Lady MacBeth

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, your murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief! Lady MacBeth, Shakespeare MacBeth I, iv

They stare at me in stunned silence, but I am too numb to comfort or reasure or even offer a snarky remark. The Murderer, the traitor, the… the….

"She's coming 'round!" Dr. Weir calls from the other room, and for a moment, I hate her, however selfishly. The queen will not move—John and Dad would have strapped her down before finding me. Can she not understand that I have just opened the door to Hell?

"Right there!" John jerks his head, indicating Dad should go stand guard. Why should he stand guard while his daughter suffers? But John gives him a look, and he obeys, however grudgingly. Sheppard turns back to me, looking me in the eye, full of…compassion? Understanding? How could he possibly understand?

"Mary, I have a feeling we could use you in there, but you don't have to come back in if you don't want to—"

"No," I shake my head…no matter my fear, no matter the pain, I, and I alone, must face her. She is my demon. "You need the information she holds. Mum isn't strong enough. It just…took me by surprise." Which is not entirely a lie, though not entirely the truth

"I'll bet." I cannot tell if he is serious or sarcastic or both. Does it matter?

I try to give him a smile, although I don't thing I succeed in reassuring him. "I will be there in a moment. I just need to… prepare myself."

"Right." He pauses. "You know you're starting to talk like Teyla, right? Always pausing before a verb or adjective?"

This time I can give him a genuine smile—somehow John can always do that, coax a smile or a chuckle out of you, even in the worst situations.

I close my eyes as he returns to the infirmary and I listen to their conversation with the morthair.

Blood fills my senses. Human blood, carnadine and coppery; wraith blood, dark, metallic and earthy. In my mouth, my nose, my eyes. On my hands, my face. I cannot escape it, no matter how I try to force the memories back—I can't even tell if this world of blood and smoke and screams is the real world, or the world of water and exhaustion is real…

Humorless, dangerous laugh breaks through the confusion. "You are all about to die."

"Care to elaborate on that?" John's dry voice throws me a lifeline back to his world, and I drag myself up through the mire of memory with it.

Silence. No more screams, no more talking, nothing.

I steel myself as much as I can. I will never be 'ready' to face Her. I pray silently to the Spirits for strength as I walk in and stand beside the bed, drawing myself up as she stares at me in shock, almost horror.

"I killed you!" she whispers, and then screams, "I killed you and the brat you carried! I killed you centuries ago!"

"Not me," I say levelly, dangerously, even as a shudder runs through my body and my meager breakfast rises in my throat at the sound of her voice. Oh that she had died in the ocean! Oh, that she is now at my mercy! "My mother."

"No, it's a trick!" she shrieks, fighting against the restraints. "I killed them all! All her daughters!"

"All you could find, morthair," I struggle to remain impassive—it is the lack of passion that frightens her the most—but my voice still trembles with fury and passion unspent. "But you could not find me. I lived to see my mother's curse came to pass."

She spits on me. "The words of a dying bitch! They mean nothing!"

I smile grimly. "Yet here you are. All those deaths have gained you nothing but a prison in the depths of the ocean and death by my hand."

I turn to face the shocked humans behind me. A part of me wants to reassure them, explain, step back and look impassionately at this, but my patience, my nerves are worn thin. I, however wrongly, am in no mood to coddle them. "You need to know if her threat is worth anything. Stay back, be quiet and don't interfere unless you think something has gone horribly wrong."

"Mairghr—"

"Dr. Weir, with all due respect," I cut her off as firmly and politely as I can under the circumstances. "This is not the time."

I face the morthair again, and lower my first barrier that separates our minds, trying to brace myself against the onslaught I know must be coming.

Mother!

I'll kill you for this!

Blood, smoke, death! So much death! Stop it! stop it!

Stay back bitch!

Focus, Mairghread, damn it! Focus! It's only memory! Fight her. Fight as your mother fought!

Damn you and all your spawn!

Pain, such terrible pain…

Your lifeforce is so strong…you taste wonderful…

Ah! At last, I break through, and her mind is laid bare before me. Her rise to power, her plans for overthrowing the Lanteans, her careful building of alliances…

I will kill you for this! she screeches in my mind, but I shout back Shut up! I have no interest in your decayed delusions!

And then, despair…utter loneliness as her crew disappears by her own hand, to feed her when the humans are gone…loneliness broken by fits of torture and carnal pleasure with the few slaves she has kept for distraction, unfit even for food after her abuse….then even these were gone…

"She was the leader of the great alliance, who went with the first wave of ships against Atlantis," I tell John, Dad and Weir, who I know are waiting impatiently behind me. "Her ship failed her, and she crashed into the ocean. When the humans she had brought for sustenance were gone, she fed upon her crew, one by one, until she was alone."

I do not tell them how, in her memories, it is the loneliness that is more unbearable to her than the captivity. Wraith are so used to having the presence of others tangible to us….

"She entered the deep sleep, to make her energy last, waking between the centuries, for a rescue that never came," I do not tell them how greatly she longed for death's release, and feared it so terribly. Facing the other shore, she began to fear the stories she had learned as a child were true, that she would receive frightening retribution for what she had done. "She sense us as we descended, me most of all." If we were not a rescue party, at least she would not have to die alone.

A sudden thought flashes across my sight…

"She has set the self-destruct," I tell them as I turn around. "It will go off in ninety minutes now. Something to write with…" I look around, before Weir hands me her PDA. I draw in the symbols with the tiny stylus. "This is the command code. It will disable the self-destruct."

I break out of Her mind as a prisoner would his gaol cell, passing again through the gore and smoke…

I hurry out of the room as fast as I can; I cannot do anything more…they must take care of it themselves

I run into the crew quarters, desperate and nearly mad with grief as I can no longer stand the memories now overwhelming my mind. I feel the blood coating my skin, the dirt in my hair, ashes under my nails…

I must get clean.

TBC

Next: To Be Clean

A/N: To those of you who are going "What happened to chapters 7-12? Hell, what happened to this chapter?" this is what happened/ is happening. I am moving 600 miles from my current home to begin a new stage in my life in a completely unfamiliar territory. While I am not one to panic, is has affected my writing. I realized that my last few chapters were of poor quality to say the least and crappy to say the most. So I've deleted what I have and am redoing them. Please read and review if you think it's better or worse. Thank you, Cainwen

Steve Plushie would like to add that he will force me to type regardless of the work I will have to do, so fear not, this story will be updated and not abandoned in my move.