Chapter Seven: Explanations: Part II

Author's Notes: This was partially inspired by the spoilered storyline for Identity (and the speculation around it on the Doctor and the Wildman thread on Gateworld), so parts may resemble that. I have not seen the episode, although I have seen pictures and read parts of the transcript.

The italics are the present tense (and are in third person POV). The normal text is Jennifer talking (and so they are in first person POV). Thanks to everyone who reviewed! :)

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At the end of the prescribed half hour, the group trickled back into the conference room. Woolsey was already waiting when Evan escorted Neeva back into the room. John and Teyla followed; Jennifer, Ronon, Kiryk, and Laura entered soon after. Rodney was the last to return and did not pause to look about the room as he headed straight for his original seat; as they'd all returned to the chairs they'd left. Squirming slightly in her chair as everyone's attention had returned to her, Jennifer straightened her shoulders and began again,

"They kept me in that cell for about a week, maybe a day or so more, until their," Here she swallowed hard, shuddering. Obvious distress played out over her features, and sent anxiety coursing through the rest who surrounded the table. Exhaling all the air from her lungs in one steady stream, she then pressed on, "Until their executioner returned from another village."

There wasn't much light in the cell, or in the room outside of it, so after the first couple of days, I stopped trying to guess what time of day it was. But I could still tell; it was morning when they came to get me. The sunlight was harsh and bright when I stepped out of the jail. They tied my hands together in front of me, and then I saw their leader again. Everyone I'd seen referred to him as the Magistrate. He planted hands on ample hips and stared at me with a sneer,

"It's time."

I was sandwiched between two men; one silent with a hood covering his head, and the other who I had seen before, bringing food into me a couple times a day. They led me through the forest by the hold each of them had on my arms. I was too scared to do anything more than stumble over any branch, root, or rock I came into contact with.

"Quit draggin' yer feet," One of them ordered roughly, "It ain't gonna save you."

That only made me freeze even tighter, and I could barely stand. The first man, the one who'd spoken before, gripped my arm tighter and shook me, "Pick yer damn feet up!"

My voice was shaking, and I could only speak in short, halted gasps, "Wh-why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?"

He sneered too, "A good place for the likes of you."

"Oh god, oh god," I muttered, not making the effort to continue the trudge through the woods. If we were headed into the woods for what I thought we were; I wasn't going to be helpful.

It wasn't long before we came to a small clearing in the forest. In the middle of it, was a hacked off stump, and my heart was in my throat the second I realized why it had such a place of purpose.

"No," I dug my heels into the ground, trying to gain some kind of footing in the soft mud, "No. You can't do this."

"Oh, really now?" One of the men who shadowed the Magistrate turned back from his coveted place at the Magistrate's right, with a glare that went right through me, "I think we can."

I was shaking hard enough for my teeth to rattle in my head when they drug me further into the clearing and shoved me to the ground beside the stump. My knees ached from landing against the gnarled roots of the stump that poked through the ground. Clenching my jaw, I forced myself to look up, and then regretted making the effort. Because if I hadn't; I wouldn't have seen him emerge from the other side of the clearing. He was a huge man; dressed in black, with even a dark cloth mask over his face. Ragged holes were cut in it for his mouth, nose, and eyes; and in his gloved hand he carried a long-handled axe, with a blade that actually reflected the bloody sunlight.

"It was so much like a scene from a movie that if I hadn't of been sure that I was going to die, I would have laughed," Tears were creeping up on her, as her eyes glistened and her gaze was turned to the table top. Her voice faded and she gnawed at her bottom lip, "I was terrified."

John had gotten to his feet part way through her description, unable to remain seated any longer; and instead settled for claustrophobic pacing in the midsized, oddly shaped room. Teyla's stomach had begun to churn.

Only the draw to stay beside her kept Ronon seated. His jaw was gritted, his fists were clenched; his entire body was practically vibrating with rage. She'd been kidnapped, swapped, imprisoned, and now they tried to kill her? A small, callused hand lay on his wrist and hauling in a deep breath; he managed to quash enough anger back to remain seated and refrain from smashing or shooting something. The only thing keeping him in place, besides her touch, was the fact that she was actually there and able to give it.

"They tried to behead me," She said hauntingly, and then her fear turned to anger, "Or rather," She turned flashing, incensed eyes on the thief who occupied her body, "They tried to cut off your head. With me in it!"

Neeva had the decency to look remorseful, "That wasn't supposed to happen. Us getting stuck, you getting captured, it wasn't supposed to happen. You were supposed to think it was some weird dream; I-I-I had a plan, a time limit. It was supposed to work."

"Obviously there was a flaw," John quipped, his voice tightly wound steel. Seated in front of him, Teyla was employing a regimented breathing technique to control the anger building within her. Laura was inches away from exploding; Evan's hands had lost all color from gripping the arms of his chair; Rodney gnawed at the inside of his mouth, one of his knees quivering under the table. Kiryk, having heard the story before, didn't doubt that it caused just as much grief to relate it again, and felt the familiar twist in his abdomen.

"Do you need a moment?" Woolsey asked carefully, his concern evident in his voice.

"No, no," Jennifer dissuaded after a moment, "I want to get this done. I—I want it to be over."

Kiryk's hand landed gently on her shoulder and she turned a near-tearful face to him. Their eyes connected, and a few tears slid from her eyes. Projecting encouragement with a simple look and touch; the bond between the two evident as Kiryk clearly, silently, asked her to continue.

"Whenever you feel you are able," Teyla offered quietly, the intuitive woman offering her support with expressive eyes.

Instead of answering, out of the corner of her eye from across the table, Jennifer saw Neeva lean forward and lift her elbow to the table top. Sighing miserably in a low, almost whispered tone, Neeva squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingers to her temples.

"Are you alright?" Jennifer found herself asking, reaching out to touch the arm that rested on the table. It was strange; to reach out to her own body, to see her body in discomfort. Even if there was another consciousness inhabiting it. It was the doctor in her that had her reaching out to the other woman; amateur body-snatcher or not.

Jennifer's attention to her had called the attention of the other; and Neeva hurried to cover. Despite her occupation, despite the reasoning behind the fact that she was sitting in a roomful of people she'd been hiding among for two months, in a body that didn't belong to her; she was still a woman in her own right. And the secret she kept now was one that she couldn't disclose to its rightful owner in such mixed company. The woman deserved that much. Neeva would have to carve out a moment in private to tell her. But for now, "Yeah, I just haven't had much to eat today."

"Hmm," Jennifer mumbled, and then looked over to McKay, knowing a way to fix such a problem, "Rodney, would you give her one of the power bars you have in your pocket?"

The mood in the room shifted, as Rodney immediately rooted through his breast pocket while a puzzled John had to ask, "How did you know he'd have power bars in his pocket?"

"Here it is!" Rodney announced, fishing a power bar from his pocket. Extending it across Laura seated beside him, he offered it to Neeva, "Uh, here, you go."

Sighing heavily, Neeva opened her eyes and lowered her hand from where she had been rubbing at her forehead, "Thank you," She mumbled, accepting the offered ration.

"How did I know Rodney had food on him?" Jennifer shook her head at John, her expression conveying that she hadn't thought he'd need to ask, "I'm a doctor John. I know how to keep patients with low blood sugar, or those who think they have low blood sugar, prepared in case of such an event."

"Ah," John concurred with a grin, "What was I thinking. Of course."

"How did you escape from the villagers?" Woolsey inquired, trying to bring the briefing back around on track. Jennifer opened her mouth to answer Mr. Woolsey's question, but a gruffly spoken question from Ronon stopped her, and set her in another direction,

"When they kept you in that cell," Ronon began, looking only to Jennifer, "Did they—did they treat you well? You weren't, they didn't," He trailed off, but Jennifer could see the wheels turning in his head, and immediately set out to put a stop to them,

"I was left alone for most of the time," Atop the table, Jennifer's borrowed hand still lay over his wrist, and she tightened her grip, "I saw someone maybe twice a day, when they brought me something to eat. They asked me questions at first, wanted me to tell them where the other two were, but after they figured out I didn't have anything that I could tell them; for the bulk of the time, I was on my own."

He breathed a tiny sigh of relief, feeling a fraction of tension relieved at her assurances. Still, much of it lingered, and a dip of his head encouraged her to continue with her explanations.

"No, please," I pleaded breathlessly, "You don't know what you're doing. Please, don't do this."

But I was ignored, and instead, the Magistrate pulled a rolled-up piece of paper from inside his coat, and began to read from it, "Neeva Casol, you are guilty of such crimes deemed to be heinous in nature; herein laid out to include…"

That was a far as he got, because suddenly the man in black dropped to the ground like a rock. He crumpled a few paces from me, and standing behind where he had been standing was Bordal; a stout piece of a log held aloft.

It all started to go so fast. Suddenly, the silent hooded man who had led me through the forest launched himself at the two dumbfounded and unsuspecting men near him; rendering them unconscious, and knocking their heads together for a finishing touch. The hood swept off his head as he moved, and Jannick's eyes gleamed as the two fell and Bordal knocked down another.

There were two left; the Magistrate and his shadow. I still knelt by the stump, and I saw the shadow-goon reach for the belt slung low over his hips and whatever was hidden behind his long coat. I didn't think about it; just moved as I fell onto my back and slammed my heel into the side of his knee, then swept his feet out from under him with my leg. He went down, and I rolled away, scrambling to get to my feet.

The Magistrate's eyes were darting around; from Bordal standing between the oversized man in black and another burly type who lay sprawled on the ground, to me crouched by the stump, to Jannick who, with a frightening smirk, pulled the knife from his boot and began to advance on him.

"You feelin' alright there Magistrate?" Jannick asked with obviously fake concern, still advancing with his knife drawn, "You're lookin' a mite pale."

Jannick stopped a few steps from the Magistrate who'd gone white and broken out into a sweat. A distinctive, deliberate snap from behind him caused the Magistrate to look away from Jannick and spin around. He found a smiling Bordal a step behind him, "Boo."

With a scream, the Magistrate set off for the forest at a dead run, and once he cleared the line of trees at the edge of the clearing, both Bordal and Jannick burst out laughing, "Boo," Jannick chuckled, "Classic."

He then turned towards me, and sobered almost instantly. I was still cowering beside the stump, and was once again frozen in place. Jannick's hand was still wrapped around the hilt of his blade as he approached, and he couldn't have missed the growing fear in my face, "Easy now. I ain't gonna cut you."

Trembling, my knees shook as I tried to stand; but my legs refused to straighten. Jannick stopped to stand directly in front of me, and bending down, he pulled my arms out from where I had them tucked as best I could to my sides. He then made quick work of sawing through the rope binding my wrists.

"C'mon," Bordal urged as I rubbed my now-freed, examining the marks the rope had left, "We gotta get moving before that old tub comes back with half the damn village," It didn't take him more than a few strides, and he was behind me; hoisting me to my feet by hands under my armpits, "We gotta get movin'."

"The caves ain't far from here," Jannick tucked his knife back into his boot and hiked his chin at the woods. Standing, he decided, "We can wait it out up there for a couple of days."

"It ended up being eight days," Jennifer informed them dryly, "Eight long days of being cooped up in a cave with Jannick and Bordal, until the villagers caught up with us. We ended up cornered; with no way back to the village or the caves. They decided that it would be better if we left through the gate, and then went back, in the middle of the night, when things had calmed down and we could sneak back into the village without the villagers catching us."

"But you didn't make it back to the village after that," John observed, now leaning behind Teyla with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

"No," Jennifer rubbed at her temples, rolled the balled muscles in her borrowed shoulders and sighed heavily, "No, we never made it back to the village. More caves on the new planet, for nearly a week and a half."

"Those two seem fond of caves," Evan remarked, trying to infuse a tiny bit of humor into the situation, and lighten the horribly tense situation, "They sleep hangin' upside down or something?" Truthfully, he just wanted to see her crack a grin.

His efforts were rewarded with a short snicker, "I probably couldn't have been more befuddled even if they had."

"Could be because caves and underground tunnels can throw off sensors and scanners," Rodney theorized, "There could have been some kind of magnetic charge that scrambles the signal, or just the rock face can sometimes make it hard for scanners to pick up signals."

"Basically," Neeva agreed under her breath. She wouldn't chance speaking louder. Then all their attention would be angrily focused on her again, and that she didn't want.

Jennifer nodded, ignoring the fact that Neeva had made a sound. Kiryk's hand no longer rested on her shoulder, but oddly his steady gaze had a calming effect on her. Ronon methodically drummed one finger on the tabletop, Jennifer's hand still resting on his wrist; that one touch keeping him seated and mildly contained.

It wasn't hard for Woolsey to see the exponential amount of tension saturating the room. Taking a deep breath, Atlantis' CO held it for a few beats before releasing it in one, continuous stream, and saying decidedly, "Why don't we leave it there for tonight? We'll pick this back up in the morning."