Capture

The minutes pass while we wait for news. Mum and I are both sensing the queen's caustic presence, painfully close, hungry and assertive, then dulled—

Shouts from the control room, orders flying…McKay tells us the compartment with the Jumper was flooding, they had to throw up emergency bulkhead force-fields; they are still trying to reach Dad and John, but Graydon was confirmed dead.

I stand up and immediately Weir demands to know where I think I'm going.

"To the station's infirmary," I tell her, concentrating all my will power on remaining calm. "There is a good chance that Dad and John are injured, and it is possible they may have captured the queen—her presence is numbed, as though she were unconscious."

Thus declaiming my purpose, I sweep out of the crew quarters, picturing the map of the station from the control room. Five halls, three rights and two lefts later, and I have found the infirmary. My skin tingles uncomfortably so close to Lantean medical equipment, but I know what I need.

I pull the dust cloths off three of the beds and begin yanking open cupboards, looking for blankets and anything else that may still be useful after 10,000 years, like restraints for the wraith I hope they have captured.

How strange a thought—'the wraith I hope they have captured'. I have few illusions about my race. I know what we have become. I know that my people are become murderers, torturers, monsters that lurk in the shadows. Yet, I cannot help but feel...a connection that runs deeper than mere genetic similarities. To want one to become a prisoner, as my own father was, seems to bring me down to their level. Perhaps I am no better then they, despite my never having fed. Is it mere vanity to think that I am less evil than my distant cousins who cull whole worlds? Is it only the name of our sins that are different, but the severity the same?

Behind me, Dr Weir comes in with the case full of our own medical supplies, seeming somewhat…miffed. While I did not intend to rub her the wrong way, I have grown tired of her absurd questions and illogical decisions, as well as her thinly disguised dislike of me. Despite my doubts and fears regarding my people, I cannot help what I am—I am wraith. No amount of her frowns can change that, nor have I given her reason to regard me with such disdain.

"Mary, good thing you're here," I turn around to see John and Dad come in, dripping wet; over his shoulder, Dad has slung the other wraith. In the deep recesses of my heart, I wonder if I can face this brethren. Am I strong enough to resist? Is there anything to resist?

Such thoughts are futile.

"Thank the Spirits. Are either of you injured?" I demand hurriedly as Dad unceremoniously dumps the queen on the nearest bed.

"Nope, we're good," he rumbles, surreptitiously wiping off his shoulder and violently shaking water from his dreadlocks.

"Uh, Mary, think you could get her," John gestures towards the wraith while wringing out his jacket, "Pumped full of our finest sedatives?"

"Of course," I grab an IV bag of saline and a vial of strong sedative from the case, along with the necessary needles. Dr. Beckett taught me basic nursing skills for an event such as this.

I place them on the small table next to the bed and reach out to roll the wraith, whom Dad dropped on the bed in a heap on her side, on her back.

As soon as I touch her, I am filled with revulsion and nausea the likes of which I have never felt before in my life. Icy terror slices through my heart and my breath freezes in my throat. Emotions I have never known, so immense and consuming….

I jerk away from her and stumble into the corridor, where I crumple into a corner, gasping for breath and trying to find myself amidst the many horrifying memories which spring into my mind, unbidden except by the sight and touch of the other wraith.

Seeing through my sibling's eyes as they are killed…

Watching them die through the eyes of the living….

My mother's last moments, her last words, her curse, replay over and over in my mind, a maelstrom, a thick, choking miasma of pain and hatred and terror and death…

"Mary?"

I scream when Dad touches my shoulder. I open my eyes and he and John are kneeling in front of me, their eyes full of concern. I realize in a flash that I am trembling violently and as soaked with sweat and tears as they are with sea water.

"What is it? What'd she do to you?" John asks, his hand reaching for his gun.

"Bheil si mortair a' mo treubh," I whisper hoarsely in my own tongue while I seek the words in theirs. "She is the murderer of my family."

TBC

Next: Lady MacBeth

A/N: FYI: I use Scots Gaelic for Wraith-ese. Lantean is bastard latin, so why not gaelic for wraith? Go listen to some, and I think you'll understand why. The next couple chapters will be progressively darker, I'm thinking, and will end up departing from the episode almost entirely, sooner or later, of course. Now, I know this chapter was short, but, Please REVIEW!!!