The Last Survivor

by Kodiak Bear Country

I had lived alone for as long as I remember. Also known as the story where Sheppard and McKay crash, get hurt and need help, and the wraith are afoot.

3. Chapter 3

AN: First, sorry this took so long. Second, sorry it's not the end, I tried to fit it all in but it just didn't work. Last, big thanks to my betas, sholio, tazmy, linzi and my hand holding support, shelly!

Chapter Three

Before the cycles of cold came, if I had been asked by the birds, "How will you die? Who will mourn you?" my answer would have been, "Can any creature predict their end? But when I pass to the otherworld, the green cliffs will cry, the river will sing, and father sky, maybe, will weep, if he has mind enough to care."

In truth, the answer was that no one would mourn my passing, for there was none to care. I had been the one left behind; the one to mourn, to weep.

I had lived enough to know the capriciousness of life. That one moment, the breath and beat was there, only to be gone in the next. All life is a fragile thing. I could grab the laviola, pull it from the ground, and it would not grow again; the pale plant's blood would dry and harden, the leaves would turn to dust in the wind. The fish that fed me flopped in my hands one moment, frantic to return to the water, but in the next, I would bash it on the head with a rock, and its bones would feed the dirt.

My kind was not so different.

Life could be so easily taken, and it did not sit any better knowing there were now two of my kind to notice my passing if I had died. Sheppard and McKay would have mourned me, I knew, as much as I knew the sun would climb into the sky to chase the moon to the other side of my world, beyond the cliffs and woods. Being mourned, even for a moment, was better than not being noticed at all.

Sky eyes McKay shook like the leaves, wind-tossed. His eyes had lost the heat of anger and now widened. He stared at the body of the white haired monster by my side, then to me, before they drifted past and over my head – to Sheppard.

Sheppard!

I rolled to my side, enough to push myself up, ignoring the trembling in my limbs. He lay in a tumbled heap in the snow, curled on his side. Harsh breaths, drawn in pain, filled the air.

It only took three worried steps till I was kneeling next to him.

During the fight with the white haired wraith, I had been driven into the wet snow; it clung to me like cobwebs, made my clothes stick to my skin and chilled my bones. Or was it my fear for Sheppard? The raspy, wheezing sound made me want to demand of sky eyes to find his people, to bring them now, because I did not trust in my abilities to mend a broken air cavity. Please, do not be broken, I begged of the air.

"I killed a wraith with a bow and arrow."

He had moved with me, stood staring down at his litter mate with a mixture of wonder and fear. "McKay, he is hurt," I whispered.

Why did I whisper? Did I fear to wake the dead monster? Or did I fear to speak too loud, scaring Sheppard's soul?

"He's hurt? What…do you realize --"

I rose quickly, turned and took sky eyes' hand. The bow was still held firmly, so tight McKay's knuckles were taut and white, reddened at the tips from the cold and the pressure. "You saved my life, sky eyes," I said. I took the bow, saw the blood staining his pants, the drips dotting into the whitened slush underneath our feet. "But Sheppard is hurt, and so are you."

"Of course he's hurt – he tried to tackle a wraith!" The words came out mixed with irritation and affection. "Wait a minute – I'm hurt? Where?" He looked downwards, checking his hands, his legs. "Oh. Blood. There's blood…my blood." Sky eyes looked at me. "Did I just kill a wraith with a bow and arrow?"

Despite my worry, I smiled. I did not know why, but McKay lightened my heart even when it was heavy, and I could not resist poking at him. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." I repeated his strange words from the time before, when we had barely known the surface of each other's mind.

"What? No! This…this I want repeated, sung from the highest spires of Atlantis…" As I reached to ease Sheppard to his back, McKay's excitement waned as his thoughts cleared. "You're teasing me." He tossed his hands in the air before he bent to help. "I finally get flirted with and Sheppard's unconscious."

OoO

After McKay and I struggled to move Sheppard inside, I had a feeling of being back to the beginning, when I had first found them. Sheppard's breathing was harsh, labored, his skin pale and sweaty. He had not woken. Though I could find no injury to his head, he remained deeply asleep.

McKay dropped wearily beside Sheppard, grunting and mumbling from the pain in his leg. The injury had been a deep one, and despite the sickness that had filled it when I first found them, sky eyes had been healing well. Now, the hurried pounding of his feet against ground, even if it was gentled by the snow, and the kicking, had ripped the stitches from the edges of his wound.

As I eased them free of their clothing, sky eyes helping me with Sheppard, I saw that not all of McKay's wound had torn open. A small area in the middle and one of the ends gaped, weepy and red. It was the area in the middle that worried me the most, because it opened down past the surface layers of skin and sky eyes might get wound sick again.

He had swung between talking and moaning. At one point, when I bathed them both with warm gilly water, he squinted at my face and motioned at his own eyes. "You've got wrinkles. You're older." McKay's hand lifted to point at my chest. "You should do something about that."

I tucked my chin to look and saw the oozing marks showing through my tunic. "It took some life from me." I had felt it, a pain like I had never experienced before. "Do I look so different?"

The motion he always seemed to be in quieted and his chin came up. "No, improved, actually. I wouldn't mistake you for some teen aged brat now. You look…oddly dignified. Just…don't cry, okay, not again…"

"A few wrinkles are not enough to make me cry," I said, taking a strip of precious cloth and dipping it into warm water. And I did not believe they made me look dignified.

"Great, really. You don't cry easily, and I'd be an insensate mess by now in your shoes." He sucked a harsh breath down as I dabbed at his wound, clenching his hands into fists and snapped, "Easy, Jesus, that's my leg. I need that in one piece, preferably."

"It is still there, McKay."

"No thanks to you."

He said it crossly but I could see his worry for Sheppard in his eyes, his regret for my wrinkles – McKay was not so angry as he wished me to believe. He wanted me to get mad at him, to say words that would keep him irritated, because that would distract him from the pain he endured and felt. Pain in his leg and in his heart.

"You are as easily read as the sky, McKay," I said evenly, then ducked my head to focus on his wound, and to let him show his emotions to the wall.

We spoke no other words while I re-sewed his wound with sinew, using the last bits I had. I was fairly sure part of that was because of the drop of gilly I gave him before I pierced his skin with needle. I had given it to him to ease the pain, but maybe also, a little, to keep him quiet. Sky eyes could unsettle me more than anything had been able to in many cycles.

Sheppard's eyes responded to being pried open, and when I rubbed my hand on his chest, high in the middle, he moved to stop me. Not so deeply asleep, then. How badly he had been injured, time would tell me.

I had tasks to keep my hands busy, but my mind was not so fortunate. It was hard to push away the memories. I undressed under my blanket, wiped off the wounds on my chest, surprised they were not so deep at all.

Finally, I could avoid it no longer. Sheppard and McKay were resting, cared for, and if their injuries were going to get worse, it was not likely to be in the time I had to deal with the wraith.

I was wearing a new tunic, this one blue, the color to match my spirit. I felt cold, lost, and anxious. I left the warmth of my home, stepped into the snow that crunched under my feet. The sun hid behind the trees and the temperature was falling, causing the melted slush to freeze. I could see the crumpled form on the ground where we had fought it. I had been focused on getting Sheppard inside, not caring to check for certain that it was dead.

I would not have tried to save it even if it had breathed.

But, maybe it had?

Had it laid in the wet snow and begged to its spirits to live? Had it suffered even while I had cared for my kind not more than a few lengths of my body away? Had the poison given it great pain or had it been an instant end? I both wished for it to have lasted and for it to have been quick. Quick, so it did not have time to say its goodbyes, and long, so it had felt the fear and pain it gave to my kind without a thought.

I knew where I would take it. There was a small hole, burrowed into the Jade Cliffs, not more than twenty steps away. I had found it many cycles ago. The small passage only went inward four or five lengths of my body before it ended. The walls glowed weakly, not receiving enough light from the sun to keep away the night. There had been nothing for me in that darkness; I had explored it the one time and never gone back.

If it were true, what McKay had said, that the cliffs had some power over the wraith, then would it not be the best place to put the body of the one we had killed? The other would not be likely to find it, and if by some chance it was not completely dead – did it not have magic power, to take life from my kind with just a touch -- then being entombed in the cliffs could only keep it from ever coming back to harm us.

I looked at it warily. It did not breathe, or move.

Still, it was a white haired monster from my dreams, and I could not shake the feeling that like the terrible things in my night terrors, it could live again, regardless of how dead it seemed to me now. I approached it carefully, poised to act, though all I had was the same knife from before – the one I had never wanted to hold again.

I stared at the white hair, as long as mine. The body was as it had been from before. The arrows stuck out from its chest like saplings from the dirt.

Thrust hard, don't hold back, aim true.

The pain from being fed upon flared at the edges of my mind. I was not wearing my cloak, and standing in the cold, staring down at the wraith, I felt colder. This was silly. Looking at the wraith did not change the past.

Knowing I needed the arrows, I bent towards the chest to pull them free. Closing my eyes, I grabbed the shaft of the one higher in its chest and pulled as quickly as I could. It slid free from the body with a sickening, surprising ease. The other followed in the same manner. I tossed them to the ground, trying not to linger on the blackened, hardened puddles spreading out from its side, discoloring the snow, staining everything.

With my precious arrow tips salvaged, there was no more reason to put off that which had to be done. I grabbed the uniform straps that were on the monster's shoulders and began to drag the body across the ground. The freezing slush crackled against the stiff leather uniform as it slid, the body rising and falling in irregular jerks as I pulled it over small rocks and debris hidden under the thin layer of snow. The smell of death made my eyes water, and my hands ached from pulling. Fast enough, I backed myself into the cave and dropped to my knees. The cold hardness of the rock and clay and drifted snow burned into my bare skin but there was no keeping my tunic over my legs. The ceiling would not let me stand and I could not bring myself to abandon it this close to the opening. It might be spotted.

I pulled, scooted, and dragged. A lifetime later, the bottoms of my feet hit the end. I paused to breathe, trying to not look at the face staring at me, the mouth twisted up into a permanent grin. The need to get away overwhelmed me, but to leave, I had to crawl over the monster. There was no room to stand or to walk hunched to the side; I could only go over. Still, I pushed up as far as I could, until the rough rock pressed down against my back, scraping skin as I tried to keep as much distance between our bodies.

In the stifling darkness, it was too easy for my mind to imagine life suddenly returning to the white haired monster. Imagining the hand shooting up towards my chest while I hovered over it, unable to escape. The fear made me dizzy. Even when I was past, and down on my hands and knees, moving away for good, the thought that the hand would reach for my feet and pull me towards it, made me hurry forward, so fast I added more scrapes and bruises along the bones that ran down the middle of my back.

I did not care – I only wanted out.

OoO

Later, safely back inside my home, the scrapes nothing more than stings of the recent past, I could not settle. I drifted between caring for Sheppard and McKay, tending the fire, fixing a stew of bear root and salted fish. The walls that had once been reassuring, now pressed in towards me, threatening. Singing. Leave, they begged.

Why?

Because at least one more white haired wraith was out there – the one that had fed on its companion, the one that was not injured and weak, and would assuredly kill one or more of us.

The bow and arrows were against the wall, mocking me. It had worked once, but that wraith had been far less than the other would be. Even with the weapon, we had almost been killed. My hand stole to the feeding mark on my chest, the tips of my fingers slid across the scabbing scars. I had almost died. After all these cycles, the end had been so near I could still taste it on my tongue.

Would we survive the other if it found us?

The answer was painful.

Not without help.

Dark haired Sheppard had said their people would come for them. Sky eyes had said they'd fallen from the night sky in a spaceship. If these others were to find Sheppard and McKay, they would need to be with their ship. Else, was it not like finding a small pebble in a large stream? Three small beings in one large world; had I not seen for myself that the lands stretched beyond where my legs could take me?

I sat on the crate by the fire, shivered from the warmth of the river rock battling with the chill in my soul. Night sky had draped a cloak of darkness above me and only the soft green glow of my walls and the dancing sprites of orange, yellow and red filled my eyes.

I was perched on the cusp of a breaking floe of ice, precarious in the thoughts racing through my mind. Sheppard and McKay's wounds had been aggravated, but if Sheppard's air cavity had not been breeched, if McKay's wound stayed well through the night…if…then I had two paths before me. Both could end in my death, in their death, but only one might end in salvation for the two.

They needed their people. Their healer. Their city in the sea.

As the fire burned my face, I hung my head, and wept. Softly, silently, for my people, my baby -- for my world, because I knew it was lost to me.

I knew I would help my males find their ship, and pray their people came before the storms. I knew if they asked – if they let me – I would go with them, to the stars, to the sky, and leave my world behind. Leave the ghosts in the dust. Leave the memories I had lost and gained and only wished to forget again.

My arms slipped around my knees and I hugged myself tight, wishing suddenly they had never came. That I had never found them on the ground and brought them here. It had been eleven turns of night and day, and yet, in that time I had gained my people back, if only in my mind, just to feel the loss again, as if it were only a cycle away instead of the many more that I could count on my hands and feet…I had remembered the face that belonged to the picture, and the one that had given me that face. I had remembered the ghosts, and the monsters.

It was not fair that the monsters returned to life and the ghosts did not. Why not the ghosts, why not the laughing children that danced with me at my binding? Why not my father, that had kissed me softly and whispered, "Mawani, daughter of Kinani and Soham, blessed by father rock and mother river, I give to Leom, strong in courage and tall in heart."

The monster's ships had screamed from the sky, deadly insects swarming on my people. The twilight ground to a stop, and the cries of many rose to fill the air. I had stood before the venerated, with Leom by my side, in my dress of cotton, rich and yellow, bright and full of the promise of sun sky. My father had turned, to calm the scared, but there was no calming my people when bright stars fell from the sky and made our world burn.

I remembered standing frozen in the circle, the gusts of wind blowing smoke into my eyes – remembered the pink petals fluttering to my feet, torn free from the binding wreath woven in my hair.

Torn from me, like my people had been.

"Leom, take Mawani to the chest, hide her!"

"No, father! I will not leave you!"

I had been a good daughter, obedient in all things, other than lying with Leom the day before our binding. Father had only to look upon me with the face I remembered well from my days of running with my hair bound in leather. I let Leom pull me away, let him push me into the wooden chest, stared frightened into his face.

With gentle, warm hands, calloused from working the tools of the ground, Leom clasped my cheeks and drew my face into a kiss. The shouts of terror, the roaring of roofs burning in the tortured background, filled me up as he claimed my lips and pushed me down.

"Do not leave, Mawani. I am going to help your father. You must stay hidden!"

I did not leave. Not even when I had to relieve myself. I stayed, felt the warmth of it run down my legs, and endured the helplessness that enclosed me in its horrible embrace. Time passed until I grew brave enough, desperate enough, to open the lid; there was nothing left. The home I was in had been mostly of stone, but the roof of branches and grass was gone. The meeting circle was scoured to nothing but rock and coal. The well, filled with broken parts of the lives we had led.

My father was gone. Leom was gone. I had done what Leom said. I did not leave – but they had left me.

I was alone.

Days I had wandered in the ruins. It was not until I had grown ill and realized I had missed my time of women's blood that I knew I would not be alone for much longer. It was what pushed the sorrow away, what drove my sadness into dust, and forced my feet to walk towards safety. If not for Lilani, I would have died there, just as broken as the remnants of my world.

By the time Lilani left me, her spirit uniting with the father she had never known, numbness stole my mind and I had lived in a place where I had no past.

Wiping away the wetness from my cheeks, I stole a glance at the sleeping males, and wished again to be in that place. No past, no future – just the day and night sky, the turns of the endless cycles, and the work to keep my hands busy and my mind empty.

Sheppard stirred, a bare arm slipping free of the blanket. His breath grew faster, pained. I held still, afraid for him to wake, afraid for him not to. When his eyes blinked away his sleep and focused on me, I stood, pushing away the depths of my misery.

"McKay?" He tried to turn enough to see sky eyes, but the movement pulled on his broken bone, and he stopped quickly, a picture of frustration flickering across his face for only a blink of time. "Is he all right?"

"His wound opened again, but he is resting." I did not speak of my worry about the sickness returning. Sometimes, putting words to thought made them come true. "How do you feel?" I asked, keeping my voice soft so that I would not wake sky eyes.

His mouth twisted into a grimace. "Like a wraith tossed me around."

"Then you feel as you should." I pulled away the blanket, aware that he was watching me. "Breathe." I placed my hands flat over the injured bone.

"It's not worse."

"Then breathe."

Those eyes of many colors grew stormy. "You know, you're more annoying than --"

I pushed slightly upwards, away from the air cavity, to see if the bone gave. He yelped and stopped talking, and the bone bent. Broken again, but when I laid my ear against his chest, his thick hair tickling my face, I could hear no sounds that would have meant the air cavity was punctured. I pulled away and readjusted the blanket, staring at him solemnly. "You are very blessed, Sheppard."

He did not look like he believed it. "Really?" he drawled. "Then someone needs to tell the big guy upstairs because I seem to get into a lot of deep sh --" he stopped, frowned at me, "never mind. Look, I'm a little vague on how it all ended out there." He tried again to glance at sleeping sky eyes, this time only moving his head. "I'm guessing we won. Tell me it's dead?"

I curled my feet underneath me, sat by his side and pulled his hand, clasping it between mine to feel his life's beat. "We won."

The skin on his forehead bunched as he studied me closely. His other hand reached for my face, brushed stray hair behind my ear. Warm fingers traced along the edges of my eye, across new wrinkles. "I'm sorry."

McKay had told me I now looked dignified instead of a teen-aged girl. He'd told me it was a good thing, that it was not that much. The wraith had only begun to feed when he had shot it with the second arrow; pushed it away from me with his foot. I had told sky eyes a few wrinkles were not enough to make me cry. I had not lied – it was not the wrinkles that broke me. It was imagining Leom aged to an old man. My father. My mother.

Imagining strong, dark haired Sheppard and the constantly moving and talking sky eyes McKay.

No living thing deserved that.

I had felt my face. The changes were small, nothing more than a few cycles would have given me. I would not have had another day of sun and night sky if the poison had failed to work.

A few years for a lifetime.

"No," I whispered, pulling his hand away. "I am sorry. I should have looked for this ship of yours, should have tried to find your things. I had been so eager to see another of my kind that I did not stop and think about why you were here, and what had brought you to me."

There was a gentleness to Sheppard, a part of his soul that peeked through the edges of his eyes. I had seen glimpses when he had soothed sky eyes through the aftermath of night terrors, and I saw it now. He did not blame me for being single-minded, though I blamed myself.

"You saved our lives."

"Only for you to die." Because that was what would happen if the other wraith found us. I pulled back, retreating, and made an excuse to put fresh logs on the fire. He stayed quiet, watching me. I lingered longer than I had to, bending over the river rock. The heat suffused my cheeks, making them burn again. I put a log end down in the ashes and let it tip from my hand and fall forward into the fire.

The bark hissed, crackled, the flames splitting around the bulk of the wood. Staring mesmerized, I knew it would only be a short time before the fire licked at the sides, rejoined over the top, and turned the log to burnt coal. "If we do not find your ship, your people will not find you. You will die, like this log in the flame." I breathed deep, feeling the sharp tang of wood smoke seep into my air cavities.

"You're beginning to sound like McKay," he muttered.

When I looked at him, Sheppard was still on his back, staring at the glowing bricks arching over his head. Did he see the danger lying around us? "Sky eyes is wise," I said.

Night held the land in a tight fist and tiredness washed over me.

Morning had held such promise – now it was like water on a hot river rock, gone in a puff of smoke, creeping to the sky to rejoin the cycle of life, where hope and heartache mixed and fell like random drops of rain.

Why did it seem like my sky dropped more pain than promise?

"Sky eyes is paranoid."

Sheppard's tone was as dry as the end of the summer cycles. "He cares for you." I did not mean to say it out loud – I knew these two males did not openly say words of affection. They were not like my people, where a reason to share feeling was pulled from the sky. If the sun had been especially bright, or the stars loomed clear and close overhead, as to seem like you could touch them with only a reach of a finger, we had been eager to laugh, hug and call, "I love you!"

Life was meant to be sung, felt, embraced.

Sighing, I slipped quietly to the wall, away from where the two males were, pulling free the scraps of fur and root thread. They were not my people, but they were of my kind. I would sing their feelings for them if I must, even if I kept the song in my heart.

"Yeah…" Sheppard looked warily at the sleeping sky eyes. "I know." His voice had dropped again, husky and soft, as reluctant as the ice. "Funny, took traveling to another galaxy to find a family." He coughed, grimaced, and fought to keep from coughing again. I left my supplies by my bed and took a flask of water to Sheppard.

"Drink," I soothed. The effort made his eyes heavy. "Rest, Sheppard. We will make plans to find your ship when the sun returns. You will not lose your family, I promise."

His nod was clumsy.

By the time I had knelt by sky eyes and prodded him into waking enough to drink, Sheppard was fast asleep.

McKay's skin was warm, but he came up long enough to drink, before returning to his rest, as well. I checked his wound and was relieved to find it felt the same temperature as the rest of his leg. I hoped it was only the heat of my home, their blankets, and the break in the terrible cold outside, making him feel warm to my touch. They must recover, or I would have to search for a ship I would not recognize, to try and save them.

I gathered their discarded clothing from earlier, and settled on my mattress. If we would begin to search, they would need to be better dressed. I took out the scraps and began the long process of patching the holes in their clothing with gnarl hide before working on fur coverings.

OoO

It was the noise of feet on the floor that woke me. The walls were dimmed, and a weak pale light drifted down from the ceiling. The morning chill stung my face and I fought against the urge to burrow under my blanket.

I sat reluctantly, keeping the blanket wrapped as tightly as I could, and found Sheppard bending at the wood pile, piling logs in his hands, before turning towards the hearth. He saw me watching him and grinned. "Did I wake you?"

"You should be in bed," I scolded.

"I should be up." He began to lay the logs over the coals from last night's fire. "We didn't post a watch last night. There's another wraith out there that doesn't care how hurt we are. Yesterday proved we need to be careful."

"You risk injuring your air cavity." My legs were folded together, the skin warm, and I made no move to leave my bed, or my blanket.

"I'm fine." When he turned away from the fire, I could not keep from staring at the deep bruises on his chest, only hidden by the thick, curly black hair in the middle that tapered down to the waist of his pants. "You did that?" He nudged his head towards their pile of mended clothing.

I nodded. "We will need to be warm." Last night it had seemed as obvious as the wall in front of me, that we must leave, seek their ship. But at the same time, with morning light casting away the shadows, I was afraid. I knew the trip was a leap off the cliff. There was no going back once we jumped. The storms would come, the wraith that still lived would be hunting us – what if sky eyes could not fix their ship? What if we did not find it?

The saying that those that are in your thoughts, know, and come, seemed true, because even as my mind considered McKay, the male groaned, rolled to his back and blinked fuzzily at the ceiling. "I keep thinking this is a nightmare and I'll wake up back on Atlantis." His face turned to the side, locking onto Sheppard. "Why couldn't this just be a bad dream?"

"Because we're not that lucky, McKay."

"You're telling me." He sat, wincing from the pain caused by his motion. "Ow!"

Sheppard's worried eyes met mine. "Can he walk on it?"

"He's right here."

I shrugged heavy shoulders. "If I bind it tightly, and he is careful, but it is as risky as you walking with a broken bone." I was not so easy to steer away as Sheppard wished. But there was little hope if we stayed, and looking at him, I regretted bringing up his infirmity. He was well aware of his injury and the danger the trip held. The blanket slid to my legs and I stood. "There is food to pack, supplies we will need. There is a rest between storms, usually a few turns of night and day, so we should leave soon."

"What?" McKay's demand came with the edge of surprise. "Leave – where are we going?"

Sheppard's steps were careful; he kept his arm by the broken bone bent and still to limit any pulling. He moved to the pile of clothing and knelt to lift McKay's, tossing it to sky eyes on the bed. "Get dressed – we're going Jumper hunting."

"Jumper hunting?" He repeated, still trying to understand. He shook out his pants, slipped free of the blanket and moaned with more waves of pain. "You mean – what if—oh…"

"What'd you give him last night?"

I frowned. "His jumbled speech is not my doing."

McKay reached for Sheppard's hand, pulled himself up and finished fastening his pants. "I'm not jumbled, God. It's cold, my leg feels like a hot poker is stuck in it, and you spring the news on me that we're going to be hiking through the woods…" he looked superciliously at the door, "the frozen woods, to find the Jumper, when it's probably nothing more than scrap metal – and let's not forget the wraith that's stalking around out there." With an exasperated huff of air, he tugged his shirt over his head. "It's warm in here, Colonel. Food, fire, blankets – it's cold death waiting out there and excuse me for not being fast enough to process the stupidity of this plan!"

"I thought you wished to find your ship?" McKay was like the clouds. Calm one moment, stormy the next. "You want to see your Carson again?"

His hands went up, agitated. "That was before our run-in with…" he paused and narrowed his eyes at Sheppard.

"Larry."

McKay snorted, shook his head, and continued, "…with Larry. Going out in this weather, with only a bow and arrow, knife and the clothes on our backs, is an incredibly suicidal idea."

"But you said the cliffs have magical properties – your people will not find my home. They might come and leave, thinking you are gone to the otherworld. Is that what you wish? Staying here is dangerous." I had to make sky eyes understand. I did not want for them this solitary life. I did not want the remaining monster to find them. "It found us; it is only a matter of days till the one still living does, also."

Sky eyes stood barefoot on the straw mattress, shivered, and limped towards the fire, seeming lost in his thoughts. "I didn't specifically say the cliffs would keep our people from finding us…but you're right. We didn't pick up life signs when we came out of the 'gate…it could be the same ions in the atmosphere that brought us down, or an intrinsic property with the cliffs. Oddly enough, local myth and legend usually is a warped version of truth. Without my scanner, I can't be sure --"

"McKay, can you make it," interrupted Sheppard sharply.

"No," he snapped. "I've got a hole in my leg, Sheppard." He looked at me, saw into my heart, and read my worry and fear. "But I'll do it anyway." He turned from me, rubbed cold hands over the flames and pretended he had not seen my emotions.

I pretended I had not let them show.

Like the movements of the small insects in the ground before the cycles of cold arrived, we got ready. I made us a thick breakfast of white weed, giving both males extra and insisting they eat it all. McKay had curled his lips and said thanks in a way that I was sure meant exactly the opposite. Sheppard elbowed his litter mate, causing an outraged squawk.

Out of habit, I cleaned the bowls, the kettle, though I had the feeling I would not return. Either we would die in the woods, or their people would come and take me away. While Sheppard and McKay picked from the scraps of fur I had sewn into covers for our hands and heads, I put everything in a place. The bow was ready, the arrows – I had never had the chance to make them one of their own.

My knife was tucked in Sheppard's pants.

I opened the door and scooped snow, returning to the hearth. Using a clay jar and another log, I pushed a couple of the larger coals inside to take with us. I could use them to start a new fire if we needed. Then, I sprinkled the snow over the burning logs. The flames hissed and spattered. It took four full scoops to make the fire die, and I added a fifth to be sure, though there was not anywhere for the flames to go even if they managed to nurse an ember. I had built a large hearth, made to keep my home safe, and the fire contained.

My satchel was full of preserved fish, cakes of white weed that I had baked last night on the river rock, and some healing herbs and laviola. On sky eyes' back was a bag full of dry wood and straw, on Sheppard's, blankets to keep us warm.

It was two of their hours to the place where I had found them, but how far had they wandered from their spaceship? Had it been a day, or two?

With their injuries, I did not think it possible to be more than that.

They stood by the door, ready, tired and pale. Injured, but prepared. I had my fur cloak on, my boots, the fur coverings in my hands for when I walked outside. I swallowed back the thickness in my throat, the salt in my eyes.

Sheppard ducked his head, considered me and the door. "We'll just…be outside," he said huskily. "Come on, McKay." He tugged sky eyes with him.

"What? "

"Just move..."

They were through the door, their voices fading to murmurs in the air, and I was alone in my home for the first time since I had found them. I walked without thought to the chest, knelt and opened the lid. The picture was behind, tucked out of sight, and I pulled it forward, holding the image in my mind. With shaking fingers, I traced the soft curves of features I had shaded with coal. "Good bye," I whispered. Without giving my heart time to reconsider, I rolled it quickly, and placed it in the chest, shutting the lid on the memories. "This is where you belong, Lilani – with the ghosts."

I stood, the swing of the satchel thumping against my belly. Maybe the dust would reclaim my home. Maybe some day I would return, and walk in the dust.

It was enough to know it would always be in my mind, in my dreams, and that I had lived here. I walked to the door, pulled open the latch, and stepped into the uncertainty of my future.

OoO

"This is where you found us?"

I nodded, standing in the middle of the small clearing. McKay looked as if he thought I could not be sure, but I had lived many cycles in the woods. I had marks to guide my way, small changes in the trees and ground that I used to remember the way. "Here," I pointed at the nearest slender birch, "the cuts on the bark I made two cycles ago. A mother gnarl made her den in this place and I found the baby. I had to return many days to be sure it had not been abandoned."

McKay still looked unconvinced, hunched in his barely fitting wrap of fur scraps, patched together like the clouds of the sky.

"She knows her way, McKay. So, we made it this far, but which way did we come from…"

Sheppard spoke the last as a question but did not wait for an answer, even if I had one to give. He stepped to the edge, where grass met trees, though all that could be seen through the small layer of stubborn snow were the tips of sun-yellowed weeds. The temperatures were not as warm as the day before, when we had walked through the melting snow and looked for branches to form bows. The same day that we had killed the white haired monster, setting us on this course that I thought was foolish, dangerous, and the only one that would save our lives.

We had not walked easily through the woods to this clearing. Sheppard had us walk here in a form much like that of the Fens when they flew high above, leaving before the cold arrived: their venerated in front, the others following to the side and behind. We watched the woods while we moved as quietly as we could, always looking for any sign of the other wraith. My soft fur boots could move lightly over the frozen crust without breaking through, but their heavier boots, black as the night sky, broke through, leaving marks we could not hide and noise that could be heard for too many steps away.

"Fine, even if this is the clearing, it helps us how?" McKay demanded, leaning heavily on his good leg. The cold had driven a ruddiness into his cheeks, but it only accentuated the pallor in his skin.

Sheppard had his face turned away from sky eyes, and if I had not watched him for all these turns of night and day before, I would have believed he was not paying attention. I did know him though, and knew that he was thinking two steps ahead of me, already considering things in the future that I did not know. His eyes were focused outward, white mists of air curling out from his lips. "Think, McKay – would we have left the ship without anything? Guns, medkit, food?" He stepped into the woods, knelt and ran his hands over a lumpy rise in the blanket of snow. With a suddenness that surprised both me and sky eyes, he punched through the crust, grinned, and pulled up a black object, no bigger than his hand, but oddly shaped.

"That's mine," McKay said, surprised and territorial. He limped over, took it from Sheppard and stared at it mystified. "We dropped our supplies." Sky eyes snapped the fingers on his free hand. "Bread crumbs through the forest, it'll lead us to the Jumper!"

I struggled to follow. "You used your supplies to lay a trail back to your ship? Like my markers in the woods?" It seemed to me a silly idea, losing these items in the forest that they had placed such faith in. "Is that one of these guns you spoke of? Would it not have been better to scratch the bark, or pile branches, than leave your important supplies behind?"

McKay's eyes lifted to the sky. When he returned them to me, I felt like a child standing before my mother. "It wasn't intentional. We weren't exactly compos mentis, Mawani – Sheppard probably wasn't even conscious, which means I was dragging him along. On a good day, that would leave me floundering, but add wounded, it's a miracle we made it at all."

"Why did you not simply stay with your ship?" If their people had already come, and gone…

"Oh, I don't know," McKay thrust the black object at Sheppard, "because we'd be dead, maybe. Little things like the wraith knew we'd gone down, and of course, the being wounded…"

Sheppard took a frustrated breath. "Knock it off, McKay. We don't know what we were thinking, for all we know, there might not be anything left but a burnt frame – I'm blank from the time we started down into the atmosphere, and you're not much better. We've got to focus on finding the ship."

There were still many questions in my mind, but I pushed them aside, and stepped closer to Sheppard. "You came that way. The warm temperatures have melted the snow, made it easier to find odd shapes lying underneath. If we walk with arms-length between us, we can find these discarded supplies, but if you came far…if you did not have much in your arms, it will not help so much as you wish."

"Do I sound that depressing when I do that to you?" McKay demanded, looking at Sheppard.

Sheppard's mouth twisted crookedly and he nodded. "See, pessimism's a real downer."

"Huh, I never knew." McKay joined up with Sheppard and they started moving forward, spreading to the side, leaving enough room that they could carefully scan the ground between them.

I had the feeling I had just missed currents in the water and stood, confused, on the cusp of the clearing. These males were very odd at times. Shrugging my satchel to relieve a sore spot on my shoulder, I walked briskly to catch up, moving to the farthest edge away from McKay.

We walked like that for many of their hours. We found two more objects that they confirmed were guns. Both of these were longer, larger. They looked as if they were capable of doing much damage. Sheppard tried all three, but only two would fire; first, the small gun boomed, then the sharp, fast rapping of noise filling the air around us from the larger weapon. I thought the sound would draw the white haired wraith to us, but Sheppard insisted they had to know what worked and what did not.

The temperature was falling. I began to shiver under my tunic and fur; the air crept up underneath the hem of my clothes, wrapping around my bare skin. Clouds, heavy and gray, had slipped overhead with a quickness that reminded me of water released from a blockage in a stream. "A storm is coming," I warned Sheppard.

I had found the latest item. Progress was slow, and sometimes we moved so far forward without finding anything that I was sure we had lost the trail. Or wondered if we had gone so far that maybe McKay had not begun to drop items. When he had first set out from the ship, dragging Sheppard and their things, he must have had enough clarity of thought to gather these things together. He would not have dropped supplies in the beginning of his journey.

He would have had to grow weary and confused first.

We would eventually reach the moment where he had tired enough to start shedding objects, and from that point on, we would be searching without a trail for their ship.

Sheppard took the black bag, frowned at the sky. "How long till it hits?"

Predicting the storms was like predicting the motion of a pebble in the river. I could say it would roll downward, but would it be tossed to the side, or down the middle of the riverbed, I could not guess. I had not thought another would arrive for another turn of night and day.

"It could be as soon as the sun falling behind the trees," I told him. "Or when the moon will have filled the sky, if not for the clouds." I did not think it would hold off much past that point.

"So we need to find shelter soon," he surmised.

McKay spun around, almost falling as he lost his balance, his wounded leg faltering for a moment. He gestured at the slender willows stretching upwards. This part of the forest lacked the thick evergreens that grew north of the river. Here, it was like walking through a ground littered with poles rising straight to the sky, bare of leaves, their branches like scraggly arms curved upwards. "Where? Did I miss something, because I'm not seeing anything even remotely shelter-like."

"We've got one of our bags. We've got supplies now." Sheppard stared pointedly at McKay. "Depressing, remember? The good news, we haven't seen any sign of the wraith. Odds are, the dart crashed away from us, and that means time's on our side."

"That's the best you can come up with?"

Sheppard squinted into the darkening woods ahead. "It's better than nothing."

"Did you hear the gusts of wind during that last storm? A tent isn't going to cut it, Colonel. We need a building, or a cave. Something sturdier than nylon, preferably man-made, and we need it yesterday."

"Will your ship do?" I asked.

Sky eyes turned on me with surprise; Sheppard, with hope tempered by caution. I had been scanning the trees while they talked; their back and forth often left me confused. It was then that I had spotted it – the missing tree tops, so easily overlooked by anyone not used to having walked amongst the forest in full bloom. I could see it now, a path in the air above our heads, where the tops of the trees were broken. "Look." I gestured above us, then off to the side. "Follow the trees that are smaller than the others."

"Son of a bitch," breathed Sheppard, a broad grin replacing the guarded look from before.

McKay craned his neck, tracked the line and returned Sheppard's grin ten-fold. "Follow the yellow brick road." He stepped forward, only for his leg to collapse, and send him falling to the ground.

Before I could move, Sheppard was there. "Easy, McKay…take it easy." He got his hands under sky eyes' arms and helped him stand.

"Oh, God, pain bad. Remember that."

"Like you'd let me forget?"

McKay lurched forward and I shook off my slowness. I took his other arm from Sheppard, smiling at him when he thanked me with his eyes. "We need to get you both to shelter." I had not missed the carefulness of Sheppard's movements, or how shallow his breaths were. The mist that rose from his mouth was far less than that coming from sky eyes and myself.

I had seen animals do the same. Deep breaths hurt with broken bones over the air cavities; shallow breaths offered less pain, but did not clear out the cavities, did not stretch them like they should, and sometimes animals would fall sick after taking shallow breaths for too long. The same sickness that had clogged Lilani's chest and taken her from me.

"Lead the way," offered Sheppard. "You can see the differences better than we can."

I nodded, knowing his words were true.

OoO

The sheared treetops soon gave way to scorched trunks and devastation easily followed by even sky eyes. The sun had dipped behind the clouds so that the grey pall had given way to a deeper darkness. Flakes spit down, small and fitful; gusts of wind ruffled the fur against my neck.

My worry was as big as the cliffs when suddenly, it was there, a large silver fish out of water. I felt my feet stop, my heart pause. "It is beautiful," I whispered.

Sheppard chuckled. "You should have seen it before we crashed."

"Yes, amazing how the lack of scorching, bending and breaking adds to the effect," cracked McKay.

They did not understand. It was like legend walking from myth, appearing in front of me. Like a star dropping at my feet and letting me hold it – I let go of sky eyes and stepped near enough to touch. "Can I?" I asked, looking over my shoulder at them. The wind rocked my body, the snow settled on my cloak.

"Go ahead," Sheppard said. His eyes shared my excitement.

The storm raged around me, the trees howled, but I was in a bubble, with nothing but magic in the moment of touching this ship that had flown in the night sky, danced with the stars. My fingertips brushed metal both cold and warm and I felt for sure I was touching life. My feet took me forward and I leaned in, pressed my body against the curves. "You have seen the unseeable. You have flown with the birds." I swallowed back my emotion. "You have been steered by the ghosts."

"Freezing here."

"See if you can get the hatch open. I'll watch over her."

My bubble burst and I stepped away, feeling odd. "This is yours?" How could man own such majesty?

He made a face. "Maybe borrowed is a better term."

Understanding flooded through my bones. Of course. They were simply the guardians to this brave spaceflyer. "Can it be fixed? Can sky eyes mend its wounds?"

"Look, Mawani – I know this is, well, unusual for you, but as much as the Jumpers have a special spot…" Sheppard drifted off, his eyebrows drawing together. "You know what, never mind, maybe you're right. Come on, let's --"

"Got it! Yes! " Sky eyes' cry floated to us on the wind, and softer came, "I really can fix anything."

Sheppard's lips curved. "- go see how McKay's doing."

I smiled. "He is doing well, I believe."

OoO

If seeing the outside had been wondrous, seeing the inside was even more so. The spaceflyer was made of materials I had never touched before and now found myself surrounded by. Chairs with cushions that were not made from cloth and straw. There were so many things, everywhere, and I did not know what they were. Doors led into a front, more broken and damaged than the outside.

Sheppard had approached one of those chairs. He had fallen into himself, and he reminded me of what I had felt outside in the woods when I had touched the surface of the ship's body. But on his face, I read worry, sorrow and pain. The see-through material that had covered the surface in front of the chairs was broken, and it looked to me like ice that had been too weak to stand the weight of an animal; cracks traveled outward, crooked and ugly. Blood was on the odd shaped wall, almost like a table. Sheppard's blood, I realized, feeling a thickness in my throat again.

"Now I know how my leg got like this," sky eyes said, his voice sounding slightly sick and weak.

I followed his eyes and saw a thick branch, punched through the ice-like surface and angled down to the other chair. There was so much blood that I reached for it, feeling the dried, hard puddles, awed that it was not their deathbed. I looked to both and said, "You lived through such a thing? How is that possible?" The damage to their spaceship was great, to their bodies, how could it have not snatched them to the otherworld?

Before McKay could speak, the storm arrived in full fury, whipping into the ship. The branch groaned and moved; the ice shield cracked more, sounding like the breaks on the river when the summer cycle arrived and stole the land from its hibernating sleep. The ice would moan through the night and sometimes, it made a sound like the weapon Sheppard had fired, echoing into the air, before being whisked away in the fast flowing water.

"Can you restore emergency power from the rear?" Sheppard asked, looking over at McKay.

Sky eyes pushed me to the side, hopped through the doors. "Yes, if there are any crystals still in one piece."

"Crystals?" The word felt strange on my tongue, but beautiful, like the fragile flowers emerging from their buds.

"Come on." Sheppard tugged me back. "We need to seal the cockpit if we're going to stay warm."

When we were through, he touched the wall and another set of doors slid between us and the front. They shrieked like the storms and could not close all the way. Sheppard shrugged and said, "Good enough," before guiding me to the long raised bed against the wall.

I knew this was the time to watch, and be quiet. They were immersed in their world and I knew they were fighting to keep us alive. I stared towards the larger door that sky eyes had closed once we were inside, the one they had called a hatch, and imagined the dark forest beyond.

"Take this. If anything tries to come through either door, you should be armed."

Sheppard thrust the small black object in my hand. It was cold and heavy. I held it awkwardly and looked to him for words to explain. He smiled grimly and pointed to a button on the side. "That's the safety, leave it on. When you're ready to shoot, push it in. You point this --" he clasped my hand and fitted my fingers around the thicker end, then pointed the narrower end at the closed doors, " – at what you want to shoot. Pull the trigger," he moved one of my fingers to loop around a thin curved part, "and pray."

"Pray?"

McKay snorted. "Out of all that, she asks what pray means."

"If you can shoot a bow and arrow, she can shoot a 9 mil."

"I'm sure she can shoot it, I just don't want to be the one she hits." Sky eyes pulled open a panel and I could see there were more ice-like pieces inside. He seemed to go through them with as little care as I used when cleaning my wooden bowls.

Sheppard looked sideways at me. "You won't hit McKay, right?"

I shook my head. "Just white haired monsters," I promised. I did not bother to mention I knew what pray meant.

He nodded, satisfied, then seemed to think about it more. He gave me a second glance. "Just…don't point that end at us, ever, okay?" I lifted the weapon and looked down the barrel, curious. Sheppard jerked forward, grabbed and pushed it down and away, back towards the rear doors. "Don't do that." He looked whiter than before.

Maybe I should give it back? If this thing was that dangerous, I did not wish to hold it. I almost did, but I saw the gray lying underneath Sheppard's skin, the lines of hidden pain creeping from his eyes and mouth. I swallowed back my fear and placed it gently on my knees, the narrow end facing the metal door. "Do not point at you, or me, only white haired monsters, and pull the…trigger. I understand."

"See, easier than teaching you, Rodney."

"Har har har, you slay me."

They worked together, then, arguing and fussing over the opened panels of ice. There were times when sky eyes shouted in triumph, only for the ship to whine and then sky eyes' face would fall.

After another disappointment, Sheppard patted McKay on his shoulder, moving his body carefully. "Keep working, you can do it – besides, if you don't, we die."

"Stop with the imminent death." Sky eyes dropped his attention from the panels to Sheppard, his expression exasperated. "I have no idea where you came up with that flawed psychology, but let me assure you, all previous instances were purely coincidental."

Sheppard grinned, holding the tools that sky eyes had given him. "I don't believe in coincidences."

I huddled in my furs, shivering. I was about to suggest they stop arguing and we build a fire on the floor, when McKay suddenly shouted again, but this time his cry was followed by sun lighting the darkness that had only been broken by the small light Sheppard had set on the long bed next to me. I had gaped in wonder at it when he had pulled it free from their supplies, sure that they had snatched part of the sun and trapped it in the thin tube, but now…how did they do this?

The spaceflyer had many secrets.

"Now we won't become humansicles." McKay turned to Sheppard and me, smiling widely. "See," he said happily. "Fix anything."

"Get us spaceworthy, then," challenged Sheppard.

His face scrunched. "With parts."

"Always an excuse, buddy." Sheppard's words seemed the opposite of the warmth in his eyes, and I waited for sky eyes to return words, that in any of my people, would have been insulting, but suddenly Sheppard's legs crumpled and he stumbled back.

I dropped the weapon and caught him, his motion driving both of us back into the bed. "Sheppard!"

"Colonel?"

"Help me, McKay." I tried not to move his body much. Sky eyes and I got him stretched out where I had been sitting moments before. I put my cheek over his mouth and felt the soft puff of air. "He is breathing," I said. McKay seemed to go limp, and slumped against the other wall, sliding down into the long bed on that side of the ship.

I felt Sheppard's forehead, sucked in a quick breath at the heat that met my skin. Kneeling, I pulled away the layers of his patched outer cloak and shirt, till I was down to his bare chest. Afraid of what I would hear, I pressed my ear against his skin. The heat burned into my face and the crackles I heard on the side where his broken bone lay made my heart stumble.

Not that. Not the same sickness that had claimed Lilani. It was not fair. I pulled away from Sheppard, tucked his clothes back into place, and turned to sky eyes. "Can your Carson cure a clogged chest?" I demanded, angry. I had no herb to cure the crackles.

"Clogged chest?" sky eyes repeated dumbly. "What…" he seemed to slow his tongue to match his thoughts. "Explain using words I can actually understand. What's wrong with him?"

I frowned at him. Sky eyes was not as slow as the gnarls. He was smart, like the night predators. "His air cavities are sick, they crackle. Clogged chest."

His eyes of blue widened with understanding. "Pneumonia?" He stood with too much speed, stumbled on his bad leg. "Damn it!" Then he was pulling himself towards the back and opening a small door near the ceiling. A bag came falling on his head, causing him to yelp with surprise. Finally, he glared at me. "A little help! Before I kill myself trying to save his life, again."

He was confusing me, with his rapid speech and actions, but I moved to him, took the bag and followed him back to Sheppard's side.

"Why didn't I think of this earlier --" He took the bag from me and threw it on the floor, opening it and rummaging through the things inside. I peered in and found myself lost again in how strange their supplies were. I had never seen the like in my life, not before the time of the white haired monsters, nor after. "Here!" He held up a thin shaped object, pleased, and by the look he gave me, sky eyes thought I should be, also.

"What is it?" I felt as stupid as the Nole, intent on digging holes and nothing else, from morning sky to night.

"Broad spectrum antibiotics," he explained, seemingly deflated by my reaction. "Treats bacterial infections."

I considered the object. "Infection?"

He bobbed his head. "In-fec-tion…wound sickness."

How could this tiny object treat what I needed many things for? When sky eyes' wound was sick, and Sheppard's head wounds, I had needed river moss, poultices and cloth. "His sickness is inside," I said wisely. "That will not help."

McKay grinned and pulled part of the object off. "It goes inside."

I reached for it, only for sky eyes to yank it away. "Don't touch – it's sterile."

I had seen enough, though. The tip was so thin as to barely exist, but it was pointed at the top, almost like the arrow tips, but many many times smaller and thinner. "Will it treat your wound sickness, too?" I had not failed to notice the rising color in his cheeks, the flush that only came from the sickness returning. Walking from morning to night sky had brought back what I had feared.

"What? Of course it will."

"Do you have another?"

"There's just the one, it's an emergency kit. It's only meant to carry the bare essentials, and I'm always telling Carson he needs to stock more --"

With gentleness, I pushed him until he was sitting on the floor, Sheppard lying above him. He was confused, but let me roll his pants enough to expose the cloth I had wrapped around his leg. It was soaked through, life's blood and sickness staining the white bandage an ugly red-yellow. "It is why the pain is so much greater now than this morning," I told him. "I brought what little river moss I had left, but it might not be enough. The wound is aggravated. When that happens, I have found that healing is slower and longer. If the river moss does not work, the sickness can worsen and kill you even before the wound turns green."

McKay's hand trembled slightly. He looked nervously from his leg to Sheppard, lying still and pale. "But there's nothing you can do for him. Nothing – without this, he might die before they rescue us."

I fought against my feelings. I did not know their medicine, but clogged chest was a killer for my people. Most did not survive. But this sickness in sky eyes' leg, he could live, with treatment. "He is your litter mate, McKay. It is your decision to make."

"Litter mate?" The medicine dropped by his side as he gaped at me. "What's that mean?"

"Born of the same mother, or those in life that find a similar soul in one another," I explained. How could he not understand something so simple?

I did not envy him this decision. In my hands, it would not be easily made. I could not bear to let Sheppard worsen, to deny him the only hope he had, yet, I could also not bear to risk the sickness sneaking into McKay's heart and mind. "We should not have come. Neither of you were healed enough when the wraith fought us, and the day spent walking…" It had been too much, as I had feared it would be. "But if your people come soon?" I could not forget hope, even though I had little enough reason to hold onto it.

His face fell, the object still gripped in his hand. "For all we know, they might have already looked and found nothing. This was stupid, we're going to die here. I can't believe I agreed to come on this mission in the first place." He turned to Sheppard. "What were you thinking? Nothing ever goes right out here. We should've had back-up. The Daedalus, another Jumper, Ronon and Teyla! "

I touched sky eyes' chin, just for a moment, to get his attention. The ship was growing warm. Though I had a hard time believing in miracles, the hopelessness on sky eyes' face made me speak even while I knew I should be quiet. "When I was little girl, I was certain I would not be bound to Leom. He was the son of my mother's mosul. That made us important to one another, but he did not seem to even see my nose on my face."

"What does that have to do --"

"Listen, sky eyes," I scolded. His lips thinned but he stayed quiet, still clutching the medicine in his hand. "I went to my mother, crying, certain my life was over, because to be overlooked by a mosul's son was a grave insult. It meant I was not worthy, even to those that had more reason to love me, than anyone else. She dried my cheeks and told me that life is best lived in the moment of now. Do you understand?"

"Carpe diem?" he said with a grimace.

"More strange words from your tongue."

He sighed, but withdrew a small white item from the bag, ripping it open to reveal something that looked like white cloth but smelled unpleasant. "Seize the day," McKay said, pulling Sheppard's clothes to the side, revealing both Sheppard's arm and his decision. "A saying invented by the optimists of the world. I never believed in it because seizing the day often meant forgetting about tomorrow, and how screwed you are when it arrives."

I watched as he wiped the pungent smelling cloth over Sheppard's skin. I did not move to stop him. It was his choice, and whatever the outcome might be, it was not for me to interfere. He pushed the thin metal tip down and it disappeared into Sheppard's arm. I slumped further, feeling more tired than I remembered ever being since Lilani's death. When I spoke, it was for myself, as well as sky eyes. "For Sheppard, you must be this optimist. For yourself, because I do not think we will survive if we do not have hope."

Sheppard stirred as sky eyes withdrew the thin rod. His eyes cracked open enough that I could see the sliver of color hiding within. He blinked at the ceiling. McKay pushed the other part back over the metal tip and tossed it in the bag. Then, he leaned over Sheppard and placed a hand on his litter mate's belly. "Stay down or you'll probably fall on your butt, again."

"I fell?"

Before I could reassure Sheppard, McKay's smile grew and he said with more pleasure than I could understand, "You fainted."

Sheppard groaned. "Let it go, McKay."

"Never."

The spreading warmth in the ship, and maybe even the wounds I carried on my chest, made me sleepy. It had been a long, uncertain day. The weapon was not far from my reach, the doors a solid barrier between us and the storm, even the wraith, if it was out there. The howling wind whistled in through the cracks in the doors that led to the broken place Sheppard had called a cockpit. My mind grew fuzzy and slow, my thoughts returning to linger on magic medicine in small tubes, the strange words carpe diem, and panels like ice, before my mind fell lastly to a silver spaceflyer, gracefully darting amongst the twinkling stars.

I slept in my hope.

AN: one more chapter, I promise!