She's lost control.
She cried, for the god's sakes. She never cries. She grew up the desert, she knows how precious water is, what the hell is wrong with her?
Maybe she should talk to someone. She'd hate to prove Desperaux right, but they've been assigned to Atlantis pending further notice and she doesn't know how much longer she can take it. Something about building ties and getting to know each other. The might of the Alketch Empire recognizing a kindred spirit in the United States.
Conquerors. Conquerors determined to keep her on this hellish world where a million and one things can and do go wrong, daily. It's probably a plot. The gods are punishing her for turning away from her people. This is exactly the kind of retribution they would…
You're being stupid. Shut up.
Focus.
She needs help and she knows it. Privately she's known it for years.
The psychologist's name is Dr. Heightmeyer. "Call me Kate," she says with a gentle smile.
She's a pretty little blonde thing, a creature of air and light. Next to her Ezrikos is a hunting cat, and a particularly mean one at that.
"What can I do for you, Captain," she asks. "Or would you just like to talk?"
I'm cracked up, she thinks.
What she says is, "I have nightmares."
The doctor doesn't say anything. Somehow that makes it easier.
"I've had them for a while now."
"Since you came to Atlantis?"
Ezrikos shakes her head. "Since I was eight." And then she adds, "They're worse here, though."
"And why do you think that is?"
Good question.
"The water," she says. It just pops out without her really thinking about it, and then she's talking, but her mouth is the only thing controlling what she says. The words just come.
"I'm afraid of water. Always have been, it's a cultural thing: I grew up in the desert."
Kate nods, never taking her eyes away. "I've talked to some other crew members about it before. It's perfectly normal, especially if you're not accustomed to it."
Ezrikos waves the platitude aside. "It doesn't bother me; I'm used to that, even if I don't like it."
The doctor says, "Tell me about the nightmares."
"It's more like a memory. As in it really happened, and in my dream I'm back there."
"Is it exactly what happened?" she asks, her tone curious, but professional.
"Yes. Well, I don't know. It stops at a point and I wake up before the…event finishes."
There's a pause.
"Event?"
"Yes." She hesitates here. She's hasn't told anyone this in decades.
"Something wrong?"
"It's just…it's complicated, I don't…" she sighs, "I don't know how to start."
"Start at the beginning, in your own words."
Well, what the hell.
My mother was adopted. She was Bahzir, but her parents were killed, and an Alketch family on Brysa adopted her. It was a fad at the time to take in Bahzir children. She grew up there, became an anthropologist.
And went back to Casca. To study the Bahzir.
Dr. Heightmeyer doesn't interrupt. She just listens.
She lived with the Hazdrozaboth for a year, writing a paper. Then she left to get published, get famous, get back to the Empire.
She came back.
She stayed for a long time, this time. She met my father. She had me.
Then she left again. And this time she didn't come back.
I grew up there…the details aren't important, I'm sorry, I'm babbling…
"It's alright. Whatever you need to say to get it out."
Yes, well. There's a point in here somewhere.
When I was eight, I was kidnapped by a group of smugglers.
She ignores the doctor's sharp intake of breath.
They were the suppliers in a prostitution ring. They took me to a planet called Matria.
A planet covered almost entirely by water.
"Like this one."
Yes.
The nightmare is of being in the cargo hold, feeling the ship rock back and forth on the water, not that I knew it then.
I was in a shipping crate, but I got out, I don't really remember how. I thought I could run. The Bahzir are great runners. That's the nightmare. I get out of the crate, and out of the hold, and then I get onto the deck. And I see that I can't run.
Then I wake up.
"What happened then, when it really happened?"
My mother had had a location chip implanted subcutaneously when I was born. Under the skin at the small of my back. When she heard I was missing, she had her friends in the government call out a rescue squad.
She lapses into contemplative silence, remembering her mother, and the chip.
"So they took you off the…off Matria?"
Yes.
"Is that all?"
Yes.
"Would you like to talk about what we might do about it?"
Gods, no.
But she doesn't say that.
"You must hate being in Atlantis," Dr. Heightmeyer says after they've talked for a while longer. "Being constantly surrounded by water."
Ezrikos smiles faintly.
"It's something of a challenge. I try to avoid looking out the window."
They both laugh a little. This wasn't what she expected; it's like talking to a friend.
A nosy friend, sure, but not a doctor.
A shrink, Major Sheppard calls her, Ezrikos remembers.
"You've been assigned to Atlantis pending further notice, haven't you?" Kate says. "How do you fell about that?"
And Ezrikos doesn't have an answer for her.
Major Sheppard finds her in the hall on her way back.
"Captain," he says with his habitual knee-melting grin. "Come check this out."
He takes her to the top of the southwest pier, where the sun is just setting.
"It occurred to me that you'd never seen the sunset from up here," he says. "It's really something."
He pauses, and then adds, "If you've got a problem with the whole 'looking over the ocean' part, I'll take you back."
She hesitates, and then puts a hand over his on the railing.
"It's fine," she tells him.
And it is.
...fin
A/N: Yeah! My first complete story, ever! Oh, come on, you know she'll be back. Thank you so much to everyone who stuck with it, Amaruk, puddles1311, MacCartney, Marla, highonscifi, Erinamation, Littlefoot22 – thanks for all your help with storylines, and don't think I'm done with you yet, you know there'll be more. Until next time…
