A.N.: First of all, I guess I owe all of you an apology for updating so late. I must admit that it's partly my fault. Sorry. Thanks to everyone who reviewed so far. As I said, Hatari's secret (which will be the main topic for the rest of the story) will be revealed in this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own SGA or any of it's characters, but I own Hatari.

III – Revelation

The sound of birds singing woke her gently from her sleep. Wind rustled through the needles of the tree's branches above her, pulling sleep back into her eyes. Frowning, she forced her eyes open.

It was a mistake.

The corpse next to her was wrinkled and distorted. Its eyes stared at her with an expression of blame and horror. Shrieking, she sat up and crouched away backwards, just to find her hand stuck in another corpse. Quickly, she withdrew the hand again and looked at it. Another scream rippled from her throat.

---

Lorne was in her bedroom within a second. In the last days he had come to spend with her, he had noticed that none of her few hours of rest passed without nightmares. But she had never reacted with a high-pitched scream like that one.

She was curled up between the copper pillows – a colour of her favourite – as he knew by now. Her eyes focused on nothing in particular and the bleakness in them sent shivers down his spine. Carefully, he reached for her fists.

The punch hit him faster than he had imagined, but she had only hit his arm and so he recovered quickly. Nevertheless, she seemed to possess a strength he had not yet noticed at all.

"Easy, Hatari! Take it easy!" He tried to console her as best as he could, before approaching her again. "It's just us. You don't have to worry."

"Lorne?" Her voice was thin, almost shaky, but at least it was a word.

"Marcus." He corrected on a sigh. "How often do I have to tell you that you can just call me by my first name?" A weak smile slid across her face, before she reached for the gloves on the bedside table. He had never, except for that moment of course, seen her without them, he noticed, but right at the moment, he didn't bother. "Are you alright again?"

"Yes, yes." She got up quickly, set the mess of her hair in some proper form again and followed him out of the room. "I suspect you have found something of interest?"

Immediately, Lorne's face lit up again. "That too. Remember the radio signal you sent when you were on the surface?"

"Of course." She muttered and she also remembered that she had had a hell of a time fighting all the Wraith that had been waiting for her. Usually, her visits to the upper levels were restricted to the very quick search for food and water. But this time, she had spent a whole eight minutes up there to install that damn transmitter, so his people could see he was still alive – given they were somewhere in the orbit. Until now, she had clearly doubted it.

"That's a coded signal from the Daedalus!" He pointed at the monitor in her computer room, where a strange script played on screen.

"That doesn't look familiar to me."

"It's a special script from Earth." He chuckled at her puzzled look. "It's called stenographic. I took a course in it. They know that I understand it."

"While the Wraith don't." She finished. "Okay, so what does it say?"

He scrolled through all of it again, hesitating at certain points. Apparently, he had taken the course, but couldn't remember all of it. "They say they are in orbit, but they can't get me beamed out of here when I'm beneath the surface, because of the magnetic shield. They are waiting to pick up my radio signal again.

"Which means that you will just have to go to the surface, say "beam me up" and hope that none of the hundreds of thousands of Wraith out there are hungry." Frowning, she left the room again to pace quietly from one end of her flat to the other. It was by far the most depressing news of the past week to her.

"You don't have to come with me, although I don't want to leave you here." Lorne mentioned, as he leaned back against the door's frame. "Listen, Hatari, they will not reject you, don't you understand that?"

"No, you don't understand!" She spat back teary eyed when she turned around to him. They had been arguing about that for days now and he still didn't get it. "You don't know anything about me-"

"You saved my life, nearly giving yours, you enabled me contact to my people again and you have kept me company quite well for the last week, so what? What the hell is it that I don' know about you and that could be so important?"

She frowned, sighed and in the end decided to leave it to ending that argument without a reasonable compromise. The way they worked together now, they were not going anywhere. None of them. "You will see." She knew it was no satisfying answer and his ironic smile in response only confirmed that. Summoning all her strength, she took another breath. "But first, I want a kiss."

"Excuse me?" The confusion was easy to hear in his voice. Where there had been rage or frustration before, the simple lack of understanding now leaked through.

"You got me right, Marcus. I want a kiss. After that, I'll give you the codes and you can type your way up to the surface while I keep you from meeting any unfriendly visitors. Believe me: That's the easiest way. I will have no other choice but to show you then."

Lorne wanted to argue, but he too had come to realise that this only cut his chances of ever getting off that darn planet again. Besides, it was just a kiss, so why bother? "If I end up without getting the answer to my questions and you dead, I will hate you for eternity." He half-joked, half-explained. Grinning at the weary smile she gave him, he crossed the room, caught her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers.

For someone who was that desperate to get a kiss, she acted quite surprised and unprepared. He could feel the passion, the longing, the mere need clawing at her, but her movements taught him that she was either a total newbie – which he already considered ridiculous when looking at her body – or an extremely bad kisser. Either way, he was glad they had finally found something that could replace a never-ending argument.

She broke the kiss and swallowed for air frantically. Another little smile sneaked upon her lips. "Okay… here we go." She left the room through the door to the computer area, but returned quickly with a small console in her hands. "Here are the codes. Let's get going."

---

By the time they had worked themselves up to the last sub-level, all Lorne could feel anymore was the urgent wish to wake up and tell himself that it had been a dream and nothing of this was real. He himself was as good as unharmed, apart from the fact that his lungs burned like fire from all the running, jumping, climbing, evading. He didn't even want to know how Hatari felt now. Hatari…

He turned around to search for her, but couldn't make out anything in the darkness. It had already taken him three levels to get used to ignoring all the snarls and screams from the Wraith around them. Or those of Hatari. He considered it a wonder she could still fight as if nothing had happened.

"What are you waiting for?" She punched his shoulder lightly as she stepped out of a darker passage next to him. It nearly made him shriek, but as she had expected, he recovered quickly from the shock.

"Oh my goddess, you really-" Within a second, his face went blank again. Eyes widening in utter astonishment, Lorne reached for her right cheek. "Hatari, how…? The last time I saw you, you had a hell of a scratch on your face!" He roamed her body shortly, wincing when she noticed that her wounds seemed to be gone. "Hatari, who or what are you?"

She actually wanted to yell at him and tell him to go on typing in the damn codes, for she could already hear and feel nearly a dozen of Wraith approach them, but he was right. She owed him an answer. A weak smile covered her thin lips. "You know what…" She took his left hand carefully and let her right fist rest in it. The gloves were off, he noticed quickly. "The reason I wanted you to kiss me." Slowly, she unclenched her fist in his warm hands. "I didn't want to die never having kissed a guy. No one would ever dare doing it." Finally, her hand lay open in his. The claw like fingers felt cold against his skin, the slit on her palm was clearly visible, despite all the blood.

"Oh my god!" It was all he managed, paralysed by – what? Fear? Astonishment? He couldn't tell. His gaze was fixed on the ivory hand. It made sense. The colour of her eyes, her skin, the healing, the strength… "You are a Wraith yourself."

"Half-Wraith." She insisted. "My mother was perfectly human. She was a worshipper long ago, but when they told her to kill me, she got some sense knocked into her. She ran away and taught me to value and honour all human life above the one of a Wraith. I usually prefer to feed on Wraith instead of humans."

Slowly, understanding dawned inside him. "The Wraith corpse Martins and Hyde found…"

"Was my lunch." She gritted her teeth in a smile, showing the sharp vampire-like edges to him, before she erased it just as quickly. "They are coming." She closed her eyes to focus, then fletched her teeth again. "Go on, Marcus! Type in those damn codes!"

Next to her, Lorne kept standing still for another moment, trying to put some order into the chaos of thoughts in his head. A Wraith, no Half-Wraith. He had been living with a Half-Wraith for almost a week! Shoving shock, disgust and fear aside, he went to open the last door. Wraith or not, he had to get out of that hellhole before all was over.

The first scream reached his ear, while he entered the password. It was definitely the one of a Wraith, though he wasn't entirely sure anymore, if it couldn't have been one of Hatari either. Pushing that idea away, too, he went for the first code.

The stunner blast hit his right arm, causing him to cry out in pain. He had been hit by those things before, but he couldn't recall them to be THAT painful. Numbness spread from the spot down to his fingers, effectively keeping him from entering the second half of the code. In a quick move, Lorne evaded the second blast that would have knocked him out.

In the corridor to the left, Hatari kept sucking the life out of the Wraith that had just hit her with its stunner. It felt good to have the stiffness fade at least for a moment. There was no time to enjoy though. In the shadows not far away from Lorne, she could feel the presence of another group of younger Wraith.

Lorne. Marcus.

She ran back through the halls as quick as she could, but still careful not to trip across the corpses of all the Wraith she had fed upon. The awkward pain crept back into her body again, when another blast hit her right in the back.

She stumbled forward and crashed straight into him. Balance was lost and they fell to the ground without the slightest chance of catching themselves. Her head hit the concrete with a loud bang and sent the angels singing in her mind.

Lorne landed quite inconveniently on his right arm, secretly thanking the Wraith that had stunned him that it hadn't hit his left – and still working – arm. The console had shattered on the ground and now lay in pieces. That was the bad news. After a quick gaze at his left and right, he turned to Hatari for the codes. "Wake up, sweetheart, we still need your head."

"What…" Her voice was nothing more but slow muttering in the dark. He could tell she was dazed, probably even shocked. His hands felt wet on the back of her head and he wasn't really surprised to find them bloody. Frowning, she sat up slowly and tried to get rid of the Wraith voices in her head. Silence. All she wanted was damn, freaking silence. "5563902". She murmured slowly, just loud enough for him to hear. Immediately, she heard him rush to the panels.

Another stunner blast knocked her down just as she had managed to stumble back onto her own two feet. What was left of her pain dissolved into sheer fury. Those damn bastards. They would regret that soon enough.

"I've got the second code!" Lorne shouted from the panel. "Hatari, the last code!"

"41175784-" She stopped abruptly and launched forward as if she was hunting down her prey. Her hand gripped his jacket only moments before the stunner blast went right into the control panel. She drew him back quickly, but held his stumbling weight easily in the vertical line. "Ah, damn it, get out of the line. I'm doing this."

Unwilling to believe that he had just heard the typical hissing of a Wraith in her voice, Lorne stepped aside quickly. He couldn't remember her talking like this at any time. She was definitely pissed. And he hoped by any deity in this world that it wasn't himself who her anger was aimed at. Quietly, the doors slid open in front of him. The last passage. The last obstacle.

"You want to wait until they feed on you?" Her voice sounded perfectly cold again, as she grabbed for his jacket again and dragged him through the corridors. "I haven't brought you all the way here to have us end up like that." When they reached the surface, her senses went red alert again. Wraith. More than just a dozen. Perfectly great. Muttering a curse in her father's language, she pushed Lorne out into the open fields. "Get that damn signal up to your people!"

"Don't have to tell me twice." A smile on his face, Lorne picked up his radio and activated the transmitter, sending a signal right into orbit. The device crackled softly, then made a loud beep and turned almost silent. Almost.

"Major?"

"Nice to hear your voice, Colonel. Now beam us up. We're two. Me and the life signal closest to mine. Rush!" He turned to look at Hatari and the look on her face pierced right through his heart. Apparently, she was fed up with the good old argument.

"Lorne, are you-" Her moves were quick, but not quick enough for both of them. Leaving the other Wraith unnoticed, she jumped next to him, blocking his body with hers as the Wraith behind him fired its last ammunition at them. She had forgotten they still had some of the earthlings' weapons up on the surface from the two they had killed. Hot metal burned into her back and made her scream from pain. A Wraith scream, cruel enough to scare not only him, but her, too. Trying to ease the pain, she clung closer to him. Then, there was the blackness of nothing.

---

They arrived right on the bridge of the Daedalus. She still clung to him, now shivering from the pain that seeped through her body. It was over. Giving into the darkness, she opened her hands and slid to the ground.

Lorne had barely had a few seconds to notice what was going on. They pointed their weapons at him, or better yet: at her, even though she now lay on the ground, blood dripping from her wound and her half open mouth, eyes widened in fear, her body shivering frantically as she gulped for air. "Hatari!" He knelt down next to her and heard the others release the safety catches. "For God's sake, take down those damn weapons!" He shouted and was surprised to find himself that furious in one moment and helpless in the other. Guilt. Yes, that was the best way to describe it. It was his fault that she was lying there, as good as dead. "Hatari…" He cradled her head with one hand, while taking her right hand in the other. "Call a medical team, damn it!"

"I'm beyond human forms of healing." She replied with the weakest voice he had ever heard since he had watched Martins die.

"Then we'll try it the non-human way." He ripped his jacket open and her eyes widened immediately. Not in joy, as one would have thought, but in pure fear. "You saved my life more than once." Releasing her hand, he tore his shirt at the neckline. "Let me save yours."

"Marcus, don't! Please don't!"

"Major Lorne, get out of the line!" He heard Caldwell shout from behind, but it barely mattered now. Taking a last deep breath, he caught her right hand again and gazed at her teary eyes, before setting it onto his chest. Her claws dug into him, drawing his life power immediately. When pain became too strong, he ripped her hand off his chest again. The wounds were clearly visible on his chest. Her breath had turned down to a slightly less alerting level, but the tremors still ran through her body. "COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE CALL THE MEDS?!"