YAY! A long SGA story! It's been a while, my old friends. However, I'm back, and boy do I have a story for you!
Title: A Dish Best Served Cold
Summary: Pre-The Return. Dr. Weir has been taken by persons unknown, and for a month Atlantis is in turmoil. For so long, she's been taken for granted, but as her friends realize just how much they need her, will she ever be returned? Yes, she will, but she's not the same woman who left them.
Rating: T
Characters: Elizabeth Weir, Ronon Dex; John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagen; and all others in various ways, shapes, and forms
A/N: All chapter titles are henceforth songs by the Killers, who I'm listening to as I write this. Also, this is dedicated to Marianne H. Stillie, who inspired me to get started on this, and who, as always, captivates me with her stories...even if Carson is a wuss...
Prologue: For Reasons Unknown
Despite what pictures and movies tend to make it seem, a forest at night is neither scenic nor easy to traverse. In point of fact, a forest bottom is usually clogged with plants, roots, and other such easily tripped over things. Any light given by stars above and sometimes, moons, is usually hidden by the tree tops. It's dark, dank, and quite frankly, terrifying, in a forest at night. Sounds from all sides, lost in the trees, and so scatterbrained that you don't know what is up or down, and then you realize you're being chased.
She thought on that as she ran all out through the dark environment. She slammed into trees and shrubbery as she did so, cutting her arms and legs, and though she ached from the impacts and cuts, she still ran. She had no choice.
Behind her, she could hear several others crash through the same path she'd just went through. They were gaining on her, it was easily told. They went through the ways she cleared for them with her very body, avoiding the trees she hit and stepping over the trampled plants she'd flattened with her body. Her head swam, so light, and her feet felt like lead but still she ran. She'd be lying if she said she knew why.
She can't tell you her name, or where she came from, or why she runs. She can tell you that she woke up in the dark and didn't like it there. Slender as a reed, it was easy for her to slip through an opening in the wall, one that was at the edge of this dark forest. Hearing voices coming nearer, she'd taken off, but she didn't know why. Instincts, primal and awakened within in her had demanded that she flee. Danger, her body screamed, even as her mind slowly came up with reasons to stop. She didn't know who chased or why. It was just as possible that she was dangerous and not them, and that they sought to help her.
She ran anyways.
Ahead of her, through the many trees between them, a large circle of light suddenly appeared. Again, something inside her gave her an urge and she followed. That light was good. Through it, she would find answers, of some sort. Something on the other side of it was familiar. She faltered in her run as a vague memory came to the surface of a similar ring, in a large cavernous room. It wasn't so much one memory, as a fleeting remembrance of many memories. She'd always looked at the ring, but had never gone through it, or at least, very rarely.
Pausing briefly, she tried to suck in some oxygen, her lungs burning almost as badly as her legs and arms. Behind her, she could hear the shadowy figures close in. The ring of light was so close. Only yards away, but she couldn't even get the strength to push away from the tree.
Suddenly, the figures were there and they grabbed her arms. She screamed for help, not even knowing who help was, but she screamed anyways. The ring of light disappeared. They began to drag her back from hence she'd ran, and she struggled, gathering her strength, from where, she doesn't know.
Between the two men, if men is what they were, it was hard to tell in the dark. She managed to free one arm, leaning down and grabbing a large branch, she came up swinging. She hit the two men in the heads, knocking one down, but the other came back immediately, knocking the branch away, sending her falling to the ground. He raised his fist, about to deal out some payback, when a twig snapped nearby.
He froze, a figure of shadows, and stepped back into the forest, drawing a weapon from his waist. She watched as behind him, two figures, different in some way, crept up and knocked him out. Suddenly, no warning, she was picked up from behind, and instinctively she started to struggle, a scream tearing its way out of her throat, never reaching the air as the man calmly palmed her mouth shut.
"Quiet. We're here to help."
She froze, a deer in headlights, her large brown eyes fixed determinedly on the man's poorly lit face. He was handsome, his features carved from stone, and vaguely familiar. His hair was light, that much she could tell in the dark; that and that he was very strong, standing easily cradling her.
"Why were they chasing you?"
She tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak, a sign of some dis-use recently. She had the disconcerting feeling that this was something that didn't happen often.
"It's okay. We're gonna get you out of here," the man reassured, sending some sort of head signal to the others within a few feet. They stepped from the shadows, eyeing the two fallen enemies. They all wore similar clothing, all in black, a uniform of sorts. As one, they started to move away from the encampment where she'd escaped. Toward the strange ring of light that was even now gone.
She wrapped her arms around the man's shoulders and felt a stirring of an urge, one she had no intention of indulging. After all, was it really appropriate to lick your hero's ear?
"What's your name?" The man asked, stepping into a small clearing where a large circle of metal stood, held up by a small platform. She ignored his question and watched as one of the other figures stepped up to a small device near the platform and began to do something. Suddenly, the circle began to move and without warning a large flash of light blinded her. The ring of light had returned.
"I don't know," she finally answered, her voice hoarse but clear.
"You don't know?" He asked, starting towards the ring, still carrying her.
"I can't remember. I don't remember...well...I remember, but I don't. Some things, but not a lot."
He nodded as if he came across this sort of situation all the time. "Well...you can call me Shal."
"Shal?" She asked, her eyebrow quirked.
"It's short for Shalimar."
She nodded as if she came across a blond Adonis named Shalimar everyday. "Where are you taking me?"
"We're returning to me home, where we can prolly get you help."
"I don't need help."
"Yeah, sure."
"You're patronizing me."
"That's an awful big word to say to a soldier."
"Need a dictionary?"
Shal laughed as he carried the mystery woman through the Stargate.
John Sheppard was angry. Now, John, usually a congenial man, always with the sexy grin and a quick quip, wasn't usually seen angry, or rather, not at this level of angry.
"What do you mean, you don't know!?" The poor victims of this yell of fury were a dozen men, equally divided between off-world teams of Atlantis. The two teams had been assigned to protect Atlantis's leader, Dr. Elizabeth Weir, as she started talks with a rival people, the Genii, and the possibility of a permanent alliance. Just ten minutes ago, the teams had walked through the gate, and Dr. Weir had been nowhere in sight.
The leader of one of the teams stepped forward. "There was a fight when Kolya showed up. Somewhere in the all the chaos, we lost her."
"Why didn't you call me? Call us so we could send teams to look?!" Sheppard demanded, in Dr. Weir's office, behind her desk, and yelling in a voice she'd never have used.
"The building the meeting took place in collapsed. Besides, she's not there."
"How do you know if we didn't look?!"
"Because we have a tape showing Kolya and his men leaving through the Stargate with her."
John calmed down enough to take the tape. "Leave. You'll debrief with Rodney," he said scornfully.
The men left slowly, guilt and failure written on their faces. From the other side of the room, Colonel Caldwell and two others watched as the teams left. It was Caldwell who stepped forward and took the tape.
"We'll look over the tape; see if we can get an address from it. We'll get her back," he added for comfort's sake, though the three other tenants of the room didn't care for it. Saying nothing more, he left to go down to one of the technical labs. Truth was, this wasn't his command, but in Weir's absence, who better to take control?
John disagreed, and took the seat behind the desk, gesturing for Teyla and Ronon to seat themselves across from him. "I knew we should've went with her."
Teyla inclined her head, her face calm and peaceful even in the face of this very bad news. "It was a stipulation that we not join her. There is history between us and the Genii."
John looked at her. "You think it was a set-up?"
"I did not say that."
Ronon sat there silently. He'd never been one for speaking when silence sufficed. His long hair was wrapped and knotted into locks, and he idly toyed with the end of one. What did this news mean to him? He didn't really have feelings on it. While Sheppard was angry, and yes, slightly guilty, Teyla was peaceful, perhaps leaving her more passion-driven emotions behind locked doors. Ronon didn't need to leave them behind closed doors, because he rarely felt them at all. Seven years of running from the Wraith, acting on instinct and doing what he felt he must; most hypothesized that that left him little more than an animal. The women of this complex in particular went to great lengths to try and provoke the animal in him. None of them truly understood that he wasn't an animal, and never had been. Seven years of acting like one didn't make him think like one. He'd shut down inside, gone numb to the pain and chaos he'd caused wherever he'd traveled. Being emotionless, but primal, was very different from being an animal.
He did wish that Cadman would stop leaving him notes asking for a "date" for dinner, though. He was sure that any day now Dr. Beckett would find out and try to hurt Ronon. Since he was a doctor, Ronon doubted his vengeance would be given in a conventional way.
Back to the situation at hand, Ronon watched as his friend torn himself up inside over things not done. Ronon started to speak. "They took her for a reason. I don't think she's dead." He said it trying to put a good light on the situation.
John grinned angrily. "Thank you, that's comforting."
Ronon shrugged.
Teyla tried to offer another solution. "We've dealt with Kolya before. It cannot be terribly difficult to track him down again."
John nodded. "Yeah. He's not too smart, you know?"
The duo across from him nodded, their thoughts alternately fatalistic, optimistic, and vaguely pessimistic mixed with hungry. They sat there for a few minutes, and thought on plans to be made.
Plans that would be put into effect, and fail in succession. As it was, it would be over a month until they even got a good lead, as feeble as it was. In the meantime, chaos would erupt in Atlantis. She was more valuable to them than any of them had realized.