Long-windedA/N:
Hey everyone! This (quite shockingly, perhaps) is not a Mass Effect related story. Rather, I've recently fallen in love with the characters of Stargate: Atlantis and a while ago, the premise for this story jumped into my head, burrowed deep in the recesses of my subconscious and refused to relinquish its hold until the story was written.
I'll be following mostly my own story arc instead of rehashing what we've all seen in the show, but I will, occasionally, include excerpts from the episodes. This story starts after the events of 3:06 "Progeny" but before 3:07 "Common Ground."
Special thanks to Kassandra Black who reads everything I write before it comes anywhere near ffnet these days :)
A short note about the style this story will be written in: 1,000-word vignettes following Eva Vasir's journeys with the people of Atlantis.
Note to my 'Memories' readers: I'm not abandoning that story, and this one shouldn't affect the update schedule of the other. The chapters here are short and sweet vignettes (whereas Kaidan likes to do his Kaidaning thing that's so adorably frustrating).
Disclaimer: I don't own SG:A or any of its wonderful characters.
Enjoy! -quantumparadigm
-E-
Never Surrender
The tracking device is what makes a Runner. It is implanted in the back, near the second thoracic vertebrae, to prevent the victim from reaching and removing it himself. With the device, the Wraith are seemingly able to locate a Runner anywhere in the Pegasus Galaxy.
-E-
Eva Vasir stepped out of the ring of the ancestors and assessed the scorched landscape in front of her, a small frown creasing her brow. The Wraith had clearly visited this planet within the past few years - and burned it to the ground. That meant there wouldn't be people, which meant that for the next day or so, she was safe.
As safe as Runner could ever be. Which, if she was honest with herself, wasn't very. But on an unpopulated planet, all she had to worry about were the Wraith hunting her instead of angry villagers with shotguns and torches. As soon as most people found out what she was, they turned a cold shoulder. And that was considered polite. She could handle the Wraith.
She quickly darted away from the ancestral ring, and stole a glance at the sky, marking the position of the sun. Come nightfall, she wanted to be at least 10 miles out. Preferably with a canyon or a cliff between her and the ancestral ring. Or better yet, a mountain. The land appeared to be hilly, covered with half-dead trees that had somehow managed to survive the razing imposed by the Wraith, struggling to hold onto the thin string of life left to them, but she didn't see a mountain on the horizon - in any direction. She'd settle for a canyon. Though if worse came to worst, she could always climb a tree.
This might be a good place to hole up for a few days, maybe set up a sort of outpost. Provided she found the right location, she could even start a cache. She had a few on other planets, but had been forced to abandon them in recent months. Abandoned planets made the best hiding places, especially abandoned planets with little to no oddities. Like the last one she'd attempted to seek haven on. The potency of the sun had forced her to flee when the Wraith had eventually arrived in force.
That was a damn shame. She'd found a cave that had provided excellent shelter from the rays during the daytime, and the vegetation had been plentiful.
About 5 miles from the ancestral ring she came across the remnants of a village. Burnt tent husks littered the ground, mixed in with broken pottery and old clothes. Eva stepped over the remnants of a wooden fence and into the village proper. She scrunched her nose as the smell of stale, burnt wood assaulted her senses. She moved through the settlement, searching for a suitable place to hole up in the night.
The sun was already beginning to set, which surprised her. The cycles on this planet must be fairly rapid considering it had seemingly been late afternoon the last time she'd checked the position of the sun. She thought she'd have at least another hour to put more distance between herself and the ring. But since that wasn't the case, it was better to find a place to hunker down now, in a place that offered shelter, somewhere where she could set a fire and actually eat cooked food.
Too bad the food was packaged dry food intended to last a long time, meant for military use. The colony that had given her the supply had only been too happy to see her go.
Once she'd devoured her small meal, she stamped out the fire. The warmth was certainly welcome, but she didn't want to alert anyone who might visit this forsaken planet of her presence. It may be abandoned by a local population, but that didn't mean that bandits and raiders wouldn't use this place as base of operations. Rather, it increased the chances that any humans she encountered would be more than willing to kill her for the clothes on her back.
And free her from the Wraith. Sometimes, she thought about the sweet release death would provide. No more running. No more waiting. Just... finality, and peace. She closed her eyes, letting out a deep breath. The idea of freedom was intoxicating.
But then the Wraith would only choose a new target, someone else to entertain them for their twisted pleasures. Training, target practice, study. Someone else to endure the pain and hardship she'd suffered for the past 12 years. Someone who might not be as good as her, which would only lead to more victims of this sick game where the Wraith cheated as they hunted her down mercilessly, day after day, until the weeks blurred into months, which in turn faded into years. Now over a decade later, the only thought that kept her moving and not simply succumbing was that by continuing to evade them, she staved off the creation of other Runners.
Whether or not it was true didn't matter in the end because in the end everyone hunted by the Wraith died. The parties that hunted her had gradually grown larger over the years, as if they'd come to expect her to fight - and pressed all the harder to see her fail.
She would never give them the satisfaction. If she was going to die, she would do it on a Wraith hive and take out the whole ship full of bastards with her.
She tossed on the ground, hugging her arms near the embers of the campfire. Fat chance of ever cornering the Wraith on their own ship while she still had the device in her spine. Though one day... she could dream. Futile as it may be, pointless as it most certainly was, because she'd already learned to accept the fate dealt to her.
She was a Runner.
Nothing was going to change that. Certainly not wishes and fanciful musings. She forced the thoughts out of her mind. Wishing for her life to be different wouldn't make her situation any better, nor would it change the fact that she was what she was.
It was time to focus on reality. She couldn't afford to do otherwise.
