Culture Clash Challenge: Somewhere I Have Never Travelled by Brighid
Challenge: Culture Clash Challenge
Title: Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
Category: erm. het, sorta.
Rating: PG-13
Author: Brighid
Summary: somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence
Note: This is a.) longer than I expected and b.)divergent from where the current continuity will probably go but not entirely from what it is now. In other words, this could be a season two story, but'll probably be jossed before the opening credits.
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled.
**
Min woke up in the general sleeping quarters and the room was impossibly dark and close around him. Gasping and wet he slid from under his blanket and padded down to the water room, trying not to wake anyone. He dunked his head under a tap and then pulled his damp tunic over his head to sop up the wet trailing down neck.
He touched the place on the back of his neck, just beneath his skull, that ached sometimes, and tried to remember what he'd dreamed. Teeth, there'd been teeth.
God-led visions, perhaps.
But Min had never considered himself to be a speaker of the Gods, and these were not visions, they couldn't be. For the Gods were great and terrible and to be feared.
Min, however, tasted rage beneath his terror, coppery and bitter, and when had he learned to *hate* the Gods?
**
Tarl's arms were sore and his back was aching when the horn blew. He wiped the sweat from his forehead away on the sleeve of his over-tunic and tugged the heavy gloves off, depositing them in the bin just outside of Glasshouse 37. He made his way to the feeding hall, and found Sari waiting outside for him. She was smiling, her tired face alight, and he felt a sudden warmth in his chest.
"Marel came?" he asked, dropping his voice, and she held up the card. Extra rations, light duty. He dropped down to his knees to kiss the slight curve of her belly and whispered: "love you. love you."
"Me or the child?" Sari asked, pulling him up again, and her brown eyes were searching.
"Both," Tarl said simply. "Both."
**
Imal watched the two just outside the door. Tarl he didn't know so well, but he'd come to know Sari, and liked her. His face split in a wide grin when Tarl dropped to his knees. He turned to Min, nudging him with his shoulder. "Another breeding female."
Min shoved the len'ik stew around on his plate with the last of his flatbread and snorted. "Gardeners are good at planting seeds, I guess. That puts us at what? Eighteen breeding females? Fourteen in cradles? Well ahead of most of the Compounds. That'll mean extra rations for sure, come Cold."
"Red steak," Imal said, his mouth watering as he eyed his empty plate wistfully. "And warm blankets."
"And an offering to please the Gods, when they come." Min replied, and his voice was dry like the burnt fields a day's walk beyond the Compound gates. His bitterness always surprised Imal, who knew what all good citizens knew: the Gods always came, that was the way of things. Those whose offering was greatest were the most blessed.
Enough of them might survive the Judging to go on, to breed the next offering.
**
Min stopped and watched Tarl leave the shared quarters, saw him kissing Sari before they parted ways. It was an odd thing, that kiss: sweet and loving and faintly unsure. He knew they'd only been together a short time, chosen for each other by Marel of the Council who matched the breeding pairs. And yet, after such a short time, there was a clear bond between them, even before Marel had confirmed Sari's breeding. As the short moon came and went they seemed to grow even closer. Tarl smiled for her, a sudden, unexpected expression on the normally taciturn man's face, and Sari's eyes followed Tarl constantly. It was as though they found some sort of surety in one another, and that made no sense whatsoever to Min. So he watched them, and tried to understand.
This day he leaned against a fencepost and waited for Tarl. "Glasshouse 37," he said conversationally as Tarl came closer.
Tarl paused to look at him, a brief, disinterested glance. "Yes?"
"We work together, Glasshouse 37," Min elaborated.
Tarl made an impatient hand gesture. "Your point?"
Min shrugged. "No point, I just wanted to congratulate you. You've bred her just two estruses and she's already conceived. She's halfway through second quarter. You are a good match."
Tarl shrugged in return. He did not look at Min. "Marel matched us."
Min's eyes narrowed slightly, and he reached out. "I think you were matched before Marel. Where did you come from, where did she come from? Did you know each other before?"
Tarl stopped then and there was heat in his gaze. "Don't you dare ask anything more, Min. Don't think you've gone unnoticed. You're trouble. You have questions about the Gods, and the offering, and the Council. You ask too many questions and you'll get yourself culled. It's bad breeding stock that thinks too much."
Min caught Tarl's arm, held him. "Do you think too much, Tarl? You do, don't you?" Tarl pulled away and stalked off, his body rigid with anger and fear.
Min watched him move away and tasted the memory of that fear and anger in the back of his throat, as though he'd known it before.
**
Imal brought the stacks of pliat root to the processing house, and smiled at Enan who opened the door and pointed him to the washing tubs. As he loaded the roots into the cold water he saw Sari at the other side of the vats with a long-handled brush, diligently scrubbing. Her face looked pale beneath her toffee-coloured skin and her mouth was drawn tight as she breathed through her nose.
Suddenly she dropped the brush and was running out the back door. Imal left the pliat roots half-unloaded to follow her outside, where he found her hanging over the side of the steps, retching noisily. He crouched down beside her, pulled her hair away from her face. "Are you well?" he asked when she at last sat back up and the look she shot him made him laugh out loud. "I mean, other than breeding, are you well?"
"Marel said that I might feel unwell but I had not anticipated it being this bad," Sari said, before leaning back over the step to spit the foulness from her mouth. "Could I have some water, please?"
Imal stood and trotted back into the processing house, coming back with a dipperful of water. Sari rinsed her mouth out and then drank the rest before handing it back. "Can you go back to work?" he asked. "The first quarter they let you rest more, you know."
Sari smiled up at him. "I am fine, thank-you, Imal." She did, however, take the hand he offered to help her up. "Really. All is well."
"If you say so. It's not like I've ever been bred." Imal touched her shoulder lightly. "But if you feel sick again, maybe you should go lie down."
Sari laughed. "I will, I promise." She patted his face fondly, and he let himself reach out and touch her belly. "We will be very careful," she said softly, and Imal nodded.
**
Min was waiting for Imal at mid-meal. "Min. How goes the dirt?"
"Better than the Glasshouses, I hear," Imal replied as they headed into line. "We're ahead of quota. Too bad you can't say the same."
Min shot Imal a dark glance, then got them both trays. "Glasshouse growing is a science. Animals can dig in the dirt, Imal."
"Well, Scientist, you're still half a thousand weight under your quota." Imal punched Min's shoulder.
"Ow. And there you make my argument for me. You're an animal," Min said, rubbing his arm. "Oh, joy. Len'ik stew and flatbread."
Imal grimaced as the stew landed thickly in his bowl. "You'd think being assigned to a farm we'd have a little more ... variety in our diet," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper.
Min looked sidewise at him. "Well, the offering. Hungry Gods. Apparently they like a little pliat root with their fresh souls." His mouth twisted in a not-quite smile, and Imal wondered at the bitterness of it.
"What?" he whispered as they took their seats. "What now?"
Min shrugged. "The Gods have not been here for generations. I find it hard to believe, despite how it tastes, that pliat root lasts *that* long."
Imal looked at his plate and dipped his bread into it, shovelling up a mouthful. "That," he said softly, hiding the words in his chewing, "would be blasphemy."
Min toyed with his len'ik. "I know." He ate the flatbread, but not the stew, and then got up and left the table.
Min, Imal thought, was a malcontent, and a disbeliever. Sometimes he thought it would be wiser to distance himself from the man, but Min was his ... well, not exactly friend. But still *his*, in some way that Imal could not even begin to say. And for all that it was probably unwise, Imal could not find it in himself to break whatever bond it was between them.
He finished his stew hurriedly and then headed back out into the fields.
**
Shared quarters were a small luxury. A bigger platform, just enough for two, and privacy walls that were unknown in the common barracks. So long as a breeding pair was compatible, the thin sliver of privacy was theirs.
Sari stretched out on the edge of the pallet and let her tiredness wash over her, not even having the energy to get up and go to the showers. She didn't even open her eyes when she heard the screen slide open, or when she felt Tarl's weight shift the bed.
"Are you all right? I heard you were sick today." His body curled around hers protectively, and his hand rested just below her belly, his fingers tickling downwards sweetly.
"It happens," she replied, and opened her eyes at last. She loved Tarl's eyes, and thought they were what made him handsome because they showed everything he thought, everything he felt.
And then he smiled at her, and she forgot what she'd been thinking about his eyes. "I need to urninate," she said, completely without meaning to, and Tarl laughed.
"To the water rooms, then. I need a shower. I stink." He helped her to her feet and they grabbed the satchel with their measure of soap and washing cloths and walked out into the hall and down the stairs to the water rooms.
When she squatted over the trough, Tarl stood a little ways down from her and urinated as well, scratching at his beard tiredly. "You're breasts are fuller," he said when she stood, and came over to wash his hands in the basin beside her. He touched a nipple with a cold, wet finger, watched it crinkle and rise. He smiled, a sudden, soft expression in his gaze, and then leaned down and gently sucked the puckered tip between his lips.
"We're here to shower," Sari said sternly, pulling his head up, and Tarl licked the tip of her nose.
"So we are." He tugged her over to the showers where he'd hung their bag, pulled out the sliver of soap they shared and pulled the cord to start the trickling spray. He tipped her head back slightly, working water and then soap through her hair. When it rinsed clear he began washing down the length of her body, his hands maddeningly slow and knowing.
When he paused to press a kiss between her legs she sighed, worked her soapy fingers into his wet hair and then gently pulled him up. "Shower!' she said, but she was laughing and Tarl was laughing as well and in that moment she did not feel tired at all.
**
Marel was waiting for him at the door to general sleeping quarters, a tall woman made of long bones and gristle. A thin sash of red across her chest marked her as the Council's Voice in the Compound. "You've been asking questions again, Min."
"Have I?" Min asked, his voice sharp with that anger he could not explain. "What sort of questions, Marel? What have you heard?"
Marel crossed her arms and sighed. "Too much, but not enough to take action. Not yet. Questions are dangerous things, Min. They breed discontent in those who should labour, whose sole purpose is to be an offering should the Gods come."
"And the Gods always come," Min said, bitterly. "I do not think our discontent would mean much to them, do you? And since when do the Gods eat plants, and take ore? They feed on our souls, don't they, and pass them out into the next world, isn't that the way it goes? Why do we labour so damn hard to be *shit*, Marel?"
Marel's pupils thinned in fear. "Min ... you will be culled if you say such things, if you blaspheme. I do not want to have to report you to Council, I do not want to have to burn you to ashes and scatter them outside the Compound, but I will."
Min hunched his shoulders in and stared at the ground and swallowed against a bitter taste at the back of his throat. "Where did you live before here, Marel?" he asked, finally, looking up into her black eyes.
Marel blinked. "I was born in Compound 28, a mining compound. Why?"
Min shrugged. "Because I was curious."
"That, too, is dangerous," Marel warned him, her calloused palm patting his cheek. "You didn't eat today, I hear. Just bread at mid-meal and at night-meal. Perhaps hunger has made you foolish?" She patted his cheek again. "Learn silence, Min." And then she strode away, to the edge of the Compound where her office and sleeping quarters were, just behind the gate guards who watched for raiders.
**
Sari was out the back door for the third time when Enan came to her. "How far are you now, Little One?" the big woman asked, braiding Sari's tangled hair back. "A quarter and a half, yes? The sickness should be over soon, but until then? I'm sending you to your bed. I'll send word to Marel, and she'll bring you brightgrass tea, and something to eat that'll stay down." She patted Sari's head like a mother patting a child and sent her to the shared quarters with an old bucket.
Marel did not come however, just Tarl, with a mug of brightgrass tea and a bowl of orril gruel. "You've been sick again. Still." He helped her sit and supported her as she sipped the tea, which settled her stomach enough to let her eat the orril.
"Is this a bad thing? I know many women vomit when they're breeding, but not like this?" and it was a question which she had no real answer for.
"It is what it is," she said, tired, but she turned in his arms and touched his face, stroked his beard. "Would you rub my back? It aches."
Tarl's strong, blunt fingers slid down along her spine and dug into the muscles of her lower back, and she listened to his heart beating far too fast and tried to believe that force of will alone could make this right. So long as the breeding pair were compatible, they stayed together, and only so long as they could produce children.
She did not want to lose this. She curved her hand over her belly protectively and did not pray because the Gods were always hungry.
**
Imal looked up when Shigro whistled quietly across the fresh-planted rows at him. "What?"
"Min," Shigro said. "Min's going to be culled, I hear."
Imal dropped his head down. "They don't tell us ahead of time, so how would you hear?"
Shigro made a clicking sound of tongue against teeth. "Neru was at the doors and Marel was warning him to change his ways, to shut his mouth. How likely is that to happen? He's ashes for certain, dust not even the Gods can swallow."
Imal shot a look at him, and something in it frightened Shigro because he held up a hand in defence. "Hey, I'm trying to help you. He's your friend, right? So either you get him to close his mouth, or you keep your distance." Shigro turned his attention back to weeding, and Imal did as well, but when the mid-meal horn blew he helped the other man up and walked with him to the feeding hall.
When Min started towards him just inside the door he turned away and moved to sit with Shigro. He pretended not to notice as Min stood still as stone for a moment before dropping his tray and walking out again.
That was why, when the alarms sounded, Min was walking the edge of the Compound, and taken by the raiders who came from the skies as the Gods were said to do.
Imal searched for an hour, after, but found no trace of Min.
**
Min woke up slowly, his head aching. "What the ...?" and there was a woman over him, her eyes ringed with dark circles and her hands clutching his.
"Welcome back, Major. I'd like you to meet Leader Tinal and his Chief Scientist, Aheln, who are about to apologize to you." Two men behind her shoulder, dressed in soft tunics and sleek in a well-fed way, winced at the steel in her tone. The one on the left moved forward slightly and helped him sit up, and Min felt something cold and circular pressed to the base of his skull.
For a moment his vision swam and he felt nauseated and then he was clear and sharp and focused. "You *fucking* sons of bitches," he said.
Elizabeth smiled at him, a real smile, though tired to bone. "And again, welcome back, Major. It's been a long five months."
**
When the alarms sounded for the second time Tarl felt his gut lurch in fear. He pulled Sari up and dragged her to the door. "We'll go to the water room. It's stone, and there are places to hide there. Come on!"
Sari started to open her mouth and Tarl knew it was to argue but then her eyes widened and her hand went to her belly and she said, "Oh, no, nonono," on a single, drawn out breath. A strangled noise escaped Tarl's throat and he grabbed her, swung her up into his arms and started running. It was only once they were hidden behind the well pumps that he noticed his hands were wet with blood, that when he touched Sari's face he left dark red smears.
"Oh, no," he said, and Sari looked up at him and she said. "Shhh. Shhh! All will be well, Tarl. It will be all right!"
But there was too much blood, not all of it dark, and he knew it was not going to be all right at all.
**
Imal watched as five ships appeared in the air and a sixth set down in the middle of the Compound. The back hatch opened and everyone dropped to their knees, ready for the Gods to take them.
Except the woman who walked out was not God-born, just a woman with dark hair and dark eyes. Min walked at her left shoulder, and armed guards were all around her. "My name is Doctor Elizabeth Weir of Atlantis. You have people among you from my team, and we've come to retrieve them. Many of you, as well, have been taken from other worlds. My medical staff are going to come to each of you and remove the devices that have given you false memories. All people living in the compounds will be given the choice to remain, to relocate to their world of origin if the gate address is known, or to come make their home on Atlantis." She made a gesture, and two more guards brought out a fat man in a scarlet Council tunic.
"While you've been working up here, and been bred to feed the Wraith, whom you've been taught to view as gods, a small percentage of your population have lived in an extensive, shielded city beneath the ground. You feed them, produce the resources they use, and you keep them safe from the Wraith."
The Councillor's face twisted with rage, grew purple. "You will destroy us! You will undo everything we have created with your interference!" He lunged at the woman, only to be shot with a light that made him tremble and then fall.
The dark haired woman looked down at him a long moment, then at the hundred or so kneeled around her ship. "I don't really have a problem with that," she said finally, and the chill in her voice made Imal shiver.
**
Sari's fingers were cold in his hand, and her breathing was hitched with pain. "Tarl, this is not right," she said at last. Tarl shushed her, dropped his free hand lightly over her mouth, and then she heard them, too: footsteps and voices and "Over in there!" and she shook with fear. Tarl let go of her, pressed a brief, frantic kiss to her mouth and then lunged out, screaming.
She heard him land hard against someone, and there was a flash of light and then a voice, saying, "Oh dear god, Rodney?" and then they were around the corner, shining lights, and there was a man beside her, with soft hands and sad eyes. "Teyla?"
"I think I'm losing the child," she said, and he barked back at the soldiers, orders for a litter and an ivy and she was so very cold that she curled into the warmth of the stranger's touch and let darkness take her.
**
Ford sat on the edge of the hospital bed, touching the place where the small device had been. "So, what? They went out *kidnapping* people to expand their work force and breeding stock? That's just ... wrong."
Sheppard snorted. "No kidding. And all the while there's this this little group of them, living like the last goddamn days of the Roman Empire underground."
Ford shook his head. "This galaxy is, pardon my language sir, even more fucked up than I thought." He touched his bearded chin. "I guess I should shave this off, huh?"
Sheppard leaned over and punched him lightly in the arm. "Hell, Ford, I'm surprised you were able to grow one in the first place. It certainly took you the full five months to do it right. Seems a shame to waste it."
Ford eyed Sheppard balefully. "Permission to speak freely, Sir?" and Sheppard laughed again.
"No way in hell. Now come on, Doc Beckett says you check out fine, so let's go to the dining hall and find something to eat that *isn't* len'ik stew."
They were halfway down the corridor when Ford dropped his voice and leaned in close. "How's Teyla doing?"
Sheppard shrugged. "She's ... Teyla. Scarily serene. I'm more worried about Rodney, really. He's been ... well, damned quiet, and it's unnerving me." There was a thread of humour in the words but not the tone.
"Really fucked up galaxy," Ford said finally.
**
Teyla woke up from her latest nap, feeling alert for the first time in the two days since she'd been recovered. She looked up and saw the IV feeding saline into her body, so she must have recovered enough blood after the miscarriage. Her body hurt, still. and her belly felt strangely empty. She felt ... hollow, but it would pass. She pulled a pillow to herself and curled around it and said, "You can come in, Doctor McKay."
Rodney slid in behind the curtain, and there were those eyes, showing everything. "I think, under the circumstances, you can call me Rodney."
Teyla smiled. "Rodney, then. Carson told you that it was a boy?"
Rodney nodded. "Yeah. He did." And then there was silence between them, awkward and fraught, until Rodney took a great, gasping lungful of air.
"I'm sorry," he said, sounding broken. Teyla sat up despite the ache in her belly and reached across to take his hand.
"Why? You were not the one who subverted my will and freedom, nor did you do anything I did not allow. Did not wish for, in fact." Teyla regretted that she did not have the right words for him, but her grief was so different than his. It was simple and uncomplicated and it was the sorrow of loss. His seemed tangled and fearful and shamed and it made her wish that he was Tarl again, because she would have known the right words for Tarl.
Instead she pulled Rodney's McKay's hand closer and laid it on her belly, pressed it to the slightly loose skin. "This is where Tarl and Sari's child was," she said finally, and she looked up at him, trying to make him see the truth of it. "That child was very much loved. Had he lived, I would have loved him as well, because his creation was a blessing, do you understand?"
Rodney's eyes were too bright and his hand was shaking on her. "Not really, no."
So Teyla pulled him down to sit beside her and touched his face and said, "They changed our memories, not our nature, and Tarl was a good, kind man that Sari came to love. A very good man, and she was glad of the child. There is no evil in that, Rodney, it was untouched by the wrongness of the situation itself. Tarl loved Sari and Rodney McKay has done no wrong to me."
"I never thought I'd have kids," Rodney said at last. "I guess I was right."
Teyla opened her mouth but still there were no right words, so instead she pulled his head to her shoulder, more than a little surprised that he would allow himself to be held once back in this world where they belonged, but not to each other. His breath on her neck was soft and sweet and her body ached with memory and the sorrow of things lost.
**
END
Title: Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
Category: erm. het, sorta.
Rating: PG-13
Author: Brighid
Summary: somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence
Note: This is a.) longer than I expected and b.)divergent from where the current continuity will probably go but not entirely from what it is now. In other words, this could be a season two story, but'll probably be jossed before the opening credits.
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled.
**
Min woke up in the general sleeping quarters and the room was impossibly dark and close around him. Gasping and wet he slid from under his blanket and padded down to the water room, trying not to wake anyone. He dunked his head under a tap and then pulled his damp tunic over his head to sop up the wet trailing down neck.
He touched the place on the back of his neck, just beneath his skull, that ached sometimes, and tried to remember what he'd dreamed. Teeth, there'd been teeth.
God-led visions, perhaps.
But Min had never considered himself to be a speaker of the Gods, and these were not visions, they couldn't be. For the Gods were great and terrible and to be feared.
Min, however, tasted rage beneath his terror, coppery and bitter, and when had he learned to *hate* the Gods?
**
Tarl's arms were sore and his back was aching when the horn blew. He wiped the sweat from his forehead away on the sleeve of his over-tunic and tugged the heavy gloves off, depositing them in the bin just outside of Glasshouse 37. He made his way to the feeding hall, and found Sari waiting outside for him. She was smiling, her tired face alight, and he felt a sudden warmth in his chest.
"Marel came?" he asked, dropping his voice, and she held up the card. Extra rations, light duty. He dropped down to his knees to kiss the slight curve of her belly and whispered: "love you. love you."
"Me or the child?" Sari asked, pulling him up again, and her brown eyes were searching.
"Both," Tarl said simply. "Both."
**
Imal watched the two just outside the door. Tarl he didn't know so well, but he'd come to know Sari, and liked her. His face split in a wide grin when Tarl dropped to his knees. He turned to Min, nudging him with his shoulder. "Another breeding female."
Min shoved the len'ik stew around on his plate with the last of his flatbread and snorted. "Gardeners are good at planting seeds, I guess. That puts us at what? Eighteen breeding females? Fourteen in cradles? Well ahead of most of the Compounds. That'll mean extra rations for sure, come Cold."
"Red steak," Imal said, his mouth watering as he eyed his empty plate wistfully. "And warm blankets."
"And an offering to please the Gods, when they come." Min replied, and his voice was dry like the burnt fields a day's walk beyond the Compound gates. His bitterness always surprised Imal, who knew what all good citizens knew: the Gods always came, that was the way of things. Those whose offering was greatest were the most blessed.
Enough of them might survive the Judging to go on, to breed the next offering.
**
Min stopped and watched Tarl leave the shared quarters, saw him kissing Sari before they parted ways. It was an odd thing, that kiss: sweet and loving and faintly unsure. He knew they'd only been together a short time, chosen for each other by Marel of the Council who matched the breeding pairs. And yet, after such a short time, there was a clear bond between them, even before Marel had confirmed Sari's breeding. As the short moon came and went they seemed to grow even closer. Tarl smiled for her, a sudden, unexpected expression on the normally taciturn man's face, and Sari's eyes followed Tarl constantly. It was as though they found some sort of surety in one another, and that made no sense whatsoever to Min. So he watched them, and tried to understand.
This day he leaned against a fencepost and waited for Tarl. "Glasshouse 37," he said conversationally as Tarl came closer.
Tarl paused to look at him, a brief, disinterested glance. "Yes?"
"We work together, Glasshouse 37," Min elaborated.
Tarl made an impatient hand gesture. "Your point?"
Min shrugged. "No point, I just wanted to congratulate you. You've bred her just two estruses and she's already conceived. She's halfway through second quarter. You are a good match."
Tarl shrugged in return. He did not look at Min. "Marel matched us."
Min's eyes narrowed slightly, and he reached out. "I think you were matched before Marel. Where did you come from, where did she come from? Did you know each other before?"
Tarl stopped then and there was heat in his gaze. "Don't you dare ask anything more, Min. Don't think you've gone unnoticed. You're trouble. You have questions about the Gods, and the offering, and the Council. You ask too many questions and you'll get yourself culled. It's bad breeding stock that thinks too much."
Min caught Tarl's arm, held him. "Do you think too much, Tarl? You do, don't you?" Tarl pulled away and stalked off, his body rigid with anger and fear.
Min watched him move away and tasted the memory of that fear and anger in the back of his throat, as though he'd known it before.
**
Imal brought the stacks of pliat root to the processing house, and smiled at Enan who opened the door and pointed him to the washing tubs. As he loaded the roots into the cold water he saw Sari at the other side of the vats with a long-handled brush, diligently scrubbing. Her face looked pale beneath her toffee-coloured skin and her mouth was drawn tight as she breathed through her nose.
Suddenly she dropped the brush and was running out the back door. Imal left the pliat roots half-unloaded to follow her outside, where he found her hanging over the side of the steps, retching noisily. He crouched down beside her, pulled her hair away from her face. "Are you well?" he asked when she at last sat back up and the look she shot him made him laugh out loud. "I mean, other than breeding, are you well?"
"Marel said that I might feel unwell but I had not anticipated it being this bad," Sari said, before leaning back over the step to spit the foulness from her mouth. "Could I have some water, please?"
Imal stood and trotted back into the processing house, coming back with a dipperful of water. Sari rinsed her mouth out and then drank the rest before handing it back. "Can you go back to work?" he asked. "The first quarter they let you rest more, you know."
Sari smiled up at him. "I am fine, thank-you, Imal." She did, however, take the hand he offered to help her up. "Really. All is well."
"If you say so. It's not like I've ever been bred." Imal touched her shoulder lightly. "But if you feel sick again, maybe you should go lie down."
Sari laughed. "I will, I promise." She patted his face fondly, and he let himself reach out and touch her belly. "We will be very careful," she said softly, and Imal nodded.
**
Min was waiting for Imal at mid-meal. "Min. How goes the dirt?"
"Better than the Glasshouses, I hear," Imal replied as they headed into line. "We're ahead of quota. Too bad you can't say the same."
Min shot Imal a dark glance, then got them both trays. "Glasshouse growing is a science. Animals can dig in the dirt, Imal."
"Well, Scientist, you're still half a thousand weight under your quota." Imal punched Min's shoulder.
"Ow. And there you make my argument for me. You're an animal," Min said, rubbing his arm. "Oh, joy. Len'ik stew and flatbread."
Imal grimaced as the stew landed thickly in his bowl. "You'd think being assigned to a farm we'd have a little more ... variety in our diet," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper.
Min looked sidewise at him. "Well, the offering. Hungry Gods. Apparently they like a little pliat root with their fresh souls." His mouth twisted in a not-quite smile, and Imal wondered at the bitterness of it.
"What?" he whispered as they took their seats. "What now?"
Min shrugged. "The Gods have not been here for generations. I find it hard to believe, despite how it tastes, that pliat root lasts *that* long."
Imal looked at his plate and dipped his bread into it, shovelling up a mouthful. "That," he said softly, hiding the words in his chewing, "would be blasphemy."
Min toyed with his len'ik. "I know." He ate the flatbread, but not the stew, and then got up and left the table.
Min, Imal thought, was a malcontent, and a disbeliever. Sometimes he thought it would be wiser to distance himself from the man, but Min was his ... well, not exactly friend. But still *his*, in some way that Imal could not even begin to say. And for all that it was probably unwise, Imal could not find it in himself to break whatever bond it was between them.
He finished his stew hurriedly and then headed back out into the fields.
**
Shared quarters were a small luxury. A bigger platform, just enough for two, and privacy walls that were unknown in the common barracks. So long as a breeding pair was compatible, the thin sliver of privacy was theirs.
Sari stretched out on the edge of the pallet and let her tiredness wash over her, not even having the energy to get up and go to the showers. She didn't even open her eyes when she heard the screen slide open, or when she felt Tarl's weight shift the bed.
"Are you all right? I heard you were sick today." His body curled around hers protectively, and his hand rested just below her belly, his fingers tickling downwards sweetly.
"It happens," she replied, and opened her eyes at last. She loved Tarl's eyes, and thought they were what made him handsome because they showed everything he thought, everything he felt.
And then he smiled at her, and she forgot what she'd been thinking about his eyes. "I need to urninate," she said, completely without meaning to, and Tarl laughed.
"To the water rooms, then. I need a shower. I stink." He helped her to her feet and they grabbed the satchel with their measure of soap and washing cloths and walked out into the hall and down the stairs to the water rooms.
When she squatted over the trough, Tarl stood a little ways down from her and urinated as well, scratching at his beard tiredly. "You're breasts are fuller," he said when she stood, and came over to wash his hands in the basin beside her. He touched a nipple with a cold, wet finger, watched it crinkle and rise. He smiled, a sudden, soft expression in his gaze, and then leaned down and gently sucked the puckered tip between his lips.
"We're here to shower," Sari said sternly, pulling his head up, and Tarl licked the tip of her nose.
"So we are." He tugged her over to the showers where he'd hung their bag, pulled out the sliver of soap they shared and pulled the cord to start the trickling spray. He tipped her head back slightly, working water and then soap through her hair. When it rinsed clear he began washing down the length of her body, his hands maddeningly slow and knowing.
When he paused to press a kiss between her legs she sighed, worked her soapy fingers into his wet hair and then gently pulled him up. "Shower!' she said, but she was laughing and Tarl was laughing as well and in that moment she did not feel tired at all.
**
Marel was waiting for him at the door to general sleeping quarters, a tall woman made of long bones and gristle. A thin sash of red across her chest marked her as the Council's Voice in the Compound. "You've been asking questions again, Min."
"Have I?" Min asked, his voice sharp with that anger he could not explain. "What sort of questions, Marel? What have you heard?"
Marel crossed her arms and sighed. "Too much, but not enough to take action. Not yet. Questions are dangerous things, Min. They breed discontent in those who should labour, whose sole purpose is to be an offering should the Gods come."
"And the Gods always come," Min said, bitterly. "I do not think our discontent would mean much to them, do you? And since when do the Gods eat plants, and take ore? They feed on our souls, don't they, and pass them out into the next world, isn't that the way it goes? Why do we labour so damn hard to be *shit*, Marel?"
Marel's pupils thinned in fear. "Min ... you will be culled if you say such things, if you blaspheme. I do not want to have to report you to Council, I do not want to have to burn you to ashes and scatter them outside the Compound, but I will."
Min hunched his shoulders in and stared at the ground and swallowed against a bitter taste at the back of his throat. "Where did you live before here, Marel?" he asked, finally, looking up into her black eyes.
Marel blinked. "I was born in Compound 28, a mining compound. Why?"
Min shrugged. "Because I was curious."
"That, too, is dangerous," Marel warned him, her calloused palm patting his cheek. "You didn't eat today, I hear. Just bread at mid-meal and at night-meal. Perhaps hunger has made you foolish?" She patted his cheek again. "Learn silence, Min." And then she strode away, to the edge of the Compound where her office and sleeping quarters were, just behind the gate guards who watched for raiders.
**
Sari was out the back door for the third time when Enan came to her. "How far are you now, Little One?" the big woman asked, braiding Sari's tangled hair back. "A quarter and a half, yes? The sickness should be over soon, but until then? I'm sending you to your bed. I'll send word to Marel, and she'll bring you brightgrass tea, and something to eat that'll stay down." She patted Sari's head like a mother patting a child and sent her to the shared quarters with an old bucket.
Marel did not come however, just Tarl, with a mug of brightgrass tea and a bowl of orril gruel. "You've been sick again. Still." He helped her sit and supported her as she sipped the tea, which settled her stomach enough to let her eat the orril.
"Is this a bad thing? I know many women vomit when they're breeding, but not like this?" and it was a question which she had no real answer for.
"It is what it is," she said, tired, but she turned in his arms and touched his face, stroked his beard. "Would you rub my back? It aches."
Tarl's strong, blunt fingers slid down along her spine and dug into the muscles of her lower back, and she listened to his heart beating far too fast and tried to believe that force of will alone could make this right. So long as the breeding pair were compatible, they stayed together, and only so long as they could produce children.
She did not want to lose this. She curved her hand over her belly protectively and did not pray because the Gods were always hungry.
**
Imal looked up when Shigro whistled quietly across the fresh-planted rows at him. "What?"
"Min," Shigro said. "Min's going to be culled, I hear."
Imal dropped his head down. "They don't tell us ahead of time, so how would you hear?"
Shigro made a clicking sound of tongue against teeth. "Neru was at the doors and Marel was warning him to change his ways, to shut his mouth. How likely is that to happen? He's ashes for certain, dust not even the Gods can swallow."
Imal shot a look at him, and something in it frightened Shigro because he held up a hand in defence. "Hey, I'm trying to help you. He's your friend, right? So either you get him to close his mouth, or you keep your distance." Shigro turned his attention back to weeding, and Imal did as well, but when the mid-meal horn blew he helped the other man up and walked with him to the feeding hall.
When Min started towards him just inside the door he turned away and moved to sit with Shigro. He pretended not to notice as Min stood still as stone for a moment before dropping his tray and walking out again.
That was why, when the alarms sounded, Min was walking the edge of the Compound, and taken by the raiders who came from the skies as the Gods were said to do.
Imal searched for an hour, after, but found no trace of Min.
**
Min woke up slowly, his head aching. "What the ...?" and there was a woman over him, her eyes ringed with dark circles and her hands clutching his.
"Welcome back, Major. I'd like you to meet Leader Tinal and his Chief Scientist, Aheln, who are about to apologize to you." Two men behind her shoulder, dressed in soft tunics and sleek in a well-fed way, winced at the steel in her tone. The one on the left moved forward slightly and helped him sit up, and Min felt something cold and circular pressed to the base of his skull.
For a moment his vision swam and he felt nauseated and then he was clear and sharp and focused. "You *fucking* sons of bitches," he said.
Elizabeth smiled at him, a real smile, though tired to bone. "And again, welcome back, Major. It's been a long five months."
**
When the alarms sounded for the second time Tarl felt his gut lurch in fear. He pulled Sari up and dragged her to the door. "We'll go to the water room. It's stone, and there are places to hide there. Come on!"
Sari started to open her mouth and Tarl knew it was to argue but then her eyes widened and her hand went to her belly and she said, "Oh, no, nonono," on a single, drawn out breath. A strangled noise escaped Tarl's throat and he grabbed her, swung her up into his arms and started running. It was only once they were hidden behind the well pumps that he noticed his hands were wet with blood, that when he touched Sari's face he left dark red smears.
"Oh, no," he said, and Sari looked up at him and she said. "Shhh. Shhh! All will be well, Tarl. It will be all right!"
But there was too much blood, not all of it dark, and he knew it was not going to be all right at all.
**
Imal watched as five ships appeared in the air and a sixth set down in the middle of the Compound. The back hatch opened and everyone dropped to their knees, ready for the Gods to take them.
Except the woman who walked out was not God-born, just a woman with dark hair and dark eyes. Min walked at her left shoulder, and armed guards were all around her. "My name is Doctor Elizabeth Weir of Atlantis. You have people among you from my team, and we've come to retrieve them. Many of you, as well, have been taken from other worlds. My medical staff are going to come to each of you and remove the devices that have given you false memories. All people living in the compounds will be given the choice to remain, to relocate to their world of origin if the gate address is known, or to come make their home on Atlantis." She made a gesture, and two more guards brought out a fat man in a scarlet Council tunic.
"While you've been working up here, and been bred to feed the Wraith, whom you've been taught to view as gods, a small percentage of your population have lived in an extensive, shielded city beneath the ground. You feed them, produce the resources they use, and you keep them safe from the Wraith."
The Councillor's face twisted with rage, grew purple. "You will destroy us! You will undo everything we have created with your interference!" He lunged at the woman, only to be shot with a light that made him tremble and then fall.
The dark haired woman looked down at him a long moment, then at the hundred or so kneeled around her ship. "I don't really have a problem with that," she said finally, and the chill in her voice made Imal shiver.
**
Sari's fingers were cold in his hand, and her breathing was hitched with pain. "Tarl, this is not right," she said at last. Tarl shushed her, dropped his free hand lightly over her mouth, and then she heard them, too: footsteps and voices and "Over in there!" and she shook with fear. Tarl let go of her, pressed a brief, frantic kiss to her mouth and then lunged out, screaming.
She heard him land hard against someone, and there was a flash of light and then a voice, saying, "Oh dear god, Rodney?" and then they were around the corner, shining lights, and there was a man beside her, with soft hands and sad eyes. "Teyla?"
"I think I'm losing the child," she said, and he barked back at the soldiers, orders for a litter and an ivy and she was so very cold that she curled into the warmth of the stranger's touch and let darkness take her.
**
Ford sat on the edge of the hospital bed, touching the place where the small device had been. "So, what? They went out *kidnapping* people to expand their work force and breeding stock? That's just ... wrong."
Sheppard snorted. "No kidding. And all the while there's this this little group of them, living like the last goddamn days of the Roman Empire underground."
Ford shook his head. "This galaxy is, pardon my language sir, even more fucked up than I thought." He touched his bearded chin. "I guess I should shave this off, huh?"
Sheppard leaned over and punched him lightly in the arm. "Hell, Ford, I'm surprised you were able to grow one in the first place. It certainly took you the full five months to do it right. Seems a shame to waste it."
Ford eyed Sheppard balefully. "Permission to speak freely, Sir?" and Sheppard laughed again.
"No way in hell. Now come on, Doc Beckett says you check out fine, so let's go to the dining hall and find something to eat that *isn't* len'ik stew."
They were halfway down the corridor when Ford dropped his voice and leaned in close. "How's Teyla doing?"
Sheppard shrugged. "She's ... Teyla. Scarily serene. I'm more worried about Rodney, really. He's been ... well, damned quiet, and it's unnerving me." There was a thread of humour in the words but not the tone.
"Really fucked up galaxy," Ford said finally.
**
Teyla woke up from her latest nap, feeling alert for the first time in the two days since she'd been recovered. She looked up and saw the IV feeding saline into her body, so she must have recovered enough blood after the miscarriage. Her body hurt, still. and her belly felt strangely empty. She felt ... hollow, but it would pass. She pulled a pillow to herself and curled around it and said, "You can come in, Doctor McKay."
Rodney slid in behind the curtain, and there were those eyes, showing everything. "I think, under the circumstances, you can call me Rodney."
Teyla smiled. "Rodney, then. Carson told you that it was a boy?"
Rodney nodded. "Yeah. He did." And then there was silence between them, awkward and fraught, until Rodney took a great, gasping lungful of air.
"I'm sorry," he said, sounding broken. Teyla sat up despite the ache in her belly and reached across to take his hand.
"Why? You were not the one who subverted my will and freedom, nor did you do anything I did not allow. Did not wish for, in fact." Teyla regretted that she did not have the right words for him, but her grief was so different than his. It was simple and uncomplicated and it was the sorrow of loss. His seemed tangled and fearful and shamed and it made her wish that he was Tarl again, because she would have known the right words for Tarl.
Instead she pulled Rodney's McKay's hand closer and laid it on her belly, pressed it to the slightly loose skin. "This is where Tarl and Sari's child was," she said finally, and she looked up at him, trying to make him see the truth of it. "That child was very much loved. Had he lived, I would have loved him as well, because his creation was a blessing, do you understand?"
Rodney's eyes were too bright and his hand was shaking on her. "Not really, no."
So Teyla pulled him down to sit beside her and touched his face and said, "They changed our memories, not our nature, and Tarl was a good, kind man that Sari came to love. A very good man, and she was glad of the child. There is no evil in that, Rodney, it was untouched by the wrongness of the situation itself. Tarl loved Sari and Rodney McKay has done no wrong to me."
"I never thought I'd have kids," Rodney said at last. "I guess I was right."
Teyla opened her mouth but still there were no right words, so instead she pulled his head to her shoulder, more than a little surprised that he would allow himself to be held once back in this world where they belonged, but not to each other. His breath on her neck was soft and sweet and her body ached with memory and the sorrow of things lost.
**
END