Resonance, by kageygirl, for the First Contact challenge
Title: Resonance
Author: kageygirl
Rating: G
Category: Gen
Summary: "Soft science fiction masquerading as hard SF," Rodney muttered.
Notes: Evidently, I shared the fannish hivemind meld thingie with brighidestone and troyswann. (There was both cursing and headdesking involved when I saw that, oh yes.) Thanks to maching_monkey for the beta, and to nice people like Leah and kyrdwyn who let me whimper and then told me to post it anyway. *g*
Resonance
"'Speak, friend, and enter'?" Sheppard asked, staring up at the low stone arch.
"High fantasy rots your brain," Rodney said, without looking up from his scanner. The energy readings were still frustratingly indeterminate, but the highest radiation level seemed to be emanating from the chamber past the arch.
As for the writing carved above it... Rodney squinted up at the Ancient script and smirked. "But in this case, by a staggering coincidence, you're not that far wrong." Only Sheppard had such luck. "What it says is actually something very close to, 'Enter, friend, and speak.'"
"Well, it's good that we're friendly then." Sheppard folded his hands over the butt of his P90, and Rodney was sure the irony was intentional. "Aren't we, Lieutenant?"
"Always, sir." Ford nodded, flashing a quick grin. "Except when it upsets the locals."
Teyla smiled, but said nothing, looking around the plain antechamber once again. Rodney was certain that they'd already experienced all of the nothing that it had to offer.
"Well, seeing as how we haven't found any locals, we'll just have to go with McKay's energy readings." Sheppard tipped his head toward the archway and hefted his P90, and Rodney followed Ford in, Teyla bringing up the rear.
The chamber lit up as they entered it, with a soft unfocused light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It would have been spherical if not for the floor, and it wasn't all that big, with curving panels that looked like marble lining the interior walls.
Up close, the panels were some kind of cloudy crystalline material--Rodney thought he could see flashes of color deep within them, like fire opals, if he turned his head the right way at the right time.
There was a sort of harmonic hum in the background. It muted the sounds his team made, much like a white-noise generator.
Rodney looked back down at his scanner, frowning as the readings climbed and fell almost at random. "Whatever's giving off the radiation seems to be fluctuating--no." He turned, waving the scanner in a slow arc. "Actually, the source seems to be moving, though from what I can tell, it's somewhere in this room."
"We're the only things in this room," Sheppard said, his voice flattened by the hum.
Rodney kept taking readings, ignoring the murmurs of his team, until Ford's voice cut through the haze of sound. "Major!"
Rodney looked back to see Teyla clutching the sides of her head, Ford supporting her with an arm around her waist. Rodney strode over quickly to join them. Sheppard bent his neck to look her in the eyes. "Teyla, you okay?"
"I--I am sorry, Major." Even with the background noise, Teyla's voice sounded shaky. "I do not feel well." Which, for the rest of them, probably would have equated to 'total incapacitation.' "I think it may be connected to the light, somehow."
Sheppard nodded sharply. "Lieutenant, you two head outside for a bit. I'll stay here with McKay, see if there's anything else to find in here."
"Yes, sir."
They both watched Ford and Teyla leave, then Sheppard turned back to Rodney. "Got anything yet?"
"I've got plenty, but nothing that makes any sense." Rodney dropped his gaze back to the scanner and tried to chase down the strongest energy source, pacing around the room.
After a few minutes, Sheppard called, "McKay?"
"I still can't quite pin it down..."
"McKay." The odd note in Sheppard's tone registered, and Rodney turned around to find the major staring up and off to one side, looking slightly alarmed. Which was enough to make Rodney more than slightly alarmed, though he couldn't see anything that would set Sheppard off like that.
Rodney moved cautiously to his side, looking in the same direction. "Major?"
Sheppard reached out a hand blindly, grabbing Rodney's sleeve. "Do you see that?"
"I don't see anything," Rodney said, and he looked closely at the major's face, trying to tell if he'd been drugged or concussed or something while Rodney wasn't looking. Sheppard's eyes were wide, but not dilated, and while Rodney watched, the alarm on Sheppard's face was replaced by a look of wonder.
"You really don't see that?"
"See what? Major, there's nothing to--" The hum seemed to increase in intensity all of a sudden, canceling all sound in the chamber like closing the lid on a music box, and the oppressive, throbbing non-sound made Rodney squeeze his eyes shut for a second. But it faded into the background again, and he opened his eyes quickly, in case something horrible was trying to sneak up on them while they were incapacitated.
But what he saw wasn't horrible. It was beautiful--somehow precise and mathematical and wild and undefined at the same time.
There were shimmering ribbons of light twisting across the chamber, like the colors he'd seen in the panels, only deeper and stronger and more--alive, somehow. He'd seen the Aurora Borealis in Russia, and the Aurora Australis in Antartica, but they would have paled in comparison to this.
He looked over at Sheppard, and knew that this was what Sheppard had been seeing. "Major?"
"This is so cool." Sheppard turned to him, and Rodney was so jolted by Sheppard's delighted smile that he almost missed the fact that the light wasn't reflected off Sheppard's face anywhere. He looked down at himself, and, no, he too was illuminated only by the milky glow of the panels.
Which meant that the lights--probably weren't really there.
Rodney looked up again, and realized that the brilliant strands of color were shifting along with the throbbing of the background noise. Oh, no--exposure to strange noises that caused visual hallucinations could not possibly be healthy. He swallowed, and said, "Major, as fascinating as this is, I think perhaps we should leave--"
Sheppard's hand tightened on Rodney's arm, and his lips parted slightly. "Oh, wow." He licked his lips, then gave Rodney a shaky smile. "Keep talking."
"Major."
"Keep talking, Rodney," Sheppard said, and Rodney heard the words, but he also felt Sheppard's voice thrum along his nerves like warm silk, or fur, or something else decadent and forbidden.
Rodney took a deep breath. "Major, obviously this chamber is affecting us in some way--I really think that we should get out before something happens..." Sheppard was staring at Rodney as if he were entranced, his eyes bright, and the hand he still had on Rodney's arm was bleeding living green warmth into him.
Rodney blinked, hard, trying to recapture his train of thought. Synesthesia. Synesthesia could only be very, very bad. "Major..."
Sheppard gave him a gentle smile, almost sad, and his voice wrapped around Rodney. "All right, all right. But usually you have to pay for this kind of ride."
Rodney shivered, and Sheppard squeezed his arm reassuringly, a cool blue pulse of comfort. He said, haltingly, "Good, that's--that's good, that we're leaving. I'd rather not pay for this ride with our lives, thank you."
"We mean you no harm."
Rodney and Sheppard both spun at the touch of the new voice, like a cool spring rain, and Sheppard brought his P90 up. "Hello?"
One of the ribbons of light got--brighter, or more solid, or something, and Rodney just knew that it was talking to them, somehow. It pulsed, and Sheppard said, "Did you get that?"
"Get what?"
Sheppard spoke slowly, as if he were reading aloud from a dense text. "'We mean you no harm. We wished only to speak to you, but...'"
He broke off as the light changed a little, and Rodney picked up the thread as it sleeted over him. "'... we did not know it would take so long for you to adjust to our spectrum.'"
Sheppard nodded, like windchimes in the breeze. "Okay, this is officially weird."
"More so than usual?"
"Good point."
"Thank you. Adjust to their..." Rodney had a flash of thought that might have been from the light--'intensity, focus'--and he glanced around at the chamber again. Yes, yes--he could imagine it was something like being inside a pair of parabolic mirrors. He addressed himself to the shimmering light, and reminded himself that it really wasn't any weirder than the telepathic mist aliens, was it? "This is... a focusing chamber of some sort, right?"
The answer washed down, and Rodney translated the parts he understood. "'Yes. Built by our friends from far away, that we may speak to them.'" Rodney glanced over at Sheppard. "Friends from far away?"
Sheppard held up a hand, his expression distracted, discordant. "'We have not heard from your kind in a very long time, we think.'"
"Our kind?"
"'The ones who sing the same song that you sing.'" He and Sheppard were talking over one another, and Sheppard shot him a wry grin, all cinnamon and maple sugar. Rodney made a 'be my guest' gesture as the light faded from his mind again, and Sheppard continued. "'We hear you now, when we have heard nothing for so long.'"
Rodney tried to ignore how Sheppard's voice tasted like dark chocolate. "The ATA gene?" he mused. "The Ancients were their friends?"
"Fits with the writing outside." Sheppard addressed the light, and Rodney suppressed a gasp as Sheppard's voice slid past him, smooth and velvety. "Our kind have been--gone, for a very long time." He paused as the light rippled, and shot Rodney a look. Rodney shrugged--he hadn't gotten anything there--and Sheppard blinked rapidly, then translated. "'You are back now, and we rejoice.'"
"What... are you, exactly?" Rodney asked, looking between Sheppard and the light, because he couldn't decide which was more confusing, talking to a mirage or using Sheppard as a translator for said mirage.
The answer came straight back to Rodney though, and now Sheppard was giving him the quizzical look. It was like the world's most frustrating game of Telephone. "'We are between the layers of things. We fill the spaces, and take none of it. We are unseen but for our effects on things,'" Rodney quoted, then felt himself frowning. "You exist as... radiation?"
"From what we understand of your concept, yes."
"They understand you, Rodney. Lucky for them." Sheppard's tone of voice was sardonic, but the feeling Rodney got from the words was more fragile, a frozen pond in springtime, the ice growing dangerously thin.
"It's a privilege, I'm sure," Rodney replied, less harshly than he would have otherwise, because he knew how Sheppard felt. Literally.
It was both distant and intimate, and incredibly distracting. Rodney looked away from both Sheppard and the light, not really focusing on anything in the room for a moment as he tried to think it through. "Major, you remember that this planet's ozone layer had some very strange properties? I wonder if..."
The light pulsed again, and Rodney looked at Sheppard, but Sheppard stared right back at him. Apparently, neither of them had gotten that. Sheppard winced suddenly, a jarring crash of sound, and Rodney felt a shooting pain above his right eye. He pressed a palm to his forehead and grimaced.
As if from far away, it came to him, "We are sorry. Our communication distresses you."
He turned to translate, but Sheppard was already answering. "We're not--used to this sort of thing." Rodney could hear the strain in his voice, coarse and abrasive and unpleasant.
"You did not know of us before this? You did not seek us out?"
Sheppard shook his head, a jangling dissonance. "No, I'm sorry--we were just exploring."
"We see now that you are like and unlike your kind. You are not the ones who we knew, the ones who are not returning. We do not wish to cause further distress." The glow of the panels started to dim slowly. "The effects of the chamber will fade. We are sorry you were drawn in unaware."
The more solid light dissipated, though there were still tendrils twining through the air like vines. Rodney felt the pressure in his head ease, and he looked up at Sheppard tentatively. "Are you getting anything else?"
"All quiet here," Sheppard said, and the touch of his voice was fading, like a warm hand being slowly drawn away. Rodney tried not to miss it.
"Well, I suppose that explains the energy readings," he said softly, and Sheppard was watching him carefully, nodding in a dim, descending glissando.
"Come on," Sheppard said, patting Rodney on the shoulder, one last dying burst of warm orange light. "Let's go tell Ford and Teyla about our close encounter."
"Soft science fiction masquerading as hard SF," Rodney muttered.
Sheppard chuckled warmly, and Rodney held onto the taste of it as long as he could.
Until Sheppard showed up to drag him along to dinner in the mess hall that night, and Rodney couldn't come up with a way to explain his sudden reluctance to eat. While he was harassing Rodney, Sheppard smiled, and there was something a little lost about it.
Rodney thought that maybe he wasn't the only one feeling bereft, and gave in.
"Being cut off like that... hurt them," Sheppard said, scraping the puréed vegetable on his plate into some sort of pattern with his fork, not looking up at Rodney.
Rodney had felt it too, the sadness, the reluctant acceptance of the necessity of letting him and Sheppard go. The recognition that the two of them weren't really the Ancients returned had been a minor key of old loss trickling through him. He cleared his throat and said, "Well, at least now they know why the Ancients fell out of contact with them. That has to count for something."
"I think it does," Sheppard said. "I think it helps to know that the Ancients didn't abandon them by choice."
"Mmm." Rodney watched Sheppard continue to play with his food, until Sheppard set his fork down with a faint clink. He glanced up to see Sheppard looking him over, his face quiet and thoughtful. "What?"
"Just thinking." Sheppard pushed his plate aside and folded his hands together, flexing his intertwined fingers. "About being... connected."
Rodney moved his own plate out of the way and rested an arm on the table, opening his hand in a gesture of agreement. "Their method of communication? That part was intriguing, if incredibly disturbing at first. Well, 'intriguing' right up until the blinding headache."
Sheppard shook his head. "I wasn't talking about the chamber, Rodney."
"Then--I don't understand, Major." Rodney felt himself frowning, and Sheppard reached across the table to lay a hand on his wrist.
"What's the answer to life, the universe and everything?"
"Forty-two, but what does that have to do with..." Rodney trailed off as Sheppard pointed a decisive finger at him.
"See, you understood that," Sheppard said, dropping his hand back down to squeeze Rodney's wrist.
"So?"
"So, there's different kinds of connections. And some last longer than others." Sheppard drummed his fingers lightly on Rodney's wrist, then pulled his hand back and folded his arms, leaning forward on the table. He smiled wryly, companionably, ducking his head a little. "I think we understand each other just fine, Rodney."
And somehow, Rodney felt that smile move all the way through him, filling up the empty spaces.
Author: kageygirl
Rating: G
Category: Gen
Summary: "Soft science fiction masquerading as hard SF," Rodney muttered.
Notes: Evidently, I shared the fannish hivemind meld thingie with brighidestone and troyswann. (There was both cursing and headdesking involved when I saw that, oh yes.) Thanks to maching_monkey for the beta, and to nice people like Leah and kyrdwyn who let me whimper and then told me to post it anyway. *g*
Resonance
"'Speak, friend, and enter'?" Sheppard asked, staring up at the low stone arch.
"High fantasy rots your brain," Rodney said, without looking up from his scanner. The energy readings were still frustratingly indeterminate, but the highest radiation level seemed to be emanating from the chamber past the arch.
As for the writing carved above it... Rodney squinted up at the Ancient script and smirked. "But in this case, by a staggering coincidence, you're not that far wrong." Only Sheppard had such luck. "What it says is actually something very close to, 'Enter, friend, and speak.'"
"Well, it's good that we're friendly then." Sheppard folded his hands over the butt of his P90, and Rodney was sure the irony was intentional. "Aren't we, Lieutenant?"
"Always, sir." Ford nodded, flashing a quick grin. "Except when it upsets the locals."
Teyla smiled, but said nothing, looking around the plain antechamber once again. Rodney was certain that they'd already experienced all of the nothing that it had to offer.
"Well, seeing as how we haven't found any locals, we'll just have to go with McKay's energy readings." Sheppard tipped his head toward the archway and hefted his P90, and Rodney followed Ford in, Teyla bringing up the rear.
The chamber lit up as they entered it, with a soft unfocused light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It would have been spherical if not for the floor, and it wasn't all that big, with curving panels that looked like marble lining the interior walls.
Up close, the panels were some kind of cloudy crystalline material--Rodney thought he could see flashes of color deep within them, like fire opals, if he turned his head the right way at the right time.
There was a sort of harmonic hum in the background. It muted the sounds his team made, much like a white-noise generator.
Rodney looked back down at his scanner, frowning as the readings climbed and fell almost at random. "Whatever's giving off the radiation seems to be fluctuating--no." He turned, waving the scanner in a slow arc. "Actually, the source seems to be moving, though from what I can tell, it's somewhere in this room."
"We're the only things in this room," Sheppard said, his voice flattened by the hum.
Rodney kept taking readings, ignoring the murmurs of his team, until Ford's voice cut through the haze of sound. "Major!"
Rodney looked back to see Teyla clutching the sides of her head, Ford supporting her with an arm around her waist. Rodney strode over quickly to join them. Sheppard bent his neck to look her in the eyes. "Teyla, you okay?"
"I--I am sorry, Major." Even with the background noise, Teyla's voice sounded shaky. "I do not feel well." Which, for the rest of them, probably would have equated to 'total incapacitation.' "I think it may be connected to the light, somehow."
Sheppard nodded sharply. "Lieutenant, you two head outside for a bit. I'll stay here with McKay, see if there's anything else to find in here."
"Yes, sir."
They both watched Ford and Teyla leave, then Sheppard turned back to Rodney. "Got anything yet?"
"I've got plenty, but nothing that makes any sense." Rodney dropped his gaze back to the scanner and tried to chase down the strongest energy source, pacing around the room.
After a few minutes, Sheppard called, "McKay?"
"I still can't quite pin it down..."
"McKay." The odd note in Sheppard's tone registered, and Rodney turned around to find the major staring up and off to one side, looking slightly alarmed. Which was enough to make Rodney more than slightly alarmed, though he couldn't see anything that would set Sheppard off like that.
Rodney moved cautiously to his side, looking in the same direction. "Major?"
Sheppard reached out a hand blindly, grabbing Rodney's sleeve. "Do you see that?"
"I don't see anything," Rodney said, and he looked closely at the major's face, trying to tell if he'd been drugged or concussed or something while Rodney wasn't looking. Sheppard's eyes were wide, but not dilated, and while Rodney watched, the alarm on Sheppard's face was replaced by a look of wonder.
"You really don't see that?"
"See what? Major, there's nothing to--" The hum seemed to increase in intensity all of a sudden, canceling all sound in the chamber like closing the lid on a music box, and the oppressive, throbbing non-sound made Rodney squeeze his eyes shut for a second. But it faded into the background again, and he opened his eyes quickly, in case something horrible was trying to sneak up on them while they were incapacitated.
But what he saw wasn't horrible. It was beautiful--somehow precise and mathematical and wild and undefined at the same time.
There were shimmering ribbons of light twisting across the chamber, like the colors he'd seen in the panels, only deeper and stronger and more--alive, somehow. He'd seen the Aurora Borealis in Russia, and the Aurora Australis in Antartica, but they would have paled in comparison to this.
He looked over at Sheppard, and knew that this was what Sheppard had been seeing. "Major?"
"This is so cool." Sheppard turned to him, and Rodney was so jolted by Sheppard's delighted smile that he almost missed the fact that the light wasn't reflected off Sheppard's face anywhere. He looked down at himself, and, no, he too was illuminated only by the milky glow of the panels.
Which meant that the lights--probably weren't really there.
Rodney looked up again, and realized that the brilliant strands of color were shifting along with the throbbing of the background noise. Oh, no--exposure to strange noises that caused visual hallucinations could not possibly be healthy. He swallowed, and said, "Major, as fascinating as this is, I think perhaps we should leave--"
Sheppard's hand tightened on Rodney's arm, and his lips parted slightly. "Oh, wow." He licked his lips, then gave Rodney a shaky smile. "Keep talking."
"Major."
"Keep talking, Rodney," Sheppard said, and Rodney heard the words, but he also felt Sheppard's voice thrum along his nerves like warm silk, or fur, or something else decadent and forbidden.
Rodney took a deep breath. "Major, obviously this chamber is affecting us in some way--I really think that we should get out before something happens..." Sheppard was staring at Rodney as if he were entranced, his eyes bright, and the hand he still had on Rodney's arm was bleeding living green warmth into him.
Rodney blinked, hard, trying to recapture his train of thought. Synesthesia. Synesthesia could only be very, very bad. "Major..."
Sheppard gave him a gentle smile, almost sad, and his voice wrapped around Rodney. "All right, all right. But usually you have to pay for this kind of ride."
Rodney shivered, and Sheppard squeezed his arm reassuringly, a cool blue pulse of comfort. He said, haltingly, "Good, that's--that's good, that we're leaving. I'd rather not pay for this ride with our lives, thank you."
"We mean you no harm."
Rodney and Sheppard both spun at the touch of the new voice, like a cool spring rain, and Sheppard brought his P90 up. "Hello?"
One of the ribbons of light got--brighter, or more solid, or something, and Rodney just knew that it was talking to them, somehow. It pulsed, and Sheppard said, "Did you get that?"
"Get what?"
Sheppard spoke slowly, as if he were reading aloud from a dense text. "'We mean you no harm. We wished only to speak to you, but...'"
He broke off as the light changed a little, and Rodney picked up the thread as it sleeted over him. "'... we did not know it would take so long for you to adjust to our spectrum.'"
Sheppard nodded, like windchimes in the breeze. "Okay, this is officially weird."
"More so than usual?"
"Good point."
"Thank you. Adjust to their..." Rodney had a flash of thought that might have been from the light--'intensity, focus'--and he glanced around at the chamber again. Yes, yes--he could imagine it was something like being inside a pair of parabolic mirrors. He addressed himself to the shimmering light, and reminded himself that it really wasn't any weirder than the telepathic mist aliens, was it? "This is... a focusing chamber of some sort, right?"
The answer washed down, and Rodney translated the parts he understood. "'Yes. Built by our friends from far away, that we may speak to them.'" Rodney glanced over at Sheppard. "Friends from far away?"
Sheppard held up a hand, his expression distracted, discordant. "'We have not heard from your kind in a very long time, we think.'"
"Our kind?"
"'The ones who sing the same song that you sing.'" He and Sheppard were talking over one another, and Sheppard shot him a wry grin, all cinnamon and maple sugar. Rodney made a 'be my guest' gesture as the light faded from his mind again, and Sheppard continued. "'We hear you now, when we have heard nothing for so long.'"
Rodney tried to ignore how Sheppard's voice tasted like dark chocolate. "The ATA gene?" he mused. "The Ancients were their friends?"
"Fits with the writing outside." Sheppard addressed the light, and Rodney suppressed a gasp as Sheppard's voice slid past him, smooth and velvety. "Our kind have been--gone, for a very long time." He paused as the light rippled, and shot Rodney a look. Rodney shrugged--he hadn't gotten anything there--and Sheppard blinked rapidly, then translated. "'You are back now, and we rejoice.'"
"What... are you, exactly?" Rodney asked, looking between Sheppard and the light, because he couldn't decide which was more confusing, talking to a mirage or using Sheppard as a translator for said mirage.
The answer came straight back to Rodney though, and now Sheppard was giving him the quizzical look. It was like the world's most frustrating game of Telephone. "'We are between the layers of things. We fill the spaces, and take none of it. We are unseen but for our effects on things,'" Rodney quoted, then felt himself frowning. "You exist as... radiation?"
"From what we understand of your concept, yes."
"They understand you, Rodney. Lucky for them." Sheppard's tone of voice was sardonic, but the feeling Rodney got from the words was more fragile, a frozen pond in springtime, the ice growing dangerously thin.
"It's a privilege, I'm sure," Rodney replied, less harshly than he would have otherwise, because he knew how Sheppard felt. Literally.
It was both distant and intimate, and incredibly distracting. Rodney looked away from both Sheppard and the light, not really focusing on anything in the room for a moment as he tried to think it through. "Major, you remember that this planet's ozone layer had some very strange properties? I wonder if..."
The light pulsed again, and Rodney looked at Sheppard, but Sheppard stared right back at him. Apparently, neither of them had gotten that. Sheppard winced suddenly, a jarring crash of sound, and Rodney felt a shooting pain above his right eye. He pressed a palm to his forehead and grimaced.
As if from far away, it came to him, "We are sorry. Our communication distresses you."
He turned to translate, but Sheppard was already answering. "We're not--used to this sort of thing." Rodney could hear the strain in his voice, coarse and abrasive and unpleasant.
"You did not know of us before this? You did not seek us out?"
Sheppard shook his head, a jangling dissonance. "No, I'm sorry--we were just exploring."
"We see now that you are like and unlike your kind. You are not the ones who we knew, the ones who are not returning. We do not wish to cause further distress." The glow of the panels started to dim slowly. "The effects of the chamber will fade. We are sorry you were drawn in unaware."
The more solid light dissipated, though there were still tendrils twining through the air like vines. Rodney felt the pressure in his head ease, and he looked up at Sheppard tentatively. "Are you getting anything else?"
"All quiet here," Sheppard said, and the touch of his voice was fading, like a warm hand being slowly drawn away. Rodney tried not to miss it.
"Well, I suppose that explains the energy readings," he said softly, and Sheppard was watching him carefully, nodding in a dim, descending glissando.
"Come on," Sheppard said, patting Rodney on the shoulder, one last dying burst of warm orange light. "Let's go tell Ford and Teyla about our close encounter."
"Soft science fiction masquerading as hard SF," Rodney muttered.
Sheppard chuckled warmly, and Rodney held onto the taste of it as long as he could.
Until Sheppard showed up to drag him along to dinner in the mess hall that night, and Rodney couldn't come up with a way to explain his sudden reluctance to eat. While he was harassing Rodney, Sheppard smiled, and there was something a little lost about it.
Rodney thought that maybe he wasn't the only one feeling bereft, and gave in.
"Being cut off like that... hurt them," Sheppard said, scraping the puréed vegetable on his plate into some sort of pattern with his fork, not looking up at Rodney.
Rodney had felt it too, the sadness, the reluctant acceptance of the necessity of letting him and Sheppard go. The recognition that the two of them weren't really the Ancients returned had been a minor key of old loss trickling through him. He cleared his throat and said, "Well, at least now they know why the Ancients fell out of contact with them. That has to count for something."
"I think it does," Sheppard said. "I think it helps to know that the Ancients didn't abandon them by choice."
"Mmm." Rodney watched Sheppard continue to play with his food, until Sheppard set his fork down with a faint clink. He glanced up to see Sheppard looking him over, his face quiet and thoughtful. "What?"
"Just thinking." Sheppard pushed his plate aside and folded his hands together, flexing his intertwined fingers. "About being... connected."
Rodney moved his own plate out of the way and rested an arm on the table, opening his hand in a gesture of agreement. "Their method of communication? That part was intriguing, if incredibly disturbing at first. Well, 'intriguing' right up until the blinding headache."
Sheppard shook his head. "I wasn't talking about the chamber, Rodney."
"Then--I don't understand, Major." Rodney felt himself frowning, and Sheppard reached across the table to lay a hand on his wrist.
"What's the answer to life, the universe and everything?"
"Forty-two, but what does that have to do with..." Rodney trailed off as Sheppard pointed a decisive finger at him.
"See, you understood that," Sheppard said, dropping his hand back down to squeeze Rodney's wrist.
"So?"
"So, there's different kinds of connections. And some last longer than others." Sheppard drummed his fingers lightly on Rodney's wrist, then pulled his hand back and folded his arms, leaning forward on the table. He smiled wryly, companionably, ducking his head a little. "I think we understand each other just fine, Rodney."
And somehow, Rodney felt that smile move all the way through him, filling up the empty spaces.