Chapter 218 - Melia’s Troubles - Part 2
The walk to Doctor Weir's office above the gateroom garnered them a number of odd looks from the humans. Possibly those who recognized Melia from the holographic message, or, given that the majority of those were men, Eventus supposed it was possible they were just intrigued by the new attractive woman he had effectively pulled out of the aether.
“Eventus,” Weir greeted them at the door to her office, her gaze switching to Melia only for a confused look to momentarily flash across her features before settling into a pleasant smile as she offered a hand. “I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met. I'm Doctor Elizabeth Weir.”
“Melia,” Melia said, accepting the other woman's handshake in a way that made it clear this was her first practical experience with the act.
“...Would you believe Colonel Sheppard thought you were some sort of space hamster?" Weir awkwardly joked before motioning them towards the couches set up against her office walls.
“I do not know what that is,” Melia admitted as the three of them walked in and arranged themselves on the semi facing couches.
Eventus grimaced. “Melia is… Complicated. I'm sure you recognize her from the holographic message you found upon entering the city?”
Weir turned to study Melia's face, and her eyes widened slightly. “I actually hadn't until you mentioned it.”
A feeling of bewilderment hit Eventus at the admittance, and he tried to mentally compare her current appearance to what he remembered of that particular hologram.
She had been in full Councilor regalia at the time, and her hair had been a good five inches shorter in a stylized bob cut instead of its current somewhat wavy natural state. Outside of that however the only real difference was Melia's lack of makeup, and while that had certainly added to the intensity of her face, Eventus didn't really think it would have made that much of a difference that she wouldn't still be recognizable.
“So I don't look like you remember?” Melia asked in an odd tone.
Weir gave a small wince as she seemed to realize what she had opened herself up too. “You look…” She offered the other woman a reassuring smile. “Much less intense.”
Melia seemed to consider that for several seconds. “And that's good?”
“It depends on what you're going for,” Weir admitted with a small laugh that did a good job of disguising that she had avoided actually answering Melia’s question. “But I have to say I didn’t expect to see you here, and alive.” She frowned slightly and turned a questioning look to Eventus. “This is her, right?”
“Yes and no,” Eventus confirmed, then felt the need to clarify further. “This Melia is not an identical twin, genetic clone, dimensional duplicate, temporal duplicate, android duplicate, metamorphic duplicate, translocator bifurcation, shapeshifting alien, or person who made very specific choices while having cosmetic alterations done.”
“...All right?” Weir said slowly, clearly not understanding the need to be that specific.
“She is the original Melia who ascended, spent thousands of years as an ascended being, broke the rules to prevent something really bad from happening, got captured by the Asurans, broken out by the rest of the Ascended when Oberoth decided he wanted to try and use her as a weapon against other ascended beings, and was descended and had her memory blocked as punishment for basically forcing the Ascended to wipe out a significant percentage of the Asuran's population.”
Which Eventus wasn’t really holding against her at this point given it had actually allowed a peaceful resolution of the whole situation.
“So she has the same body, at least to the degree deascension apparently allows as her body has a uniform makeup to its biological structure that doesn’t exist in the body of someone who grew up organically.”
Eventus’s own biological structure was close, but even the passive correction of his healing wasn’t capable of keeping everything as, well, perfect as scans showed both Daniel and Melia now seemed to possess.
“However as she lacks any personal memories, she is for all intents and purposes a completely different person to the Melia that existed before.”
Weir blinked clearly working through his run on explanation before finally glancing over at Melia with a suddenly worried look in her eyes. “Is Atlantis in danger?”
“A little bit,” Eventus reluctantly admitted. “Her situation is somewhat like Doctor Jackson's in that it's theoretically possible for something to overpower the block on her memory. Which is why she is going to be restricted to this planet for the time being to minimize the risk of the Wraith, Goa'uld, or ascended forbid the Ori grabbing her and probing her mind.”
Honestly, he was still a bit confused about why Melia hadn’t been dropped off on some isolated human world where she could live a relatively normal life with nobody ever being any wiser given just being around other Lantean’s upped the risk of her someday recovering her memories by a considerable amount.
“Which is fine since it's not being locked away in a small building with only Rayla to talk to,” Melia interjected only to wince slightly. “Not that there's anything wrong with Rayla, she can just be a bit…” She trailed off, clearly unsure about just how to phrase things.
“Much?” Weir volunteered with an understanding tone.
“Yes,” Melia agreed with a nod. “She can be a bit too much.”
“Anyways,” Eventus continued, getting the distinct sense the two had been about to go on a lengthy digression about their shared experiences with the elf. “I’m telling you all this because a recent conversation has made it somewhat clear that Melia is something of an extrovert and is starting to get twitchy being locked up. So we’re going to need to put together a believable story for you to tell Earth and your people about where she came from.”
“Because you think everyone would be in danger if it openly became known that Melia had previously been ascended.” Weir followed along.
“Yes,” Eventus nodded, glad she understood. “I’m going to have to tell my own people the truth of course, if only to explain to them why they shouldn’t vote Melia back into her previous position as the councilor representing the Cultural Shapers.”
“I don’t even really know what cultural shaping is,” Melia offered, shooting Eventus a look that made it clear she was hoping for at least some clarification. “Everything I’ve seen just suggests I was some sort of media presenter, but given Eventus’s clear distaste for the position there has to be more to it than that.”
“For everyone’s safety I limited her to guest level access,” Eventus explained at Doctor Weir’s questioning look.
“As to what cultural shapers are,” he continued, turning back to Melia. “That’s too complicated to explain simply in a way that is divorced from my own opinions on the job.”
“They handled media and public relations for the Lantean’s, ran the Lantean rehabilitation system, and worked to shape younger civilizations for some of the Lantean’s more morally dubious cultural experiments,” Weir volunteered, having apparently read up on the subject some since the last time they’d talked about it.
Melia glanced over to Eventus seeking confirmation.
“That’s a mostly accurate description,” he reluctantly admitted. “But just to be absolutely clear, as far as I know we never purposefully set up cultures to fail…” He grimaced and made a small correction. “Outside of the ones that started to go in an Ori-like direction. But that’s for a really good reason.”
Because god ruler type civilizations never ended well for anybody around them.
Weir let out a small sigh, clearly disagreeing with that but not wanting to get into an actual argument about the morality of the various things the Lantean’s had done. “Given your reasonable concerns, I will leave out just where you managed to recover Melia from in our official reports back to Earth.”
She held up a hand to forestall further conversation. “But, I will be informing General O’Neill in full about the situation.”
“That’s fine,” Eventus agreed as he considered his conversations with the General. “Given the Goa’uld spies on Earth I’m sure General O’Neill will understand the wisdom of keeping that bit of information from anyone else… Except probably Daniel, and maybe Sam, and possibly Teal’c, but they’re all trustworthy enough that I doubt they will tell anyone.”
“...Right,” Weir sighed before offering Melia a small smile. “I assume this means we’ll be seeing you around the city now?”
“Yes,” Melia nodded. “But do not worry, Eventus has already informed me that you do not want me having sexual relations with your people’s soldiers.”
“That’s more of a general policy,” Weir said, shooting Eventus a slightly annoyed look. “Which we’re currently reviewing for practicality purposes. But for the time being, yes, that’s probably for the best.”
She focused fully on Eventus. “Before you leave, would you mind if we talked about something privately for a moment?”
“Sure,” Eventus said, wondering just what it was the expedition leader wanted to discuss.
He turned to Melia and offered the woman a small smile. “Would you mind waiting outside?”
“Yes,” Melia confirmed as she rose to her feet. “But I will do it anyway.”
Ignoring Eventus’s pained sigh she strode out of the office, and the moment the glass-like door finished closing Doctor Weir turned a glare on the Lantean that was equal parts annoyed and exasperated.
“I'm not Rayla's mother, Eventus. So you need to stop sending her to me any time something comes up that you don't want to deal with.”
Giving a slight wince at the moderately valid complaint, Eventus offered the expedition leader his best look of apology. “This is about the kitten thing, isn’t it?”
“And the requests to go out on missions with one of our teams, and the odd questions about interpersonal relationships, and the request for various things from Earth, and the hair care and makeup advice.”
“Okay,” Eventus interjected, knowing there were several other things she probably would have added in if given the chance. “To be fair on the last, you are the most look conscious woman in the city.”
Weir gave him an odd look. “Thank you?” She took a breath and let out a sigh, the action allowing a slight untensing of her shoulders from their previously firmed state. “But the point stands, I’m not Rayla’s mother. And you shouldn’t be expecting me to take that position in her life.”
“Do you have a better target for that?” Eventus asked, because it was inevitable that the Elf would latch onto someone as a female role model. “My people would treat her as science experiment instead of a person, your soldiers and scientists are not exactly what I would consider responsible adults, and Teyla has limits in what she can help with due to her Athosian upbringing. So you are literally the only reasonable option for her when it comes to that sort of thing on the entire planet.”
Several seconds passed, and it was clear Doctor Weir was trying to find some flaw in his logic but couldn’t.
“I suppose I can’t really argue with that given we specifically selected people without spouses and children when putting together this expedition.” She admitted with a grimace. “But she can’t keep sneaking into my office while I’m working to ask these things. And you need to stop sending her to me to dodge around answers you don’t want to give.”
Eventus stared at her for a moment and then raised a single eyebrow in challenge since it was clear she hadn’t thought the alternative to that through. “Consider for a moment that I am not immune to Rayla’s pleading, and that the result of me giving in without dodging around the issue would almost surely be something completely over the top by current human standards.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be that bad” Weir tried, though it was clear from her tone she wasn’t entirely convinced of that herself.
Pulling his interface off his belt, he brought up the vulpix-like form of one of the projects he’d gotten randomly distracted on the past couple days and spun it around so Doctor Weir could see.
Weir studied it for a moment, and a confused expression briefly flitted across her features. "It's very… Cute?”
“Before Rayla asked me for a kitten she asked me to make her a pokemon, I said no at the time, but then I did a deep dive into Goa’uld genetics and got to thinking that I actually could make something somewhat close to a pokemon. What you’re looking at is one of the potential prototypes for that.” Eventus gave it a second to let that sink in and then continued. “It can breathe fire.”
“...Point made,” Weir reluctantly conceded. “Just… Can you at least warn me about these things in the future?”
“I can work with that,” Eventus agreed.
“And please,” Weir continued in a suddenly tired tone. “For everyone’s sake, don’t give your daughter a pet capable of breathing fire.”
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Author’s Notes: Breathing fire is actually one of the easier organic type abilities, after all, it’s just a basic chemical system not that different from how bombardier beetles do things.