Two things she noted that she would never have thought of, and wasn't sure she had wanted to know. Three things. Firstly, that Wraith needed to sleep on any sort of similar schedule to humans, although that might have simply been the human part of Michael asserting itself more aggressively after the retrovirus. Secondly, that Wraith could have nightmares at all, although again, that might simply have been his unique state.

Thirdly, that being so near to a telepathic shriek could hurt so very much.

She tried to shake him awake again. There was very little thrashing and flailing, although his mouth was open in a soundless, wordless scream. Inside his mind, at least as much as she got through the waves of terror and grief crashing through her, it was certainly worth screaming over. There was loneliness. There was fear, the known turning against him and becoming threatening and vicious. Betrayal, and heartache, and she was reminded of the entity that had taken the form of Sheppard and wreaked so much havoc on Atlantis.

Which, in turn, reminded her of the solution. Or a solution, a possible solution and perhaps it would at least enable her to get some sleep that night. She focused on the selfish part to avoid thinking about other possible motives and other feelings.

"I wish..." she started, but didn't know how she would finish the sentence.

No need for special equipment here; she closed her eyes and allowed herself to be sucked into his nightmares.

It was easy to see why he was afraid. And it was Michael, the Michael she had first come to know, human and in the t-shirt and fatigues he had mostly worn on Atlantis, looking around with wide and frightened eyes. In the Queen's room, on a hive ship, the Queen approaching him with her hand out as if to feed. She put her hand on his shoulder, dodged easily as he tried to knock her away. The Queen gave her an irritated look but otherwise seemed to be ignoring her. And still heading for Michael.

Teyla interposed herself between the two of them. "Stop."

"T-Teyla?" And then, in her mind: What are you doing here?

The Queen did stop, too. And then started to advance again. Teyla wasn't sure what to say or do, to defeat the Queen, to enable Michael to defeat her himself to wake up. To speak to him; would he even know or be convinced that he was dreaming?

You are dreaming, Michael. This is a nightmare. You need to wake up. The Queen moved forward to sweep her out of the way, but Teyla wasn't so easily pushed aside. She was, however, a little startled by how easily the Queen was knocked back. Michael, you are dreaming! Wake up!

The world around them began to waver. Teyla felt her head resting on the surface of what seemed to be an uncomfortable bed, and yet she still felt her body standing on the floor of the Wraith ship. It was disconcerting, at the very least. And yet.

"Michael." She turned halfway, keeping an eye on the Queen as she put her hands on his shoulders and forced him to look at her. "Michael, you are dreaming. You must wake up."

"Teyla..." He looked so sad. So terrified. "What's happening to me?"

You are dreaming. This is all a dream, a nightmare. "We ..."

Pain. The Queen's hand on her back, that familiar roar. She was feeding.

Teyla found herself digging her fingers into Michael's shoulders as her legs gave out from under her and she tried to remind herself that it was only a dream. A very painful, terrifying dream. Michael's dream. Wake up, please.

The pain eased. She opened her eyes.

She was still digging her fingers into Michael's shoulders, but now he had a grip on her and they were sitting just about face to face, with her kneeling next to the makeshift bed and him sitting upright on it at an angle that looked profoundly uncomfortable. It appeared as though he really had been sleeping.

Did Wraith sleep as they did, a certain period of time every twenty four hours or so? Was it a byproduct of his increased humanity as a result of the retrovirus? She wanted to ask, and had the feeling he wouldn't answer.

"Are you all right?" she asked, instead.

He nodded, uncurling his fingers from her shoulders and straightening, pulling away from her touch. "Thank you," he added, after a moment. Almost as an afterthought, or as though remembering to put it into words rather than palpable emotions. His breathing was still a little ragged, she noticed. Teyla wondered what the dream had meant for him, what he had sensed within it. If the key was still there in her memories, if she...

"You had better get back to bed," he interrupted her thoughts, watching her. Her eyes flickered back to his face; somehow she had the impression, although his expression hadn't changed, that he didn't want her thinking about that too much. "You will need your rest."

"If I can sleep," she admitted. "Your dreams were... unsettling. Are you prone to nightmares?" she found herself asking, too curious for her own good of course. "I did not know you could... might have to... sleep."

All right, she decided, backing up and rising to her feet. Too many questions. He looked at her, impassive and quite probably annoyed.

"Get what sleep you can," he told her. "I won't interrupt you again."

Whatever that meant. Teyla nodded, gave him one more concerned glance over her shoulder, and went back to her room. Her second try at sleep was, as promised, more successful.

Breakfast was waiting for her when she woke up, hot and fresh. Or at least as fresh as it was possible to get from an MRE. She wondered, a little, how he had known to prepare it, if he had been monitoring her dreams or at least her state of consciousness, to be able to tell when she was close to waking. Possibly? And if he had, did it bother her? It seemed not.

He wasn't in the makeshift kitchen with her, but he did join her after a few moments, sitting silently down and watching her with that same strange attitude of not-quite-watching. Keeping her company, she decided. Being polite and keeping her company while she ate, although he didn't need to. And that was another question, although given his response the previous night she wasn't sure she wanted to ask it.

"Would you..." No, that wasn't the right question to ask. Or perhaps it was. "Would you like to join me?" she finally asked, gesturing at the mean. Beckett had said that the Wraith could, in fact, eat human food, although it would not provide even minimal nourishment. Was it possible that they did?

Against his previous response, Michael even smiled a little. "There are those of us who do eat, as you do, for pleasure only. I would hardly call those pleasurable, though." And it was both with a bit of a nose-wrinkling kind of tone and an apology, that he didn't have anything better for her.

Teyla smiled back, a little. "I did not give you much warning; I apologize. I would offer to cook something," she added, trying to lighten the atmosphere a little, straightening her back as she sat up. "But I'm afraid it would not be much better than this."

"We all have our particular gifts," he allowed, sounding amused that she was admitting to be a poor cook.

Of course, after that they didn't have much to talk about, and the silence stretched out and became uncomfortable and awkward again. She finished her breakfast as quickly as she could without sacrificing decorum or choking on it, piling the refuse back into the bag and there did, at least, seem to be a carton that he was using for food waste and such. Well, he was a tidy Wraith. And that was an entirely incongruous thought.

"How are the others?" he asked, breaking into her thoughts and distracting her from what she'd meant to say. "Your... friends."

"They are well." It was an automatic response, as confused as she is that he would ask after them. Perhaps because it would be what one expects? Perhaps simply because he wanted to know what had happened to the people who had imprisoned and experimented on him. "John is..."

"John."

There was no reason for him to note that she had called Sheppard by his first name. Really.

"Colonel Sheppard is doing well, Doctor McKay..." Not that he would care about them. "Ronon is adapting well to life on Atlantis." And then she realized that might not have been the best thing to say.

"Good." Although his tone indicated that he wished the exact opposite. He stood, pushing his chair back and heading towards the door. He stopped, then, halfway out, one hand on the frame. "Doctor Beckett?"

Oh. Of course, he wouldn't know. Any more than he had known about her people, or any of it. Teyla stood too, looking at him not quite looking at her over his shoulder. His back and shoulders seemed tense, under the coat.

"Doctor Beckett died while removing an explosive from one of the Marines. Doctor Heightmeyer died... she was under attack from an alien entity that was inflicting nightmare-like hallucinations. It... scared her literally to death." She couldn't see his face, couldn't tell what he thought of the news. "Doctor Weir was lost on the Replicator city. We don't know if she's alive."

The news hung in the air between them for a long time. She wondered if that meant he was taking it well or poorly. She wondered if he cared, and then revised her definition of caring. Of course he cared what happened to the people who had put him in his current position. Whether or not he felt kindly for them, or grieved for their deaths, that was to some extent a separate question.

"Michael?" Waiting for him to say something was becoming almost unbearable. He turned, a little, so that she could see the side of his face, but he still didn't say anything for a moment.

And then he did. "Three of the people responsible for making me into what I am are dead or lost. And yet I... I am still here."

She blinked. She hadn't quite tallied it up like that. "Three of my friends are gone, yes." And then when she said it she regretted it, not wanting to make it a competition between how they viewed who had died. "I am sorry. You did ask..."

"I did." But he turned and walked a little ways down the hall.

Teyla wondered if she should follow, and then decided that even if she shouldn't she did not want to be alone in this compound just yet. That wasn't what she had come here for. Thankfully, at least, he didn't object when she caught up to him in the hall and walked with him, through the hallways and out onto the surface.

"Three of the people I hated most in this world are dead," he said quietly, once they had reached the surface. He was staring out and a little bit up, at the sky. As though it would swoop down and take him away, and perhaps that was what he was expecting or hoping for. "I am sorry that you believe they are your friends, but I..."

"I understand," she interrupted. And she did; they had all in their own way lied to him, been responsible for changing him. But if Heightmeyer had been responsible, then that made her responsible, too. "Do you hate me for it, too?"

He looked at her, distracted from whatever it was he had been thinking. And when he didn't answer she started to wonder, and worry. "I don't know."

He liked to spend time out of doors, Teyla realized. Even if most of it was looking up at the sky as though it would welcome him back again. Welcome him home, she thought. Three days spent in his company and although they had talked, mostly about her and life on Atlantis, there was a feeling of immense loneliness about him that never quite went away.

He didn't seem willing to talk about it, though, and she wasn't going to force the issue. Instead she talked around it, finding little things that she hoped would alleviate it, if only so that it would be less of a pressure on her mind. There were no more nightmares. She wasn't even sure he slept at night, but in the very late hours of the evening when she was lying there trying to go to sleep she was so lonely and so empty she wanted to cry, and she knew it had to come from outside of her. And there was no one else but Michael.

Little things. It started with the little things.

She began to prepare the meals that only she was going to eat after all, and there wasn't much preparation involved in an MRE. She began to clear out some of the sections through which they walked, although he was not or at least didn't seem to be living in them.

"Were you planning on bringing others here?" he asked, at one point, standing in the doorway and looking at her efforts with something very much like amusement.

Teyla pushed her hair out of her eyes and shook her head. "But that is no reason for this place to look as though it is still abandoned," she told him. It didn't make sense, no, even to her. But he didn't point out that it wasn't a very good reason, or even a reason at all, and he even helped her after a moment more of watching her.

One day passed, and the next. They talked about what had happened to them.

"I do not know what to do with myself, where to go, sometimes. I am walking in the hallway and I stop on my way to the mess hall, or on my way to practice, and I do not know what I'm doing."

She was teaching him a game that Athosian children learned, thankful that he wasn't asking why she wanted to. They had started in silence and then the words had started pouring out.

"Because everything is unfamiliar," he said, partly a question and partly not so much. "Because the world is moving on when you most want to stand still and understand what happened."

Teyla nodded. "They are gone. All those in the settlement, and now my friend in the shuttle. If there are any left who had traveled before, or who escaped the culling, I do not know where they are. I would not even know where to begin to look."

His hand moved, as if to move one of the stones, but then he didn't. She was barely paying attention to the game anymore. His hand rested lightly on the ground next to hers, not touching, but there was something about the tension in his body that suggested he might move any moment. He still didn't say anything, only listening to her silence and waiting for to continue.

"My friends, all the people I knew and cared for, all gone. He said they were alive, but after the lies he told, I find myself unwilling to trust even that faint hope."

That wasn't everything. There was more, and she thought she heard him ask when his fingertips brushed the side of her hand, but it might have only been her imagination. It didn't occur to her that he might have been touching her mind, as well. There was more, but she couldn't bring herself to say.

"Why are you telling me this?" But it was gentle, more gentle than she would have imagined he was capable of. At least like this. It was a sort of tone that went much better with Michael Kenmore's easy smile and soft blue eyes. She found that if she looked down at her hands it was easier to hear his voice and imagine that they were the same person. Which was true, but it still wasn't a thought or feeling that she wanted to share with him. "Teyla, please..."

She closed her eyes, trying to put that internal seal back upon the wellspring of grief that she had been continually hiding since she had returned from Athos that last time. It didn't help. Not with this, not now.

"I have lived on Atlantis for three years now, no, more than that. Colonel Sheppard has been nothing but kind to me, I have learned a great deal about the ways of the people from Earth, and yet it all still seems so strange to me. The things they say, the way they act. It is not what I'm used to. It is not my home, and yet it was all right, as long as I did still have that home to go back to. And now even that has been taken away and I..." her throat closed. She couldn't breathe. "I do not know what to do."

It didn't occur to her that it was strange that she could finally say these things, that she could let her control go so far in the presence of someone who was supposed to be an enemy. That the touch of a Wraith, even a half-breed Wraith, could undo her and at the same time be more comforting than anything her friends had offered in the last several days. It didn't occur to her that a more cynical person might have suggested it was only Michael's abilities attempting to peel her out from under her defenses. Or that there was anything incongruous about Michael moving around the game board to sit next to her, to put an arm around her shoulders and pull her closer to him as she started to cry.

And she did. She sobbed, fingers curling into his coat, as his arm tightened around her shoulders and he simply listened. It was safe to say things to him that she could never said to her friends, not without risk of offending them or hurting them in some way.

"It is not that I have been made to feel unwelcome, at any time. They are my friends, they are as much my close and dear friends as any other I have come to know from my people. It is not that..."

"But they cannot replace the life that you left behind when you went to Atlantis, and when a large part of that life is suddenly taken from you, it leaves a wound."

"Yes," she sniffled. "Yes, exactly."

Her breathing ragged, her head hurting a little, his words were starting to sink in. The reality of what she was doing started to sink in, just enough for her to push it away and accept the comfort that was being offered without tempering it with the knowledge of who he was and what had passed between them before.

"Loss compounding loss," he said, sounding thoughtful. "And how much loss have you had in last few months. Your three friends on Atlantis, your people. It would be strange, I would think, if you did not grieve for them."

She looked up at him, frowning slightly and attempting to pull back some of her composure. At least put back some of the distance that had been between them until a few moments ago. When had she allowed him so close? "Do Wraith grieve for their fallen comrades?"

"Do you doubt that we would?" The look he gave her was something like angry, but without any of the force behind it that she imagined his anger would have. Too tired of the argument or the constant misunderstandings, perhaps, to be angry. Now that she thought about what she had said it didn't sound right.

Teyla shook her head, frowning. "No, of course you do. I'm sorry, I didn't think."

Her admission seemed to catch them both by surprise, pulling away as if by mutual decision to let what had just passed between them stand for a bit, without pushing at their instincts any further.

Perhaps a little further. "I am sorry for what has happened to you," he said, brushing the back of his glove across her cheek, brushing the tears away. Since it became apparent that she really was going to stay for the rest of the week as she had said, he had taken to wearing fingerless gloves on his hands, hiding the most threatening part of himself for her comfort, she guessed. It was a gesture that neither of them had commented on.

She thought it deserved comment now, at least obliquely. Teyla reached out to cover his hand in both of hers. "Thank you," she said quietly.

The loneliness eased for both of them after that day, although neither of them changed their pattern of behavior. They still moved, each around the other, as though the peace between them would shatter if they stepped wrong. They still argued when the conversation strayed into an uncomfortable topic.

"I did not want to lie to you," she insisted, trying to make him believe. "Not all of us thought the experiment would be a good idea."

"But you went through with it anyway, made up everything, created this comforting cushion of a lie around me even though you knew you had no intention of letting it last."

She wasn't sure how to answer that. "We were hoping that by the time you were ready to hear..."

"You mean by the time you were ready to tell me," he interrupted, snarling.

"By that time," she continued stubbornly, "you would have made a place for yourself on Atlantis. We were coming to trust you, you to trust us..."

"I trusted you from the beginning. I believed you were there to help me, I believed that you were my friend. And yet none of you trusted me with any part of yourselves, if any part of the truth, you had guards outside my door and even when I helped you..."

"We took the precautions we thought necessary," she retorted, sick of the argument and sick of the anger between them. "We did not believe we had a choice."

"We both do what is necessary for us to survive," he snapped, bitterly. "But we have never pretended that we are anything but what we are to each other. We have never lied so completely to you."

So close. They came so close, over and over again, to understanding and some sort of truce. And yet there was still a gap between them that was sometimes small enough to leap over and sometimes so why she thought they would never bridge it or close it completely.

Both of them were hurting from what they had done to each other, neither of them quite willing or quite able to express how much.

"I am sorry," she said, one hand brushing over his arm as she crossed by him on her way out of the room.

And yet, that was a sort of progress. I'm sorry were the words that crossed their lips most often, even for the little things. Anything that turned the air between them instantly to tension and discomfort, if they could all manage it, was dissipated with an apology. And it helped. One of the many little things that they did to remind each other that they were not truly seeking open warfare. They were trying to understand, to be kind to each other.

The loneliness had eased, and they were communicating better. She told him about anything that came to her mind about her people, little things she remembered that she didn't want to forget or to be lost. He listened, and he didn't say a word of protest or ridicule about it. She halfway hoped he would return the gesture, but wasn't sure how she would be able to handle listening to stories of life as a Wraith. If he sensed that, he didn't say anything, and he didn't tell her anything either.

Teyla felt a little bit guilty for that. For not being able to return the gesture, but he didn't seem to mind, for which she was again grateful. She would think about it, remembering what he had said after he had joined their side from the Wraith ship, about being rejected as unclean. And perhaps the next time she could...

Was she truly thinking about there being a next time? What kind of excuse could she possibly contrive to return here?

If she wanted to return, she would most likely have to tell someone. Sheppard, perhaps. Colonel Carter, although Teyla did not know the woman very well yet and was uncertain of how such an announcement would be received. Not Ronon. If she had her way she would not tell Ronon about this for some time.

And yet. There were a great many "and yet"s.

She leaned in the doorway and watched Michael reading over something on a datapad, something that clearly interested him enough that he wasn't aware of her presence yet. Their week was almost up. She would return to Atlantis tomorrow, and her feelings on the subject were more mixed up than she had expected.

He looked so tired. If he were human she would have suggested he sleep, take the next day to rest. Go golfing or something if he were John, but he wasn't. She was a little worried about him, a little confused and curious at her own feelings, wondering really just what it was she thought she could do to help. She wanted to go to him, sit by him as she would have any other member of the Atlantis team, and talk to him. And yet. There it was again, and yet.

She went and sat next to him.

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

Next part
Previous part