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lobelia321Title: Once the search has begun, something will be found
Author: Lobelia;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lobelia321
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis (SGA)
Pairing: Teyla Emmagan / Jennifer Keller
Category: Femslash. Whee! My first since lotrips.
Type: Episode response fic.
Spoilers: SGA 4.09, 'Missing'.
Rating: G.
Length: 1,800 words.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and the storyworld of Stargate Atlantis. I am not making money nor attempting to infringe copyright. This is amateur fiction.
Summary: Teyla is numb with grief. The alien healer woman stumbles along behind her.
Acknowledgement: Title taken from the Oblique Strategies widget, fourth edition, 1996, © Brian Eno, Peter Norton and Pae White; widget version 1.1, © 2005 Guy Drieghe. This widget generates 'over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas' at random. I asked it, "What shall this fic be called?", I clicked, and lo, this title was the answer.
Dedication: This one's forlazlet. Thanks for giving me the inspiration! :-)
Feedback = loved.
---
Once the Search has Begun, Something will be Found
by Lobelia
Teyla has lived with Terrans so long that she has forgotten how extra-galactic they are. It is only now, on this lorn planet, with her village empty and her people dead, that she is reminded of it.
It is this woman. This alien woman. This alien healer woman who does not understand the first thing about Teyla's home worlds.
Drugged with grief, Teyla has no resources of understanding. If it were John Sheppard, matters would be different. If it were Elizabeth Weir, or even Rodney McKay, it would all be different. But this woman is new and raw and stumbles through the forest with reed feet.
"I'm sorry," the woman keeps saying, and Teyla does not understand why she keeps repeating this.
"My ankle hurts. What are these insects? They are horrible. I'll never be able to make it across this bridge. I can't get up that cliff, sorry, I just can't.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."
A pain appears at the root of Teyla's nose, half-way between one eyebrow and the other. Teyla knows this pain. It is not an outer pain; it is much worse. It is something that presses against her skull from the inside.
She does not say a word as she hacks the woman free from the lianas enveloping her torso.
"Sorry," says the alien woman. "I'm so clumsy. I've never been much good in the great outdoors. Thank you for helping me."
What is all this "sorry, sorry", "thank you, thank you"? Inside Teyla's mind, a hundred screams ricochet.
"You know," says the woman, panting and pink. Twigs have got caught in her hair, and her cheek is scratched. "My favourite bit at summer camp was always the weekly movie outing. Every Thursday which was the discounted day at the local theatre, we'd get taken to the pictures. There was a coach to take us there, and then real paved roads, and before the show started, we were allowed to buy popcorn and ice cream and cokes. I always got my popcorn lathered in butter; I just loved all that butter on my fingers and so sticky on my lips, and the way it melted in with the coke in your mouth. We used to sit at the back. We took up the entire two rows. Sometimes, there'd be couples there who'd been clearly hoping for a bit of privacy. It must have been hell for them to see us arrive! We were too young for all that hanky-panky, and anyway, I never got much into it, even later. Oh yuck, what's that?"
"It is only a mudworm," Teyla says, takes out her knife and slashes the tooroona in half. "It will make a tasty meal."
The woman screws up her mouth and says, "Ew."
She makes no sense to Teyla. No sense at all.
Teyla's mouth has settled into a grim line. She can feel the line tugging at the corners of her lips. The pain in her forehead is an even jeer.
They rest under the overhanging arms of a paan tree. Every time there is a scuttling noise, the alien woman starts. Better she were to start at the soundless tread of a Bolo Kai's foot.
"Excuse me," says Teyla. "I need to relieve myself. It is not polite to do so this close to shelter, I know, but I think it is best not to venture too far out into the open."
"Oh," says the woman. "Right. Yes, of course." She turns away. What pointless valour. "When I was little, I could sometimes not hold it in until we got home," she says, talking into the foliage of the tree. "It drove my mother crazy. There we'd be, in the middle of some parking lot, and I'd go, mommy, I have to go! Once, she just told me to hide behind a car and be quick about it. It was always really awkward, and I'd get pee splashed on my shoes. And once, o my god, I haven't thought about this in years, the driver of the car came back! He was this really big man, I don't remember anything else about him, except that he was big and had these red shoes on, these really weird red shoes. What's this? the man said, an alley cat?' I had no idea what an alley cat was. I'd got pee all over his front tyre."
"It would be good for you to take care of this business," interrupts Teyla, "while we have a moment."
"Oh. Right. Of course. You know, Teyla, I'm not sure I can. It's not something I'm used to, not since I was little, anyway. I need more, I don't know, privacy, and a cubicle around me."
There is a frail ball inside Teyla's guts. It spins on its axis, round and round. if it spins too fast, it will crack and spill into Teyla's insides. Teyla has to hold in her rib cage in a tight vise to prevent the ball from cracking open.
"Very well," Teyla says. "Wait until later. But there may not be a later."
The woman sits there, looking at Teyla, rubbing her ankle, looking at Teyla again.
"You're right," she says finally. "I don't know why I'm being so foolish. I'm just a burden to you, I know that. I'm sorry." She gets herself into an awkward crouching position and tugs at her trouser legs. Her thighs are very white. Teyla hears the stream of the alien woman's piss rushing into the undergrowth.
"That will frighten away the mudworms, at any rate," she hears herself saying, and the alien woman actually laughs.
She is like a child, this woman. She is not like a woman at all. She has no idea how to protect herself, or her people.
The worst thing, the unforgivable thing, is when she decides to heal the traitor.
They find him unconscious among fallen leaves and roots. Teyla can see that he will be dead soon. It is merciful to leave him, and it is wise to leave him because he constitutes a danger.
The alien woman doesn't see it like that. She insists on stitching the man up and talking to him and taking him along and "saving his life". It is so ludicrously foolish that the blood runs counter-clockwise behind Teyla's eyes.
Teyla invokes the gods of the woods. She clenches and unclenches the muscles of her diaphragm and takes a deep breath.
There is a numb dizziness at the back of her mouth, as if she had just fed on chilli peyote.
"Very well," she says. She thinks that one must respect the healer. She thinks that one must be kind to the child. "Bring him then."
She's been among aliens too long. She has forgotten how to think along the straight and curvilinear paths.
But at night, when she returns, with a bloatfish in one hand and a self-fashioned spear in the other, to the flicker of a flame in their makeshift tent, there is the alien woman, bent over the man. He is prone, she curves to meet him, and at the apex, their mouths touch.
Teyla drops her spear with a deliberate thwack.
The woman is an alien and a burden but the woman is her alien and her burden.
"I would not do that," she whispers, having dragged her outside the tent. "I would really not do that, Dr Keller." The name has come back to her, from outside her stone wall of pain.
"I was only resuscitating him," whispers the alien Keller. "He'd stopped breathing!"
"I see," says Teyla. She touches her own wet forehead, wet with sweat and bog water.
"You don't think I would...?"
"No, no. I was merely... Here, I have brought a bloatfish from the bog for sustenance. I was merely advising caution. We do not know who this man is, or what he was doing in the village of my people."
"This fish looks disgusting. I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can eat this. And it's got, oh my god, it's got weevils or something crawling around in its guts. That is really, really not hygienic."
"Very well," says Teyla.
Nor will Keller sleep. She says she is too anxious. She says the ground is too hard. Hard? It is covered in lichen and leaves!
"The first thing I did after I got my very first pay check," says the woman Keller, "is to buy myself a new bed. Isn't that insane? But I just always wanted to have one of those big soft double beds, king-size, those big brass beds. It was so exciting. I took my brand new credit card and I went into Beds And Less, that's this shop near where I went to medical school, and I tried out all the beds. But I already knew which one I wanted. I lay down on that one last. It was so soft and so bouncy and so big, and I could hold onto the headboard with my hands. There was a footboard as well, beautifully ornate, and I could hang stuff on it, scarves and belts. I didn't even have a... I was living alone at the time but I just loved the idea of having that whole huge mattress to myself."
There is a twinge in Teyla's heart. What a life! What an innocent life! Where all that matters is the size of a bed.
"It is all right," she tells Keller the alien. "You will survive."
The woman looks at her, with her big innocent eyes. "Really?" she says.
Teyla looks down at her own fingers, covered in bloatfish guts. She looks up again. She leans across and, holding her hands carefully in her lap, she kisses Keller on the mouth.
"Oh," says Keller. She looks like a little girl in the firelight. A strand of hair sticks to the corner of her mouth. "I didn't..."
The pain in her forehead frightens Teyla, as do the howls in the back of her mind. She kisses Keller again. Everything recedes a little. The howls are muffled. The flame spits.
The bog water runs down Teyla's cheeks.
"Oh, Teyla," says Jennifer Keller. "I'm so sorry. So sorry."
---
THE END.
Written and posted by Lobelia on 6 March 2008.
All original parts of this story © Lobelia.
Author: Lobelia;
lobelia321Fandom: Stargate Atlantis (SGA)
Pairing: Teyla Emmagan / Jennifer Keller
Category: Femslash. Whee! My first since lotrips.
Type: Episode response fic.
Spoilers: SGA 4.09, 'Missing'.
Rating: G.
Length: 1,800 words.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and the storyworld of Stargate Atlantis. I am not making money nor attempting to infringe copyright. This is amateur fiction.
Summary: Teyla is numb with grief. The alien healer woman stumbles along behind her.
Acknowledgement: Title taken from the Oblique Strategies widget, fourth edition, 1996, © Brian Eno, Peter Norton and Pae White; widget version 1.1, © 2005 Guy Drieghe. This widget generates 'over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas' at random. I asked it, "What shall this fic be called?", I clicked, and lo, this title was the answer.
Dedication: This one's for
lazlet. Thanks for giving me the inspiration! :-)Feedback = loved.
---
Once the Search has Begun, Something will be Found
by Lobelia
Teyla has lived with Terrans so long that she has forgotten how extra-galactic they are. It is only now, on this lorn planet, with her village empty and her people dead, that she is reminded of it.
It is this woman. This alien woman. This alien healer woman who does not understand the first thing about Teyla's home worlds.
Drugged with grief, Teyla has no resources of understanding. If it were John Sheppard, matters would be different. If it were Elizabeth Weir, or even Rodney McKay, it would all be different. But this woman is new and raw and stumbles through the forest with reed feet.
"I'm sorry," the woman keeps saying, and Teyla does not understand why she keeps repeating this.
"My ankle hurts. What are these insects? They are horrible. I'll never be able to make it across this bridge. I can't get up that cliff, sorry, I just can't.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."
A pain appears at the root of Teyla's nose, half-way between one eyebrow and the other. Teyla knows this pain. It is not an outer pain; it is much worse. It is something that presses against her skull from the inside.
She does not say a word as she hacks the woman free from the lianas enveloping her torso.
"Sorry," says the alien woman. "I'm so clumsy. I've never been much good in the great outdoors. Thank you for helping me."
What is all this "sorry, sorry", "thank you, thank you"? Inside Teyla's mind, a hundred screams ricochet.
"You know," says the woman, panting and pink. Twigs have got caught in her hair, and her cheek is scratched. "My favourite bit at summer camp was always the weekly movie outing. Every Thursday which was the discounted day at the local theatre, we'd get taken to the pictures. There was a coach to take us there, and then real paved roads, and before the show started, we were allowed to buy popcorn and ice cream and cokes. I always got my popcorn lathered in butter; I just loved all that butter on my fingers and so sticky on my lips, and the way it melted in with the coke in your mouth. We used to sit at the back. We took up the entire two rows. Sometimes, there'd be couples there who'd been clearly hoping for a bit of privacy. It must have been hell for them to see us arrive! We were too young for all that hanky-panky, and anyway, I never got much into it, even later. Oh yuck, what's that?"
"It is only a mudworm," Teyla says, takes out her knife and slashes the tooroona in half. "It will make a tasty meal."
The woman screws up her mouth and says, "Ew."
She makes no sense to Teyla. No sense at all.
Teyla's mouth has settled into a grim line. She can feel the line tugging at the corners of her lips. The pain in her forehead is an even jeer.
They rest under the overhanging arms of a paan tree. Every time there is a scuttling noise, the alien woman starts. Better she were to start at the soundless tread of a Bolo Kai's foot.
"Excuse me," says Teyla. "I need to relieve myself. It is not polite to do so this close to shelter, I know, but I think it is best not to venture too far out into the open."
"Oh," says the woman. "Right. Yes, of course." She turns away. What pointless valour. "When I was little, I could sometimes not hold it in until we got home," she says, talking into the foliage of the tree. "It drove my mother crazy. There we'd be, in the middle of some parking lot, and I'd go, mommy, I have to go! Once, she just told me to hide behind a car and be quick about it. It was always really awkward, and I'd get pee splashed on my shoes. And once, o my god, I haven't thought about this in years, the driver of the car came back! He was this really big man, I don't remember anything else about him, except that he was big and had these red shoes on, these really weird red shoes. What's this? the man said, an alley cat?' I had no idea what an alley cat was. I'd got pee all over his front tyre."
"It would be good for you to take care of this business," interrupts Teyla, "while we have a moment."
"Oh. Right. Of course. You know, Teyla, I'm not sure I can. It's not something I'm used to, not since I was little, anyway. I need more, I don't know, privacy, and a cubicle around me."
There is a frail ball inside Teyla's guts. It spins on its axis, round and round. if it spins too fast, it will crack and spill into Teyla's insides. Teyla has to hold in her rib cage in a tight vise to prevent the ball from cracking open.
"Very well," Teyla says. "Wait until later. But there may not be a later."
The woman sits there, looking at Teyla, rubbing her ankle, looking at Teyla again.
"You're right," she says finally. "I don't know why I'm being so foolish. I'm just a burden to you, I know that. I'm sorry." She gets herself into an awkward crouching position and tugs at her trouser legs. Her thighs are very white. Teyla hears the stream of the alien woman's piss rushing into the undergrowth.
"That will frighten away the mudworms, at any rate," she hears herself saying, and the alien woman actually laughs.
She is like a child, this woman. She is not like a woman at all. She has no idea how to protect herself, or her people.
The worst thing, the unforgivable thing, is when she decides to heal the traitor.
They find him unconscious among fallen leaves and roots. Teyla can see that he will be dead soon. It is merciful to leave him, and it is wise to leave him because he constitutes a danger.
The alien woman doesn't see it like that. She insists on stitching the man up and talking to him and taking him along and "saving his life". It is so ludicrously foolish that the blood runs counter-clockwise behind Teyla's eyes.
Teyla invokes the gods of the woods. She clenches and unclenches the muscles of her diaphragm and takes a deep breath.
There is a numb dizziness at the back of her mouth, as if she had just fed on chilli peyote.
"Very well," she says. She thinks that one must respect the healer. She thinks that one must be kind to the child. "Bring him then."
She's been among aliens too long. She has forgotten how to think along the straight and curvilinear paths.
But at night, when she returns, with a bloatfish in one hand and a self-fashioned spear in the other, to the flicker of a flame in their makeshift tent, there is the alien woman, bent over the man. He is prone, she curves to meet him, and at the apex, their mouths touch.
Teyla drops her spear with a deliberate thwack.
The woman is an alien and a burden but the woman is her alien and her burden.
"I would not do that," she whispers, having dragged her outside the tent. "I would really not do that, Dr Keller." The name has come back to her, from outside her stone wall of pain.
"I was only resuscitating him," whispers the alien Keller. "He'd stopped breathing!"
"I see," says Teyla. She touches her own wet forehead, wet with sweat and bog water.
"You don't think I would...?"
"No, no. I was merely... Here, I have brought a bloatfish from the bog for sustenance. I was merely advising caution. We do not know who this man is, or what he was doing in the village of my people."
"This fish looks disgusting. I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can eat this. And it's got, oh my god, it's got weevils or something crawling around in its guts. That is really, really not hygienic."
"Very well," says Teyla.
Nor will Keller sleep. She says she is too anxious. She says the ground is too hard. Hard? It is covered in lichen and leaves!
"The first thing I did after I got my very first pay check," says the woman Keller, "is to buy myself a new bed. Isn't that insane? But I just always wanted to have one of those big soft double beds, king-size, those big brass beds. It was so exciting. I took my brand new credit card and I went into Beds And Less, that's this shop near where I went to medical school, and I tried out all the beds. But I already knew which one I wanted. I lay down on that one last. It was so soft and so bouncy and so big, and I could hold onto the headboard with my hands. There was a footboard as well, beautifully ornate, and I could hang stuff on it, scarves and belts. I didn't even have a... I was living alone at the time but I just loved the idea of having that whole huge mattress to myself."
There is a twinge in Teyla's heart. What a life! What an innocent life! Where all that matters is the size of a bed.
"It is all right," she tells Keller the alien. "You will survive."
The woman looks at her, with her big innocent eyes. "Really?" she says.
Teyla looks down at her own fingers, covered in bloatfish guts. She looks up again. She leans across and, holding her hands carefully in her lap, she kisses Keller on the mouth.
"Oh," says Keller. She looks like a little girl in the firelight. A strand of hair sticks to the corner of her mouth. "I didn't..."
The pain in her forehead frightens Teyla, as do the howls in the back of her mind. She kisses Keller again. Everything recedes a little. The howls are muffled. The flame spits.
The bog water runs down Teyla's cheeks.
"Oh, Teyla," says Jennifer Keller. "I'm so sorry. So sorry."
---
THE END.
Written and posted by Lobelia on 6 March 2008.
All original parts of this story © Lobelia.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-06 09:57 pm (UTC)*applauds*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-06 10:43 pm (UTC)And Larren! omg, I saw Larren two days ago and my mind blew away.
Glad you're back from the wild and woolly north! Pics?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-06 09:58 pm (UTC)That said, if I may, I found the mention of the "gods of the woods" jarring: Teyla and the Athosians--all alien civilisations, actually--have only ever been shown to worship the Ancients. I am not averse to the idea of animalistic beliefs, but that'd require at least a bit of elaboration, in my opinion. Same for the peyote requiring a brief explanation: Why and how would Teyla immediately think of a special Earth drug and not some Pegasus counterpart?
But again, thank you for an otherwise amazing look at the episode and what I think must be pretty much canon!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-06 10:49 pm (UTC)I totally take your point about the gods of the woods. I tinkered with this for a bit. I had, I have to confess, completely forgotten the Ancients when writing this... I was thinking 'woods, tribes, tents, animism'. And not a little bit of Ursula Le Guin. *sighs* On the other hand, I could always argue (if I were so inclined) that simply because we haven't been shown any other forms of worship / belief doesn't mean that they didn't have it. (We never get shown hot Rodney/Radek kissing, either, but that doesn't mean it's not going on at the rate of knots! *g*)
The peyote, I confess, just popped into my head, as did the paan and the mudworm. I was typing this offline so only had a vague memory of these things existing on earth. I think in my addled heard paan and peyote were alien words. *rubs eyes* So that's a fair point. Squint and pretend it's been revised.
Thank you again! :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-06 09:59 pm (UTC)I also wholeheartedly encourage the pairing. \o/
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-06 10:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-06 11:27 pm (UTC)(Your Toothy Legolas is making me LOL)
Yeah, I enjoyed that episode a lot too. They really need to put the gals out there more, without the guys along.
I hope you have more ideas for this pairing :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-07 12:01 am (UTC)There are a lot of great women in series 4, I'm finding. Larren, Jeannie, Sam Carter, I lurve them! God, imagine if Larren kidnapped Jeannie and held her throat at knife point, with Jeannie's milk white bosom heaving against Larren's creaking leather corset...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-07 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-07 11:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 07:09 pm (UTC)