A/N: And now we're back to the beginning of my story! Though hopefully I've written it well enough that you would have been able to figure that out without me telling you... I particularly enjoyed writing the part about Eva's knives in this chapter so I hope you like it, too.
Thank you again to all of my readers and reviewers, new and old. I get so happy every time I see a new review! Enjoy!
"I told you!" the girl yelled. "I'm Eva! Your daughter! What is wrong with all of you?!"
Ronon regarded the young woman in front of him with both curiosity and suspicion. She wore a pair of black combat boots similar to the ones Sheppard always sported, laced halfway up her shins and caked in mud. Tucked into those boots, she was dressed in pants that must have once fit her tightly, ripped at both knees, that now pooled and bagged around her hips and ankles. With the light of the moon as their only light source, he couldn't be certain, but they looked just like what his friends from Earth called "jeans." Odd, he thought, for someone who was so clearly not from Earth. She had zipped her khaki jacket, adorned with a blaze of black, yellow, and red stripes along the sleeves – symbol of the long defunct Satedan military – all the way to her chin to ward off the cold; it utterly dwarfed her already small frame, further diminished by malnutrition. She looked so little, so tired, so frail; had he not seen her bring down the Wraith with his own eyes, he would have never believed it possible. He angled his head to get a better look at the side of her neck, but saw no trace of any tattoo that might reveal something about who she was or what rank she potentially held. His eyes traveled upward as the winter wind blew stray pieces of brown hair from her two long and messy braids across her dark and heavy brow. He then took in the shape of her face – pretty, slender, feminine, but somehow also familiar – and wondered why he had the nagging feeling he perhaps did know her. But his daughter? Impossible. By Satedan standards, the girl would already be considered an adult. Months of running had clearly made her insane. And yet, there was something about her hooded hazel eyes that made him uneasy…
"At this moment, who she is does not matter," Teyla announced. "We have a much bigger problem to deal with. More Wraith will be upon us soon. We need to remove her tracker so we can take her back with us."
"Take her back?" McKay repeated with incredulity. "Like back back?"
"She already knows of Atlantis. If we took her anywhere else, she would pose a significant security risk," she reasoned.
"Teyla's right," Sheppard agreed. "We're bringing her home with us. Fall back to the jumper."
The team walked in silence, all on high alert, on their way to the ship. Eva was relegated to the middle of the pack where she would not only be safe from the Wraith, but where the whole team could keep a wary eye on her. When they arrived at a clearing in the forest, McKay pulled a small device out of his TAC vest pocket, hit a button, and the jumper materialized. Dr. Beckett boarded first and Eva made moves to follow.
"Whoa there, warrior princess." Sheppard stepped in front of her and blocked her path to the jumper. "There is no way in hell we are letting you on this ship armed."
"Fine," she said, dropping her large knife to the ground and then advancing once more toward the ship.
"Not so fast," Sheppard warned as he pointed his gun at her again. "Teyla, pat her down."
Teyla walked up to the girl and began feeling for concealed weapons. She lifted the back of the girl's jacket, withdrew a knife tucked into her waistband, and showed it to the group.
"We good?" the girl asked with a raised eyebrow.
Satisfied, Sheppard began to lower his gun, but Ronon interrupted. Whoever she was, she was clad in the garb of the Satedan military and if she was Satedan, then she needed to be more thoroughly searched.
"Right boot," Ronon ordered.
She sneered, bent down and removed a knife from her boot.
"Left boot," he continued.
She repeated the gesture and threw the knife to the ground.
"Gauntlet."
She produced a dagger from her leather wrist guard.
"Hair," he said, pointing his chin up to her head.
She pulled two small daggers from her long braids, extended her arms wide, and released both of them at the same time from each hand.
"This is weird," Sheppard whispered to McKay, who nodded in response.
Placing her hands on her hips with an air of finality, she raised her eyebrows expectantly at Ronon.
He smirked. "Right boot again," he demanded.
She glared at him, maintaining intense eye contact as she extracted one last knife from her right boot and flung it in Ronon's direction so that it landed at his feet. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and crossed her arms across her chest.
"We're good," he affirmed.
Eva, along with the rest of the team, packed themselves into the bright glow of the jumper and not a moment too soon. With a high-pitched hum, three darts emerged from the thick, low-hanging clouds and headed their way.
"Time to go!" Sheppard declared.
Dr. Beckett was already preparing his surgical implements in the rear compartment, Sheppard made his way to the pilot's seat, and McKay took shotgun. Eva collapsed into one of the seats in the back, rested her head against the wall, and let out a sigh of relief. They took off without hesitation and Ronon knelt at her feet to peer into her face.
"All right," he began, "who are you really?"
She shook her head, eyes still closed. "I already told you," she snapped, "I'm your –" She opened her eyes, looked down at him, and immediately recoiled. "Whoa! What the hell?!" she shouted.
Prompted by her rapid, erratic motion, Ronon drew his gun and aimed it at her head.
"What's wrong with your face?!"
Ronon raised his eyebrows.
Ignoring the lethal weapon hovering just inches from her own face, she reached out and roughly patted his features – chin, cheeks, nose, eyelids, forehead. Though she had practically lunged at him, he didn't shoot, a fact that surprised him as much as everyone else watching their bizarre exchange. He caught her wrist with his hand and removed it from his face. She was obviously deranged. "What do you think you're –"
"Why do you look like that?"
Ronon glanced over at Teyla who shook her head. Eva followed his sightline and her eyes widened as she took in Teyla's countenance. She directed her eyes to the floor of the aircraft and brought her hand to the top of her back. "Oh my God," she breathed.
She had clearly come to some realization. What realization that was, Ronon didn't know.
"All right, Miss Eva," Dr. Beckett began, Ancient scanner in hand, "let's take a look at this tracker."
She lifted her head, gave Ronon another dubious glance, then stood up in the bumpy craft and turned around. She gripped to the cargo hold straps above her, knuckles white, and stood, legs planted shoulder-width apart, with her back to the doctor. He switched the scanner on and ran it along the top of her spine. Ronon knew the doctor's silence was a bad sign. He turned off the scanner and returned it to his pocket.
"Well?" Eva prodded, glancing over her shoulder. "Can you get it out?"
Beckett shared a quick glance with Ronon who found his own stomach twisting into a knot. "Not easily…I'm afraid," he admitted. "I'm sorry, but it looks like the device is attached to your brainstem."
"So?" she retorted.
Beckett was taken aback. "So? So I can't perform surgery to remove it in the back of a flying jumper with a fleet of Darts and a bloody Wraith Cruiser on our tail! To do so would be foolhardy."
She spun around and faced him. "So fry it!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Like Dr. Keller did with that other runner…"
"Dr. Keller?" Beckett echoed.
"That—that Kiryk guy or whatever his name was. Hit me with the paddles and fry the circuits!"
"But that would stop your heart," he protested.
"I don't give a fuck! I need this thing out of me, even if it kills me!" She looked to Ronon. "Dad, you understand. You have to explain to him –" She stopped herself short and clutched her back with her hand. "No," she breathed. "No, no, no."
"What?" Ronon asked.
"It's burning," she whispered. Her chest heaved with rapid breaths. "It's heating up. You have to fry it!" she yelled at Beckett.
"Heating up?"
"Yes! It's heating up! It's activating!" She released an inhuman scream of agony and dropped to her knees. "Hit me with the paddles!" she roared.
"I will do no such –"
"Fry it! Fry it or I disappear! Everything will change and you will be gone and I'll disappear!"
"Disappear?" Beckett whispered.
"God fucking dammit!" she bellowed. She looked up at Ronon and the doctor from the floor of the jumper, eyes bloodshot and wide with terror.
Something in Ronon's heart softened. "Do it," he growled. "Do it before it's too late."
Relief washed over her face and for the briefest of moments, Ronon glimpsed not the warrior, but the young girl she actually was. She swiftly removed her jacket and cast it to the side. Then, with no shyness or embarrassment that should otherwise be typical for her age and circumstance, she pulled her grubby shirt off and added it to the pile with her military jacket. The state of her bruised and scarred body sent a wave of nausea through Ronon's gut; her skin, paper thin, stretched tautly across her collarbone and hips, and her ribs protruded so far he could easily count every single one. Starvation had taken a brutal toll on her; if they hadn't found her when they did, she probably wouldn't have lasted much longer. She grasped at a silver chain around her neck, drew it over her head, and dropped it to the floor.
In the meantime, the doctor prepared the defibrillator, charged it full of electricity and rubbed the paddles together. "Lie back," he ordered.
The girl did as she was told. "Hurry," she winced.
Beckett pushed the straps of her bra to the side, then tentatively brought the paddles to her chest. "Clear," he announced.
Ronon stepped back.
The shock of the defibrillator brought a deafening silence to the cabin. Beckett felt for a pulse in her neck, then flipped her body onto its side. He scanned her with the Ancient device and nodded. "It's been disabled."
"It's disabled?" Sheppard confirmed from the cockpit.
"Aye. I'm not getting a signal. It shouldn't broadcast her location anymore."
"Roger that. Switching shields for cloak."
The doctor settled Eva onto her back, felt again for a pulse, and began CPR. He leaned over her body, straightened his arms, and pressed the heel of his hand so hard into her chest, Ronon feared one of her fragile ribs would crack beneath the pressure. Her body rocked with the force of his compressions, her head banging roughly against the metal floor with each one. Teyla rushed over to help, knelt down, and cradled the girl's head in her hands. The familiar frustration of uselessness crept through Ronon's neck and shoulders as he stood and watched, meanwhile debating whether he should move to the forward compartment where he would perhaps be of more assistance. He found it difficult to tear himself away from the scene in front of him. Though he didn't know the girl, they both shared a mutual trauma, and for that reason alone he wanted her to make it. She deserved to be able to experience her freedom.
"Holy shit!" Sheppard exclaimed as the jumper lurched to the left. "That was way too close!"
Ronon headed to the front. It was best not to get too invested in the kid's fate. "What's going on?"
"Doc, you sure that thing isn't transmitting?"
"The scanner indicated it wasn't," Beckett replied through gritted teeth as he continued compressions.
"Well they can definitely still see us!"
"I did wha' I could." His Scottish brogue thickened, a sure sign he was in distress. Apparently, the girl wasn't reviving as quickly as he hoped. "Now if ye'd leave me be, I'm tryin' to save the lass's life."
The jumper swerved again as another Dart-fired missile nearly struck them.
"Okay. That's enough of that. I'm turning our shield back on," the colonel declared.
"Teyla, go into my kit and find the epinephrine," Beckett said.
She nodded, searched for the medicine in question, and handed it to the doctor. He briefly stopped his compressions and, with a quiet hiss, injected the drug into Eva's neck.
"Rodney, dial the farthest planet from here you can think of," Sheppard ordered as he dipped the jumper to evade another projectile.
"What do you mean 'farthest?'"
"What do you mean what do I mean? One that's really far away!"
"Any other requirements?"
"Hospitable, preferably." The sarcasm in Sheppard's voice was outmatched only by his frustration with McKay's inopportune questions. "And not crawling with Wraith."
"Well that could be any dozen –"
"Move," Ronon grunted, pushing his way to the cockpit and punching a seven-symbol address into the DHD interface.
"I'm gonna try and lose as many of 'em as I can in the cloud cover, then we'll drop low and go through the gate," Sheppard explained. "If a few Darts follow us through, no big deal – we can take 'em. We just need to put some distance between us and the Cruiser. Even if they can still track her, the Cruiser will have no choice but to travel by hyper speed. By the time they catch up with us, you'll already have that tracker removed, right Doc?"
Ronon glanced over his shoulder at Beckett who had fallen backward onto his heels and was wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Teyla was helping Eva, dazed but alive, to sit up. "Aye," Beckett sighed. "Get me some more personnel and supplies once we're there, and I think I can manage that."
Sheppard lowered the jumper from the relative safety of the clouds and navigated them through the rubble of the city Ronon once called home, past derelict apartments, past the library, past the bank, past the street corner where Melena had first kissed him, until the shimmering blue waves of the Ring of the Ancestors engulfed them completely.
A/N: Thank you again for reading, reviewing, favorite-ing, and following! I'm lucky to have such a supportive audience to write for. :)