Chapter 12 – Escape
Teyla's wound in the head continued healing. With each day it got better, and now, as she put her nape to the moist wall of the cell, she did not get dizzy from the moving of her neck.
"Oh, fine," she breathed, and a faint smile appeared in the corner of her mouth.
As Michael arrived with her breakfast, a bowl of mushy, gray grunge, she had already taken a bath - she could do everything on her own now.
"Good morning, darling," he greeted her. Teyla wondered if it was a good idea to let him try to persuade her to fall in love with him.
"Thank you," she whispered as she accepted the mush from him. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yes, of course," he nodded.
She put the bowl aside. "Will you, please, embrace me?"
A smile appeared on his face, which was a rare thing to happen. "Are you sure you want it?" he asked, nervously clenching his fists.
"Yes, I can't be more sure," she answered calmly, "I want to feel you close to me."
The naive, simple light in his eyes nearly broke Teyla's heart. She got up from the floor, he leaned over to her, and she snuggled up into his cold arms. The next moment she grabbed his weapon, whipping it out of his belt, and she shot in the middle of his chest. Michael doubled up with the pain, but his Wraith body was strong enough to keep him on his feet, so she needed to shoot once again. This time the bluish lightning of the beam hit him so forcefully that he flew into the corner.
She turned away and ran out of the cell, which proved to be easy, considering the fact that the Wraith left the rails open as he came in. She rushed through the corridor, then she turned left. She had absolutely no idea where she should go, she just wanted to flee. For a while, she did not have a problem, she had to hide behind a corner once because a few Wraith guards marched across the passage, but they did not notice her. The difficulty came later, as she started to get exhausted. Her concussion was not completely healed, and she had other wounds from Michael's baseball bat hits on her body which began to ache more and more. At first her left knee shook, and she nearly fell onto the ground, then her head made the world turn around her. Staggering, she leaned against the wall.
His voice echoed in her head, she fancied hearing his steps everywhere around her, especially from behind, but every time she turned back, no one was there.
"No, no, I should not move my head so much, it makes me giddy," she told herself, but she could not help it, when she heard those steps, she turned back again and again.
She fell onto the floor. Her limbs were like heavy sacks filled with lead; she felt that she could not go on. She dragged herself behind a hanging offshoot of the organic ceiling, then she lay down, panting.
"Oh, no, he will find me," she thought dismally, "I should have killed him... I should have killed him... I should have..."
She closed her eyes. These negative images took her endurance away. She turned the lines of her thoughts to Atlantis. She imagined her friends there, the people she loved, and it gave her strength. She kneeled up, grabbed the gun again, and she scrambled a few yards more. She thought of Elizabeth, John, Rodney, Doctor Beckett, her Athosian friends, and in spite of her pain she made a sad smile. She missed these wonderful people so much, and probably she would never see them again... And then, there was no one else she could think of, just Ronon. Ronon, he was the one she missed the most, and imagining his encouraging expression gave her strength. She fancied him saying to her "Just fight, Teyla, fight, you can do it".
She found an empty room, and she decided to cross it, so she stumbled in. She was about to sit down for a few moments and have some rest, but suddenly she felt a hand grabbing her hair with incredible force, and her body got pushed to the wall.
"You damned bitch, you betrayed me!" she heard the hysteric screaming of Michael, and her head was knocked against the wall once more.
She clasped his knees with her right leg, tugging him down. He fell upon her. She kicked him off of her body, and she wanted to grab the weapon, but he was quick enough to pull her back.
"You can't go anywhere from here," Michael growled into her ear. "If you can escape from me, the other Wraiths will find you and kill you. There's no place you can hide. You either die or remain my captive forever!"
"I have really no idea which one is the most horrible option!" she retorted, pushing her heel into his stomach, making him climb off of her, and she could reach the gun now. She took it, and turned it in the Wraith's direction, but he grabbed it at the same time, and he pulled it out of her hands with such force that she could not resist it.
"Kill me, then, you sick son of a bitch," she hissed. He turned the weapon in his hands just to snap its end into her face so violently that she went sprawling on the floor. She wondered if he fractured her jawbone and two or three of her teeth with that hit. She wanted to sit up, but Michael pushed her back.
"You did not deserve my care," he shouted furiously. "Now you will see what you did to me."
She spat her blood in his eyes, and taking advantage of his astonished, brief moments of blindness, she wrested the gun out of his hands and shot at him. He fell onto the floor, screaming from the pain.
"I'm killing you this time, you bastard," she panted. "I'm truly killing you..."
She aimed at him, and she was about to shoot many more times to take his life away, but she stopped. Her heart missed a beat; she thought of the childish happiness on Michael's face when he talked about the chance of falling in love with each other, she thought of the miserable cake he baked, the hug he gave her with no hesitation when she asked him to do so...
The gun slipped out of her fingers because she let it go, she did not hold it anymore. She collapsed on the ground, sobbing. She stayed there, crying on the floor for long minutes, until something hit her from behind with enormous force, and she lost her consciousness. When she came to her senses again, she felt Michael's hands gripping her ankles, and he dragged her through the corridors, drawing her by her legs. A thin line of blood was streaming from the corner of her mouth, and it made a red trace where he dragged her.
When he arrived at her cell, he pushed her body in the corner.
"I've lost faith in you," he snarled at her. "I've lost it forever."
He knocked her shoulder with the toe of his boot. Teyla's tormented body curled up on the hard floor with the pain that swept through her muscles from his kick.
"Please, don't hurt me," the desperate moan burst out of her. "I'm sorry for leaving you. I'm very thankful to you for taking care of me. Please, stop it!"
"I can never trust you!" Michael screamed with mad rage. "You've betrayed me, you've always lied to me."
"Michael, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry... Please, let's try it again."
"It's too late to say that," he hissed. "You lost your last chance."
He was about to kick her again, but she grabbed his robe, and she said to him, looking him straight in the eye, "Stop it, Michael. I love you."
The Wraith stared at her with mere astonishment. He completely forgot about hurting her, he kneeled down beside her and rested his eyes on her wonderingly.
"Do you really love me? Honestly?" he asked surprised.
"I do," she answered with no hesitation.
He put his hands softly to her neck and lifted her head up from the ground. He was about to kiss her, when he saw her lips tremble with loathing. She tried to suppress her abomination, but she could not. He let her fall back on the floor and at the same moment she was about to grab his gun at his belt. She could not reach it. He got up with somber bitterness on his face.
"You lied to me again!" He turned away from her. "Now you made your situation really bad for yourself. Maybe you didn't believe that I would be capable of hurting you more than I did before, but I am, and I know well what would cause you the greatest pain. I will kill your best friends... Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Elizabeth Weir and Ronon," he recited with dark hatred burning in his eyes. "I will kill them and I will bring their cut-off heads for you. Here, you can hang the heads over there on the wall."
He made a gesture towards the left-hand side of the cell.
"What?" she groaned. "No, you would never hurt them! You can't... you just simply can't..."
"Yes, I can. I've already made a plan how to get them all killed. That's what you deserve. You will stare at the rotting heads of your best friends for the rest of your life!"
"Michael, no!" she screamed, crawling on her knees to the entrance, but she could not stop him from leaving. "Please, don't do a thing to my friends. I'm begging you."
He locked the cell. "Now you believe me? Nice. You will see how beautifully I arranged everything. That's my revenge on you pathetic humans..."
"No! If you really do it, I will hate you. I will hate you forever," she moaned desperately.
"I don't give a damn. You yourself told me that you were unable to ever love me. Well, I don't need your love anymore, I just want to see you suffer. You will rot in this cell with the dead bodies of your friends." He walked away with slow, calm steps, which was in perfect contrast to his disjointed, mad laughter echoing through the place.
"You sick beast!" she cried out. "You disgusting, foul, heartless monster..."
She collapsed on the floor, feeling rage and sorrow because of her helpless situation. She must have had at least one rib broken and her jawbone split from the hits of the Wraith, the pain burnt her body with a twinge. Her heart filled with anguish as she realized that Michael really meant what he said. He truly had a plan, supposedly a very shifty one, how to do harm to her friends, and as far as she knew him, she suspected that he had something deeply wicked and hurtful on his mind.