Title: Interlude
Chapter: 1 – Teyla
Part: 1/?
Rating: M
Warnings: AU world, some violence, and sexual content
Disclaimers: I earn no money from this and I own no part of the canon Stargate world, only the characters that I create for myself.
Spoilers: Set in my established AU Alliance world, set in equivalent time to early season 3.
Note: It's been some time since I last posted a fic – it's been a busy few months, with moving house, visiting old friends, a friend's wedding, and, more recently, I broke my ankle. I am also currently taking part in the Beya John/Teyla Christmas challenge. It starts in December, so head over to the Beya Livejournal page to check out all the goodies everyone will be posting. I'm really looking forward to it.
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INTERLUDE 1 - TEYLA
The heavy oppression of the small space pressed heavily on her consciousness. There was barely room to move her legs without bumping into other knees and holsters, or space above her head to stretch up her neck without catching nauseous glimpses of what was outside the single porthole.
She wished she could sleep, that she could pass this travelling time in blissful rest which would enable her to recharge and prepare. However, her mind was still too acutely sharp, while her body faintly ached from the battle they had left all of an hour before. Adrenaline was still lingering in her blood, stealing some of her ability to trick her mind into sleep. There was no fooling herself that another battle was fast approaching, and the tumbling stretched time until it started clung thickly in the air.
Mediation had worked to calm her for a while, but the bump of knees against her adrenaline heightened body meant that she could not fully immerse herself in that respite just yet.
To her left, three people down the row from her, but only two foot away in reality, a fellow Elite slept, his deep restful snoring mixing with the heavy rasp of knives being sharpened.
Too much distraction. Too great a need for patience. Normally patience did not escape her, or her fellow warriors, but this approach...
Teyla looked up at the porthole inches above her head. Space tumbled by outside, the stars rolling and sliding through the view, instantly confusing and destabilising her internal balance. Her stomach reacted, and hers was one of the strongest, but the conflicting information between what she saw and what she felt was too much for the primitive human brain.
A large boulder of rock rolled into her view through the porthole, partially blocking the stars momentarily, and she latched her gaze upon it, and the nausea eased.
The asteroid danced slowly through her view, almost elegantly, though the truth was that if it, or one of its companions, struck the infiltration vessel, they would all be lost.
It had been Jobrill's clever scheme to infiltrate the new Wraith territory in this tiny, sealed, internally stabilised vessel. With one burst of its tiny engines, they had been sent rolling out among the asteroids that stretched the border the Wraith patrolled around their latest space station. It was a treacherous approach for they could not risk altering their tumbling route without drawing Wraith attention and guns. They had just enough power for the engines to move a small distance once they were level with the station. The calculations to ensure they would miss all the asteroids and still pass close by the station had had to be exceptionally precise and only fate would prove if they had been so.
Until then, twenty Elite were stuck inside this tiny metal can, tumbling through space amid dangerous rolling rocks, and watchful Wraith.
It was perhaps that surrender of control that grated on her nerves the most. There was nothing that she could do now until they reached their destination. If they were detected, they would die in space, destroyed instantly by weapons fire, or blow out into the vacuum of space if the vessel was torn apart. All was out of her control, and she could only wait and pray to the Ancestors, in whom which she had little faith, that her fellow Elite would all survive to do battle on the station.
Twenty Elite against an innumerable quantity of Wraith on the station – she would take those odds any day over this seemingly endless flight.
The asteroid continued its slow progress across the porthole, its uneven brown surface her only focus, until it finally disappeared, leaving only the swimming stars once more.
She closed her eyes, shutting out the vision, leaving her other senses in sharper focus. There was the musty scent of battle worn males around her, of sharp chemical cleaning fluid combining with the metallic spark of sharpening metal and the greased hinges of the vessel's only hatch. Gentle snores to the left along with Si' slow meditative breathing close against her right side. There was a rush of air as Oneakka blew across his latest impeccably sharpened knife, and the soft bleep of the single pilot's console updating her on their continuing journey through the asteroid field.
Her body's aches seemed stronger now with her attention turned from the porthole. Aches gained from the battle they had just abandoned to the Alliance military force to finish, leaving the Elite free to progress further. This would be the last push to fully claim this entire system from the Wraith. This space station was their last holdout and it needed to be eliminated.
Her right hip throbbed deeply from where a Wraith had struck her, while her left knuckles burned from her returning strike, which had caught part of the Wraith drone's bone mask. There was also a superficial, yet sharp, pain in her left knee, of which she had not been wholly aware until this moment, as if her body was now taking the opportunity of her attention to report all the ills she had suffered today.
And the old.
Amid all the bruises and sprains, her upper back still always ached. She knew the wound was long healed and that there was nothing there to cause her such discomfort anymore, but some days it felt as if Iketani' blade still cut acutely into her.
She had been a warrior long enough to understand the faces of trauma – the physical and the psychological, as well as the psychic in the case of her fellow Seekers. She knew that the ache in her upper back, around the tiny scar that was all that was left of the true injury, was not real. It was a psychological criticism at what had almost been the greatest mistake she had ever made. She had turned her back on her enemy, and it had been nearly fatal. If it had not been for John...
John.
The thought of him was like a balm on her aches and worries.
She sought not to think of him too frequently, for it was a distraction to do so, and one that had passed its time.
Yet, today, now in this tiny disturbing claustrophobic lull between storms, she let herself drift into the temptation of thinking of him.
John Sheppard.
Memories, warm and calming, seeped through her body and mind.
The remembered caress of his lips upon hers.
His hands sliding across her exposed skin.
The deep well of yearning that he had responded to with his own.
The tight warm press of chest to chest.
The arousing scent of his skin as his hands tangled in her hair.
It all washed away even the deepest of battle chills, forcing the frustration, and the never confessed worrying fears, out of her consciousness.
And yet, though she submerged herself into the teasing, freeing, memories of him, they brought with them the darker side of such indulgence. The sharp edge of emotion that whispered to her too frequently that she should be contented with what she had shared with John that single time. That she should not think of him and what he might be doing in Atlantis and what dangers he might be facing.
She should not brood on the thought that she might never see him again.
And even if she did see him again, it would be unwise to follow through on what her inner self wished – to drag him back against her.
To feel that racing, roaring, feminine rush through her that demanded his body, his touch and his breath upon her. That yearned to experience that powerful joining once more.
Just once more.
She opened her eyes abruptly, snapping her mind's focus back to where she was, and the reality of her life and his. She was an Elite. Elite do not dwell upon the past and wish for a future beyond the next battle and the ultimate defeat of the Wraith. It was foolish to do so.
Across from her, Halling opened his eyes and smiled faintly at her through the starlight shinning in from the porthole. She knew he could see her discomfort on this trip, but he said nothing, only turned to Oneakka filling the seat tight up against his.
"That knife has been razor sharp for the past half hour, put it away."
Oneakka paused in his obsessive duty for a second and then continued, this time with a far heavier hand on the sharpening stone.
Halling sighed and closed his eyes again, his head bumping back against the wall and ceiling tight around his tall frame.
Teyla smiled as she watched Oneakka lift the knife and inspect it in the starlight, the low glow glimmering off its shiny surface highlighting the stark scarred texture of the right side of his face. The sharpening stone lifted again.
Teyla watched the stroke of stone across the blade only inches away from her. Her own knives were sharp and ready, her guns cleaned and prepared, as she knew Oneakka's and all the others' were too. They were ready, but all held in limbo, tumbling through space to either victory or death.
She looked up back to the porthole, at the twisting lights and tumbling rocks, and considered that perhaps, on this occasion, dwelling on memories was preferable and understandable.
With a soft deep breath, she closed her eyes, the starlight cool on her face, and she slid back into the warm arousing memories.
Just for today.
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TBC