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CHARACTERS: "Todd"/Guide, James T. Kirk, and all volunteers
LOCATION: Medical Bay
WARNINGS: Extensive description of the Wraith feeding process, and internalized self-loathing. Possible profanity.
SUMMARY: You can never win, you can only break even. With a Wraith, you can't break even - even if you are one.

He's growing used to the fire in his bones, and the thought disgusts him more than he would dare to admit. This repetition of siphoning off a bit of life and then slowly starving again is not the way of a Queen's man. It is short-sighted - but the kine are a short-lived species, as it should only be that they cannot imagine so far into the future. Yet he has agreed to this deal, and their short-sightedness is his own. It will not be long before he starves again, and then more humans will have to sacrifice themselves to him. So this vicious cycle will begin anew.

He kneads the dark vein that winds itself abound his wrist so that it does not swell with enzyme, but he closes his fist as he does so. He can grow used to the fire in his bones, but never shall he look upon a hungry hand without shame.

Guide waits in the medical bay, squinting at the too-bright lights. When he has the strength to do so, he stands; when he hasn't, he rests, sitting as regally as one can in torn leathers.

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Guide draws in a deep breath, brushing away the memories of dying men asking for mercy. "Before we reach adulthood, we Wraith are able to take nourishment from solid food. The Lanteans, and myself, sought to exploit this fact with a gene treatment that would enable us to revert to the ways of our childhoods." He sighs and turns his head away from Kirk, instead taking a keen interest in the ship's bulkhead. "It worked for a short time. We were able to eat without pain and renew our strength without taking human lives. We thought ourselves triumphant over the threat of starvation.

"We quickly discovered how wrong we were. The first group to take the treatment became extremely ill. Their deaths were slow and painful to degrees that words do no justice to. I ordered them to enter their hibernation pods to slow the progress of the disease so that we could seek assistance from Atlantis." He shoves the rest of the story to the back of his mind, the memories of struggling to restore life support to faulty pods while the men inside suffocated, the memories of wondering if the hull would hold, the frantic bid to survive the fall to the planet's surface in half a hive. "They were not able to provide adequate help in the end. Even my survival was not assured at the time I left Atlantis."

It's curious, hearing about it, because it was easy to think that back in his own universe, the threat of starvation was not present. Nick alone was a proud creature, and Jim couldn't see why a species would want to change something that had worked for eons. Whatever was going on back there, the war McKay had spoken of, it seemed more was going on. Jim couldn't see them changing for mankind, with the way Nick spoke of them as a herd, like cattle.

But if they were starving there too, it made sense. It meant if they could find a solution here, when Nick went back, it might assist in ending the war, and that thought only spurs Kirk's desire to find a solution even further.

"I'm guessing that wasn't the same genetic treatment McKay told me about." He frowns. "From the sound of it, altering your genetics just doesn't work period."

Guide smiles mirthlessly, his head still turned away. "I believe it may be related to the hardiness of the Iratus that we Wraith descended from. Countless clevermen have experimented upon it as long as I can recall, yet I have yet to read any report of a cleverman successfully altering an Iratus permanently. However, I would hypothesize that whatever abilities we inherited from the Iratus do not allow us to completely undo changes to our genetic code. But that is neither here nor there, and I am no longer quite so quick to experiment upon myself again."

He gently touches the bulkhead with the tips of his claws, tracing memories in his mind's eye. It should be pearly shell and warm skin beneath his hand, not cold, unchanging metal, and it's only then that he realizes how long he's been kept away from the men he commands. It's only been less than a year in waking, yet it feels so much longer without the touch of a thousand brilliant minds placing their trust in him. "I know what I ask your people to do is not an easy thing," he says, turning his head back toward Kirk. "And though I am proud, I am not so proud that I will not seek out some way to simplify our current deals. Yet, you understand that there is as of yet an untold history between Wraith and Lanteans, do you not? You understand that I cannot allow that history to play itself out again here."

Jim knows there's more going on than what's been told. He knows Nick didn't tell him because he needed them on his side, because he didn't want to starve. Kirk also knows that it was his own fault, that he backed himself into that corner and was lied to. So far, it hasn't come back to bite him in the ass.

Jim stops, then, and turns to fully face the wraith. He's sick of being in the dark.

"I think if you want my help with that, you need to tell me what happened."

He considers Kirk's statement for a moment, head tipped to one side. "That is quite a lot of history for you to consider. If you are so certain, I have three tales that I believe will best illustrate our present situation. However..."

Guide looks the human in the eye, head slightly inclined. "These are not pleasant stories. These stories will document crimes that the people of Earth have committed, crimes which I believe that no other Wraith would ever see past to acknowledge the technical skills of these new Lanteans. You are also of Earth, and you may find yourself embittered by the actions of your kin."

Once upon a time, it might have been unnerving for the wraith to look him square in the face. Now, Jim meets his gaze unflinchingly. There's a pause, after he speaks, but it isn't uncertainty. It's more an acknowledgement of the gravity of the discussion they're about to have.

"If I flinched at every terrible thing the human race had done, I wouldn't be around right now," Because Jim had a curious mind, and he had a passion for Earth's history. Humanity made mistakes, some horribly grievous, but you didn't learn anything, or change, by ignoring that it happened. "Tell me."

He takes a breath, and begins the first of his tales. "To understand us, you must first understand how we rose up to declare our sovereignty. Before the first hive crossed between stars, Pegasus was ruled by the Lanteans. They were the builders if the Stargates, the progenitors of life throughout our galaxy - although any Blade would, to a man, tell you that Queen Death was the one who sowed the seeds of life. The Lanteans supposedly created humans in their own image, for they were nearly identical to yourself. Yet they rested upon all their achievements and grew arrogant. They looked down upon those who worshipped them and their city, scornful of those who were not their kin.

"We crossed paths with them some eleven thousand years before the time I was brought here. The Lanteans could not abide us, hunters of their forgotten children, a people rapidly approaching technological advancements that rivaled their own. At first we were pursued, until the Lanteans grew so arrogant that they led their ships deeper and deeper into our territory. We Wraith trapped several of their ships and incorporated their designs into our own. The superior technology bought us time to grow our numbers, and in a thousand years we were ready to fight a true war.

"Ten thousand years ago, we crushed the Lanteans so thoroughly that they abandoned even Atlantis, which they sank beneath the oceans of Lantea. The war cost us several billion lives, but we destroyed those who sought our extinction. And so we have ruled until their children returned to Atlantis a few short years ago."

Jim nods along, trying to listen objectively. Though he had no ties to this galaxy, there was a universal sympathy with the human race. Jim felt it as much as any other person. When the wraith's needs had first come to light, Kirk had been just as initially put off by the idea of humanity being hunted. It still wasn't something that sat well with him, regardless of the laws of nature.

But this wasn't about his own opinions on the matter, this was about learning a history and applying it to the current situation. He remains silent, letting the wraith continue.

So began the second tale. "We do not know why the Earth humans returned to Atlantis, but they did. They returned during a time of peaceful hibernation. You humans are not an efficient herd animal; you grow so slowly that if we fed off your kind continuously, humans in Pegasus would go extinct. We hibernate for years at a time, decades or even centuries if our culling is good, and it was during a time that several hives' hibernation cycles overlapped that the Lanteans returned.

"One of their exploring parties chased after hunters sent to gather provisions for a hive's caretakers. What the Lanteans did not know was that this hive was ruled by one of our Keepers, a Queen trusted with the power to wake every sleeping hive should a rival species emerge. As the Lanteans attempted to take back the humans taken by her hunters, they confronted and killed this Queen. Before she died, she called out to every Wraith in Pegasus, waking us all from our slumber before our time.

"I assume you understand why this would be... problematic for us."

Jim's expression does an impressive switch, from that objective listening to what the fuck are you serious? His brow creases and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before glancing away.

"An accident," Jim says, but even he can understand why this mistake was catastrophic. It would be like introducing a surplus of lions to an area where antelope didn't reproduce fast enough. Eventually, the antelope would die, and the predators would starve.

Nobody said that when humanity screwed up, they didn't do it radically. He exhales. "And that's when the war started."

"You cannot tell me that they left so many men Queenless by accident," he says, shaking his head slowly. He has his share of Queens' blood on his hands, but never has he left men without a woman, without that inherent leadership, to rally around. "Though the war itself was not what they likely intended to start. Nevertheless, we have been at odds with each other for some time."

He leans his head back against the bulkhead, continuing. "A year into the fight, the Lanteans developed the very retrovirus that Dr. McKay has so graciously explained to you. By then, our food sources were on the wane, and hives turned toward fighting each other instead of Atlantis. We were too scattered to resist when they began their first trials."

So began the third tale. "And thus they created Michael."

Jim says nothing to the concept of leaving men Queenless; it's likely that the men from Earth didn't understand. If they were military, the probably went in guns blazing. Kirk frowns a little at that. As much of a fan as he was of old fashioned westerns, there was a reason Earth had changed it's tune by the time Jim was born.

"Michael?" He asks, because despite the history listen, this sounded... different somehow.

"His is not a story that Wraith enjoy dwelling upon. I did not know him personally, but I knew of his reputation before the Lanteans gave him his false name. He was a man of his Queen's harem, and brilliant in battle. Yet the Lanteans turned his own love of the fight against him, and captured him as he bought his own men a chance to retreat. They brought him to Atlantis, where they tested their retrovirus upon him. They ground down his claws so that he could not tear at them, they cropped his hair so he would look like one of them, and their retrovirus stripped him of everything else that made him Wraith."

His brow creases as he closes his eyes. It's a subject that has cropped up too many times to not be addressed, that it is not impossible to transform him into a human. He would not starve to death, but it would be a living death. He would not be Guide, and those precious memories of Snow, of their daughter, would be lost. "They stripped him of his memories, and they stripped him of his name. Now even we Wraith call him only by the name the Lanteans gave him."

Jim's eyes widen, and it'd be comical if the reaction was genuine. "They-" He closes his eyes tightly for a moment, processing, before he squints at the wraith. He's not even sure what he was going to say to that. They essentially took everything that made this person himself and ripped it out of him. Changed his race and his mind and lied to him.

Like they could cure him of his race.

Kirk hands find his hips and he turns away from Nick, a hunch in his shoulders that's impossible to define. Maybe a guilt, or the full realization of what had happened. Kirk had heard of terrible things, the awful courses war could take. The hubris of men who thought they were better than others.

He lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. He couldn't afford to feel guilt for something that he wasn't involved in, but as he lets the feeling rise and then fade away, he knows what it really is:

Disgust.

When his hand falls away, Jim turns to face him again, and regards the sharp angles of his face for a long moment. "I'm sorry." He says, not because he did it, or because his race was responsible- but that it happened at all.

"What have you to be sorry for? I did not tell you this so that you could apologize for it." He crosses his arms over his chest, glaring defensively. "You have tried to understand a war as old as myself without any context. You are trying to solve a problem that has plagued we Wraith since the dawn of our species. And you have been handed options that mirror the very same that the Lanteans have used to destroy men utterly.

"I am not telling you this so that you pity Wraith. I am telling you this so that you do not take the same course as the Lanteans."

He didn't expect anything less, and Kirk's hands return to prop on his waist, looking away with a crease in his brow. It's less a surrender than it is just a thoughtful gesture. The wraith wasn't looking for pity, and he recognized that. He was being given data to formulate an equation with.

Well, at least they didn't have a chance of coming onto a hive and waking every wraith in existence up. He doesn't bother trying to explain the apology, even if it isn't pity that he feels.

"Well, we'll just make sure that doesn't happen, won't we?," He says, without any bite, and he nods when his gaze comes back around. "Are you going up to your lab?"

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