Author's note: I wrote this for the "Falling in Love With a Wraith?" challenge on Atlantica; you can find it there under "jewel_of_athos". It's essentially much a Michael spoiler with a twist. I hope you enjoy :)
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She was scared.
There just wasn't any way to get around it; she was just plain freaked out. She had thought that with the way that the city was run, this would be a nice, easy position that might let her have just a few moments of peace every once in a while; at least more than she'd had pulling what might have been suicide missions in places like Iraq. She thought that it'd be quiet here on Atlantis. It was turning into anything but.
John had assured her that they were almost perfectly safe on the city; but thinking back to the John Sheppard that she'd briefly know, "almost" probably could have meant that there was no more than one attack on the city within any two week period. She'd thought for a moment that her friend's promotion to Lt. Colonel might have been because he'd actually decided to grow up; no such blessing. He was the same smart mouthed, come-and-try-this-and-we-probably-won't-blow-up John that she remembered, no matter what rank you slapped on him. There was nothing that you could do or say that would change his attitude; the one that had gotten him into so much trouble back on earth. He'd informed her when she'd gotten to the city that she wasn't any better, to which she had just laughed. Now she wondered how she'd ever found anything in this galaxy funny.
The explosion had come literally out of nowhere; there had seemed to be no cause for it. Suddenly, without warning, an entire hallway had simply blown up. Her radio had been either lost or broken as she had been thrown by the force of the explosion, and now, as she crawled among the wreckage, searching for survivors as her training demanded despite what she was sure was several pieces of shrapnel lodged firmly into the flesh of her leg, she wondered how anyone could ever feel safe on this city again.
Her searching led her to three bodies; two of them dressed in the familiar Atlantis military uniforms, and the third in a t-shirt and jeans. She checked all of their pulses, and her heart sank. The two Marines were dead. She realized that the third man still had a pulse; and she recognized him as Michael Kenmore, a Lieutenant who had apparently gotten hurt very badly off-world just over a month ago. She'd seen him around, but always with others; he was guarded constantly. She couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone about why that was, but it hadn't seemed to bother him.
With a brief pang of regret for having to leave the bodies of the two Marines, she pulled off their dog tags and stuffed them in her pocket, before focusing her full attention on Michael. She needed to take care of the survivor before she could worry about the dead. She forced herself to her feet, almost falling as she put weight on her injured leg before she managed to get her balance, and started to drag Michael into the transporter. She only just got him inside in time; an alarm began to sound somewhere in the city, and the transporter took on a life of it's own and chose a destination. When the door opened, she was away from the explosion and the fires and the warning sirens… and everything that she knew. Worried, she touched the button on the panel that would bring her to the infirmary- she knew some field medicine but Michael needed more than that- and the transporter would not respond. Dread filled.
There wasn't much that Ava Stratford couldn't handle; but being trapped alone with someone dying pretty much topped the list. She couldn't let Michael die.
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When Michael awakened, there had been a few seconds of total bliss when he'd remembered nothing and felt nothing. But quite abruptly and quite rudely the pain had reminded him that something bad had happened. He was starting to see flashes and images in his head of what he thought could have been the cause of his injuries; a crashed wraith dart, a drone from the city, an explosion in the hallway…
Somehow, he knew that his last idea was correct. He had no idea how, buy he was sure that he had been in an explosion. He wondered why he wasn't dead; the explosion had certainly been enough to kill him.
He shifted, trying to roll onto his side, and was held back by a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't move," it was a woman's voice, and Michael wracked his brain for all the women that he knew on Atlantis. He came up with three; and only one of them would have been walking through that particular hallway. But he didn't remember seeing her…
"Teyla?" he croaked, and throat completely dry. He took a breath and tried again, wincing as he became aware of a pain in his chest. "Is that you?"
"I'm not Teyla, I'm sorry." He forced his eyes opened, and found himself looking into those of a beautiful and clearly worried woman.
"Who…?" he couldn't get the rest of the sentence out, but that word was enough.
"Srgt. Ava Stratford," she introduced herself.
"Lieutenant Michael Kenmore," he returned. "I think." He groaned, and tested the muscles in his arms and hands experimentally. "What happened?"
"We were in an explosion," Ava explained, pushing a messy lock of light brown hair out of her eyes. "I was going to take you to the infirmary, but then the transporter decided to choose now to exhibit free will and take us here instead. And it locked me out of the controls." She grinned ruefully. "Looks like we could be stuck here for a while."
"How badly am I hurt?" Michael asked. Ava glanced away briefly, but immediately returned her gaze to meet his. He could see in her eyes what she was thinking.
"Don't lie to me," her warned her. "Too many people here lie to me; I want to know if this really bad." Ava hesitated a second, then nodded.
"It's bad," she told him. "You have broken ribs, a shattered leg; most likely a concussion. As far as I can tell you're not bleeding internally, but I wouldn't recommend that we stay here long." He tried again to sit up, and this time she helped him gently, until his back was leaning against the wall. He smiled in thanks; even that much effort had exhausted him. Ava was worried; he needed medical attention, and there was no way that he could get it out here.
"Do you have a radio?" Michael asked suddenly. She shook her head.
"I lost it; I think that it broke during the explosion. Don't you have a radio?" she couldn't help but ask.
"I've been off-duty," he explained. "I haven't needed it; so I just stopped wearing it."
"Then let this be a lesson to you," she teased weakly. "Never leave your room without your radio." He grinned.
For a while they were quiet; talking seemed to tire the young marine far more than it should have, making Ava think that maybe he was even more badly hurt.
"Where do you hurt?" she asked him. Suddenly, a scene from an Indiana Jones movie came into her head, and she began to giggle.
"What?" Michael asked, unsure whether to laugh too or be insulted.
"I just realized that I was almost quoting that scene from the first Indiana Jones movie…" but as she tried to describe it to him, his face stayed blank.
"Don't tell me that you've never seen Indiana Jones." He shrugged, wincing in pain when he did so.
"I don't know. That's probably part of the whole amnesia thing that came along with my getting hurt."
"Well then one we get back and Dr. Beckett checks you out, movie night is on me." He grinned.
"Deal."
They fell silent again, Michael's energy quickly sapping. The quiet was unnerving, a foreign concept to most of the population of Atlantis; they seemed to feel an almost constant desire to talk, as if insanity would prevail if they were quiet for too long. Part of it, she was sure, was loneliness, and part of it stemmed from the deep friendships that had developed in the year and a half that most of the rest of them had been there. And maybe a little bit of it was insanity. Ava could feel it now, as she contemplated their situation. The silence that allowed her mind to wander was making her crazy as she began to imagine all the different scenarios that could play out; all the different ways that Michael and even she could die. She needed to get her mind off of it.
She glanced over at Michael and saw that he had closed his eyes, and his breathing was starting to slow.
"Hey," she shook his shoulder gently, aware of his injuries. "You're not supposed to sleep when you have a concussion." He opened his eyes sluggishly.
"You only said that I might have a concussion," he reminded her.
"You're still not allowed to sleep." He moaned softly, leaning his head back against the wall.
"I just want to rest," he mumbled. "I'm so tired; and being awake makes me think too much." Ava was instantly sympathetic.
"I know the feeling," she said apologetically.
"We need to talk," Michael said. "So that neither of us… thinks too much."
"Okay," Ava paused, and wracked her brain to think of something that she could talk about that wouldn't make him feel even worse. "When you go back on duty, what team are they going to put you on; same one as before?" he shrugged.
"I'm not sure. I think that Colonel Sheppard is going to bring me on a couple of missions, to see how I do and if I would be better off staying on the city for a while." He paused. "What team are you on?"
"I've only been here about a week," she said. "I don't have a team yet. The Colonel is still trying to figure out where he wants me."
"You've only been here for a week?" she nodded. "Something about you… it makes it seem like you were here for much longer."
"Thank you, I think."
"That was a complement," he assured her. But their conversation trailed off into silence again after that, which Ava knew was a problem. But they were both hurt and exhausted; they must have been sitting in this hallway in the middle of nowhere for somewhere around five hours; Michael had been out for a long time. Ava felt an uncomfortable grumbling in her belly that told her it was definitely past lunch time. She wondered if Michael was hungry too, and how they would find anything to eat way out here. She wondered how far out they were from the middle of the city. Having a sudden idea, she rocked to her feet.
"Stay here," she cautioned; as if he could do anything but. "I need to check something."
"Don't be late for dinner," he teased, and her stomached protested to his joke.
"I'll try," she promised, heading off down the corridor.
She hadn't explored far when they'd first gotten there; her primary concern had been to take care of Michael and to attempt to remove the bits of glass and metal from their bodies; only partially successful. But now she wanted to find a window, or a balcony or something; she needed to see how far away everything she knew was.
She tried every door that she came to, and was soon rewarded by a cool breeze as one of them slid opened to reveal a balcony. She stepped out, and turned around as she tried to get a sense of where she was on the city.
As she'd guessed, they were very far out; almost on the end of one of the long arms that spread out from the base of the tower. She looked towards the center of the city and saw tendrils of smoke curling up; the fires after the explosion must have given them trouble. She took in all of this, but it didn't really matter. What did matter was that they were stranded, too far out for her to go back and get help on her own, and definitely too far to even think about trying to take him back with her. And as long as the transporters were down, they were stuck out here.
Discouraged, she returned to find Michael asleep again. She woke him quickly, and he blinked weary eyes at her.
"Why do you bother?" he asked her, and the hopelessness in his voice broke her heart. "I'm going to die anyways; I can feel it happening now. Why don't you try to get back?"
"You're not going to die," she admonished him quickly. "They're going to find us, and Dr, Beckett will make sure that you're fine." But Michael was convinced.
"It hurts," he said. "I can feel it; like there's something inside me trying to tear me apart. I'm trying to fight it, but its winning."
"Michael, its not going to win, I promise."
"You don't know how it feels."
"It doesn't matter; I won't let you die. And neither will they; they don't leave people behind. They came and rescued you from the wraith, didn't they?"
"But they knew what had happened. They have no idea where we are." Ava pondered that for a moment, not allowing him to discourage her. They didn't know where they were? Well then she was just going to have to help them along a little bit.
"Do you think that you can walk a little?" she asked Michael, climbing to her feet again.
"Not all the way back to the center of the city." He reminded her as she bent down to help him up.
"I was thinking something a little bit… closer." she took him down the hall, into one of the rooms that she had found while she was searching for a door outside. The lights responded immediately to their entrance, and the ancient gene that Ava had recently acquired. Michael looked around.
"What is this?" he asked, observing multiple blinking machines. Ava grinned.
"It's a lab."
"Do you know what it's for?" she shrugged.
"Not a clue."
"Then how does this help us?"
"It's doesn't need to do anything in particular," she told him, helping him to ease down beside one of the consoles. "It just needs to draw enough power to let them know that we're down here." Michael smiled at her as she explained her plan.
"You know, that's not a bad idea."
"Thanks. Now what should I turn on first?"
"Try that one," he pointed at a console against the far wall. "It looks big." She rubbed her hands together in anticipation.
"You know, Dr. McKay is probably going to kill you for this."
"Well it's a lot better than dying of starvation down here." The word seemed to strike a peculiar feeling in Michael.
"Starvation?" he muttered. But Ava was too busy with the big machine to notice. She looked for an "on" switch, found none, and tried it the good old fashioned way. She placed her hand on the device, and the words "open sesame" came to mind, but she pushed them away and thought "on". The device obediently lit up at her touch, and readouts began scrolling down its screen.
"There we go," she said, turning her attention back to Michael, who was watching her intently. Instantly she felt nervous, as if he was looking right through her and seeing something that he didn't like. She felt naked and exposed; and she had the sudden urge to go curl up in a corner. But all those thoughts and feelings took only a fraction of a second, and then everything felt totally normal again and the closest to safe that it could when she was trapped with a dying man miles away from anyone else on an alien city in the middle of the ocean in another galaxy; and she was turning on alien technology that she didn't have the slightest clue about and that could quiet possibly kill them at any moment. As that description ran through her mind she felt winded.
She saw Michael's attention switch from her to the device that she had just turned on, and saw him squint to make out the readings being displayed.
"Hey, I know what that is!" he said suddenly, and struggled to get up, his injuries apparently forgotten. Ava ran to help him.
"How do you know? You're a lieutenant, not a scientist."
"I don't know how I know, but I do."
"You've spent too much time around Rodney McKay," she said, helping him over to the machine. He leaned on it, and his eyes flicked back and forth across the screen as he read it, and made sense of it.
"Okay, tell me what this does," Ava said. "And if we should be letting it do it."
"It's a remote control station," Michael said glancing at her for only a second before returning most of his attention to the device, the rest of his explanation unfinished.
"For what?" she pressed.
"For the life-sense detector," Michael said. "In the control room." The scrapings of an idea began to form together in Ava's mind to create a shaky plan.
"And you're sure that this controls it, not just lets us monitor it?" he nodded.
"It seems like there's at least one of these in each section," he said, his eyes moving faster than Ava thought the human eye was supposed to be able to. "So that if something happened and they lost the control room, they would still be able to access the systems." He paused. "I bet that everything in this room controls some vital system." Ava was getting excited now.
"You want to play?"
The two of spent the next ten minutes turning things on and wreaking havoc on the city's systems. Ava did most of the turning on, and once the things were initialized Michael was able to control them; it saved him from having to move around too much, although Ava had noticed that it had gotten easier for him. Maybe it was pure adrenaline.
"Do you think that they've noticed us yet?" Ava said, the light of their mischief obvious in her eyes. Michael shrugged.
"I'd be disappointed if they hadn't."
"Do you think that we can take a break?" she hinted, remembering that they were both still injured. He took the hint, and they sat down against one of the consoles.
Now that they weren't doing anything and the adrenaline was wearing off, Ava was sharply feeling the stress that she had put upon herself; and suddenly all that she wanted to do was curl up and sleep forever… after she'd had the biggest thanksgiving day feast that there ever was. She could imagine it now; turkeys the size of puddle-jumpers; pies the size of the stargate, and an ocean of gravy and mashed potatoes…
"I thought that I was supposed to be the one with the head wound," Michael teased gently, his breath tickling her ear. She could hear his breath rasping strangely, however, and she began to get worried. Maybe letting him help her, standing up and controlling the machines for so long, had been a bad idea.
"How do you feel?" she asked, turning to look at him. His face was turning a sickly pale color.
"Like I was in an explosion," he paused, shifting his seat experimentally. "I think that getting their attention finally did me in." but he didn't seem scared anymore; instead, it seemed like he'd accepted it for what it was, and was not going to fight it anymore.
"Please don't let yourself die until after they rescue us," she begged him softly. His blue eyes held her gaze. "Please. I never meant for either of us to die down here." She could feel herself slipping away into unconsciousness. "Please," she said again, as she felt herself slide closer and closer into darkness.
"Rest," Michael's whisper was the last thing that she heard before she succumbed to the darkness.
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When Ava woke up much later, she wondered for a moment if she was awake. It was pitch black in the room, except for one or two of the machines that were still on standby. She rasied her head and looked for Michael as her eyes adjusted to the gloom.
He was lying on the floor, bent double in agony, moaning softly. She crawled to his side, and felt for his pulse. It was heavy and erratic, and she wondered if that was a good thing. Suddenly, he screamed.
"It's okay," she tried to assure him, frantically trying to figure out what to do. "You're going to be okay."
"Ava!" he moaned. "It's killing me!"
"Tell me how to help you," she begged. "What do you need me to do?"
"There's nothing," he said, as his body began to convulse. "Nothing!" His voice definitely had an odd quality to it now; raspy and thick and dark. That last word came out of nowhere, but she allowed herself no more than a second to wonder where it had come from.
"Michael, you have to hold on!" she commanded him. Again, in the back of her mind she wondered where she got off commanding him. "You are not going to die." He continued to moan, and she could tell that he was crying now.
"Ava, let me go!"
"I can't!" and she suddenly realized why. This one day; one single day of disaster, had created something within her that only now, when there was no hope, she discovered. She couldn't let him go; and it was not just that she simply didn't want him to die; she loved him too much to let him give up. She wouldn't let him roll over and die because she loved him. That thought shocked her. But she sensed that it was something that she could do for him; maybe the last thing that she could do for him.
"Michael, I love you," she said gently, placing her mouth close to his ear so that he could hear her above his own noise. "Do you hear me? I love you; and I will not let you die." She felt him tense, and she knew that he was fighting again. Her words were working.
She continued to whisper to him, telling him that she loved him and keeping him fighting. Every time he began to give up she would come back stronger, and he would renew his fight for just a little longer.
Just as Ava was sure that she could do no more, and that Michael could fight no more, she heard a stampede of footsteps; and a moment later the lab was crowded with people; Dr. Beckett and several other doctors and nurses; along with Sheppard and Ronon and Teyla. Carson dropped on his knees beside Michael and Ava, and withdrew a needle full of a clear greenish liquid. He injected whatever it was into a vein in Michael's arm, and then he and another doctor lifted the man out of Ava's arms and onto a stretcher, and they rushed him out. Sheppard took Ava's arm and led her after them, followed by the rest of his team.
"Sorry we took so long," Sheppard said. "Transporters were down and most of the city was locked down. It's taken us this long to break into the jumper bay to get down to this section," he paused. "You know, a simple S.O.S. would have been fine for us to know that you were down here; you guys have the tech's upstairs thoroughly convinced that the systems are haunted." Ava took in all of this in seconds, and was angry and forgave them for not coming for them sooner. And she asked the only question that she cared about.
"Is he going to be okay?" Sheppard glanced at Ronon and Teyla, and pushed a little faster as they neared the door to the balcony where they'd parked the jumper.
"We'll talk about it later." Ava was terrified by his words. How could they let Michael die?
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Ava refused to let the doctors look at her wounds until someone explained to her what was happening with Michael.
"He's not gonna die," Sheppard assured her. "Beckett got to him just in time with that injection; everything should be just fine."
"But why?" she pressed. "What is going on with him?" Ava had only been on the city for a week; but she was clearly smart. She knew that they treated him differently, and she wanted to know why.
Sheppard exchanged a glance with Teyla, clearly hoping that she would explain. She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Oh, come on! You know him best."
"This was not my decision," she told him. It worried Ava; what could possibly be so bad that none of them wanted to talk about it?
Sheppard was clearly uncomfortable talking about it and as he opened his mouth to speak Ronon, who had been silent in the background, decided to save him the explanation.
"Michael is a wraith," he said bluntly. Ava dropped into a chair, in shock. A wraith?
Sheppard glared at Ronon.
"Nice. I admire the gentle way you break news like this, I really do." He said sarcastically.
"You weren't gonna tell her." Elizabeth came into the room just then, and knew immediately by the look on Ava's face what they'd been talking about. They all turned to her to explain.
"Dr. Beckett decided that he wanted to see if he could turn a wraith into a human; he was trying to find an alternative to being at war with them. So he made a retrovirus, had Sheppard's team go out and get him a wraith, and tried an experiment."
"He's an experiment?"
"He's a failure," Ronon began.
"What? It worked, he's a human now; how can you think of him as just an experiment or a failure?"
"He's a wraith." Ronon said simply.
"He's human now," Ava stressed. "Give him a chance." But she knew that Ronon couldn't.
"Ava," she looked at Sheppard. "You can't tell him about this."
"What?"
"We have no idea how he's going to react if he finds out." Elizabeth tried to explain. "It was agreed, before the experiment was started, that he wasn't going to know what he was. Carson thinks that it'll be too much for him to deal with and he'll go nuts." Ava felt her heart break for her friend.
"That's wrong," she said. "He has the right to know what he is. There's no way that you can keep a secret like this for very long." She examined their expressions, and found only Teyla's to be sympathetic; she must have had this argument before as well. And from the faces of the other two, she had lost it repeatedly.
"We can't take the risk," Sheppard said finally. Ronon didn't say anything, but he didn't need to; his feelings were written all over his face. He wanted Michael dead. Elizabeth's expression was sad, but firm.
"We did him a favor," Sheppard tried to justify what they'd done one more time. This time Ava didn't answer. All the anger and fear and frustration and exhaustion of the day had finally caught up with her. She tuned them out, and allowed herself to slip away into dreams.
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When Michael woke up, Ava was sitting by his bed, waiting.
"Hey," he croaked, his throat completely dry. She smiled.
"Hey yourself."
"How are we doing?" he asked. Ava sighed heavily.
"We're okay," she told him, taking his hand. "Both of us are okay; just like I said." She paused. "How do you feel?" she remembered asking him that same question, what seemed like forever ago.
"Like I was hit by a jumper," he admitted. "And then chewed up and spit out by a giant… off the control tower." She laughed at him. It felt good to laugh again.
"Even right out of surgery, all you can do is make jokes." That had been one of the reasons her feelings for him had shown themselves… but how could she ever admit that now that she knew? She hated Ronon in that moment; he had forever colored her view of Michael, no matter how much she tried to look past it. Now, no matter what, there would always be that little corner of fear in her mind when she thought of her friend.
"I've gotta do something with all that time," he said. They were quiet for a minute, a comfortable quiet, though; this one not marred by fear and injury and impending doom.
"Hey, when I was really bad," Michael recalled suddenly, "you kept me from giving up. You kept telling me… you kept telling me that you loved me. Was I dreaming that?" Ava was caught off-guard by the question. She had hoped that he would forget it. And now she hoped that he would forgive her for what she was about to say.
"I knew that it would keep you fighting until they could come for us," she said. He frowned a little.
"So you didn't mean it?"
"I love you like a brother," she assured him. "But I've learned better than to let myself feel anything more than that." He smiled, and she could see that she was forgiven.
"I guess I can live with that," he said. "There's always hope that I can change you." She shrugged noncommittally, teasing him.
"Maybe one day," she said, and she hated lying about all of this to him, and in her mind begged him to forgive her. But she didn't know what else to do. "Maybe."
Fin.
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Author's note: I'm sorry that there was no McKay; but I couldn't seem to convince him to come out of hiding long enough to make an appearance. Tell me what you think about Ava; if you like her, I'll write more!