Chapter Eleven: Explanations Part: IV

Author's Notes: Hey! Here's chapter eleven! This one's a bit of a long one. Once it got started; it just kept going and going and going, until I finally had to cut it off.

Thanks to everyone whose read and reviewed! : )

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They'd all returned to their original chairs around the conference table. Each of them watched her, waiting for her words. It was unnerving and exhilarating all at the same time.

Laura smiled reassuringly at her; Evan gave her a salacious wink that would have made her grin at any other venture. John's steady gaze was comforting in an odd way; and Teyla somehow managed to project encouragement simply by looking at her. Woolsey was calm, cool, and collected; as was his way; even if he was teetering under the weight of all the mistakes and holes in protocols that had been pointed out within the last day and a half, and that too, was heartening. Rodney was avoiding her eyes, but that was something that she hoped could be remedied in time. Kiryk was a steady presence beside her, and knowing she had his support was comforting. And Ronon.

He was watching her again. And that shouldn't be comforting, that shouldn't be reassuring. But weirdly, strangely; from him it was. He was leaning his chin on his fist as he sat sideways in his chair. It was like he was hanging on her every word.

We went back to the cave, all four of us. While Kiryk hovered near the mouth of the cave; Jannick and Bordal tensely arranged themselves in spots where they could keep an eye on Kiryk. And then there was me; I settled nervously back where I usually sprawled on the cave floor.

"Alright, you were gonna explain what's going on here?"

It took some prodding; but Bordal, and eventually Jannick begrudgingly collaborated on my tale. As we talked on, Kiryk ventured further into the cave, and then back to the mouth of it. He eventually settled by the fire that was not far inside the cave, poking at it with a stick he'd picked up from the ground. Staring into the flames with a contemplative look on his face, he began,

"Let me get this straight," Kiryk gave a smoldering pocket of coals a good jab, "She's really Doc Keller, but her brain is in your cohort's body. And the cohort's brain is in her body?" He shook his head wonderingly, "Why would you even want to try that?"

Slumped in my spot, one booted foot flung out over the rocky cave floor; happy he was becoming a believer, but I had to add grumpily, "I was opposed to it from the beginning."

"Bordal and Jannick didn't really take to the idea of me leaving them, at first. There wasn't much they could do besides talk though. They weren't doing such an awesome job keeping me when it was just me, and now that Muscles had shown up," Jennifer grinned proudly, patting Kiryk on his exposed, wiry forearm, "I was so out of there."

It was probably a little paranoid, but instead of gating straight from wherever we were to Atlantis, we went somewhere else first.

"Why not just come straight back to Atlantis?" Rodney asked as he adjusted his chair in its crowded place between Carson and Laura.

"It was probably a little silly, but I knew that Jannick and Bordal wanted the symbols to Atlantis, and who knows what they would have done with the address," Jennifer explained, then shrugged a shoulder, "I wanted to be careful so if they managed to catch the address on the DHD when we were leaving, they wouldn't be able to get here."

"Caution and care are nothing to be taken lightly," Woolsey declared stoutly, tossing a momentary glance in John's direction. The Lieutenant Colonel looked away, knowing his CO was still thinking of the missing GDO and wondered what repercussions would follow from it.

Jennifer nodded, "I wasn't taking any chances with it."

When we stepped through the gate on the other side of the event horizon, there was a group of people, in heavy cloth cloaks, gathered to the left of the stone stairs leading from the gate to the ground. They had their heads bowed and their hands clasped, and my first instinct was that they were praying.

Neither Kiryk nor I knew what was going on, and we looked to each other and then back at them. I went still, and then it came screeching into my head what did they do here? I yanked the collar and hood of the cloak up so that the face was covered.

"The Ancestors!" One of them cried out, looking up from where they were crouched, and seeing Kiryk and I standing just a few steps from the closing event horizon, "By the Ancestors, they've come!"

There were many following and corresponding murmurs as the four other beside the first fellow turned to stand and stare.

"They have heard us and have come in answer!" A woman, one of two in the group, seemed relieved at our presences as she clasped her hands.

"You have been sent to us by the Ancestors, yes?" A man with a well-trimmed red beard and a broad, sturdy frame stepped forward from the group with his hands extended to us.

"Uh, no," Kiryk began and I jumped in with,

"We're travelers, from far away."

"Yes," Kiryk confirmed, glancing over at me. I watched as their faces fell, and the collective feeling of hope among them drained away, "We're travelers."

"But, you came through the ring," The one with the red-beard began confused, and one of the other men approached, laying a hand on Red-Beard's shoulder

"Heran, what do we do?"

"What can we do Burgess?" The second woman in their group; a thin, bird-like woman with a pinched face and a bite to her tone asked, "We have tried to help them, received no answer from the Ancestors."

"There must be something Alyn," The one they called Burgess snapped, "Our people need help. There are so many."

"What kind of help?" Kiryk somehow managed to speak before me, "My friend here, she is a healer. Perhaps we—"

"A Healer?" Their faces snapped back to us, and I could recognize the hope that flared through them again. Heran's gaze shifted from Kiryk to me, "We have not had a Healer in our village in many months."

"Really?" That surprised me a little, even though it probably shouldn't of, and I started descending the steps from the gate and approached the group, "Why is that?"

They looked at me like I had some kind of authority and Burgess answered my question, "There is a traveling Healer that visits among the villages, and he has not been this way for months."

"We have people in the village that are knowledgeable of the common ailments," Alyn explained, "But this is beyond their scope."

"There is no way to contact the Healer," Heran agreed, and the rest of the group was nodding along.

"What's wrong? What happened?" I asked, and then Kiryk was standing beside me again.

"Please, come to the village," Heran urged, "Please help us Healer."

I looked to Kiryk, asking his opinion without words. He looked from me to the group of them; studying each one of them carefully. He appeared utterly calm and collected. Finding whatever he was looking for, or not finding whatever he wasn't; his head dipped once as he agreed.

"All right," I said, gesturing away from the gate, "Lead on."

"Lead on McDuff?" Woolsey posed, and Jennifer nodded her agreement,

"I left the McDuff off. Didn't want to cause anymore confusion."

"What was wrong with the villagers?" Carson twisted his chair in closer in to the table, and quickly received a glare from Rodney when the MD knocked the scientist's chair to the side, causing a domino effect along the other side of the table.

"And how did you two," Rodney pointed between Kiryk and Jennifer, "Manage not to catch it?" He suddenly went back in his chair, "Are you carriers?"

"Relax McKay," Oddly enough, it was Kiryk who scolded the neurotic scientist first, "We're fine."

"We both were scanned when we got here Rodney," Jennifer assured, but not soothingly, "There were no signs of anything. We're not carriers, we're not contagious, and we're not ill."

"Paranoid much?" John asked, giving Rodney a wry look.

"What?" Rodney demanded, "You're not concerned about catching a disease where one of the symptoms is death?"

"Only if it gets to the final stages," Kiryk shrugged absently, "It's not like you're gonna miss the rash. Or the vomiting. Or the bone-melting fever."

Rodney squeaked, drawing backward, "Bone-melting?" The scientist looked panicky, and his eyes darted around the room. A hand crept from the table to his neck; presumably to check his own temperature, while he seemed to be searching for an escape.

"Rodney," Carson chided, sadly shaking his head at the scientist's gullibility, "He's just funnin' ya."

Jennifer rolled her eyes, "Nobody's bones melted. Besides, your skin would melt way before your bones would anyway."

Neeva (in Jennifer's body) looked stricken, Rodney squeaked again, Kiryk appeared to want to chuckle, and Carson turned his chiding expression to Jennifer, "Lass."

"All right," Jennifer held back a deep sigh, "McKay, you don't have it. We," She indicated between herself and Kiryk, "Don't have it. We're not carriers. You're in no danger. No one is going to catch it from us."

"Satisfied?" John asked Rodney, who shrugged.

Poor Woolsey; the man looked as if he hadn't been able to rest since Jennifer and Kiryk and their whole world of trouble had arrived.

Laura regarded Rodney with a critical eyes and when Rodney turned to peer at her, the Lieutenant shook her head,

"What?"

Evan too, was shaking his head, "Do you need a pair of gloves McKay? Mask; a respirator maybe?"

"Major," John said warningly, "That's enough."

"My apologizes sir," Evan returned, but he spoke to John, not Rodney. It was obvious the Major had lost his patience with the astrophysicist.

Mentally tabulating when he could take his next dose of Advil, Woolsey seemed to lose his buttoned-up stiffness as he grumbled, "Let's get on with it."

"Right," Jennifer raked Neeva's hair from her face, catching it and drawing it up into a tail at the back of her head.

When we arrived at the village, it was pretty quiet. A few people wandered the streets, but they spoke in hushed tones and scurried away as we came near.

"Heran," I asked, my face still covered by the hood and collar, "Why are they afraid?"

"Our village hasn't seen a Healer in many months," He explained, directing us to a building in the center of the village, "And we have not seen such a sickness in much, much longer."

They ushered us inside a house, and once inside, Burgess immediately moved to start a fire in the fireplace. The inside of the house looked like a cabin, roughly hewn furniture; a table and a few chairs, cupboards, and a cabinet; sparsely populated the room, a few windows were scattered over the walls.

"I know that this is not as fine as you would be used to," Heran began to apologize, but my first response was to squeeze his arm,

"It's wonderful," I assured quickly, my mind jumping at the thought of being free of the dank, dark, smelly caves (not to mention the two dank and smelly capturers).

Heran seemed pleased, "Would you—"

"Take me to them."

It hit the usual suspects first; the elderly, children, people with weak immune systems. Then it continued through the village and by then it didn't matter who you were.

The patients presented with a rash, nausea, and dizzy spells. From there; vomiting, general weakness, and fatigue. The next step was a high grade fever and delusions. It then progressed to seizures. In the final stage, the person's body could no longer stand the stress and the dehydration, and they went into full-blown tachycardia.

The first thing I had to do was find a way to bring the fever down before someone's brains started to boil. Before all of this happened, I had been studying the Ancient database, going over any kind of natural occurring plants and such that could be used for medicinal purposes. So it occurred to me,

"Is there any skylark root around here?" I asked Alyn one afternoon. We were standing in a house where two people already had the fever, a third was vomiting, and a fourth was showing the first signs of the rash.

Alyn squinted at me, confused, "Any what?"

I wished I had a tablet then, so that I could show her. Of course they called it something different than the Ancients did. I now had to describe it to her.

"Um," An idea flashed, and I grabbed a stick from the fire place and scratched a rough sketch in the dirt and ashes on the hearth, "This. Ever seen it?"

"Yes!" She exclaimed excitedly, nodding rapidly, "Yes, do you need this?"

"Yes!" I started nodding rapidly too, "Can you get it?"

"Yes!" She exclaimed again, becoming more and more excited, "I'll go," At my nod, (which I really hadn't stopped giving), she darted from the house; the door slamming behind her. Looking out the window, I could see her running through the village.

Alyn soon fell ill too, "Here," I held a cup to her lips, supporting the back of her head with my hand, sweat plastering her stringy hair to her skin, "Drink this."

She took a swallow, and then shuddered at the taste, "What is that?"

"The tea," I pressed the cup back to her mouth, "It'll help bring down the fever, remember? Drink it."

She made a face, but finished the tea in the cup. The tea was really more of a stop-gap than anything. There were properties in the plant that help lower a fever. But we needed a cause and a treatment that would cure it.

And then they found it.

"Jen," I looked up from where I was seated on the hearth, stirring another caldron of the root tea as Kiryk burst into the house after dark one night, about half-way through the second week.

"What is it? What's wrong?" I was up on my feet quickly, and we met in the middle of the room, "Where'd you go?" I spotted a jagged cut winding over his shoulder as I stood, "You're hurt."

"It's a scratch," He quickly dismissed, and instead informed me, "There's a downed mine shaft, just west of the village."

"Is someone hurt? Trapped?" I instantly started mentally inventorying what I had that I could use to treat the injured.

"No Jen, no one was in it. It's been down for a while. The ground underneath of it gave out," Kiryk dissuaded, "But it's right by the stream that feeds into the new well in village."

"What kind of mining?" I asked, catching his train of thought, "Because if the metals or minerals leeched into the water supply, and they ingested them—"

I trailed off and Kiryk picked it up, "Could that have caused the symptoms the villagers' have got?"

"The first thing we did was shut down the well," Jennifer explained, "Made sure that no one drank from the well anymore."

"Filled it in and covered it over," Kiryk added.

"What did you do to counteract the effects of the contaminated water?" Carson wanted to know, leaning forward curiously.

"Another herbal remedy. I actually tripped over it the next afternoon when Heran and Kiryk took me into the forest to show me the mine shaft," Her borrowed cheeks tinged pink and she offered a one-shouldered shrug.

"You fell again?" Teyla wondered aloud.

Jennifer blushed a little harder, nodding, "Yeah."

Laura chuckled, "Way to go, Miss Graceful."

"The villagers called it black root, because that's what color it is," Kiryk explained, pulling the discussion back on track, and Jennifer finished,

"But the Ancient database refers to it as a Quirick plant. Turn the flower and stem into a paste, and it helps the rash; boil the leaves into a broth," Jennifer grinned, "I'd like to go back there as soon as I can; check in on them, make sure everything's okay."

Woolsey nodded, agreeing, "We'll see what we can do."

Across the table, Evan started to clap, "Way to go brainiac," The Major grinned big, "That's my girl."

After those three words left his mouth, Evan's (and everyone else's) gaze swiveled to Ronon. For his part, Ronon seemed to be ignoring that comment (for the time being), and instead asked, "Why didn't you just come back here? You've got all your fancy equipment, access to the Ancient database."

"I couldn't leave them," Jennifer argued, "Not until I was sure that they were stable, and even then."

"You stabilized them with the root tea—thingy," Ronon disputed, the two turning to meet head on at their side of the table, "You could have come back and gotten our help then."

"Yeah, sure," Neeva's brows drew together as Jennifer got annoyed, "And be stuck sitting here for at least two days; explaining everything. And that was only if you all actually believed me!"

"We did!" Ronon threw back, his volume increasing; and left most in the room wondering if he'd wanted to utter I did.

"But I couldn't be sure of that! I wasn't going to leave when there was a likely possibility that no one would believe a word I'd said; I'd be locked up in a cell in the brig, and those villagers would be left on their own!"

Little Doc could glare near as well as Ronon, John noted as possibly the two most stubborn people he'd ever met tried to stare each other down.

It was Rodney who broke their stalemate, "Why'd you keep your—er—her face covered all the time?"

Jennifer sighed, glancing from her staring contest with Ronon, to Rodney, to her own face, "I had no idea what they'd been up to on that planet. And considering what happened the last time I showed her face," Neeva-in-Jennifer winced, and Jennifer-in-Neeva pulled a face, "I figured it was better to keep that to myself for the time being."

Woolsey nodded, then, "I assume you wish to have the reversal process begun as soon as possible."

Her tone was terse as she replied, "Yes."

"All right then," Woolsey breathed a sigh; of relief or resignation, he wasn't sure, "Then we'll reconvene at ten hundred hours tomorrow morning, and discuss a plan of action," There were nods around the table, "Dismissed."