This is my first chapter-fic. I am currently looking for a beta. If you think you are well-qualified and interested, please E-mail or message me. I don't bite :) Also, please review! Thanks so much.
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate:SG1, the characters, or the ideas. All rights belong to MGM studios.
The voices would not stop.
They continued to berate her, tease her, mock her, and torture her. She tried to make them stop - tried to force them to be silent. But it soon became obvious that there was nothing she could do. The voices weren't coming from her head it seemed. They were alive.
She tried to isolate a single voice – separate it from the confusion. She found one. It sounded casual and friendly – unlike most of the other voices. His tone was inviting and made her feel safe. The more she listened to him, the more she could begin to envision him. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel the sturdy bones in his cheeks, to touch the soft wrinkles around his eyes. But when she tried, he faded. His voice, his face – everything – was gone.
"Mas," he whispered in her ear and gently prodded her awake by pushing lightly on her shoulder. "You'll miss the mid-day meal if you sleep much longer."
She buried her face in the pillow in an attempt to hide the playful smile that was beginning to appear on her lips. The warm familiar blush in her cheeks was returning merely by the sound and scent of him.
He laughed, pulling her body away from the pillow, revealing her huge grin as she looked up at him. "Did you sleep well, Mas?" he asked.
Her gleeful expression faded and was replaced with a clouded, tortured one. "I keep having the same dreams," she whispered.
His face sobered as well as he leaned towards her, his deep blue eyes communicated genuine worry. "Perhaps you should see someone about this. I know a very good –
"No, Wyl," she shook her head, twisting the bed sheets beneath her. "I don't need doctors. I'm not sick anymore." She reached up to smooth a jet black lock of hair out of his face.
"But you keep having these nightmares. You can't expect me not to worry about that."
She sat up in the bed, smoothing out the back of her head as she attempted to choose her words. "I guess I'm not fully over it just yet. But I will be, and then the nightmares will stop."
Wyl smiled slightly. "Then will you marry me?"
She laughed nervously and playfully swatted at him. "Will you stop asking that?"
"Why?"
Rolling her eyes, she pushed herself off the bed and headed towards the wardrobe. "I told you why. Now get out, I have to change."
He lingered a bit on the bed, grinning at her mischievously. Picking up one of the decorative pillows off the settee, she hurled it at him, perfectly hitting him square in the face.
"All right, I'm leaving, sorry." He chuckled, ducking out of the room quickly before she could swing another one of her feathered weapons his way.
Once she heard the door shut securely behind him, she began changing into her usual day clothes. After slipping off her nightwear, she caught a glance at her bare arms.
She stood up straight and ran a finger across her right wrist where the symbol was written. She rubbed it with her thumb, testing its indelibility once again. But nothing rubbed off. Not that she wanted it gone. It was the first thing she remembered seeing; that strange trilateral symbol with the ring directly above the pique of the triangle. She knew it had to be a part of her former life, whatever it was. But no one could tell her what it meant. Not even Tolpa's greatest scientists - who were favored in intelligence far above any other scientists in the solar system – had even the slightest clue what it meant.
She sighed as she remembered the first few days of her troublesome life. They'd been fraught with panic as she tried to figure out what happened. The doctors told her that she had been in an accident that had caused her amnesia. But when she asked about her former life – her name, her family, where she lived – they did not know. Her face had been advertised all over the planet – asking people if they knew her. No legitimate answer came and she was left alone.
Like the first days, the first nights were vivid and memorable as well; the dreams were wild and confusing. Often letters, symbols and pictures were jumbled together. She often dreamt of sitting next to a body of water, holding a stick with a line attached that sank into the water. For some reason, she felt peaceful during that. But then it would suddenly swerve into a horrifying nightmare where she was running from man-sized serpents. She would awake covered in sweat and heaving with terror. Then she would cry. She would cry tears of sadness and loneliness. She could only dream what her life had been like before this. Who she knew, what she did and where she lived. Mas often wondered if she had a family – a husband, children, parents, siblings – but then she would remember that no one claimed her. And either she was a terrible person or she never had anyone.
After the second week, she began to finally accept what had happened. And she even began seeing it as a way to start over. Perhaps her life had been terrible before; maybe this would finally be a new beginning.
But there was only one thing missing from this new life – a name.
She didn't just want to choose one from the long list of traditional names in the Tolpan dictionary. She wanted her real name. And she was determined that – if she dug deep enough – she could figure it out.
She concentrated hard, writing out symbols that came to her mind on a notepad. Most of the ciphers meant nothing to her – except for three: A, M, and S.
When showing them to her new friend, Wyl, she discovered that these weren't in the Tolpan dictionary and he had never before seen them in his life.
But she could perfectly give the sound to the symbol. And after mixing and rearranging, she soon discovered that her name must be Mas. It was three characters, which fit perfectly into the Tolpan society and it sounded normal compared to other names she came by daily. It seemed as though everything had worked out and she was finally working towards the start of her new life.
But she would still stare at that symbol, day and night, desperately trying to search her memory for a possible clue as to what it represented.
A knock on the door interrupted her day dreaming and she quickly fastened the last few clips on her jacket. As she began putting away her nightwear, she called out. "You can come in."
Wyl swung open the door, leaning his head in slightly. "Are you ready for a meal yet?"
She nodded. "Give me a moment."
He gave a joking irritated groan before shutting the door behind him. She chuckled to herself as she began smoothing out her appearance in the mirror.
She gazed at her reflection for a moment, pondering her appearance. Mas did not even look like the rest of the Tolpans. All of the females grew their hair out and tied it in a secure bun just below the crown of her head. While hers was peculiarly cropped short, similar to the men's style. While she had considered growing it out to blend in and avoid the curious stares, she had grown to like it and became attached to it as another part of her enigmatic past.
After finishing gussying up, she and Wyl began their regular walk to the community dining area. Because of it being the only location of food, Wyl had made it a point to live close by so that the good seating was not all taken up by meal time.
Mas collected her mid-day meal contents and followed Wyl towards their customary seat by the window.
"Come to work with me today."
Mas looked up from her tray at his sudden suggestion. "What?"
"Come to my work today," he repeated, smiling. "I know you get bored staying in the house."
She picked up her utensil and eyed him. "I don't want to get in the way…"
"You said you were interested in science, right?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
She nodded. "Then perhaps that is where your expertise lies."
"But science covers a lot of fields," Mas said, taking a bite of her food. "Maybe –
He bent his head. "They found something." He interrupted her in a low voice. "They don't want the populous to know about it until they can ascertain that it's not dangerous."
"Then why are you telling me?" she hissed back, looking around.
He picked up her marked wrist and pushed the jacket sleeve off it to reveal the symbol. "I think you'll want to see it."