TITLE:  An Oracle for All Seasons (part 2/?)
AUTHOR:  Ellen Hursh
RATING:  PG-13
KEYWORDS:  Extreme AU; SF/fantasy; philological antics; "etc." (including "off-screen" violence)
LAST EPISODE SEEN:  "Dead Again"
TIMELINE:  Somewhere after "Lockdown"
ARCHIVE:  If you must.
SUMERIAN: There are something like ten people who speak Sumerian, these days. Somehow I doubt they're likely
to come across a.t.e.c., so I'm not overly worried about the accuracy. :-)
DISCLAIMER:  ER and all its characters belong to Warner Bros.  No infringement of their copyright is intended. 
This story was written for the enjoyment of "ER" fans everywhere, and may be downloaded for your own pleasure.
SUMMARY/SPOILERS:  See part 1
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  The pretentious suckitude continues.



"I said, I don't want to talk about it!"

"Kerry, I had to throw her out of here. How can you not have anything to say about what she did to you?" She
swatted his hand away as he tried to touch the large red spot on her face.

"Really. And what did she do?" He ignored the snide tone her voice was beginning to take - he'd found that sometimes
the best way to get past her nastier moods was to resist the urge to engage her in a shouting match.

"She hit you, Kerry." She sighed wearily.

"All she did was slap me, Luka. We were arguing, I said something I shouldn't have, and she slapped me. That's all."

"Bullshit," he replied with forced calmness - he was surprised that he hadn't reacted more forcefully than he had, after
seeing Sandy Lopez strike her. He'd certainly felt angry enough to let himself lose control of himself, the way he'd
done two years ago,  with such dreadful results for everybody involved. "I saw her use her fist. Has she done it to you
before?" Kerry narrowed her eyes at him, although it was clear that he wasn't impressed - even after having worked with
him for three years, she wasn't sure whether or not that was a trait that she liked about him.

"If I say yes, are you going to run right out and beat her up, too?"

"'Too'?" He feigned ignorance, even though he knew perfectly well what she was talking about.

"Like you did Abby's former neighbor?" He tried to look innocent, and was almost relieved when a commotion from
curtain area three distracted them from their conversation... well, argument, if he was going to be honest about it.

"Stay there," he directed, pointing at her, and hurried to see what was going on. She glared after him, and then followed:
it had been one thing, for him to send her home after her emotional reaction to the news of Mark's death, but damned if
he was going to tell her what to do otherwise!

Luka was startled by what he found: a large man in what looked like black pajamas was crouched on the middle bed, with
Abby and Haleh huddled back against the wall. Pratt was on the floor next to the bed, apparently knocked out cold. Well,
Luka thought, it was only a matter of time before somebody did that. "Gie aweh fra me!" the man shouted at him, and
brandished a scalpel that he'd obviously grabbed from an equipment tray at some point.

"Just settle down. We can work something out." There was something oddly familiar about the man, but it couldn't be that
he was a regular. Not with that speech pattern: he sounded like a European who'd learned his English from watching
episodes of "Blackadder".

"Luka, what is going on in here?!?" With her usual sense of good timing, Kerry burst into the room.

"Dammit, Kerry..." There was a metallic clang that drew their attention as the man dropped the scalpel, then she cried out
in surprise as he rushed to her and fell to his knees in front of her. The others saw their chance and rushed out of the room,
abandoning Pratt to whatever his fate might be.

"My lady. Bethriven... alive."

"Not a word, Luka," she warned him between clenched teeth. Dammit... what was it about her that seemed to draw the
religious nuts?

"I wasn't going to say anything," he assured her, digging his nails into his palm and relying on the pain to help him to keep a
straight face. Not that he liked seeing her disconcerted like that, but it was as though she were a magnet for these kinds of people.

"Hey. You. C'mon, get up before I call Security." The man looked up at her as she nudged him with the tip of her crutch, and
she felt a jolt at the first clear sight of his face.

"Luka," she said almost distractedly, "you don't have a twin brother, do you?"

"No. I had a brother, but he... died."

"Luka, look at him!" She bent slightly, and pushed the hair back from the man's upturned face - his hair had been secured into
a number of braids, but some of it had snaked its way loose after his adventure with the rain and the car and was hanging down
in his eyes. Luka shook his head, baffled.

"What am I supposed to see? I'm sorry." He wondered why she had that smug look on her face - it was bad enough when Carter
did it. (Not that he would ever actually do anything about the frequent urge to knock the smirk off Carter's face... that was all he
needed, for people around here to start thinking that he wanted Abby back, and that would be exactly how it would look to others.)

"That's okay. Most people probably wouldn't recognize their own face if they saw it unexpectedly."

"What?" He took a closer look at the man, who was still kneeling on the floor at Kerry's feet... although he was tall enough that
he still came up to a bit higher than her waist. "It's a strong resemblance... I guess."

"His skin is darker, and he looks a little different, but... I mean, it could just be the ethnicity," she trailed off uncertainly. "Would
you get up!" she snapped at the man.

"Yai." He stood up, and looked Luka over carefully. "So you're her skeld, too. Of all the nookings for me to be, I find myself
here. Ayel," he shrugged. "Tis shere this is meant - I understand." Before Kerry or Luka could ask him what the hell he was
talking about, he'd seized her left arm in a powerful grip, and begun to chant. "Zali ki-ngiri! Getushe, nin-dingir be guduga."

She cried out in surprise and panic as light began to pour out of the spot where his hand was clutching her arm - this couldn't be
real! - and instinctively flung out her other arm (dropping her crutch in the process and sending it skidding across the floor) to
Luka, who was watching the proceedings. He lunged forward and caught her outstretched hand at the last moment, and was
swept along into the expanding field of light. The door to the room was thrown open, and Carter rushed in... just in time to see
Kerry, Luka, and the patient who Abby had breathlessly warned him about, disappear.

"Um. Hm. Well," Carter muttered, and kicked at the linoleum. He glanced over at the floor by the center bed, and saw that they
hadn't managed to take Pratt with them. Oh well. Another few minutes until Deb was on - until then, he was the only attending.
Hm... that's right, he was the only attending, he thought with a little smirk. Technically, he was in charge around here... for the
next few minutes.

Of course, nobody would believe that the two senior attendings had been kidnapped by some nut who whisked them off to...
well... wherever they'd gone. At the very least, Carter knew, he'd be peeing into cups until the cows came home, to prove that
he hadn't been taking drugs again. Even he didn't believe it, and he'd seen it with his own eyes. On the other hand, maybe people
would believe that Luka and Kerry had simply left together - they'd certainly believe that a lot more readily than "the two of them
went poof in a flash of light"!

* * *

"Man, I must be concussed," Pratt grumbled as Chen checked his pupils. He'd been moved onto the same bed where he'd been
just about to examine the weird guy that the paramedics brought in.

"You must be," she agreed cheerfully. "I've been here five minutes, and you haven't made a sexually inappropriate comment - I
think that's a new record for you!"

"Yeah, well," he muttered with a sheepish little grin. "But I mean... it's funny. I kinda have this memory - hallucination, I mean -
of opening my eyes at some point, and seeing Dr Kovac and Dr Weaver and the patient disappear in a big ball of light. Crazy,
huh?" Chen frowned at that.

"Where did you say the patient hit you? You have bruising that's consistent with falling down, but I can't find any injuries to
your face."

"I dunno. I just assumed that he punched me... I mean, one minute I'm standing over him, getting ready to check him over, and
the next I've got you people standing over me. It's freaky."

"Some would say that word describes you pretty well," Chen twinkled, causing Pratt to leer at her in return.

"You have no idea." Carter made a disgusted face at their banter.

"Okay, okay, you two, that's enough. Pratt, are you feeling better, or do you need to go home sick?"

"Nah, nah, I'm cool now," he said quickly, and got up to leave the room and go back to work. When he reached the spot where
Carter had seen Kerry and Luka disappear, however, his legs folded up under him and he collapsed. "What the hell?" he said,
confused, as he sat up and shook his head. "All of a sudden... I dunno. I just got light-headed." Carter and Chen exchanged a
worried look, although their concern was for different reasons. "Huh. What's this?" he said suddenly, and got back down on the
floor to reach under the center bed. He pulled out a long metal object that turned out to be Kerry's crutch. "Why is Dr Weaver's
crutch here, if she left?" Carter thought quickly.

"I don't know. That must be somebody else's, sitting there for who knows how long - she had her crutch with her when she left."

"No way, man. Housekeeping cleaned up in here earlier today, maybe an hour before that guy came in, 'cause of some geezer who
puked. It hasn't been there that long." Chen turned to Carter, frowning.

"You have to admit, John, that is strange." He laughed sharply.

"C'mon, Deb. Don't tell me you're worried about Dr Weaver all of a sudden?" She shrugged.

"No, not really. It's just strange."



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