Raiders of the Seven Systems by ltlj, commentary by teenygozer 4/7
Title: Raiders of the Seven Systems
Author: ltlj
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: teenygozer
Story without DVD commentary: Right here!
Rot7S Commentary Part 3
The planet didn't have a name on their charts, but it had a gate address, which let Carter and McKay locate it and figure out the hyperdrive coordinates. It turned out to be near the edge of their usual territory, which John thought was a good sign. It meant it was that much less likely that the Genii or any other scavengers would have gotten there first.
"How did you find this place?" John asked Carter, when he saw her in the galley. He was waiting for the crew to finish the last of the launch preparations, and she had taken a break from her calculations.
"It was on a list of gate addresses we found at another Ancient site," she told him. John was going to leave it at that and not ask any more questions. He knew she had been working most of the night to fine-tune their hyperdrive; the bowl of porridge she was eating while standing up in the galley was probably the first break she had taken in hours. But she added, "And about that...I'd really like to talk to you, and Teyla, when you have a chance. Maybe after this mission." Figures that the ever-reasonable Carter would be the one who decides to come clean. I find her choice of who to come clean to interesting: John and Teyla. John because, well of course--but Teyla and not, say, Halling. It hasn't been made obvious in this story, but Teyla is apparently the leader of this "flying commune of lesbian separatist pirates", as Rodney so elegantly put it.
It was still odd to John's ears, that she called their hunts and scavenging expeditions "missions" like he did. The others had picked up the habit from him, but it sounded more natural when she did it. He had thought she had been military from the first, and this was just something else to add to the evidence. Because just asking, "So, you in the military?" would be so gauche. I mean, she might think he's trying to hook up or something! He asked, "Is this about you guys leaving? Because you're not prisoners, so whenever you're ready to go--" It occurred to him suddenly what the problem might be, and he added, "And if you need supplies, trade goods, whatever, I'm pretty sure we owe you a lot." Awww, he's being so damned *good* here, so reassuring and sweet, and he's about to be kicked in the teeth.
She shook her head, smiling. "That's not a problem. Halling already offered us payment, and gave us a list of gate addresses, we can get back to where we need to go with that." She poked at a lump in the porridge, her expression turning serious. "It's just...I know we'd like to stay in touch. I think we can help each other, and--"
Halling's voice came over the all ship com, saying, "John, we are ready to start the launch sequence," and in all the subsequent activity, they didn't get a chance to finish the conversation. Stupid Halling! A simple bit of bad timing sets mad scientist McKay's evil master plan on its course.
***
John was in the cockpit on their second day out, with Teyla keeping him company. McKay had suggested that they make this a real shakedown cruise, and drop out of hyper a few times to test the cloak and the other systems. John was waiting for the all-clear to take them back into hyper; so far everything was working fine. He was wearing the ATA booster in a leather band around his wrist, Hee! Like that wasn't predictable! and if it worked as well as the cloak, then John's hand might actually heal up.
They were listening to the inner-ship comm, where Rodney and Carter were in the engine compartment bickering over the fine-tuning they were doing. Teyla said hesitantly, "They know so much. Do you think we might ask them about...Zoe's situation? That if we took them to Sere that they might be able to understand the portal that brought her here?"
"I don't know. If anybody could..." To be able to give Zoe the chance to go home... I read a lot of longing in that simple statement! Just the idea of "home", a place of safety, is so attractive to him--there's no place like it! I guess this makes John the Dorothy Gale of the Pegasus Galaxy. John didn't know if she would take it or not, but she might be the only one among them who still had a home to go to. "We should ask her first. It's not like she'd have to make up her mind right away."
Teyla lifted a brow. "By 'we should ask her' you mean that I should ask her."
John nodded. "Well, yeah." I'm hearing a "duh" in there. I mean, Zoe might *cry* or try to hug him or do some other girlie thing at him, getting her girl cooties all over him.
Then over the comm, John heard Carter say, "Rodney, that's all we can do right now. What are you waiting for?"
"Nothing, nothing," Rodney replied hurriedly. "Fine, let's go. Sheppard, take us back into hyper." ::headdesk:: I suppose he acts like a spazz so often that this behavior isn't raising any alarms with anyone.
***
They were about half a day from the planet's projected location and John was sitting in the galley, trying to decide if he really wanted mashed toba root for lunch. Dude, *nobody* wants mashed toba root for lunch. Then Rodney walked in, plopped down into the chair across from him, and demanded, "What do you miss most about Earth?"
John stifled his first knee-jerk response. Um, to throw up? Or is "knee-jerk" literal and it means he wants to jerk his knee into Rodney's mid-section? You talked about it first. If you didn't want to keep talking about it, you shouldn't have answered him back at base camp when he asked you how you escaped. This was a far more innocuous question than that one and there was no reason Rodney shouldn't ask it. And John was a little surprised to find he knew the answer. "Music. The Athosians recorded their music, but not as much as we did. And most of that got left behind on Athos. They sing, they have instruments, but...you can't just listen in private, whenever you want." I was thinking about the way music is viewed, with regard to a short SGA fic I read a while ago (can't remember the story, just the concept), that the Athosians think of music as very personal, where people sing their own songs and what they sing means everything to them, as each song is pure self-expression. Teyla didn't understand the impersonal way people from our planet cede our songs to professional singers and do not sing ourselves--we are actively encouraged *not* to sing, especially around other people, if we aren't pros. But here's what I thought: yes, we as a people do give over self-expression to professional singers and literally mock non-pros who try to sing, but we show our individualism and self-expression in the *choice* of songs we choose to listen to. Since we have literally billions of songs to choose from in the world, the specific songs we choose are personal and they say a lot about who we are. John isn't missing "music" as a general concept, he is missing all the specific songs *from home* that mean a lot to him, the ones that speak to him personally, whether it's Johnny Cash or the Beach Boys. The songs that make him feel comfortable and at home.
Rodney nodded. "We brought MP3s when we--" He stopped abruptly. "I mean, we did-- We had--"
"I always wanted to learn to play the guitar," John said, to put him out of his misery. Yeah, John; heaven forbid someone reveal something of themselves. Rodney obviously didn't want to talk about the group he had come to Pegasus with. John was beginning to wonder if it wasn't that their group was dead, but that Rodney and Carter had been kicked out of it. Always a possibility with Rodney, but Sam is so *nice*! Nobody would kick her out!
He could see why Rodney wouldn't get along with a band of military refugees. He would have fit in better with somebody like Sumner; John had to admit Sumner had seemed able to deal with the eccentric scientists under his command, even if he thought John was a waste of oxygen. This leads me to believe that John was with Sumner for at least a little while, somehow making Sumner even more of a bastard. He *knew* and *worked with* John, but still put him back in a cell without a weapon, for the Trust to find and kill. But Carter's company was easy and uncomplicated. She got along with everybody, and the little Athosian girls were drawn to her like they were drawn to Teyla and Zoe, ready to imprint on her like little baby birds. If Rodney had been kicked out for some reason, he could see Carter going with him; for all the bickering, they seemed to actually like each other. I would really like to know what the heck happened to Carter & McKay. What were they doing wandering around before they were picked up by the Genii?!
And he thought they must have been kicked out, or decided to leave on their own. Otherwise he couldn't think why they wouldn't have tried to re-join their group as soon as Halling had told them they were free to go.
Rodney eyed him a moment. "How did you end up with the Athosians, anyway?"
John shook his head. After he had escaped from Kolya, he had been in the jumper, scavenging and looking for Genii to kill. He had been exploring an Ancient site when he had stumbled on a group of Genii attacking an Athosian camp, and John hadn't been able to resist. He had killed a lot of Genii but had been shot in the leg; the Athosians had found him trying to crawl back to the cloaked jumper. This would be hilarious if it weren't so very, very sad.
They had had no idea the jumper was there, and John hadn't told them. They had taken John into their ship and left the planet, going to one of their base camps on another world. He hadn't believed their reassurances; he had been half-crazy since the escape and now he was out of his head with fever and sickness from the wound. If he hadn't been so weak, he would have been desperately dangerous. But the Athosians were careful and patient and persistent; necessary qualities in someone who is trying to tame down a feral, injured woodland creature, by the point John was starting to be able to hobble around, he was less like a trapped wounded animal and more like a person they could actually talk to. They had been telling him all along that he could leave as soon as he was able to, and he was actually almost starting to believe them.
Then two traders had come through the stargate to visit the camp. They were informants who supplied information about the Genii to the Athosians, and while sitting in Teyla's tent, they had recognized John from one of the times Kolya had dragged him out in front of a crowd for a demonstration. One of the traders had complimented Teyla on finally acquiring the Ancient gene for the Athosians. Oh, dear; do you think you might want to… um, rephrase that? But he wasn't wrong: without John, even if the Ancient tech on the Vengeance of Athos worked absolutely perfectly, I'm assuming it still would not work for the Athosians alone--they'd still need John's gene. Acquiring John has made them a group to be reckoned with. And John had gone nuts and tried to escape. He had almost made it to the stargate before Halling and the others had hauled him back.
The trader had claimed later that he had thought John was Teyla's new lover, because he was sleeping in her tent, and had been trying to compliment them both, not imply she had bought him or was planning to sell him, but the damage had already been done. The Athosians had decided there was only one thing to be done, and they had taken John to the stargate, given him food and weapons, and let him go. Awwww! "If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were." -- Kahlil Gibran. I confess to being partial to the version that ends, "If they don't, hunt them down and kill them," a popular poster and/or tee-shirt saying in the 70s. He had gated back to the planet where the jumper had been left behind, okay, I had wondered about that! and then waited in it for the Athosians to come after him. They hadn't. So after thinking about it for a couple of weeks, oh, John; sometimes your mill grinds *so slowly*! he had taken the jumper back to them.
Rodney was still watching him impatiently. John just smiled and said, "I ran into them, decided to join up." Yeah, that whole thing was way too personal for John to share with Rodney, no way he was going to tell him that story.
Rodney nodded, as if satisfied with that explanation, but he said, "You know, before the Trust, if the right people on Earth had known you had the Ancient gene, you could have had some very interesting assignments. Important assignments. Working with Ancient technology, going offworld--"
John lifted a brow. "I'm doing that now."
"Well, yes, but--"
"I had a bad record, McKay. I doubt whether any of the secret government space agencies would have crossed the street for me."
"You'd be surprised." Rodney eyed him thoughtfully. "If you could do something like that, work for a secret government space agency, wouldn't you--"
"No," John said, trying to inject a note of complete finality. It had been hard enough watching his whole world fold like a house of cards, he didn't want to play "what if" games about it. They're really talking at cross purposes here: John is looking back, Rodney is asking for future reference. They're just not talking about the same thing. "What was your favorite movie?" he asked, as an attempt at distraction, and that worked. They argued about Back to the Future for the whole rest of the watch. Some things never change, no matter what the AU!
***
When they arrived, the planet was exactly as promised. Scans said it was uninhabited, the Ancient site a large rambling collection of stone ruins in what was now a desert, the shattered buildings almost completely covered by windblown sand. The stargate, standing up on a giant plinth, was the most visible feature. My mind went directly to the Star Trek Classic episode "City on the Edge of Forever", replacing the Time Donut with the Stargate. "A question! Since before your sun burned hot in space, I have awaited… a question!" (oh, Ellison, you drama queen!)
John could see why it had been ignored by the Genii and any other scavengers. It looked desolate and empty, as if nothing could possibly be left behind but sand and more sand.
But when they had landed Vengeance of Athos and made their way to the ruin, Carter led them through the tumbled stones to a big square plaque set into the side of a sunken plinth. "It's actually a door. It leads down into the underground section of the installation."
"Once we dig it out again," Rodney said, but it was just grumbling by habit. He seemed a little nervous, scanning the ruin anxiously as John and the others started to shovel sand away from the doorway.
"What are you looking for?" John asked him finally, trying to shake the sand out of his hair. The wind was cold and dry, smelling of nothing but stone and dust. "There's nothing here." They had scanned the ruin itself from upper atmosphere for life-signs and found nothing, and Ronon was posted up on the vantage point of the plinth, keeping watch.
"Oh, nothing." Rodney turned away, fussing with his scanner. "Just generic disassociated terror of alien planets." Yeah, that's plausible. Good cover story, Rodney. [/sarcasm] Now would be a good time for one of your wee bouts of paranoia, John.
Finally they got the door cleared, and Rodney hit the combination on the hidden keypad. It slid open, revealing a dark corridor leading deep into the underground bunker. Cool air flowed out, stale and dusty.
"This is wonderful." Her eyes shining with excitement, Teyla turned to Carter. "How did you discover it?"
Carter smiled. "A friend of ours found it. He's really good at this kind of thing." That's gotta be Daniel! I mean, who else, right?
John noticed she hadn't spoken in the past tense. More support for his theory that they had actually been asked to leave their group. We haven't really seen John, or anyone else, trying to tease bits of info out of Carter in this story. It would actually have been amusing: she *seems* like a pushover, but she's not; the only thing she's got going against her is a naturally open personality--she genuinely *wants* to share info in a free and open manner. She's smart enough and tough enough to keep it to herself, but does it by fighting her natural instincts. I think she uses McKay as an excellent distraction tactic; they're so busy with Rodney in their faces, they don't see Sam being all stealth!Carter.
John left Ronon on guard outside, and they followed the passage into a dark maze of rooms and corridors, walled in copper and bronze, full of goodies. Carter led them straight through to an unexcavated room that held still intact consoles, each filled with spare crystals and other parts they could use for the ships. John helped them set up the battery lamps, then left Teyla with the main group to keep watch, and he and Zoe went back to check out the other rooms. The life-signs detector said the place was empty, but John wanted to take a look himself.
The other rooms hadn't been looted, but methodically stripped, the remnants of damaged equipment and consoles left neatly stacked or set aside. Flashing her light over the collection, Zoe commented wryly, "The Genii haven't been here, that's certain." The SGC people would take whatever they wanted, but they'd have respect for the place, and do it in a deferential and orderly fashion.
"Yeah." John brushed at a chalk mark on the wall, a series of letters and numbers in English. Whoever had been through here had not only been neat and careful, they had had a system for cataloging their finds. McKay and Carter's group must have included more scientists, more Ancient experts. Probably why they could spare two, he thought ruefully. "What do you think of asking Carter and Rodney to stay on permanently?"
Zoe was silent for a moment, then said, "I'm not sure it's a good idea." Yeah, Zoe's not stupid and she feels something off about these two. And I love those two, but yeah, they are *off*.
John turned to face her, a little taken aback. "Seriously?"
She nodded. "It ain't personal. I like Carter, I can handle McKay. But everybody else -- you, Ronon, Teyla, Halling, the girls, the kids, all the Athosians -- I know why they're here, I know everything about you all that I need to know. Those two, all I have are guesses. And guesses aren't good enough." It's funny to hear that coming from Zoe considering she hasn't told them anything about her life in the Firefly universe. But I see her point.
"Huh." John turned that over. He could see what she meant, but he wasn't sure he agreed.
When they returned to the others, Teyla was standing guard in the doorway. "It goes well so far," she told them. "I do not think we will have to stay here very long."
Carter, Selana, and Halling were deep inside a console, carefully taking it apart. Rodney was across the room, equipment spread out around him, working on a device set into the wall. It looked like he had connected it to a portable power cell to try to get it working again. He still looked twitchy, and John walked over to him. "You okay?" John asked.
Rodney looked up, startled. "What? Oh, yes, fine, just uh... How long were we planning to stay here?" Twitchy *and* polite. How could they not have seen Rodney was up to something!?
John shrugged. "Until you're done. Why?"
Rodney stuck his head back into the device, tinkering with the insides again. "I thought we might check out the rest of the ruin. There could be another underground area."
From across the room, Carter looked up from the crystal she was examining. She frowned. "You think so? I thought we decided this place was pretty much played out except for these rooms."
"Well yes, we did," Rodney said impatiently. "I just think while we're here we shouldn't rush."
John was about to agree, when a screen blinked to life on the device. Rodney sat up, staring hard at it, then slumped in relief. "Finally!" he said.
"What is it?" John asked, squinting at the screen. So innocent! So about-to-be-fucked-over!
Carter had pushed to her feet, staring warily. "Rodney... What are you doing?" Yes, everybody please try to remember how Carter had nothing to do with this!
Rodney looked up at John with an earnest expression. He said, "It's for your own good."
And then the room dissolved. Rodney, you *bitch*!
John felt his ears pop and then he was standing in a large metal-walled room, the hold of a spaceship, surrounded by people in black and gray uniforms. It sounds like he doesn't recognize the uniform. Given John's background, this had got to be completely, utterly terrifying for him and I do not blame him for trying to shoot everyone in his path, even though I know these are the good guys. His body was still frozen from the transport beam, but he could see McKay was crouched beside him and Carter was a few steps away.
The temporary paralysis abruptly released and John started to jerk the P-90 up to fire. But something hit him with the force of a truck and he collapsed to the deck instead, everything fading to black. Your life sucks, John.
This occurrence also hearkens back to the teleportation kidnapping of John in Retrograde. In that version, John is teleported up with Rodney and Miko, they're sent back but he's not, whereupon he immediately collapses and passes out due to the many injuries visited upon him by the crew of the Iapetus. In Recovery, he's tele-kidnapped again, and immediately stunned. So John has a history of being kidnapped via teleport and then either going unconscious or being forced into unconsciousness. It's a dramatic way to end a section of story--the POV character losing consciousness, and *bam*, you're out of scene--but just once, I'd like to see John stay awake for his kidnapping so everyone has to deal with a very dangerous and pissed-off John before the chapter ends. ;)
***
"So where the hell have you been?" Jack tried again. Your life sucks, Jack. Also, you are our POV character. He had gotten Sam and McKay into his office as the nearest place they could talk in private. The rest of the crew was practically nuts with relief at finding them after all this time and he hadn't been able to get a word in. Not that being in private was doing any good. For a month he had been looking for them frantically, and now he couldn't even get one of them to answer a damn question. "Who's that we beamed up with you?" He had had the guy taken to the medical bay to recover from the stun, with orders to keep him restrained, but from what he was getting from Carter and McKay, he wasn't one of the pirates who had captured them.
"You put a sublight signal in the cloak array!" Sam yelled at McKay, ignoring Jack's questions. "You betrayed them!"
"It wasn't a betrayal, it was a..." McKay waved his arms. "Okay, it was a betrayal!" For the first time, McKay is being made to see that his Evil Mad Scientist Master Plan was perhaps not very well conceived. It's his first admission--yes, it *was* a betrayal--but he's only just started down the path of admitting it was not something he should have done.
Yeah, this was pretty much all that Jack had been getting in the hold area, too. "I thought you were captured by pirates," he said.
"Yes, but not these pirates," Sam told him. She turned back to McKay to yell, "How could you do this to Sheppard?" HIT HIM! KICK HIM IN THE SHINS!
"It's for his own good!" McKay yelled back.
Sam nearly growled in frustration. "You don't know that. I thought we discussed this, I thought we decided that we'd tell them who we were and give them the option of allying with us or not."
McKay lifted his chin, implacably stubborn. "I couldn't take the chance they'd say no! We need Sheppard's gene." Larrin said she had to kidnap Sheppard because she was afraid he'd say "no", and in "Tracker", the runner guy said he had to kidnap Keller because he was afraid she'd say "no." Is this a Pegasus thing, where you don't just not-take-no for an answer, you don't even bother asking the question in the first place?
Sam gritted her teeth. "Rodney!"
That's it, Jack thought in exasperation. "Shut up!" he yelled. "Now one of you -- not you, McKay -- tell me what the hell happened. Now." The fact that Jack didn't just say, "Tell me what happened, Carter" right off the bat amuses me to no end, and that's what makes it a very good Jack-voice.
***
Back to the Dread Pirate John's POV:
John woke without moving, keeping his eyes shut, making his breathing stay calm though he couldn't do anything about his pounding heart. He knew he was lying on a medical gurney, with his wrists strapped. It's a half-measure like this that causes the problem: if they'd not put any confining straps on him at all, he might have re-evaluated the situation and given consideration to the fact that he was not a prisoner. If they'd considered him enough of a danger to put the straps on his wrists, but also had a guard standing right there to keep an eye on him and alert everyone that he'd woken up, someone would have been there to stop him from escaping (and presumably let him know that they were not going to hurt him.) But they underestimated John, tucked him to one side figuring to deal with him once they've gotten the story from Carter & McKay, and so his escape from the gurney without having anything cleared up just set the situation up to go down the tubes very quickly. He thought for a long surreal moment that he was still with the Genii, that his escape and living with the Athosians had been a dream.
It seemed crazy and unreal, that he would luck into something like that, finding people who cared about him all the way out here. Okay, everyone who thinks this qualifies John as the woobiest John ever written, raise your hand. ::raises hand:: But he didn't usually dream in that much detail, or with such a logical progression of events. Then he remembered Rodney, and Carter, and just how fucking stupid he had been. That ATA booster. That was a transmitter. You let them put a fucking transmitter on you, John. He immediately blames himself for not being completely paranoid, for allowing himself to relax. But he is smart to have immediately figured out where the transmitter was, despite being half-stunned.
He could hear people talking somewhere nearby, and the beep of medical equipment, and underneath it all the distant hum of engines. The recycled air smelled antiseptic. He didn't think anyone was standing over him.
He opened his eyes to see he was in a small compartment, the walls covered with advanced medical equipment. His clothes were gone and he was wearing standard white medical scrubs, yes, somebody undressed him while he was asleep, and there was a small bandage on his forearm, probably covering a needle mark. That was another unpleasant blast from the past. This is an indication that at this point, anything that smacks of a medical procedure pings "bad touch" to John, and is a possible reason why he would rather cut his hand instead of allowing the Athosians to siphon off some blood siphoned off for use in initializing the ATA on the Vengeance. It also occurs to me that if this was a slightly different AU, he might well have found himself on the Iapetus, and in grave danger, so his actions would not be unfounded. These people could be the Trust. The prisoners with the Ancient gene had been treated like experimental animals.
But John didn't think they had done anything yet, except take blood for analysis. He turned his head, craning his neck to see there was a hatchway open to another larger room. He couldn't see anyone but he could hear voices, a woman, then a man speaking in a Scottish accent. That was weird to hear, familiar and strange all at once.
After a few moments, it sounded as if the people in the next compartment had left. John thought about waiting for another opportunity, but he was already sweating from panic, he couldn't conceal that, or what these monitors were showing about his heart rate and breathing. If someone walked in, they would put him out again and next time he might wake up in a locked cell. Or worse. If they just wanted the gene, they could get that from his blood, and they never needed to let him wake up again.
And if that wasn't all they wanted, he couldn't let them use him as a hostage against the Athosians.
He pulled experimentally at the straps, startled to realize they were tight fabric, not a heavier material. His ankles weren't even individually tied; there was just one strap across his shins. Gritting his teeth, he put all his effort into working his right hand free.
He lost some skin *ouch*! but he finally pulled his wrist out of the strap. Moving fast, he unbuckled the strap on his other wrist, then pulled the IV out.
And something started to beep, loud and insistent. Crap, crap, that's it. He yanked his legs free and swung off the gurney, and grabbed the first blunt object to hand, a portable monitor unit. He stepped to the wall beside the door just as a uniformed guard lunged inside.
John slammed the metal box into the guard's head, sending him to his knees. Another blow knocked him over and John dropped the unit, leaning down to snatch the man's pistol out of his holster. As Jack says with grudging admiration in "Retrograde", "These people are great at escaping. They should teach courses."
He clicked the safety off and ducked outside the door, just as a woman in a white medical coat ran up. She bounced off his chest and he grabbed her, spun her around and put the gun to her head. Dr. Lam, I presume? I don't believe Keller had been introduced yet when this story was written.
Because this compartment was empty, but the hatch across the room was open to an area that was fucking full of people.
The ones who weren't wearing scrubs or medical coats were wearing BDUs, an almost random collection of them, some ragged and stained. A possible tip-off to the reader that they've been in the Pegasus galaxy for a good while. The medical personnel scrambled away, leaving two guys in black BDUs, one a big muscular black guy with an incongruous gold emblem on his forehead.
The first guy said, "Hey, just be calm. I'm Colonel Mitchell, and we're from Earth, we're refugees just like you." Has Mitchell gotten enough of the story to know that John is a refugee… from Earth? It's a bit uncertain with the phrasing, but I think he knows.
John rasped, "Not just like me. I never kidnapped anybody." But he sort of believed it. They didn't look like the Trust.
"Yeah, the kidnapping," Mitchell said, watching him warily. "I don't have any information on that right now, but we're not going to hurt you." Way to be reassuring, Mitchell!
Right, they had set all this up and grabbed him for no reason. John wasn't buying that one. "Then let me walk out of here, and I'll let her go."
"We're in orbit. You're not going to get away," Mitchell said.
The lousy thing was, he was right. John wasn't going to shoot this woman, and he wasn't getting out of this. And I'm not spending the rest of my life strapped to a table bleeding into a jar every time they need another shot of the Ancient gene. He shoved the woman away and jerked the gun up to his own head. We have been given enough backstory on this character to know that this is what he would do in this situation. This was not added for some sort of false drama. The reaction is completely organic to the character.
Then he was face down on the deck. He knew he had gotten a shot off; his ears were still ringing from it. But he didn't hurt, except for his nose, from slamming into the metal deck. He knew they had managed to hit him with a stun blast before he could shoot himself, his last chance for escape. You got away from this twice, he reminded himself, once from the Trust and once from the Genii, and what were the odds of that? Third time's the charm, John. Then somebody kicked the gun out of his nerveless fingers, and that was the last thing he knew. John's been stunned twice now! If it was by 'zat, he could be flirting with real medical trouble--getting zatted twice too close together will kill you!
***
Jack had gotten most of the story by this point and he knew it couldn't end well. "So these people rescued you from the Genii, asked you to help fix their ship in return, and in fact already told you you could leave, and offered you trade goods and stargate addresses. So to pay them back you jimmied their cloak to broadcast a signal to us and set it up so that when we locked on your locator implants, we'd also grab one of their leaders?"
McKay nodded, like nothing Jack had said sounded crazy. "Sheppard is from Earth. He belongs with us."
Sam dropped into a chair wearily. "As a prisoner?"
McKay snapped, "Of course not. This is what's best for him. He will come to realize that." ::headdesk::
Sam shook her head. "God, of course he won't. Rodney, did you even listen at all when he was telling us what happened to him?" As I said previously, Rodney does not easily put himself in another person's shoes. With any other character, this would tread uncomfortably close to the concept of the "idiot plot", wherein a character does something uncharacteristically and irredeemably stupid in order to move the plot along, but this is exactly the kind of very stupid mistake Rodney would pull. But while he genuinely thinks he's done the best for John, honestly?--I think mostly he is doing what he feels is right for himself and the other Milky Way refugees. I do not think he'd have done this if John was just a random Earth refugee they came across; he's doing it because John has the gene and they need him for the science. Good intentions aside, the fact that John would actually be better off with them aside, his possessive attitude is very like the Genii's… and *that* is very Rodney.
From what Carter had said, Jack knew Sheppard had been captured by the Genii for his Ancient gene. And that apparently all the rumors they had heard about how Genii used Ancient gene carriers were true, and probably not anywhere as grim as the reality. The Athosians know what a delicate hothouse flower John is and know how to look after him, I'd say somebody in the Daedalus camp needs to figure that out right quick! And Jack was seeing any chance of an alliance with these people circling the drain, because McKay hadn't been prepared to take no for an answer. He rubbed his eyes. "McKay--"
McKay persisted, "He has a stronger expression of the Ancient gene than you do, General. Look, there was no way he was going to agree to leave the Athosians and come with us." He folded his arms stubbornly. "This was the only way."
Sam stared at the ceiling in helpless exasperation. "You don't know that. You didn't give us a chance to find out." She was being professional and patiently laying a foundation for future interaction before McKay wrecked everything.
Jack's headset beeped for attention and he keyed it on. "This is O'Neill." He listened for a moment, then winced. "Goddamnit. All right, I'm coming down there."
Sam read his expression OLD SCHOOL TEAM EMPATHY! and sat up straight. "What?"
Jack told her, "Sheppard nearly got out of the medical bay, and just tried to shoot himself."
McKay's face went white. Oh, Rodney! Allow me to introduce you to the wide, wide world of Mea Maxima Culpa!
***
The next time John woke two Marines were dragging him up off another gurney. His head was swimming, he was sick from the second stun, his hands were bound in front of him with a plastic handcuff strip.
They were hauling him down a corridor before his head started to clear. Then behind him he heard McKay's voice, though he didn't catch the words. Someone else replied, "Well now whose fault is that, McKay?"
Rage blotted out John's vision for a moment and he jerked free of the Marines and tried to lunge back to kill McKay. I know this is a terrible thing for poor John, but I find it mildly hilarious that this one skinny, half-out of it guy is giving them a real run for their money this way. And Rodney's voice being the spur to action is the cherry on the sundae. Mitchell yelled, "Whoa, Teal'c, grab him!" and somebody caught him around the waist and hauled him back.
Teal'c turned out to be the big guy with the gold forehead thingy and he dragged John down the corridor, impervious to all John's fighting and kicking. Yeah, good luck with that, Sheppard.
They turned into another large compartment, with consoles back against one wall. A Marine stepped up to him with a knife, and John kept his face blank. He knew they wouldn't kill him, he wasn't that lucky, but all the guy did was cut the handcuff strip away. If you're in a place where getting knifed to death is the *good* outcome, you are in a very bad place indeed.
Teal'c let John go and John stumbled, his legs still shaky from the stun. Everybody backed away and John found himself facing an older man with short gray hair, wearing a battered set of black BDUs. He held up a little device, a life-signs detector like the ones John had found stored in the jumper. John thought, this is it. This was the part where they tried to force him to turn things on, he knew how that went. Then the guy said, "I've got the Ancient gene," and in his hand the detector's little screen lit up.
John knew he was staring, wide-eyed. He had never seen anybody else do that before. The gene-carriers the Genii had managed to find had never had it strongly enough to use a detector.
The guy continued deliberately, "Bringing you here, that was a mistake. We're sending you back." Erm, Jack; you have him there, d'ya think maybe you want to say a few more things? Maybe clear a few more things up? Explain what's going on a tiny bit? At least, be a teeny bit less *cryptic*, where your few words can mean so many things? In other words, maybe you should have let Daniel field this one.
Sending me back? John thought, Back where?
Then the room dissolved.
The sudden difference in pressure, air, light almost sent John to his knees. He staggered and stayed upright. He was standing in dusty sand, under a late afternoon sun, cold wind whipping through his clothes, cold sand and sharp pebbles underfoot. He pivoted, seeing rock formations in the distance, vaguely familiar. He was back down on the planet. Somewhere on the planet. He wasn't sure where the ruin was, or the stargate. "This is new," he said aloud. Maybe they thought that being abandoned in this empty desert for a night or two would make him more amenable to persuasion. He is in that place where, for your own survival, you have to put the worst possible interpretation on anything that happens and try to deal with that, rather than trying to rationalize that your situation just got better. Hah. I've been abandoned in worse places than this. I'll bet you have, baby! I love his little pep talks to himself, they're so depressing. Maybe he could walk to the stargate, if he could figure out which way it was. He took a step and fell down, going to his hands and knees.
About a hundred yards away something shimmered, like a mirage forming out of the dust and light. A big mirage, glittering as it turned solid... Uh oh. John flashed on invisible alien monsters and Forbidden Planet, and started to scramble back. Then the mirage solidified into the Vengeance of Athos.
Okay, I am hallucinating, John thought, as the hatch started to open. They couldn't still be here, that would be crazy. Yeah, right, John--nobody would care about you so much that they'd actually put themselves in danger just to do their best to get you back! Ronon jumped down without waiting for the ramp to lower, running toward John.
His pounding steps kicked up dust, John could hear his harsh breathing. Crap, this is real. John shoved to his feet, staggering back. "Ronon, get back, it's a trap!" It had to be a trap.
Ronon slid to a halt. "They sent us a signal, told us where you'd be."
John kept backing away, stumbling over a rock. "Yeah, because it's a trap! You need to get out--"
Ronon shook his head in frustration, drew his gun and fired. Because *that* never gets old. Of course, ltlj wrote this *before* Ronon shot John for his own good in Tabula Rasa, so it's doubly wonderful.
***
This whole scene is chock full of Woobie-to-the-Max John action.
John came back to himself, lying on his side on a quilt on the floor of the sick bay, his head in someone's lap, warm under a couple of blankets. Contrast this warm family scene to the scene where he wakes up on the gurney in that cold, antiseptic, terrifying place, alone. The others were sitting on the floor around him, talking about the cloak and transmitters and scans. He felt heavy and warm and relaxed, and at first he had no memory of getting here. Then he remembered Ronon. He said, "Hey, Ronon shot me."
Someone squeezed John's ankle through the blanket. Ronon's voice said, "You've got long legs. I didn't want to have to chase you." Yeah, but if John wasn't so tough, three-times stunned could have presented a medical problem.
Halling said slowly, "It could have been their plan from the beginning. If they spread the word among our sources of intelligence, knowing we would be eager to take experts in the Ancestors' technology away from Kolya..."
Zoe said, "It means we can't trust any of our informants. If they're feeding us false information--" They're all off-balance, the foundation of their lives completely turned upside-down, and searching for reasons it happened as well as casting about to protect against future problems that might crop up. Everyone's paranoia is off the scale.
John's memory of the last few hours was starting to return. From what the others were saying, they thought it had been a trick from the beginning. And maybe it had. John had known McKay wanted something, but he had thought that it was friendship and the protection that came with it, the best coin worth having in Pegasus. "I'm so stupid," John said aloud. His default is to blame himself.
Fingers stroked through his hair, and Teyla's voice corrected, "We are so stupid. We were suspicious, but of all the wrong things."
John tried to sit up, but his body was still numb. He managed, "Did you check for--"
"We used the Ancient scanner," Teyla said. "There are no foreign objects in your body." Everyone quite rightly thinks of the possibility of a tracking device having been placed in John.
Halling's face appeared, as he leaned over to get eye level with him. "John, did they hurt you?" See, I suspect Halling has come to the same conclusion that I came to earlier about John--that at some point, John might have been sexually molested while in the hands of the enemy. Halling's manner is so very gentle, and the way he is asking this question makes me think he is asking if anything particularly hinky... *that* way... happened to John. "Show me on the doll where the SGC touched you, sweetheart!"
John blinked at him. They had to see he wasn't hurt, past the bruises and the effect of the multiple stun blasts. Except you could be hurt in a lot of ways that didn't leave marks. "No."
There was a collective breath of relief. They were all thinking it!
Selana asked, "John, do you know these names? Zoe, what were they?"
John turned his head to squint at Zoe. She was holding the scrub shirt he had been wearing. He realized they had taken the scrubs off him, that he was wearing a pair of lightweight pants and a shirt that was way too big for him. Yes, somebody undressed him while he was unconscious, again! An awful lot of people have seen John Sheppard naked today….
Zoe read the English printing stamped on the inside hem of the scrubs. "S.G.C? Daedalus?" John mentioned the "stargate base" earlier, but he seems to have no knowledge at all of the SGC (Stargate Command)--I suppose if he thinks about it, he'll figure out the "star gate"/SG part, but it's not really immediately obvious
That just confirmed what John had seen on the ship. "The letters could mean anything. Daedalus, that's their ship's name. An Earth ship. I think it was a BC303. Some of the crew still had uniforms."
Zoe frowned, smoothing a hand over the shirt. "That doesn't tell us much. We knew they were from your Earth."
"Trying to figure out why they did this? Some people don't need a reason," John reminded her.
She grimaced, shaking her head.
Teyla stroked his hair again, and John realized his voice had cracked. Awww, he's being so good about letting someone touch him and accepting comfort! I suppose part of that is that he literally cannot move, but still, nice growth on John's part, to accept their love & attention. She asked, "Did they say why they let you go?"
"No." John tried to make his sluggish brain work. He's not quite right about that: Jack said that taking him was a mistake. Kinda makes me wish Jack had followed that up with blaming it all on McKay--John would have believed that--and then apologizing a lot. "There was a guy, the leader, maybe. He had the Ancient gene. They didn't need me for that." McKay and Carter had never mentioned any names, and maybe that should have been a clue. There was no reason not to talk about the dead, plenty of reason not to mention the living. "The cloak? There's a transmitter?"
"Not as such." That was Halling's voice, weary and depressed. "But it emits a resonance, a frequency that does not match our scans of the jumper's cloak. We think that was how they tracked us to the planet." McKay is nothing if not a crafty little shit! The hardest part would have been getting the illicit tweaks past Carter.
"God." John felt sick. They had had such grand plans, the Genii homeworld, the asteroid field base, the Ancient ship. And they were busted back to minor annoyance, just like that. Actually, I don't think John and his crew are a minor annoyance as they stand, I think they're doing good work; but yeah, the loss of all their big plans to destroy the Genii is a painful loss indeed. John remembered he and Teyla, thinking that their new friends might even know enough to be able to offer Zoe a chance to go home. That was another twist in the gut. Maybe that was why the Daedalus had let John go, just to underline the humiliation. Again, he's coming up with the worst possible scenario as the explanation, even though it might not make the best or most logical sense.And there could be anything buried in the Vengeance of Athos, time bombs, booby traps, more ways to trace their location. And they know where we live. "Base camp? Is there..."
"We sent a message," Teyla answered. "The others have left, and we have ordered them not to tell us their location, or contact us. If we-- When we have made sure the ship is safe, and that we are not followed, we will leave them word at one of the message drops."
"There is too much we don't know," Selana said quietly. "We did not know about the frequency emitted by the shield until it was too late. No matter how carefully we look, I fear the next trap will not reveal itself until we are already caught." Selana has pretty much nailed it here, and is saying what everybody is thinking. Hence, their over-the-top paranoia. For their own survival's sake, they have to be as paranoid as they can be.
We can't go home, John thought. Here's more of that theme of losing and searching for one's lost home! The "Dorothy Gale" theme! "Fuck this." He shoved himself upright. "They want to show us we're helpless, that they can reel us in whenever they want. That works both ways." John's down, but he's not out. He's canonically the one who comes up with the most outrageous outside-the-box ideas. They don't always work quite as planned and they look terrifying to anyone watching, but they do tend to be creative and sneaky.
Teyla tilted her head thoughtfully, her eyes turning predatory. "We can summon them whenever we wish." Acting as John's wing man is usually Rodney's thing, but Teyla will more than do in a pinch.
"Yeah. We need a new ship." And now John knew where they could get one.
***
Well, blow me down, methinks somebody's about to get keel-hauled! Drop anchor, pull up a mug o' grog, and check out the next chapter! Uh, you know, when it posts. And stuff.
Rot7S Commentary Part 5
***
Author: ltlj
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: teenygozer
Story without DVD commentary: Right here!
Rot7S Commentary Part 3
The planet didn't have a name on their charts, but it had a gate address, which let Carter and McKay locate it and figure out the hyperdrive coordinates. It turned out to be near the edge of their usual territory, which John thought was a good sign. It meant it was that much less likely that the Genii or any other scavengers would have gotten there first.
"How did you find this place?" John asked Carter, when he saw her in the galley. He was waiting for the crew to finish the last of the launch preparations, and she had taken a break from her calculations.
"It was on a list of gate addresses we found at another Ancient site," she told him. John was going to leave it at that and not ask any more questions. He knew she had been working most of the night to fine-tune their hyperdrive; the bowl of porridge she was eating while standing up in the galley was probably the first break she had taken in hours. But she added, "And about that...I'd really like to talk to you, and Teyla, when you have a chance. Maybe after this mission." Figures that the ever-reasonable Carter would be the one who decides to come clean. I find her choice of who to come clean to interesting: John and Teyla. John because, well of course--but Teyla and not, say, Halling. It hasn't been made obvious in this story, but Teyla is apparently the leader of this "flying commune of lesbian separatist pirates", as Rodney so elegantly put it.
It was still odd to John's ears, that she called their hunts and scavenging expeditions "missions" like he did. The others had picked up the habit from him, but it sounded more natural when she did it. He had thought she had been military from the first, and this was just something else to add to the evidence. Because just asking, "So, you in the military?" would be so gauche. I mean, she might think he's trying to hook up or something! He asked, "Is this about you guys leaving? Because you're not prisoners, so whenever you're ready to go--" It occurred to him suddenly what the problem might be, and he added, "And if you need supplies, trade goods, whatever, I'm pretty sure we owe you a lot." Awww, he's being so damned *good* here, so reassuring and sweet, and he's about to be kicked in the teeth.
She shook her head, smiling. "That's not a problem. Halling already offered us payment, and gave us a list of gate addresses, we can get back to where we need to go with that." She poked at a lump in the porridge, her expression turning serious. "It's just...I know we'd like to stay in touch. I think we can help each other, and--"
Halling's voice came over the all ship com, saying, "John, we are ready to start the launch sequence," and in all the subsequent activity, they didn't get a chance to finish the conversation. Stupid Halling! A simple bit of bad timing sets mad scientist McKay's evil master plan on its course.
***
John was in the cockpit on their second day out, with Teyla keeping him company. McKay had suggested that they make this a real shakedown cruise, and drop out of hyper a few times to test the cloak and the other systems. John was waiting for the all-clear to take them back into hyper; so far everything was working fine. He was wearing the ATA booster in a leather band around his wrist, Hee! Like that wasn't predictable! and if it worked as well as the cloak, then John's hand might actually heal up.
They were listening to the inner-ship comm, where Rodney and Carter were in the engine compartment bickering over the fine-tuning they were doing. Teyla said hesitantly, "They know so much. Do you think we might ask them about...Zoe's situation? That if we took them to Sere that they might be able to understand the portal that brought her here?"
"I don't know. If anybody could..." To be able to give Zoe the chance to go home... I read a lot of longing in that simple statement! Just the idea of "home", a place of safety, is so attractive to him--there's no place like it! I guess this makes John the Dorothy Gale of the Pegasus Galaxy. John didn't know if she would take it or not, but she might be the only one among them who still had a home to go to. "We should ask her first. It's not like she'd have to make up her mind right away."
Teyla lifted a brow. "By 'we should ask her' you mean that I should ask her."
John nodded. "Well, yeah." I'm hearing a "duh" in there. I mean, Zoe might *cry* or try to hug him or do some other girlie thing at him, getting her girl cooties all over him.
Then over the comm, John heard Carter say, "Rodney, that's all we can do right now. What are you waiting for?"
"Nothing, nothing," Rodney replied hurriedly. "Fine, let's go. Sheppard, take us back into hyper." ::headdesk:: I suppose he acts like a spazz so often that this behavior isn't raising any alarms with anyone.
***
They were about half a day from the planet's projected location and John was sitting in the galley, trying to decide if he really wanted mashed toba root for lunch. Dude, *nobody* wants mashed toba root for lunch. Then Rodney walked in, plopped down into the chair across from him, and demanded, "What do you miss most about Earth?"
John stifled his first knee-jerk response. Um, to throw up? Or is "knee-jerk" literal and it means he wants to jerk his knee into Rodney's mid-section? You talked about it first. If you didn't want to keep talking about it, you shouldn't have answered him back at base camp when he asked you how you escaped. This was a far more innocuous question than that one and there was no reason Rodney shouldn't ask it. And John was a little surprised to find he knew the answer. "Music. The Athosians recorded their music, but not as much as we did. And most of that got left behind on Athos. They sing, they have instruments, but...you can't just listen in private, whenever you want." I was thinking about the way music is viewed, with regard to a short SGA fic I read a while ago (can't remember the story, just the concept), that the Athosians think of music as very personal, where people sing their own songs and what they sing means everything to them, as each song is pure self-expression. Teyla didn't understand the impersonal way people from our planet cede our songs to professional singers and do not sing ourselves--we are actively encouraged *not* to sing, especially around other people, if we aren't pros. But here's what I thought: yes, we as a people do give over self-expression to professional singers and literally mock non-pros who try to sing, but we show our individualism and self-expression in the *choice* of songs we choose to listen to. Since we have literally billions of songs to choose from in the world, the specific songs we choose are personal and they say a lot about who we are. John isn't missing "music" as a general concept, he is missing all the specific songs *from home* that mean a lot to him, the ones that speak to him personally, whether it's Johnny Cash or the Beach Boys. The songs that make him feel comfortable and at home.
Rodney nodded. "We brought MP3s when we--" He stopped abruptly. "I mean, we did-- We had--"
"I always wanted to learn to play the guitar," John said, to put him out of his misery. Yeah, John; heaven forbid someone reveal something of themselves. Rodney obviously didn't want to talk about the group he had come to Pegasus with. John was beginning to wonder if it wasn't that their group was dead, but that Rodney and Carter had been kicked out of it. Always a possibility with Rodney, but Sam is so *nice*! Nobody would kick her out!
He could see why Rodney wouldn't get along with a band of military refugees. He would have fit in better with somebody like Sumner; John had to admit Sumner had seemed able to deal with the eccentric scientists under his command, even if he thought John was a waste of oxygen. This leads me to believe that John was with Sumner for at least a little while, somehow making Sumner even more of a bastard. He *knew* and *worked with* John, but still put him back in a cell without a weapon, for the Trust to find and kill. But Carter's company was easy and uncomplicated. She got along with everybody, and the little Athosian girls were drawn to her like they were drawn to Teyla and Zoe, ready to imprint on her like little baby birds. If Rodney had been kicked out for some reason, he could see Carter going with him; for all the bickering, they seemed to actually like each other. I would really like to know what the heck happened to Carter & McKay. What were they doing wandering around before they were picked up by the Genii?!
And he thought they must have been kicked out, or decided to leave on their own. Otherwise he couldn't think why they wouldn't have tried to re-join their group as soon as Halling had told them they were free to go.
Rodney eyed him a moment. "How did you end up with the Athosians, anyway?"
John shook his head. After he had escaped from Kolya, he had been in the jumper, scavenging and looking for Genii to kill. He had been exploring an Ancient site when he had stumbled on a group of Genii attacking an Athosian camp, and John hadn't been able to resist. He had killed a lot of Genii but had been shot in the leg; the Athosians had found him trying to crawl back to the cloaked jumper. This would be hilarious if it weren't so very, very sad.
They had had no idea the jumper was there, and John hadn't told them. They had taken John into their ship and left the planet, going to one of their base camps on another world. He hadn't believed their reassurances; he had been half-crazy since the escape and now he was out of his head with fever and sickness from the wound. If he hadn't been so weak, he would have been desperately dangerous. But the Athosians were careful and patient and persistent; necessary qualities in someone who is trying to tame down a feral, injured woodland creature, by the point John was starting to be able to hobble around, he was less like a trapped wounded animal and more like a person they could actually talk to. They had been telling him all along that he could leave as soon as he was able to, and he was actually almost starting to believe them.
Then two traders had come through the stargate to visit the camp. They were informants who supplied information about the Genii to the Athosians, and while sitting in Teyla's tent, they had recognized John from one of the times Kolya had dragged him out in front of a crowd for a demonstration. One of the traders had complimented Teyla on finally acquiring the Ancient gene for the Athosians. Oh, dear; do you think you might want to… um, rephrase that? But he wasn't wrong: without John, even if the Ancient tech on the Vengeance of Athos worked absolutely perfectly, I'm assuming it still would not work for the Athosians alone--they'd still need John's gene. Acquiring John has made them a group to be reckoned with. And John had gone nuts and tried to escape. He had almost made it to the stargate before Halling and the others had hauled him back.
The trader had claimed later that he had thought John was Teyla's new lover, because he was sleeping in her tent, and had been trying to compliment them both, not imply she had bought him or was planning to sell him, but the damage had already been done. The Athosians had decided there was only one thing to be done, and they had taken John to the stargate, given him food and weapons, and let him go. Awwww! "If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were." -- Kahlil Gibran. I confess to being partial to the version that ends, "If they don't, hunt them down and kill them," a popular poster and/or tee-shirt saying in the 70s. He had gated back to the planet where the jumper had been left behind, okay, I had wondered about that! and then waited in it for the Athosians to come after him. They hadn't. So after thinking about it for a couple of weeks, oh, John; sometimes your mill grinds *so slowly*! he had taken the jumper back to them.
Rodney was still watching him impatiently. John just smiled and said, "I ran into them, decided to join up." Yeah, that whole thing was way too personal for John to share with Rodney, no way he was going to tell him that story.
Rodney nodded, as if satisfied with that explanation, but he said, "You know, before the Trust, if the right people on Earth had known you had the Ancient gene, you could have had some very interesting assignments. Important assignments. Working with Ancient technology, going offworld--"
John lifted a brow. "I'm doing that now."
"Well, yes, but--"
"I had a bad record, McKay. I doubt whether any of the secret government space agencies would have crossed the street for me."
"You'd be surprised." Rodney eyed him thoughtfully. "If you could do something like that, work for a secret government space agency, wouldn't you--"
"No," John said, trying to inject a note of complete finality. It had been hard enough watching his whole world fold like a house of cards, he didn't want to play "what if" games about it. They're really talking at cross purposes here: John is looking back, Rodney is asking for future reference. They're just not talking about the same thing. "What was your favorite movie?" he asked, as an attempt at distraction, and that worked. They argued about Back to the Future for the whole rest of the watch. Some things never change, no matter what the AU!
***
When they arrived, the planet was exactly as promised. Scans said it was uninhabited, the Ancient site a large rambling collection of stone ruins in what was now a desert, the shattered buildings almost completely covered by windblown sand. The stargate, standing up on a giant plinth, was the most visible feature. My mind went directly to the Star Trek Classic episode "City on the Edge of Forever", replacing the Time Donut with the Stargate. "A question! Since before your sun burned hot in space, I have awaited… a question!" (oh, Ellison, you drama queen!)
John could see why it had been ignored by the Genii and any other scavengers. It looked desolate and empty, as if nothing could possibly be left behind but sand and more sand.
But when they had landed Vengeance of Athos and made their way to the ruin, Carter led them through the tumbled stones to a big square plaque set into the side of a sunken plinth. "It's actually a door. It leads down into the underground section of the installation."
"Once we dig it out again," Rodney said, but it was just grumbling by habit. He seemed a little nervous, scanning the ruin anxiously as John and the others started to shovel sand away from the doorway.
"What are you looking for?" John asked him finally, trying to shake the sand out of his hair. The wind was cold and dry, smelling of nothing but stone and dust. "There's nothing here." They had scanned the ruin itself from upper atmosphere for life-signs and found nothing, and Ronon was posted up on the vantage point of the plinth, keeping watch.
"Oh, nothing." Rodney turned away, fussing with his scanner. "Just generic disassociated terror of alien planets." Yeah, that's plausible. Good cover story, Rodney. [/sarcasm] Now would be a good time for one of your wee bouts of paranoia, John.
Finally they got the door cleared, and Rodney hit the combination on the hidden keypad. It slid open, revealing a dark corridor leading deep into the underground bunker. Cool air flowed out, stale and dusty.
"This is wonderful." Her eyes shining with excitement, Teyla turned to Carter. "How did you discover it?"
Carter smiled. "A friend of ours found it. He's really good at this kind of thing." That's gotta be Daniel! I mean, who else, right?
John noticed she hadn't spoken in the past tense. More support for his theory that they had actually been asked to leave their group. We haven't really seen John, or anyone else, trying to tease bits of info out of Carter in this story. It would actually have been amusing: she *seems* like a pushover, but she's not; the only thing she's got going against her is a naturally open personality--she genuinely *wants* to share info in a free and open manner. She's smart enough and tough enough to keep it to herself, but does it by fighting her natural instincts. I think she uses McKay as an excellent distraction tactic; they're so busy with Rodney in their faces, they don't see Sam being all stealth!Carter.
John left Ronon on guard outside, and they followed the passage into a dark maze of rooms and corridors, walled in copper and bronze, full of goodies. Carter led them straight through to an unexcavated room that held still intact consoles, each filled with spare crystals and other parts they could use for the ships. John helped them set up the battery lamps, then left Teyla with the main group to keep watch, and he and Zoe went back to check out the other rooms. The life-signs detector said the place was empty, but John wanted to take a look himself.
The other rooms hadn't been looted, but methodically stripped, the remnants of damaged equipment and consoles left neatly stacked or set aside. Flashing her light over the collection, Zoe commented wryly, "The Genii haven't been here, that's certain." The SGC people would take whatever they wanted, but they'd have respect for the place, and do it in a deferential and orderly fashion.
"Yeah." John brushed at a chalk mark on the wall, a series of letters and numbers in English. Whoever had been through here had not only been neat and careful, they had had a system for cataloging their finds. McKay and Carter's group must have included more scientists, more Ancient experts. Probably why they could spare two, he thought ruefully. "What do you think of asking Carter and Rodney to stay on permanently?"
Zoe was silent for a moment, then said, "I'm not sure it's a good idea." Yeah, Zoe's not stupid and she feels something off about these two. And I love those two, but yeah, they are *off*.
John turned to face her, a little taken aback. "Seriously?"
She nodded. "It ain't personal. I like Carter, I can handle McKay. But everybody else -- you, Ronon, Teyla, Halling, the girls, the kids, all the Athosians -- I know why they're here, I know everything about you all that I need to know. Those two, all I have are guesses. And guesses aren't good enough." It's funny to hear that coming from Zoe considering she hasn't told them anything about her life in the Firefly universe. But I see her point.
"Huh." John turned that over. He could see what she meant, but he wasn't sure he agreed.
When they returned to the others, Teyla was standing guard in the doorway. "It goes well so far," she told them. "I do not think we will have to stay here very long."
Carter, Selana, and Halling were deep inside a console, carefully taking it apart. Rodney was across the room, equipment spread out around him, working on a device set into the wall. It looked like he had connected it to a portable power cell to try to get it working again. He still looked twitchy, and John walked over to him. "You okay?" John asked.
Rodney looked up, startled. "What? Oh, yes, fine, just uh... How long were we planning to stay here?" Twitchy *and* polite. How could they not have seen Rodney was up to something!?
John shrugged. "Until you're done. Why?"
Rodney stuck his head back into the device, tinkering with the insides again. "I thought we might check out the rest of the ruin. There could be another underground area."
From across the room, Carter looked up from the crystal she was examining. She frowned. "You think so? I thought we decided this place was pretty much played out except for these rooms."
"Well yes, we did," Rodney said impatiently. "I just think while we're here we shouldn't rush."
John was about to agree, when a screen blinked to life on the device. Rodney sat up, staring hard at it, then slumped in relief. "Finally!" he said.
"What is it?" John asked, squinting at the screen. So innocent! So about-to-be-fucked-over!
Carter had pushed to her feet, staring warily. "Rodney... What are you doing?" Yes, everybody please try to remember how Carter had nothing to do with this!
Rodney looked up at John with an earnest expression. He said, "It's for your own good."
And then the room dissolved. Rodney, you *bitch*!
John felt his ears pop and then he was standing in a large metal-walled room, the hold of a spaceship, surrounded by people in black and gray uniforms. It sounds like he doesn't recognize the uniform. Given John's background, this had got to be completely, utterly terrifying for him and I do not blame him for trying to shoot everyone in his path, even though I know these are the good guys. His body was still frozen from the transport beam, but he could see McKay was crouched beside him and Carter was a few steps away.
The temporary paralysis abruptly released and John started to jerk the P-90 up to fire. But something hit him with the force of a truck and he collapsed to the deck instead, everything fading to black. Your life sucks, John.
This occurrence also hearkens back to the teleportation kidnapping of John in Retrograde. In that version, John is teleported up with Rodney and Miko, they're sent back but he's not, whereupon he immediately collapses and passes out due to the many injuries visited upon him by the crew of the Iapetus. In Recovery, he's tele-kidnapped again, and immediately stunned. So John has a history of being kidnapped via teleport and then either going unconscious or being forced into unconsciousness. It's a dramatic way to end a section of story--the POV character losing consciousness, and *bam*, you're out of scene--but just once, I'd like to see John stay awake for his kidnapping so everyone has to deal with a very dangerous and pissed-off John before the chapter ends. ;)
***
"So where the hell have you been?" Jack tried again. Your life sucks, Jack. Also, you are our POV character. He had gotten Sam and McKay into his office as the nearest place they could talk in private. The rest of the crew was practically nuts with relief at finding them after all this time and he hadn't been able to get a word in. Not that being in private was doing any good. For a month he had been looking for them frantically, and now he couldn't even get one of them to answer a damn question. "Who's that we beamed up with you?" He had had the guy taken to the medical bay to recover from the stun, with orders to keep him restrained, but from what he was getting from Carter and McKay, he wasn't one of the pirates who had captured them.
"You put a sublight signal in the cloak array!" Sam yelled at McKay, ignoring Jack's questions. "You betrayed them!"
"It wasn't a betrayal, it was a..." McKay waved his arms. "Okay, it was a betrayal!" For the first time, McKay is being made to see that his Evil Mad Scientist Master Plan was perhaps not very well conceived. It's his first admission--yes, it *was* a betrayal--but he's only just started down the path of admitting it was not something he should have done.
Yeah, this was pretty much all that Jack had been getting in the hold area, too. "I thought you were captured by pirates," he said.
"Yes, but not these pirates," Sam told him. She turned back to McKay to yell, "How could you do this to Sheppard?" HIT HIM! KICK HIM IN THE SHINS!
"It's for his own good!" McKay yelled back.
Sam nearly growled in frustration. "You don't know that. I thought we discussed this, I thought we decided that we'd tell them who we were and give them the option of allying with us or not."
McKay lifted his chin, implacably stubborn. "I couldn't take the chance they'd say no! We need Sheppard's gene." Larrin said she had to kidnap Sheppard because she was afraid he'd say "no", and in "Tracker", the runner guy said he had to kidnap Keller because he was afraid she'd say "no." Is this a Pegasus thing, where you don't just not-take-no for an answer, you don't even bother asking the question in the first place?
Sam gritted her teeth. "Rodney!"
That's it, Jack thought in exasperation. "Shut up!" he yelled. "Now one of you -- not you, McKay -- tell me what the hell happened. Now." The fact that Jack didn't just say, "Tell me what happened, Carter" right off the bat amuses me to no end, and that's what makes it a very good Jack-voice.
***
Back to the Dread Pirate John's POV:
John woke without moving, keeping his eyes shut, making his breathing stay calm though he couldn't do anything about his pounding heart. He knew he was lying on a medical gurney, with his wrists strapped. It's a half-measure like this that causes the problem: if they'd not put any confining straps on him at all, he might have re-evaluated the situation and given consideration to the fact that he was not a prisoner. If they'd considered him enough of a danger to put the straps on his wrists, but also had a guard standing right there to keep an eye on him and alert everyone that he'd woken up, someone would have been there to stop him from escaping (and presumably let him know that they were not going to hurt him.) But they underestimated John, tucked him to one side figuring to deal with him once they've gotten the story from Carter & McKay, and so his escape from the gurney without having anything cleared up just set the situation up to go down the tubes very quickly. He thought for a long surreal moment that he was still with the Genii, that his escape and living with the Athosians had been a dream.
It seemed crazy and unreal, that he would luck into something like that, finding people who cared about him all the way out here. Okay, everyone who thinks this qualifies John as the woobiest John ever written, raise your hand. ::raises hand:: But he didn't usually dream in that much detail, or with such a logical progression of events. Then he remembered Rodney, and Carter, and just how fucking stupid he had been. That ATA booster. That was a transmitter. You let them put a fucking transmitter on you, John. He immediately blames himself for not being completely paranoid, for allowing himself to relax. But he is smart to have immediately figured out where the transmitter was, despite being half-stunned.
He could hear people talking somewhere nearby, and the beep of medical equipment, and underneath it all the distant hum of engines. The recycled air smelled antiseptic. He didn't think anyone was standing over him.
He opened his eyes to see he was in a small compartment, the walls covered with advanced medical equipment. His clothes were gone and he was wearing standard white medical scrubs, yes, somebody undressed him while he was asleep, and there was a small bandage on his forearm, probably covering a needle mark. That was another unpleasant blast from the past. This is an indication that at this point, anything that smacks of a medical procedure pings "bad touch" to John, and is a possible reason why he would rather cut his hand instead of allowing the Athosians to siphon off some blood siphoned off for use in initializing the ATA on the Vengeance. It also occurs to me that if this was a slightly different AU, he might well have found himself on the Iapetus, and in grave danger, so his actions would not be unfounded. These people could be the Trust. The prisoners with the Ancient gene had been treated like experimental animals.
But John didn't think they had done anything yet, except take blood for analysis. He turned his head, craning his neck to see there was a hatchway open to another larger room. He couldn't see anyone but he could hear voices, a woman, then a man speaking in a Scottish accent. That was weird to hear, familiar and strange all at once.
After a few moments, it sounded as if the people in the next compartment had left. John thought about waiting for another opportunity, but he was already sweating from panic, he couldn't conceal that, or what these monitors were showing about his heart rate and breathing. If someone walked in, they would put him out again and next time he might wake up in a locked cell. Or worse. If they just wanted the gene, they could get that from his blood, and they never needed to let him wake up again.
And if that wasn't all they wanted, he couldn't let them use him as a hostage against the Athosians.
He pulled experimentally at the straps, startled to realize they were tight fabric, not a heavier material. His ankles weren't even individually tied; there was just one strap across his shins. Gritting his teeth, he put all his effort into working his right hand free.
He lost some skin *ouch*! but he finally pulled his wrist out of the strap. Moving fast, he unbuckled the strap on his other wrist, then pulled the IV out.
And something started to beep, loud and insistent. Crap, crap, that's it. He yanked his legs free and swung off the gurney, and grabbed the first blunt object to hand, a portable monitor unit. He stepped to the wall beside the door just as a uniformed guard lunged inside.
John slammed the metal box into the guard's head, sending him to his knees. Another blow knocked him over and John dropped the unit, leaning down to snatch the man's pistol out of his holster. As Jack says with grudging admiration in "Retrograde", "These people are great at escaping. They should teach courses."
He clicked the safety off and ducked outside the door, just as a woman in a white medical coat ran up. She bounced off his chest and he grabbed her, spun her around and put the gun to her head. Dr. Lam, I presume? I don't believe Keller had been introduced yet when this story was written.
Because this compartment was empty, but the hatch across the room was open to an area that was fucking full of people.
The ones who weren't wearing scrubs or medical coats were wearing BDUs, an almost random collection of them, some ragged and stained. A possible tip-off to the reader that they've been in the Pegasus galaxy for a good while. The medical personnel scrambled away, leaving two guys in black BDUs, one a big muscular black guy with an incongruous gold emblem on his forehead.
The first guy said, "Hey, just be calm. I'm Colonel Mitchell, and we're from Earth, we're refugees just like you." Has Mitchell gotten enough of the story to know that John is a refugee… from Earth? It's a bit uncertain with the phrasing, but I think he knows.
John rasped, "Not just like me. I never kidnapped anybody." But he sort of believed it. They didn't look like the Trust.
"Yeah, the kidnapping," Mitchell said, watching him warily. "I don't have any information on that right now, but we're not going to hurt you." Way to be reassuring, Mitchell!
Right, they had set all this up and grabbed him for no reason. John wasn't buying that one. "Then let me walk out of here, and I'll let her go."
"We're in orbit. You're not going to get away," Mitchell said.
The lousy thing was, he was right. John wasn't going to shoot this woman, and he wasn't getting out of this. And I'm not spending the rest of my life strapped to a table bleeding into a jar every time they need another shot of the Ancient gene. He shoved the woman away and jerked the gun up to his own head. We have been given enough backstory on this character to know that this is what he would do in this situation. This was not added for some sort of false drama. The reaction is completely organic to the character.
Then he was face down on the deck. He knew he had gotten a shot off; his ears were still ringing from it. But he didn't hurt, except for his nose, from slamming into the metal deck. He knew they had managed to hit him with a stun blast before he could shoot himself, his last chance for escape. You got away from this twice, he reminded himself, once from the Trust and once from the Genii, and what were the odds of that? Third time's the charm, John. Then somebody kicked the gun out of his nerveless fingers, and that was the last thing he knew. John's been stunned twice now! If it was by 'zat, he could be flirting with real medical trouble--getting zatted twice too close together will kill you!
***
Jack had gotten most of the story by this point and he knew it couldn't end well. "So these people rescued you from the Genii, asked you to help fix their ship in return, and in fact already told you you could leave, and offered you trade goods and stargate addresses. So to pay them back you jimmied their cloak to broadcast a signal to us and set it up so that when we locked on your locator implants, we'd also grab one of their leaders?"
McKay nodded, like nothing Jack had said sounded crazy. "Sheppard is from Earth. He belongs with us."
Sam dropped into a chair wearily. "As a prisoner?"
McKay snapped, "Of course not. This is what's best for him. He will come to realize that." ::headdesk::
Sam shook her head. "God, of course he won't. Rodney, did you even listen at all when he was telling us what happened to him?" As I said previously, Rodney does not easily put himself in another person's shoes. With any other character, this would tread uncomfortably close to the concept of the "idiot plot", wherein a character does something uncharacteristically and irredeemably stupid in order to move the plot along, but this is exactly the kind of very stupid mistake Rodney would pull. But while he genuinely thinks he's done the best for John, honestly?--I think mostly he is doing what he feels is right for himself and the other Milky Way refugees. I do not think he'd have done this if John was just a random Earth refugee they came across; he's doing it because John has the gene and they need him for the science. Good intentions aside, the fact that John would actually be better off with them aside, his possessive attitude is very like the Genii's… and *that* is very Rodney.
From what Carter had said, Jack knew Sheppard had been captured by the Genii for his Ancient gene. And that apparently all the rumors they had heard about how Genii used Ancient gene carriers were true, and probably not anywhere as grim as the reality. The Athosians know what a delicate hothouse flower John is and know how to look after him, I'd say somebody in the Daedalus camp needs to figure that out right quick! And Jack was seeing any chance of an alliance with these people circling the drain, because McKay hadn't been prepared to take no for an answer. He rubbed his eyes. "McKay--"
McKay persisted, "He has a stronger expression of the Ancient gene than you do, General. Look, there was no way he was going to agree to leave the Athosians and come with us." He folded his arms stubbornly. "This was the only way."
Sam stared at the ceiling in helpless exasperation. "You don't know that. You didn't give us a chance to find out." She was being professional and patiently laying a foundation for future interaction before McKay wrecked everything.
Jack's headset beeped for attention and he keyed it on. "This is O'Neill." He listened for a moment, then winced. "Goddamnit. All right, I'm coming down there."
Sam read his expression OLD SCHOOL TEAM EMPATHY! and sat up straight. "What?"
Jack told her, "Sheppard nearly got out of the medical bay, and just tried to shoot himself."
McKay's face went white. Oh, Rodney! Allow me to introduce you to the wide, wide world of Mea Maxima Culpa!
***
The next time John woke two Marines were dragging him up off another gurney. His head was swimming, he was sick from the second stun, his hands were bound in front of him with a plastic handcuff strip.
They were hauling him down a corridor before his head started to clear. Then behind him he heard McKay's voice, though he didn't catch the words. Someone else replied, "Well now whose fault is that, McKay?"
Rage blotted out John's vision for a moment and he jerked free of the Marines and tried to lunge back to kill McKay. I know this is a terrible thing for poor John, but I find it mildly hilarious that this one skinny, half-out of it guy is giving them a real run for their money this way. And Rodney's voice being the spur to action is the cherry on the sundae. Mitchell yelled, "Whoa, Teal'c, grab him!" and somebody caught him around the waist and hauled him back.
Teal'c turned out to be the big guy with the gold forehead thingy and he dragged John down the corridor, impervious to all John's fighting and kicking. Yeah, good luck with that, Sheppard.
They turned into another large compartment, with consoles back against one wall. A Marine stepped up to him with a knife, and John kept his face blank. He knew they wouldn't kill him, he wasn't that lucky, but all the guy did was cut the handcuff strip away. If you're in a place where getting knifed to death is the *good* outcome, you are in a very bad place indeed.
Teal'c let John go and John stumbled, his legs still shaky from the stun. Everybody backed away and John found himself facing an older man with short gray hair, wearing a battered set of black BDUs. He held up a little device, a life-signs detector like the ones John had found stored in the jumper. John thought, this is it. This was the part where they tried to force him to turn things on, he knew how that went. Then the guy said, "I've got the Ancient gene," and in his hand the detector's little screen lit up.
John knew he was staring, wide-eyed. He had never seen anybody else do that before. The gene-carriers the Genii had managed to find had never had it strongly enough to use a detector.
The guy continued deliberately, "Bringing you here, that was a mistake. We're sending you back." Erm, Jack; you have him there, d'ya think maybe you want to say a few more things? Maybe clear a few more things up? Explain what's going on a tiny bit? At least, be a teeny bit less *cryptic*, where your few words can mean so many things? In other words, maybe you should have let Daniel field this one.
Sending me back? John thought, Back where?
Then the room dissolved.
The sudden difference in pressure, air, light almost sent John to his knees. He staggered and stayed upright. He was standing in dusty sand, under a late afternoon sun, cold wind whipping through his clothes, cold sand and sharp pebbles underfoot. He pivoted, seeing rock formations in the distance, vaguely familiar. He was back down on the planet. Somewhere on the planet. He wasn't sure where the ruin was, or the stargate. "This is new," he said aloud. Maybe they thought that being abandoned in this empty desert for a night or two would make him more amenable to persuasion. He is in that place where, for your own survival, you have to put the worst possible interpretation on anything that happens and try to deal with that, rather than trying to rationalize that your situation just got better. Hah. I've been abandoned in worse places than this. I'll bet you have, baby! I love his little pep talks to himself, they're so depressing. Maybe he could walk to the stargate, if he could figure out which way it was. He took a step and fell down, going to his hands and knees.
About a hundred yards away something shimmered, like a mirage forming out of the dust and light. A big mirage, glittering as it turned solid... Uh oh. John flashed on invisible alien monsters and Forbidden Planet, and started to scramble back. Then the mirage solidified into the Vengeance of Athos.
Okay, I am hallucinating, John thought, as the hatch started to open. They couldn't still be here, that would be crazy. Yeah, right, John--nobody would care about you so much that they'd actually put themselves in danger just to do their best to get you back! Ronon jumped down without waiting for the ramp to lower, running toward John.
His pounding steps kicked up dust, John could hear his harsh breathing. Crap, this is real. John shoved to his feet, staggering back. "Ronon, get back, it's a trap!" It had to be a trap.
Ronon slid to a halt. "They sent us a signal, told us where you'd be."
John kept backing away, stumbling over a rock. "Yeah, because it's a trap! You need to get out--"
Ronon shook his head in frustration, drew his gun and fired. Because *that* never gets old. Of course, ltlj wrote this *before* Ronon shot John for his own good in Tabula Rasa, so it's doubly wonderful.
***
This whole scene is chock full of Woobie-to-the-Max John action.
John came back to himself, lying on his side on a quilt on the floor of the sick bay, his head in someone's lap, warm under a couple of blankets. Contrast this warm family scene to the scene where he wakes up on the gurney in that cold, antiseptic, terrifying place, alone. The others were sitting on the floor around him, talking about the cloak and transmitters and scans. He felt heavy and warm and relaxed, and at first he had no memory of getting here. Then he remembered Ronon. He said, "Hey, Ronon shot me."
Someone squeezed John's ankle through the blanket. Ronon's voice said, "You've got long legs. I didn't want to have to chase you." Yeah, but if John wasn't so tough, three-times stunned could have presented a medical problem.
Halling said slowly, "It could have been their plan from the beginning. If they spread the word among our sources of intelligence, knowing we would be eager to take experts in the Ancestors' technology away from Kolya..."
Zoe said, "It means we can't trust any of our informants. If they're feeding us false information--" They're all off-balance, the foundation of their lives completely turned upside-down, and searching for reasons it happened as well as casting about to protect against future problems that might crop up. Everyone's paranoia is off the scale.
John's memory of the last few hours was starting to return. From what the others were saying, they thought it had been a trick from the beginning. And maybe it had. John had known McKay wanted something, but he had thought that it was friendship and the protection that came with it, the best coin worth having in Pegasus. "I'm so stupid," John said aloud. His default is to blame himself.
Fingers stroked through his hair, and Teyla's voice corrected, "We are so stupid. We were suspicious, but of all the wrong things."
John tried to sit up, but his body was still numb. He managed, "Did you check for--"
"We used the Ancient scanner," Teyla said. "There are no foreign objects in your body." Everyone quite rightly thinks of the possibility of a tracking device having been placed in John.
Halling's face appeared, as he leaned over to get eye level with him. "John, did they hurt you?" See, I suspect Halling has come to the same conclusion that I came to earlier about John--that at some point, John might have been sexually molested while in the hands of the enemy. Halling's manner is so very gentle, and the way he is asking this question makes me think he is asking if anything particularly hinky... *that* way... happened to John. "Show me on the doll where the SGC touched you, sweetheart!"
John blinked at him. They had to see he wasn't hurt, past the bruises and the effect of the multiple stun blasts. Except you could be hurt in a lot of ways that didn't leave marks. "No."
There was a collective breath of relief. They were all thinking it!
Selana asked, "John, do you know these names? Zoe, what were they?"
John turned his head to squint at Zoe. She was holding the scrub shirt he had been wearing. He realized they had taken the scrubs off him, that he was wearing a pair of lightweight pants and a shirt that was way too big for him. Yes, somebody undressed him while he was unconscious, again! An awful lot of people have seen John Sheppard naked today….
Zoe read the English printing stamped on the inside hem of the scrubs. "S.G.C? Daedalus?" John mentioned the "stargate base" earlier, but he seems to have no knowledge at all of the SGC (Stargate Command)--I suppose if he thinks about it, he'll figure out the "star gate"/SG part, but it's not really immediately obvious
That just confirmed what John had seen on the ship. "The letters could mean anything. Daedalus, that's their ship's name. An Earth ship. I think it was a BC303. Some of the crew still had uniforms."
Zoe frowned, smoothing a hand over the shirt. "That doesn't tell us much. We knew they were from your Earth."
"Trying to figure out why they did this? Some people don't need a reason," John reminded her.
She grimaced, shaking her head.
Teyla stroked his hair again, and John realized his voice had cracked. Awww, he's being so good about letting someone touch him and accepting comfort! I suppose part of that is that he literally cannot move, but still, nice growth on John's part, to accept their love & attention. She asked, "Did they say why they let you go?"
"No." John tried to make his sluggish brain work. He's not quite right about that: Jack said that taking him was a mistake. Kinda makes me wish Jack had followed that up with blaming it all on McKay--John would have believed that--and then apologizing a lot. "There was a guy, the leader, maybe. He had the Ancient gene. They didn't need me for that." McKay and Carter had never mentioned any names, and maybe that should have been a clue. There was no reason not to talk about the dead, plenty of reason not to mention the living. "The cloak? There's a transmitter?"
"Not as such." That was Halling's voice, weary and depressed. "But it emits a resonance, a frequency that does not match our scans of the jumper's cloak. We think that was how they tracked us to the planet." McKay is nothing if not a crafty little shit! The hardest part would have been getting the illicit tweaks past Carter.
"God." John felt sick. They had had such grand plans, the Genii homeworld, the asteroid field base, the Ancient ship. And they were busted back to minor annoyance, just like that. Actually, I don't think John and his crew are a minor annoyance as they stand, I think they're doing good work; but yeah, the loss of all their big plans to destroy the Genii is a painful loss indeed. John remembered he and Teyla, thinking that their new friends might even know enough to be able to offer Zoe a chance to go home. That was another twist in the gut. Maybe that was why the Daedalus had let John go, just to underline the humiliation. Again, he's coming up with the worst possible scenario as the explanation, even though it might not make the best or most logical sense.And there could be anything buried in the Vengeance of Athos, time bombs, booby traps, more ways to trace their location. And they know where we live. "Base camp? Is there..."
"We sent a message," Teyla answered. "The others have left, and we have ordered them not to tell us their location, or contact us. If we-- When we have made sure the ship is safe, and that we are not followed, we will leave them word at one of the message drops."
"There is too much we don't know," Selana said quietly. "We did not know about the frequency emitted by the shield until it was too late. No matter how carefully we look, I fear the next trap will not reveal itself until we are already caught." Selana has pretty much nailed it here, and is saying what everybody is thinking. Hence, their over-the-top paranoia. For their own survival's sake, they have to be as paranoid as they can be.
We can't go home, John thought. Here's more of that theme of losing and searching for one's lost home! The "Dorothy Gale" theme! "Fuck this." He shoved himself upright. "They want to show us we're helpless, that they can reel us in whenever they want. That works both ways." John's down, but he's not out. He's canonically the one who comes up with the most outrageous outside-the-box ideas. They don't always work quite as planned and they look terrifying to anyone watching, but they do tend to be creative and sneaky.
Teyla tilted her head thoughtfully, her eyes turning predatory. "We can summon them whenever we wish." Acting as John's wing man is usually Rodney's thing, but Teyla will more than do in a pinch.
"Yeah. We need a new ship." And now John knew where they could get one.
***
Well, blow me down, methinks somebody's about to get keel-hauled! Drop anchor, pull up a mug o' grog, and check out the next chapter! Uh, you know, when it posts. And stuff.
Rot7S Commentary Part 5
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