[Daniel] Working it Out
Who: Daniel
Where: Mini-Bunker, Jail/Observation Station
When: Day 20, late night/Day 21, early morning
Invited: Anyone
Status: Complete [Closed]
( The Wraith threat was, as far as they knew, ended. )
Where: Mini-Bunker, Jail/Observation Station
When: Day 20, late night/Day 21, early morning
Invited: Anyone
Status: Complete [Closed]
( The Wraith threat was, as far as they knew, ended. )
George studied the bodies. They had souls. George could feel them, now that she was close. She hadn't been sure of that before. She kicked the nearest torso. "Get up!"
The wraith's ghost (and how was that for a weird construction?) sat up with a hiss, oriented on George and sprang at her. George smacked it upside the head with Sweet Reason. The ghost went sprawling. "Knock it off, you asshole! You're dead!"
The wraith scrambled up and leaped at her again. George bitch slapped it across the face several times. "I said knock it off! You may have been some hot shit when you were alive, but you're my bitch now!"
The wraith stood unmoving for a moment, not so much cowed as badly confused. It looked down at the heap of bodies, then at George. "That's right, you're dead. Dead! Speaka de English? Ou-yay are-a ead-day! Do you get it now?"
"Impossible!" the wraith said. George rolled her eyes and sighed. She looked over the pile of bodies, then leaned over and picked up one of the heads. She held it up for the wraith to see. "This," George said, "this is you. This is your brain. This is your brain on...nevermind."
Seeing his own severed head in George's hand really took the wind out of the wraith's sails. From there it was all downhill. George didn't bother being gentle with him, she just ran him through the drill as fast as she could manage.
When he had vanished into the afterlife, George turned to the pile of corpses again. Now that she'd done it once and had an idea of how they would react, she was ready to ride herd on several at once. She waded into the pile, kicking at bodies or shaking a shoulder or an arm here and there.
"Wakey-wakey! Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep--God, you have no idea how sorry--but the time for dirt naps is over. You've got places to be, things to repent, eternal torments to suffer. Let's get cracking!"
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The question came from the trees not far beyond the pile of Wraith corpses. Emerging otherwise silently from between the trunks, Raelle's head was canted slightly to the left as she observed the exceedingly strange antics of the blonde Earther. For her own part, she'd rather faded into the woodwork for a while in the aftermath of the Wraith attack. McKay had passed out in some room somewhere in the bunker. But, Raelle's body was still set to Atlantis time, which meant night here had still been 'day' for her. So, she'd gone out to try to figure out just where the hell she was.
She wasn't at all successful, in that regard. And it frustrated her. Still, she wasn't the type to take it out on others, particularly strangers.
Of course, the young Athosian could hardly be expected to see the ghost of a Wraith. (How's that for something of an oxymoron? 'Ghost' of a Wraith?! Huhn.) And, to be fair, the only 'reapers' she'd had the unwelcome privilege of meeting before now were typically in the guise of the corpses the blonde was now assaulting peculiarly. So, to say that George's behaviour perplexed Raelle was something of an understatement.
"We do not wish them to awake. Nor... I should think... will they." She could no longer sense their minds. They were dead. She was sure of it.
And thank the Ancestors for that.
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"What does it look like I'm doing?" George asked, keeping a firm grip on two of the dead wraith spirits. They were hostile and confused, but also strangely subdued.
"It looks," the other woman said, "as if you are attempting to wake the dead."
The last of the Wraiths sat up, spotted the other woman and lunged for her. George snagged the ghost by its long white hair. "Forget it," she snarled. "You're dead. You had your chance and you blew it."
The Wraith snarled and tried again to leap forward. George held onto its hair with one hand and slapped the back of its head with the other. "No do-overs! You lost. Get over it!"
George glanced up at...Raelle, that was it. Raelle. She glanced up at Raelle, who was watching her with wide eyes. "I'm reaping their souls. Sending them off to the afterlife." She shrugged. "It's what I do."
Not that she was certain they deserved it. Since crashing on this island George had developed an appreciation for Rube's practice of giving the reapers minimal information about their targets. When you knew next to nothing about someone, you weren't tempted to make value judgements about them.
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The Wraith have souls?
Raelle looked clearly skeptical, a brow arched dryly. And yet, she could concede, since she'd spent far too much time in the Atlantis labs not to, that there was human DNA in their genetic make-up. That being the case... Perhaps they did have souls.
Still, the very thought offended her.
However, that was hardly the blonde woman's fault. Thus, showing her usual restraint, Raelle simply let out a short chuff of air to dismiss the very idea. "I see."
She regarded the woman for another moment, watching her wrestling with the air. She could not sense the Wraith, herself. If they did have souls, and the souls were truly there before her, she certainly couldn't see them. As far as she could tell...
George was another crazy Earther. Like Sgt. Torin, perhaps. Or... what was her name? Deirdre. That was it. Deirdre. That creepy psychoanalyst with the odd constellation myths.
She gave the woman a faint, somewhat reserved half-smile and knelt down by the bodies to begin stripping their forearms of the armlets common to them all. "I need to gather the transponders," she told her by way of explanation. "So that they do not send out a signal that will bring a hive ship down upon us."
She did not rifle through their clothing, nor did she search them for other valuables. There was nothing of theirs she particularly wanted. Nothing but the armlets...
Those, she gathered. Slipping a knife out of her boot then, she glanced up to the Reaper. "What planet is this?" Odd question? Maybe. But, the woman fell through a vortex in the middle of the night. She has cause to be a little mixed up.
Taking the knife, she proceeded to methodically pry the transponders from the armlets, taking care to smash the small disks beyond repair.
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(She took it a lot more calmly than most people do,) George thought. (But then, wherever she came from, she deals with these guys all the time.)
When Raelle knelt and began taking 'transponders' from the Wraiths, to prevent any hive ships (and whatever that meant, it didn't sound good) from showing up, George just said, "Uh...good idea."
Then Raelle asked "What planet is this?"
George paused in her Wraith wrangling. "Earth," she said. "You're on earth." She watched Raelle carefully destroying the transponders for a moment, then gave her charges a shake. "Let's go, boys."
To Raelle, George said, "I've gotta send these bozos on their way. I'll, uh, I'll catch you later, I guess. Bye." She walked toward the treeline, herding the ghosts before her.
EXIT GEORGE
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Raelle's head came up at George's confirmation and she looked around at the dark jungle and black soil about her. Her brows creased again, her expression betraying her thoughts-which generally ranged from Oh, crap to You have got to be kidding me...
But, George did not wait for her to voice her skepticism, distress, or incredulity. Instead, she continued to herd the unseen ghosts into the forest. For a moment, she wondered what Halling would think about that particular spiritual practice. Perhaps, just as soon as Dr. McKay figured out how to get them out of here, she'd ask him.
"Thank you," she called softly after the blonde. Then, she gathered up the pieces of the broken transponders and rose to her feet.
Once more, her eyes surveyed the environment. Her gaze swept up to the sky, distress on her face in the unguarded moment of solitude. It coalesced into a tight expression of resolve, however, as her gaze fell back down to Earth, to the bunker.
"I need to find Dr. McKay," she decided, the words soft on her lips.
So. Into the bunker, it is. Perhaps someone there will know where he is.
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