Disclaimer in chapter 1.

A/N: Thank you so much for your kind comments. I appreciate any and all feedback!!! Onward ho!

They Call Me Suzuki - Chapter 3

by Deichtine

Thank god for Dr. McKay. He saw me trying to get away while simultaneously trying to huddle further into the protection of Carson's hands, and he peremptorily pushed the crowd away and grabbed me from the doctor, returning me to his coat with one hand as he shooed the onlookers away with the other.

"This being an international, no, intergalactic, top-secret research base under strict deadlines, I'm sure you all have WORK to DO!" he snapped. "Or maybe you've forgotten that we're leaving to go back to Atlantis in only two weeks."

One by one, reluctantly, the crowd dispersed, but I didn't fully relax. I couldn't help but think of the way a Toothed-Maw - the chief enemy of my kind - protected its kill from the others of its pack.

"I'll see what I can do. Why don't you bring him on down." Carson had a fairly decent little infirmary set up here at the research station, though of course nowhere near what he had back at the city of the ancient ones.

Rodney followed Carson through the halls, snarling at anyone who seemed too curious about what he was carrying under his coat, and when we reached the infirmary, Beckett led the way into a small private room and closed the door, and Rodney took me from his coat and set me down in the middle of the big, soft exam table.

It was the first time since he'd found me that one or the other of them hadn't been holding or touching me somehow, and even though it had only been a short time since he'd found me, I felt alone and vulnerable. The surface I was on was foreign too; white like the snow I knew so well, dry yet yielding, bouncy and hard to stand upon. My young wings outstretched for balance, I wavered a few times, a few steps, and abruptly fell forward. McKay laughed, but it wasn't a threatening sound, and set me upright again, then placed a folded up towel around me to help support me.

Beckett was pulling a second skin over his hands, which was horrifying; the gloves fit so well they had to come from one of his own kind. What kind of creatures were these? Despair shot through me.

But nothing happened. Beckett simply felt my body gently with his hands. After a moment I was able to see the substance on his hands clearly enough to tell that it was not skin after all, but some kind of...made stuff. McKay disappeared briefly while this was happening, and when he returned, he was carrying something that looked strange - some kind of paste in a flat round can - but smelled delicious. He set it down beside me, but every time I tried to bend down to it, I fell down again on the flat surface. This, of course, led to both of them dissolving into peals of laughter, complete with water in their eyes, but after a couple of tries, Carson found a small fork, and bit by bit, they fed me the fish until I could eat no more.

Had they killed me then, I would have died happy.

I stayed with them, and soon learned not to fear when they picked me up, or produced some other new tool or strange thing. Beckett even put me under some strange buzzing machines, and one time poked me for some reason with a long, sharp thing (a "needle"), but did it so gently, so carefully, that I didn't even feel it.

I seldom saw any other humans, and at first I wasn't really curious about why; I was happy the way it was. But eventually I realized that they were deliberately shielding me from the others, whether it was to hide me from them or to protect me from them I'm not sure, though it amounted to the same thing.

Having gotten past the worst of my brush with a cold death on the ice, I soon began to find the human settlement too warm. McKay and Beckett started turning the heat down in the lab for me as much as they could, though McKay never stopped complaining loudly about cold suppressing the immune system and the dangers of hypothermia. Beckett, of course, paid him no mind, and soon I learned to do the same. As time passed, I gradually began to understand some of their words. First came their names, then the name they had given to me - Soo-zoo-kee. Then other words for the things around us; "cold", "lab", "tuna", "tribal magic". This last was, according to Dr. McKay, Beckett's specialty, though every time it was mentioned Carson would simply shake his head and roll his eyes. Rodney's specialty was "physics", or maybe "science". I'm still not sure exactly what those mean.

Soon I was being left alone more and more, and eventually I was able to put together from overheard conversation that Rodney and Carson would be leaving soon to return home to some place called "Atlantis" and they were rushing to get everything ready to go. This revelation filled me with dread. What would happen to me when they went? Would they send me back out into the cold and snow to survive on my own? Would they try to return me to the flock? My parents' flock would never accept me; I knew that. I was a stranger now, and lone ones, especially males, were never allowed to join a flock - usually they were alone because their own flock had rejected them.

Or would they give me to the other humans? The ones with the hungry eyes and high voices? I would rather have taken my chances on the ice.

But then one evening Dr. McKay came into the lab where I was living, sat down in a chair, wrapped a blanket around himself, and picked me up. He placed me in his lap and began to stroke me lightly, his hand moving from my head all the way down my back. It was a lovely feeling, and instinctively I raised my head into his head.

"Not a cat, but you'll do," he mused. We sat there silently for a few moments, just enjoying the contact. He seemed unusually tired. "We're working almost around the clock to get everything done before we have to head back to Atlantis. I'm almost finished my work with the power systems, but Carson's still mired in plague tissue samples."

I nuzzled his hand again, feeling my soft down catch on the callouses on his fingers.

"I don't know what we're going to do with you, little guy," he said, and abruptly I stilled, listening hard. "I've been asking around the biology people and we can't send you back to the others." Part of me was relieved to know that he knew that; another part was still anxious to hear what he did plan to do. "We can't send you to a zoo, for obvious reasons." Whatever that was. "So what do we do? I don't trust these bumbling idiots" he waved his hand as if to encompass the entire research camp, "with you, that's for sure."

I looked up at him and asked him, "Don't you want me any more?" Of course, he didn't understand, and just patted my head with a sigh.

"Don't worry, I'll think of something."

TBC