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Title: On A Glass Beach.
Author: Keenir.
Summary: Held captive, Elizabeth and Sora plan their escape.
Written for the McWeir2006 ficathon. From Meg: Rodney/Elizabeth established relationship, a day off work, water, some kind of animal life form indigenous to Atlantis.
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PROLOGUE:
On this world, the geologic record stretched back to the dawn of this planet. But life and fossils only went back ten million years, beginning in the same rock strata that sheathed the stargate.
Back on Atlantis, the rocks of Mainland stopped carrying fossils seven million years ago. They were fossils of things – creatures which had baffled human scientists prior to the discovery of this world. Here they learned how the segmented armor-skin was used to move the body along. It was not perfect – far from it – but it had sufficed for a billion years.
Here, on a shale world (with silica beaches), Elizabeth Weir and Sora Idtaris were being held captive in a seaside fossil quarry.
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WEIR'S POV:
I have to admit – I don't like admitting it either – I'm all out of diplomacy. I think I ran out yesterday, when the prince said that Sora and I can only leave when he has an heir. Spitting in his face wasn't an option, not when he's got a wall with the decapitated heads of unruly women on pikes… clearly a graduate of the Vlad Tepish School of Decorum.
Sora's coughing. Again.
I look across the table-height piece of shale that lies here on the beach with us, noting how she's leaning on that shale more than she's done thus far in our captivity. She looks up at me and says, "I will be fine."
I hadn't said anything – not this time. We won't even get a doctor here, not until we give in to the prince's demands…and when we give in, we can have anything – anything except a way to leave. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that he hasn't simply forced himself on us – leaving us with enforced benevolent neglect: nothing is allowed in to harm us…nor are we given food or medicine.
I'm glad Rodney isn't here. He would've tried and tried - to escape, argue, rebutt, and all else that would come to his mind - but I'm afraid he wouldn't have lasted this long.
"Sora?" I ask. May as well ask her now. Sora's never lied to me. Then again, neither has Rodney, though for a different reason.
"What?"
"Before we left Atlantis, Commander Kolya was handed a detailed report, and he tore it up." All that paper… not the commonest of commodities in this galaxy. "Would you happen to know why?"
"No," looking down. "But I know of a – possible – impetus."
"Go on," I encourage.
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3rd PERSON POV:
"Even nowadays, in modern Genii, one in every hundred lacks an enzyme, a protein, or a membrane – and they are thereby as defenseless as an Athosian… or as yourself, Doctor." Ladon Radim's sister is one such mutation in our population, Sora knew.
"I have to say I don't understand, Sora," Dr. Weir said. "I asked you why your commander had destroyed the report Dr.s McKay and Zelenka had typed up for him. I'm sympathetic to the fact that your people still suffer from genetic diseases, I am, but I'm afraid I don't see how its connected." If anything, it would be like Rodney pointed out, that exposure to radiation had made the Genii more vulnerable.
"Tribes grow accustomed to their environment," Sora said.
"And people strive to learn how they can improve their living conditions. And cure their diseases."
Sora glared across the shale table at her. "You really have no id-" and coughed, a few flecks of bright blood raining down upon that same shale. Groaning, she reached for the first-aid bottle she'd taken to carrying around since long before she'd become trapped here with Weir: standard issue for Genii offworld. Before Weir could say anything, Sora said, "We can't – wait any llongerr," rolling some letters.
"I can get you a doctor," Elizabeth offered. The prince holding them captive here, had offered every luxury to the two ladies – provided the pair were here and nowhere else.
"Genii… Saabre… LLosns… any of those are good. I can't wait any longer," deliberately not reminding her that waiting had been her idea.
Noting the pointed omission of whose idea it had been to waiting, "I take it those are planets?" When Sora nodded, "And how are we going to make our escape?"
"Èaesci."
"First deceive, then overpower?" Weir asked. Kolya had phrased it more diplomatically, but the fact was that the current power-sharing arrangement on Atlantis had its roots as a Èaesci." Rodney just called it sneaky. "I suppose you've got a plan of attack?"
"You have none?"
Not sure if Sora meant to say 'I'm going to make damned sure you contribute' or 'what, you didn't make an escape plan?' – Weir picked the one that sounded more likely: the one Rodney would've said. If he'd been here. So she said, "I've got some ideas."
Sora nodded.
"If we're here," pointing out positions on the shale, careful to avoid Sora's blood, "and the stargate is here, with the coastline here; our guards should be fewest…here," stabbing that spot.
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SORA'S POV:
"Why are you here?" she asks me as we tread water, catching our breath after we swam this far out. I couldn't have – not in my current condition, certainly – disemboweled that guard if Dr Weir hadn't used her for-Dr-McKay's-eyes-only glance. Even I don't have enough training to disable with a glance.
She got her breath back first clearly. No doubt her body isn't leaving a benign state; mine is…has been since the most recent time I left my world. "My order," I say, sucking in air. "Why?"
"Well, besides the fact that Carson ordered me to take a day or three off for my health, forbidding me from doing any work inside Atlantis itself, I came here," to this world, "to open diplomatic relations," and we both nearly became objects to churn out more relations. "I was just wondering if there was any particular reason why you came too."
Augustus asked me to. "Commander Kolya selected me for this mission."
She looks at me with suspicion. Surely she cannot be thinking I will steal Augustus away from her; he would kill me were I even to try. Perhaps she worries that I am about to steal Dr McKay away from her – she has consummated that relationship, unlike her relationship with Augustus; as involvement with McKay on my part would upset Weir, I have no doubt that Augustus would kill me for that as well. Under our law, by the precepts of Genii Law, a woman may have two husbands, or a man may have two wives, but never both: society is a pivot, a neat fulcrum.
I am doomed. As I am trained to escape, to survive…doomed.
"You like him, don't you?"
I level a glare at Weir for such a question. Not my most withering of glares, not with the condition I'm in for now.
"I thought so."
"It does not matter."
"You ought to say something to him. Maybe he feels the same way about you."
"I do doubt that."
"You never know until you try."
"Commander Kolya," I say as we start swimming towards the stargate, "is already married."
"He is?"
"To you."
"What?" and somehow sounds surprised to hear this.
"Just as you are married to Dr McKay."
That draws her up short. "I'm not… I'm married to Rodney, in the Genii legal system?" A very quick study, you are.
"In the Genii legal system," I affirm.
She resumes swimming.
The remainder of our efforts are not worth recounting, as we met no appreciable resistance to our return to the stargate, and from there back to Atlantis, where Doctor Weir ordered an immediate dialing to the Genii planet on my behalf. No doubt she went to her McKay for comfort, or to Augustus for answers.
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The End