Sings the Tune Without the Words by Ceitie (Team Challenge)
Title: Sings the Tune Without the Words
Author: ceitie
Rating: PG
Characters: Gen, Teyla
Spoilers: AU ending for Inquisition, 5x13
Words: 3155
Summary: On the third day, an emissary from the Coalition arrives in Atlantis and says, there has been a trial. And the accused have been found guilty, and they have been punished.
Author's notes: This is possibly the first chapter of a much longer story that I might someday write, dealing with the consequences of Inquisition if the team had actually been sentenced and punished. The punishment here isn't quite the same as the one that was described in the episode, however. Also, I might never actually write the rest of this story, so don't read if that would really bother you. The title is from an Emily Dickinson poem.
They search for three days. Every off-world contact is questioned, some more harshly than others, and every lead is followed, but no one can or will give them the location of AR-1, and every hint only ends in failure. Woolsey paces in his office. Kanaan wanders through the hallways of Atlantis with Torren in his arms and agony in his eyes, waiting for news.
On the third day, an emissary from the Coalition arrives in Atlantis and says, there has been a trial. And the accused have been found guilty, and they have been punished. He will not tell them anything else, even after they put him in a cell. The search begins again, with a different flavour of desperation.
Kanaan returns to New Athos, and takes Torren with him. When he explains the nature of Teyla and her team’s disappearance to his people, they are horrified, grief-stricken, and determined to find her, if she still lives. They are not, however, surprised.
*
She opens her eyes, and it takes a few moments before she realizes that the large brown thing lying directly in her line of sight is a shoe. A boot, to be precise, made of scuffed leather, its laces undone and trailing. She doesn’t know whose boot it is, and she sits up to get a better look at its owner.
It isn’t until she sits up, until she looks around and takes in her surroundings, that her situation hits her, pushing the breath from her lungs as firmly as a bellows.
She does not know this place. She does not know this long room with its dingy white walls, paint flaking away from the gray stone beneath, and the rows and rows of pallets that cover its wooden floor. The pallets themselves are covered with people, most of them lying still and silent, but some of them are coughing or wheezing, or groaning in pain. The room is hot and noisy, thick with the stink of sickness and too many bodies, and she has to dig her fingers into the rough material of her own pallet to keep from vomiting.
It’s not just the smell; there’s a wave of panic washing through her, tightening her throat and making her heart pound. She doesn’t know where she is, and she doesn’t recognize the boy who lies next to her, sharing her pallet, his boot-clad feet at her head. She doesn’t know who she is.
Ancestors, oh Ancestors, help me, please -
She does not know who she is.
She puts her head down between her legs and breathes, willing the rushing dizziness and nausea to fade, for her memories to come seeping back in from wherever they have been hidden away.
The nausea fades, but her life before her awakening in this room, in this - infirmary, hospital, plague-house - remains stubbornly blank.
She raises her head and looks over at the boy lying next to her, pale and sleeping. He is perhaps twelve, she estimates. His dark clothes, baggy and worn, are similar to the ones that she herself is wearing, and their boots have the same thick soles and hand-stitched working. He doesn’t look ill, so she reaches out and touches his hand carefully. She realizes, with a start, that his hand is a little bigger than her own, and she looks down at herself in surprise. Either she is an exceedingly small person, or - and her barely formed breasts and unlined hands seem to confirm this - she is no older than he is.
This strikes her as wrong in a way that nothing about her surroundings has, and she tries to puzzle out why. The problem, she decides, is that she does not feel like the child that she clearly is. For whatever reason, she had expected to look down at her body and see an adult woman. Before she has a chance to turn this oddity over in her mind, a man swoops down towards her and she jumps in surprise, nearly lashing out at him.
He doesn’t seem to notice the sharp, quickly restrained motion of her right hand towards his throat, which is probably for the best. He crouches beside her pallet, beige robe pooling on the ground around him, and his dark eyes run over her with a cool, impersonally assessing glance.
“So you’re awake, that’s good,” he says briskly, his voice as distant as his eyes. “I’m Falu of Tre, I’m in charge of this wing. Do you know where you are?”
“No,” she says, and shifts into a kneeling position. If she has to make a run for it, she thinks that she can reach the door before he can. He’s taller than her, but there’s more than a smattering of gray in his hair and she can see the stiff way that he’s keeping one leg stretched out as he crouches down next to her.
“You’re in the gray wing of the San-Yel-Tre Hospital, in the city of Tullrand, on the world of Las,” Falu says. “Does that help?”
The name Las sounds vaguely familiar, but other than that - “No,” she says again, and blinks furiously at the tears that come to her eyes.
He sighs, and she has a feeling that he wishes that she would be a little more helpful.
“What is your name, girl? Who is your family?”
This time she actually has to wipe at her eyes to rid herself of the humiliating wetness, and she stares down at the patched knee of her pants when she answers, “I do not know. I cannot remember anything.”
Falu blinks at her, and then says, “Hmm,” in a considering voice. He begins asking her a series of questions that starts off with the mundane - does your head hurt? - and moving into the completely odd - when you try to remember, do you smell anything unusual? The questions are followed by a cursory examination, but when he’s finished he looks as baffled as he had five minutes earlier.
He stands up and spreads his hand dismissively. “Aside from the memory loss, you seem perfectly healthy. Your memories may come back in time. In any case, you can’t stay here and take up a bed until they do, so tomorrow morning you’ll have to go to the orphan house when the cart comes.”
“The orphan house?” she repeats. It does not sound particularly promising.
Falu’s mouth turns down, heavy with impatience. “You are an off-worlder, a refugee. You have no family to sponsor you for an apprenticeship or a foster placement, so the orphan house is all that’s left.”
She opens her mouth to protest, and then realizes that she is unaware of any other options that she could present as alternatives. Falu is already moving off down the row of pallets before she has the chance to reply, or to ask any of the myriad questions that are suddenly bubbling into her mind.
She lies back down on the pallet and stares at the ceiling. She tries as hard as she can to think of absolutely nothing, and mostly succeeds by counting the breaths of the boy sleeping beside her. She doesn’t touch him again. The room grows darker, the light from the windows on the far wall fading as dusk overtakes the day.
When the smell of food begins to overwhelm the stench of sick bodies, her stomach growls demandingly and she sits up. There are people gathered around a table in one corner of the room, so she stands and makes her way over to them, and receives a bowl full of vegetable soup and a piece of reddish bread. She sits down near the table to eat, hoping to have the first shot at any leftovers that may be distributed. The soup is salty and lukewarm.
One of the people handing out the bread, a young man with a goatee and a cheerful smile, glances down at her curiously. “Don’t you want to eat with your family, little one? Or are they still sleeping?”
“What family?” she asks, her hand freezing over her bowl, fingers clutching the spoon tight.
“The boys, the ones they brought in with you.” Her wide-eyed stare must give away her shock and incomprehension, because the young man frowns and crosses his arms. “They are of your people, aren’t they?”
“I don’t - I do not remember, I -” She places her bowl on the floor and stands up, moving towards him and raising her hand imploringly. If she is not alone, oh Ancestors, if only she is not alone here. “Please, can you tell me who - what happened -”
“Alright, calm down,” he says. She has apparently unnerved him with her intensity and he takes a step back, away from her reaching hand. She tries not to smile at the sight of a tall, strapping man backing away nervously from a young girl.
“A group of Sapharos brought the four of you in yesterday, you and the three boys,” he says, watching her carefully. “They found you in a temple of the Ancestors. Does that sound right?”
“I do not know,” she whispers, twisting her hands into her jacket anxiously. “I remember nothing, nothing before waking up in this room today.”
His mouth falls open in surprise, but before he can say anything else she bursts out, “Where are the others? The ones who were found with me?”
He closes his mouth, and spares an uncertain glance for the crowded food table, but says, “Here, I’ll show them to you.” She wants to kiss him from sheer gratitude, but satisfies herself with a beaming smile. He grins back and taps her shoulder affectionately.
He leads her back through the rows of pallets, and looks back over his shoulder to say casually, “I’m Vannu of Ji, by the way.” She nods and lowers her eyes in something akin to shame; she has no name to offer in return.
When he comes to a stop, they are standing in front of her pallet, still half-covered by the sleeping boy. “Here,” Vannu says, and points to the boy. “And those two, as well,” he adds, spinning to gesture at the pallet directly across from it. The two boys sprawled across it look to be the same age as herself and the first boy, and wear the same ill-fitting clothes.
Vannu continues to speak, although she barely hears it. Relief is running through her, sweet and sharp, like joy, like cool water, and she sinks down to sit next to the boy who lies on her pallet. She stares at his face, begins to catalogue his features: every freckle, every hair is dear to her now.
“The Saphoros’ leader said that they found the four of you lying fast asleep on the floor in the middle of the temple. When they couldn’t wake you, they decided to bring you here to the hospital in Tullrand.” Vannu pauses for a moment, but she does not look away from the boy. “The temple that you were found in - it was on the outskirts of a village, but the Saphoros said that the rest of the village was empty. Culled.”
She has to swallow then, and press her hands to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Vannu says, but she flinches when he crouches down and touches her elbow.
When she is able to speak without wailing, and look up without spilling tears down her face, she turns to him. “Thank you, Vannu. I would like to be alone now, please.”
He presses his lips together, but obediently gets up and returns to the food table. She sits next to the boy on her pallet for a while, and does her best to imprint his face into her memory. She doesn’t know what will happen in the morning, if her family is still asleep when the cart to the orphan house arrives. She stands and moves to sit next to the other two boys, studying them with equal intensity. If the authorities of this place decide that she must be separated from them, they will have to drag her into the cart kicking and screaming. Still, it is better to be prepared for any eventuality.
She jumps when a near-by voice says hoarsely, “Stare any harder and your eyes will fall out.” The woman lying on the pallet to her left, next to the two boys, is propped up on her elbows and looking at her curiously.
She waves her hand at throat-level to make a “so-what” gesture at the woman, and turns back to the boys.
“Are you trying to lay a curse on them?” the woman asks, sounding bemused.
“No, of course not,” she replies, full of indignation. “They are - my brothers,” she finishes a little more uncertainly.
The woman looks at the two boys, and then looks back up at her and raises her eyebrows. “You do not look much alike.”
She does not know exactly what expression she makes, but it must be particularly forbidding because the woman recoils slightly. Then the woman tilts her head, reaching up to twist one of her braids around her finger thoughtfully. “Are you sure that they are not your cousins, perhaps? I myself have an overabundance of cousins and barely any of them look a thing like me.”
She blinks in surprise. “Truly?” Although she is aware that the word that the woman is saying is not quite “cousins”, but something just close enough to translate, she is still not sure how that could be.
The woman’s lips quirk up in a small smile, but she breaks out coughing before she can answer. When the fit has subsided, the woman says, “Yes, most of my cousins were adopted or fostered into my house, just as I’ve been adopted into several different families. We’re a motley bunch.”
“Ah,” she says, smiling in comprehension. She clears her throat. “Yes, it is the same for me and my - cousins.”
“Ah,” the woman echoes, and grins at her. “Of course. Allow me to introduce myself, girl, as a fellow cousin to another. I am Senni of Tav, to those who know me well.” She rubs at her eyebrow for a moment, and then says carefully, “You are - having trouble remembering? I heard you talking to Falu, the useless ass.”
Surprised by the insult, she barely suppresses her laughter. “Yes, I cannot remember anything from before today, and waking up in this room. It is - very disorienting.” She bites her lip and then blurts out, “I have no name to give you. What if the others wake and do not know it either? What if -”
Senni interrupts her. “You’re right, it is simply ridiculous for a person to run around with no name. It causes far too many complications,” she says firmly. “I’ll make a bargain with you: if you go and fetch me a bowl of soup before it all becomes completely cold, in return I will give you a name. Fair dealing?”
She smiles, nodding. “Fair dealing.” Jumping to her feet, she hurries to the food table and procures a bowl of soup for Senni, and another bowl for herself. The one that she’d left on the ground when she followed Vannu to her cousins is long gone. When she returns to Senni, they sit and eat together in contented silence, although she cannot stop her leg from jittering a little in anticipation.
Finally, Senni sets her bowl aside and lowers herself down on to her pallet. She looks exhausted, and suddenly much older. Closing her eyes, she says, “Do you like the sound of Tali?”
She lets out a breath. “Tali.” She rolls the name around on her tongue, and in her mind. “Yes,” she says, Tali says, “yes, I like it.”
Senni smiles, although her face is still pinched in pain and she has begun taking rasping breaths through her mouth. “Good. It was my younger sister’s name, but she doesn’t need it any longer, and she wouldn’t begrudge your using it.”
“Thank you,” Tali whispers, and watches until Senni’s breaths are coming deeper and more evenly, and her face has smoothed out into sleep.
True night has fallen, and the room is completely dark but for the two oil lamps glowing at each doorway when the boy lying on her pallet wakes up.
She watches as his eyelids flicker, and the shadows twist across his face when he rolls his head to the side and groans. His eyes open and he looks up at her, his expression soft and confused.
“Hello,” she says, and clenches her hands, frozen with hope.
But there is no spark of recognition in his eyes, only fear and bewilderment. He sits up, glancing around the dim, crowded room, and his already pale face is whitening to match the walls.
“Where am I? What -” He looks back at her, and his dark eyes are wide and panicked. It’s all horribly familiar, and she feels the hope drain from her body, leaving her limp and tired.
“Who are you?” the boy asks, and his voice breaks. Something in her breaks along with it, so Tali takes a deep breath, and smiles, and reaches out to touch his hand.
“I am Tali,” she says. “We are family.”
*
On MX4-392, Captain Griggs and her team find one of the members of the Coalition in a town meeting-house, talking with a small group of villagers. When the team walks into the meeting-house, half of the people surrounding the leader of the Bellorans yank out their weapons. The other half start checking out the exits.
Griggs grits her teeth, but she knows that starting a gun-fight in this room would be a very bad idea. She lowers her P90, and looks the Belloran leader in the eye. He hasn’t pulled a weapon, and his expression suggests that, for the moment anyway, he’s more curious than pissed off or frightened. They might have a chance here.
Dr. Li steps forward, his empty hands raised. “We don’t want any trouble with you or your people,” he says earnestly. Griggs just keeps her eyes on the crossbows that are pointed at them.
“We just want to know what happened to our people. Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex. If you could even just tell us what their punishment was, if they’re dead or alive -” Dr. Li trails off.
The Belloran leader is shaking his head. He hesitates before speaking, but finally says, “I will tell you this. Teyla Emmagan of Athos spoke on behalf of the expedition, and spoke well, from all accounts. She was unable to sway the verdict, but during the sentencing, she asked the judges to - mitigate their sentence.”
“And?” Griggs prompts, ignoring the dirty look that Dr. Li gives her.
The Belloran leader presses his palms together. And so. “The judges were merciful.”
~/~
Author: ceitie
Rating: PG
Characters: Gen, Teyla
Spoilers: AU ending for Inquisition, 5x13
Words: 3155
Summary: On the third day, an emissary from the Coalition arrives in Atlantis and says, there has been a trial. And the accused have been found guilty, and they have been punished.
Author's notes: This is possibly the first chapter of a much longer story that I might someday write, dealing with the consequences of Inquisition if the team had actually been sentenced and punished. The punishment here isn't quite the same as the one that was described in the episode, however. Also, I might never actually write the rest of this story, so don't read if that would really bother you. The title is from an Emily Dickinson poem.
They search for three days. Every off-world contact is questioned, some more harshly than others, and every lead is followed, but no one can or will give them the location of AR-1, and every hint only ends in failure. Woolsey paces in his office. Kanaan wanders through the hallways of Atlantis with Torren in his arms and agony in his eyes, waiting for news.
On the third day, an emissary from the Coalition arrives in Atlantis and says, there has been a trial. And the accused have been found guilty, and they have been punished. He will not tell them anything else, even after they put him in a cell. The search begins again, with a different flavour of desperation.
Kanaan returns to New Athos, and takes Torren with him. When he explains the nature of Teyla and her team’s disappearance to his people, they are horrified, grief-stricken, and determined to find her, if she still lives. They are not, however, surprised.
*
She opens her eyes, and it takes a few moments before she realizes that the large brown thing lying directly in her line of sight is a shoe. A boot, to be precise, made of scuffed leather, its laces undone and trailing. She doesn’t know whose boot it is, and she sits up to get a better look at its owner.
It isn’t until she sits up, until she looks around and takes in her surroundings, that her situation hits her, pushing the breath from her lungs as firmly as a bellows.
She does not know this place. She does not know this long room with its dingy white walls, paint flaking away from the gray stone beneath, and the rows and rows of pallets that cover its wooden floor. The pallets themselves are covered with people, most of them lying still and silent, but some of them are coughing or wheezing, or groaning in pain. The room is hot and noisy, thick with the stink of sickness and too many bodies, and she has to dig her fingers into the rough material of her own pallet to keep from vomiting.
It’s not just the smell; there’s a wave of panic washing through her, tightening her throat and making her heart pound. She doesn’t know where she is, and she doesn’t recognize the boy who lies next to her, sharing her pallet, his boot-clad feet at her head. She doesn’t know who she is.
Ancestors, oh Ancestors, help me, please -
She does not know who she is.
She puts her head down between her legs and breathes, willing the rushing dizziness and nausea to fade, for her memories to come seeping back in from wherever they have been hidden away.
The nausea fades, but her life before her awakening in this room, in this - infirmary, hospital, plague-house - remains stubbornly blank.
She raises her head and looks over at the boy lying next to her, pale and sleeping. He is perhaps twelve, she estimates. His dark clothes, baggy and worn, are similar to the ones that she herself is wearing, and their boots have the same thick soles and hand-stitched working. He doesn’t look ill, so she reaches out and touches his hand carefully. She realizes, with a start, that his hand is a little bigger than her own, and she looks down at herself in surprise. Either she is an exceedingly small person, or - and her barely formed breasts and unlined hands seem to confirm this - she is no older than he is.
This strikes her as wrong in a way that nothing about her surroundings has, and she tries to puzzle out why. The problem, she decides, is that she does not feel like the child that she clearly is. For whatever reason, she had expected to look down at her body and see an adult woman. Before she has a chance to turn this oddity over in her mind, a man swoops down towards her and she jumps in surprise, nearly lashing out at him.
He doesn’t seem to notice the sharp, quickly restrained motion of her right hand towards his throat, which is probably for the best. He crouches beside her pallet, beige robe pooling on the ground around him, and his dark eyes run over her with a cool, impersonally assessing glance.
“So you’re awake, that’s good,” he says briskly, his voice as distant as his eyes. “I’m Falu of Tre, I’m in charge of this wing. Do you know where you are?”
“No,” she says, and shifts into a kneeling position. If she has to make a run for it, she thinks that she can reach the door before he can. He’s taller than her, but there’s more than a smattering of gray in his hair and she can see the stiff way that he’s keeping one leg stretched out as he crouches down next to her.
“You’re in the gray wing of the San-Yel-Tre Hospital, in the city of Tullrand, on the world of Las,” Falu says. “Does that help?”
The name Las sounds vaguely familiar, but other than that - “No,” she says again, and blinks furiously at the tears that come to her eyes.
He sighs, and she has a feeling that he wishes that she would be a little more helpful.
“What is your name, girl? Who is your family?”
This time she actually has to wipe at her eyes to rid herself of the humiliating wetness, and she stares down at the patched knee of her pants when she answers, “I do not know. I cannot remember anything.”
Falu blinks at her, and then says, “Hmm,” in a considering voice. He begins asking her a series of questions that starts off with the mundane - does your head hurt? - and moving into the completely odd - when you try to remember, do you smell anything unusual? The questions are followed by a cursory examination, but when he’s finished he looks as baffled as he had five minutes earlier.
He stands up and spreads his hand dismissively. “Aside from the memory loss, you seem perfectly healthy. Your memories may come back in time. In any case, you can’t stay here and take up a bed until they do, so tomorrow morning you’ll have to go to the orphan house when the cart comes.”
“The orphan house?” she repeats. It does not sound particularly promising.
Falu’s mouth turns down, heavy with impatience. “You are an off-worlder, a refugee. You have no family to sponsor you for an apprenticeship or a foster placement, so the orphan house is all that’s left.”
She opens her mouth to protest, and then realizes that she is unaware of any other options that she could present as alternatives. Falu is already moving off down the row of pallets before she has the chance to reply, or to ask any of the myriad questions that are suddenly bubbling into her mind.
She lies back down on the pallet and stares at the ceiling. She tries as hard as she can to think of absolutely nothing, and mostly succeeds by counting the breaths of the boy sleeping beside her. She doesn’t touch him again. The room grows darker, the light from the windows on the far wall fading as dusk overtakes the day.
When the smell of food begins to overwhelm the stench of sick bodies, her stomach growls demandingly and she sits up. There are people gathered around a table in one corner of the room, so she stands and makes her way over to them, and receives a bowl full of vegetable soup and a piece of reddish bread. She sits down near the table to eat, hoping to have the first shot at any leftovers that may be distributed. The soup is salty and lukewarm.
One of the people handing out the bread, a young man with a goatee and a cheerful smile, glances down at her curiously. “Don’t you want to eat with your family, little one? Or are they still sleeping?”
“What family?” she asks, her hand freezing over her bowl, fingers clutching the spoon tight.
“The boys, the ones they brought in with you.” Her wide-eyed stare must give away her shock and incomprehension, because the young man frowns and crosses his arms. “They are of your people, aren’t they?”
“I don’t - I do not remember, I -” She places her bowl on the floor and stands up, moving towards him and raising her hand imploringly. If she is not alone, oh Ancestors, if only she is not alone here. “Please, can you tell me who - what happened -”
“Alright, calm down,” he says. She has apparently unnerved him with her intensity and he takes a step back, away from her reaching hand. She tries not to smile at the sight of a tall, strapping man backing away nervously from a young girl.
“A group of Sapharos brought the four of you in yesterday, you and the three boys,” he says, watching her carefully. “They found you in a temple of the Ancestors. Does that sound right?”
“I do not know,” she whispers, twisting her hands into her jacket anxiously. “I remember nothing, nothing before waking up in this room today.”
His mouth falls open in surprise, but before he can say anything else she bursts out, “Where are the others? The ones who were found with me?”
He closes his mouth, and spares an uncertain glance for the crowded food table, but says, “Here, I’ll show them to you.” She wants to kiss him from sheer gratitude, but satisfies herself with a beaming smile. He grins back and taps her shoulder affectionately.
He leads her back through the rows of pallets, and looks back over his shoulder to say casually, “I’m Vannu of Ji, by the way.” She nods and lowers her eyes in something akin to shame; she has no name to offer in return.
When he comes to a stop, they are standing in front of her pallet, still half-covered by the sleeping boy. “Here,” Vannu says, and points to the boy. “And those two, as well,” he adds, spinning to gesture at the pallet directly across from it. The two boys sprawled across it look to be the same age as herself and the first boy, and wear the same ill-fitting clothes.
Vannu continues to speak, although she barely hears it. Relief is running through her, sweet and sharp, like joy, like cool water, and she sinks down to sit next to the boy who lies on her pallet. She stares at his face, begins to catalogue his features: every freckle, every hair is dear to her now.
“The Saphoros’ leader said that they found the four of you lying fast asleep on the floor in the middle of the temple. When they couldn’t wake you, they decided to bring you here to the hospital in Tullrand.” Vannu pauses for a moment, but she does not look away from the boy. “The temple that you were found in - it was on the outskirts of a village, but the Saphoros said that the rest of the village was empty. Culled.”
She has to swallow then, and press her hands to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Vannu says, but she flinches when he crouches down and touches her elbow.
When she is able to speak without wailing, and look up without spilling tears down her face, she turns to him. “Thank you, Vannu. I would like to be alone now, please.”
He presses his lips together, but obediently gets up and returns to the food table. She sits next to the boy on her pallet for a while, and does her best to imprint his face into her memory. She doesn’t know what will happen in the morning, if her family is still asleep when the cart to the orphan house arrives. She stands and moves to sit next to the other two boys, studying them with equal intensity. If the authorities of this place decide that she must be separated from them, they will have to drag her into the cart kicking and screaming. Still, it is better to be prepared for any eventuality.
She jumps when a near-by voice says hoarsely, “Stare any harder and your eyes will fall out.” The woman lying on the pallet to her left, next to the two boys, is propped up on her elbows and looking at her curiously.
She waves her hand at throat-level to make a “so-what” gesture at the woman, and turns back to the boys.
“Are you trying to lay a curse on them?” the woman asks, sounding bemused.
“No, of course not,” she replies, full of indignation. “They are - my brothers,” she finishes a little more uncertainly.
The woman looks at the two boys, and then looks back up at her and raises her eyebrows. “You do not look much alike.”
She does not know exactly what expression she makes, but it must be particularly forbidding because the woman recoils slightly. Then the woman tilts her head, reaching up to twist one of her braids around her finger thoughtfully. “Are you sure that they are not your cousins, perhaps? I myself have an overabundance of cousins and barely any of them look a thing like me.”
She blinks in surprise. “Truly?” Although she is aware that the word that the woman is saying is not quite “cousins”, but something just close enough to translate, she is still not sure how that could be.
The woman’s lips quirk up in a small smile, but she breaks out coughing before she can answer. When the fit has subsided, the woman says, “Yes, most of my cousins were adopted or fostered into my house, just as I’ve been adopted into several different families. We’re a motley bunch.”
“Ah,” she says, smiling in comprehension. She clears her throat. “Yes, it is the same for me and my - cousins.”
“Ah,” the woman echoes, and grins at her. “Of course. Allow me to introduce myself, girl, as a fellow cousin to another. I am Senni of Tav, to those who know me well.” She rubs at her eyebrow for a moment, and then says carefully, “You are - having trouble remembering? I heard you talking to Falu, the useless ass.”
Surprised by the insult, she barely suppresses her laughter. “Yes, I cannot remember anything from before today, and waking up in this room. It is - very disorienting.” She bites her lip and then blurts out, “I have no name to give you. What if the others wake and do not know it either? What if -”
Senni interrupts her. “You’re right, it is simply ridiculous for a person to run around with no name. It causes far too many complications,” she says firmly. “I’ll make a bargain with you: if you go and fetch me a bowl of soup before it all becomes completely cold, in return I will give you a name. Fair dealing?”
She smiles, nodding. “Fair dealing.” Jumping to her feet, she hurries to the food table and procures a bowl of soup for Senni, and another bowl for herself. The one that she’d left on the ground when she followed Vannu to her cousins is long gone. When she returns to Senni, they sit and eat together in contented silence, although she cannot stop her leg from jittering a little in anticipation.
Finally, Senni sets her bowl aside and lowers herself down on to her pallet. She looks exhausted, and suddenly much older. Closing her eyes, she says, “Do you like the sound of Tali?”
She lets out a breath. “Tali.” She rolls the name around on her tongue, and in her mind. “Yes,” she says, Tali says, “yes, I like it.”
Senni smiles, although her face is still pinched in pain and she has begun taking rasping breaths through her mouth. “Good. It was my younger sister’s name, but she doesn’t need it any longer, and she wouldn’t begrudge your using it.”
“Thank you,” Tali whispers, and watches until Senni’s breaths are coming deeper and more evenly, and her face has smoothed out into sleep.
True night has fallen, and the room is completely dark but for the two oil lamps glowing at each doorway when the boy lying on her pallet wakes up.
She watches as his eyelids flicker, and the shadows twist across his face when he rolls his head to the side and groans. His eyes open and he looks up at her, his expression soft and confused.
“Hello,” she says, and clenches her hands, frozen with hope.
But there is no spark of recognition in his eyes, only fear and bewilderment. He sits up, glancing around the dim, crowded room, and his already pale face is whitening to match the walls.
“Where am I? What -” He looks back at her, and his dark eyes are wide and panicked. It’s all horribly familiar, and she feels the hope drain from her body, leaving her limp and tired.
“Who are you?” the boy asks, and his voice breaks. Something in her breaks along with it, so Tali takes a deep breath, and smiles, and reaches out to touch his hand.
“I am Tali,” she says. “We are family.”
*
On MX4-392, Captain Griggs and her team find one of the members of the Coalition in a town meeting-house, talking with a small group of villagers. When the team walks into the meeting-house, half of the people surrounding the leader of the Bellorans yank out their weapons. The other half start checking out the exits.
Griggs grits her teeth, but she knows that starting a gun-fight in this room would be a very bad idea. She lowers her P90, and looks the Belloran leader in the eye. He hasn’t pulled a weapon, and his expression suggests that, for the moment anyway, he’s more curious than pissed off or frightened. They might have a chance here.
Dr. Li steps forward, his empty hands raised. “We don’t want any trouble with you or your people,” he says earnestly. Griggs just keeps her eyes on the crossbows that are pointed at them.
“We just want to know what happened to our people. Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex. If you could even just tell us what their punishment was, if they’re dead or alive -” Dr. Li trails off.
The Belloran leader is shaking his head. He hesitates before speaking, but finally says, “I will tell you this. Teyla Emmagan of Athos spoke on behalf of the expedition, and spoke well, from all accounts. She was unable to sway the verdict, but during the sentencing, she asked the judges to - mitigate their sentence.”
“And?” Griggs prompts, ignoring the dirty look that Dr. Li gives her.
The Belloran leader presses his palms together. And so. “The judges were merciful.”
~/~