Lessons of Loss by Miriel (PG)
Title: Lessons of Loss
Author: miriel
Beta: scififreak
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: I just about strangled cesperanza through the web over this one - I scrambled and scrambled to get it done for the midnight deadline, and then she extended it (so I went and got a beta to look it over). Written for the sga_flashfic prompt Backstory, at the behest of cupidsbow.
Summary: For as long as she can remember, Teyla has known death.
For as long as she can remember, Teyla has known death. Death meant food over the cooking fires. Death meant that the Wraith had come. Death meant noise, and silence, and everything in between.
When she was small, so small that she cannot recall the event as more than a story told by others, death took her mother. It came in the wind, with the brother she never had the chance to know. The one thing she did recall, what was always waiting for her when she lay down for sleep, or woke in the night, was the emptiness in her father's eyes. It taught her that death was cold, and cruel, and cared not for those it left behind.
Two years later, one of her playmates, Mika of the black hair, fell while running to the caves as they played Wraith and Runner. It was three days before death visited, filled with screams and moans that haunted Teyla's nightmares. This time it was in the form of the ancestors, who relieved Mika's suffering and claimed her in her sleep. That was when Teyla learned that death could be a kindness.
Her tenth summer, Teyla took part in her first hunt and killed a herdbeast at a thirty paces. The death was clean, and the meat fed her people for a week, marking the beginning of her journey to adulthood. That day, death was bountiful, and came from her own hands.
The winter of her twelfth year, Teyla began to accompany her father when he traded. First, there were the Genii. They were a kind people, and one of their elders had a daughter her age who was released from chores for the duration of the visit. Sora was bright and cheerful, a fair-haired version of Mika, and they found much in common. Like Teyla, death had taken Sora's mother, and sorrow is a burden best shared amongst friends.
After the Genii, there were the Annon, a people different from the Genii in every way. Where the Genii were farmers, simple in their tools, the Annon believed in technology, in metal and in crystal. Or rather, they had. When Teyla and her father stepped through the Ring of the Ancestors to Annon, they found a people in ruin. Just one cycle of the moon before, the Wraith had come, culling many and destroying their precious machines. Teyla was left by herself, to wander the newly restored marketplace while her father met with the elders.
Growing up with the Wraith, Teyla was no stranger to destruction; her people built nothing that could not quickly be replaced. Approaching her thirteenth year, she understood the damage that the Wraith could inflict, but she had never seen it for herself. It wasn't the charred ruins of the marketplace that frightened her, it was the villagers. There was a coldness reflected in their eyes, much like the emptiness that had haunted her father in the years after her mother's death. As she picked her way through the marketplace, glancing over the sparse items for sale, she found herself cradling the sticks that were normally strapped to her back. It was silly; these people were their allies. Her father would never have brought her to a world that wished her people ill, not before she was fully blooded; the concern was ridiculous, and insulting to their hosts.
Death taught her otherwise. That afternoon, cloistered in an alley off the main causeway of the Annon marketplace, death came. This time, death was not kind, it was not merciful, and the only blessing was that it was quick. The shock in the dead man's eyes laid claim to her memory long after the man's face had been replaced by other and more terrible monsters.
Teyla never regretted taking the life of the man who had claimed her for breeding rights, just as her father never regretted breaking ties with the Annon. But regret and remorse are two very different things. Necessity had dictated her actions that cold afternoon; the man was large, and carried himself as a fighter. She might never have had the chance for more than one blow, and the killing strike was the first lesson learned by every child of Athos. Necessary or not, Teyla never forgave the man for forcing her to turn her people's weapons on their own kind - the Bantos Rod was for killing of the Wraith, not the killing of men.
Death taught her caution, that day, and claimed a piece of her soul in exchange. It lingered, as it never had before, in visions and in whispers of the choked gurgling of a desperate man, and the apology in his eyes. Years later, a man named John Sheppard told her that the killing blow of her people would never kill a Wraith, just a man. By then, however, the lesson had already been learned.
~ Finis ~
Author: miriel
Beta: scififreak
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: I just about strangled cesperanza through the web over this one - I scrambled and scrambled to get it done for the midnight deadline, and then she extended it (so I went and got a beta to look it over). Written for the sga_flashfic prompt Backstory, at the behest of cupidsbow.
Summary: For as long as she can remember, Teyla has known death.
For as long as she can remember, Teyla has known death. Death meant food over the cooking fires. Death meant that the Wraith had come. Death meant noise, and silence, and everything in between.
When she was small, so small that she cannot recall the event as more than a story told by others, death took her mother. It came in the wind, with the brother she never had the chance to know. The one thing she did recall, what was always waiting for her when she lay down for sleep, or woke in the night, was the emptiness in her father's eyes. It taught her that death was cold, and cruel, and cared not for those it left behind.
Two years later, one of her playmates, Mika of the black hair, fell while running to the caves as they played Wraith and Runner. It was three days before death visited, filled with screams and moans that haunted Teyla's nightmares. This time it was in the form of the ancestors, who relieved Mika's suffering and claimed her in her sleep. That was when Teyla learned that death could be a kindness.
Her tenth summer, Teyla took part in her first hunt and killed a herdbeast at a thirty paces. The death was clean, and the meat fed her people for a week, marking the beginning of her journey to adulthood. That day, death was bountiful, and came from her own hands.
The winter of her twelfth year, Teyla began to accompany her father when he traded. First, there were the Genii. They were a kind people, and one of their elders had a daughter her age who was released from chores for the duration of the visit. Sora was bright and cheerful, a fair-haired version of Mika, and they found much in common. Like Teyla, death had taken Sora's mother, and sorrow is a burden best shared amongst friends.
After the Genii, there were the Annon, a people different from the Genii in every way. Where the Genii were farmers, simple in their tools, the Annon believed in technology, in metal and in crystal. Or rather, they had. When Teyla and her father stepped through the Ring of the Ancestors to Annon, they found a people in ruin. Just one cycle of the moon before, the Wraith had come, culling many and destroying their precious machines. Teyla was left by herself, to wander the newly restored marketplace while her father met with the elders.
Growing up with the Wraith, Teyla was no stranger to destruction; her people built nothing that could not quickly be replaced. Approaching her thirteenth year, she understood the damage that the Wraith could inflict, but she had never seen it for herself. It wasn't the charred ruins of the marketplace that frightened her, it was the villagers. There was a coldness reflected in their eyes, much like the emptiness that had haunted her father in the years after her mother's death. As she picked her way through the marketplace, glancing over the sparse items for sale, she found herself cradling the sticks that were normally strapped to her back. It was silly; these people were their allies. Her father would never have brought her to a world that wished her people ill, not before she was fully blooded; the concern was ridiculous, and insulting to their hosts.
Death taught her otherwise. That afternoon, cloistered in an alley off the main causeway of the Annon marketplace, death came. This time, death was not kind, it was not merciful, and the only blessing was that it was quick. The shock in the dead man's eyes laid claim to her memory long after the man's face had been replaced by other and more terrible monsters.
Teyla never regretted taking the life of the man who had claimed her for breeding rights, just as her father never regretted breaking ties with the Annon. But regret and remorse are two very different things. Necessity had dictated her actions that cold afternoon; the man was large, and carried himself as a fighter. She might never have had the chance for more than one blow, and the killing strike was the first lesson learned by every child of Athos. Necessary or not, Teyla never forgave the man for forcing her to turn her people's weapons on their own kind - the Bantos Rod was for killing of the Wraith, not the killing of men.
Death taught her caution, that day, and claimed a piece of her soul in exchange. It lingered, as it never had before, in visions and in whispers of the choked gurgling of a desperate man, and the apology in his eyes. Years later, a man named John Sheppard told her that the killing blow of her people would never kill a Wraith, just a man. By then, however, the lesson had already been learned.
~ Finis ~