So this is my first Stargate Atlantis fanfic and it's been a story I've been mulling over for a while. I'm just finally writing it down. So enjoy and let me know what you think.
Chapter One:
Emma's POV
It was raining, hard. She was soaked and had been lost for three days on another planets version of a rain forest. She was tired, cold and very annoyed. It wasn't the fact that she was lost; it was who she was lost with. She had only been a part of the Atlantis exposition into the Pegasus galaxy for a short time and in that short time she had learned who was good in a crisis and who wasn't. Unfortunately she was with one of the few who was not very gracious during a difficult situation. Dr. Peter Kavanagh was a brilliant man, but he was also arrogant and just plan obnoxious. He had very little respect for other scientist especially if they were women and he made no bones about voicing it. He seemed to have taken an even stronger dislike to her which wasn't really surprising considering what her job entitled. She was an investigator of sorts and also a scientist. Being a forensic archaeologist had its challenges and a lot of people were sometimes weird out when they found out what she did. She really didn't care what others thought, she loved the puzzles of her field, and she loved field work. She was young but also considered one of the top in her field which was why certain people took notice. She was good, very good, to good and this rubbed people the wrong way including her current companion.
They had been sent on a scientific exposition to check out why a thriving civilization had suddenly disappeared. Three months before an Atlantis team had made contact with a group of people who had proven to be good trading partners. Then just as suddenly they seemed to have vanished leaving behind everything. That was where she came in. Her job as a forensic archaeologist was to go in, find evidence of what had happened, study evidence and if need be search for mass graves. Thankfully there had been no evidence of that just people suddenly gone. Dr. Kavanagh on the other hand had been sent in to study a power fluctuation that had been detected and the theory was it had caused the disappearance. She had disagreed; she had seen this before in a village in Africa. The UN had sent her in to investigate only to discover they had left the village because of increasing lion attacks and she had found evidence of that two miles outside of the village. It had not been pretty, but that was her job. Kavanagh had not liked being challenged which was why they had been put together on this mission. Dr. Weir 's thought was that if she sent them together that Kavanagh might be taught team work and humility?! They only thing she was going to teach if was how to fly off a cliff. Normally she was very tolerant of people but three days with him alone was enough to make her wish she had the conscience to leave him but that voice in her head told her otherwise.
"You're not even listening to me are you?!" Kavanagh interrupted her thoughts as they stopped in a clearing.
"No I tuned you out two days ago." She stated simply which earned her a sigh of disgust.
"This is not the way back to the stargate you know. If you would listen to me would be there by now." He grabbed her arm and spun her around. "It's this way." He said as he started to drag her back the way they had just come. She dug her heels in and jerked her arm away from his grasp.
"Listen to you?" She questioned hotly. "I have been listening to you for three days. Three days!" She poked a finger in his face to get her point across. "I'm done listening to you. In fact if I hadn't listened to you in the first place we wouldn't even be lost. So do us both a favor and shut it." He opened his mouth to argue with her but she held her hand up to stop him. "I dare you to say one word, just one." She glared at him daring him to say something which he thought better of and seemed to back off. She knew she had a scary temper but when you grew up with six older brothers you had to learn to be feisty to survive. Being a red head did not help either it was one of her down falls. She quickly turned away and started to the closest and highest tree and started to climb. Her idea was to climb as high as she could so that she could see the area and maybe find the stargate. She had done this on several occasions in the last three days and her mission was met with distain, again. She was about three fourths the ways up and trying not to slip on the wet when he shouted up to her.
"That's not going to work. You keep trying that and it doesn't work. You're not going to find the gate that way." She was getting really tired of his negative responsive and thought briefly about dropping something on his head. Instead she shouted down.
"At least it's better than walking in circles." She hiked herself up a few more inches and then stopped. Kavanagh shouted up to her when he heard her stop.
"Why did you stop, did you see something?"
"Quiet." She hissed down at him.
"You know I'm getting a little tired…" He started to say.
"Will you please, stop talking? Someone is coming." That got his attention as he looked up at her.
"What should I do?"
"Hide."
"Why?"
"Or don't, at this point I don't really care." She could hear him muddle something just as the jungle seem to come alive around them. She could hear her companion panic and dive for cover below the tree. She was basically clinging to the very slippery tree and praying it wasn't a wild animal or worse. Whatever had caused the village to disappear could very well be close by. She managed to wrap her legs and arms around a branch and hung there as whatever came out of the foliage and entered the clearing. Voices and they sounded familiar. She breathed a sigh of relief when she recognized the voices as the team she had originally come with. Finally help had arrived.
"I'm telling you my money is on Dr. Brennan. She's a feisty little thing and I don't see her putting up with Dr. Kavanagh for very long." The voice of Lt. Reed filtered through the trees. Reed was close to her age, very friendly and had introduced himself the first day she had arrived. He reminded her of her youngest brother Ben and the two of them had become fast friends. He would tell her about his girlfriend back home and she would talk about her childhood growing up in a foster home with six older foster brothers. It was nice to have someone to talk too when one was so far from home.
"I don't know Reed, Kavanagh could talk a bird into flying into a wall." Andrews added clearly not aware of what was above them in the tree. She started to shout down when another voice added to the discussion.
"Okay boys, let's focus on finding our wayward scientist and get back to the gate." Great it was him and his team. The one person she had been trying to avoid and it wasn't that she didn't like him; she did a little too much. It was the fact they had met once before a and he hadn't remembered her, but boy she had remembered him and how he had gotten her team out of a very tight spot in Africa about ten years ago. Needless to say it hadn't been her shining moment. She had just decided to shimmy down the tree when suddenly a yell came from beneath her at the base of the tree. She could hear weapons being drawn and the shifting of boots below.
"Oww, Kavanagh it's us. Are you trying to get shot?" Reed asked him.
"I thought you were something else. She kept saying something else might be out there." The doctor sounded almost panicky.
"What do you mean something?" Major Lorne asked and Kavanagh pointed up in the tree where she was.
"Ask her." She looked down to see four different faces looking up at her.
"You okay up there Doc.?" The Major asked with a look of amusement, just what she needed for him to take her as a joke.
"Yup." She answered.
"Hey Red what are you doing up there anyway?" Reed asked her.
"Oh, just getting a different prospective on things, you know taking in the scenery."
"I thought that maybe Kavanagh had driven you up the tree." Reed responded which earned him a glare from the opposing party.
"Hey, Doc you want to come down now so that we can take you home?" Lorne shouted up to her. She started to come down when all of a sudden a creature flew out at the branches at her. It looked to be a flying monkey-bird of sorts with some very sharp teeth. She screamed and covered her face which resulted in her letting go of the tree and falling. She was about four feet in the air before a vine caught her foot and she was suddenly hanging upside down in the tree.
"You have got to be kidding me!" She said as she hung there hanging back and forth.
"Hang in there doc, we're coming." Reed said and she thought she could hear a hint of laughter in her voice.
"Funny Reed, real funny."
"I told you not to go in the tree." Kavanagh responded starkly. Eyeing him as best as she could while hanging upside down she pointed at him.
"What did I tell you about talking?" She bit back as she reached up to unhook her foot.
"Let us help you there." Lorne said as he approached the tree just as her foot came lose and she fell the remaining distants from the tree and landing on her butt, hard.
She looked up and found Major Lorne reaching down and grasping her arm under her shoulder and pulling her to her feet.
"It seems to me that I'm always pulling you out of trouble Emma." He said with a teasing smile. Great, he really did remember her and here she was looking like a three day old drowned rat. What a great way to make an impression. Well at least it was somewhat better than last time. Maybe.
