[Stargate Atlantis - TV][Repair][Michael][PG][Prompt #071]
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Fic title: Repair
Main characters/pairing: Michael, gen
Rating: PG
Spoilers: through season 4
Warnings: none
Prompt ID: Prompt #071 -- fixing the mistake
Summary: It's a while before he understands where things went wrong.
Repair
At first he thinks it's only a matter of time. Back in the hive, its living flesh and the hum of minds embracing him, he is safe, and it's only a matter of time before he's whole again. He tries not to see himself the way the rest of them see him, his hair cropped short, his skin the wrong shade, all beauty gone. He turns from their minds the way he turned from mirrors in the hive of the humans, hiding himself in his work.
It's easy enough to steal time from his work on the hive ship's organic components to investigate what's been done to his own body. His shorn hair will not grow again, any more than it has since he was a child, but that's the least of it. He reads his own genetic code flickering across the monitor screens and sees the places it is wrong, the indelible scars they left under his skin.
It is bitter knowing that he must live with the reminder of his torture at their hands. It's worse knowing that he will never, now, know what it is to mate, never have his queen honor him by letting him father a child. Even if she could look past his appearance to his undamaged mind, she would smell the taint in his body, taste it on his skin. He is young, and he has never been chosen, but he had hoped …
It's worse than that, he realizes the first time she calls him to her, circling him angrily, her fingers brushing his skin and then pulling away as if she's been burned. It's an impossible conflict for her, almost funny, he thinks at the same time that he shudders and fights to keep still; he knows more about their own imperatives, written deep in their cells and strengthened by the mental and chemical hum of the hive, than most Wraith will ever even try to understand.
He is damaged, and a part of her is telling her to kill him now, burn out the damage she can sense in his genes before it can spread to taint the hive. He is damaged, wrong for a mate, maybe even tainted as food, and so another part of her is telling her she must not touch him. He glances up at her, trying to sense which way she will be driven, because he may as well dare when he's probably dead already.
If she understands her own warring impulses, she will have them take him away to be ejected into space, to die in vacuum safely out of reach of the hive. He doesn't think she does, and so he takes the gamble of trying to push her in the direction that may save him.
I know things no one else does, he tells her, showing what he remembers of the humans' machines and the bright cold corridors of their hive. He cannot keep the memories free of his fear and grief, but if she mocks him for his weakness, it will only make her feel safer with him. I know what was done to me. He's grasping at anything that might save him, but the idea swims into existence already formed. It would be a powerful weapon against your enemies.
He can feel her disgust at the idea, and at the same time her temptation. She will keep him for this, but she will never trust him now, never believe he is not damaged beyond repair. She believes the fact that he can contemplate doing this thing to the other Wraith without flinching from the thought is a sign of madness and not desperation.
He thinks he still knows the difference.
"Get back to work," she says aloud. "Michael."
It is the only name she will allow him, now. He understands that, just as he understands that she will only keep him alive as long as he can persuade her he is useful. He wishes he were more certain that he could duplicate the human doctor's retrovirus. The way their minds work is so alien.
Back in his laboratory he lets himself wander through the knowledge stored in the hive ship's brain and computer banks, piecing them together with things he knows without asking why -- the hive's memory, or the queen's, or his own before he was taken apart. They pay little attention to their beginnings, preferring to think of it as destiny rather than what it was, an accident, a mindless insect finding a new and irresistable prey, a mindless chemical process entangling their genes.
They have changed themselves since then, breeding for strength and intelligence and beauty, the judgment and whim of generations of queens and the work, he more than suspects, of men like himself. It's still possible they could be better. Less easily hurt. There's a lot that they could do that they haven't dared.
This is dangerous stuff, one of the ones he works with tells him. He would think it was concern, but he can catch the edge of suspicion in the man's thoughts. He won't look into that mirror. It won't show him anything he wants to see.
*****
He watches the queen of his new hive watch him and the handful of other males rescued from the humans' prison planet. He's not sure he blames her for having the drones killed -- their minds had grown into odd shapes in the weeks without a queen's mental touch, and he's not sure he'd want to use them for anything himself. But the other males believe they'll be allowed to live.
Michael is pretty sure they won't be. As few as they are, they are too many males to join a new hive painlessly even if they were undamaged, enough to color the hive's mind and unbalance its thoughts. They will be a faction, and an angry one, knowing she will never choose any of them as a mate. She has sent most of them to hibernation already. Michael doesn't think they'll wake up.
He makes his plans carefully, gathering every scrap of information he can, the cultures he will need to start a laboratory when he goes and the few pieces of equipment he can fit into a dart. It's actually flying the dart that gives him the most pause -- he is no pilot -- but it has to be.
He is tempted to tell one or two of the other males, maybe a pilot, or someone who could help him in his work. It would be their only chance to live. He likes the idea of holding out life to them and having them be grateful for it.
But it's all too likely that they'd betray him. He looks and smells too human still, and it frightens them, but it's more than that. It's too hard for them to imagine walking away from their queen. He's been changed enough that his desire for a queen's mind to rule his own is not compulsion. His genes make him outcast, but at the same time they will make him free. He worried, at first, that it was the beginning of madness to feel that way, but he doesn't worry about things like that much anymore.
If he's angry when she finally orders his death, he tells himself it's not because he expected anything different. She's the same as the humans under the skin, fearing him because she can't force him into the mold of what she thinks he should be. He nurses the anger as his inspiration and tries to ignore the bone-deep ache in his chest when he's finally safe in a long-abandoned base, safe and far from the reach of any other mind.
It's only hunger, he tells himself; there's nothing else he needs.
*****
Michael is confident, once he begins his experiments in earnest, that it's only a matter of time. He understands now that he's not the one who's broken -- it's all the Wraith, back to their beginnings. They're weak, easily starved, tempted by hunger into taking too many chances. The humans are made wrong, too, all that intelligence and weirdly bright passion caged in bodies that make them nothing more than food for anyone stronger.
It's all been a series of accidents -- the blind fumbling of evolution, the random tangle of genetic material that birthed the Wraith, the vicious experiment that ripped apart his own genes and put them back together in such an interesting way. He's too smart to leave anything to chance. He's smarter than any of them, two steps ahead of all the ways the humans and the Wraith will try to stop him.
He's learning more each day about how to construct his hybrids. He can make them perfect, the way they always should have been.
And then everything will finally be all right.
Fic title: Repair
Main characters/pairing: Michael, gen
Rating: PG
Spoilers: through season 4
Warnings: none
Prompt ID: Prompt #071 -- fixing the mistake
Summary: It's a while before he understands where things went wrong.
Repair
At first he thinks it's only a matter of time. Back in the hive, its living flesh and the hum of minds embracing him, he is safe, and it's only a matter of time before he's whole again. He tries not to see himself the way the rest of them see him, his hair cropped short, his skin the wrong shade, all beauty gone. He turns from their minds the way he turned from mirrors in the hive of the humans, hiding himself in his work.
It's easy enough to steal time from his work on the hive ship's organic components to investigate what's been done to his own body. His shorn hair will not grow again, any more than it has since he was a child, but that's the least of it. He reads his own genetic code flickering across the monitor screens and sees the places it is wrong, the indelible scars they left under his skin.
It is bitter knowing that he must live with the reminder of his torture at their hands. It's worse knowing that he will never, now, know what it is to mate, never have his queen honor him by letting him father a child. Even if she could look past his appearance to his undamaged mind, she would smell the taint in his body, taste it on his skin. He is young, and he has never been chosen, but he had hoped …
It's worse than that, he realizes the first time she calls him to her, circling him angrily, her fingers brushing his skin and then pulling away as if she's been burned. It's an impossible conflict for her, almost funny, he thinks at the same time that he shudders and fights to keep still; he knows more about their own imperatives, written deep in their cells and strengthened by the mental and chemical hum of the hive, than most Wraith will ever even try to understand.
He is damaged, and a part of her is telling her to kill him now, burn out the damage she can sense in his genes before it can spread to taint the hive. He is damaged, wrong for a mate, maybe even tainted as food, and so another part of her is telling her she must not touch him. He glances up at her, trying to sense which way she will be driven, because he may as well dare when he's probably dead already.
If she understands her own warring impulses, she will have them take him away to be ejected into space, to die in vacuum safely out of reach of the hive. He doesn't think she does, and so he takes the gamble of trying to push her in the direction that may save him.
I know things no one else does, he tells her, showing what he remembers of the humans' machines and the bright cold corridors of their hive. He cannot keep the memories free of his fear and grief, but if she mocks him for his weakness, it will only make her feel safer with him. I know what was done to me. He's grasping at anything that might save him, but the idea swims into existence already formed. It would be a powerful weapon against your enemies.
He can feel her disgust at the idea, and at the same time her temptation. She will keep him for this, but she will never trust him now, never believe he is not damaged beyond repair. She believes the fact that he can contemplate doing this thing to the other Wraith without flinching from the thought is a sign of madness and not desperation.
He thinks he still knows the difference.
"Get back to work," she says aloud. "Michael."
It is the only name she will allow him, now. He understands that, just as he understands that she will only keep him alive as long as he can persuade her he is useful. He wishes he were more certain that he could duplicate the human doctor's retrovirus. The way their minds work is so alien.
Back in his laboratory he lets himself wander through the knowledge stored in the hive ship's brain and computer banks, piecing them together with things he knows without asking why -- the hive's memory, or the queen's, or his own before he was taken apart. They pay little attention to their beginnings, preferring to think of it as destiny rather than what it was, an accident, a mindless insect finding a new and irresistable prey, a mindless chemical process entangling their genes.
They have changed themselves since then, breeding for strength and intelligence and beauty, the judgment and whim of generations of queens and the work, he more than suspects, of men like himself. It's still possible they could be better. Less easily hurt. There's a lot that they could do that they haven't dared.
This is dangerous stuff, one of the ones he works with tells him. He would think it was concern, but he can catch the edge of suspicion in the man's thoughts. He won't look into that mirror. It won't show him anything he wants to see.
*****
He watches the queen of his new hive watch him and the handful of other males rescued from the humans' prison planet. He's not sure he blames her for having the drones killed -- their minds had grown into odd shapes in the weeks without a queen's mental touch, and he's not sure he'd want to use them for anything himself. But the other males believe they'll be allowed to live.
Michael is pretty sure they won't be. As few as they are, they are too many males to join a new hive painlessly even if they were undamaged, enough to color the hive's mind and unbalance its thoughts. They will be a faction, and an angry one, knowing she will never choose any of them as a mate. She has sent most of them to hibernation already. Michael doesn't think they'll wake up.
He makes his plans carefully, gathering every scrap of information he can, the cultures he will need to start a laboratory when he goes and the few pieces of equipment he can fit into a dart. It's actually flying the dart that gives him the most pause -- he is no pilot -- but it has to be.
He is tempted to tell one or two of the other males, maybe a pilot, or someone who could help him in his work. It would be their only chance to live. He likes the idea of holding out life to them and having them be grateful for it.
But it's all too likely that they'd betray him. He looks and smells too human still, and it frightens them, but it's more than that. It's too hard for them to imagine walking away from their queen. He's been changed enough that his desire for a queen's mind to rule his own is not compulsion. His genes make him outcast, but at the same time they will make him free. He worried, at first, that it was the beginning of madness to feel that way, but he doesn't worry about things like that much anymore.
If he's angry when she finally orders his death, he tells himself it's not because he expected anything different. She's the same as the humans under the skin, fearing him because she can't force him into the mold of what she thinks he should be. He nurses the anger as his inspiration and tries to ignore the bone-deep ache in his chest when he's finally safe in a long-abandoned base, safe and far from the reach of any other mind.
It's only hunger, he tells himself; there's nothing else he needs.
*****
Michael is confident, once he begins his experiments in earnest, that it's only a matter of time. He understands now that he's not the one who's broken -- it's all the Wraith, back to their beginnings. They're weak, easily starved, tempted by hunger into taking too many chances. The humans are made wrong, too, all that intelligence and weirdly bright passion caged in bodies that make them nothing more than food for anyone stronger.
It's all been a series of accidents -- the blind fumbling of evolution, the random tangle of genetic material that birthed the Wraith, the vicious experiment that ripped apart his own genes and put them back together in such an interesting way. He's too smart to leave anything to chance. He's smarter than any of them, two steps ahead of all the ways the humans and the Wraith will try to stop him.
He's learning more each day about how to construct his hybrids. He can make them perfect, the way they always should have been.
And then everything will finally be all right.