lunabee34

Title: Rite of Passage
Pairing: Keller-centric gen
Rating: G
Word count: 990

Episode tag for "The Missing."

Jennifer rises with the dawn. She knows that Teyla is not asleep in the low tent pitched next to her own but she doesn’t ruin the illusion by saying goodbye. She heads west from the Stargate down a trail that was once well traveled but is now overgrown with small shrubs and waist-high grasses. Jennifer takes with her only a knife, a canteen, some water purification tablets, and a radio. She will not use the radio unless she absolutely must, but this concession to her weakness rankles her.

The air is chill, her breath thick and tangible. The early morning sun makes prisms high in the trees and all along the edges of the path before it burns off the dew and leaves Jennifer sweating into her BDUs. When the sun is highest in the sky, Jennifer reaches the river. She thinks she’s made good time.

Cyanth grows thick along the river’s edge. Jennifer harvests two arms full, the stalks’ serrated edges slicing into the soft flesh of her fingers. Over, under, over, under, triple knot—just as Teyla showed her. Before long Jennifer has woven a river trap, a sort of loose oval basket with a wide mouth that can she close from the shore just like a drawstring purse. She bandages the worst of her cuts with the top two inches of her left sock, lowers the river trap into the water and waits.

The water is clear and threaded through with all manner of growing things, scarlet and yellow flowers kaleidoscoping just beneath the surface. Jennifer waits with a patience borne of long hours at the bedsides of the dying. The shadows have moved to the other side of the footpath before a creature the size of Jennifer’s fist ventures into her trap. She closes the trap with a quick snap of her wrist and hefts her haul onto the shore. The animal inside is beautiful, alien. Jennifer breathes deeply through her nose—once, twice—and then she spears the roveensa through the abdomen with her knife. Its blood runs green onto the sun-warmed sand and Jennifer turns away until the wriggling has stopped. She fillets it carefully, separating the skin from muscle and ferreting out the small bones with her blade. This, at least, Teyla did not have to show her. Jennifer has spent many hours with a knife exposing the body’s inner secrets.

The roveensa tastes of salt and iron, a faint sweetness of blood orange, and bitters. Jennifer eats the entire animal and tosses the bones into the river. They settle to the bottom before they are swarmed by tiny tentacled creatures that kick up the sand as they eat, obscuring Jennifer’s view. The sun is now gilding everything over in red and gold and Jennifer yawns. She is ready to sleep.

Jennifer hacks down the tall fragrant grass that grows along the trail and spreads it over the sand. She breaks open several leaves of the mabuew plant and smears the viscous liquid inside over all her exposed skin. Teyla swears that no insecticide the Lanteans have brought with them from Earth can compete with the milk of the mabuew and Jennifer hopes she’s right. The nocturnal biting flies of this world won’t kill her, but Jennifer would rather not spend the next few days scratching if she can help it.

She thinks she will take forever to fall asleep. Her ears are full of the sounds of the night—the water moving over rocks, animals rustling the trees, the wind in the grass. Jennifer wads a knot of grass under her head and sticks her knife into the sand nearby. No doubt Teyla could sleep with her hand curled around the hilt but Jennifer thinks she’s likely to gouge out an eye if she tries to do the same.

Jennifer doesn’t think she has ever been so alone. This world was culled several years ago; no survivors remain. No one is here but her and Teyla and Teyla is a half day’s walk behind. Jennifer is afraid, anxiety thrumming deep in her blood, but she is also strangely exhilarated. Jennifer suspects that Teyla is simply humoring her, graciously helping her to find some way to save face after what happened on New Athos, but this journey is important to Jennifer. She has things to prove to Teyla but mostly to herself and she never wants to feel again that she doesn’t deserve the wonders of Pegasus because she is too cowardly to face its dangers. She is afraid to be alone here in the night, but she will not let that fear control her. Jennifer falls asleep with the moons bright on her face.

When she wakes, the flies have bitten her on the scalp where the mabuew didn’t penetrate through her hair. Jennifer gives herself one good scratching with her blunt surgeon’s nails and then ignores the itch. She’s hungry and cold and stiff from sleeping on the ground. Breakfast is a handful of berries and the stringy pulp of a melon that grows submerged underwater. It’s juicy and sweet and stains the palms of her hands.

Jennifer walks back to the Stargate slowly. She feels different somehow even though nothing of consequence has happened and she isn’t ready to step back through the Gate to Atlantis. She wishes this journey could last the traditional ten days but she spent nearly all her leave visiting her father and Colonel Carter would never greenlight such a long absence from her post anyway.

When she finally reaches their camp, the afternoon is edging into twilight. Teyla is sitting on top of their neatly rolled tents and she is smiling. They don’t speak, but Teyla lowers her forehead to Jennifer’s and they share breath that way for several beats of Jennifer’s heart. Jennifer shoulders her half of the gear while Teyla dials the Gate and then they both step through to whatever waits beyond.