Rescue
Why do you weep for the happy dead, my daughter? It is the living who need your tears…
It is my mother's voice, but I do not know to whom she would have said this, or why amidst all my memories of death and thoughts of sorrow these soothing words should come to me…
Gilleasbachan!
I jerk away from my dad's comforting embrace as though I had received a jolt of electricity and stagger over to one of the bathroom sinks where I begin to wash my hands of what remains of the queen's blood. Dad follows me and leans against the doorframe the way he does, watching me with an eagle's eye, perhaps to make sure I don't hurt myself…
"Dad, I need to go over to the cruiser," I announce as I scrub the dark, clotted gore from my palm.
"Why?" he asks sharply, gruffly. Inwardly I wince—how can I explain to him? How can I do this, when already I can see that dealing with the queen today has rankled him, prodded those open sores which even I cannot heal?
"My brother is there," I state bluntly. There is no gentle way to put this, and prevarication will only rub salt in the wounds. Dad has always appreciated honest words and clear action over silky speech.
"Whoa, wait," he crosses his arms and stands up straight, at once defensive and on the offence. "I thought only you and Cullough were left alive."
I sigh and turn to face him, my hands dripping water onto the floor. "I thought so too. Until I was in the shower and I realized I had no memory of Gilleasbachan's death. The queen more or less confirmed it—she kept him alive."
"Why would she do that?" his voice is harsh—today has been hard on Dad in so many ways, this is one more thing for him to come to terms with in a very short amount of time…
"You heard her," I remind him. "'He was pleasing to us.' She kept him as a…" I choke on the word, but there is no other way to say it and call it what it is… "sex slave."
Dad grows stiffer—I can see my words slowly penetrating. Oh Spirits! Would that I could spare him this pain! He is so torn—it took so long for him to accept me but once he did, I was his. But I was an infant, completely innocent of anything. Gilleasbachan was an adult, but he is my brother, and a victim of the wraith like dad was.
"What makes you think he's on that cruiser?" his voice is still gruff, but I can see him softening, sense his initial hostility cracking.
I shudder involuntarily and say plainly, "The queen was prepared for a long battle. She would not deprive herself pleasure for the sake of battle."
"Hmph," he uncrosses his arms and checks his blaster. "Let's go find Sheppard. Maybe there're some more of those suit things."
"You'll help?" I ask, somewhat surprised. I had hoped he wouldn't fight me, wouldn't let his disapproval burn against me, but I did not expect him to help.
"Didn't say I'd play poker with him," he huffs as he wraps his arm around my shoulder and guides me out of the unused rooms. "But he's your brother—I'll help for your sake."
"Thank you," I whisper and jump up slightly to peck Dad on the cheek. "I love you, Dad."
"Love you too, babe," he kisses the top of my head gently as we walk along.
Once I explain to John what happened, he agrees almost immediately, though he tells us not to tell Weir—he's afraid that she might not want to act immediately, and I have impressed upon him my fear that Gilleasbachan may be dying, and may have been dying for years. He explains it to Mum, and tells her to keep Dr. Weir busy. She does not like the subterfuge, but agrees. I sense there is something going on between Sheppard and Dr. Weir that I am unaware of officially.
There are two more underwater suits that they found, so John, Dad and I all suit up to go join Rodney back on the cruiser. Once internal sensors on the ship showed no life signs, he had insisted on staying to see how bad the damage to the ship was.
The Lanteans had never anticipated anyone Dad's size trying to use these suits apparently, because he just barely fits. He has to take off his boots in order to make his legs short enough. In my suit, I take an emergency med-kit—bandages, blankets, antibiotic ointments.
Though I know the walk between the drilling platform and the cruiser is not long, it feels like an eternity to me. I keep reaching out with my mind, hoping, trying to find my brother, but there is only an emptiness when I ignore Mum's mind. Yet he cannot be dead…
The darkness of the water…it weighs down upon us, upon me…like the darkness I feel creeping like a shadow over my soul…I know that killing the queen was right, no one can hold it against me, and yet…
No! Stop thinking about this…I must force myself to think about life, not death…
At last, we reach the cruiser, and enter through its own moon pool. We work in a triangle, helping each other to get out of the deep-water suits, which are heavy and clumsy.
As I struggle to free myself from the legs and boots, my foot pulls free of everything, including my own shoes, and I stumble back, my barefoot touching the floor of the cruiser.
The instant my foot touches the floor, I have the sudden sensation of being…home. Not like coming back to our flat in Atlantis; it is more like…coming back to somewhere I lived a long time ago, to find it has been vandalized, desecrated, but it is still home.
Hello Mairghread.
The voice flits through my mind, familiar, welcoming…
Our hive…the queen used captured small hive ships to build this cruiser, and one of them was ours, and now it welcomes me, despite long separation, it recognizes me, warming the floor beneath my feet and raising the light so we can see more clearly.
Where is my brother? Where is Gilleasbachan? I ask it, and almost immediately a shadow of sorrow flits across my mind, and an image, a map, which guides in my mind, weaving through the intersecting corridors, down a level, at last to a small room, nearly hidden by millennia of growth and dirt.
I rush off, matching the images in my mind to what I see as I rush through the halls which light up as I run, Dad and John chasing after me, yelling for me to slow down, where am I going?
How can I slow down? My brother is here, somewhere, hurt, dying…
At last! I find the small, hidden door, which retracts for me and I dash in to fall at the side of a body-sized mound in the floor. With feverish haste born of a terror that I may too late to save him, though he is not dead yet, I brush off the thick layers and dirt and debris until only a thin, translucent membrane separates me from what lies within.
As the room grows brighter, I can see clearly that beneath this mound is my brother, the shadows and contours of his face leaping out at me even through the clouded film between us.
He is near death… the hive warns me You will have to act quickly…the queen did terrible things to him…
I shudder, but mentally nod to the ship, positioning my hand over where his heart is, under the membrane that separates us, ready to flood him with new life the moment my hand will fit through…
Slowly, the membrane separates, as though reluctant after all these ages to move and give up its burden, and as soon as it is wide enough I slam my hand onto his chest, pouring into him what I so recently took from the queen, his torturer…
He is so weak, it terrifies me. Even though I pump all of the queen's energies and some of my own into him, he barely has enough to breathe, for his heart to beat, and he is dreadfully hurt. Through his ragged clothes, which now crumble with age, I can see scars, welts old and new, cuts shallow and deep, some partially healed, some now beginning to bleed sluggishly. His face is drawn, even in sleep, and his hair has begun to grey, from his temples reaching back nearly a hand's-width. As the membrane pulls back further, I can see his limbs bent at unnatural angles…
"DAD! JOHN!" I shout, hoping they are within hearing distance, because I now realize that in my haste I left the medical kit I brought from the platform back with the suits.
"Right here," John answers, and makes me jump—so absorbed was I in finding my brother I did not notice he was crouching down next to me, with Dad standing in the doorway. "I brought the med kit," he says, shrugging it off his shoulders and onto the floor. "Geez, he's a bit of a mess."
I cast John a withering glare at his careless words as I spread out one of the blankets on the floor and with John's help I lift Gilleasbachan out of the stasis pod imbedded in the floor and onto it. Wounds, partially healed and unhealed, begin to bleed sluggishly, dark blood dripping off a skeletal frame onto the grey blanket. With more haste than skill I bandage the lacerations and deep wounds, hoping to at least stem the tide that threatens to take my brother's already fragile life.
Take him out of here…there is a room not far away…images slip into my mind of a bedroom of sorts, 20 meters away…
I could lift Gilleasbachan myself, but I do not want to risk too much jarring, I fear for the broken bones and ribs I felt when I bandaged him…
"Dad or John?" I turn them, still standing by but looking unsure. "Could you help me carry him? There is a bedroom just down the hall…"
Dad grunts and scoops up Gilleasbachan like a baby before I can say anything else. "Which way?" he asks, somewhat coldly—I know that this is 'way outside his comfort zone'.
"This way…"I lead them out into the hall and turn right until I come to the room that the hive showed me.
"How the hell do you know all this?" John demands as he looks around uneasily at the dark and…eerie excuse for a bedroom.
"The cruiser is showing me—part of it used to be our hive," I explain curtly as I brush the dust of ancient blankets and sheets off the bed so Dad can set down Gilleasbachan.
Dad sets him down gently, though I think only for my sake, and I am struck, truly struck, for the first time how terribly thin, skinny, skeletal, my brother has become. In my memories he looms large, lean, yes, but muscular, like John, not this pathetic, emaciated…
corpse
I shudder as the word springs unbidden into my mind. Gilleasbachan, my brother, protector, is corpse-like. His skin is deathly pale, even for a wraith, his cheeks and eyes sunken, and neither bandages nor the pitiful scraps of rag that are what remains of his clothes can hide the bones which protrude through parchment skin…
Have I found my brother, only to watch him die?
TBC
Next: Fevered Dreams
A/N: I'm so SO sorry, my life is insane. Therefore, while I promise to update as quickly as possible, I can make no promises as to when that should be, except that there should definitely be an update by the end of the month. Sorry. And for those of you who are going, "where are all the other chapters?" don't worry, they're coming back, better than ever! I hope.