*Have you chosen?*
*I — * Quicksilver froze, made himself point at random. *There.*
He found himself pointing at a young woman who sagged half conscious in her webbing. He swallowed hard, lifted his hand, feeling the mouth stretch and open. It burned, he burned, but he could not bring himself to tear the webbing away from her. He stood shaking, unable to understand what was wrong with him, what was happening to him. The woman opened blue eyes, wide and uncomprehending, and Ember looked from one to the other, irritation fading to something like understanding. He caught Quicksilver’s arm in his own off hand and bore it gently down.
*I’m sorry,* he said. *I ask too much of you. I knew Dust had fed you himself, when you were first returned, but I did not realize — *
*I don’t — * Quicksilver stopped, not sure what he would have said. I don’t understand, I don’t want this, I don’t know what’s wrong with me: all true, but he had enough shreds of self-preservation left that he would not say them.
*It has happened before,* Ember said. *Men so badly hurt they could not feed themselves, not for months and sometimes years. This is not unknown, Quicksilver.*
*I was not hurt,* Quicksilver said, bitterly.
*Injuries of the mind are no less real.* Ember reached out, ripped the webbing free, and sank his claws into the woman’s chest. She withered silently, with only the murmur of the hive to mark her death. Quicksilver shuddered again, knowing that something was terribly wrong, and Ember glanced quickly over his shoulder.
*We must keep this secret. But you must feed, and if you cannot — Permit me to help you.*
He extended his feeding hand. The mouth was open still, swollen at the edges, the feeding membrane dark within. Quicksilver stared, caught like a human in the cleverman’s stare, and Ember bent his head.
*Your brother did this for you,* he said. *Allow me to act as he would.*
Quicksilver could not move, and Ember took his silence for assent. He stepped closer, close enough to slide his feeding hand under Quicksilver’s shirt, claws cold against bare skin. Quicksilver caught his breath, the terror returning, and Ember flexed his hands, setting his claws. The feeding mouth touched him, sharp as fire, hot as fear, and pain seared through him, radiating from Ember’s hand to the tips of his fingers, the soles of his feet. As abruptly as it had begun, the pain eased, was replaced by warmth, tingling, a strange pleasure and a new strength. He straightened in spite of himself, and Ember drew his hand away.
*Better?*
Quicksilver shook himself, but could not deny that he was restored. He snarled, groping for the right words, for anger to cover emotions he did not dare name, and Ember gave a rueful smile.
*I see you are.*
Chapter Ten
Necessary Measures
“Dr. Keller, do you have a moment?” Teyla said, coming in the door of the infirmary with Torren balanced on her hip.
“Sure,” Jennifer said. “As much as I’m likely to today.”
“I am sure you are busy,” she said. Torren hid his face in Teyla’s shirt, peering out with a frown; Jennifer didn’t think she was one of his favorite people. “I am taking Torren back to New Athos, and I wondered if you could make sure that all is well with him first. If there are immunizations he will need soon, it might be better if he could have them now.”
“Okay,” Jennifer said. “I can take a look, but he’s a pretty healthy kid, so I don’t expect I’ve got much work here.” She busied herself with the exam, which gave her time to figure out what to say. Teyla smiled at Torren as she tried to coax him to let Jennifer look in his ears, but she didn’t exactly look happy. “How long do you think he’ll be staying there with Kanaan?”
Teyla smoothed Torren’s hair. “At least until we have an iris again,” she said. “It has not ever been perfectly safe in the city, but when we do not even have the iris…” She met Jennifer’s eyes over Torren’s head. “And I would have him have every benefit of this city’s medicine before he goes.”
You mean in case the Wraith nuke Atlantis and he never comes back, Jennifer thought. That’s cheery. She wouldn’t say it in front of Torren, though, and she supposed that Teyla had to think that way; she’d grown up with the knowledge that any community, no matter how strong, could be wiped out by the Wraith.
Jennifer wasn’t sure how anyone could stand to have kids in the face of that knowledge. She was starting to feel pretty guilty herself about having brought the kitten, although at least the Wraith didn’t eat cats —
She cleared her throat, aware that she’d taken too long to reply. “I can go ahead and give him his MMR booster early, and the Varicella — that’s chicken pox. He’s current on everything that’s specific to the Pegasus galaxy.”
“That is good,” Teyla said, her hand curled protectively over the top of Torren’s head again.
Colonel Sheppard came into the infirmary as she was giving Torren the second injection. “What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s getting a measles shot,” Jennifer said. “I gave you one before we left Earth, but you didn’t scream.”
“I thought about it,” Sheppard said. “I came to see if I could talk to Lorne.”
Jennifer frowned at him. “Is that talk as in bother, or talk as in cheer up?”
“Talk as in see how he’s doing and tell him everything’s okay,” Sheppard said as if he thought that should have been obvious. He glanced at Teyla. “For a certain value of okay.”
“All right,” Jennifer said. “He’s conscious, but he has a concussion, okay? Don’t make his head hurt even worse than it does.”
“I’ll use my inside voice,” Sheppard said.
“Speaking of which, could you take Torren for a moment?” Teyla said. “I would like to ask Dr. Keller about Rodney.”
Sheppard grimaced, as if acknowledging that the subject was probably not toddler-appropriate, at least not for a toddler who didn’t need to hear the words ‘Wraith’ and ‘Uncle Rodney’ in the same sentence. “Up you go,” he said, hoisting Torren off Teyla’s lap. “Let’s go see Major Lorne.”
Teyla met Jennifer’s eyes once John had gone around the corner with Torren. “I am sure you may not know anything yet.”
“Carson and I ran some computer models based on our best guess at the structure of their retrovirus,” Jennifer said reluctantly. “We know that whatever they did didn’t affect the ATA gene. That narrows down the possibilities. Still, I want to stress that at this point we have very little actual data — ”
“What did you find?” Teyla’s voice was gentle but insistent.
“Our best computer models right now have Rodney not returning completely to human form, even after he’s no longer receiving doses of the retrovirus. In the best-case scenarios, the lasting effects are essentially cosmetic.”
“Rodney would not like it if his hair were permanently white, but I think we would all learn to live with it,” Teyla said. “But if he remained much more like the Wraith in appearance… it would be a difficult thing for him, and I am sure for you.”
“Right now, I’m not even worried about that,” Jennifer said, although she wasn’t entirely sure Teyla believed her. “If he ends up staying green, we’ll… you know, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” She wasn’t sure what it would mean for him ever being able to go back to Earth, even to visit, but that wasn’t something she was ready to think about at the moment.