Of wraith and dead men   von RayuTen
                     (~ a stargate atlantis fanfiction ~)
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        Kapitel 1: Of lucidity and puzzlement and everything in between
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“So what should we call him?” 
Simons sudden question startled Silvers out of his musing, leaving him guessing
about what had brought it one. Some of his confusion must have shown in his face
or maybe Simons had grown adapt to reading questioningly lifted eyebrows.
“Well the wraith!” Hurried the linguist to explain, somewhat annoyed. “I
always wanted to name one!”
Still not sure how to reply to that the Lieutenant shared a nonplused glance
with Michaels across the briefing room table. The only other military man in his
team and therefore the only one he really got most of the time.
“Well if we want to name it ourselves we have to come up with something now,
before SG-1 gets back!” Simons impatiently insisted, crossing his arms. 
“He is kind of bluish so how about Neytiri?” Michaels choose that moment to
enter the conversation and Silvers had to admit: he did not always get the other
Lieutenant either.
“That’s a girl’s name and you totally stole it!” Simons indignant outcry
did have some merit to it. Wasn’t Neytiri that hot alien chick from avatar?
Besides their skin color he truly could not see any resemblance. That wraith was
far less human and anything but sexy and quite obviously not a girl. Vampire
names were out of the question too, again not good looking enough. Now this
train of thoughts was truly getting awkward.
“What would you call a blue-skinned life-sucking alien bug then?” Apparently
they were still at it and Michaels refused to take the insult. 
“Er… Wallace?” Obviously the name Simons had picked sounded not as
suitable spoken aloud as he had imagined it would, even to himself. His
uncertainty was well warranted given this discussion had just turned from
awkward to ridiculous.
“Good God! That’s just as bad as having Sheppard name him!” Evans spoke up
and Silvers dreaded were this was going.
“Oh shush, you stay out of this!” Yep, Simons was definitely rising to the
bait.
“I bet I could do better than any of you lot!”
“You’re a Botanist you get to name stuff all the time!”
“That just means I have a lot more experience with choosing!”
“No! It means you will pick a plant name and it will probably be Latin to!”
“Would still be better than ‘Wallace’!”
“Stay focused people!” Silvers choose to intervene before their bickering
got out of hand, like usual. What an annoying lot he had been struck with, but
then again it could have been worse: he could have gotten McKay. At least those
two listened to him, occasionally. “Let’s just agree that we are not in
agreement and move on to the next issue!” They desperately needed a change of
topic and now.
“Such as?”
“Why the Wraith behaved the way it did?” Ironically that should have been
the first thing to strike the scientists interest instead of starting this
useless naming debate. “Well I admit that is a jolly good question, any ideas
on that?” Simons send a sideward’s glance towards their resident Botanic,
still in the mood for a fight it seemed.
Silvers choose to take control of the conversation himself. “Let’s start
with what we actually know about the situation: A dart crashed and out came a
wraith, so far so normal!” He cut Simons of with a hard glare before the man
had a chance to fully open his mouth. “And that’s where things get fuzzy.
Turns out there is a human in that dart too and he dies during impact!”
“Actually we don’t know that!” This times Evans was on the receiving and
of his declining mood.
“As I was saying: The man died crashing!” Anything else would take too much
efford to explain right now and would lead to a totally unproductive and useless
controversy on how he got to be in that dart in the first place. “Wraith
survives crash and spontaneously chooses to bring him back to life? I think not!
Now, any ideas on what his motivation might have been?”
“I see you have already started without me?” Dr. Weirs voice drifted into
the briefing room while the woman herself stood in the doorway with that knowing
smirk of hers. Four heads snapped towards her while Silvers tried to suppress a
wince.
I bet she has already been here long enough to witness all this awkwardness!
Sometime Silvers really loathed his job. “We were only just discussion the
wraithes motives, Ma’am!”
“I gathered as much! Now why don’t we just pick up where you left off? Dr.
Jungblut should be here with her medical report soon anyway.” Dr. Weir moved
over to sit down still smiling and placed the mission file she doubtlessly just
read on the table in front of her. 
Damn, how he hated to be right.
“So I presume there is no easy solution to this situation?” Dr. Weir looked
pointedly at Lieutenant Silvers obviously waiting for him to continue. Oh how he
hated to be in charge of this bunch of morons even more. “No Ma’am.
Apparently non of us can really wrap their brain around what the blue guy might
be thinking!” Ok, right now he hated his own tongue most of all.
For the first time in what felt like a century luck seemed to finally be on his
side because a sudden noise from the doorway made Dr. Weir turn around instead
of asking more questions he could give equally embarrassing answers to.
“Ah! Dr. Jungblut how are our patients?” The sudden appearance of a slender
middle-aged German woman in a lab coat saved him further embarrassment, at least
for the moment.
“There seems to be no change with the wraith. Still unconscious but seemingly
stable, it has yet to react to any outside stimuli. But then again, I admit, we
don’t really know what to do with it…” 
No surprise there. If the bugger was too hungry to heal himself there was really
nothing any of them could do short of feeding it, which of course, was totally
and utterly out of the question. So Silvers decided to simply be grateful for
the reprieve it earned them.
“How about our human guest then?” 
Silvers was slightly irked by Weirs wording, not sure if she implied the wraith
to be anything but a prisoner.
“Besides a few scratches from the crash and the almost-healed stab to his left
lung he seems remarkably healthy for someone who was, er… dead!” Dr.
Jungblut seemingly still had trouble with the concept but then again who
didn’t? “Mentally he appears to be holding up quite well, too!”
“So what is your opinion of him?” Dr. Weir tried to coax a little more
information out of the physician.
“He seemed confused and somewhat wary earlier, nothing unexpected given the
situation. Sadly he refused to talk to us soon after regaining consciousness
without giving us even his name or origin!” No surprise there either, the kid
was probably either traumatized or thought they had abducted him or both. 
“He did ask about the wraith though!” Dr. Jungblut finally added a rather
curious piece of information. 
“So he remembers?” Simons peaked up and the medical woman started to look
rather embarrass all of a sudden. “Well I… might have mentioned it when I
tried to persuade him to talk to us.” Great, so they couldn’t even be sure
the kid actually knew what had happened to him, no wonder their guest was
distressed.
“For all we know he might be a worshipper!” Evans decided to interrupt their
line of inquiry and return to the previous topic of discussion.
“Or he could have been victim to a culling?” Of course Simons just would
have to disagree. 
“Why then, pray tell me, would the Wraith bother to revive him?” Yep. Check
mate there. Reviving someone you wanted to feed on was probably not only contra
productive to a wraith given the amount of energy it wasted but also made
Silvers think of cows rumination something they had already half digested. Not a
pleasant thought.
“Which takes us back to not knowing anything!” Dr. Weir concluded saving the
Lieutenant from further headache.
“That is not entirely true! We can warrant al lot of guesses based on the
Wraith behavior!”
“Guessing is not knowing, Dr. Simons!”
“But it is better than nothing!”
Weir seemed to finally grow weary enough of the linguist to simply let him have
his way. “Ok than: Speculate away!”
“Well there is the fact that he revived him at all…”
“Which we already gathered is a mystery to us!” Evans interjected.
“Right. But there is also something else; The Wraith noticed us!”
Michaels send the linguist a rather annoyed glance. “Yes, because you just had
to be a scared chicken and give us away!”
“Hey!”
“Gentlemen! Insults will not get us anywhere.” Dr. Weir intervened before
they could start a real argument.
“My point is not that it knew we were there, but that it did nothing about
us!” Simons continued now slightly enraged.
“So what? We were armed and he was in pretty bad shape…” Silvers offered
his opinion. Not that such minor detail usually kept wraith from trying any
funny business.
 “Think about it! He obviously had enough strength left in him to bring
someone back to live, which I warrant is no easy feat! Why not just take us out,
feed himself and then go back for the revival?”
“Gosh, that sounds so wrong…” Michaels complained slightly nauseated and
Silvers had to agree, it sounded like they were talking about a necromancer or
something.
“Maybe he just did not feel up to the task?” Evans tried to reason.
“We are still talking about a Wraith! Stop trying to make him sound like a
sensible person!”
“Or maybe there is something we’re missing!” Dr. Weir sharply ended their
bickering.
“What if he felt there wasn’t the time?” Lieutenant Michaels pondered all
of a sudden. Quite ingenious a thought given his usual input.
“Pardon me?” Now that Silvers actually deemed sensible to get an explanation
to.
“Well what do we know about this ‘gift of life’ business? Next to nothing
I bet! What if it’s a time-sensitive process?”
“So…” Evans seemed to pick up on what Michaels was implying. “You mean
to say if someone remains a corpse for too long he has to stay dead?”
That kind of made sense even to Silvers who admittedly was not really
comfortable with this topic of discussion. “So the Wraith decided it did not
have the time to bother with us, even if it could have used the snack? Must have
wanted his friend back alive desperately then, since there is no way the wraith
did not notice his own condition!”
 “Aha! But is it truly that mans friend or is there something entirely
different behind all of this?”
“Can’t imagine the wraith doing it just for sensitive information! I might
even go so far as to call this a rather suicidal move!”
And there they had really gotten down to the bane of the dilemma: Why did the
wraith endanger his own live over a human? Those Creepers were smart, it must
have known exactly what it was doing, down to the lack of any threatening moves
towards the Atlantian expedition.
“I fear we will not get any explanations until we have talked to that young
man down in the infirmary!” Dr. Weir wrapped their current lack of progress
down into a nutshell successfully ending the conversation.
Crud! Why did he get the feeling things would not be that simple?

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