[revised] Bone-Deep (Z. vialacteanan version)
-title- Bone-Deep
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Guys being Not Helpful. Er. Very nearly gen, with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it pairing (Teyla/Kate). Mention of past abuse of non-canon character.
-notes- A slightly different version of this, most of which can be seen in "Far and Far From Land," took place in my pet asymptotic-to-canon AU; this is what happened in the diverging-from-canon series that is part of said AU's... well, backstory.
-timeframe- missing scene for "The Gift"
-characters- Teyla, Rodney, Sheppard, Ford
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 1962
-summary- Teyla is scarred. Her teammates mean well.
Bone-Deep
Scarred skin is strongest. Teyla had known the proverb since she was old enough to walk; known, too, that it referred not only to the skin of one's body but to hearts and minds and perhaps to peoples, and thus to her.
It was not as if she had had scars otherwise. Minor cuts healed quickly and readily, torn flesh being replaced by whole and healthy skin; more serious ones sealed themselves with scar tissue, but it was soon enough replaced by unbroken brown skin. Teyla's father and aunts had smiled and said how like her other father she was going to be; the elders nodded as she ran by and remarked to each other how clearly the Ancestors had favored Teyla and Tagan, how obviously they were destined for a special duty among their people.
And in truth, it was -- it was --
"Perhaps you should speak with your team about it," Doctor Heightmeyer -- Kate, she had asked to be called Kate -- said. "I am your friend, and I do not fear you; they are closer to you than I, and I think you need to hear it from them."
"We are friends, then?" Teyla wondered, reaching a hand out to cover Kate's.
"Well, I'm certainly not your psychiatrist." Kate ran her other hand back through her hair from her forehead. "The Medical Ethics board would have me up on charges as it is... "
Teyla patted her hand, long practice making her used to giving comfort when her soul longed to receive it.
"They told you," Teyla said, looking around the room at her comrades, "what I was."
"What you have," Aiden Ford corrected her. "We already knew what you are."
"You're Teyla," Major Sheppard echoed his subordinate. "You're our -- you're our -- you're ours." He spread his hands helplessly.
"They told us," Doctor McKay agreed, "nice information to have, solves a minor mystery or two, does nothing for our current problem. Is that all you wanted? I mean, I'm sure I'd be interested at some other time... "
"You do not fear me."
"Whatever for?" Major Sheppard asked.
"If anything, you ought to be scared of -- nevermind."
"The people with weapons of mass destruction?" Aiden Ford finished his Canadian teammate's thought. "Seriously, Teyla, only in that 'scarily gorgeous woman who can totally kick my ass' sort of way."
"You are... " Teyla's eyes misted over.
"Is this a group hug moment? Because I really, really suck at those. Um. Not that I wouldn't be happy to -- hey! What are you, Major, twelve?"
Aiden laughed, and Teyla managed a wobbly smile before the weight of her new burden dragged her back down.
"I am just -- I do not know -- my life is a lie."
"It is not," the Major said. "And even if it was, lies lived long enough grow their own kind of truth -- uh -- maybe you should be talking to Sora about this."
Teyla flinched, shaking her head; she had seen the warmth in Sora's eyes turn to hatred once before, and she did not think she could bear it a second time, not now, not when the ashes of the ancient flame were only beginning to reveal a few still-glowing embers.
"Everything's the same, really, isn't it?" Aiden Ford asked. "It's just that there's that more now, but it doesn't change things as much as you think maybe it should..."
"And yet it does," Teyla said. "I have always held my... talents... as gifts from the Ancestors, but now that I find out that it is Wraith blood that gives my strength and my healing and my sensing... "
"Well, if the Ancients created the Wraith, it's indirectly from them, isn't it?" Doctor McKay pointed out.
"Healing is an Ancient thing," Major Sheppard agreed. "Their bodies replaced every cell at ages when they were old enough to know better -- what is that from? -- if not as ferociously as the Wraith do -- "
"McLendon's Syndrome," Doctor McKay told him, "which you should know perfectly well, you were quoting from it the other day, and they only had to worry about invading Rodents. Of unusual size."
"The Ancients had healing powers," Aiden Ford said, "but you're saying they healed themselves without using them? Or healed faster?"
"Well, you can't grow back missing limbs -- I wonder if the Wraith do? -- "
"Oh, there's a cheerful thought."
"And I've never known anyone to regenerate a functional eye if the lens was destroyed, but I have Ancient genes and when I got a tattoo it only took the white blood cells or whatever it about a year and a half to digest the ink."
The other two Tellurians stared at him.
"What? How long does it normally take?"
"How am I supposed to lead my life," Teyla asked, "knowing that my forefathers were -- were bred to be of use, as if they were rabbits?"
"Well, mostly you don't think about it, it doesn't come up in day-to-day interaction." Doctor McKay flushed a deep, brilliant red. "Back me up here, Ford?"
"...oh. Yeah. You really don't, even when you're thinking about, um. Unfairness. History is history, and now is now, and people are people."
Teyla blinked. She vaguely remembered Aiden Ford's stammering, confused explanation of some sort of cultural madness that had seized the Columbians long before Doctor Weir or Major Sheppard had been born, but she didn't quite -- "But is not that mere use, if use can be mere, rather than breeding?"
"Hey! My great-great-great-grandmother Leesy walked from Kentucky to Ontario because she wanted her sister to be born free, the way that her mother-aunt hadn't had the courage to do for her!"
Major Sheppard blinked. "Your family remembered that part?"
"Hoo-ee, no wonder they could pass." Aiden Ford sat down on the end of Teyla's bed and added "But I have to agree with Major Sheppard; it doesn't seem the sort of thing you'd tell the kids."
"It's my family. We'd kind of have found out anyway." Doctor McKay's eyes darted wildly from one side of the room to another, perhaps only now realizing what he had revealed. "And anyway, we kind of wanted to remember so as to remind ourselves not to grow up to be assholes."
Major Sheppard cocked his head quizzically.
"Well, not that kind of asshole -- anyway. Teyla."
She stared helplessly at him, jerked out of the warmth her comrades' byplay had lulled her into.
"If you're, uh, remembering Wraith stuff in your dreams, or whatever, you want to think twice and three times about using that in your daily life unless you really, really understand it; most of the problems in this world are caused by people using tech they don't really know how to handle. Uh. And if you make a list of, of things that you do that Wraith don't, you can say it over to yourself when you think you're losing yourself."
"A list of things?"
"You know. Things like Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty, Clarke's laws, the Canadian national anthem, science fair projects, school riots, why the Fourth Doctor was the best, the Oath of Hippocrates, the tribble episode, Sierra On-Line games, the Scout Promise... "
"You were a boy scout?" Major Sheppard asked.
"Wolf cub. My parents thought it would build character and instill useful virtues. Please."
"I was a boy scout," Aiden Ford commented. "I loved camping. My grandparents used to leave the city and take me up to one of the national forests for a week or two in the camping seasons, as well as scouting trips."
"Oh, and I suppose you made it to... "
"Eagle."
"Oh, hey, congratulations," Major Sheppard told him. "I missed out on all that."
"What's that one again?" Doctor McKay asked.
"The highest one," the Major told him.
"That must be an achievement," Teyla said politely, deciding to ask Doctor McKay about the oath he had mentioned some other time. "So, then, I should remember for myself the trades I have made, and the recitatives I have recounted, and the tuttle root soup I have cooked, and sparring with bantoi?"
"Uh, yeah, if that's what helps you remember who you are. And, well, us, if you think it'll help."
"It shall," Teyla told him, for if she was sure of little enough else, when even the marrow of her bones was not truly hers, she was sure of this.
"So, uh, we're good, then?" Major Sheppard asked, shifting as nervously as Doctor McKay.
"We are well. Thank you for sparing the time to speak with me."
"I'm sorry we sort of made it all about us instead of about you," Aiden Ford apologized.
"No, do not be; it was what I needed," Teyla told him, because it had been. This at least had not changed: this often-infuriating habit of her comrades' was the more dear because it was exactly what they would do on any other occasion.
"My uncle told me once," Major Sheppard said uncomfortably, "that anyone who didn't have scars on their soul was shallow or sheltered. Uh. And anyone in your position wouldn't be able to be sheltered anyway." He ducked his head and walked out of her room, one shoulder twitching slightly.
"My mother gave me a book once," Aiden Ford said suddenly. "I read it, because it was from her, although the hero was a girl and I wasn't that interested in girl heroes then -- anyway, I forgot most of it, but I remember this one bit where these three witches are giving the hero presents to help her save the day and one of them says 'I give you your faults.' And the hero is all confused, because she doesn't want her faults, but the witch says that that's her present." He rose to his feet. "And I think that's what did save the day in the end."
"I remember that book," Doctor McKay said, "and her faults were what got her to the point where she realized that sociopathic sentiences don't get love, so they can't plan properly for it or against it, and THAT'S what she used to save the day." He shrugged. "Not a bad message, even with the book's complete and utter inability to tell a fourth-dimensional construct from a fifth-dimensional vector."
"Not a bad message at all," Aiden Ford agreed. "That's kind of what it all comes down to in the end, isn't it?" He smiled at Teyla and left the room.
"Well, if you want to reduce matters to a squushy unpredictable mess," Doctor McKay told Teyla's door. He turned back to her. "Recalling people you care about helps, too. Oh, and! We learn when we're little that ontogeny isn't destiny. What's encoded in your genes might make a difference to your life, but it doesn't necessarily matter; what matters is what you do with it. You can ignore it or use it for bad things or use it for good things: just be sure -- really sure, right down to the bone -- which is which."
He flushed pome-red again, flapped a hand at Teyla, and hurried out of her room.
Teyla dropped prone onto her bed and stared at the weave of its coverlet.
Scarred skin is strongest, the Athosian proverb ran, and followed it up with Wear your scars with pride, drawing strength from them.
She could not display this proudly, not now; perhaps it had cut too deep even to scar yet.
And yet -- a hope had kindled that someday she could wear this wound with pride, among the Atlanteans at least if not among her own people.
There might even be a way that she could use this -- this susceptibility to nightmares for good.
Somehow.
Someway.
She would draw strength from these her second scars.
McLendon's Syndrome is by Robert Frezza, and quite possibly the funniest space-adventure-impending-invasion story EVER.
The book Ford and Rodney are referring to at the end is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Guys being Not Helpful. Er. Very nearly gen, with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it pairing (Teyla/Kate). Mention of past abuse of non-canon character.
-notes- A slightly different version of this, most of which can be seen in "Far and Far From Land," took place in my pet asymptotic-to-canon AU; this is what happened in the diverging-from-canon series that is part of said AU's... well, backstory.
-timeframe- missing scene for "The Gift"
-characters- Teyla, Rodney, Sheppard, Ford
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 1962
-summary- Teyla is scarred. Her teammates mean well.
Bone-Deep
Scarred skin is strongest. Teyla had known the proverb since she was old enough to walk; known, too, that it referred not only to the skin of one's body but to hearts and minds and perhaps to peoples, and thus to her.
It was not as if she had had scars otherwise. Minor cuts healed quickly and readily, torn flesh being replaced by whole and healthy skin; more serious ones sealed themselves with scar tissue, but it was soon enough replaced by unbroken brown skin. Teyla's father and aunts had smiled and said how like her other father she was going to be; the elders nodded as she ran by and remarked to each other how clearly the Ancestors had favored Teyla and Tagan, how obviously they were destined for a special duty among their people.
And in truth, it was -- it was --
"Perhaps you should speak with your team about it," Doctor Heightmeyer -- Kate, she had asked to be called Kate -- said. "I am your friend, and I do not fear you; they are closer to you than I, and I think you need to hear it from them."
"We are friends, then?" Teyla wondered, reaching a hand out to cover Kate's.
"Well, I'm certainly not your psychiatrist." Kate ran her other hand back through her hair from her forehead. "The Medical Ethics board would have me up on charges as it is... "
Teyla patted her hand, long practice making her used to giving comfort when her soul longed to receive it.
"They told you," Teyla said, looking around the room at her comrades, "what I was."
"What you have," Aiden Ford corrected her. "We already knew what you are."
"You're Teyla," Major Sheppard echoed his subordinate. "You're our -- you're our -- you're ours." He spread his hands helplessly.
"They told us," Doctor McKay agreed, "nice information to have, solves a minor mystery or two, does nothing for our current problem. Is that all you wanted? I mean, I'm sure I'd be interested at some other time... "
"You do not fear me."
"Whatever for?" Major Sheppard asked.
"If anything, you ought to be scared of -- nevermind."
"The people with weapons of mass destruction?" Aiden Ford finished his Canadian teammate's thought. "Seriously, Teyla, only in that 'scarily gorgeous woman who can totally kick my ass' sort of way."
"You are... " Teyla's eyes misted over.
"Is this a group hug moment? Because I really, really suck at those. Um. Not that I wouldn't be happy to -- hey! What are you, Major, twelve?"
Aiden laughed, and Teyla managed a wobbly smile before the weight of her new burden dragged her back down.
"I am just -- I do not know -- my life is a lie."
"It is not," the Major said. "And even if it was, lies lived long enough grow their own kind of truth -- uh -- maybe you should be talking to Sora about this."
Teyla flinched, shaking her head; she had seen the warmth in Sora's eyes turn to hatred once before, and she did not think she could bear it a second time, not now, not when the ashes of the ancient flame were only beginning to reveal a few still-glowing embers.
"Everything's the same, really, isn't it?" Aiden Ford asked. "It's just that there's that more now, but it doesn't change things as much as you think maybe it should..."
"And yet it does," Teyla said. "I have always held my... talents... as gifts from the Ancestors, but now that I find out that it is Wraith blood that gives my strength and my healing and my sensing... "
"Well, if the Ancients created the Wraith, it's indirectly from them, isn't it?" Doctor McKay pointed out.
"Healing is an Ancient thing," Major Sheppard agreed. "Their bodies replaced every cell at ages when they were old enough to know better -- what is that from? -- if not as ferociously as the Wraith do -- "
"McLendon's Syndrome," Doctor McKay told him, "which you should know perfectly well, you were quoting from it the other day, and they only had to worry about invading Rodents. Of unusual size."
"The Ancients had healing powers," Aiden Ford said, "but you're saying they healed themselves without using them? Or healed faster?"
"Well, you can't grow back missing limbs -- I wonder if the Wraith do? -- "
"Oh, there's a cheerful thought."
"And I've never known anyone to regenerate a functional eye if the lens was destroyed, but I have Ancient genes and when I got a tattoo it only took the white blood cells or whatever it about a year and a half to digest the ink."
The other two Tellurians stared at him.
"What? How long does it normally take?"
"How am I supposed to lead my life," Teyla asked, "knowing that my forefathers were -- were bred to be of use, as if they were rabbits?"
"Well, mostly you don't think about it, it doesn't come up in day-to-day interaction." Doctor McKay flushed a deep, brilliant red. "Back me up here, Ford?"
"...oh. Yeah. You really don't, even when you're thinking about, um. Unfairness. History is history, and now is now, and people are people."
Teyla blinked. She vaguely remembered Aiden Ford's stammering, confused explanation of some sort of cultural madness that had seized the Columbians long before Doctor Weir or Major Sheppard had been born, but she didn't quite -- "But is not that mere use, if use can be mere, rather than breeding?"
"Hey! My great-great-great-grandmother Leesy walked from Kentucky to Ontario because she wanted her sister to be born free, the way that her mother-aunt hadn't had the courage to do for her!"
Major Sheppard blinked. "Your family remembered that part?"
"Hoo-ee, no wonder they could pass." Aiden Ford sat down on the end of Teyla's bed and added "But I have to agree with Major Sheppard; it doesn't seem the sort of thing you'd tell the kids."
"It's my family. We'd kind of have found out anyway." Doctor McKay's eyes darted wildly from one side of the room to another, perhaps only now realizing what he had revealed. "And anyway, we kind of wanted to remember so as to remind ourselves not to grow up to be assholes."
Major Sheppard cocked his head quizzically.
"Well, not that kind of asshole -- anyway. Teyla."
She stared helplessly at him, jerked out of the warmth her comrades' byplay had lulled her into.
"If you're, uh, remembering Wraith stuff in your dreams, or whatever, you want to think twice and three times about using that in your daily life unless you really, really understand it; most of the problems in this world are caused by people using tech they don't really know how to handle. Uh. And if you make a list of, of things that you do that Wraith don't, you can say it over to yourself when you think you're losing yourself."
"A list of things?"
"You know. Things like Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty, Clarke's laws, the Canadian national anthem, science fair projects, school riots, why the Fourth Doctor was the best, the Oath of Hippocrates, the tribble episode, Sierra On-Line games, the Scout Promise... "
"You were a boy scout?" Major Sheppard asked.
"Wolf cub. My parents thought it would build character and instill useful virtues. Please."
"I was a boy scout," Aiden Ford commented. "I loved camping. My grandparents used to leave the city and take me up to one of the national forests for a week or two in the camping seasons, as well as scouting trips."
"Oh, and I suppose you made it to... "
"Eagle."
"Oh, hey, congratulations," Major Sheppard told him. "I missed out on all that."
"What's that one again?" Doctor McKay asked.
"The highest one," the Major told him.
"That must be an achievement," Teyla said politely, deciding to ask Doctor McKay about the oath he had mentioned some other time. "So, then, I should remember for myself the trades I have made, and the recitatives I have recounted, and the tuttle root soup I have cooked, and sparring with bantoi?"
"Uh, yeah, if that's what helps you remember who you are. And, well, us, if you think it'll help."
"It shall," Teyla told him, for if she was sure of little enough else, when even the marrow of her bones was not truly hers, she was sure of this.
"So, uh, we're good, then?" Major Sheppard asked, shifting as nervously as Doctor McKay.
"We are well. Thank you for sparing the time to speak with me."
"I'm sorry we sort of made it all about us instead of about you," Aiden Ford apologized.
"No, do not be; it was what I needed," Teyla told him, because it had been. This at least had not changed: this often-infuriating habit of her comrades' was the more dear because it was exactly what they would do on any other occasion.
"My uncle told me once," Major Sheppard said uncomfortably, "that anyone who didn't have scars on their soul was shallow or sheltered. Uh. And anyone in your position wouldn't be able to be sheltered anyway." He ducked his head and walked out of her room, one shoulder twitching slightly.
"My mother gave me a book once," Aiden Ford said suddenly. "I read it, because it was from her, although the hero was a girl and I wasn't that interested in girl heroes then -- anyway, I forgot most of it, but I remember this one bit where these three witches are giving the hero presents to help her save the day and one of them says 'I give you your faults.' And the hero is all confused, because she doesn't want her faults, but the witch says that that's her present." He rose to his feet. "And I think that's what did save the day in the end."
"I remember that book," Doctor McKay said, "and her faults were what got her to the point where she realized that sociopathic sentiences don't get love, so they can't plan properly for it or against it, and THAT'S what she used to save the day." He shrugged. "Not a bad message, even with the book's complete and utter inability to tell a fourth-dimensional construct from a fifth-dimensional vector."
"Not a bad message at all," Aiden Ford agreed. "That's kind of what it all comes down to in the end, isn't it?" He smiled at Teyla and left the room.
"Well, if you want to reduce matters to a squushy unpredictable mess," Doctor McKay told Teyla's door. He turned back to her. "Recalling people you care about helps, too. Oh, and! We learn when we're little that ontogeny isn't destiny. What's encoded in your genes might make a difference to your life, but it doesn't necessarily matter; what matters is what you do with it. You can ignore it or use it for bad things or use it for good things: just be sure -- really sure, right down to the bone -- which is which."
He flushed pome-red again, flapped a hand at Teyla, and hurried out of her room.
Teyla dropped prone onto her bed and stared at the weave of its coverlet.
Scarred skin is strongest, the Athosian proverb ran, and followed it up with Wear your scars with pride, drawing strength from them.
She could not display this proudly, not now; perhaps it had cut too deep even to scar yet.
And yet -- a hope had kindled that someday she could wear this wound with pride, among the Atlanteans at least if not among her own people.
There might even be a way that she could use this -- this susceptibility to nightmares for good.
Somehow.
Someway.
She would draw strength from these her second scars.
McLendon's Syndrome is by Robert Frezza, and quite possibly the funniest space-adventure-impending-invasion story EVER.
The book Ford and Rodney are referring to at the end is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time.