Title: Not To Have or To Hold
Chapter: 1 – Prologue
Part: 1/?
Rating: M
Warnings: AU world, violence, angst galore, some scenes of a sexual nature, threat to character lives and so forth.
Disclaimers: I earn no money from this, I write only for pleasure. I own no part of the Stargate world, only the characters that I create for myself.
Spoilers: Set in established AU world, set in equivalent time as late season 3 – around the time of the episode "Sunday".

Note: Many apologies for the massive delay between the last fic and this one. Real Life has been dramatic, full of change and times of difficulty, through which this fic has slowly been created over the last 8 months. But it is finally here, completely written and so editing and posting is all that is required, but this is a large fic. I only hope there are still readers out there, and that Atlantis fic is still being created and read. I have been very lapse in reading others' fic myself (for the various Real Life reasons) but promise I will catch up as and when I can. Long may SGA live in the hearts of its fans.

Note2: I will do my best to get chapters out as quickly as possible. What I can promise is that this fic will contain angst, arguing, tears, Genii plotting, a wedding, a massive space battle, angst, space stations, killer robots, an unsuccessful fishing trip, angst, C4, John swearing, and did I mention there may be some angst? You have been warned.
To get the story started, here are three chapters for this evening...

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Chapter 1 – Prologue

The Second World Named Pelydr

The rag was a heavy wet presence over her face, a recognised object but unseen. Its wetness released drips of chilled moisture down her face, the sensation strong, but yet distant, surreal.

"She is lost deep in the fever," a voice drifted in from beyond the wet rag, known yet also distant and ill defined...

The images and feelings were too much and drew her swiftly back into the raging overlapping torrent of moments. The memories of times to come were too overwhelming, demanding all of her consciousness.

And her consciousness was already stretched it to its fullest, to the point of breaking apart entirely.

As one watched moment overwhelmed and demanded her focus and attention, another formed to overlap it, the simultaneous moments existing together. She felt all in both and they warred with one another, conflicted and consumed her. No peace, no focus came, for another moment arrived, demanding, spewing its reality upon her.

A fire was burning before her, the echoes of other memories informing more of what she saw. It was a fire, but not of wood or cloth, but an atmosphere devouring itself. High above it, dark ships hovered, watching, causing. Lifeless human bodies floated in the vacuum around their dull hulls, the corpses bouncing off spinning broken pieces of destroyed ships, burning, all burning.

"She will not drink..."

Air blew across her face and before her light was sparkling over a strange coloured ocean, as a child ran across bright grass. She watched a building rise, built by many hands from the ashes of a lost world. A man crying, tears running down his sculpted tattooed cheek. A bird bursting through brush on a planet from another galaxy, a Wraith's hand twitching as it fell, opposing eyes staring at one another, trees exploding into eternal darkness, shouts and cries...

"Her heart, it cannot take this. We must do something..."

A babe's first cries, a man's last breath, a woman's final tears, and a warrior's passionate battle. Pain, loss, hope, and death.

Only, a sudden movement of light broke through the sensory barrage. It was enough to distract her expanded consciousness for a moment, drawing her back to her own physical, temporal body.

A sound registered close by, clothing moving closer, yet it could not hold her. Too quickly she was falling back into the dragging pull of the images, the feelings of times too immeasurable.

Sunlight streaking across a battlefield, the discarded bodies baking in the heat. A friend's final warm tight embrace. A man's tortured face, his long hair matted with blood as long fangs buried into the vulnerable turn of his throat.

"Sitayi!" A voice cut through all her distress in a single clear moment; the voice new and so emotionally imbued for her that its sound broke through barriers to reach her.

A soft touch brushed against her skin, the voice as soothing as the wet chill of the rag as it was pulled away.

"Hear me, Sister," the voice repeated.

Her sister.

Which reminded Sitayi of the Athosian sisters, and the moments flooded forward once more. The Athosian sisters leading victory, leading defeat, the skies burning. The tall spires of the Ancient City of the Ancestors, its walls burning, tears flowing, stars breaking apart.

"I will call the Elder Healer," another voice was heard, its anxiety pulling at Sitayi' awareness. Someone was ill. She needed to help. She could not stay hidden away.

A hidden unseen Wraith, not what it appeared to be, even to its own.

Elkaska shouting, reaching towards her with sweaty, blood-stained hands. "When will it end, Sitayi?" He shouted. Reaching up towards him, she tried to grasp his hand, but her body was falling away from him under the strongest of pulls, gravity unstoppable, just like the twisting turning leaves falling.

Leaves falling down upon a grave, an Athosian grave. Athosians weeping...the first of the great fallen.

They would fall like leaves afterwards...after his death.

"His death," she gasped, understanding with sudden, almost divine clarity that it would be his death that would decide it all.

"Who's, Sitayi'?" Sister's voice called. Sitayi' own blood sister, here at her side.

"We need a healer, now," the other voice argued.

"She is not sick," Sister objected. "It is a viewing of turning futures; she is lost in the convergence. It will pass."

"A Convergence is only myth," the other voice objected.

"No," Sister replied softly as the wet cool rag pressed once more over Sitayi' skin. "It is very real. A major convergence of possible futures is occurring. Which future will manifest remains undecided and so it is too much upon her, there are too many potentials. She is living in too many possible futures at once. It is only once the way forward forms that she will stabilise. Until then, she sees it all, lives it all. All that could be..."

And it all burned. Ancient twisted ships, killing, destroying.

The falling Elite leaves, falling to the burning Athosian ground, burning away to nothing. A reborn man, his green eyes lost, a family destroyed, and the Alliance devoured, taking a distant people's future with it into death.

All beginning at that first death.

The first leaf to fall.

The first of the Great Elite to die.

If only he would not fall.

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TBC