fic: Sacrifice [PG-13]

[tielan]

TITLE: Sacrifice
SUMMARY: To be a leader means sacrifice
CATEGORY: Character study, friendship.
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Set early Season One - after Suspicion, but before The Storm/The Eye.
NOTES: For familyarchives in the teylafen ficathon. This is a blend of two of the requests made of me: Teyla backstory, and Teyla/Elizabeth friendship. I hope it fills the requirement!

Sacrifice

As she followed her team-mates back through the Ring of the Ancestors, Teyla found her hand creeping to the bare skin of her wrist and rubbing the skin there.

It was foolishness to feel the loss of something hardly worn, and yet she did.

She regretted the trade, but what was done could not be changed; Teyla needed to look to the future of her people, which meant keeping track of her allies here in Atlantis.

Dr. Weir met them at the top of the stairs, just at the edge of what the Atlanteans were calling 'the control room'. There was a stiffness to her shoulders that told Teyla the day had been difficult for the other woman, and her inquiry was brisk and without the usual interest. "How did it go?"

Major Sheppard shrugged as he turned around to glance at the others. "Oh, fine. McKay got us into trouble, Ford got us out of it, and Teyla went shopping." He grinned at her, and she smiled back briefly, but much of her focus was on the expedition leader and the faint tension about her.

"Did you happen to find any of the equipment or supplies that you originally went to the Vandiya markets for?"

The Major shrugged. "Some of it," he said. "Not as much as we hoped." He glanced at Teyla, and she took that as her cue.

"The markets were not as busy as they once were," she told Dr. Weir. "Cullings through the galaxy have made people reluctant to gather in one place. I conversed with several people who have been able to refer me to planets where you may be able to find some of what you need - food to supplement what you brought. It will not be the same as that which you brought from Earth, nor in the quantity that you require it, but it will help."

"A little," Dr. Weir said, although not with the cynicism that Teyla expected. "Thank you, Teyla." She looked at Major Sheppard. "Send me a list of what you managed to acquire or negotiated and we'll talk about it later."

And that was that.

Teyla's three team-mates seemed to think nothing of Dr. Weir's dismissal or the woman's weariness.

Perhaps, Teyla was merely misreading their casual manner - perhaps it was a new variation of Atlantean behaviour. It was difficult to tell, they were as individual as trees in the forest. Still, she glanced back when the others walked ahead, and saw the other woman's shoulders lift in a deep sigh as Dr. Weir returned to her office.

"Teyla?" Major Sheppard paused, waiting for her to catch up. "You okay?"

She turned easily. "Fine, Major."

"All right, then." He accepted her answer without question. Not for the first time, Teyla wondered if this was customary of Atlantean men. Athosians - male and female - were more accustomed to noting the moods and states of those around them; what affected one today might affect the community tomorrow. "Are you up for the movie later on?"

"I will be there," she assured him.

"And dinner before?"

It was one of the Major's insistences that she and the others of his team meet for dinner every few nights. He did not permit them to discuss work, although Dr. McKay usually tried all the same, and the conversation varied between stilted and strange. Either way, Teyla rather enjoyed the time spent with her team-mates. They were unusual men. Unique. And they taught her as much about their world and their people in what they did not say as what they did.

"And dinner before," she assured him as they reached the junction that would lead him and Lieutenant Ford to the armoury and her to the women's showers. Dr. McKay had already moved on ahead, eager to reach his laboratory and comment on the activities that had taken place in his absence. She assayed a brief farewell wave, and turned away to leave.

"Teyla."

Teyla turned, querying Major Sheppard's interruption. His tone of voice, open before, was now guarded. "Major Sheppard?"

"What happened to your wrist things?" His head tilted a little to one side, regarding the bare wrist that she'd been rubbing earlier. "The arm-guards you had this morning?"

She had not thought any of her team-mates would notice its absence.

"I sold it," she said.

Dark brows arched over eyes that shifted from green to brown to green again. "For what?"

Teyla regarded him evenly. "For something that was needed as the vambraces were not." Beyond the Major, Lieutenant Ford was listening.

"Something?"

She didn't answer his question, merely confirming, "Something."

The Major got the point that it was not his business. "Okay. So...dinner?"

"Dinner."

Teyla walked away.

--

"Block high," said Mahael, lifting his arm up in demonstration. The sunlight glinted off the intricate metalwork set into the leather of his vambrace, but Teyla only scowled as the light lanced into her eyes. "High, Teyla!" He tugged at her arm, pulling it further up, until it was locked over her head. "The Wraith are tall -when they attack you, then it will be from above."

"When the Wraith come it will be in the craft that fly like birds," Teyla retorted, frustrated. Her friends had gone out this morning, to dare each other to skirt the edges of the Ancestral ruins; only she had been kept in - and for nothing more than a lesson that Mahael would not defer. "They do not meet us on the ground - they cull us from the air."

"At present, that is how they cull us," said the adult with stern disapproval, "but there have been tales--"

"Tales that have been told and told and told again," she complained. "It is all tales--"

Harsh fingers took her arm a tight grip. "Do you believe that, Teyla? Truly? That the Wraith are all tales?"

Startled into momentary terror - Mahael was counted a fearsome warrior, even among more martial cultures than the Athosians - Teyla looked at the fiercely burning eyes and stuttered, "N..No," she said. Then, regaining her composure, she added, "I know the Wraith are no tale." She waved her free arm at the empty space around them. "But they have not come to Athos in many years..."

Mahael let go of her arm, and the skin felt cold after the hot grip of his fingers. "Then with each year the likelihood that they will come here increases." His expression was troubled, "Teyla, when I die, you will be leader of our people. You must be ready to lead them - to defend them against the Wraith."

"And I will!" She said, intent and earnest. "But they will not come today."

He regarded her sternly, "Can you be so sure? Teyla, to be a leader means sacrifice - for the good of your people."

"They are not my people now," she muttered, and then regretted the words when Mahael gave her a searing look.

"They are your people now and always will be."

She had no retort for that. He spoke the truth. Even if she still wished to be with her playfellows.

Mahael regarded her and sighed, his hands once again hanging down by his sides as he regarded her. "Teyla, you are young, and I know that there are many things you would rather be doing today. By the will of the Ancestors, I will live a long time and there shall be no need for you to know this so soon...but we do not know such things and we cannot be sure."

"And so I must stay for this lesson while the others play?"

"Yes."

--

At this time of day, as the twilight crept into the city with a feline stealth, the corridors of Atlantis were mostly quiet.

The Atlanteans loved to watch the sunset, and groups of them would gather on the balconies to watch the sun sink down into the burning sea.

Teyla took a longer route from her rooms to the dining area of the city. While communal meals were familiar to her, the careful grouping of people was not. Athosian meals were taken in a group, but the conversation might span the entire tent, or might be confined with a few people, with little of the care with which the Atlanteans marked conversation. And each night, the people sharing the meal would change, families gathering together and taking in others, according to how the day had been. Sometimes people chose to eat alone, but that was the exception, rather than the rule.

In this city, among these people, eating alone - or in groups that never changed - was the rule rather than the exception.

She was still accustoming herself to these people, trying to understand their ways and customs - not strange, exactly, but different, with a different mindset behind them. Teyla knew she would have to understand that mindset if she was to ally herself and her people with them - and it was no easy thing.

Her footsteps were quiet in the similarly quiet halls as she made her way to Dr. Weir's quarters.

Dr. Weir was not there.

Teyla had relied upon it.

It was customary for Dr. Weir to work later into the evening. From experience and familiarity, she knew the other woman would work in her office for at least another time-mark before closing up her office and going to the dining area.

Major Sheppard grumbled about the workload he had taken on since his senior's death on the hiveship, but Teyla noted he did not labour under the requirements of his work as Dr. Weir seemingly did.

Another cultural difference? Or just Teyla's perceptions? She did not know. Certainly, Major Sheppard made time for things that Dr. McKay disdained as frivolous - like watching movies or replays of the football. Teyla doubted that her offering was 'frivolous' as the Atlanteans considered these things, but she hoped it might help the Atlantean leader relax.

She left the wrapped gift in the middle of the bed, without note or card, and went to join her team-mates for dinner.

--

They ran all the way back to the Daeli village, Daeli and Athosian both, and those too slow fell behind as the others kept going.

Teyla was one of the first into the village, already knowing what she would find - who she would not find.

"Teyla!" Kerina came towards her, the pretty face streaked with dust, her trews torn and sweat-stained. "The Wraith--"

"I know," she answered. Consciousness of their presence had alerted her as she and the youth of two cultures hunted the Daeli deer. Like the deer, they had gone to ground - hunters becoming hunted. "Where is he?"

Kerina blinked, but her startlement was only a moment. "Not dead. Not yet. But close." One hand waved at the Daeli headman's house. "They took him in-- Teyla, wait!"

Teyla did not.

"Teyla, he fought, but the Wraith fed upon him--"

She only hesitated a moment, then she cast away the fear that bubbled up within her at the thought of looking at what the Wraith had left of him. Mahael was blood of her blood, her kinsman, leader of her people; he deserved her courage and she would give him no less.

What had been hard muscle was wasted, what had been firm skin was flaccid, and the man who lay before the fire was a mere husk of the man he'd been that morning. But when his lids raised and he looked Teyla in the eye, the fire still burned in his eyes.

"You have come," he said, as though he were not as weak as a baby bird in the early spring, or looked twice as old as he had appeared but that morning. "It is good. We shall leave for Athos now. Our people shall see who leads them - there will be no doubt."

Stubborn as ever - and yet fragile within his frame. Teyla felt exasperation with his insistence - and fear at his frailty. "You should rest."

"I will," he said, with mordant humour that not all the Wraith in the galaxy could stop. "Soon."

Not all her arguments could sway him otherwise, and Teyla gave up resistance.

But as they went, the Daeli headman's wife came to Teyla. The pale blue eyes were red from tears and the strong features patched with dust and flush with grief. "The Wraith did not merely come in their flying-craft - this time, they appeared on the ground - in just the same way as they disappeared our people."

Teyla knew what came next. "Mahael fought them."

"He fought them," said the Daeli woman. "I have never seen--" She broke off. "He sacrificed himself to the Wraith so that my son might get away. He would not take our thanks - he would barely accept our hospitality...but you should know what he did."

Teyla looked at the sombre procession that moved around Mahael as her people walked to the Ring of the Ancestors - he would not be carried in a litter. "Thank you for telling me," she said at last.

And she followed her people back home.

--

Next morning, Dr. Weir seemed in considerably better spirits, willing to smile and be easy again. If Teyla's gift had a part in the greater ease, Dr. Weir did not say and Teyla did not ask.

She regretted losing the vambraces, but her memories of Mahael and his indomitable will were more than mere objects, and she had little use for arm-guards in the city.

There were things to learn, people to meet, an entire culture to understand.

Teyla had her hands full of things to do, and every time-mark compounded the things she was learning.

While her own people had studied certain realms of what Dr. McKay called 'science' - the movements of stars in the sky, the living pattern of the land, the natures of fire and water, earth and air - her knowledge was far from intensive. There was no doubt that she lacked the broad scope of knowledge that the Atlanteans possessed, but many of the concepts they explained to Teyla were familiar in her own terms, even if she let them explain it in their own.

Major Sheppard had asked for training in her stave-fighting, and she was presently taking him through the basic movements. Lieutenant Ford was showing her how to use the Atlantean weaponry - with some help from Major Sheppard. Dr. Tamara Rothschild was teaching her English - the 'common tongue' of Earth, as Teyla understood it - and there were men and women who did not hesitate to stop her in the corridor and ask her about some aspect of her culture about which she had never taken time to think and now must.

Her days were busy, and several passed in the manner of time - with little to show, and only the sunrise and sunsets to mark them.

The ebb and flow of the Atlantean movements through the Ring of the Ancestors - she was coming to think of it as 'the Stargate' just as they did - was much less predictable than that of the tides that surrounded the city. Still, Teyla thought that there was rather more travel out of the city than was usual - even for such an investigative people as the Atlanteans. She wondered at it a little, but gave it no more thought.

"Teyla?" Major Sheppard caught her one night as she emerged from a laboratory. He eyed her as she took a deep breath. "You okay?"

She glanced back at the closed door and moved briskly along the hall. "I am well, Major," she assured him as they turned the corner. "A little...bowled over, perhaps. Dr. Lissande is...intense."

"He's a bore," said the Major. "Well, I find him a bore, anyway. He goes on and on and on..." His smile was impressed. "You're doing pretty well to come out upright and without a glazed look in your eye."

"He is not so terrible as you make him out to be," she said.

"Maybe," was all he would concede. "Look, I just dropped by to tell you that Rothschild is waiting for you in the mess hall instead of her lab."

She paused, surprised by the change of venue. "Is everything well?"

Major Sheppard shrugged. "She seemed okay when I spoke to her. Maybe she just wants a change of venue."

It was possible.

Teyla left the Major at the intersection of corridors that led to the personnel quarters. Outside the windows of the corridor leading to the dining area, the evening wind fluttered against the city and the distant sound of the waves far below could be heard from inside.

At the dining area she stopped.

There were only a few people present. Most people ate dinner at an earlier time before heading off to their evening pursuits. However, Dr. Weir was sitting at a table by the window, staring out at the night sea.

On the table before her, a teapot and two cups gleamed in the understated evening light and a tendril of steam coiled up from the lid. Beside them lay the vambraces Teyla had exchanged for both tea-set and the tea leaves that lent the room a fragrant aroma beyond the heavier scents of the Atlantean food.

No question but that she had been 'caught out'.

She took the seat opposite the other woman. "How did you know?"

A wry smile touched Dr. Weir's lips. "When I found the present, I asked around. The security cameras logged you coming in and going out of my room, and Major Sheppard commented on you losing these." One hand rested on the vambraces, before she picked them up and held them out to Teyla. "I sent Lieutenant Ford to get them back for you."

Touched by the gesture, Teyla took the vambraces, her fingers lingering on the polished wire inlays on the leather - a master's work. "Thank you." Then, because politeness demanded it, she added, "I did not expect--"

"--to get them back?"

"Any recompense," Teyla corrected her. "The tea-set is a gift to you from me."

Dr. Weir's mouth twitched a little to one side. "And the arm-bands are a gift to you from me," she said as she reached for the teapot and began pouring out the aromatic blend into the finely-shaped cups - quality clay, and carefully formed. "They're lovely workmanship."

"They belonged to the last leader of my people," Teyla said, watching the dark liquid cascade into the pale containers. "My mother's brother."

The teapot paused in the act of pouring the second cup. "An heirloom?" As Teyla tried to understand the word from the context, Dr. Weir elaborated, "Something passed down in your family?"

"I... Yes."

Green eyes stared at her for a moment. "Why?"

She was not sure that Dr. Weir might understand her answer, but she answered all the same. "To be a leader means sacrifice."

And from the slight smile that touched the other woman's lips, and the way she nodded slightly as she continued to pour out the rest of the tea, Teyla knew the other woman understood.

- fin -

FINAL NOTES: It's more 'proto-friends' than actual friendship - sorry about that. Also, although it's canonically implied that Teyla's father was the leader of the Athosians, I couldn't find where it said he actually was. And just because Teyla's the leader now doesn't mean her father had to be the leader as well - matrilineal descent is a possibility for a non-Earth-based culture. (And works if Mahael was her mother's brother.)

Comments

[snoggingpicard.livejournal.com]

LOVE it! I really like the idea of Weir and Teyla being able to understand each other to an extent simply because of the duties and obligations that they share. Great fic. :)

[tielan]

Heh. Thanks!

I'd really like if they had more screen time together - they're very 'functional' characters in relation to each other. Although apparently Elizabeth ditches a meeting with Teyla in an episode of S3. :-/

But yes, I think they'd have a lot of the same experiences and a lot of the same overall attitudes towards the guys they have to live with.

[sjhw-tolerance.livejournal.com]

Noce! Of all the things I imagined Teyla might give Elizabeth, a tea set wasn't one of them. I like it very much and for Season One, I think it's just about the right amount of 'friendship' between the two of them.

[tielan]

Thanks. Like allisnow, I probably would have written them friendlier before the discussion on teylafen the other day, but this does seem to work okay for S1.

[aj.livejournal.com]

*CLINGS TO YOU LIKE A CLINGING THING*

I am gleeful and wanting to curl on you like a cat. This is way more than I expected. I am very happy to see this. THANK YOU.

(OMG TEA!)

[tielan]

I already have a cat. Three, actually. But one can never have too many cats!

*is pleased*

Very relieved that you liked it. I find Elizabeth difficult to get right when it comes to her actually personally relating to people.

[aj.livejournal.com]

*laughs* And I have the exact same problem with Teyla. I adore her like pie, but GOOD LORD was she difficult for me to channel. And how she connects with others is.. hard for me to see.

But. Omg! Elizabeth! Teyla! TEA!!!! *flails in happy joy*

[klostes.livejournal.com]

The tea set fits very well with Teyla's reserve and calm center of being, what a lovely idea for her to seek to give some of that same to Elizabeth in such a manner. this is a great character piece, and nice attention paid to the cultural differences we see so briefly in the show itself. WELL done!

[tielan]

Thanks. :)

*toddles off to have her own cuppa tea*

[maxbo.livejournal.com]

With this fic, you show how interesting it would be to see Atlantis through Teyla's eyes, and, you also show how easy it would have been to add Teyla/Elizabeth getting to know each other moments in Season 1. Missed opportunities that I'm thankful fanfic is addressing. Bravo.

[tielan]

Thank you!

[diluvian.livejournal.com]

Lovely.

[tielan]

Thanks. :)

[lccb.livejournal.com]

(Apparently I'm on a commenting spree.) Loved the 'proto-friendship' and how Teyla and Elizabeth find common ground as leaders. Also loved the character of Mahael - I'd also been toying around with the notion of Teyla's uncle, because I see her as quite young when her father died. Really like what you did here.

[tielan]

Thanks! I'm thinking of exploring the idea of the Athosians counting their parentage through the maternal line instead of the paternal - it'll depend on time and where the plotbunnies fall. :)

[lacenire.livejournal.com]

I thoroughly enjoy this fic! I loved the whole idea of a budding friendship between Elizabeth and Teyla, it seems appropriate somehow. They are both leaders, and share the burden of making difficult decisions on behalf of their charges.

I really like your insight into her earlier training. I had asked around once about any canon references to who had taught Teyla to fight. Apparently it has never been revealed, so it's a great take to have a family member be the one to train her.

Nice work, as always!

[cherryblosomjen.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful! How did I miss it the first time through?

I love the proto-friendship of Teyla and Weir.

I also didn't realize that Mahael, who I have since seen in your new stories, had appeared before.