Chapter 217 - Melia's Troubles - Part 1
Keeping himself on target while working on the Goa’uld project was turning out to be a lot more difficult than Eventus had originally imagined it would be. That constant nagging desire to go back and use each bit of new knowledge to fix up one or more of his older abandoned designs always seeming to show up just when it seemed like he was getting into the flow.
“I would ask that you stop avoiding me,” Melia's voice suddenly broke through the Lantean’s focus, causing him to glance up from his interface to see the deascended woman glaring at him with a familiar look of disapproval that sent a chill down his spine.
“I'm not avoiding you,” he lied. “I just have a lot of other important things that I need to work on before your…” He trailed off as the awkward realization hit that with all of his avoiding her he didn't have even the smallest of ideas about what she might actually want with him.
“Thing…”
“By which you mean the fact that you've been holding me prisoner since our arrival at this city.” Melia returned in a tone that made it clear she didn't particularly believe his excuse.
“You're not being held prisoner,” Eventus tried to protest, though it came out somewhat weak given he had basically restricted her movements to the first floor of their shared building.
Her city-wide authority as a member of the High Council, like all of the old High Council members, had been automatically stripped by the city's systems when Eventus had triggered the emergency election. And that meant that as far as the city's systems were concerned Melia's authority had reverted back to what it had been prior to her being elected to the councilor position.
The problem was that wouldn't do anything to her perceived authority by both the Lantean survivors and the Humans who had seen that damnable holographic message. Though of course, if that was all he would have muddled through, however muddling through in this case meant dealing with Melia, and the truth was the former cultural shaper left him feeling like an awkward nobody for several different reasons.
Melia narrowed her eyes slightly. “I admit that with my memory absent I may not be in the best position to understand the reasoning behind your various actions. But there is very little understanding needed when any attempt to move beyond the first floor of this building is met with some sort of rejection and I have not seen a single person other than you and Rayla since our arrival.”
“Saying it out loud like that makes it sound worse than it actually is,” Eventus muttered half under his breath.
Letting out a sigh, he set his interface down on the table and rose to his feet. “All right, so what do you actually want to do out in the city?”
“I…” Melia began , only to pause and scowl slightly. “How am I supposed to know what I want to do if I can't remember anything before waking up naked in your bed?”
Eventus cringed and held up a single finger. “Okay, rule one, never say that around the humans. Because they will absolutely get the wrong idea about our relationship.”
“Don't worry,” Melia tried to reassure him in a tone that all but screamed earnestness. “If anyone gets confused about our relationship I'll just explain to them that you're not my type.”
“I'm not?” Eventus asked despite the little voice of learned wisdom in the back of his mind suggesting the destination of this particular digression risked completely changing how he thought of the woman.
“No,” Melia shook her head. “My tastes seem to run toward taller older men with beards and fit blonde women with short hair.”
Eventus opened his mouth to point out how oddly specific that was, only to decide it was probably better to heed his original feeling of caution about the subject.
“All right,” he moved on. “I’m going to get directly to the point, you’ve looked up what you were like prior to losing your memory. So you should be able to understand that if I let you start walking around the public parts of the city there will be a lot of questions. While outside of the city the galaxy is mostly controlled by the Wraith, and them grabbing you would be…”
He trailed off, cocking his head slightly he actually considered the question that thought brought up for several seconds. “You know what, I don't actually know what might happen if the Wraith get their hands on you. They're telepathic, and the Replicators prove Ascended memory blocks can be overcome with sufficient effort. So I have to assume if a Queen spends enough time on its there's the very real possibility that they might be able to pull at least some Ascended knowledge out of your mind. At which point either the Ascended would smite you all, or they would become a much much larger threat.”
And while the first would only really be bad if the Ascended blamed him for it, the second could cause all sorts of problems.
Thinking about things in that context, he really should move her as far away from the Pegasus galaxy as possible. Except the only available location he knew of that far out was Earth. And while, with a little training, Melia would probably make a workable ambassador. The only way that wouldn't just be handing her over to Ba'al on a silver platter is if he removed her suppression band first. Something he really didn't want to do for at least a couple of years given how badly being able to read minds could mess up the former Ascended's still forming personality.
“Your lengthy pause doesn't sound promising,” Melia scowled.
“That's because it's not,” Eventus admitted. “I just had the unfortunate realization that the only place safe to keep you is this city.” He gave a reluctant nod. “And maybe the mainland. Though given that would be a choice between a group of friendly nomads who live in tents and a group of unfriendly nomads who live in a partially wrecked spaceship I wouldn't recommend it.”
Melia gave him an odd look. “Do we have a prime directive?”
“Technically yes,” Eventus admitted as he started to wonder if letting her watch Star Trek had really been the best of ideas. “But it was partially suspended seventy-four years into our war with the Wraith so we could help the surviving humans better fight them.”
He raised an eyebrow at the odd non-sequitor. “Why?”
“It's just that it seems kind of assholish to leave people living in tents when you have this giant city.” Melia admitted.
The sheer irony in hearing those words coming from her of all people was enough to make Eventus break out laughing.
“I'm… Sorry…” He finally managed to get out between laughs as Melia shot him an almost hurt look. “It's just… Hearing you on this end of that particular conversation is hilarious for reasons you don't realize.”
Melia's hurt look morphed into a scowl. “I know you believe the former me was a horrible person, but the fact that I seem to have the moral framework to care about this sort of thing suggests to me that you may be judging her far too harshly.”
It was Eventus's turn to scowl as the woman's words hit home in a way he really didn't like. “You're right to suggest that I didn't really know what type of person she was outside of her position.”
Because he really hadn't, the only interactions the Maintenance Corps and Cultural Shapers had tended to have was the occasional back and forth with people much lower on the authority spectrum than Melia herself about the excessive spectacle of certain operations. So all he really knew about the woman was what he had read in her files and seen in her public addresses growing up. The last of which had only really resulted in a brief teenage celebrity crush that hadn't survived the realization that she was the Lantean equivalent of a propaganda driving pundit.
“And I will grudgingly admit that she probably had what she believed were good reasons for everything she did. But that doesn’t change the fact that, at least as far as I currently know, she was one of our leaders whose extremely conservative predilections directly lead to multiple galaxies being in their current fucked over state.”
Several seconds passed before Melia let an annoyed exhale. “You still haven’t told me why I can’t at least move around the city?”
“Because I’ve been avoiding dealing with you as much as possible,” Eventus finally admitted. “And yes, that’s not fair to you. And yes, I’m sure the humans have a lot of questions given the half assed story I told Rayla to explain how you ended up on the Samantha Carter has probably been repeated to half the expedition by now. And yes, I’m sure the crews of the Tria and Aurora have figured out you’re here by now but are doing the “sensible” thing of pretending they don’t because they figure if they needed to know I would tell them about it. Which they absolutely should not be doing given that sort of trust in our leaders is one of the problems that led to us being in this position in the first place.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath to recenter himself. “But I’m digressing again because you’re right and I really don’t want to have to do what comes next. So come on,” he motioned for her to follow as he started walking towards the door. “Let’s go give Doctor Weir a run down of your circumstances before I talk myself into delaying things again.”
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Author’s Notes: Eventus really doesn’t like Melia, and as much as he tries to tell himself she’s not technically the same person without her memories, that's a difficult mental cliff for him to climb.