SGA Fic: The Grace of Mortal Men
Title: The Grace of Mortal Men
Author: Kajikia
Pairing/Rating: Teyla/Rodney, PG
Summary: "It has come to my attention," Rodney said, "that I can be somewhat abrasive and short-tempered."
Spoilers: through 3x20 "First Strike"
Length: 3800 words
Written for the Rodney/Teyla Thing-a-Thon, for emeraldteal who wanted Teyla teaching Rodney meditation.
Teyla would only admit it under duress, or possibly the influence of alcohol, but when she first allied herself with the Atlantis expedition, she had to make a list of Rodney McKay's good qualities to recite to herself when he was being particularly annoying. It was a trick her father had taught her the first time he let her negotiate offworld: "Hold a person's strengths in your mind when you speak to him, and it will help you tolerate his weaknesses."
So she made a list for Rodney. He was arrogant, but he seemed to be as clever as he thought he was. He was tactless and judgmental, but he was generous (if not gracious) with his talents, and regarded his intelligence as reason to work more instead of less. He quailed at things that even his own people considered inconsequential, but in times of true peril he was bravenot fearless, but brave. Over the years she had to resort to the list less and less frequently.
She still wasn't expecting this, though.
"It has come to my attention," Rodney said, "that I can be somewhat abrasive and short-tempered."
Teyla pressed her lips together so she didn't smile and made a noncommittal sound.
Ronon smirked at her over Rodney's shoulder.
"Yes, well, Ronon said that you've been teaching him meditation techniques, and I thought...you could teach me as well."
It was always easy to tell when Rodney was mocking someone (unlike John; point seventeen on her list), and he appeared earnest. So she did the proper thing, and smiled and said, "Of course, I would be honored."
Rodney lasted nearly five minutes before he got a muscle cramp from the cross-legged position. Ronon almost fell over laughing, and then helped him to the infirmary.
She did not expect him to return for another lesson. She thought, perhaps unfairly, that his interest was an artifact of the changes the Ancient machine had wrought in his body, something that would fade with time.
But when Ronon came for his next lesson, Rodney was with him, looking grimly determined.
When Rodney started talking about Katie Brown again, Teyla thought she understood the reason for his persistence.
***
The first item she put on her list was the image of Rodney walking into the terrible life-stealing cloud that Jinto had released.
The last item she put on her list was the image of Rodney's hands pouring the memorial tea for her father, even though it conjured up a faint, phantom twinge of the tight pain of suppressed tears.
***
"You are thinking of something else."
"Nothing! I am thinking about nothing!"
She raised one eyebrow.
Rodney squirmed just a little. "Technically, the vacuum of space is nothing."
"We'll start again with the breathing exercises."
***
"I hear you're teaching McKay to meditate," John said.
He swung his left bantos rod at her hip, but it was only a feint. She slid out of its path, not bothering to open her guard up to counter it.
"Yes," she said. "Would you like to join us?"
She feinted right herself, and he managed to check himself before he committed to the block. He was improving.
He made a face. "Yeah, no thanks. But I guess that means I need to get my umbrella out."
She could ignore his sparring feints, but somehow not his conversational ones. "Umbrella?"
He flashed her a pleased grin. "Rodney's meditating. The rain of frogs has to be next."
She mostly pulled her blow when she smacked his ass.
***
Ronon claimed he couldn't sit still long enough to meditate, but he was a forest pool of tranquility compared to Rodney. Even when he was trying to sit still, he was fidgeting mentally. She found it easier to forgive than Ronon's snoring, though, because it had been her problem as well when she first started learning. There had always been things to think about, to worry about, that meditating took time away from. Until that first moment of clarity and peace.
She was so used to struggling with Rodney's fitful energy that it was almost a shock when he was still for the first time. The world was full of silence, everything sharp and clear and exactly as it should be, and she and Rodney were at the center of that stillness. Their breaths came in unison, strangely intimate, as though they shared the same lungs.
It was only for a moment.
"Oh," he said, and opened his eyes, and it was lost. But he seemed thoughtful when he left.
***
It hurt when she inhaled, a thin, sharp pain even through the Earth drugs. Some small, perverse part of her welcomed the pain, though. It seemed fitting to have a physical manifestation of her grief, a last token of Carson's skills. He would scold her terribly for doing this, of course. She carefully shifted her grip on the tray so that she could press the guestbell to Rodney's quarters.
"Oh my God, what are you doing out of the infirmary?" he asked when he opened the door. He took the tea tray away from her and shoved a stack of papers and clothes off a chair.
"I was not able to share the mourning rites of your people on Earth. I thought perhaps you would share mine here."
He hesitated with his hand over the tea things, and his face crumpled a little. "I don'twho would serve? I know he was your friend, too."
"We pour for each other."
***
She woke up in the middle of the night and felt like it was still crawling up her belly. She scrambled up, brushing off her clothes and hair. Just to be sure she shook out the bedclothes, too. She stood next to the bed, trying to slow her breathing. She brought the lights up, but the back of her neck still itched, her heart still beat too fast. Then she made the mistake of looking at the air vent.
She took her bantos rods with her when she left, and told herself it was because she was planning to practice stances in the gym. At the last minute she touched the lab section on the transporter map.
She was not surprised to see Rodney slumped over a laptop at one of the lab benches. She exchanged her bantos rods for two mugs of what was most likely coffee. She had the sense to call Rodney's name from a few arm lengths away. He startled and made an undignified noise.
"Good God, don't do that," he said, hand over his heart.
"Am I interrupting?"
"No. I'm just rerunning some of the Aurora simulations." She knew the simulations did not need to be monitored.
He kicked another wheeled chair over to her. "What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to be sure that you had not begun to transform into a bug-creature."
He shuddered. "Thank you. I had almost forgotten about that possibility."
She handed him one of the mugs.
He looked at it for a long moment, rubbing his thumb over the rim. "Do you remember Norina?" he said at last.
"Yes," she said, because as soon as he asked, she did: pretty and curiously elegant and so taken with Rodney, and now dead under a pile of corpses. Teyla was suddenly glad that she had been the one to get the coffee. She met his eyes and tapped the bottom of her mug on the table, the offering to the dead.
He smiled a little with the side of his face that wasn't bandaged and copied her gesture. She pulled the chair over beside him to look at the laptop. She was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, and it made her think of the end of the mission, surrounded by monsters, Rodney warm and solid beside her. She wondered when he had gone from being someone she protected to being someone she trusted at her back.
Text scrolled across the screen, strangely hypnotic, the output of thousands of calculations marching towards a conclusion. She let her breathing even out and match his. It was almost like meditation, and she thought, with a little bubble of amusement, that perhaps her mistake had been starting with a candle instead of a laptop.
***
The women of Atlantis gossiped like old men, which was how Teyla learned that Rodney was no longer courting Katie Brown.
He said nothing about it.
"Does this...do you find this useful?" she asked when he arrived at the usual time.
"No. Yes. Maybe?" He sighed and sat down on the floor. "I don't know. I don't think it's making me a better person, but it's not worthless."
"Ah," she said, and let it go.
They went on missions, they ate together, John talked them into watching what she suspected were not actually classic examples of his people's theater traditions.
She meditated every night before she slept. Eventually, she stopped expecting Rodney to not be there.
***
When the beam hit the planet's surface, she thoughtshe knewthat it would cut across the Athosian settlement. Jamus and his hollowed-out moon flashed into her mind; she thought this must be the most terrible fate in the world for a leader, to see her people annihilated because of the choices she made and yet survive herself. When the display came up and showed the beam cutting harmlessly over open water, she was light-headed with relief, but the memory of that feeling lingered.
It was still with her when the Apollo beamed her to the mainland to coordinate the evacuation of her people. The most terrible fate in the world, and yet
"What will you do?" Halling asked.
"I will go with Atlantis," she said. She took a deep breath. "But there is the risk that the city may not survive the voyage. Perhaps the council should choose another leader, in case...in case."
He gave her a serene smile. "The council can lead while you are absent."
"And if the city is destroyed?"
"It will be as if you were Wraith-taken. We will wait one year, and then we will mourn you. And then Nyssa will campaign shamelessly to be named our leader, so you must ensure that the city is not destroyed."
She smiled at him.
"I know you would not give up this burden lightly," he said, serious again. "I know that this has been harder for you than for your father, even, because you want more for us than just survival. You want peace and an end to the Wraith threat, not just for our people but for all in this galaxy. We trust you to lead us well, but we do not follow you blindly. Years from now, when the people of this galaxy speak of our emancipation from the Wraith, they will say it was Teyla, leader of the Athosians, who brought it to pass."
Teyla smiled again, so that she would not weep in the face of his kindness. Halling pressed his forehead to hers for a moment.
"We will wait for you on Atlantis's new planet."
***
When the beam hit the side of the control tower, she thought of Jamus again. In the end, he had died, but his people had lived. Ever since her people had been spared, she realized, she had been half-waiting for this. Brilliant light, then darkness and heat and pain. Then Rodney said, "Teyla," and she opened her eyes.
"Oh thank God," he said. "Hold this." He shoved a datapad into her hands and stuck his head under the console. And like that she snapped back into the real universe, the one that did not make bargains.
***
"Twenty-four hours," Rodney said.
"We have had to conserve power before," Teyla said.
"Yes, but not while floating in space," he snapped back, but he was already tapping away at the datapad. "Okay, okay...Sheppard, you'll have to do this from the chair. I don't trust our control up here. Pull the shield back to cover only the central tower and the infirmarytry to get the city to keep the air instead of venting it. Everybody should be in those areas already, but do keep an eye on lifesigns while you're at it. Full power to the infirmary, minimal power everywhere else. Don't worry, I'll talk you through it."
John shut his mouth and left.
"Teyla, I need you to help me get the interface with the central computers up again. The chair is a huge powersuck and I don't want toAre we so short of medics that we have to have engineers providing first aid? Jameson, have you not heard of triage?"
After that it was mostly a lot of cursing and improvised wiring and applications of duct tape. "If the shields went up faster, maybe I'd consider that a desecration," Rodney said.
An hour later, he was sitting in the middle of a tangle of wires and a semi-circle of laptops.
"I've got access to the Ancient database now. I still have no idea where we are, but I am picking up two interesting readings on the edge of the city's sensors. One appears to be a solar system and one is either a structure or an asteroid belt with a high metal content, I'm not getting a good reading."
John bounced a little on the balls of his feet. "Inside the city's sensors means within jumper range, right?"
"Yes."
John activated his radio. "Martinez, meet me in the jumper bay."
Rodney pulled off his watch and started pushing buttons.
"We'll scout it out," John said. "One jumper for each reading. If we can find a gate, we'll dial the alpha site and have the Apollo pick you guys up."
Rodney tossed him the watch, then pointed at Coleman's wrist and snapped his fingers.
"Really, Rodney, you shouldn't have."
"That's your point of no return. If you haven't started your return trip when that goes off, don't bother coming back because we will most likely have suffocated to death by then." He tossed John the second watch.
"This is the worst going-away present I've ever received," John said.
"I find that hard to believe."
John turned to her and smiled, his reckless little boy smile. He touched his forehead to hers quickly, then cuffed Rodney on the head. "I'll be back in a jiffy," he said. "Martinez, I'll flip you for the planet."
"It's still better than a nuclear bomb," Rodney said, almost under his breath, when John had left. "We're okay on breathable air for a good while. The limiting factor is going to be powering the shield. Even at its minimum extent, we have two days at most. That goes down to pretty much zero if we want to move. If we wait too long, we may not even have enough power to dial the gate. Of course that assumes we can figure out where we are." He rubbed a hand over his face. "So I guess the good news is we'll die of explosive decompression instead of suffocation."
Thoughts of Jamus nagged at her again. "Rodney, if this city was designed to fly in space, should it not have airtight doors in case there is an emergency?"
"Of course! An emergency bulkhead system...where's the city schematics?"
He found the correct laptop and started typing. "Yes, we can make the core rooms of the towers airtight, I just have to activate the emergency protocol." His excitement faded a little. "Well, great, now we're back to suffocation. Right." He activated his radio. "Radek"
He stopped.
"I will go to the infirmary," she said quietly, "to check on their progress. Unless you still need me here?"
"No," he said, looking around at the wreckage of the control tower. "This is good enough for now. I'll get on citywide, let people know we're shutting down the shield and going to emergency containment."
The infirmary was a scene of quiet chaos. Rodney was right; there weren't enough medical personnel to handle the disaster. A nurse was binding Radek's arm to his chest. His face was pale and tight with pain.
"Broken ribs," he said. "It is nothing. Does Rodney need me?"
"Yes. How is Dr. Weir?"
"In surgery. They will not say."
She touched his unbound hand gently. "I will tell Rodney you will join him when you can."
Ronon was in a bed in the corner. The glass shard in his wound had been packed with bandages and they had immobilized his arm. From his sweet, happy smile, they had also given him painkillers.
"Teyyyylaaaa," he said. "Still not dead?"
"Still not dead," she agreed, brushing the hair back from his face.
"They gave me the good drugs while I wait for surgery. 'M after the guy with internal bleeding," he said solemnly.
"Maybe you should rest until then."
"Hmmmmm..." he said, and it trailed off into a snore.
"Oh, shit!" someone shouted behind her. "Apply pressure! Apply pressure!"
After that it was mostly bandages and antibiotic ointment: minor burns and cuts, the occasional dramatic but harmless scalp wound, everyone that the scanner cleared.
Rodney found her in Elizabeth's office, after the infirmary had taken care of everyone not waiting for actual surgery.
He collapsed into the chair in front of her desk. "How is...everyone?"
"Elizabeth and Ronon have come out of surgery and are stable. No one died, and everyone is accounted for. How are you?"
He snorted. "I'm taking a break now because I just drastically underestimated the amount of breathable air we have and spent fifteen minutes panicking before I realized I had calculated the area of the tower instead of the volume. The only bright side is that Radek passed out from manly painkillers about an hour ago so he can't rub it in."
She stood up and walked around the other side of the desk. "Come, sit with me." She tugged him over to an empty spot on the floor so they could sit facing each other. She smiled a little to see him drop so easily into proper position.
She matched her breathing to his, steady and calming, but she doubted either of them would be achieving mindfulness tonight.
After awhile, Rodney said, "I'm glad you're here."
She opened her eyes.
"And I'm not just saying that because Elizabeth and Radek and Ronon are unconscious and Sheppard is flying a jumper in betweenoh my God, that means we're in charge of the city. That's what you're doing in Elizabeth's office!"
"Yes." She was smiling harder, warmed by a rush of affection.
"Yes, well. Good thing we have everything under control."
"I am glad you are here, too, Rodney. And not just because I believe you will find a way to save us all."
"Hmph. Good, because otherwise you'd be very disappointed," he said, but he was smiling a surprised, almost shy smile. He cleared his throat. "Hey, you know what I really wanted one last time while I was waiting to die?"
Teyla leaned forward and kissed him, soft and sweet. When she pulled back, his eyes were huge.
"Actually I was going to say bacon. But you know, kissing is great, too."
She kissed him again, and he opened his mouth and kissed her back, sweetness sliding into heat. She pushed his shirt up and ran the pads and then the nails of her fingers over his nipples. He gasped into her mouth, fumbling with the laces of her shirt, freeing her breasts. She pulled him back down over her. He moved his mouth to her throat, her collarbone, the top of her breast. She palmed the round curve of his buttocks, rolled her hips up against his.
Just as their radios crackled.
"Sir, Captain Martinez just checked in via radio. He's on his way back, and is sending some reconnaissance footage."
"Yes, yes, we'll be right there," Rodney snapped, and he sounded entirely normal.
He rested his forehead against hers for a moment. "The universe hates me," he said.
"Perhaps."
He sat up and straightened his shirt. She relaced her own. Before he stood, she pulled out the last thing she had taken from the infirmary and put it in his palm. Rodney blinked at the condom.
"I am not doing this because I believe we are dying and there will be no consequences."
He searched her face. "Okay," he said.
Captain Martinez reported that the solar system was unhelpful. Gas giants and no gate, and nothing else in the range of the jumper's sensors.
"Sheppard had better have something," Rodney said.
"I got nothing," John said, two hours later. "It's an asteroid mining operation. Completely shut down, out of power, I think. I couldn't even get a warning light."
"No," Rodney said, "that's good. Radek!"
"Yes, yes, I am modifying the search parameters now."
"There can't be that many asteroid mines near gas giant systems"
"There!" Radek turned the monitor around to show a starchart with a small red X. "This is where we are."
"If we know where we are, we can dial the gate," Teyla said. Rodney looked up at her and grinned, brilliant and happy and somehow private, too, like a secret between the two of them. She smiled back, then reached out and pulled him close. He pressed his forehead against hers.
"I told you so," she said.
"Hmph," he said.
And then everyone was hugging and cheering, and Radek was shouting about correcting for drift and Rodney was shouting back that he wasn't an idiot.
"What about the city?" John asked, and everyone was quiet.
"We'll find another ZPM," Rodney said, "and she'll be good as new."
John looked a little shocked. "We can't leave her here by herself, without even a shield."
Radek suddenly burst into laughter.
"What?" Rodney asked suspiciously.
"They were mining this asteroid field to get a component of the alloy they used to make solar sails."
"Let me see that." Rodney pulled the computer around.
"Atlantis has sails?" John said, looking a little dazzled.
"It would take more than a year, I think, but we could sail her to her new home," Radek said.
***
"No!" Rodney shouted to John, then turned back to Teyla.
"Look, I have to go raise the sails now, or Sheppard might actually have a stroke from excitement. I just wanted to say...Me, too."
He shoved something into her hand and took off after John. It was a condom. Actually...
"Two?" she called after him.
He turned around and she raised an eyebrow, and he flushed bright red. "It's symbolic!"
John reappeared at the end of the hallway. "But we have sails! What if we loot the mining station before we go?"
"No!" Rodney shouted. "For the last time! We are NOT going to be space pirates!"
Teyla laughed so hard she almost fell over.
Author: Kajikia
Pairing/Rating: Teyla/Rodney, PG
Summary: "It has come to my attention," Rodney said, "that I can be somewhat abrasive and short-tempered."
Spoilers: through 3x20 "First Strike"
Length: 3800 words
Written for the Rodney/Teyla Thing-a-Thon, for emeraldteal who wanted Teyla teaching Rodney meditation.
Teyla would only admit it under duress, or possibly the influence of alcohol, but when she first allied herself with the Atlantis expedition, she had to make a list of Rodney McKay's good qualities to recite to herself when he was being particularly annoying. It was a trick her father had taught her the first time he let her negotiate offworld: "Hold a person's strengths in your mind when you speak to him, and it will help you tolerate his weaknesses."
So she made a list for Rodney. He was arrogant, but he seemed to be as clever as he thought he was. He was tactless and judgmental, but he was generous (if not gracious) with his talents, and regarded his intelligence as reason to work more instead of less. He quailed at things that even his own people considered inconsequential, but in times of true peril he was bravenot fearless, but brave. Over the years she had to resort to the list less and less frequently.
She still wasn't expecting this, though.
"It has come to my attention," Rodney said, "that I can be somewhat abrasive and short-tempered."
Teyla pressed her lips together so she didn't smile and made a noncommittal sound.
Ronon smirked at her over Rodney's shoulder.
"Yes, well, Ronon said that you've been teaching him meditation techniques, and I thought...you could teach me as well."
It was always easy to tell when Rodney was mocking someone (unlike John; point seventeen on her list), and he appeared earnest. So she did the proper thing, and smiled and said, "Of course, I would be honored."
Rodney lasted nearly five minutes before he got a muscle cramp from the cross-legged position. Ronon almost fell over laughing, and then helped him to the infirmary.
She did not expect him to return for another lesson. She thought, perhaps unfairly, that his interest was an artifact of the changes the Ancient machine had wrought in his body, something that would fade with time.
But when Ronon came for his next lesson, Rodney was with him, looking grimly determined.
When Rodney started talking about Katie Brown again, Teyla thought she understood the reason for his persistence.
***
The first item she put on her list was the image of Rodney walking into the terrible life-stealing cloud that Jinto had released.
The last item she put on her list was the image of Rodney's hands pouring the memorial tea for her father, even though it conjured up a faint, phantom twinge of the tight pain of suppressed tears.
***
"You are thinking of something else."
"Nothing! I am thinking about nothing!"
She raised one eyebrow.
Rodney squirmed just a little. "Technically, the vacuum of space is nothing."
"We'll start again with the breathing exercises."
***
"I hear you're teaching McKay to meditate," John said.
He swung his left bantos rod at her hip, but it was only a feint. She slid out of its path, not bothering to open her guard up to counter it.
"Yes," she said. "Would you like to join us?"
She feinted right herself, and he managed to check himself before he committed to the block. He was improving.
He made a face. "Yeah, no thanks. But I guess that means I need to get my umbrella out."
She could ignore his sparring feints, but somehow not his conversational ones. "Umbrella?"
He flashed her a pleased grin. "Rodney's meditating. The rain of frogs has to be next."
She mostly pulled her blow when she smacked his ass.
***
Ronon claimed he couldn't sit still long enough to meditate, but he was a forest pool of tranquility compared to Rodney. Even when he was trying to sit still, he was fidgeting mentally. She found it easier to forgive than Ronon's snoring, though, because it had been her problem as well when she first started learning. There had always been things to think about, to worry about, that meditating took time away from. Until that first moment of clarity and peace.
She was so used to struggling with Rodney's fitful energy that it was almost a shock when he was still for the first time. The world was full of silence, everything sharp and clear and exactly as it should be, and she and Rodney were at the center of that stillness. Their breaths came in unison, strangely intimate, as though they shared the same lungs.
It was only for a moment.
"Oh," he said, and opened his eyes, and it was lost. But he seemed thoughtful when he left.
***
It hurt when she inhaled, a thin, sharp pain even through the Earth drugs. Some small, perverse part of her welcomed the pain, though. It seemed fitting to have a physical manifestation of her grief, a last token of Carson's skills. He would scold her terribly for doing this, of course. She carefully shifted her grip on the tray so that she could press the guestbell to Rodney's quarters.
"Oh my God, what are you doing out of the infirmary?" he asked when he opened the door. He took the tea tray away from her and shoved a stack of papers and clothes off a chair.
"I was not able to share the mourning rites of your people on Earth. I thought perhaps you would share mine here."
He hesitated with his hand over the tea things, and his face crumpled a little. "I don'twho would serve? I know he was your friend, too."
"We pour for each other."
***
She woke up in the middle of the night and felt like it was still crawling up her belly. She scrambled up, brushing off her clothes and hair. Just to be sure she shook out the bedclothes, too. She stood next to the bed, trying to slow her breathing. She brought the lights up, but the back of her neck still itched, her heart still beat too fast. Then she made the mistake of looking at the air vent.
She took her bantos rods with her when she left, and told herself it was because she was planning to practice stances in the gym. At the last minute she touched the lab section on the transporter map.
She was not surprised to see Rodney slumped over a laptop at one of the lab benches. She exchanged her bantos rods for two mugs of what was most likely coffee. She had the sense to call Rodney's name from a few arm lengths away. He startled and made an undignified noise.
"Good God, don't do that," he said, hand over his heart.
"Am I interrupting?"
"No. I'm just rerunning some of the Aurora simulations." She knew the simulations did not need to be monitored.
He kicked another wheeled chair over to her. "What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to be sure that you had not begun to transform into a bug-creature."
He shuddered. "Thank you. I had almost forgotten about that possibility."
She handed him one of the mugs.
He looked at it for a long moment, rubbing his thumb over the rim. "Do you remember Norina?" he said at last.
"Yes," she said, because as soon as he asked, she did: pretty and curiously elegant and so taken with Rodney, and now dead under a pile of corpses. Teyla was suddenly glad that she had been the one to get the coffee. She met his eyes and tapped the bottom of her mug on the table, the offering to the dead.
He smiled a little with the side of his face that wasn't bandaged and copied her gesture. She pulled the chair over beside him to look at the laptop. She was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, and it made her think of the end of the mission, surrounded by monsters, Rodney warm and solid beside her. She wondered when he had gone from being someone she protected to being someone she trusted at her back.
Text scrolled across the screen, strangely hypnotic, the output of thousands of calculations marching towards a conclusion. She let her breathing even out and match his. It was almost like meditation, and she thought, with a little bubble of amusement, that perhaps her mistake had been starting with a candle instead of a laptop.
***
The women of Atlantis gossiped like old men, which was how Teyla learned that Rodney was no longer courting Katie Brown.
He said nothing about it.
"Does this...do you find this useful?" she asked when he arrived at the usual time.
"No. Yes. Maybe?" He sighed and sat down on the floor. "I don't know. I don't think it's making me a better person, but it's not worthless."
"Ah," she said, and let it go.
They went on missions, they ate together, John talked them into watching what she suspected were not actually classic examples of his people's theater traditions.
She meditated every night before she slept. Eventually, she stopped expecting Rodney to not be there.
***
When the beam hit the planet's surface, she thoughtshe knewthat it would cut across the Athosian settlement. Jamus and his hollowed-out moon flashed into her mind; she thought this must be the most terrible fate in the world for a leader, to see her people annihilated because of the choices she made and yet survive herself. When the display came up and showed the beam cutting harmlessly over open water, she was light-headed with relief, but the memory of that feeling lingered.
It was still with her when the Apollo beamed her to the mainland to coordinate the evacuation of her people. The most terrible fate in the world, and yet
"What will you do?" Halling asked.
"I will go with Atlantis," she said. She took a deep breath. "But there is the risk that the city may not survive the voyage. Perhaps the council should choose another leader, in case...in case."
He gave her a serene smile. "The council can lead while you are absent."
"And if the city is destroyed?"
"It will be as if you were Wraith-taken. We will wait one year, and then we will mourn you. And then Nyssa will campaign shamelessly to be named our leader, so you must ensure that the city is not destroyed."
She smiled at him.
"I know you would not give up this burden lightly," he said, serious again. "I know that this has been harder for you than for your father, even, because you want more for us than just survival. You want peace and an end to the Wraith threat, not just for our people but for all in this galaxy. We trust you to lead us well, but we do not follow you blindly. Years from now, when the people of this galaxy speak of our emancipation from the Wraith, they will say it was Teyla, leader of the Athosians, who brought it to pass."
Teyla smiled again, so that she would not weep in the face of his kindness. Halling pressed his forehead to hers for a moment.
"We will wait for you on Atlantis's new planet."
***
When the beam hit the side of the control tower, she thought of Jamus again. In the end, he had died, but his people had lived. Ever since her people had been spared, she realized, she had been half-waiting for this. Brilliant light, then darkness and heat and pain. Then Rodney said, "Teyla," and she opened her eyes.
"Oh thank God," he said. "Hold this." He shoved a datapad into her hands and stuck his head under the console. And like that she snapped back into the real universe, the one that did not make bargains.
***
"Twenty-four hours," Rodney said.
"We have had to conserve power before," Teyla said.
"Yes, but not while floating in space," he snapped back, but he was already tapping away at the datapad. "Okay, okay...Sheppard, you'll have to do this from the chair. I don't trust our control up here. Pull the shield back to cover only the central tower and the infirmarytry to get the city to keep the air instead of venting it. Everybody should be in those areas already, but do keep an eye on lifesigns while you're at it. Full power to the infirmary, minimal power everywhere else. Don't worry, I'll talk you through it."
John shut his mouth and left.
"Teyla, I need you to help me get the interface with the central computers up again. The chair is a huge powersuck and I don't want toAre we so short of medics that we have to have engineers providing first aid? Jameson, have you not heard of triage?"
After that it was mostly a lot of cursing and improvised wiring and applications of duct tape. "If the shields went up faster, maybe I'd consider that a desecration," Rodney said.
An hour later, he was sitting in the middle of a tangle of wires and a semi-circle of laptops.
"I've got access to the Ancient database now. I still have no idea where we are, but I am picking up two interesting readings on the edge of the city's sensors. One appears to be a solar system and one is either a structure or an asteroid belt with a high metal content, I'm not getting a good reading."
John bounced a little on the balls of his feet. "Inside the city's sensors means within jumper range, right?"
"Yes."
John activated his radio. "Martinez, meet me in the jumper bay."
Rodney pulled off his watch and started pushing buttons.
"We'll scout it out," John said. "One jumper for each reading. If we can find a gate, we'll dial the alpha site and have the Apollo pick you guys up."
Rodney tossed him the watch, then pointed at Coleman's wrist and snapped his fingers.
"Really, Rodney, you shouldn't have."
"That's your point of no return. If you haven't started your return trip when that goes off, don't bother coming back because we will most likely have suffocated to death by then." He tossed John the second watch.
"This is the worst going-away present I've ever received," John said.
"I find that hard to believe."
John turned to her and smiled, his reckless little boy smile. He touched his forehead to hers quickly, then cuffed Rodney on the head. "I'll be back in a jiffy," he said. "Martinez, I'll flip you for the planet."
"It's still better than a nuclear bomb," Rodney said, almost under his breath, when John had left. "We're okay on breathable air for a good while. The limiting factor is going to be powering the shield. Even at its minimum extent, we have two days at most. That goes down to pretty much zero if we want to move. If we wait too long, we may not even have enough power to dial the gate. Of course that assumes we can figure out where we are." He rubbed a hand over his face. "So I guess the good news is we'll die of explosive decompression instead of suffocation."
Thoughts of Jamus nagged at her again. "Rodney, if this city was designed to fly in space, should it not have airtight doors in case there is an emergency?"
"Of course! An emergency bulkhead system...where's the city schematics?"
He found the correct laptop and started typing. "Yes, we can make the core rooms of the towers airtight, I just have to activate the emergency protocol." His excitement faded a little. "Well, great, now we're back to suffocation. Right." He activated his radio. "Radek"
He stopped.
"I will go to the infirmary," she said quietly, "to check on their progress. Unless you still need me here?"
"No," he said, looking around at the wreckage of the control tower. "This is good enough for now. I'll get on citywide, let people know we're shutting down the shield and going to emergency containment."
The infirmary was a scene of quiet chaos. Rodney was right; there weren't enough medical personnel to handle the disaster. A nurse was binding Radek's arm to his chest. His face was pale and tight with pain.
"Broken ribs," he said. "It is nothing. Does Rodney need me?"
"Yes. How is Dr. Weir?"
"In surgery. They will not say."
She touched his unbound hand gently. "I will tell Rodney you will join him when you can."
Ronon was in a bed in the corner. The glass shard in his wound had been packed with bandages and they had immobilized his arm. From his sweet, happy smile, they had also given him painkillers.
"Teyyyylaaaa," he said. "Still not dead?"
"Still not dead," she agreed, brushing the hair back from his face.
"They gave me the good drugs while I wait for surgery. 'M after the guy with internal bleeding," he said solemnly.
"Maybe you should rest until then."
"Hmmmmm..." he said, and it trailed off into a snore.
"Oh, shit!" someone shouted behind her. "Apply pressure! Apply pressure!"
After that it was mostly bandages and antibiotic ointment: minor burns and cuts, the occasional dramatic but harmless scalp wound, everyone that the scanner cleared.
Rodney found her in Elizabeth's office, after the infirmary had taken care of everyone not waiting for actual surgery.
He collapsed into the chair in front of her desk. "How is...everyone?"
"Elizabeth and Ronon have come out of surgery and are stable. No one died, and everyone is accounted for. How are you?"
He snorted. "I'm taking a break now because I just drastically underestimated the amount of breathable air we have and spent fifteen minutes panicking before I realized I had calculated the area of the tower instead of the volume. The only bright side is that Radek passed out from manly painkillers about an hour ago so he can't rub it in."
She stood up and walked around the other side of the desk. "Come, sit with me." She tugged him over to an empty spot on the floor so they could sit facing each other. She smiled a little to see him drop so easily into proper position.
She matched her breathing to his, steady and calming, but she doubted either of them would be achieving mindfulness tonight.
After awhile, Rodney said, "I'm glad you're here."
She opened her eyes.
"And I'm not just saying that because Elizabeth and Radek and Ronon are unconscious and Sheppard is flying a jumper in betweenoh my God, that means we're in charge of the city. That's what you're doing in Elizabeth's office!"
"Yes." She was smiling harder, warmed by a rush of affection.
"Yes, well. Good thing we have everything under control."
"I am glad you are here, too, Rodney. And not just because I believe you will find a way to save us all."
"Hmph. Good, because otherwise you'd be very disappointed," he said, but he was smiling a surprised, almost shy smile. He cleared his throat. "Hey, you know what I really wanted one last time while I was waiting to die?"
Teyla leaned forward and kissed him, soft and sweet. When she pulled back, his eyes were huge.
"Actually I was going to say bacon. But you know, kissing is great, too."
She kissed him again, and he opened his mouth and kissed her back, sweetness sliding into heat. She pushed his shirt up and ran the pads and then the nails of her fingers over his nipples. He gasped into her mouth, fumbling with the laces of her shirt, freeing her breasts. She pulled him back down over her. He moved his mouth to her throat, her collarbone, the top of her breast. She palmed the round curve of his buttocks, rolled her hips up against his.
Just as their radios crackled.
"Sir, Captain Martinez just checked in via radio. He's on his way back, and is sending some reconnaissance footage."
"Yes, yes, we'll be right there," Rodney snapped, and he sounded entirely normal.
He rested his forehead against hers for a moment. "The universe hates me," he said.
"Perhaps."
He sat up and straightened his shirt. She relaced her own. Before he stood, she pulled out the last thing she had taken from the infirmary and put it in his palm. Rodney blinked at the condom.
"I am not doing this because I believe we are dying and there will be no consequences."
He searched her face. "Okay," he said.
Captain Martinez reported that the solar system was unhelpful. Gas giants and no gate, and nothing else in the range of the jumper's sensors.
"Sheppard had better have something," Rodney said.
"I got nothing," John said, two hours later. "It's an asteroid mining operation. Completely shut down, out of power, I think. I couldn't even get a warning light."
"No," Rodney said, "that's good. Radek!"
"Yes, yes, I am modifying the search parameters now."
"There can't be that many asteroid mines near gas giant systems"
"There!" Radek turned the monitor around to show a starchart with a small red X. "This is where we are."
"If we know where we are, we can dial the gate," Teyla said. Rodney looked up at her and grinned, brilliant and happy and somehow private, too, like a secret between the two of them. She smiled back, then reached out and pulled him close. He pressed his forehead against hers.
"I told you so," she said.
"Hmph," he said.
And then everyone was hugging and cheering, and Radek was shouting about correcting for drift and Rodney was shouting back that he wasn't an idiot.
"What about the city?" John asked, and everyone was quiet.
"We'll find another ZPM," Rodney said, "and she'll be good as new."
John looked a little shocked. "We can't leave her here by herself, without even a shield."
Radek suddenly burst into laughter.
"What?" Rodney asked suspiciously.
"They were mining this asteroid field to get a component of the alloy they used to make solar sails."
"Let me see that." Rodney pulled the computer around.
"Atlantis has sails?" John said, looking a little dazzled.
"It would take more than a year, I think, but we could sail her to her new home," Radek said.
***
"No!" Rodney shouted to John, then turned back to Teyla.
"Look, I have to go raise the sails now, or Sheppard might actually have a stroke from excitement. I just wanted to say...Me, too."
He shoved something into her hand and took off after John. It was a condom. Actually...
"Two?" she called after him.
He turned around and she raised an eyebrow, and he flushed bright red. "It's symbolic!"
John reappeared at the end of the hallway. "But we have sails! What if we loot the mining station before we go?"
"No!" Rodney shouted. "For the last time! We are NOT going to be space pirates!"
Teyla laughed so hard she almost fell over.