A/N: Hello everyone! This next little chapter is quite short and definitely not the chapter I thought I was going to write. It's quite introspective and, to be frank, I don't know how essential it is to the plot but for some reason I felt like I couldn't not write this chapter. I guess I kind of wanted to give Eva a moment alone to become familiar with her new (but old) surroundings and to have time to process some stuff she wouldn't have been able to deal with while running.
I also wanted to address a review from teekee hut (thank you for reviewing!) because I can't private message him/her and because I realized I needed to clarify something. Dr. Rogers is senior linguist in this little story as well as in my previous two. I would equate her position and clout with that of someone like Zelenka - important enough to express her opinions to higher-ups, but not important enough to entirely excuse the way she spoke in front of Woolsey during Eva's initial interrogation, which is why he (gently) reprimands her for it. I realize now I should have maybe slipped that in somewhere earlier but alas...I did not. Hope that clarifies things.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Because it's so short, I may make another post tonight so stay tuned. Thank you!
It had taken five days, four nights, and three Wraith kills before Eva even dared to sleep for the first time while running on Sateda. Lucky for her, that first night of slumber had been an uneventful one – other nights would not prove so uneventful. She remembered the next morning, waking up slowly, already picturing the drawings taped to her bedroom walls, basking in the luxurious warmth of her fur blankets, smelling the rich aroma of her mother's coffee brewing in their kitchenette down the hallway…until it all hit her. Her eyes flashed open in the early morning light and, with a sinking heart, she found herself precisely where she had collapsed from exhaustion the night before: alone on the floor of a damp cave, huddled into a ball next to the ashes of a long-extinguished fire.
On her first morning back in Atlantis, she once again awoke alone and disoriented. Sitting up slowly, she tried to dust away the cobwebs that clung to the corners of her mind, and kept her gaze focused to a tiny spot on the blank wall across the room. If she were being perfectly honest, she felt a lot like she had the day after Torren Emmagan's secret coming-of-age party. She rubbed her forehead to ease the throbbing and wondered just how much sedative they used on her the night before. She had always required a higher-than-average dosage of almost all Earth medications (presumably due to her Satedan roots), but now that she barely weighed more than a large sack of tava beans, she questioned the wisdom of tranquilizing her with enough haloperidol to bring down a horse.
She looked down and noticed the bed was still made. It was probably for the best that she had passed out on top of the covers instead of in between them, as she was still fully clothed, boots and all, and absolutely filthy. Only her shirt, which had been replaced for sanitary reasons after her off-world surgery, was clean. Everything else was either encrusted with dirt and dried sweat or stained with blood. She gingerly pushed herself off the standard-issue military mattress and ambled to a small table and chair in a corner of the room. Atop the table she found a protein bar, which she immediately ripped open and sunk her teeth into, a few bottles of water, and a note that said, "Tell the guard when you need breakfast." Her eyes moved to the chair where a steel gray jumpsuit, as well as some cotton undershorts and a sports bra, lay draped over its arm. And on the floor, a new pair of shiny black leather boots.
She then ventured into the small bathroom and realized, even beyond a hot meal, she wanted nothing more than a real shower. Though she had afforded herself a few quick trips to the river to rinse off the grease and grime while on Sateda, she had never thought to nick any soap from the abandoned homes in the city. With a fleeting tinge of excitement, she took stock of the few toiletries arranged on the counter for her: a small tube of toothpaste, a disposable toothbrush, a stick of deodorant, a bar of soap, and a bottle of shampoo. But no conditioner, no razor, no hairbrush. "Men," she muttered with a sigh. She hadn't expected manicures and bubble baths, but some consideration of her femininity would have been nice.
She disrobed from the bottom up, first tossing her dirty boots out into her sleeping quarters, followed by her socks and jeans, and then winced when the fabric of her shirt tugged against her raw stitches as she pulled it over her head. She turned to inspect the incision in the mirror, but stopped short, startled by the sight in front of her. The drastic change in her weight was no surprise – she hadn't needed a mirror to tell her she was dying of starvation – but she hardly recognized her own face; the angles of her jaw were sharper, her cheeks gaunt, her eye sockets sunken. She looked skeletal…weak.
Not wanting to see the pitiful stranger in the mirror any longer, she lowered her head and shook her hair out of its braids, bits of leaves and debris falling onto the bathroom floor as she unwove each tangled strand. She caught one last glimpse of her withering body and greasy hair in the mirror, and suddenly recalled an image of a coyote she had seen on one of her trips to Texas. Hit by a car, fur matted with blood and mange, she remembered how its body convulsed as it fought for its final breaths on the side of the road. She shook her head to rid her mind of the comparison. Grabbing the soap and shampoo, she stepped into the already warm cascade of water, closed her eyes, and relished the marvel of indoor plumbing.
With a small part of her humanity restored, she got out of the shower only once she realized her hunger in combination with the sedative hangover and the hot steam were making her dizzy. Slipping in the shower and splitting her head open on the tub – what a way to go that would be after surviving the Wraith for two months straight. Trying to ignore the ring of dirt that had accumulated along the bottom edge of the shower floor, she dried off, and put on the jumpsuit provided for her. Although it was far too large and definitely no fashion statement, at least she hadn't needed to remove it from the long-rotted corpse of a fallen Satedan soldier. Smelled better, too.
She strolled back to the bed, leisurely twisting her damp hair into a side braid to keep it from rubbing against the cut on her back, and stopped at the nightstand to pick up her silver necklace. But it wasn't there. Forced by habit, she grasped at her neck in vain, then began a frantic search of the room for it. She checked under pillows, between sheets, in the pockets of her discarded jeans, on the floor, everywhere until the room was completely torn apart. But it was nowhere. She had no idea what had happened to it. If she hadn't set it down on the nightstand before falling asleep, where else would it be? She needed that necklace. She couldn't remember a day in her life she hadn't worn it.
Her father had given her that necklace.
Coursing blood thrummed against her eardrums as she imagined him on the Cruiser, trapped inside the cocoon, murder in his eyes, slamming his body against the thick webbing to reach her. That was the last she had seen of him. A nagging doubt she had struggled to keep at bay throughout her entire time as a Runner burst through her gates of self-preservation: what if her father had failed to find her on Sateda not because she was too far away, too hard to find, but because he never made it off that Cruiser?
After all, it was Eva's rash and rebellious actions that had lured him out of the safety of the city in the first place. It was her fault they had gotten captured. And if he had been killed, if he had been fed upon, that would be her fault, too.
The walls of her quarters – of her cell – closed in on her. She needed air. Staggering to the opposite side of the room, she reached for the latch of the window but discovered there wasn't one. Her vision blurred as she searched the room for something, anything, to pry it open. She balled up her hand, snatched her old shirt off the floor, wrapped it tightly around her fist, and drove it straight through the stained crystal. With the soft clinking of broken glass, a cool and healing breeze wafted into the room. Eyes closed, she pressed her forehead to the wall and breathed deeply, listening to the ebb and flow of the waves below, and hoped with all her heart that her father, her real father, was listening to the same waves.
A/N: Thank you again! I hope you got a kick out of the Torren part. I had initially planned a little one-sided romance between the two (one where he is a bit too old for her, but she has a big ole crush on him anyway), but cut it in order to streamline the story. This was my way of giving homage to the writing I scrapped. Let me know what you think!