School Challenge: Free Day
Challenge: School
Title: Free Day
Spoilers: Maybe vaguely for S2.
Rating: PG.
Author: Brighid
Summary: School trips are really the same, wherever you go ... or whenever
Note: This is based in a personal experience of what I learned as a child, and what I learned as an adult.
Warning: Go to the end to see warnings.
Free Day
by Brighid
Ume blinked as she passed through the soft tingle of rematerialization into the Ops Centre of Atlantis. Around her the two dozen other students of her module whispered excitedly, standing in open-mouthed wonder at the gleaming silver-white until Mari Alus shooed them out of the way of the next incoming module.
When the group was at last complete, three modules of Scholars in their last cycle at Academy, the Keeper flickered into being. She was a slim woman, bones light like the orex of Ume's homeworld. She looked strange, almost alien, in close-fitted clothes with her face pale and unpainted and her hair uncovered.
But she had been a daughter of the Ancestors, just as Ume was, just as all the children of the stars were. She touched her forehead in the posture of listening, and all the others around her did the same. The Keeper's gaze swept the group, and she smiled when she saw that all were prepared.
"My name is Elizbet Weer, of the Lost Children," she said. "I was the Command of Atlantis in the time of the Great Hunger. Welcome to the Memory of Free Day."
"Free Day," the Scholars repeated, and Mari Alus touched her lips, her belly in respect for Elizbet Weer, who had died where the Keeper stood now, who had shot three Wraith before they'd flanked her and dug their fingers into her to suck the marrow dry.
)0(
The room was choked and bitter with the scent of electrical fires. Fragments of charred plastic gritted her eyes and stung her skin as she watched Lorne's men push guns into Gurpreet and Mariel's hands.
"You really should fall back, Doctor Weir," Lorne said when he handed her the last stunner. He looked like hell, smeared and sooty and his left shoulder crusty with blood, a five-pointed star from a near-miss with a Wraith a few hours ago. Living on borrowed time, he'd said, climbing in through the ductwork after dropping a supply bag into Elizabeth's waiting arms.
They'd eaten the powerbars and drank the water while he explained the current situation. "Zelenka got the gate back-up memory wiped before they made it in," he said. "And his worm purged the system. There's no way they can find their way back to Earth from our computers or Atlantis'. They'll have to get it the hard way."
Now Elizabeth fingered the trigger of the stunner. "I'm not the best shot," she admitted finally, and Lorne had laughed.
"That's why you got the stunner, ma'am," he said. "I've seen your drill records."
Elizabeth smiled wryly. "There's a reason I chose diplomacy, Major," she said.
"How close?" Gurpreet asked finally when the sound of fighting began to echo in the corridors beyond.
"Very close," Lorne said, his face almost but not quite expressionless. "They've broken the last two lines, and the shielding Kavanagh got up won't hold them more than a few minutes. We've got to stretch it out for as long as we can, make them think the gate still matters."
"I can do that," Mariel said, moving in closer to Gurpreet.
"Shoot me, if one gets me," Gurpreet said when the first volley hit the door, made it bulge. "Just ... shoot me."
"I can do that, too," Mariel said.
In the end Elizabeth scrambled for the dropped gun and put a bullet in Gurpreet to stop her screaming, but it was the last in the cartridge. The sound of the blast was still in her ears when she was lifted off the ground, and she looked into a smile that was so hungry it made her gut crawl. And then two fingers pressed into her shoulder, hooked and seeking, and there was a voice inside her head that said, "Tell me".
And Elizabeth wanted to, she really did, but she didn't know, not in a way that would mean anything to them. All the same, they took their time with her, just to be certain.
)0(
The Keeper walked them down to the Healer's Hall. "This is where Healer Bekt worked. He is the creator of the Pestilence, and the Father of the Pure Line that keeps us true to the Ancestors. His vaccine destroys all those of polluted blood, and has been used to cull the unclean worlds of those not blessed by the Legacy that makes us the true inheritors of the Cluster."
Ume blinked as a new hologram appeared of a solid, muscular man in red healer's garb. "The Wraith were an abomination of the Legacy. Their DNA had become contaminated by the Iratus insect. This was the first wave of Cleansing, necessary for the safety of the cluster, and the Faraway Worlds that we lost to the Fires. Purity is necessary to the pursuit of peace and harmony." His voice was different than the Keeper's, burred and soft and at odds with the edge of his words. The Scholars touched their hearts, where the pure blood flowed, and gave thanks.
)0(
Bates stood in the doorway to Beckett's office. "You are to surrender all your materials and samples, Doctor. It's as simple as that."
Beckett stood in front of his desk, tired and rumpled and bristling with defiance. "I bloody well will not," he said. "It's a betrayal of every damn oath I ever took. I will not have you take my vaccine -- my highly experimental and volatile vaccine -- and use it as a goddamned biological weapon. Or are WMD's only unethical when someone other than the US military is using them?" He looked furiously from Bates over to Colonel Caldwell.
Caldwell sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose. "Doctor, I will accept that you do this under protest, and I will make sure that your concerns are noted, but the truth is? The Wraith Hives have put aside their own squabbling and are heading this way in force. We've got a matter of maybe two weeks before they get here and wipe us off the planet and then fly this goddamned city back to the Milky Way. So you know what? I don't really care about your personal ethics if it means that we have a fighting chance of stopping the culling of the whole human race. Now ... stand aside, or I will have Bates order his men to come in here and move you aside." Caldwell ran his hand over his scalp. "I'd really rather not have to, though, Doctor."
Beckett swallowed hard. "Call your men," he said. "I'm not moving, Colonel."
"I'm sorry," Caldwell said before nodding at Bates, who motioned two marines in. "Please escort Doctor Beckett to his quarters, and keep him under house arrest."
The marines were original Atlantis crew; they were gentle with Beckett, and slightly shamefaced in their co-operation. But they took him away just the same.
"I figured he'd have a problem with this," Caldwell said finally, but he sounded tired more than anything.
"That's because he's right, sir," Bates said quietly.
"I know," Caldwell said. "But we don't have the luxury of being right." He went over to Beckett's desk and began to gather the files up.
)0(
The Keeper took them to the Temple of the Ancestors next. A second woman, staff in hand, flickered into existence behind her. "Some of us were marked by the Wraith, touched. We were the weapons left by the Ancestors for the Lost Children to wield when they came back to free us. I am Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tughan." She crossed her arms across her chest and leaned forward, and Alvenra, of the Lineage of Athos, leaned forward as well, until her forehead touched the electrical field that held the ghost of Tughan's daughter. "I was the Seer."
"And I am Ronon Dex," said a voice from the far wall, and Ume turned to see a tall man with a very big gun holstered across his bare back. "I was the Runner."
"And I am Iden," and Irli pointed to the doorway, where a young man with great, dark eyes watched them. "I was the first of the Warriors of the Cleansing."
"These were the Three Blades of the Lost Children," the Keeper said, smiling at each in turn.
"Blessed are the Blades," the Scholars said.
)0(
Teyla arched suddenly, her voice shifting from the cold intonation of the Wraith she'd touched to a soft mewling cry. "They can see, they can see!" and then she arched impossibly higher, so sharply that Beckett heard her vertebrae snap and pop with the strain. For a handful of seconds she hung there, panting and gasping, and then she fell back to the bed, her nose and eyes bleeding, and she smiled.
"I'll eat you first," she said, arm coming up, tearing the restraint like it was tissue. A bolt blasted across the sickbay and she fell back flat against the bed. She smiled up at them, a baring of bloodstained teeth even as her body started to seize.
"Stun," Ronon said, but Beckett ignored him, shouting for the trauma cart when the seizures suddenly stopped. They worked frantically, Beckett feeding the tube in and bagging her as Mills got her hospital top cut open and the paddles placed carefully in an impossibly short time. Three more times she arched up, body flailing like a broken puppet, but in the end there was nothing there to save.
"It was set to stun," Ronon insisted, handing his gun over for Sheppard to check.
"Stun," Sheppard agreed, looking fixedly at the gun and not at the body on the bed.
"I think that ... that it was the Wraith that did it," Beckett said. "It's like they just reached in and shut her off."
Ronon stood staring at the bed for a moment, then pulled his gun from Sheppard's grasp and stormed out of the room.
"It wasn't his fault," Beckett said helplessly. "It's far more mine, for letting her try this again."
"Let him be angry," Sheppard said. "Right now, anger's the only thing we've got." And then he was gone, leaving Beckett to pull the ragged edges of Teyla's top together and gently pull the tube from her throat. When her mouth closed he wiped the blood away and closed her eyes, but he couldn't bring himself to pull the sheet up. Not yet.
)0(
The man beside the Seat smiled at them as the Keeper gestured them into the room. "Welcome."
A ripple of noise moved through the room. This was the Sheppard.
Ume had expected him to be ... taller. Handsome, maybe, as her mother's younger husband. But he had kind eyes, pale like the winter skies she'd grown up with. "This is the Seat of the Ancestors. It is here where the Sheppard became one with Atlantis to defeat the Wraith." He moved and there was a second man stretched in the chair, glowing, alight.
"I am Dohkt Emkay. It was here that I served the Sheppard as he went out into the darkness, reached out and plucked the Wraith from the sky until the few left fled, hoping to escape. But the Cleansing would come, for Sheppard followed them and marked their paths so that we could destroy them and their Hunger, so that we might have a Free Day."
"Free Day," they echoed.
"What happened to the Sheppard?" Oolkin asked from Ume's left, his voice hesitant.
"He went into the Heart of Atlantis," Emkay said, the same answer that all the Scholars had known since their walking days.
"But ... what does that mean?" Ume asked.
"Whatever we need it to mean," Emkay said.
)0(
John stretched out his mind and for once, just for fucking once the Universe worked because there she was, all alight around him, reaching into him. It was like the Antarctic all over again, only a thousand times more so.
"Holy fuck," John said. "Good job, Rodney."
"Yes. Yes it is," Rodney agreed. John opened his eyes and saw Rodney staring down at him, his mouth slanted downward. "I've never seen it at this level, actually, Colonel. I'm not sure if you'll be able to ... I'm not sure," Rodney said.
"Oh, sure. You say that when I don't have any witnesses," John said. He lifted his hand from the armrest, groped for Rodney's fingers. "Rodney," he started, but really? There was nothing he could say.
"I know, John." Rodney squeezed his hand, and when John closed his eyes again he felt a kiss, close-mouthed and frowning and tasting of salt, pressed against his mouth.
"When I can't anymore, you'll have to," he said, one last gasp against the swelling tide of bright.
"I know, John," Rodney said. "I know."
John sank into the chair and let Atlantis in.
)0(
Ume was in the last group to go through, and she turned to see the Keeper watching her.
"Remember us," the Keeper said.
"I will," Ume promised, and then she crossed the threshold to Academy.
)0(
End
Warning: Character death.
Title: Free Day
Spoilers: Maybe vaguely for S2.
Rating: PG.
Author: Brighid
Summary: School trips are really the same, wherever you go ... or whenever
Note: This is based in a personal experience of what I learned as a child, and what I learned as an adult.
Warning: Go to the end to see warnings.
Free Day
by Brighid
Ume blinked as she passed through the soft tingle of rematerialization into the Ops Centre of Atlantis. Around her the two dozen other students of her module whispered excitedly, standing in open-mouthed wonder at the gleaming silver-white until Mari Alus shooed them out of the way of the next incoming module.
When the group was at last complete, three modules of Scholars in their last cycle at Academy, the Keeper flickered into being. She was a slim woman, bones light like the orex of Ume's homeworld. She looked strange, almost alien, in close-fitted clothes with her face pale and unpainted and her hair uncovered.
But she had been a daughter of the Ancestors, just as Ume was, just as all the children of the stars were. She touched her forehead in the posture of listening, and all the others around her did the same. The Keeper's gaze swept the group, and she smiled when she saw that all were prepared.
"My name is Elizbet Weer, of the Lost Children," she said. "I was the Command of Atlantis in the time of the Great Hunger. Welcome to the Memory of Free Day."
"Free Day," the Scholars repeated, and Mari Alus touched her lips, her belly in respect for Elizbet Weer, who had died where the Keeper stood now, who had shot three Wraith before they'd flanked her and dug their fingers into her to suck the marrow dry.
)0(
The room was choked and bitter with the scent of electrical fires. Fragments of charred plastic gritted her eyes and stung her skin as she watched Lorne's men push guns into Gurpreet and Mariel's hands.
"You really should fall back, Doctor Weir," Lorne said when he handed her the last stunner. He looked like hell, smeared and sooty and his left shoulder crusty with blood, a five-pointed star from a near-miss with a Wraith a few hours ago. Living on borrowed time, he'd said, climbing in through the ductwork after dropping a supply bag into Elizabeth's waiting arms.
They'd eaten the powerbars and drank the water while he explained the current situation. "Zelenka got the gate back-up memory wiped before they made it in," he said. "And his worm purged the system. There's no way they can find their way back to Earth from our computers or Atlantis'. They'll have to get it the hard way."
Now Elizabeth fingered the trigger of the stunner. "I'm not the best shot," she admitted finally, and Lorne had laughed.
"That's why you got the stunner, ma'am," he said. "I've seen your drill records."
Elizabeth smiled wryly. "There's a reason I chose diplomacy, Major," she said.
"How close?" Gurpreet asked finally when the sound of fighting began to echo in the corridors beyond.
"Very close," Lorne said, his face almost but not quite expressionless. "They've broken the last two lines, and the shielding Kavanagh got up won't hold them more than a few minutes. We've got to stretch it out for as long as we can, make them think the gate still matters."
"I can do that," Mariel said, moving in closer to Gurpreet.
"Shoot me, if one gets me," Gurpreet said when the first volley hit the door, made it bulge. "Just ... shoot me."
"I can do that, too," Mariel said.
In the end Elizabeth scrambled for the dropped gun and put a bullet in Gurpreet to stop her screaming, but it was the last in the cartridge. The sound of the blast was still in her ears when she was lifted off the ground, and she looked into a smile that was so hungry it made her gut crawl. And then two fingers pressed into her shoulder, hooked and seeking, and there was a voice inside her head that said, "Tell me".
And Elizabeth wanted to, she really did, but she didn't know, not in a way that would mean anything to them. All the same, they took their time with her, just to be certain.
)0(
The Keeper walked them down to the Healer's Hall. "This is where Healer Bekt worked. He is the creator of the Pestilence, and the Father of the Pure Line that keeps us true to the Ancestors. His vaccine destroys all those of polluted blood, and has been used to cull the unclean worlds of those not blessed by the Legacy that makes us the true inheritors of the Cluster."
Ume blinked as a new hologram appeared of a solid, muscular man in red healer's garb. "The Wraith were an abomination of the Legacy. Their DNA had become contaminated by the Iratus insect. This was the first wave of Cleansing, necessary for the safety of the cluster, and the Faraway Worlds that we lost to the Fires. Purity is necessary to the pursuit of peace and harmony." His voice was different than the Keeper's, burred and soft and at odds with the edge of his words. The Scholars touched their hearts, where the pure blood flowed, and gave thanks.
)0(
Bates stood in the doorway to Beckett's office. "You are to surrender all your materials and samples, Doctor. It's as simple as that."
Beckett stood in front of his desk, tired and rumpled and bristling with defiance. "I bloody well will not," he said. "It's a betrayal of every damn oath I ever took. I will not have you take my vaccine -- my highly experimental and volatile vaccine -- and use it as a goddamned biological weapon. Or are WMD's only unethical when someone other than the US military is using them?" He looked furiously from Bates over to Colonel Caldwell.
Caldwell sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose. "Doctor, I will accept that you do this under protest, and I will make sure that your concerns are noted, but the truth is? The Wraith Hives have put aside their own squabbling and are heading this way in force. We've got a matter of maybe two weeks before they get here and wipe us off the planet and then fly this goddamned city back to the Milky Way. So you know what? I don't really care about your personal ethics if it means that we have a fighting chance of stopping the culling of the whole human race. Now ... stand aside, or I will have Bates order his men to come in here and move you aside." Caldwell ran his hand over his scalp. "I'd really rather not have to, though, Doctor."
Beckett swallowed hard. "Call your men," he said. "I'm not moving, Colonel."
"I'm sorry," Caldwell said before nodding at Bates, who motioned two marines in. "Please escort Doctor Beckett to his quarters, and keep him under house arrest."
The marines were original Atlantis crew; they were gentle with Beckett, and slightly shamefaced in their co-operation. But they took him away just the same.
"I figured he'd have a problem with this," Caldwell said finally, but he sounded tired more than anything.
"That's because he's right, sir," Bates said quietly.
"I know," Caldwell said. "But we don't have the luxury of being right." He went over to Beckett's desk and began to gather the files up.
)0(
The Keeper took them to the Temple of the Ancestors next. A second woman, staff in hand, flickered into existence behind her. "Some of us were marked by the Wraith, touched. We were the weapons left by the Ancestors for the Lost Children to wield when they came back to free us. I am Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tughan." She crossed her arms across her chest and leaned forward, and Alvenra, of the Lineage of Athos, leaned forward as well, until her forehead touched the electrical field that held the ghost of Tughan's daughter. "I was the Seer."
"And I am Ronon Dex," said a voice from the far wall, and Ume turned to see a tall man with a very big gun holstered across his bare back. "I was the Runner."
"And I am Iden," and Irli pointed to the doorway, where a young man with great, dark eyes watched them. "I was the first of the Warriors of the Cleansing."
"These were the Three Blades of the Lost Children," the Keeper said, smiling at each in turn.
"Blessed are the Blades," the Scholars said.
)0(
Teyla arched suddenly, her voice shifting from the cold intonation of the Wraith she'd touched to a soft mewling cry. "They can see, they can see!" and then she arched impossibly higher, so sharply that Beckett heard her vertebrae snap and pop with the strain. For a handful of seconds she hung there, panting and gasping, and then she fell back to the bed, her nose and eyes bleeding, and she smiled.
"I'll eat you first," she said, arm coming up, tearing the restraint like it was tissue. A bolt blasted across the sickbay and she fell back flat against the bed. She smiled up at them, a baring of bloodstained teeth even as her body started to seize.
"Stun," Ronon said, but Beckett ignored him, shouting for the trauma cart when the seizures suddenly stopped. They worked frantically, Beckett feeding the tube in and bagging her as Mills got her hospital top cut open and the paddles placed carefully in an impossibly short time. Three more times she arched up, body flailing like a broken puppet, but in the end there was nothing there to save.
"It was set to stun," Ronon insisted, handing his gun over for Sheppard to check.
"Stun," Sheppard agreed, looking fixedly at the gun and not at the body on the bed.
"I think that ... that it was the Wraith that did it," Beckett said. "It's like they just reached in and shut her off."
Ronon stood staring at the bed for a moment, then pulled his gun from Sheppard's grasp and stormed out of the room.
"It wasn't his fault," Beckett said helplessly. "It's far more mine, for letting her try this again."
"Let him be angry," Sheppard said. "Right now, anger's the only thing we've got." And then he was gone, leaving Beckett to pull the ragged edges of Teyla's top together and gently pull the tube from her throat. When her mouth closed he wiped the blood away and closed her eyes, but he couldn't bring himself to pull the sheet up. Not yet.
)0(
The man beside the Seat smiled at them as the Keeper gestured them into the room. "Welcome."
A ripple of noise moved through the room. This was the Sheppard.
Ume had expected him to be ... taller. Handsome, maybe, as her mother's younger husband. But he had kind eyes, pale like the winter skies she'd grown up with. "This is the Seat of the Ancestors. It is here where the Sheppard became one with Atlantis to defeat the Wraith." He moved and there was a second man stretched in the chair, glowing, alight.
"I am Dohkt Emkay. It was here that I served the Sheppard as he went out into the darkness, reached out and plucked the Wraith from the sky until the few left fled, hoping to escape. But the Cleansing would come, for Sheppard followed them and marked their paths so that we could destroy them and their Hunger, so that we might have a Free Day."
"Free Day," they echoed.
"What happened to the Sheppard?" Oolkin asked from Ume's left, his voice hesitant.
"He went into the Heart of Atlantis," Emkay said, the same answer that all the Scholars had known since their walking days.
"But ... what does that mean?" Ume asked.
"Whatever we need it to mean," Emkay said.
)0(
John stretched out his mind and for once, just for fucking once the Universe worked because there she was, all alight around him, reaching into him. It was like the Antarctic all over again, only a thousand times more so.
"Holy fuck," John said. "Good job, Rodney."
"Yes. Yes it is," Rodney agreed. John opened his eyes and saw Rodney staring down at him, his mouth slanted downward. "I've never seen it at this level, actually, Colonel. I'm not sure if you'll be able to ... I'm not sure," Rodney said.
"Oh, sure. You say that when I don't have any witnesses," John said. He lifted his hand from the armrest, groped for Rodney's fingers. "Rodney," he started, but really? There was nothing he could say.
"I know, John." Rodney squeezed his hand, and when John closed his eyes again he felt a kiss, close-mouthed and frowning and tasting of salt, pressed against his mouth.
"When I can't anymore, you'll have to," he said, one last gasp against the swelling tide of bright.
"I know, John," Rodney said. "I know."
John sank into the chair and let Atlantis in.
)0(
Ume was in the last group to go through, and she turned to see the Keeper watching her.
"Remember us," the Keeper said.
"I will," Ume promised, and then she crossed the threshold to Academy.
)0(
End
Warning: Character death.