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Sometimes a memory will return to him, unexpected and vivid.
Centuries ago, standing on a planet with trees full of insects that radiated ultraviolet light.
Listening to a human mumbling the myths of his people--a creature of light who would guide them to safety, a night bird who sang the future--while he was waiting to arrive for her feeding.
The vague regret he felt when the human was silenced.
Scattered moments with a friend he once had whose name eludes him now. The friend listened to his research, his ideas, even though he is sure the friend didn't quite understand it all.
He will never regain all of his memories; he has known that since he scanned his brain and saw the permanent damage that was done. Even the memories that return to him are transient.
The only ones that will not leave him are the ones of Atlantis, and so even when he is alone now, he calls himself Michael.
He thinks of his nameless friend--he can't quite remember the face, but he had a tattoo on his neck--as he sits in the underground cavern working at this makeshift lab. The mother Iratus clicks and buzzes on her nest, satisfied and well-fed.
She is his friend now. Sometimes, he holds out his hand, and she crawls onto it, jabbing at his fingers with her mandibles.
He stands in the quarters where they kept him before. The places where the wide-brimmed hat and the photograph of his supposed parents are bare. He wonders what they did with those things. Did they throw them away when he left?
Some part of him wants to believe that Teyla took his request to someone. Sheppard or Weir or whoever else. He wants to believe they will consider it, that they will sit around a table. Ronon will suggest they kill him, reliable as he always is. Sheppard will silently agree. McKay will want to run more experiments, as will Beckett, although he will deny it. Teyla will feign sympathy. Weir will decide, in the end, to continue with their plan of action.
He does not, however, believe that this will happen. Teyla will not bring his request to anyone.
He looks out the window again, at the spires of the city and the ocean beyond. He did not live in the time of the war with the Ancients. He knows many Wraith who did, and he has felt their hatred for this place, but he has never been able to feel that same hatred. Despite it all.
This was the last place he thought was home.
He can remember standing here in the wrong skin, looking out at the ocean, more than he can remember his own Queen.
He shudders. He can hear footsteps in the corridor. The time has come to forget again.
The first Iratus-Human hybrid in the compound beneath the Terranian settlement doesn't live long.
He holds it as it dies. He tells it the story of the night bird who sings the future to a planet of Humans who, in the end, had no future. Who were culled into extinction and their stories forgotten by every other living being.
The Wraith who find him, weak and injured and still far too human, take him to a prison chamber. He writhes in pain for weeks as his body twists itself back into something like its old form. In his moments of clarity, a commander questions him about his condition.
He does not say that he was in Atlantis. He does not say who it was that altered him. Only that they were Humans and they injected him with something that mangled his body inside and out.
When it's clear that he'll live, they let him feed. The sensation is strange. When the desiccated corpse falls away from his grip and he imagines that it is Sheppard's body, he feels no satisfaction or relief.
That is when his new Queen comes to him.
He feels his true name echo in his mind as she holds him by his chin, and that is not a relief either. It's as if he is listening to a conversation from a distance, one that he could never be part of. He tries to respond to her telepathically, but there is only a low tone in his mind, then an emptiness.
"You have my loyalty," he says aloud.
She sneers at him. "What could you offer me?"
"I... am a scientist, I--" She releases him and turns away, and in desperation he says, "Atlantis still stands. I know where it is."
She stops and turns her head to listen.
The Iratus which once nibbled his hand as he worked is now suspended in liquid, neither alive nor dead. Distantly, he can remember such a state of stasis himself. Sometimes, he imagine that it is his current state, and all of this is a hallucination.
Instead of her company, he now has that of her many descendants. Large, simple-minded creatures. Simple enough that his limited telepathy allows him to communicate his wishes and modified so that they will listen to no others.
They don't understand when he speaks to them, but he does speak to them, and they seem to sense the vibration of his voice. They seem comforted by it.
He tells them the things he remembers. He tells them about the planet with the trees full of ultraviolet insects. He tells them that he would no longer be able to see them, because his eyes have been weakened by the retrovirus.
He tells them about his friend whose name he cannot remember.
And he tells them about Atlantis.
"What are you doing, Michael?"
Michael is on one of the balconies, arms crossed. His guards are behind him. They never say anything to him. They just hold their weapons and wait for something to go wrong.
"Hey, Dr. Heightmeyer," he says with a crooked grin. "Just getting some fresh air, I guess."
"You're late to your appointment."
"Am I? Sorry about that. I must've lost track of time..."
"We can talk out here if you want."
He takes a deep breath. He likes the smell of the salt air, but there is something foreign about it. He wonders what the air smells like in... where is he from again? A place called Texas?
"Can I ask you a question, Doctor?"
"Of course."
"Why doesn't Colonel Sheppard like me?"
"Oh. Um..." She gets quiet, that way people do when he asks something they don't seem to want to answer. "I'm sure he likes you."
"No, he doesn't. I can tell. He likes everybody, but not me."
"Well, I'm sure... You weren't here very long before you were captured; I'm sure it'll just take some time."
He chuckles unhappily. "How long do you think until I make some friends? I'm feeling a little... lonely, I guess."
She hesitates, then she puts her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure it won't be long, Michael."
He is on another planet when the alarm goes off. Someone has entered the compound under the Terarian settlement. He checks the monitors, scrambled as they are at such a distance.
But he recognizes them. Of course he recognizes them, and he can feel his heart beating in his throat--an emotional reaction that he doesn't remember experiencing before he was changed.
They are more familiar to him than any part of his life before they took him away from his Queen. They are more familiar to him, sometimes, than himself. Even when he is alone, he calls himself the name they gave him.
Part of him wants to go to them in peace. To try again. To imagine that this time, they would listen to him. This time, they would care.
But he knows they won't.
Neither will he.