fic: With Great Power for pentapus
RECIPIENT: pentapus
TITLE: With Great Power
AUTHOR: greenconverses
SUMMARY/DESCRIPTION: John knew going to Italy for the summer had been a bad idea. You never knew what kind of trouble you were going to get into overseas.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: John and Teyla, with appearances with the rest of the Atlantis cast and some of the SG-1 cast.
RATING: PG-13 for some language
WORDCOUNT: around 3.500
SPOILERS: None.
WARNINGS: None in particular. Crack heavy.
NOTES: My apologies for being so late! I have limited Internet access and I've been very busy at work the last few days, one of the few places I can get access. This fic was partially inspired by all the commercials for the movie Wanted and maybe a little bit of Hellboy and other super secret agent/super hero things I saw in the last few weeks. Thanks to allisnow for the quick beta!
With Great Power
Signing up for the two-week summer trip to Italy hadn’t been John’s idea.
Nancy had spotted the flyer in the political science building in February and begged him to come with her. It’d be romantic, she said, the two of them visiting all the famous sites in Rome and Venice and Florence. It was cheap and didn’t he remember when they had talked about going to Europe together before? Best of all, she said, he’d be able to get those fine art credits he’d been putting off since freshman year.
After much poking and prodding, John had reluctantly agreed to go with her. Ever since then, the little voice of caution in the back of his mind hadn’t shut up about what a terrible idea this trip was. John tended to ignore that voice of reason on a fairly regular basis and this occasion had been no different.
Now, with a short, strange woman holding him at gunpoint in a dark Venetian alley, that little voice was doing one hell of a victory “I told you so!” dance.
“You are coming with me,” the woman said, her dark eyes intense. John would’ve thought her very pretty if, you know, she wasn’t trying to kidnap him and he didn’t already have a girlfriend.
“Am I?” he asked before he could stop himself.
It probably wasn’t the best idea to mouth off when a gun barrel was pressed between his eyes, but the smart side of his brain tended to jump ship and abandon him in high stress situations.
“I am already running behind,” she said, annoyance creeping into her voice. “Please do not make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
John couldn’t figure out why the police weren’t descending on this woman at this very moment. He wasn’t that far from the crowded piazza - he’d only ducked into the alley so he could have a quick smoke without Nancy noticing.
“I’m not being difficult,” he said, his mouth still thinking it was best to remain disconnected from his brain. Maybe he’d buy enough time for someone to notice and call the police. “I just think this is a bad idea and I’m trying to persuade you from committing a felony that’ll land you in jail for a few years. And you’re too pretty for jail.”
She frowned and John gulped, realizing he’d made a bad move. He tried again, “My friends are just around the corner. They’ll notice I’m missing, you know.”
The woman sighed and pulled the gun away. John’s shoulders relaxed just a bit as she holstered it at her hip.
“No, they won’t,” she said.
Then she belted him on the chin with a right hook that snapped his head to the side and made him see stars. He stumbled into the brick wall, groaning in pain. He’d been on the receiving end of several punches in his life but none ever hurt quite as much as hers did. Was her fist made of iron or something?
He felt her hands sliding under his shirt and he squawked weakly in protest as she tugged it over his head. He looked up at her, watching as she balled up his shirt around her fist.
“What’re you - ”
She hit him again. Her blow wasn’t softened at all and she drew blood this time. She mopped up the blood from his lip with his shirt and tossed it to the ground. She was digging in his pants pocket next, pulling out his wallet and cell phone. The cell phone was on the ground and crushed under her heel in seconds; she flipped through his wallet and tossed out his student ID card on the ground next to his bloody shirt.
She did this all with an air of professionalism that would’ve impressed him if, again, this whole armed robbery and kidnapping thing wasn’t taking place.
“Now, are you finished protesting?” she asked coolly, glancing through his wallet at his credit cards, “or do I need to use some of more of my own methods of persuasion, John Sheppard?”
“I’m done,” John wheezed, blood continuing to dribble down his chin.
“Good choice,” she said, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him down the alley. They made several sharp turns down other alleys and John made a valiant effort to remember which way they had come, but his effort was made worthless when they came around their last turn and a sleek black BMW Coup was waiting for them. The lady might be mental, but at least she had good taste in cars.
She gestured for him to get in the passenger side; John’s eyes flickered down to where her hand was curled over her weapon.
“Do not get any ideas,” she said sternly, catching his gaze. “Or a cut lip will be the least of your worries.”
The thing was, John hadn’t been getting any ideas. He was bleeding, shirtless, and being kidnapped by an incredibly strong (and gorgeous) woman in a country where he knew less than ten phrases in the native tongue. Things couldn’t get much worse than this.
*
Retrieving the new ones was always trouble for Teyla. Ronon could simply tower over them and growl, and they’d run toward the car. Rodney was good with talking their ears off and Aiden … well, they had not paid much attention to Aiden’s techniques until it was too late and look where that had almost gotten them.
But Teyla always had to use force with the new ones. Either they did not think anything of her until she had them flat on their backs, groaning in pain and with a sizable dent in their egos, or she got stuck with the difficult ones like this John Sheppard. She didn’t like using force - it caused some trust issues when the new ones eventually got to field level with her - and it was the reason why she had not done retrieval in decades.
John was supposed to have been Aiden’s retrieval but with him running off and the rest of the team swamped trying to recover, the duty had fallen to her. She had fumed for a bit until she had gotten a good look at John’s profile. That was when things started looking up.
She glanced at him in the passenger seat out of the corner of her eye as she sped down the Italian roadway. He was delicately fingering his jaw, where the skin was already beginning to purple, and she resisted the sudden urge to reach out and touch him. Healing only worked when the other person was receptive to the touch and she was sure he wouldn’t welcome hers for a long time.
“You didn’t have to hit me twice,” he said, breaking the silence suddenly, as if he could read where her thoughts were focused. Which he very well could - his profile had only listed what possible qualities he possessed, not the ones he actually had. “The gun had me pretty much convinced you meant business.”
“I apologize,” Teyla said. “But I am very late and your mouth was not doing you any favors.”
John smiled ruefully. He had the look of a man who knew his time would be running out soon; he could not be further from the truth.
“Why me?” he asked, turning his gaze on her. “Is it because of my dad? That old bastard hates me and he isn’t going to give your group a dime if you’re planning on holding me hostage.”
“You are not our hostage,” she said patiently, steering the car into the far lane where it was mostly clear of traffic and punching the accelerator. “But after today, you will no longer be able to return to your old life. Nor will you want to, I think. The John Sheppard your friends and family knew died in that alley.”
He fell silent, a terribly sad look on his face. Teyla remembered reading that he’d had a long-time girlfriend and was probably planning on marrying her sooner or later. She could not pity him - they all had to give up something precious when they received the call - but she could sympathize.
“Have you ever felt as if you were…” Teyla searched for the words. It had been a very long time since she had done this, “Not quite human?”
John’s expression became closed and guarded, and he shifted subtly in his seat. Teyla tried to ignore the way the muscles of his bare chest tensed - it was not an easy task.
“No,” he lied tersely.
“Oh?” she replied, letting go of the wheel of the car and turning to him. “There were no inexplicable incidents as a child? Nothing you did as a teenager that struck others as odd?”
“If you went through all this trouble just to hand me my Hogwarts letter, you’re going to very disappointed. There’s nothing special about me at all,” he said. “So you might as well - Christ, put your hands back on the wheel!”
Teyla sighed and inclined her head to the right. Just before the car ran off the road, it corrected its own path and shifted into a higher gear. She folded her arms over her chest as the car kept driving itself, weaving in and out of traffic, and arched an eyebrow at John.
He was staring at her as if he had never seen anything quite like her before. At least the new ones reactions had not changed much since she was last out on retrieval.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Did - are you doing that?”
“I can do much more than that,” Teyla replied, although she did not move her lips. John noticed and heard her all the same; if anything, his eyes got fantastically wider. “And so can you.”
“I can?” he croaked.
Teyla reached for his file jammed between the two seats and tossed it in his lap.
“Why do you think the Air Force refused to take you, even though you fit all of their qualifications and were in perfect health? They knew you were one of us and that we would be coming for you soon enough. That packet should tell you everything you need to know.”
“Who are you?”
Teyla smiled grimly and told him.
*
In the general scheme of things, things could’ve been a lot worse with this kidnapping thing. For instance, he could’ve ended up as a continued feature on Nancy Grace.
Or, you know - dead.
Instead, he was hanging out in his new room in a secret underwater (underwater!) facility nicknamed Atlantis and had just learned that he was a super hero. Well, sort of.
“We’re not super heroes,” one of them - the grumpy one, was McKay his name? - had said when John blurted this out in the big group meeting he and Teyla had gone to upon arriving at the facility. “We’re Ancients.”
“What?” John said, not seeing the difference. There were around eight people seated at a circular table in the middle of the room. They were all staring at him, like he was some sort of insect under a microscope, and Teyla shifted next to him.
“It was in your folder,” she hissed, almost too softly for him to hear.
He stared at her incredulously. She had expected him to actually read all of that? It had to have been over 100 pages! How was he supposed to know that crazy international organizations of super heroes had pop quizzes?
“Where’d you dig this one up, Jackson?” McKay demanded, swirling in his seat to glare at the bespectacled man three seats down from him. "Comic Con?"
John frowned, unpleasant thoughts about McKay filtering through his head. The pretty, brown haired woman across the table laughed out loud.
“Elizabeth can hear your thoughts,” Teyla said, continuing her under-the-breath guidance. She was a lot nicer when she wasn’t waving a gun in his face or nearly crashing her BMW into guardrails. “I would be careful if I were you.”
“Technically, we’re not the Ancient Ones themselves - just their descendants,” Jackson said, pushing his glasses up his nose. He reminded John of one of his university professors, the ones that tended to babble for twenty minutes before making their point. “The Ancient Ones … uh, why aren’t you wearing a shirt?”
“Did Teyla beat you up?” a man with wicked looking dreadlocks asked, grinning viciously at him. John nodded nervously and he let out a bark of laughter. “She does that a lot. Means she likes you.”
John glanced at Teyla out of the corner of his eye and was surprised to find her flushing at the other man’s comment.
“And she must like you a lot if she’s already trying to get you naked,” McKay added, smirking at the two of them. A second later, his notebook flew up and hit him in the face. “Ow, Teyla! There was no need for that!”
“You know better, Rodney,” Teyla said simply, but if looks could kill, McKay would be roasting over a spitfire by now. “Keep your comments to yourself… and that goes for you as well, Ronon.”
“Anyway,” Jackson said loudly, desperately trying to get attention back to him. He clearly relished the chance to explain things - John got the feeling these people didn’t get meet new people or get out much any more. “The Ancient Ones, as they were referred to in most texts, were the first race of humans on Earth and they were much more highly evolved than humans of today. You’re familiar with basic mythology, right?” Jackson breezed on before John could respond. “The Ancients are generally considered the source behind many of the myths on Earth, mostly Greek and Roman, and were extremely powerful. They began to interbreed with normal humans once their numbers began to deplete and produced us.”
“So, you’re saying that you’re - I’m - part god?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, we think you might be descended from the Ancient who called himself Zeus - ”
The blonde woman sitting next to an empty chair cleared her throat and leaned forward.
“The only thing that makes us different from other humans is our increased brain activity. Most of our brains operate at over fifty percent of their normal capacity. The increased activity gives us extraordinary abilities like telepathy or increased strength. We generally live longer too,” she gave him a brilliant smile. “I’m one hundred and seven years old.”
“In summary, we’re super heroes,” a deep voice said, but John couldn’t place from which person on the table it had come from. A moment later, a grey haired man appeared in the empty chair and John actually yelped in surprise. “I’m the Invisible Man, Jack O’Neill. Nice to meet ya.”
“Jack - ”
“Think of us as a more neurotic version of the Justice League. Over there we have Daniel, the Scholarly Boy Wonder, and Rodney the Atomic Annoyance. Next to me are the lovely Brainiac Babe, a.k.a Sam Carter, and Teal’c … well, he’s just Teal’c,” O’Neill stopped when he noticed the others’ glares. “What? I don’t know why you people always have to spoil their enthusiasm. He’s the first one that’s come in years who doesn’t think we’re freaks and isn’t having a psychotic episode!”
John, too, was surprised how well he was taking this. It wasn’t everyday he was told he was the descendant of Zeus, probably had really cool powers that would’ve saved him from getting beat-up in middle school a couple of times and everyone who ever knew him would never hear from again. He knew the breakdown would come eventually; he was incredibly good at repressing horrible things for a long time.
But, from the moment he had walked into Atlantis, everything had just felt right. It was like he had been sleepwalking through the first twenty-four years of his life and finally someone had come along and woke him up. Everything just felt different and better. He felt different, like he could do anything he wanted now.
A jingling sound drew him out of his mental shell and he glanced toward the door. It sounded like a doorbell but there was no handle to the door and no one had shown him how to the doors (or anything in this place, come to think of it) actually worked -
The door slid open suddenly and Teyla poked her head in.
“Did you do that or did I?” John asked, standing up from his bed. He felt a little more on even footing with her now that he had a shirt again.
“You. Rodney and Sam have designed most of the technology in Atlantis to respond to mental commands,” Teyla said, hovering in the doorway. He noticed she had changed out of the leather get-up she had ‘retrieved’ him in and into some comfortable looking jeans and a t-shirt. “Did no one tell you that?”
“No. I bet it was in the packet, wasn’t it?” he said and she smiled unsurely. “You can come in if you want.”
“That is fine. I just wanted to see how you are settling in,” she replied. “Did you get your schedule for tomorrow?”
John walked over to his desk and glanced down at the stack of papers sitting there.
“Yeah. I have a … Chair Test at 9?”
“The Chair is one of the few remaining Ancient artifacts we have. It reacts to our genetic abnormalities. The stronger reaction, the better,” Teyla explained, taking a few steps inside his room in spite of herself. “You should have no problem with them. Daniel thinks you have even stronger genes than Jack does.”
“You know, none of you guys ever told me what you Ancients do here besides look for other Ancients.”
They hadn’t exactly told him that either, but it wasn’t too hard to guess. They were out to protect their own and to keep their presence hidden. They couldn’t do when people like him were wandering around like a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off and expose them.
Teyla blinked at him. She really was very pretty, and maybe once he got over losing Nancy (because you don’t just forget about a relationship that defined three years of your life, no matter how many new, good-looking super friends you made) he’d have a chance with her.
“I thought that would have been obvious,” she said, leaning against the wall. “We help the human race. Rodney, for instance, is the one responsible for the computer age. He’s been slipping engineers ideas for ages. Steve Jobs is his new favorite because he is innovative enough on his own and Rodney likes to have someone to compete with besides Sam and Radek.
“Some of us work with the international governments. Elizabeth uses her talents to negotiate treaties with other countries and Daniel has limitless knowledge that he lends to the historical community. Jack, Ronon and myself are … mercenaries, for a lack of a better term,” she paused for a moment, chewing on her tongue as she debating to tell him something else. “We also keep the humans safe from the Wraith.”
John felt a chill trickle down his spine.
“Who are they?”
“You are better off not knowing for now. Trust me,” she added, catching sight of look on his face. She glanced at her watch. “I had better leave. You need to get your rest - ”
“Wait, just one more question,” John said and she paused, looking over her shoulder at him. He fumbled for a moment, not actually having a question in mind and then said, “Do you have any other abilities? Besides the other two?”
“Just the power to heal,” she said slowly. “Would you like me to show you? I feel terrible about earlier. I am usually not that cruel.”
“Uh…sure.”
Teyla crossed the room in three quick strides and stood in front of him. John tried not to flinch when she reached up to his face. Her hands slid across his cheek in a soft, smooth motion, a far cry from her punches before. Once she reached the spot where his bruises where forming, John felt her hand heat up. The heat transferred from her hand to his cheek, spreading through his skin and straight down to the bone. She shifted after a moment and her thumb brushed across the cut on his lip, sending a shiver through him that had nothing to do with healing.
“There,” she said, pulling away with a smile on her lips. “All better.”
John poked his cheek, just to make sure. It didn’t sting and his lip felt better too.
“Are you sure I’ll be able to do stuff like this?”
“In time,” she said, backing away from him. “I shall see you around, John.”
“Yeah,” John said to the empty room after she left. “See you.”
TITLE: With Great Power
AUTHOR: greenconverses
SUMMARY/DESCRIPTION: John knew going to Italy for the summer had been a bad idea. You never knew what kind of trouble you were going to get into overseas.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: John and Teyla, with appearances with the rest of the Atlantis cast and some of the SG-1 cast.
RATING: PG-13 for some language
WORDCOUNT: around 3.500
SPOILERS: None.
WARNINGS: None in particular. Crack heavy.
NOTES: My apologies for being so late! I have limited Internet access and I've been very busy at work the last few days, one of the few places I can get access. This fic was partially inspired by all the commercials for the movie Wanted and maybe a little bit of Hellboy and other super secret agent/super hero things I saw in the last few weeks. Thanks to allisnow for the quick beta!
With Great Power
Signing up for the two-week summer trip to Italy hadn’t been John’s idea.
Nancy had spotted the flyer in the political science building in February and begged him to come with her. It’d be romantic, she said, the two of them visiting all the famous sites in Rome and Venice and Florence. It was cheap and didn’t he remember when they had talked about going to Europe together before? Best of all, she said, he’d be able to get those fine art credits he’d been putting off since freshman year.
After much poking and prodding, John had reluctantly agreed to go with her. Ever since then, the little voice of caution in the back of his mind hadn’t shut up about what a terrible idea this trip was. John tended to ignore that voice of reason on a fairly regular basis and this occasion had been no different.
Now, with a short, strange woman holding him at gunpoint in a dark Venetian alley, that little voice was doing one hell of a victory “I told you so!” dance.
“You are coming with me,” the woman said, her dark eyes intense. John would’ve thought her very pretty if, you know, she wasn’t trying to kidnap him and he didn’t already have a girlfriend.
“Am I?” he asked before he could stop himself.
It probably wasn’t the best idea to mouth off when a gun barrel was pressed between his eyes, but the smart side of his brain tended to jump ship and abandon him in high stress situations.
“I am already running behind,” she said, annoyance creeping into her voice. “Please do not make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
John couldn’t figure out why the police weren’t descending on this woman at this very moment. He wasn’t that far from the crowded piazza - he’d only ducked into the alley so he could have a quick smoke without Nancy noticing.
“I’m not being difficult,” he said, his mouth still thinking it was best to remain disconnected from his brain. Maybe he’d buy enough time for someone to notice and call the police. “I just think this is a bad idea and I’m trying to persuade you from committing a felony that’ll land you in jail for a few years. And you’re too pretty for jail.”
She frowned and John gulped, realizing he’d made a bad move. He tried again, “My friends are just around the corner. They’ll notice I’m missing, you know.”
The woman sighed and pulled the gun away. John’s shoulders relaxed just a bit as she holstered it at her hip.
“No, they won’t,” she said.
Then she belted him on the chin with a right hook that snapped his head to the side and made him see stars. He stumbled into the brick wall, groaning in pain. He’d been on the receiving end of several punches in his life but none ever hurt quite as much as hers did. Was her fist made of iron or something?
He felt her hands sliding under his shirt and he squawked weakly in protest as she tugged it over his head. He looked up at her, watching as she balled up his shirt around her fist.
“What’re you - ”
She hit him again. Her blow wasn’t softened at all and she drew blood this time. She mopped up the blood from his lip with his shirt and tossed it to the ground. She was digging in his pants pocket next, pulling out his wallet and cell phone. The cell phone was on the ground and crushed under her heel in seconds; she flipped through his wallet and tossed out his student ID card on the ground next to his bloody shirt.
She did this all with an air of professionalism that would’ve impressed him if, again, this whole armed robbery and kidnapping thing wasn’t taking place.
“Now, are you finished protesting?” she asked coolly, glancing through his wallet at his credit cards, “or do I need to use some of more of my own methods of persuasion, John Sheppard?”
“I’m done,” John wheezed, blood continuing to dribble down his chin.
“Good choice,” she said, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him down the alley. They made several sharp turns down other alleys and John made a valiant effort to remember which way they had come, but his effort was made worthless when they came around their last turn and a sleek black BMW Coup was waiting for them. The lady might be mental, but at least she had good taste in cars.
She gestured for him to get in the passenger side; John’s eyes flickered down to where her hand was curled over her weapon.
“Do not get any ideas,” she said sternly, catching his gaze. “Or a cut lip will be the least of your worries.”
The thing was, John hadn’t been getting any ideas. He was bleeding, shirtless, and being kidnapped by an incredibly strong (and gorgeous) woman in a country where he knew less than ten phrases in the native tongue. Things couldn’t get much worse than this.
*
Retrieving the new ones was always trouble for Teyla. Ronon could simply tower over them and growl, and they’d run toward the car. Rodney was good with talking their ears off and Aiden … well, they had not paid much attention to Aiden’s techniques until it was too late and look where that had almost gotten them.
But Teyla always had to use force with the new ones. Either they did not think anything of her until she had them flat on their backs, groaning in pain and with a sizable dent in their egos, or she got stuck with the difficult ones like this John Sheppard. She didn’t like using force - it caused some trust issues when the new ones eventually got to field level with her - and it was the reason why she had not done retrieval in decades.
John was supposed to have been Aiden’s retrieval but with him running off and the rest of the team swamped trying to recover, the duty had fallen to her. She had fumed for a bit until she had gotten a good look at John’s profile. That was when things started looking up.
She glanced at him in the passenger seat out of the corner of her eye as she sped down the Italian roadway. He was delicately fingering his jaw, where the skin was already beginning to purple, and she resisted the sudden urge to reach out and touch him. Healing only worked when the other person was receptive to the touch and she was sure he wouldn’t welcome hers for a long time.
“You didn’t have to hit me twice,” he said, breaking the silence suddenly, as if he could read where her thoughts were focused. Which he very well could - his profile had only listed what possible qualities he possessed, not the ones he actually had. “The gun had me pretty much convinced you meant business.”
“I apologize,” Teyla said. “But I am very late and your mouth was not doing you any favors.”
John smiled ruefully. He had the look of a man who knew his time would be running out soon; he could not be further from the truth.
“Why me?” he asked, turning his gaze on her. “Is it because of my dad? That old bastard hates me and he isn’t going to give your group a dime if you’re planning on holding me hostage.”
“You are not our hostage,” she said patiently, steering the car into the far lane where it was mostly clear of traffic and punching the accelerator. “But after today, you will no longer be able to return to your old life. Nor will you want to, I think. The John Sheppard your friends and family knew died in that alley.”
He fell silent, a terribly sad look on his face. Teyla remembered reading that he’d had a long-time girlfriend and was probably planning on marrying her sooner or later. She could not pity him - they all had to give up something precious when they received the call - but she could sympathize.
“Have you ever felt as if you were…” Teyla searched for the words. It had been a very long time since she had done this, “Not quite human?”
John’s expression became closed and guarded, and he shifted subtly in his seat. Teyla tried to ignore the way the muscles of his bare chest tensed - it was not an easy task.
“No,” he lied tersely.
“Oh?” she replied, letting go of the wheel of the car and turning to him. “There were no inexplicable incidents as a child? Nothing you did as a teenager that struck others as odd?”
“If you went through all this trouble just to hand me my Hogwarts letter, you’re going to very disappointed. There’s nothing special about me at all,” he said. “So you might as well - Christ, put your hands back on the wheel!”
Teyla sighed and inclined her head to the right. Just before the car ran off the road, it corrected its own path and shifted into a higher gear. She folded her arms over her chest as the car kept driving itself, weaving in and out of traffic, and arched an eyebrow at John.
He was staring at her as if he had never seen anything quite like her before. At least the new ones reactions had not changed much since she was last out on retrieval.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Did - are you doing that?”
“I can do much more than that,” Teyla replied, although she did not move her lips. John noticed and heard her all the same; if anything, his eyes got fantastically wider. “And so can you.”
“I can?” he croaked.
Teyla reached for his file jammed between the two seats and tossed it in his lap.
“Why do you think the Air Force refused to take you, even though you fit all of their qualifications and were in perfect health? They knew you were one of us and that we would be coming for you soon enough. That packet should tell you everything you need to know.”
“Who are you?”
Teyla smiled grimly and told him.
*
In the general scheme of things, things could’ve been a lot worse with this kidnapping thing. For instance, he could’ve ended up as a continued feature on Nancy Grace.
Or, you know - dead.
Instead, he was hanging out in his new room in a secret underwater (underwater!) facility nicknamed Atlantis and had just learned that he was a super hero. Well, sort of.
“We’re not super heroes,” one of them - the grumpy one, was McKay his name? - had said when John blurted this out in the big group meeting he and Teyla had gone to upon arriving at the facility. “We’re Ancients.”
“What?” John said, not seeing the difference. There were around eight people seated at a circular table in the middle of the room. They were all staring at him, like he was some sort of insect under a microscope, and Teyla shifted next to him.
“It was in your folder,” she hissed, almost too softly for him to hear.
He stared at her incredulously. She had expected him to actually read all of that? It had to have been over 100 pages! How was he supposed to know that crazy international organizations of super heroes had pop quizzes?
“Where’d you dig this one up, Jackson?” McKay demanded, swirling in his seat to glare at the bespectacled man three seats down from him. "Comic Con?"
John frowned, unpleasant thoughts about McKay filtering through his head. The pretty, brown haired woman across the table laughed out loud.
“Elizabeth can hear your thoughts,” Teyla said, continuing her under-the-breath guidance. She was a lot nicer when she wasn’t waving a gun in his face or nearly crashing her BMW into guardrails. “I would be careful if I were you.”
“Technically, we’re not the Ancient Ones themselves - just their descendants,” Jackson said, pushing his glasses up his nose. He reminded John of one of his university professors, the ones that tended to babble for twenty minutes before making their point. “The Ancient Ones … uh, why aren’t you wearing a shirt?”
“Did Teyla beat you up?” a man with wicked looking dreadlocks asked, grinning viciously at him. John nodded nervously and he let out a bark of laughter. “She does that a lot. Means she likes you.”
John glanced at Teyla out of the corner of his eye and was surprised to find her flushing at the other man’s comment.
“And she must like you a lot if she’s already trying to get you naked,” McKay added, smirking at the two of them. A second later, his notebook flew up and hit him in the face. “Ow, Teyla! There was no need for that!”
“You know better, Rodney,” Teyla said simply, but if looks could kill, McKay would be roasting over a spitfire by now. “Keep your comments to yourself… and that goes for you as well, Ronon.”
“Anyway,” Jackson said loudly, desperately trying to get attention back to him. He clearly relished the chance to explain things - John got the feeling these people didn’t get meet new people or get out much any more. “The Ancient Ones, as they were referred to in most texts, were the first race of humans on Earth and they were much more highly evolved than humans of today. You’re familiar with basic mythology, right?” Jackson breezed on before John could respond. “The Ancients are generally considered the source behind many of the myths on Earth, mostly Greek and Roman, and were extremely powerful. They began to interbreed with normal humans once their numbers began to deplete and produced us.”
“So, you’re saying that you’re - I’m - part god?”
“Well, not exactly. I mean, we think you might be descended from the Ancient who called himself Zeus - ”
The blonde woman sitting next to an empty chair cleared her throat and leaned forward.
“The only thing that makes us different from other humans is our increased brain activity. Most of our brains operate at over fifty percent of their normal capacity. The increased activity gives us extraordinary abilities like telepathy or increased strength. We generally live longer too,” she gave him a brilliant smile. “I’m one hundred and seven years old.”
“In summary, we’re super heroes,” a deep voice said, but John couldn’t place from which person on the table it had come from. A moment later, a grey haired man appeared in the empty chair and John actually yelped in surprise. “I’m the Invisible Man, Jack O’Neill. Nice to meet ya.”
“Jack - ”
“Think of us as a more neurotic version of the Justice League. Over there we have Daniel, the Scholarly Boy Wonder, and Rodney the Atomic Annoyance. Next to me are the lovely Brainiac Babe, a.k.a Sam Carter, and Teal’c … well, he’s just Teal’c,” O’Neill stopped when he noticed the others’ glares. “What? I don’t know why you people always have to spoil their enthusiasm. He’s the first one that’s come in years who doesn’t think we’re freaks and isn’t having a psychotic episode!”
John, too, was surprised how well he was taking this. It wasn’t everyday he was told he was the descendant of Zeus, probably had really cool powers that would’ve saved him from getting beat-up in middle school a couple of times and everyone who ever knew him would never hear from again. He knew the breakdown would come eventually; he was incredibly good at repressing horrible things for a long time.
But, from the moment he had walked into Atlantis, everything had just felt right. It was like he had been sleepwalking through the first twenty-four years of his life and finally someone had come along and woke him up. Everything just felt different and better. He felt different, like he could do anything he wanted now.
A jingling sound drew him out of his mental shell and he glanced toward the door. It sounded like a doorbell but there was no handle to the door and no one had shown him how to the doors (or anything in this place, come to think of it) actually worked -
The door slid open suddenly and Teyla poked her head in.
“Did you do that or did I?” John asked, standing up from his bed. He felt a little more on even footing with her now that he had a shirt again.
“You. Rodney and Sam have designed most of the technology in Atlantis to respond to mental commands,” Teyla said, hovering in the doorway. He noticed she had changed out of the leather get-up she had ‘retrieved’ him in and into some comfortable looking jeans and a t-shirt. “Did no one tell you that?”
“No. I bet it was in the packet, wasn’t it?” he said and she smiled unsurely. “You can come in if you want.”
“That is fine. I just wanted to see how you are settling in,” she replied. “Did you get your schedule for tomorrow?”
John walked over to his desk and glanced down at the stack of papers sitting there.
“Yeah. I have a … Chair Test at 9?”
“The Chair is one of the few remaining Ancient artifacts we have. It reacts to our genetic abnormalities. The stronger reaction, the better,” Teyla explained, taking a few steps inside his room in spite of herself. “You should have no problem with them. Daniel thinks you have even stronger genes than Jack does.”
“You know, none of you guys ever told me what you Ancients do here besides look for other Ancients.”
They hadn’t exactly told him that either, but it wasn’t too hard to guess. They were out to protect their own and to keep their presence hidden. They couldn’t do when people like him were wandering around like a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off and expose them.
Teyla blinked at him. She really was very pretty, and maybe once he got over losing Nancy (because you don’t just forget about a relationship that defined three years of your life, no matter how many new, good-looking super friends you made) he’d have a chance with her.
“I thought that would have been obvious,” she said, leaning against the wall. “We help the human race. Rodney, for instance, is the one responsible for the computer age. He’s been slipping engineers ideas for ages. Steve Jobs is his new favorite because he is innovative enough on his own and Rodney likes to have someone to compete with besides Sam and Radek.
“Some of us work with the international governments. Elizabeth uses her talents to negotiate treaties with other countries and Daniel has limitless knowledge that he lends to the historical community. Jack, Ronon and myself are … mercenaries, for a lack of a better term,” she paused for a moment, chewing on her tongue as she debating to tell him something else. “We also keep the humans safe from the Wraith.”
John felt a chill trickle down his spine.
“Who are they?”
“You are better off not knowing for now. Trust me,” she added, catching sight of look on his face. She glanced at her watch. “I had better leave. You need to get your rest - ”
“Wait, just one more question,” John said and she paused, looking over her shoulder at him. He fumbled for a moment, not actually having a question in mind and then said, “Do you have any other abilities? Besides the other two?”
“Just the power to heal,” she said slowly. “Would you like me to show you? I feel terrible about earlier. I am usually not that cruel.”
“Uh…sure.”
Teyla crossed the room in three quick strides and stood in front of him. John tried not to flinch when she reached up to his face. Her hands slid across his cheek in a soft, smooth motion, a far cry from her punches before. Once she reached the spot where his bruises where forming, John felt her hand heat up. The heat transferred from her hand to his cheek, spreading through his skin and straight down to the bone. She shifted after a moment and her thumb brushed across the cut on his lip, sending a shiver through him that had nothing to do with healing.
“There,” she said, pulling away with a smile on her lips. “All better.”
John poked his cheek, just to make sure. It didn’t sting and his lip felt better too.
“Are you sure I’ll be able to do stuff like this?”
“In time,” she said, backing away from him. “I shall see you around, John.”
“Yeah,” John said to the empty room after she left. “See you.”