The Stars My Destination (SGA, ensemble) 5/17
Title: The Stars My Destination (5/17)
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Star Trek 2009 (mashup)
Length: 91,750 (total); 5,848 (this part)
Characters: All of them!
PairingS: Canonical levels of Elizabeth/Simon, Teyla/Kanaan
warnings: Graphic violence
Summary: When a terror from out of time threatens the heart of the Federation, the crew of the USS Atlantis must band together in order to stop it. But can they overcome their own demons to stop the greatest threat they'll ever face?
Five
Elizabeth paused outside the doors of the conference room just long enough to take a deep breath. For a moment, she pictured Vulcan's Forge and Simon's low, even voice in her mind, repeating the words of a basic meditation; it allowed her to relax her white-knuckle grip on her padd, and slowed the hammering of her heart. She went over it until she was calm, until she could no longer justify the delay; then, with her head held high, she tapped the door chimes and entered.
Three human men and a half-Betazoid woman, were waiting for her there, arrayed around the head of a long table such that she could either stand at the far end or approach awkwardly from one side. "Doctor Weir," Admiral Nixon said, and that was a bad sign from the start, that she was Doctor and not Commander. "Have you had time to review the files on the incident?"
"I have, sir," she said. "I've also arranged to take depositions from Cadets Mitchell, Tobias and Ruu on what exactly went on aboard the lost shuttle leading up to the accident."
"Then you think it was an accident?" Carnahan asked-he had just taken over as dean of students this term, to the frustration of most of the faculty.
"I think it began as an accident," Elizabeth clarified. "And had it been handled properly and responsibly, that is what it would have remained."
Captain Markov turned to face Elizabeth directly; she was the chair of the engineering faculty, and had probably been reviewing the same records that Elizabeth had been poring over for hours, in search of the tipping point, the thing that had sent the whole situation spiraling out of control. "Do you believe your modifications to the computer core contributed to the destruction of the shuttle?" she asked outright.
"Not in the least," Elizabeth said firmly, concentrating fiercely on her own convictions. As if she could say anything else, with her whole career on the line. "Up until the distributor coil failure, the shuttle was operating entirely within the agreed-upon parameters."
"And those parameters included near-critical damage to its propulsion and control system?" Carnahan asked, just shy of sarcastic.
Elizabeth met his eyes. "The parameters we discussed in this very room were for an immersive experience, so yes, sir, that included the possibility of critical failure."
"We didn't discuss killing our cadets, Doctor," Nixon said.
"Which is why the simulation was programmed with various failsafes to return to normal flight mode in the event the shuttle took on actual damage," she said. She'd been repeating it to herself like a mantra: The failsafes had worked, the failsafes must have worked according to parameters.
"Clearly that didn't happen," Markov said.
"If you study the logs, ma'am," Elizabeth pointed out "you'll notice that the shuttle designated Red Zero Seven suffered several critical overloads when the distributor coil exploded. The simulation could not operate correctly on such damaged hardware-because none of us predicted such a serious emergency."
The us was deliberate; her work had crossed quite a few desks and she wasn't going to let any of them forget that. Nixon looked at Markov, who nodded, though slowly. "How much damage did that coil blowout do?" he demanded.
"A lot," she admitted. "They're lucky they didn't lose propulsion entirely. Except for the communication interference, very little about that situation was simulated."
"The fact is, though," Carnahan said loudly, "that they blew out the coil trying to correct the thruster problem. That was a result of the simulation."
"Yes, sir, it was," Elizabeth allowed, and she pressed her hands flat on the table to avoid the temptation to fidget. "Because the point of the Spring Simulation exercise is to expose the cadets to danger. It is to determine how they will react under intense pressure similar to what they may face in an emergency on active duty. But it is still only a simulation, something these cadets seem to have forgotten at the crucial moment. At any time-well before they destroyed their shuttle-they had the option to fly out of the simulation zone and request assistance, which they failed to do."
The third man in the room shifted in his seat. "You mean quit the simulation," Admiral Hammond said. "That's an awfully big decision to make about Spring Sim, Commander."
Elizabeth turned her eyes to him. She wasn't quite sure what the admiral's assignment was or why he had come to the Academy; obviously he had some interest in the simulation, but he hadn't tipped his hand as to what-or who-it was, and his presence here might well have been simply courtesy from Nixon to a guest of equal rank. "The evacuation portion of the simulation was over. Neither of the shuttles had received further orders," she pointed out. "The crew of Red Zero Seven had several hours of work on record, and their safety was at stake. Exiting the simulation zone was the least risky option, and the only reasonable one once the distributor coil was damaged."
"I suppose so," Markov said, though she sounded almost reluctant. "Though I also know Cadet Tobias-she can be stubborn."
"So what?" Carnahan asked. "Mitchell was at the helm. It was his judgment call."
"Cadet Sheppard has claimed responsibility for the whole incident," Nixon pointed out slowly. "Not to mention he's the one who came up with that lunatic evacuation scheme."
Hammond shifted suddenly again. "That's an awful lot of blame to place on the shoulders of a man who wasn't even aboard the shuttle in question," he said, and his tone was mild, but the words gave everything away.
"Cadet Sheppard is the oldest of the group and had seven years of experience on the Mars Defense Perimeter before he even entered the Academy," Elizabeth put in, seeing an opening. (Markov rolled her eyes at the mention of the MDP; Carnahan nodded absently.) "Given that, it was natural for the other cadets to defer to him."
"According to the transcripts, though, it was Tobias who suggested restarting the engines," Markov pointed out.
"A suggesting that Sheppard only reinforced," Elizabeth shot back. "And he cut off any other attempts to solve the problem in favor of his own plan, over the protests of his own team members."
Hammond folded his hands on the desk. "If this had been a genuine emergency, Commander, Sheppard's actions would've saved eight lives."
What was his angle, she wondered? Was he interested in Sheppard's family history or something else? "Be that as it may, Admiral, it was not a genuine emergency," she said firmly. "And if Cadet Sheppard can't distinguish simulation from reality, we have serious grounds to question his judgment."
The room went silent for a moment. The four senior officers sat in contemplation, while Elizabeth stood at perfect attention, matching her breaths to the cadences of an ancient meditation. Through the windows beyond, the lights of Colorado Springs winked out slowly as the night rolled on.
Eventually, Nixon said, "Do we bring formal charges?"
"Against whom?" Markov asked. "The crew of Red Zero Seven were the ones who lost their shuttle..."
"Blue Zero Three had no business being involved in the situation," Nixon said. "They've got to have some culpability as well."
"What about the rest of the Red wing?" Hammond asked. "They ignored a wing member in distress."
"They had grounds to assume that Blue Zero Three had the situation in hand," Carnahan said. "With communications disabled, they had no way to know otherwise."
"Sheppard's teammates did protest his plan," Elizabeth put in, thinking of Teyla's face as Nixon had handed down the probation. "And it's been legal principle for centuries that no one can be prosecuted for following a direct order."
"Sheppard wasn't technically in a command position, though," Carnahan pointed out. "Even if he's decided to act like it."
"You gave him his own roommate for a flight engineer," Markov said tartly. "I don't know about Cadet Emmagen, but if you haven't noticed how Sheppard and McKay get along, you've been under a rock."
"If Sheppard's service in the MDP is factored into his record, he is easily the most senior cadet in the group," Elizabeth offered. "There's legal precedent for treating him as the de jure officer in command of the situation. Certainly the transcripts demonstrate that the others deferred to him as a de facto commander, and that he actively sought to exercise authority over them." After a pause, she added, "He also claimed responsibility of his own free will."
They all looked at Nixon, but he was looking at Hammond. If this was about Sheppard's family-the human one or the Vulcan one-then Elizabeth would never be able to make anything stick. If this was about something else, though, depending on how much actual sway Hammond had... "I'll sleep on it," Nixon said, looking out over the midnight skyline. "We should all get some sleep on it. There's no requirement to even set up the inquest until Tuesday morning."
"Though it would be better to get it over with quickly," Hammond said.
"The probation stands," Nixon said sharply, and Elizabeth wondered what the two admirals had been talking about before this meeting even convened, why Hammond was here. "We have the rest of the weekend to decide how to proceed. This meeting is over."
The others rose to leave; Elizabeth waited for the senior officers to depart first, but Hammond stopped and stood in front of her, meeting her eyes. "Commander Weir, do you truly believe that it was Jonn Sheppard who risked those cadets' lives today?" he asked quietly as the others filed past.
"I do, sir," she said, just as steely. As if she could say anything else.
He regarded her for a long moment. "Then I hope you're prepared to argue your case," was all he said, though, and then he left, heading for the transporter zone rather than the main exits.
It was a long walk back to her apartment, so Elizabeth headed for her office-new digs with her promotion, bigger ones, with all the chairs she could want and a surprisingly comfortable couch. She locked the door behind her and collapsed onto said couch, breathing deeply and in patterns that she had learned as a child in the courtyard of the Federation embassy to Vulcan. This time, they didn't really help.
Eventually she grabbed a different padd from her desk, turning it over in her hands a few times. Eventually she switched it on, and opened a file of letters-dozens of them, letters she was never going to send. Tonight she would begin a new one.
Dear Simon, she wrote. I'm afraid I might have made a terrible mistake....
///
Jonn turned up his music, and quietly wondered how hard it would be to smother himself with a pillow. The wailing guitars made an oddly appropriate soundtrack for Rodney's wild gestures, but thanks to Jonn's pointy ears they couldn't drown out the sound of the ongoing argument-ongoing for what Jonn had clocked at three hours and counting.
Rodney was in the middle of saying something like, "It has to be a Haakon-Reyes algorithm because anything else would require twice the memory and also I could've cracked it already!"
"Haakon-Reyes would be overkill," Zelenka shot back, adjusting his glasses. "All that is necessary is a progression of increasing cubes-"
"Which is susceptible to T'Koor's Method," Rodney shot back. "Oh, my god, are you even listening to me? Are there words coming out of my mouth?"
"None that are particularly intelligent, no!"
Even on a good night, Jonn couldn't take this much nerd warfare in the room; he pulled out his earphones and snapped, "You guys want to take this outside or what?"
Zelenka, at least, looked chagrined; Rodney just rolled his eyes. "Sorry, we're just trying to save your commission and ultimately destroy Commander Weir here, we'll stop now."
Elizabeth Weir was the last thing Jonn wanted to think about, at the moment, her or her damned simulation; some instinct towards self-flagellation made him ask, though, "What's that supposed to mean?"
Rodney waved the padd in his hand around. "I managed to copy the whole simulation module-bastard encryption and all-before we got back to the Academy. If I can just get in here, I can prove that her simulation created conflicts with the shuttle's own programming that caused the thrusters to lock up."
"Possibly even contributed to distributor coil failure," Zelenka added, prodding his own padd absently. "If the simulation led the cadets to alter the coolant intake efficiency-"
"And so on, and so on," Rodney said, shushing Zelenka with a wild gesture. "But first I have to actually get into the module, which is taking an absurdly long amount of time even with full access to the engineering department's computer core."
Jonn rolled over onto his side, looking down on where Zelenka and Rodney had sprawled on the floor. "How're you getting into the core when we're all on probation?"
Rodney rolled his eyes and pointed at Zelenka. "Hello? What d'you think he's here for, his stunning good looks? I'm using his account as a proxy."
"Not anymore, you are not," Zelenka said, did something that had Rodney squawking at him.
Jonn sat up and leaned forward, setting the padd with his music aside so he could lean forward over the end of the bed. Most of the floor was covered with a set of padds networked in parallel, some scrolling dense text, some showing progress bars or graphical outputs from whatever they'd cooked up to crack the module. Rodney's hands were flying from one to another with the confidence of a virtuoso, while Zelenka stayed huddled around one, typing so fast his fingers might have actually blurred. "What are the odds of this actually working?" Jonn asked, genuinely curious.
"Hmm, that we can access simulation codes? Reasonable, I think." Zelenka said. "Cannot say more until we see what we are working with."
"But you definitely think it was all Weir's fault," Jonn pushed.
Radek suddenly made a face and bowed low over his padd, completely hiding his face behind the nowhere-near-regulation shag of his hair. Rodney coughed. "The shuttle crash? Totally Weir's fault. And unlike the naysayer over there, I'm positive we can prove it once we see exactly what it was she did."
Something about Rodney's tone of voice raised the hair on the back of Jonn's neck, and he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, leaning forward. "So if we prove her simulation caused the crash, we're scott-free, right?" he said slowly. "I mean, they can't punish us for covering her ass, right?"
Radek clambered abruptly to his feet, and blurted something like"I have to-eh-toilet." Which was pretty goddamn alarming. Jonn looked at Rodney, who suddenly pulled his knees up like a little kid and hid his face behind a padd. Once Zelenka had picked his way out of the debris field and into the corridor outside, there was silence.
"Rodney," Jonn said, not even sure what they were arguing about-if they were arguing-just. "We did the right thing, buddy."
"Right," he said. "Which just happened to be so batshit insane that the rest of the Academy thinks we're about to get sectioned for it."
"Fuck them," Jonn said, because since when did Rodney care about the rest of the damned Academy? Wasn't he usually the one ranting about how they were all too dense to understand him? "Nixon can't punish us for saving lives."
"Nixon can do whatever the hell he wants, and he's already got it in for you," Rodney said. "Why didn't we just-I dunno-fly out of the simulation or something?"
"Would that have fixed the shuttle?" Jonn demanded.
Rodney threw up his hands, one of which was still holding a padd, which nearly got dashed apart on the corner of a desk. "I don't know! How am I supposed to know?"
"It's just that you were my goddamn flight engineer, McKay," Jonn said, curling his hands in the blankets, "so it was kind of your job to know. And to think of that shit before people nearly got killed."
Rodney's chin rose up at a dangerous angle. "Yes, because as a theoretical astrophysicist I am completely qualified in shuttlecraft operations-"
"Oh, fuck you," Jonn blurted. He turned away from Rodney-couldn't look at him with the blood pounding in his ears like this. "Try getting this through your ego, McKay-you fucked up back there, too. I asked you for a fix and you just froze. Some good your giant brain did us then, huh?"
Rodney scrabbled to his feet, kicking hardware left and right, blubber "You-you-" His face had gone a terrible meaty red-good Jonn thought viciously, shoving his feet into boots and shrugging on his jacket. He headed for the door, and Rodney said, "Hey, don't you dare-" and made like he was going to reach out for him; Jonn slammed the door behind him. A moment later, he heard a crashing thump, and wondered how many isolinear crystals had just burst into shards.
Campus was a terrible distraction; Rodney had been right about word getting around, and Jonn imagined could feel eyes on him everywhere he went, people he didn't even know watching and whispering behind their hands. It wasn't like he wasn't used to being in a fishbowl-he'd been putting up with his mother's reputation for years at this point, people bringing up the Athos Incident for small talk the moment they saw his name written down. But this was something different, something about the hushed tones and the glances averted a little too fast-he kept waiting for people to cross the street to keep away from him.
Maybe that was paranoid. He didn't care. Starfleet Academy took up twenty or thirty city blocks of real estate, and it had never felt so small.
Jonn knew the terms of disciplinary probation; it was just a fancy word for being grounded, and that had worked so well when he was a teenager and all. He turned down the narrow space between the engineering library and Littlefield Hall, crossing onto the grass when the footpath curved around to the left. The Academy campus had accreted in stages, as Colorado Springs stretched out to meet it, and there were several places on the north side of Centennial Quadrangle where the line between private property and Academy grounds was distinctly wobbly. The bars and cafes there weren't technically on campus, but Jonn would be within feet of the imaginary line...and of course, to get punished for leaving the grounds, somebody had to actually catch him.
He went into Legends, a dive that was favored by younger cadets-less chance of any faculty being around to spot him. His uniform jacket did stand out a bit, but with the placket open it was hard to see the third tab on his collar, and it wasn't like there weren't at least a few cadets in uniform-not to mention a couple groups of enlisted men in black coveralls, though most of them were no older than the cadets they were bumping shoulders with. It was witheringly hot inside, and the crappy pop music was almost inaudible over the sound of voices even to him; Jonn bumped his way up to the bar and tried to make catch one of the bartenders's various eyes.
It waved a free hand at him, and then mimed a gesture John couldn't decode for a minute. Then he looked down at the amber sensor embedded in the countertop. Oh. Checking identification, of course-and if Jonn swiped his thumb, there would be a hard record of him being off-campus, whether anyone spotted him or not. Not that he thought Nixon was bastard enough to check up on him like that...probably not enough of a bastard to check up on every bar in the campus district to make sure Jonn wasn't somehow secretly enjoying himself. Maybe. Crap.
Awkward now, he glanced around the crowd, not sure if he was hoping to see a friendly face who would spot him a drink or an unfamiliar one he could flirt with. The latter wasn't likely-despite what Rodney seemed to think, Jonn did not actually have people throwing their underpants at him everywhere he went, and he wasn't in the mood to put on a show in the faint hope of getting laid, much less just getting a beer. As for the former, well, that had been the whole reason he'd come to-
Wait a minute.
Jonn had to lean over the bar to get a better look, and someone in line behind him started trying to shove him out of the way. But up against the windows, at a high counter away from the bar-what the hell? He surrendered his position and made his way to where Teyla fucking Emmagen was drinking something fizzy. From the look of things, she was by herself.
"What's a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this?" Jonn asked, leaning against the window.
Emmagen nearly choked on her drink, then glared at him. "I could ask much the same of you, Cadet Sheppard."
"Course you could," he said, smiling widely. "Seeing as we're both on probation and all."
Her expression twisted a bit, and she averted his eyes. "The probation will be rescinded soon," she said firmly.
"So you decided it doesn't just doesn't count?" Jonn asked. "Except something tells me there's no whiskey in that soda you're drinking, so you're just as worried about getting caught as I am."
"If I feared getting caught," she said frostily, "I would not have come. Perhaps you should not have, either."
"I didn't say I was afraid," Jonn countered quickly. "I just don't like the thought of getting confined to quarters. McKay might not survive it."
"You speak quite harshly of someone you consider a friend," Emmagen observed.
"So does he," Jonn shot back without thinking.
Emmagen raised an eyebrow, though, and looked down at her glass. "Perhaps now is not the ideal time to discuss the simulation," she said.
"Who said anything about the simulation?" Jonn asked, irritated all over again, at her and himself and McKay and the goddamned world. "I'm just looking for a decent bottle of beer. Unless you wanna talk about it...?"
"I do not," she said firmly.
"Then we're agreed," Jonn said. "So what should we talk about?"
"Let me clarify," Emmagen said, climbing off her stool. "I do not wish to talk to you at all right now, Cadet Sheppard. Good evening."
Jonn didn't think before he reached out and grabbed her arm. "Hey, now, don't-hey! Easy!" Because she'd spun out of his grip and landed some kind of oblique karate-chop on his wrist for good measure. It stung like hell and made his whole hand tingle. He needed to learn that one. "Sorry," he said, raising his hands. "Transmission received, okay?"
"Is this guy bothering you, ma'am?"
Jonn turned to follow the sound of the voice; a couple of enlisted men were standing behind him, led by a dark, stocky guy with the braids of a petty officer. They were looking loose and flushed, but nowhere near drunk, and despite the question they had their eyes on Jonn, not Emmagen. Somebody's spoiling for a fight tonight, Jonn thought.
And given the mood he was in right now...Good.
"Thank you, sir," Emmagen said crisply. "I am quite well."
"I'm not," Jonn put in brightly. "Think you can help me with that, sir?"
The PO glared at Jonn-they were probably the same age, or close do it, but he put on a condescending gruffness that probably intimidated the hell out of teenaged recruits. "Have you been drinking, Cadet?"
"Not yet," Jonn confirmed. "You buying?"
The guy at the PO's shoulder went red in the face. Somebody nearer to the back of the group said something like, "Bates, c'mon-" but the PO stepped up with a scowl. "You want to run that by me again, Cadet?"
"Just asking if you're offering to buy me a drink, sir," Jonn said, keeping a smile on his face. "Though I ought to warn you I never put out on the first date."
"You trying to get written up for disrespecting a superior officer, Cadet?" Bates asked.
"Why, do you see one?" Jonn asked, pretending to look over his shoulder.
As such, he wasn't sure if it was actually Bates who threw the first punch-it didn't seem likely, but there was a first time for everything. He saw the blow coming in his peripheral vision and dodged out of the way, enough that it only glanced off his cheekbone; he'd had enough hand-to-hand training to come up swinging automatically, and Bates just happened to be in the way of his fist.
It got messy real quick after that point.
Jonn knew he was a good bit stronger than a real human, had known it since the time he accidentally put a schoolyard bully in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. But what Bates and his boys lacked in strength they made up in enthusiasm, and also the fact that there were five of them. Jonn got in one more tag, from luck and Vulcan reflexes-the red-faced guy, who'd maybe had a little more to drink than his buddies and wasn't braced for it-before somebody else caught his wrist from behind and got it pinned against his back, where he didn't have leverage to break free. Jonn was thrown off-balance for a moment, and wide-open for Bates himself to fire at will. The first punch left him breathless, but by the time Bates was winding up for the third Jonn had got his feet under him again: he drove a kick straight into Bates' kneecap, hard enough to possibly fracture it.
At the same moment, the grip on his arm suddenly released, and Jonn stumbled; he managed to keep his feet at the last minute, and when he turned around, he saw Emmagen swinging the stool she'd just been sitting on at the man who'd been holding Jonn's arm. Another cadet tried to step in, and got the stool planted in his midsection for his troubles; the enlisted man stumbled into a table and sent a bunch of glasses crashing into the laps of the people seated there.
An arm suddenly closed around Jonn's throat, and he dropped down on instinct, bending at the waist and twisting to the side. It didn't throw his attacker, but it did send them both crashing to the floor, and when they landed the impact relieved the pressure on Jonn's neck. He managed to roll, and found himself facing Bates, who head-butted him right in the nose; Jonn responded by burying a fist in Bate's stomach, a little bit of payback. Bates folded right up, and Jonn was able to get a grip on his neck and shove his face into the floor, hard enough to scrape the skin.
Then Emmagen reappeared, slamming her stool into the ground an inch from Bates' head. "We must go," she said, and Jonn realized she was right-the crowd was getting into it now, grabbing Bates' boys by the arms and holding them back. She offered him a hand and he took it, and when a few well-intended folks put up restraining arms between him and the door he dropped his head like a line-backer and barreled right past, into the street's receiving dark.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Teyla was not entirely certain why she followed Sheppard, as they fled the bar; surely it would've been more logical for them to split up, the better to evade possible pursuit. But then again, if they had separated, she might not have another chance to ask him to explain his behavior at the bar; she had heard of his reputation for impulsiveness, but even on the shuttle she had not truly thought him reckless.
Despite his longer legs, she kept pace with him without excessive difficulty; they ran all the way back to the Centennial Quadrangle, where Sheppard slowly stumbled to a stop under a spreading tree thick with tiny lavender flowers. He leaned against the grey-brown trunk and pressed one hand to his stomach, wincing; when he noticed that Teyla had followed him, he seemed surprised. "Thanks," he rasped, still breathing heavily.
Teyla sat down on a concrete bench next to the tree to catch her own breath. Concern for Sheppard's well-being was at war with irritation over his inexplicable outburst, and losing badly. "You did not have to antagonize them," she pointed out, rather sharper than she'd intended.
"You didn't have to help," Sheppard responded crisply.
No, she supposed, she hadn't had to; except that leaving Sheppard at the mercy of five opponents had been unthinkable, never mind that he had mostly brought it upon himself. "Would you have preferred I not intervene, then?" she asked. "I am sure you could have convinced Admiral Nixon that it was all a great misunderstanding, had it come to that."
Sheppard flinched a little, and flexed his knuckles; one had split, and his own green blood was mixing with the human blood from one of his attackers, like splashes of vivid paint. "I said thanks, didn't I?" he muttered, but he also did not meet her eyes.
His silence gave her a chance to study him at her leisure, without the distractions that had been present during the simulation. She had not known what to expect of the son of T'Perr; the destruction of the Kelvin was a watershed moment in Athosian history, in the history of all Pegasus, but it was hard to remember that the woman immortalized in statues and films had been a being of flesh and bone, who left behind a husband and son on a distant star. Teyla supposed she of all people should know better than that, given the long shadows cast by her own parents over her life, even so many years later; still, she could not connect this impulsive and volatile man with someone made famous for her cool judgment and self-sacrifice. "You are not what I expected you to be, Jonn Sheppard," she admitted after a few minutes.
He snorted gruffly and looked up at her; one eye was growing puffy and green where Bates or another of his fellows had landed a lucky punch. "What, not Vulcan enough for you?" he asked, sounding strangely defiant.
"My people remember the name of your mother," Teyla said simply. "If not for her decision to evacuate the Kelvin, we might never have made contact with the Federation, and I would not be here now."
"And if not for me, you wouldn't be facing expulsion," Sheppard snapped, looking away again. "Poetic irony and all, I get that."
"We will not be expelled," she said firmly; she had examined the Uniform Code, and there would be no way Admiral Nixon could justify such drastic action to the disciplinary board.
Sheppard merely sighed. "Maybe you won't," he said mulishly. "Not so sure about me."
Such fatalism baffled her, but she did not have the energy to argue with it. Teyla stood instead, and rolled her shoulders, wincing at the stiffening muscles there; perhaps she had been cutting her bantos practices too short recently. "Admiral Nixon is not unreasonable," she told Sheppard, because she could not bear to let him have the last word. "No matter how he dislikes you personally, he must defer to the judgment of the disciplinary board. I am sure they will make the correct decision."
Sheppard blinked for a minute as if she had been speaking Klingon to him. "So you don't think it's all my fault?" he asked blankly.
I did not say that... "I think," she said, choosing her words carefully, "that given the circumstances as they were known to us at the time, your course of action was not unreasonable."
"That's...thanks," he stammered, looking away again. "I guess."
She studied him again. "You seem surprised by my opinion."
"Guess I just expected you to take Weir's side again," he mumbled. "You weren't exactly eager to be helping out back there."
"If I had genuinely objected to the plan, I would not have assisted you at all," she told him bluntly. "And Commander Weir has nothing to do with the issue."
"She's the one who wrote the simulation," he insisted. "And she's throwing me under the bus for her mistakes."
One of her father's sayings came to her mine. We are all mortal; we can rise above our nature, but not by clawing at each others' backs. But she did not think Jonn Sheppard would be interested in Athosian theology, particularly at the moment. "If that is your opinion, I will not attempt to dissuade you."
"Fine," he said, turning away from her. "Don't choose a side. See if that helps you save your own skin."
"There is no need for you and Elizabeth to be at loggerheads," she protested, exasperated with the flicker-flare of his temper. "The nature of an accident is that no one is to blame."
"Tell her that," Sheppard snapped over his shoulder.
Teyla sighed, watching him march off into darkness: all brittle strength and insecure convictions, coupled with the self-control of a man ten years younger. "I will remember you in my prayers, Cadet Sheppard," she said quietly, uncertain if he would hear her at this distance. "May the Ancestors grant you peace."
-\-\-\-\-
Jonn ran into Zelenka at the front entrance to the dormitory; almost literally ran into him, actually, as Zelenka was rushing out in high dudgeon, muttered fiercely to himself in Czech. He actually stopped short and did a double-take when he saw Jonn's bruised and bloodied face, though. "Oh! Oh. Ah. Hello. I am just-"
"Leaving," Jonn said, because if it wasn't a statement then it was a suggestion. "Finally had enough of McKay for one night?"
"Rodney has sent me away," Zelenka said irritably. "He received a message from some girl and went into manly vapors."
Jonn snorted. "Didn't know McKay talked to girls," he muttered half-heartedly.
"What is more surprising is when they talk back," Zelenka muttered. "Though I don't think this one is a cadet-unless she is first-year. Eugenia Ingram?"
Jonn shook his head; he couldn't summon the energy to care. "Hell if I know. See you around."
He wasn't sure what he'd say when he got back into the room-he didn't feel up to continuing the argument anymore, not when he ached all over from a different kind of fight, but he didn't feel much like apologizing when he'd been right. Luckily, though-or maybe not-when he actually slunk into the room, it was dark, and there was a tight, tense shape curled up under the blankets that didn't move as Jonn peeled off his clothes. Grateful for the excuse, Jonn dropped into his own bed, and found a comfortable position to lay down in. He wondered how much either of them slept, though.
Chapter One
Chapter Four
Chapter Six
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis/Star Trek 2009 (mashup)
Length: 91,750 (total); 5,848 (this part)
Characters: All of them!
PairingS: Canonical levels of Elizabeth/Simon, Teyla/Kanaan
warnings: Graphic violence
Summary: When a terror from out of time threatens the heart of the Federation, the crew of the USS Atlantis must band together in order to stop it. But can they overcome their own demons to stop the greatest threat they'll ever face?
Five
Elizabeth paused outside the doors of the conference room just long enough to take a deep breath. For a moment, she pictured Vulcan's Forge and Simon's low, even voice in her mind, repeating the words of a basic meditation; it allowed her to relax her white-knuckle grip on her padd, and slowed the hammering of her heart. She went over it until she was calm, until she could no longer justify the delay; then, with her head held high, she tapped the door chimes and entered.
Three human men and a half-Betazoid woman, were waiting for her there, arrayed around the head of a long table such that she could either stand at the far end or approach awkwardly from one side. "Doctor Weir," Admiral Nixon said, and that was a bad sign from the start, that she was Doctor and not Commander. "Have you had time to review the files on the incident?"
"I have, sir," she said. "I've also arranged to take depositions from Cadets Mitchell, Tobias and Ruu on what exactly went on aboard the lost shuttle leading up to the accident."
"Then you think it was an accident?" Carnahan asked-he had just taken over as dean of students this term, to the frustration of most of the faculty.
"I think it began as an accident," Elizabeth clarified. "And had it been handled properly and responsibly, that is what it would have remained."
Captain Markov turned to face Elizabeth directly; she was the chair of the engineering faculty, and had probably been reviewing the same records that Elizabeth had been poring over for hours, in search of the tipping point, the thing that had sent the whole situation spiraling out of control. "Do you believe your modifications to the computer core contributed to the destruction of the shuttle?" she asked outright.
"Not in the least," Elizabeth said firmly, concentrating fiercely on her own convictions. As if she could say anything else, with her whole career on the line. "Up until the distributor coil failure, the shuttle was operating entirely within the agreed-upon parameters."
"And those parameters included near-critical damage to its propulsion and control system?" Carnahan asked, just shy of sarcastic.
Elizabeth met his eyes. "The parameters we discussed in this very room were for an immersive experience, so yes, sir, that included the possibility of critical failure."
"We didn't discuss killing our cadets, Doctor," Nixon said.
"Which is why the simulation was programmed with various failsafes to return to normal flight mode in the event the shuttle took on actual damage," she said. She'd been repeating it to herself like a mantra: The failsafes had worked, the failsafes must have worked according to parameters.
"Clearly that didn't happen," Markov said.
"If you study the logs, ma'am," Elizabeth pointed out "you'll notice that the shuttle designated Red Zero Seven suffered several critical overloads when the distributor coil exploded. The simulation could not operate correctly on such damaged hardware-because none of us predicted such a serious emergency."
The us was deliberate; her work had crossed quite a few desks and she wasn't going to let any of them forget that. Nixon looked at Markov, who nodded, though slowly. "How much damage did that coil blowout do?" he demanded.
"A lot," she admitted. "They're lucky they didn't lose propulsion entirely. Except for the communication interference, very little about that situation was simulated."
"The fact is, though," Carnahan said loudly, "that they blew out the coil trying to correct the thruster problem. That was a result of the simulation."
"Yes, sir, it was," Elizabeth allowed, and she pressed her hands flat on the table to avoid the temptation to fidget. "Because the point of the Spring Simulation exercise is to expose the cadets to danger. It is to determine how they will react under intense pressure similar to what they may face in an emergency on active duty. But it is still only a simulation, something these cadets seem to have forgotten at the crucial moment. At any time-well before they destroyed their shuttle-they had the option to fly out of the simulation zone and request assistance, which they failed to do."
The third man in the room shifted in his seat. "You mean quit the simulation," Admiral Hammond said. "That's an awfully big decision to make about Spring Sim, Commander."
Elizabeth turned her eyes to him. She wasn't quite sure what the admiral's assignment was or why he had come to the Academy; obviously he had some interest in the simulation, but he hadn't tipped his hand as to what-or who-it was, and his presence here might well have been simply courtesy from Nixon to a guest of equal rank. "The evacuation portion of the simulation was over. Neither of the shuttles had received further orders," she pointed out. "The crew of Red Zero Seven had several hours of work on record, and their safety was at stake. Exiting the simulation zone was the least risky option, and the only reasonable one once the distributor coil was damaged."
"I suppose so," Markov said, though she sounded almost reluctant. "Though I also know Cadet Tobias-she can be stubborn."
"So what?" Carnahan asked. "Mitchell was at the helm. It was his judgment call."
"Cadet Sheppard has claimed responsibility for the whole incident," Nixon pointed out slowly. "Not to mention he's the one who came up with that lunatic evacuation scheme."
Hammond shifted suddenly again. "That's an awful lot of blame to place on the shoulders of a man who wasn't even aboard the shuttle in question," he said, and his tone was mild, but the words gave everything away.
"Cadet Sheppard is the oldest of the group and had seven years of experience on the Mars Defense Perimeter before he even entered the Academy," Elizabeth put in, seeing an opening. (Markov rolled her eyes at the mention of the MDP; Carnahan nodded absently.) "Given that, it was natural for the other cadets to defer to him."
"According to the transcripts, though, it was Tobias who suggested restarting the engines," Markov pointed out.
"A suggesting that Sheppard only reinforced," Elizabeth shot back. "And he cut off any other attempts to solve the problem in favor of his own plan, over the protests of his own team members."
Hammond folded his hands on the desk. "If this had been a genuine emergency, Commander, Sheppard's actions would've saved eight lives."
What was his angle, she wondered? Was he interested in Sheppard's family history or something else? "Be that as it may, Admiral, it was not a genuine emergency," she said firmly. "And if Cadet Sheppard can't distinguish simulation from reality, we have serious grounds to question his judgment."
The room went silent for a moment. The four senior officers sat in contemplation, while Elizabeth stood at perfect attention, matching her breaths to the cadences of an ancient meditation. Through the windows beyond, the lights of Colorado Springs winked out slowly as the night rolled on.
Eventually, Nixon said, "Do we bring formal charges?"
"Against whom?" Markov asked. "The crew of Red Zero Seven were the ones who lost their shuttle..."
"Blue Zero Three had no business being involved in the situation," Nixon said. "They've got to have some culpability as well."
"What about the rest of the Red wing?" Hammond asked. "They ignored a wing member in distress."
"They had grounds to assume that Blue Zero Three had the situation in hand," Carnahan said. "With communications disabled, they had no way to know otherwise."
"Sheppard's teammates did protest his plan," Elizabeth put in, thinking of Teyla's face as Nixon had handed down the probation. "And it's been legal principle for centuries that no one can be prosecuted for following a direct order."
"Sheppard wasn't technically in a command position, though," Carnahan pointed out. "Even if he's decided to act like it."
"You gave him his own roommate for a flight engineer," Markov said tartly. "I don't know about Cadet Emmagen, but if you haven't noticed how Sheppard and McKay get along, you've been under a rock."
"If Sheppard's service in the MDP is factored into his record, he is easily the most senior cadet in the group," Elizabeth offered. "There's legal precedent for treating him as the de jure officer in command of the situation. Certainly the transcripts demonstrate that the others deferred to him as a de facto commander, and that he actively sought to exercise authority over them." After a pause, she added, "He also claimed responsibility of his own free will."
They all looked at Nixon, but he was looking at Hammond. If this was about Sheppard's family-the human one or the Vulcan one-then Elizabeth would never be able to make anything stick. If this was about something else, though, depending on how much actual sway Hammond had... "I'll sleep on it," Nixon said, looking out over the midnight skyline. "We should all get some sleep on it. There's no requirement to even set up the inquest until Tuesday morning."
"Though it would be better to get it over with quickly," Hammond said.
"The probation stands," Nixon said sharply, and Elizabeth wondered what the two admirals had been talking about before this meeting even convened, why Hammond was here. "We have the rest of the weekend to decide how to proceed. This meeting is over."
The others rose to leave; Elizabeth waited for the senior officers to depart first, but Hammond stopped and stood in front of her, meeting her eyes. "Commander Weir, do you truly believe that it was Jonn Sheppard who risked those cadets' lives today?" he asked quietly as the others filed past.
"I do, sir," she said, just as steely. As if she could say anything else.
He regarded her for a long moment. "Then I hope you're prepared to argue your case," was all he said, though, and then he left, heading for the transporter zone rather than the main exits.
It was a long walk back to her apartment, so Elizabeth headed for her office-new digs with her promotion, bigger ones, with all the chairs she could want and a surprisingly comfortable couch. She locked the door behind her and collapsed onto said couch, breathing deeply and in patterns that she had learned as a child in the courtyard of the Federation embassy to Vulcan. This time, they didn't really help.
Eventually she grabbed a different padd from her desk, turning it over in her hands a few times. Eventually she switched it on, and opened a file of letters-dozens of them, letters she was never going to send. Tonight she would begin a new one.
Dear Simon, she wrote. I'm afraid I might have made a terrible mistake....
///
Jonn turned up his music, and quietly wondered how hard it would be to smother himself with a pillow. The wailing guitars made an oddly appropriate soundtrack for Rodney's wild gestures, but thanks to Jonn's pointy ears they couldn't drown out the sound of the ongoing argument-ongoing for what Jonn had clocked at three hours and counting.
Rodney was in the middle of saying something like, "It has to be a Haakon-Reyes algorithm because anything else would require twice the memory and also I could've cracked it already!"
"Haakon-Reyes would be overkill," Zelenka shot back, adjusting his glasses. "All that is necessary is a progression of increasing cubes-"
"Which is susceptible to T'Koor's Method," Rodney shot back. "Oh, my god, are you even listening to me? Are there words coming out of my mouth?"
"None that are particularly intelligent, no!"
Even on a good night, Jonn couldn't take this much nerd warfare in the room; he pulled out his earphones and snapped, "You guys want to take this outside or what?"
Zelenka, at least, looked chagrined; Rodney just rolled his eyes. "Sorry, we're just trying to save your commission and ultimately destroy Commander Weir here, we'll stop now."
Elizabeth Weir was the last thing Jonn wanted to think about, at the moment, her or her damned simulation; some instinct towards self-flagellation made him ask, though, "What's that supposed to mean?"
Rodney waved the padd in his hand around. "I managed to copy the whole simulation module-bastard encryption and all-before we got back to the Academy. If I can just get in here, I can prove that her simulation created conflicts with the shuttle's own programming that caused the thrusters to lock up."
"Possibly even contributed to distributor coil failure," Zelenka added, prodding his own padd absently. "If the simulation led the cadets to alter the coolant intake efficiency-"
"And so on, and so on," Rodney said, shushing Zelenka with a wild gesture. "But first I have to actually get into the module, which is taking an absurdly long amount of time even with full access to the engineering department's computer core."
Jonn rolled over onto his side, looking down on where Zelenka and Rodney had sprawled on the floor. "How're you getting into the core when we're all on probation?"
Rodney rolled his eyes and pointed at Zelenka. "Hello? What d'you think he's here for, his stunning good looks? I'm using his account as a proxy."
"Not anymore, you are not," Zelenka said, did something that had Rodney squawking at him.
Jonn sat up and leaned forward, setting the padd with his music aside so he could lean forward over the end of the bed. Most of the floor was covered with a set of padds networked in parallel, some scrolling dense text, some showing progress bars or graphical outputs from whatever they'd cooked up to crack the module. Rodney's hands were flying from one to another with the confidence of a virtuoso, while Zelenka stayed huddled around one, typing so fast his fingers might have actually blurred. "What are the odds of this actually working?" Jonn asked, genuinely curious.
"Hmm, that we can access simulation codes? Reasonable, I think." Zelenka said. "Cannot say more until we see what we are working with."
"But you definitely think it was all Weir's fault," Jonn pushed.
Radek suddenly made a face and bowed low over his padd, completely hiding his face behind the nowhere-near-regulation shag of his hair. Rodney coughed. "The shuttle crash? Totally Weir's fault. And unlike the naysayer over there, I'm positive we can prove it once we see exactly what it was she did."
Something about Rodney's tone of voice raised the hair on the back of Jonn's neck, and he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, leaning forward. "So if we prove her simulation caused the crash, we're scott-free, right?" he said slowly. "I mean, they can't punish us for covering her ass, right?"
Radek clambered abruptly to his feet, and blurted something like"I have to-eh-toilet." Which was pretty goddamn alarming. Jonn looked at Rodney, who suddenly pulled his knees up like a little kid and hid his face behind a padd. Once Zelenka had picked his way out of the debris field and into the corridor outside, there was silence.
"Rodney," Jonn said, not even sure what they were arguing about-if they were arguing-just. "We did the right thing, buddy."
"Right," he said. "Which just happened to be so batshit insane that the rest of the Academy thinks we're about to get sectioned for it."
"Fuck them," Jonn said, because since when did Rodney care about the rest of the damned Academy? Wasn't he usually the one ranting about how they were all too dense to understand him? "Nixon can't punish us for saving lives."
"Nixon can do whatever the hell he wants, and he's already got it in for you," Rodney said. "Why didn't we just-I dunno-fly out of the simulation or something?"
"Would that have fixed the shuttle?" Jonn demanded.
Rodney threw up his hands, one of which was still holding a padd, which nearly got dashed apart on the corner of a desk. "I don't know! How am I supposed to know?"
"It's just that you were my goddamn flight engineer, McKay," Jonn said, curling his hands in the blankets, "so it was kind of your job to know. And to think of that shit before people nearly got killed."
Rodney's chin rose up at a dangerous angle. "Yes, because as a theoretical astrophysicist I am completely qualified in shuttlecraft operations-"
"Oh, fuck you," Jonn blurted. He turned away from Rodney-couldn't look at him with the blood pounding in his ears like this. "Try getting this through your ego, McKay-you fucked up back there, too. I asked you for a fix and you just froze. Some good your giant brain did us then, huh?"
Rodney scrabbled to his feet, kicking hardware left and right, blubber "You-you-" His face had gone a terrible meaty red-good Jonn thought viciously, shoving his feet into boots and shrugging on his jacket. He headed for the door, and Rodney said, "Hey, don't you dare-" and made like he was going to reach out for him; Jonn slammed the door behind him. A moment later, he heard a crashing thump, and wondered how many isolinear crystals had just burst into shards.
Campus was a terrible distraction; Rodney had been right about word getting around, and Jonn imagined could feel eyes on him everywhere he went, people he didn't even know watching and whispering behind their hands. It wasn't like he wasn't used to being in a fishbowl-he'd been putting up with his mother's reputation for years at this point, people bringing up the Athos Incident for small talk the moment they saw his name written down. But this was something different, something about the hushed tones and the glances averted a little too fast-he kept waiting for people to cross the street to keep away from him.
Maybe that was paranoid. He didn't care. Starfleet Academy took up twenty or thirty city blocks of real estate, and it had never felt so small.
Jonn knew the terms of disciplinary probation; it was just a fancy word for being grounded, and that had worked so well when he was a teenager and all. He turned down the narrow space between the engineering library and Littlefield Hall, crossing onto the grass when the footpath curved around to the left. The Academy campus had accreted in stages, as Colorado Springs stretched out to meet it, and there were several places on the north side of Centennial Quadrangle where the line between private property and Academy grounds was distinctly wobbly. The bars and cafes there weren't technically on campus, but Jonn would be within feet of the imaginary line...and of course, to get punished for leaving the grounds, somebody had to actually catch him.
He went into Legends, a dive that was favored by younger cadets-less chance of any faculty being around to spot him. His uniform jacket did stand out a bit, but with the placket open it was hard to see the third tab on his collar, and it wasn't like there weren't at least a few cadets in uniform-not to mention a couple groups of enlisted men in black coveralls, though most of them were no older than the cadets they were bumping shoulders with. It was witheringly hot inside, and the crappy pop music was almost inaudible over the sound of voices even to him; Jonn bumped his way up to the bar and tried to make catch one of the bartenders's various eyes.
It waved a free hand at him, and then mimed a gesture John couldn't decode for a minute. Then he looked down at the amber sensor embedded in the countertop. Oh. Checking identification, of course-and if Jonn swiped his thumb, there would be a hard record of him being off-campus, whether anyone spotted him or not. Not that he thought Nixon was bastard enough to check up on him like that...probably not enough of a bastard to check up on every bar in the campus district to make sure Jonn wasn't somehow secretly enjoying himself. Maybe. Crap.
Awkward now, he glanced around the crowd, not sure if he was hoping to see a friendly face who would spot him a drink or an unfamiliar one he could flirt with. The latter wasn't likely-despite what Rodney seemed to think, Jonn did not actually have people throwing their underpants at him everywhere he went, and he wasn't in the mood to put on a show in the faint hope of getting laid, much less just getting a beer. As for the former, well, that had been the whole reason he'd come to-
Wait a minute.
Jonn had to lean over the bar to get a better look, and someone in line behind him started trying to shove him out of the way. But up against the windows, at a high counter away from the bar-what the hell? He surrendered his position and made his way to where Teyla fucking Emmagen was drinking something fizzy. From the look of things, she was by herself.
"What's a beautiful girl like you doing in a place like this?" Jonn asked, leaning against the window.
Emmagen nearly choked on her drink, then glared at him. "I could ask much the same of you, Cadet Sheppard."
"Course you could," he said, smiling widely. "Seeing as we're both on probation and all."
Her expression twisted a bit, and she averted his eyes. "The probation will be rescinded soon," she said firmly.
"So you decided it doesn't just doesn't count?" Jonn asked. "Except something tells me there's no whiskey in that soda you're drinking, so you're just as worried about getting caught as I am."
"If I feared getting caught," she said frostily, "I would not have come. Perhaps you should not have, either."
"I didn't say I was afraid," Jonn countered quickly. "I just don't like the thought of getting confined to quarters. McKay might not survive it."
"You speak quite harshly of someone you consider a friend," Emmagen observed.
"So does he," Jonn shot back without thinking.
Emmagen raised an eyebrow, though, and looked down at her glass. "Perhaps now is not the ideal time to discuss the simulation," she said.
"Who said anything about the simulation?" Jonn asked, irritated all over again, at her and himself and McKay and the goddamned world. "I'm just looking for a decent bottle of beer. Unless you wanna talk about it...?"
"I do not," she said firmly.
"Then we're agreed," Jonn said. "So what should we talk about?"
"Let me clarify," Emmagen said, climbing off her stool. "I do not wish to talk to you at all right now, Cadet Sheppard. Good evening."
Jonn didn't think before he reached out and grabbed her arm. "Hey, now, don't-hey! Easy!" Because she'd spun out of his grip and landed some kind of oblique karate-chop on his wrist for good measure. It stung like hell and made his whole hand tingle. He needed to learn that one. "Sorry," he said, raising his hands. "Transmission received, okay?"
"Is this guy bothering you, ma'am?"
Jonn turned to follow the sound of the voice; a couple of enlisted men were standing behind him, led by a dark, stocky guy with the braids of a petty officer. They were looking loose and flushed, but nowhere near drunk, and despite the question they had their eyes on Jonn, not Emmagen. Somebody's spoiling for a fight tonight, Jonn thought.
And given the mood he was in right now...Good.
"Thank you, sir," Emmagen said crisply. "I am quite well."
"I'm not," Jonn put in brightly. "Think you can help me with that, sir?"
The PO glared at Jonn-they were probably the same age, or close do it, but he put on a condescending gruffness that probably intimidated the hell out of teenaged recruits. "Have you been drinking, Cadet?"
"Not yet," Jonn confirmed. "You buying?"
The guy at the PO's shoulder went red in the face. Somebody nearer to the back of the group said something like, "Bates, c'mon-" but the PO stepped up with a scowl. "You want to run that by me again, Cadet?"
"Just asking if you're offering to buy me a drink, sir," Jonn said, keeping a smile on his face. "Though I ought to warn you I never put out on the first date."
"You trying to get written up for disrespecting a superior officer, Cadet?" Bates asked.
"Why, do you see one?" Jonn asked, pretending to look over his shoulder.
As such, he wasn't sure if it was actually Bates who threw the first punch-it didn't seem likely, but there was a first time for everything. He saw the blow coming in his peripheral vision and dodged out of the way, enough that it only glanced off his cheekbone; he'd had enough hand-to-hand training to come up swinging automatically, and Bates just happened to be in the way of his fist.
It got messy real quick after that point.
Jonn knew he was a good bit stronger than a real human, had known it since the time he accidentally put a schoolyard bully in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. But what Bates and his boys lacked in strength they made up in enthusiasm, and also the fact that there were five of them. Jonn got in one more tag, from luck and Vulcan reflexes-the red-faced guy, who'd maybe had a little more to drink than his buddies and wasn't braced for it-before somebody else caught his wrist from behind and got it pinned against his back, where he didn't have leverage to break free. Jonn was thrown off-balance for a moment, and wide-open for Bates himself to fire at will. The first punch left him breathless, but by the time Bates was winding up for the third Jonn had got his feet under him again: he drove a kick straight into Bates' kneecap, hard enough to possibly fracture it.
At the same moment, the grip on his arm suddenly released, and Jonn stumbled; he managed to keep his feet at the last minute, and when he turned around, he saw Emmagen swinging the stool she'd just been sitting on at the man who'd been holding Jonn's arm. Another cadet tried to step in, and got the stool planted in his midsection for his troubles; the enlisted man stumbled into a table and sent a bunch of glasses crashing into the laps of the people seated there.
An arm suddenly closed around Jonn's throat, and he dropped down on instinct, bending at the waist and twisting to the side. It didn't throw his attacker, but it did send them both crashing to the floor, and when they landed the impact relieved the pressure on Jonn's neck. He managed to roll, and found himself facing Bates, who head-butted him right in the nose; Jonn responded by burying a fist in Bate's stomach, a little bit of payback. Bates folded right up, and Jonn was able to get a grip on his neck and shove his face into the floor, hard enough to scrape the skin.
Then Emmagen reappeared, slamming her stool into the ground an inch from Bates' head. "We must go," she said, and Jonn realized she was right-the crowd was getting into it now, grabbing Bates' boys by the arms and holding them back. She offered him a hand and he took it, and when a few well-intended folks put up restraining arms between him and the door he dropped his head like a line-backer and barreled right past, into the street's receiving dark.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Teyla was not entirely certain why she followed Sheppard, as they fled the bar; surely it would've been more logical for them to split up, the better to evade possible pursuit. But then again, if they had separated, she might not have another chance to ask him to explain his behavior at the bar; she had heard of his reputation for impulsiveness, but even on the shuttle she had not truly thought him reckless.
Despite his longer legs, she kept pace with him without excessive difficulty; they ran all the way back to the Centennial Quadrangle, where Sheppard slowly stumbled to a stop under a spreading tree thick with tiny lavender flowers. He leaned against the grey-brown trunk and pressed one hand to his stomach, wincing; when he noticed that Teyla had followed him, he seemed surprised. "Thanks," he rasped, still breathing heavily.
Teyla sat down on a concrete bench next to the tree to catch her own breath. Concern for Sheppard's well-being was at war with irritation over his inexplicable outburst, and losing badly. "You did not have to antagonize them," she pointed out, rather sharper than she'd intended.
"You didn't have to help," Sheppard responded crisply.
No, she supposed, she hadn't had to; except that leaving Sheppard at the mercy of five opponents had been unthinkable, never mind that he had mostly brought it upon himself. "Would you have preferred I not intervene, then?" she asked. "I am sure you could have convinced Admiral Nixon that it was all a great misunderstanding, had it come to that."
Sheppard flinched a little, and flexed his knuckles; one had split, and his own green blood was mixing with the human blood from one of his attackers, like splashes of vivid paint. "I said thanks, didn't I?" he muttered, but he also did not meet her eyes.
His silence gave her a chance to study him at her leisure, without the distractions that had been present during the simulation. She had not known what to expect of the son of T'Perr; the destruction of the Kelvin was a watershed moment in Athosian history, in the history of all Pegasus, but it was hard to remember that the woman immortalized in statues and films had been a being of flesh and bone, who left behind a husband and son on a distant star. Teyla supposed she of all people should know better than that, given the long shadows cast by her own parents over her life, even so many years later; still, she could not connect this impulsive and volatile man with someone made famous for her cool judgment and self-sacrifice. "You are not what I expected you to be, Jonn Sheppard," she admitted after a few minutes.
He snorted gruffly and looked up at her; one eye was growing puffy and green where Bates or another of his fellows had landed a lucky punch. "What, not Vulcan enough for you?" he asked, sounding strangely defiant.
"My people remember the name of your mother," Teyla said simply. "If not for her decision to evacuate the Kelvin, we might never have made contact with the Federation, and I would not be here now."
"And if not for me, you wouldn't be facing expulsion," Sheppard snapped, looking away again. "Poetic irony and all, I get that."
"We will not be expelled," she said firmly; she had examined the Uniform Code, and there would be no way Admiral Nixon could justify such drastic action to the disciplinary board.
Sheppard merely sighed. "Maybe you won't," he said mulishly. "Not so sure about me."
Such fatalism baffled her, but she did not have the energy to argue with it. Teyla stood instead, and rolled her shoulders, wincing at the stiffening muscles there; perhaps she had been cutting her bantos practices too short recently. "Admiral Nixon is not unreasonable," she told Sheppard, because she could not bear to let him have the last word. "No matter how he dislikes you personally, he must defer to the judgment of the disciplinary board. I am sure they will make the correct decision."
Sheppard blinked for a minute as if she had been speaking Klingon to him. "So you don't think it's all my fault?" he asked blankly.
I did not say that... "I think," she said, choosing her words carefully, "that given the circumstances as they were known to us at the time, your course of action was not unreasonable."
"That's...thanks," he stammered, looking away again. "I guess."
She studied him again. "You seem surprised by my opinion."
"Guess I just expected you to take Weir's side again," he mumbled. "You weren't exactly eager to be helping out back there."
"If I had genuinely objected to the plan, I would not have assisted you at all," she told him bluntly. "And Commander Weir has nothing to do with the issue."
"She's the one who wrote the simulation," he insisted. "And she's throwing me under the bus for her mistakes."
One of her father's sayings came to her mine. We are all mortal; we can rise above our nature, but not by clawing at each others' backs. But she did not think Jonn Sheppard would be interested in Athosian theology, particularly at the moment. "If that is your opinion, I will not attempt to dissuade you."
"Fine," he said, turning away from her. "Don't choose a side. See if that helps you save your own skin."
"There is no need for you and Elizabeth to be at loggerheads," she protested, exasperated with the flicker-flare of his temper. "The nature of an accident is that no one is to blame."
"Tell her that," Sheppard snapped over his shoulder.
Teyla sighed, watching him march off into darkness: all brittle strength and insecure convictions, coupled with the self-control of a man ten years younger. "I will remember you in my prayers, Cadet Sheppard," she said quietly, uncertain if he would hear her at this distance. "May the Ancestors grant you peace."
-\-\-\-\-
Jonn ran into Zelenka at the front entrance to the dormitory; almost literally ran into him, actually, as Zelenka was rushing out in high dudgeon, muttered fiercely to himself in Czech. He actually stopped short and did a double-take when he saw Jonn's bruised and bloodied face, though. "Oh! Oh. Ah. Hello. I am just-"
"Leaving," Jonn said, because if it wasn't a statement then it was a suggestion. "Finally had enough of McKay for one night?"
"Rodney has sent me away," Zelenka said irritably. "He received a message from some girl and went into manly vapors."
Jonn snorted. "Didn't know McKay talked to girls," he muttered half-heartedly.
"What is more surprising is when they talk back," Zelenka muttered. "Though I don't think this one is a cadet-unless she is first-year. Eugenia Ingram?"
Jonn shook his head; he couldn't summon the energy to care. "Hell if I know. See you around."
He wasn't sure what he'd say when he got back into the room-he didn't feel up to continuing the argument anymore, not when he ached all over from a different kind of fight, but he didn't feel much like apologizing when he'd been right. Luckily, though-or maybe not-when he actually slunk into the room, it was dark, and there was a tight, tense shape curled up under the blankets that didn't move as Jonn peeled off his clothes. Grateful for the excuse, Jonn dropped into his own bed, and found a comfortable position to lay down in. He wondered how much either of them slept, though.
Chapter One
Chapter Four
Chapter Six