybe we better stop for the day," he suggested.

"If you like."

It was, she decided, after he'd left and as she was settling in to meditate before the shower and dinner, probably a good thing that Ronon hadn't seen that. It was one thing, and very easy, to interpret his hand on her chest as an instinct or intent to feed. It would've been quite another thing for Ronon to have seen that kiss.

Their next sparring session did not end so pleasantly.

He'd been distracted the whole time. She called a halt to it before they had gone more than half an hour, after she had dumped him on the mats no less than three times. It was as much for his safety as for her peace of mind that she suggested they stop and talk about whatever was bothering him.

She hadn't really expected that what was bothering him would bother her so much. That it would be something so mundane and so familiar as bad dreams. And not just any bad dreams, but those bad dreams.

Not nightmares. Or perhaps they were nightmares, but not the sort of thing most people meant when they talked about nightmares. Something else, some dark reflection of what she was inside. They had never talked about it after they discovered what had been done to her. She had almost managed to willfully forget.

Perhaps it was perfectly natural that Michael should have dreams of being a Wraith. After all, he had been one. But what did that mean, when she had had the same dream? A Wraith masquerading as a human, a human taught to be a Wraith, or vice versa. Inside out, outside in, one of them was the inverse of the other and she wasn't sure which one was who.

And those lies she had told. His dreams were not shared by most of Atlantis; as far as she knew she was the only other one to have them. Dreams of being fed on by wraith, yes, dreams of being attacked, eaten alive. Dreams of being what they feared the most? Of becoming their most primal enemy? Never. Only her, and after numerous talks about how it was understandable and part of the aftermath of trauma, she'd stopped talking to anyone about them.

Except Michael. Now, Michael.

The dreams wouldn't go away. She knew that, and because she knew that she wanted to tell him the truth. Why none of Dr. Beckett's tranquilizers and sedatives would work, why none of Dr. Heightmeyer's counseling would alleviate the dreams. But they had overruled her, and as long as the experiment was still in play and she was still on Atlantis, she would obey.

That didn't mean she had to like it.

Teyla opened her eyes, deciding that meditation was not likely to be feasible in the next hour or so, and opted for a shower instead. Thinking, and she closed her eyes under the water stream, that perhaps now might be a good time to go visit her fellows on the mainland. Get away from all of these confusing and conflicting reactions that would, in time, only serve to confuse the poor man.

Which would then leave him all alone on Atlantis with Ronon, Sheppard, and Weir. And Dr. Beckett. One out of four was not the sort of odds she felt comfortable leaving him with.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.

Next part.