Tie a Scarlet Ribbon (Fight or Flight Challenge)
Title: Tie a Scarlet Ribbon
Author: friendshipper
Word Count: 2200
Rating: PG, gen
Summary: Lifeline AU. "If we don't come back, you have to get them in the jumpers." But still, she waited as long as she could. Spoilers, of course, up through 4x02 "Lifeline".
Teyla waited as long as she could, until Dr. Zelenka came to her where she stood on the balcony outside Elizabeth's office, gazing through the shield at the blackness of space. His voice did not quite break when he said softly, gently, "We must go now, if we are to survive."
Things moved quickly then. They had spent the hours since Sheppard's departure keeping themselves busy with practical matters: packing the jumpers with necessary supplies, conducting drills so that everyone knew their assigned spot and could reach it quickly. With the city's presently reduced staff, they could fit everyone in the jumpers in one trip, but it wouldn't be comfortable and they couldn't do it for very long. "Packed like sardines" was the term that Dr. Coleman used; Teyla wasn't sure what sardines were, but the meaning came through loud and clear.
None of the remaining staff with the ATA gene had ever spent any time at all in the control chair. They didn't realize this until most of the way through their allotted twelve-hour safety window; Teyla had never even thought -- and suspected John hadn't either -- that they would need a pilot to jump them into hyperspace. Hastily she scrambled to find as many of the gene-bearers as possible who weren't doing anything mission-critical. Of everyone who was available, only Dr. Rangarajan and Sgt. Flint could visualize anything when they were sitting in the chair. Teyla could read their fear and reluctance on their faces plainly. Among the Athosians, such a decision would be made by sitting with both men, discussing their fears, determining the best course of action so that everyone would be content.
But she was not among the Athosians, and she made the decision Earth-style. "You will do it," she told Rangarajan, "because you have spent more time with the computers."
He looked back at her with flat terror, but she did not have time for that. There were many more things that she had to oversee.
And now, though the urgency was no less pressing, a sense of calm had descended on Atlantis -- the sort of stillness that comes when the timer reaches zero and, though things remain to be done, there is no time in which to do them and thus the slate of duty is wiped clean. In the clarity of that silence, Teyla walked from the balcony back into the control room, casting one final look down at the dark, silent Stargate. Zelenka and Chuck conferred quietly in a corner; they were the only people remaining here, except herself. Everyone else, aside from Rangarajan and Dr. Coleman in the chair room, had already headed for the jumper bay. The shields would collapse within seconds of dropping out of hyperspace, assuming they even managed to maintain them that long. Teyla swallowed, looked again at the monitor screens that showed only the cold and distant stars, and touched her radio.
"Dr. Rangarajan, are you ready?"
"No," came the voice, thin with fear, "but it's not like I have a choice, do I?"
"Would that any of us did," Teyla said softly, and she imagined that the lost voices of Rodney and John and Elizabeth spoke through her when she said, "Take us into hyperspace."
The city shuddered; Teyla gripped the console, and then Zelenka turned from the screens, his face caught somewhere between triumph and devastation. "He did it! We're on our way."
There was an instant in which the three of them just looked at each other, and then Zelenka and Chuck sprang into action, unplugging what computers they could carry. Zelenka turned back to Teyla, eyes wide behind his lenses. "We must go! Shield could collapse at any time."
"I know." She reached for her radio. "Dr. Rangarajan, Dr. Coleman, is all well with you?"
"On our way to the jumper bay," came back the breathless reply. They didn't need anyone in the chair once they were underway; the control system was set to drop the city out of hyperspace automatically when they reached their destination, assuming they didn't drop out earlier. If they were planning on landing the city, they would have needed someone in the chair to control it, but with power levels so low, they had no chance of that. Their best shot, Teyla and Zelenka had decided, would be to make sure everyone was in the jumpers and then use the drones to blow the doors of the jumper bay, since anyone who stayed behind in the city to open them would most likely be signing up for a suicide mission.
Zelenka looked over his shoulder on his way out of the control room. "We will only be in hyperspace for a few minutes; you should --"
"I am coming. Go, please; I will be right behind you. There is something I must do first." And with that, she turned and ran for Elizabeth's office, without looking back to see if he'd obeyed her.
Foolish, she berated herself, as she snatched a clay pot from Elizabeth's desk -- the one John had given Elizabeth years ago as a birthing-day gift. You should not do this. You are risking yourself without cause, she added to her mental litany of abuse, as, tucking the pot under her arm, she ran from the control room -- not towards the jumper bay, but to the stairs leading to the crew quarters. She ran like the Wraith were at her heels, ran like she'd never run before, aware that each second of air she breathed was dearly won from their fading ZPM. The lights flickered as she snatched up a book in John's room, not bothering to look at the title; it had a red cover, and she had seen him reading it more than once in the cafeteria, so she knew that he liked it.
Ronon's quarters were down the hall from John's; she'd walked the short way a thousand times, but never run it as she did now. Foolish. Foolish. You had twelve hours in which to do this; you betray your people by doing it now. The door shuddered as it opened, and she felt the city tremble beneath her feet. The ZPM was failing. Without breaking stride, she seized a knife from the table by his bed, the leather-wrapped handle warm in her palm.
Rodney's quarters were the farthest, the hardest to reach; they adjoined the labs. Normally Teyla would go the long way around, but as the floor began to tilt underfoot, she remembered a shortcut: taking a corner so quickly that her feet skidded, she dashed into his lab itself. The floor continued tilting and now it was trembling violently; glassware slid off a lab table as she ran past, shattering and sending shards of glass flying past her running feet.
"Teyla!" Zelenka's voice demanded in her ear. "Where are you? We are all in the jumper bay. There are only minutes before the shield fails. Maybe seconds."
"I am coming!" she panted with what breath she could spare. In a moment's panic, she was afraid Rodney might have locked the side door to his quarters, but it responded to her after a moment's pause. As she stumbled into his room, a sharp jerk underfoot sent her staggering against a wall, knocking pictures askew.
"Teyla, we've dropped out of hyperspace." Beyond panic, Zelenka's voice had a strained calm now. "We've come in too low over the planet; the city is already hitting atmosphere. Can you get to the jumper bay?"
"I am not sure." The trembling was so violent that she had to hang onto the wall to stay upright as she looked around. She'd rarely been in Rodney's quarters; she had no idea which things in the room might have mattered to him. A picture of a furry animal on the bedside table caught her eye just as it began to fall. Diving, she caught it and rolled, banging her elbow agonizingly on the corner of the bed as she curled her arm to protect the fragile clay pot.
"Where are you?" Zelenka had to repeat the question twice before she realized what he was asking.
"I am at Rodney's lab." She tucked the photo and Ronon's knife inside her blouse and stuffed John's book into a pocket of her jacket, freeing one hand so that she could cling to the wall and stumble into the lab -- only to duck quickly back through the doorway as a set of metal shelves nearly took her head off.
To her everlasting gratitude, Zelenka did not ask what she was doing there. Perhaps he guessed the truth, or perhaps he thought Rodney had left her some last-minute instructions; in any case, all he said was, "There is a balcony that opens off the hall outside the lab; can you get there?"
"Yes." There was no need to say what they both knew: the shield was failing, and she could not possibly run to the jumper bay before the city broke apart. She wondered if he actually had a plan, or if he only --
Ohhh. She had made it into the corridor, still hanging onto the wall, and half-ran, half-fell through the doors to the balcony -- where the view took her breath away.
She was falling, falling, head-down, into blue-green water and clouds: a planet, like so many she'd seen from the jumpers before, but this time there was nothing between her and that endless gulf of open space, nothing but the faint, flickering shimmer of the shield -- and as she clung to the door, gazing in rapt wonder, the shield gave a final flash and vanished.
Explosive decompression blew out the stained glass doors, shredding her skin like a storm of sand. Clenching her teeth, Teyla managed to keep hold of the doorframe with her free hand, while her other held the clay pot tucked close to her side. Gravity failed at the same time, and suddenly there was nothing holding her to the floor, only a screaming wind sucking her into the void. She drew a last breath as the air of the city washed over her with the blinding force of a waterfall, and then clamped her lips together, holding in that precious lungful. As a girl, she'd often gone diving in the lake by the village, and she knew that she could hold her breath for about a minute, perhaps less. That was how long she had: the time remaining in her life. Less than a minute.
I am sorry, John. But she'd gotten them to the planet, and they had supplies, they had equipment to build a transmitter that they could use to call for help. From here, they would have to survive on their own. For all the failings of Earth people, she was forever surprised by their resourcefulness. They could do it, she believed.
I am so sorry. She had gambled and lost, traded survival for sentiment. Her father would not approve, but somehow, holding the clay pot like a secret against her heart, she couldn't find it in her to be ashamed.
The flood of air had slowed to a whisper. She'd expected to be cold, but she wasn't, though her hand was going numb from holding onto the doorframe; and she remembered then that she wasn't going to freeze, but burn, as they fell through the sky. She had never really understood Rodney's rambling explanations about it, but she did understand that an object falling to a planet created a lot of heat in front of it. Well, at least she wouldn't have to worry about drifting around the planet forever, as they'd left Niam all those months ago.
Her ears were ringing, and spots danced around her vision. When Zelenka's voice spoke to her, she thought for a moment that it was only her own brain, dreaming.
"Teyla, let go."
But I'll fall, she thought, vaguely, and maybe she said it out loud, because Zelenka said, "We'll catch you. Let go."
Well, she was going to fall in any case, with Atlantis or without, so she gently unlocked her fingers. She knew Zelenka wasn't telling the truth, because the people who should have caught her were gone, all gone; and it was without regret that she released the doorframe and let herself fall to join them.
She fell into the back of a puddlejumper instead.
The catch, she would realize later, had been so neatly made that Sheppard himself might have been proud -- the jumper matching the velocity of the falling city, lifting backwards over the railing and decompressing the rear compartment as it opened. Dazed from lack of air, the only thing that she really registered at the moment was the presence of hands, many hands catching her and bearing her to the floor as the rear door closed. Her ears popped as the rear compartment pressurized, and she realized dizzily, lying on the floor with people above and around her, that all the jumpers were full to capacity: they'd decompressed a jumper full of people, risking that many lives and a jumperful of precious supplies, to rescue her.
Her arm was wrapped so tightly around the clay pot that she had to use her other hand to pry it loose so that she could see if it had broken. But the pot was intact, and when someone said, "Here, let me take that," she shook her head and clung to it more tightly.
Zelenka and Keller wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, one on each side. Trembling, she leaned into them, as the pilot whose name she did not even know took them down, down, down through the clouds; past the flaming, falling wreckage of Atlantis and down to the alien seas and forests of the planet that she would have to learn to call home.
Author: friendshipper
Word Count: 2200
Rating: PG, gen
Summary: Lifeline AU. "If we don't come back, you have to get them in the jumpers." But still, she waited as long as she could. Spoilers, of course, up through 4x02 "Lifeline".
Teyla waited as long as she could, until Dr. Zelenka came to her where she stood on the balcony outside Elizabeth's office, gazing through the shield at the blackness of space. His voice did not quite break when he said softly, gently, "We must go now, if we are to survive."
Things moved quickly then. They had spent the hours since Sheppard's departure keeping themselves busy with practical matters: packing the jumpers with necessary supplies, conducting drills so that everyone knew their assigned spot and could reach it quickly. With the city's presently reduced staff, they could fit everyone in the jumpers in one trip, but it wouldn't be comfortable and they couldn't do it for very long. "Packed like sardines" was the term that Dr. Coleman used; Teyla wasn't sure what sardines were, but the meaning came through loud and clear.
None of the remaining staff with the ATA gene had ever spent any time at all in the control chair. They didn't realize this until most of the way through their allotted twelve-hour safety window; Teyla had never even thought -- and suspected John hadn't either -- that they would need a pilot to jump them into hyperspace. Hastily she scrambled to find as many of the gene-bearers as possible who weren't doing anything mission-critical. Of everyone who was available, only Dr. Rangarajan and Sgt. Flint could visualize anything when they were sitting in the chair. Teyla could read their fear and reluctance on their faces plainly. Among the Athosians, such a decision would be made by sitting with both men, discussing their fears, determining the best course of action so that everyone would be content.
But she was not among the Athosians, and she made the decision Earth-style. "You will do it," she told Rangarajan, "because you have spent more time with the computers."
He looked back at her with flat terror, but she did not have time for that. There were many more things that she had to oversee.
And now, though the urgency was no less pressing, a sense of calm had descended on Atlantis -- the sort of stillness that comes when the timer reaches zero and, though things remain to be done, there is no time in which to do them and thus the slate of duty is wiped clean. In the clarity of that silence, Teyla walked from the balcony back into the control room, casting one final look down at the dark, silent Stargate. Zelenka and Chuck conferred quietly in a corner; they were the only people remaining here, except herself. Everyone else, aside from Rangarajan and Dr. Coleman in the chair room, had already headed for the jumper bay. The shields would collapse within seconds of dropping out of hyperspace, assuming they even managed to maintain them that long. Teyla swallowed, looked again at the monitor screens that showed only the cold and distant stars, and touched her radio.
"Dr. Rangarajan, are you ready?"
"No," came the voice, thin with fear, "but it's not like I have a choice, do I?"
"Would that any of us did," Teyla said softly, and she imagined that the lost voices of Rodney and John and Elizabeth spoke through her when she said, "Take us into hyperspace."
The city shuddered; Teyla gripped the console, and then Zelenka turned from the screens, his face caught somewhere between triumph and devastation. "He did it! We're on our way."
There was an instant in which the three of them just looked at each other, and then Zelenka and Chuck sprang into action, unplugging what computers they could carry. Zelenka turned back to Teyla, eyes wide behind his lenses. "We must go! Shield could collapse at any time."
"I know." She reached for her radio. "Dr. Rangarajan, Dr. Coleman, is all well with you?"
"On our way to the jumper bay," came back the breathless reply. They didn't need anyone in the chair once they were underway; the control system was set to drop the city out of hyperspace automatically when they reached their destination, assuming they didn't drop out earlier. If they were planning on landing the city, they would have needed someone in the chair to control it, but with power levels so low, they had no chance of that. Their best shot, Teyla and Zelenka had decided, would be to make sure everyone was in the jumpers and then use the drones to blow the doors of the jumper bay, since anyone who stayed behind in the city to open them would most likely be signing up for a suicide mission.
Zelenka looked over his shoulder on his way out of the control room. "We will only be in hyperspace for a few minutes; you should --"
"I am coming. Go, please; I will be right behind you. There is something I must do first." And with that, she turned and ran for Elizabeth's office, without looking back to see if he'd obeyed her.
Foolish, she berated herself, as she snatched a clay pot from Elizabeth's desk -- the one John had given Elizabeth years ago as a birthing-day gift. You should not do this. You are risking yourself without cause, she added to her mental litany of abuse, as, tucking the pot under her arm, she ran from the control room -- not towards the jumper bay, but to the stairs leading to the crew quarters. She ran like the Wraith were at her heels, ran like she'd never run before, aware that each second of air she breathed was dearly won from their fading ZPM. The lights flickered as she snatched up a book in John's room, not bothering to look at the title; it had a red cover, and she had seen him reading it more than once in the cafeteria, so she knew that he liked it.
Ronon's quarters were down the hall from John's; she'd walked the short way a thousand times, but never run it as she did now. Foolish. Foolish. You had twelve hours in which to do this; you betray your people by doing it now. The door shuddered as it opened, and she felt the city tremble beneath her feet. The ZPM was failing. Without breaking stride, she seized a knife from the table by his bed, the leather-wrapped handle warm in her palm.
Rodney's quarters were the farthest, the hardest to reach; they adjoined the labs. Normally Teyla would go the long way around, but as the floor began to tilt underfoot, she remembered a shortcut: taking a corner so quickly that her feet skidded, she dashed into his lab itself. The floor continued tilting and now it was trembling violently; glassware slid off a lab table as she ran past, shattering and sending shards of glass flying past her running feet.
"Teyla!" Zelenka's voice demanded in her ear. "Where are you? We are all in the jumper bay. There are only minutes before the shield fails. Maybe seconds."
"I am coming!" she panted with what breath she could spare. In a moment's panic, she was afraid Rodney might have locked the side door to his quarters, but it responded to her after a moment's pause. As she stumbled into his room, a sharp jerk underfoot sent her staggering against a wall, knocking pictures askew.
"Teyla, we've dropped out of hyperspace." Beyond panic, Zelenka's voice had a strained calm now. "We've come in too low over the planet; the city is already hitting atmosphere. Can you get to the jumper bay?"
"I am not sure." The trembling was so violent that she had to hang onto the wall to stay upright as she looked around. She'd rarely been in Rodney's quarters; she had no idea which things in the room might have mattered to him. A picture of a furry animal on the bedside table caught her eye just as it began to fall. Diving, she caught it and rolled, banging her elbow agonizingly on the corner of the bed as she curled her arm to protect the fragile clay pot.
"Where are you?" Zelenka had to repeat the question twice before she realized what he was asking.
"I am at Rodney's lab." She tucked the photo and Ronon's knife inside her blouse and stuffed John's book into a pocket of her jacket, freeing one hand so that she could cling to the wall and stumble into the lab -- only to duck quickly back through the doorway as a set of metal shelves nearly took her head off.
To her everlasting gratitude, Zelenka did not ask what she was doing there. Perhaps he guessed the truth, or perhaps he thought Rodney had left her some last-minute instructions; in any case, all he said was, "There is a balcony that opens off the hall outside the lab; can you get there?"
"Yes." There was no need to say what they both knew: the shield was failing, and she could not possibly run to the jumper bay before the city broke apart. She wondered if he actually had a plan, or if he only --
Ohhh. She had made it into the corridor, still hanging onto the wall, and half-ran, half-fell through the doors to the balcony -- where the view took her breath away.
She was falling, falling, head-down, into blue-green water and clouds: a planet, like so many she'd seen from the jumpers before, but this time there was nothing between her and that endless gulf of open space, nothing but the faint, flickering shimmer of the shield -- and as she clung to the door, gazing in rapt wonder, the shield gave a final flash and vanished.
Explosive decompression blew out the stained glass doors, shredding her skin like a storm of sand. Clenching her teeth, Teyla managed to keep hold of the doorframe with her free hand, while her other held the clay pot tucked close to her side. Gravity failed at the same time, and suddenly there was nothing holding her to the floor, only a screaming wind sucking her into the void. She drew a last breath as the air of the city washed over her with the blinding force of a waterfall, and then clamped her lips together, holding in that precious lungful. As a girl, she'd often gone diving in the lake by the village, and she knew that she could hold her breath for about a minute, perhaps less. That was how long she had: the time remaining in her life. Less than a minute.
I am sorry, John. But she'd gotten them to the planet, and they had supplies, they had equipment to build a transmitter that they could use to call for help. From here, they would have to survive on their own. For all the failings of Earth people, she was forever surprised by their resourcefulness. They could do it, she believed.
I am so sorry. She had gambled and lost, traded survival for sentiment. Her father would not approve, but somehow, holding the clay pot like a secret against her heart, she couldn't find it in her to be ashamed.
The flood of air had slowed to a whisper. She'd expected to be cold, but she wasn't, though her hand was going numb from holding onto the doorframe; and she remembered then that she wasn't going to freeze, but burn, as they fell through the sky. She had never really understood Rodney's rambling explanations about it, but she did understand that an object falling to a planet created a lot of heat in front of it. Well, at least she wouldn't have to worry about drifting around the planet forever, as they'd left Niam all those months ago.
Her ears were ringing, and spots danced around her vision. When Zelenka's voice spoke to her, she thought for a moment that it was only her own brain, dreaming.
"Teyla, let go."
But I'll fall, she thought, vaguely, and maybe she said it out loud, because Zelenka said, "We'll catch you. Let go."
Well, she was going to fall in any case, with Atlantis or without, so she gently unlocked her fingers. She knew Zelenka wasn't telling the truth, because the people who should have caught her were gone, all gone; and it was without regret that she released the doorframe and let herself fall to join them.
She fell into the back of a puddlejumper instead.
The catch, she would realize later, had been so neatly made that Sheppard himself might have been proud -- the jumper matching the velocity of the falling city, lifting backwards over the railing and decompressing the rear compartment as it opened. Dazed from lack of air, the only thing that she really registered at the moment was the presence of hands, many hands catching her and bearing her to the floor as the rear door closed. Her ears popped as the rear compartment pressurized, and she realized dizzily, lying on the floor with people above and around her, that all the jumpers were full to capacity: they'd decompressed a jumper full of people, risking that many lives and a jumperful of precious supplies, to rescue her.
Her arm was wrapped so tightly around the clay pot that she had to use her other hand to pry it loose so that she could see if it had broken. But the pot was intact, and when someone said, "Here, let me take that," she shook her head and clung to it more tightly.
Zelenka and Keller wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, one on each side. Trembling, she leaned into them, as the pilot whose name she did not even know took them down, down, down through the clouds; past the flaming, falling wreckage of Atlantis and down to the alien seas and forests of the planet that she would have to learn to call home.