Flying Blind, by minnow1212, for darkness challenge

[minnow1212]

Title: Flying Blind
Author: minnow1212
Rating: PGish
Gen, team
:coughs: 10,167 words
Spoilers through Siege part II. Casting spoilers for season 2 (as in, a character exists. His use is pure spec).

Summary: They were always dependent on the kindness of strangers.



He kept talking to them, beyond the point where he believed they might respond. He kept talking, and he thought loud thoughts in case they were silent not because they were being assholes but because they communicated through telepathy or something--exploring in peace, possible allies, possible friends, meaning no harm, happy to leave and never come to this planet again (but my people will come and kick your asses if you touch a member of my team, so don't even think of hurting them, because we will hunt you down and fucking destroy you). He kept talking until they marched him, not roughly but inexorably, to a big, open-faced, capsule with a curved bench inside on which they deposited him before stepping back. It reminded him of the seat on a Tilt-A-Whirl, and he told them so, because, hey, maybe they could find common ground through love of carnival rides. Not that he had a reason to believe that this particular race of uncommunicative, vaguely humanoid, possibly voiceless aliens put on carnivals in their spare time, but there was no proof that they *didn’t*, and he'd repeated everything else he had to say to them ten times over.

The top slid down and enclosed him, and he fell silent. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

"All right, so--" He stopped; the shape or the material or something about the capsule changed his voice's timbre, making it unfamiliar and strange and echoey. "I don’t suppose this is some sort of nifty translation device?" he asked, tapping his knuckles against the wall. "I'm Major John Sheppard from the city of Atlantis, and my team and I don't intend you any harm. In fact, I'm happy to chat with you and make friends, but how about you turn on the lights at least--"

There was the sound of his own distorted voice, bouncing back and reverberating through his bones, and then a humming noise.

And then there was light.

***
They kept talking to their captors, all the way to the cell. Teyla was diplomatic, continuing to try to build bridges. McKay was frantic and pissy and insulting, and Ford wanted him to shut up because he was probably doing more harm than good, unless maybe McKay could annoy their captors into letting them all go. Ford himself tried to stay calm, tried to point out that they'd come in peace, but he could hear the anger escalating in his own voice. In the end, even Teyla's diplomacy didn't do anything. They were led into an alcove of some sort--and Ford tried to balk, tried to break free, but the yellow featureless *things* that lived here were taller than humans by a few feet and strong to boot, and they didn't even seem to register his struggles--and then the aliens stepped out and translucent doors swooshed shut from either side of the wall.

"Hey!" McKay pounded at the doors. "We could be *allies*, you idiots. Geniuses make good allies! We don't do much good to anyone rotting in a cell somewhere!" Through the translucent doors, Ford could see the aliens file away. "Listen to me!" McKay shouted, but they didn't even glance back. Ford hadn't seen anyone or anything ignore McKay so thoroughly. Under other circumstances, it would have been funny. Circumstances where these things hadn't taken his CO away; circumstances where Ford wasn't in an alien prison with two non-military personnel, stripped of weapons and C4 and their IDCs; circumstances where they weren't a good mile away from the puddlejumper and half a planet away from the Stargate and home.

Ford wanted to pound the doors himself, and he did clench his fist, and then flexed his fingers out, repeating the action a few times.

Okay.

They were surrounded by a city of unfriendly aliens, and they needed to find the Major, and, if possible, their gear. Ford didn't have a clue about how they were going to do that, but first things first: they needed to get out of this cell. He examined their surroundings: the room was basically triangular, the doors taking up one wall and rough rock taking up the other two. High ceilings, and enough room for the three of them to stand easily, and maybe lie down, but not much more. It looked like the doors went almost up to the ceiling, but there was about an inch of space up there, so they wouldn’t get short on air. Enough light filtering in through the translucent doors to see by. Teyla was already examining the walls, running her fingers along them.

"All right," Ford said. "So our goal is going to be to retrieve the Major and get home. First step is going to be getting out of this room. Let's start thinking up strategies."

McKay looked vaguely incredulous. Ford cut him off before he could speak, because he didn't want to hear about the improbability of escape and the certainty of doom right now. "Is there some sort of control panel for the doors? 'Cause I bet McKay could rewire it or something to let us out." He crossed his arms to do something with his hands, which felt empty without a weapon in them. Damn, he wished they hadn’t recognized the C4 as a threat and taken it when they searched them.

"Oh, yes, I can decipher the electrical systems of completely unfamiliar aliens with technology that's, oh, yes, alien, just like that, no problem," McKay muttered, but he started looking on either side of the doors, running his hands along the rock there, and then starting tapping in regular intervals along the surfaces of the doors. "Of course, unless they're stupid, it's on the outside. Or, hmm, could they be thought-controlled? I didn't see one of them actually touch anything--"

"I did," Teyla said, glancing back from her perusal of the walls and floor. "One of them touched a flat panel along the side of the door. I am afraid I do not see anything similar in here."

"So we just, what, have to wait until they come back to feed us and then try to sneak out or something, or--oh, god. What if they don't feed us? What if they don't even know that humans need food? What if we starve because they don't know any better?" McKay's eyes grew horrified, and he froze in place. "Or what if it's worse? What if they--"

"You had better not be about to ask if they're going to eat us," Ford warned him. "If you start going on about all the bad things, I swear to God I'll--"

"It's a valid question!" McKay snapped, waving an arm around for emphasis and nearly smacking Ford on the shoulder in the enclosed space. "We've already met soul suckers, it was only a matter of time until we met body suckers--"

"They're enemies, yeah, but that doesn't mean they're gonna eat us," Ford snapped.

"Enemies?" Teyla asked, glancing over her shoulder again. "They have not been hospitable, true, but in this galaxy few can afford to be, especially when most of us do not have a protective shield on our Stargates. These beings have not harmed us physically. That is a cause for hope."

"Hope?" Ford and McKay exclaimed in unison.

McKay added, "They put us into temporary stasis with their…their freezing-in-place devices. Which I really want one of, by the way, but the point is--first they wouldn't talk to us, and then they froze us in place, and then they searched us and locked us up! Those aren't signs of hope!"

"These beings were very careful, when they restrained us, not to harm us, and they easily could have," Teyla replied, turning to face them. "Their silence would be rude if they were humans, but they are not, and we do not know if they understand our language or our overtures, or have mouths and vocal chords capable of responding to us in a fashion we understand. As for removing our weapons--would you allow armed strangers to walk the halls of Atlantis? Your shield prohibits strangers from even entering the city!"

"Hey, we let your people in," Ford said, and then shut his mouth quickly. That had come out more belligerently than he’d intended.

"You escorted us with superior weaponry until you knew we were not a threat," Teyla said. There was an edge to her voice; Teyla had a reputation in Atlantis for patience, but Ford was one of the people on base who had spent enough time with her to know that it had limits. "And when you suspected us of colluding with the Wraith, you--" She looked down for a beat. When she looked up again, her control was back in place and her voice was calm. "Your people took precautions, as was necessary to protect your home. These beings may also be taking precautions, and it is not uncommon for members of an unproven trade delegation to be kept from walking freely through a city while their leader meets with representatives. I cannot claim good intentions for them, but I would not assume that they are enemies who mean us harm."

"Fine, they haven't hurt *us,*" McKay said, and then his voice went from bluster to quiet very fast. "But right now, they could be torturing--"

"That's enough," Ford said, because sure, they'd all been thinking it, but that didn't mean McKay had to say it.

Of course the man couldn't shut up. "We don't know that they're doing--"

"Enough." They all stood in silence, jaws clenched tightly, until Ford took a deep breath and let it out. They all had to stay on track instead of arguing about pointless things, and that was his job while the Major wasn’t here, even if he couldn’t do it as effortlessly as the Major seemed to. "No, we don't know. But it's not gonna help to think too much about what might be happening. And it's not gonna help to wonder what the aliens might be thinking or what their customs are, because we just don't know." He looked at Teyla. "We don’t have proof they have good intentions, and we can't afford to trust them, not when the Major's in their hands. So we're going to focus on finding a way of getting out of here, all right?" The sweep of Teyla’s eyelashes as she looked down were one concession, and the way McKay met his eyes with a look of determination was another. "All right. Now, did they leave you guys with anything when they searched you? Radios or anything?"

"They did," Teyla said, and Ford wouldn't have wanted to be on the other hand of that particular satisfied look. She reached down and rolled up the bottom of her uniform pants to reveal the sheath there. "They left me one of my knives."

"Score!" Ford said. "Dr. McKay?"

McKay was searching through his pants pockets. "Er, a…used tissue…"

"Yeah, we can threaten them with snot," Ford muttered.

"Ooh, power bar." McKay waved the power bar, which looked crushed and misshapen. "That'll stave off starvation for what, a whole four or five hours? And--" He drew out a crumpled sheet of paper and squinted on the smeared ink on it, angling it to get more light. "I think this went through the laundry. It looks like--oh, never mind, equations for a problem we solved two weeks ago. Obsolete." He folded it and tucked it carefully back in his pocket.

"Basically, we have a knife, then," Ford said. "That's better than I expected." He tried to sound upbeat, because it was better than nothing, but it wasn't good. These things were big and powerful, and their chances in hand-to-hand combat weren't good. But maybe if they could set up an ambush, and only one alien came to bring them water or check in on them or escort them to questioning--

"Hmm," McKay said, narrowing his eyes and looking at the knife, and then at the seam between the doors, and Ford got it a second later, right before McKay said, "How narrow is that blade, exactly? And how strong?"

Teyla's eyes widened in realization. "Let us find out," she said.

They took turns, trying to slide the blade between the doors. They found that the doors weren't quite flush as they approached the ceiling, and that the blade could be wedged in a spot just about a foot above Ford's head. The angle was awkward, and the handle had gotten sweaty, and McKay's half-finished sentences about being careful not to snap the blade off and about the physics involved in levers were driving him nuts, but Ford was glad to have something concrete to do, because it kept his mind from dwelling too much on what had gone wrong. Though none of them had slipped up, Ford would swear to it. Yeah, it was easy to treat trips through the Stargate as routine, to get careless and distracted out in the field, but not this time. If anything, they'd been more cautious than usual, because, as the Major had said, it'd be stupid to get so cocky about surviving the Wraith siege that they got killed on a routine mission.

Ford wasn't sure if it was better or worse, to know that they weren't here because of a mistake on their parts. There was less guilt, but more helplessness at the thought of being entirely at the mercy of those yellow-skinned, quiet *things* with their faces all oddly shaped, and he wasn't going to think about the Wraith ship right now, about being trapped and swaddled in gunk and knowing he was at the mercy of the Wraith.

Except it wasn't the three of them who are at the aliens' mercy right now. Not in the same way Major Sheppard was.

The knife skittered out of the seam when Ford tried to make it slide it in further, and he cursed. "Easy," McKay said.

"Don’t backseat drive," Ford snapped, and tried again. The blade bent slightly, but the doors opened in millimeters, while he held his breath and ignored McKay muttering, "please please please" behind him, and a rustling sound that must be Teyla.

When it had opened half a centimeter, she stepped underneath his raised arms, and he saw that she’d taken off her vest and was trying to feed it through the crack, so that the doors couldn’t close completely if the knife slipped out. "Good idea," he said breathlessly. "Hey, can you guys get your fingers in there yet?" That was when the blade snapped off the hilt, of course, and they all instinctively stepped back. But the blade itself stayed in the crack, keeping it open.

They used their fingertips after that, grunting and sweating, making progress not by inches but by centimeters, folding over their heavy vests and stuffing them in the gap as it got larger. When they got it open a few inches, McKay backed away, saying, "Wait, hold that," hopping on one foot while he tugged off a boot and wedged it in at the bottom. They tried to reach through the gap and touch the panel, but it was out of their reach still, and it didn’t respond when they tried to swing a vest out at it. They all took a breather, bending over and resting their hands on their knees. Ford checked his watch. About a half hour since the aliens had escorted them here, he thought. Slow progress, but they were making it.

"Let’s get back to it," Ford said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. He had put his hands on one side of the divide, and Teyla and McKay were moving to the other side, when they heard a rumbling noise overhead. Ford instinctively hunched his shoulders, and he saw McKay duck his head down.

"What was--" Ford began.

Then a voice, deep and precise and flattened, a machine voice, said, "Leave. Do not return. We want not friends. We want not allies. We are alone. We want alone." There was a long pause, and then the voice spoke again. "We are not enemies. We want not enemies. We wish you no harm. We wish you safe leaving." There was another pause, and Teyla had drawn breath to say something when the voice spoke again. "Do not return. If you return, you will be enemies."

The doors opened with a whoosh.

***
They jogged through the empty halls. Lieutenant Ford insisted on taking point, peering around corners carefully, but they saw no one and were not attacked, and Teyla did not think they would be. The voice had been clear: these people did not want further contact with them, but they did not want to be enemies either.

The configuration of the hallways seemed different then when they had walked through them first. As Teyla was about to mention something to the Lieutenant and Dr. McKay, to see if they had observed the same thing, they reached the end of a hallway that split in two directions. As they peered in either direction, a wall slid down from the ceiling to block one path. "They’re guiding us," Teyla realized.

"Or herding us," Dr. McKay panted. "Like mice."

"They already had us caught," Teyla said. "They let us go."

"Yeah, well, if this is the way they treat people they don’t wish harm to, I don’t want to know how they treat enemies," Ford grumbled, leading the way down the remaining hallway.

The men weren’t looking at her, and Teyla permitted herself a sigh. For people who were not quick to trust outsiders, the Atlanteans sometimes seemed to take suspicion directed towards them as an affront. One forgot, given their scientific advancement, that they were still fairly new to travel between planets, where the protocols for establishing goodwill would often take months or even years. In one of the early discussions with Major Sheppard, Dr. Weir, and Sergeant Bates, Teyla had mentioned that if they had dialed one symbol differently that first night in the city, they would have found the Ralmanaanians instead of the Athosians, the Ralmanaanians who established trade and friendship over the course of generations and who would in a single meeting only have gone so far as to nod at their visitors in a gesture of goodwill. Major Sheppard had smiled and said something about how he knew they’d been lucky to meet the Athosians, and Sergeant Bates had nodded briefly and made a notation in the database, but Teyla thought that only Dr. Weir had truly understood that the Ralmanaanians could not have been won over by charm and persuasive talk in a pinch.

The walls steered them in the direction they’d entered the building from, leaving them no room for deviation. "You think they already sent the Major outside?" Ford asked.

"I hope so," Teyla said, for while she was prepared to believe that this people did not wish to do them harm, Major Sheppard’s absence worried her. Her people were skilled at establishing bonds with prospective allies, but there were missions that had failed, too.

When they turned down a hallway and saw at the end of it sun spilling through an open doorway and a pathway beyond, Teyla felt her spirits rise. They had not been inside for long--less than an hour, she thought--but it was oppressive to be kept in an unknown room in an unfamiliar house. She felt her spirits lift further when they drew closer, and she saw Major Sheppard sitting on the stone ledge that lined one side of the pathway, and their belongings neatly lined up on the other. Ford turned back and grinned at them both, face lit up with relief and happiness, and Teyla smiled back, feeling the muscles in the back of her shoulders unknot as she picked up speed. "Oh, good, good, good," McKay said from behind her, and then shouted, "Major!"

Sheppard swiveled his head towards them. "McKay?”

They piled out the doorway, Ford reaching the Major first. "Good to see you safe, sir."

"Very, very good," McKay said happily, bumping into Teyla from behind and steadying them with a hand to her shoulder. "You’re okay." Then his voice changed; he’d seen what Teyla was noticing. "Are you okay?" Sheppard looked ill, face tinged green, sweat soaking his t-shirt and his hair matted to his forehead. Nor had he stood up to greet them. He remained seated, with his hands clutching the ledge, white-knuckled and tendons straining, and he wasn’t meeting anyone’s eyes. Stepping closer, she felt her nose wrinkle involuntarily, because he smelled of sour sweat and vomit.

"Mostly," Sheppard said, and his voice had only a tinge of the normal nonchalance. Teyla exchanged an uneasy look with Ford. "You guys okay? Is Teyla with you?"

The other three stared at each other in a moment of realization, McKay’s face crumpling in distress and Ford’s eyes narrowing in fury. Teyla willed her own face and voice to remain calm as she took a step closer to him. "I am here, and we are all fine and unharmed. You cannot see us, then?"

"Just a little bit temporarily blind here, yeah," Sheppard said, and his voice was hoarse, as if he’d been screaming, or was swallowing one.

"Son of a bitch," Ford said, voice flat with a fury that Teyla felt rising in her as well.

"How did this occur?" she asked.

"Temporarily?" McKay said, and stepped forward, waving a hand in front of Sheppard's face. When there was no response, he waved it even closer. Sheppard flinched backward when McKay almost touched his face, as if he felt the motion, but his pupils didn’t track McKay’s hand as it moved.

"That’s what they said," Sheppard agreed. "Whoever’s waving their hands in my face needs to stop that, like, right fucking now." McKay took a step back, muttering an apology. "So they brought you here. They still here lurking around, by the way?"

"No, they’re gone. Those sons of bitches," Ford spat out. "What’d they do? How did this happen?"

Sheppard closed his eyes for a moment. "Okay," he said flatly. "I’m guessing they didn’t give the rest of you a turn in the Tilt-a-Whirl thing?" Teyla frowned at the reference--an Earth reference, she assumed--and glanced at the other two men. Both of them looked puzzled as well, however; it might refer to his work as a pilot.

"Tilt-a-Whirl thing?" McKay asked.

"We were escorted to an empty room, where they left us," Teyla said. "Are we to understand that they experimented on you?" She felt fury rise in her again, and protectiveness. Such things were not unheard of, but they were a great violation of the duty due a guest. She would spread this address among her people and their contacts, as one to be avoided.

Sheppard shook his head. "Not--that wasn't the intention, I don't think. It wasn't because they were trying to use the ATA gene or anything like that." His voice was exhausted, tightly-controlled. He reached up and rubbed at his eyes, then let his hands drop to his lap. "I think they were trying to communicate, and they just didn't understand us or speak our language, and they had this big egg-shaped thing. I think it was like a scanner or something." He waved a hand. "I don't know. First the sound was weird, and then there was this…light, I guess. Very…bright, and--" A deep shudder went through his body, and his face went paler, and he moved his hands to clutch the edge of the ledge again. "It kind of felt like the control room chair--you were in it, McKay, you know the way the technology sort of meets your mind and examines it?" McKay nodded, and then looked chagrined, except Sheppard was already moving on without waiting for a verbal response. "Except this was about a thousand times more intense, and I couldn’t direct it. When it was over, they said they understood me now, and had no intent to hurt me. Their technology wasn’t meant for my kind, but it hadn’t caused permanent harm and I’d be fine before long. Then they said they don’t want to be enemies, but they don’t want allies, either. Basically they sent us packing. I'm pretty sure the blindness was more of a side effect than anything else."

"Are you all right, other than your vision?" Teyla asked, because he still looked unwell.

"Yeah, fine. But I don't really want to be sticking around if their patience runs out, so I'm thinking maybe it's a good idea if we mosey on down to the puddlejumper now, if one of you doesn’t mind telling me whenever I’m about to run into a tree or something." He braced his hands on the ledge and carefully stood up. "And start thinking about what planet we can gate to as an interim address, since we don’t have an IDC anymore."

"They returned them," Teyla told him. She glanced over at the other ledge. "It looks like they returned all our gear. It’s set out nearby."

"Yeah, we’re got our IDCs," Ford said, as he and McKay moved to pick up their belongings.

Sheppard frowned, and his voice was full of angry sarcasm. "Nice to know. Thanks. See, that’s the kind of thing you might want to keep me informed about, nearby trees and tactical advantages. Anything else you want to fill me in on?"

They had hardly had a chance to tell him, but the Major’s incapacity was no doubt making him irritable, and they would probably all be targets of it until he was well. "I do not believe so," Teyla answered, keeping her voice level and even without an effort. She was not anyone's kicking-ball, but she could stand to be his sparring partner in this situation, if he needed one.

"No ammo in the weapons, sir," Ford said, looking over from his search, and slinging his pack over his shoulder, his movements sharp and angry. "And they took the C4. Probably afraid that we’d retaliate for what they did to you, the bastards."

"Yes, because when we're outnumbered and they can freeze us in place and we need to get someone back to the infirmary as soon as possible, that's when we should go on the offensive," McKay said impatiently. He crossed back over to them, holding a radio in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He set the bottle down on the ledge. "Major, hold still, I'm going to clip your radio on your vest. There. And I have water, if you want." At Sheppard’s nod, "Just, hold out your hand, I've unscrewed the top so it's open. Here."

Sheppard twisted around to spit out the first mouthful, and the second, as if to rid himself of the taste of vomit, and Teyla winced in sympathy and looked away to give him privacy. She glanced at McKay and Ford and saw that they were doing the same.

"I'm thinking we should you back to the infirmary as soon as possible for Beckett to check out," Ford said, and Teyla approved of the way that his voice was matter-of-fact and unconcerned. "Fastest way is probably for Teyla and Dr. McKay to go and get the puddlejumper and bring it back here to pick us up. Teyla, they left your other knife here--" he held it out to her, and she reached over to take it, "in case you run into any animals along the way or something." He cast a warning glance at McKay, to forestall comment. "Not that you're likely to."

Teyla slid the knife into its sheath, and went over to pick up her own gear. "That might be faster, but they may take it as an act of aggression if they see the puddlejumper so close to their town. We don't know what their response would be, or what they're capable of."

"She's right," Sheppard said. "Don't worry, I can make it. Just--someone tell me if I'm going to go off a cliff or something."

Ford nodded. "All right. Good point, Teyla. Then--unless, um, you wanted me to carry you, sir, which would be easy for me to do--"

"No," Sheppard said grimly.

"Then I'll take point and Teyla can get our six and McKay, you can sort of…lead the Major, okay?"

"Fine. Let's get started," Sheppard said, and took another swig of water. "Uh, cap for this?"

"Here," McKay said. "Er, I've got a somewhat squished power bar, too, if you want one."

Sheppard laughed, short and unamused. "I really, really, really don't."

The trip was slow and, for the most part, silent, except for McKay's low-voiced instructions to step here or avoid that. At one point Dr. McKay asked if the aliens had specified how long exactly Sheppard would be blind, and Sheppard had replied tersely that they'd had enough trouble communicating the concepts of friendly and go away, much less converting units of chronology. At another, McKay speculated that the reason why the alien technology had felt a little like the chair technology was that the aliens and the Ancients had once been trading partners. Ford scoffed at first at the idea, because if the Ancients had been allies then they would have been treated better, but McKay pointed out that things could change in thousands of years and that Earth alliances had certainly shifted. He started to press Sheppard for details of what it had felt like, but Sheppard exploded at that point, stopping in his tracks and yelling that they could deal with the science side of things sometime when he wasn't trying not to trip over his own damn feet.

They reached the jumper in safety, and McKay started it up, Ford taking the co-pilot's seat while Teyla guided Sheppard down to sit with her in the back. He drew his legs up and dropped his head to rest on his folded arms.

The takeoff did not feel as smooth as usual, although Teyla had been in a jumper with Dr. Beckett and knew it could be worse. Ford and McKay argued in low voices over the path the puddlejumper was taking, which was apparently uneven, McKay snapping and nervous at Ford's impatient instructions. "You're doing fine, don't worry about it. You're just overthinking it," Sheppard put in quietly, not raising his head. "Just focus on getting to the Stargate. The jumper'll do most of the work of navigating." His amusement almost sounded genuine when he added, "Think of it as delegating."

McKay snorted, "I don't delegate, Major. People do things *wrong.*" But after that, the ride seemed smoother.

Sheppard reached up several times to rub his eyes. The third time he did it, Teyla asked him quietly if his eyes were itching. She didn't meant to attract the attention of the men in front, but Ford turned around to hear the answer and McKay glanced over his shoulder before whipping his head back around to the display in front of him.

"No, just…" Sheppard shrugged. "Impatient."

"It may make things worse and irritate your eyes," Teyla warned, and Sheppard shrugged again and agreed. When he raised a hand again a moment later, he caught himself in mid-gesture and let out a huff of breath. After he did so another time, Teyla caught his hand, which was warm and sweaty and not entirely pleasant to hold. But he was her friend, so she squeezed it gently. He tensed for a moment and then relaxed, and she laced her fingers through his and brought their joined hands to rest against his knee. "It will be all right," she said, and he let out a sigh and tilted his head back against the wall and made what seemed to be a conscious effort to relax.

"We're approaching the Stargate," Ford informed them a few minutes later, and then added, his tone apologetic. "Uh, sir, I know most things can wait until debriefing, but they'll need to know right away if--if the aliens were scanning your mind, then you might have been compromised and we should tell them to change IDC codes and security codes."

"Yeah," Sheppard said. "Good thought, Ford. And tell Caldwell and Elizabeth to change the self-destruct codes, too, and the--just tell them, they'll know what else I have access to." He spoke casually, but his hand had tightened on hers, and his face looked a little ashamed.

Ford was pressing the symbols now, and Sheppard let go of her hand. She had meant it as a gesture for his comfort, but when he took his hand away Teyla felt discomforted herself. For a moment, she found herself wondering, as she had not allowed herself to wonder during the journey back, what the ramification would be if his impairment *were* permanent. She automatically guarded her face and turned it away from him, even though he could not see the distress that thought brought reflected on her face. He and his people had quickly grown important to her; they had fought together and that made for loyal friends. Beyond that, Sheppard, short-sighted and impetuous and reckless as he sometimes was, had sparked in her a faith that they could win the battle against the Wraith. The Atlanteans were new to this galaxy, ignorant of its customs and protocols, but they were also ignorant of its long string of failures against the Wraith, and their confidence had relit hers. Teyla had heard the people from Earth, used to victory and safety, talking in dispirited voices about the severity of their losses in the recent siege; but Teyla and her people had appreciated what they could not: for the first time since the Ancestors had left, someone had fought off the Wraith. And somehow Sheppard represented his people to her; if he were blind, they would send him back to his own planet, and she would lose a friend, a team leader, and a source of hope.

She could not pray to the Ancestors like Halling did, now that she knew so much of them. But she found herself thinking, Let him recover, let him recover, let him recover as they flew through the open gate.

***
Elizabeth and Caldwell were talking over planets that might bear a second look now that their immediate needs weren’t so pressing when the call came over Caldwell’s comm. that Sheppard’s team was returning, and Caldwell sent back a message to lower the shield.

"They’re early," Caldwell said, already rising to his feet, because early probably meant that the mission had been fruitless, but might mean trouble. When McKay’s voice came over the city-wide speakers, calling for a medical team to the jumper bay, they both got up and ran.

Elizabeth’s primary feeling on seeing them and finding out the problem was relief: they were alive and in one piece and in no immediate danger. She schooled her words to a more appropriate expression of concern, though, since "it could have been worse" would not be any sort of consolation to John right now. And she did feel anxious for him, of course; John’s vision would be a huge loss if it weren’t temporary. But she had seen so many losses and injuries in the siege that this would seem…not minor, but bearable.

As she prepared to accompany Sheppard to the infirmary (Carson insisting on a stretcher, over John’s protests), Ford stepped near her and Caldwell, telling them, "Sir, ma’am, we may have a security breach." At that, she felt her heart sink.

Ford laid out the situation briefly, and Elizabeth began to thank him for the information and assure him that they would deal with it, but Caldwell spoke first, "We’ll take care of it, Lieutenant. Dismissed. Ma’am, if you’d like to go to the infirmary as well to check in on Major Sheppard, I can relay the necessary orders."

Walking along the corridors with Ford to the infirmary, Elizabeth thought again how disconcerting it was, to have Caldwell here. It was a boon, of course, to have another person with whom to share leadership. She had been alone in comparable situations, had felt regret about not being able to stand by an injured member of her team because some concern for the greater good of the city had kept her occupied elsewhere. John had shared the burden of leadership, but he had so often been offworld. Now Caldwell was there, a steady and reliable and competent presence, someone she should feel gratitude towards, and... Elizabeth, you are a contrary soul, and full of self-importance, she told herself wryly. Because she wanted to go to the infirmary, but she also felt twitchy about not being the one to make sure that the safety of the city was secured. Stupid of her, to feel as if she’d been cut adrift just because she wasn’t being torn by competing priorities.

"They did say he should recover, but they’re aliens, even if they meant it, they could be wrong about how the human eye works," Ford said anxiously as they approached the infirmary doors, and Elizabeth felt guilty, jostled out of her own self-absorption. Sometimes she felt as if the siege had taken up some store of compassion and it hadn’t been replenished yet, but she would simply have to act as if she still felt it because her people deserved better than indifference.

“Let’s see if Dr. Beckett has some answers for us," she said, forcing cheer into her voice.

She chatted with Teyla and Rodney and Ford while Beckett ran his tests, soothing them and gently nudging them into being checked out as well. Caldwell came in and nodded at her, right before Beckett was able to confirm that there hadn’t physical damage to the optic nerve, and he suspected that the parts of the brain that handled visual processing had just gotten a wee bit overloaded. He didn’t quite know when John’s sight would return, but it should be soon, and in the meantime he’d given the Major some pain medication for what looked like a thunderingly bad headache and told him to lie down since rest would do him a world of good.

Caldwell gathered the rest of the team, Elizabeth, and Sergeant Watkins, who was doing Bates’ job while the other man recovered, for a debriefing afterward, but it was relatively short. Elizabeth had sat in on every mission debriefing for a year now, and she was often struck by how little they knew. Were the aliens who lived on that planet now descendents of those who had lived there in the Ancients’ time, or some altogether different species? How did they communicate amongst themselves? Their technology level seemed sophisticated--how sophisticated? Was there any hope of negotiating with them? (Consensus: No.) What was their weapons technology like? How had the freeze-ray device worked, and what had it felt like? (That, at least, could be answered: less forceful than stunning technology, and not painful. They hadn’t felt any temperature change or numbness, or been knocked to the ground, but they hadn’t been able to move, although they felt pressure, as the aliens searched them. Elizabeth suspected that McKay was taking it as a challenge to produce something similar.) Were their assurances that they meant no harm reliable? Was John’s blindness truly only an unintended side effect and did they need to retaliate with a show of strength? (Though Ford glowered and said it was a bad precedent to let people in this galaxy think they could push them around, and McKay crossed his arms and muttered that they could probably poison their source of water to produce temporary blindness and see how the aliens like it, retaliation wasn’t seriously considered. They had too many enemies already. Unless the aliens tried to use whatever knowledge they had gleaned from John’s brain and body to invade Atlantis, there would be no further contact and the address would be removed from the active dialing system.)

Caldwell queried them closely, especially Ford, about their own actions, whether they could have prevented their capture. Not to be punitive, Elizabeth knew, but because they needed to shore up any gaps in their training. But as Elizabeth had become painfully aware over the past year, teams could take every precaution and still get hurt, since the inhabitants of a planet generally held the advantage in terms of numbers and sometimes in terms of superior weaponry as well. Their own teams lost the advantage of stealth when they made an attempt to communicate; once their people were close enough and visible enough to talk to strangers, they were close enough to be hurt. The only way Sheppard’s team could have prevented the situation would have been for them to start shooting on sight, before they got within range of the freeze devices, which would have defeated the purpose of a first-contact mission.

It was not a comfortable knowledge to have, that her people were always relying on luck to see them through, always depending on the kindness of strangers.

John’s team headed back to the infirmary after the debriefing, and she and Caldwell sat back down to return to their discussions. That and administrative duties filled the rest of her day, although she took time every few hours to go down to the infirmary. In the late afternoon, John was sitting cross-legged on one of the infirmary beds, and Teyla had pulled up a chair to tell him about an Athosian tradition to send off people taking long journeys. Elizabeth sat down and listened and asked a few questions, genuinely curious. She really should make a point of spending more time with the Athosians and learning about their customs, now that she had more time.

When she returned at dinnertime, the entire team had brought trays around and were eating together, Ford saying that the food looked *really* unappetizing and the Major was lucky not to see it, because macaroni and cheese was not supposed to be brown. A few hours later, the lights near Sheppard’s bed had been lowered and he seemed to be dozing, despite the fact that McKay was sitting nearby, hunched over his laptop, muttering to himself as he clicked away at the keys. She waved to McKay and he waved back before she ducked back out the door.

She planned to stop off once again and then go to bed around midnight, but shortly before that Dr. Talman, one of the new scientists who had come on the Daedalus, knocked on her door, said two sentences about the beauty of Atlantis, and then burst into a crying fit. Weir spent the next few hours persuading Dr. Talman that it would be wise to talk to Dr. Heightmeyer, and then accompanying him there and sitting in on the first part of the session at Talman’s request. By the time she made it to the infirmary, it was several hours past midnight. Colonel Caldwell was pushing the infirmary door open as he left, and he held the door open for her politely to enter; they did not speak, but nodded at one another. Only when Elizabeth stood for a moment inside the doors, glancing to see Carson snoring nearby on a cot and Sheppard sleeping, did she recognize that she had been surprised.

She slept past dawn, and made her way back to the infirmary shortly after. Sheppard wasn’t there, but Carson was, and he yawned and told her that it was good news, the Major had woken up a few hours earlier and was just fine, all brain scans normal, and able to read the eye chart perfectly.

Elizabeth checked in with Kate to confirm that Talman was fine but would probably return to Earth with the Daedalus in two weeks before she went to breakfast. John and Teyla were there, and John waved at her as she went through the line. She went to stand by their table after she’d loaded her tray. "Teyla, John. I’m pleased to see you well," she said.

"Yeah, me, too," Sheppard said, gesturing for her to take a seat. "Especially with the seeing part."

And Elizabeth was pleased, she realized, genuinely so. If her capacity for sympathizing deeply with other people’s pain had been stunted by the siege, at least it hadn’t affected her capacity to feel joy for them, and that seemed a step in the right direction. She smiled more widely, and took a seat and a sip of her coffee, and said, "Teyla, something you said yesterday made me curious, if you don’t mind answering a few questions."

"Of course not," Teyla said, smiling warmly.

As they talked, Elizabeth glanced over at John, who seemed to be listening with half an ear to their conversation but was slouched back in his chair, looking out the windows, eyes scanning the ocean as he drank a cup of coffee. Elizabeth glanced at Teyla to see her observing the same thing, and they exchanged a smile, and continued to talk.

***

McKay picked out long-sleeved shirts in the days afterward, to cover the five fingerprint bruises that Sheppard had left on his left forearm during the walk back to the jumper. It wasn’t anything shameful, obviously, but somehow the fact that Sheppard had been freaked out enough to hold onto him that tightly was…private. The walk back to the jumper, the fact that he’d led Sheppard, was public property, part of the official mission report, but that didn’t cover the way that Sheppard’s breathing had been shallow and uneven when he hadn’t been obviously willing it to steadiness, and the way he’d kept his head tilted towards McKay to listen intently, and the way that his fingers had dug into McKay’s arm the whole way, as if he was thought McKay might try to shake him off.

Rodney drummed his fingers across the bruises thoughtfully as he stared at the laptop screen, at the report he was finally getting around to typing up. (There had been power surges in one part of the city, and some mysterious artifacts found in another.) He’d typed up his theories on what Ford and Sheppard persisted in calling the Freeze-Ray Thingy purely to annoy him, and speculations about the device the aliens had used on the Major. He’d included his hypothesis that the room they’d been kept in, given its crappy prisoner-keeping qualities, was probably a storage closet of some sort. He’d pointed out that the fact that the alien town was so atypically far away from the Stargate was probably intentional on their part, and, well, they'd missed that clue.

Then he frowned at the printout sitting next to him, the puddlejumper log that showed a seven minute flight to the town and a thirteen minute flight back, before he quickly typed up another paragraph and sent off his report to Caldwell, Weir, and Sheppard.

The Colonel stopped an hour or so later, when Rodney was reading Jorgensen's theories about the chair's mental interface, which were strangely fascinating because he tended to come to the right conclusions but his methodology was horrifying and his logical processes weren't. "I read your final recommendation, that you thought you should have gotten the puddlejumper back to Atlantis faster and that you think that yourself and others with the Ancient gene should receive further flying lessons."

"Mmm," Rodney said absently, scrolling down the screen. He didn’t need a summary of what he’d written himself.

Caldwell came nearer to the table, resting his hands on it and drumming them, which was just annoying. "You did fine, Doctor, for someone who’s not a pilot. Major Sheppard spoke highly of the way all of you handled the situation."

"Mmm hmm."

"If you’re feeling some sort of guilt for flying six minutes slower than an experienced pilot did, it’s misplaced--"

Oh, dear, the man wasn’t trying to be avuncular, was he? Exasperated, McKay let his hands rest on the keys and swiveled his chair around. "I’m not feeling guilt. It’s not like I’ve had much of a chance to practice flying, what with my time being taken up with building nuclear bombs to blow up hive ships and working out ways to use inert space stations to, oh, blow up more hive ships, in addition to keeping this city running when it’s staffed by idiots who think that--" And he'd read that last thing wrong, hadn't he? Jorgensen couldn't have seriously hypothesized that; it was just too appalling. He swiveled back to the computer screen to check. Good god. "Who don't think, plainly. Anyway, obviously other things, like ensuring our survival, had higher priorities," he said absently, starting to scroll down again to see what new heights of illogic Jorgensen could reach.

"Uh huh," Caldwell said.

"Right," Rodney agreed. When he glanced up again, Caldwell was leaving, which was exasperating. Why had the man bothered to come if he was only going to bring up irrelevant questions and leave without addressing the point? "Colonel. I’m assuming there’s no objection to my spending more time practicing in the puddlejumpers."

Caldwell shook his head. "As long as you get one of the pilots to take you up, it’s fine."

"Right, then." Caldwell was still standing there. "That’s all," McKay said, waving his hand in dismissal before going back to work.

Weir came in awhile later, when he was composing an e-mail detailing the flaws in Jorgensen's theories. She caught him between pages five and six, and said more fairly irrelevant things that he half-listened to while coming up with an appropriately scathing rebuttal to Jorgensen's assertions.

"Rodney, I hope you don't feel any guilt over the trip back taking longer than it should have. Obviously Sheppard wasn't in immediate danger. While we appreciate that the scientists have stepped so far and above the call of duty here, we never intended for extra duties to interfere with your primary goals."

"No, no guilt," he said, and added vaguely, "But extra practice won't do me any harm, and I can fit it into my schedule." He sat back and gestured at his computer. "Okay, this, this is truly amazing. Most people at this level, their theories are basically sound, sometimes even elegant, but they have tiny flaws that ruin their conclusions. Whereas Jorgensen is just hugely, horribly, mind-bogglingly *wrong* but he arrives at the correct answer anyway. We should study him to see how he's doing it. Plus, I know I told him at least once before that that was erroneous thinking." He turned back to his computer and started skimming his files for his previous corrections to Jorgensen's report. A few moments later, he felt a pat on his shoulder and heard Elizabeth saying she was heading back to the control room.

Sheppard came by, hands shoved in his pockets and leaning slouched against the doorway, when Rodney was finishing up the eleventh page and typing his name at the bottom.

"It's not out of some ridiculous and illogical sense of guilt," Rodney informed him as he hit Send. "So we can fast forward through that part of the conversation."

Sheppard took that in with a blink and then a quick sideways smile. "'Kay. In that case, have you got time now to go up for a few hours before dinner?"

McKay blinked back in surprise, and then grinned himself. He didn't have time, really--stacks of reports to read! devices to analyze! tasks to assign! wisdom to dispense!--but still, nothing was actually exploding that wasn't supposed to be, so it would do. "Just a minute," he said, saving his files and powering down the laptop before he grabbed his jacket.

"So somewhere in the guilt conversation," Sheppard said as they ambled down the hall. "Just so you know, I probably would have mentioned that you all handled yourselves really well back on that planet and I was, um, grateful and all."

"Oh, well, compliments are always acceptable," Rodney said. "I just didn't feel like explaining, once again, that because the situation wasn't time-sensitive this time, it might not be--and here we go."

Sheppard rolled his eyes. "No, I get it. I think it's a good idea. We got lucky this time. We might not next time. If I'm injured or dead and the rest of you are under fire, then you damn well need to be able to get away fast."

"Exactly," McKay agreed with a feeling of satisfaction. "There are always enough factors that aren't under our control for us not to correct the one that is." He felt something in him unknot a bit, because Sheppard understood. What they'd done on that planet, good and bad, had been almost entirely irrelevant to what had happened there, and they placed themselves in that position of vulnerability every time they went exploring. They were fumbling around in this galaxy without signposts or markers, and no matter how smart they were or how well they fought, they could be squished like bugs. Which was fairly terrifying. How could they afford to pass up any advantages they had?

Caldwell still thought like he was at the SGC, where scientists weren't, with a few notable exceptions, on the front lines. Weir was more ruthless in some ways, but she tended to ask instead of demand, and to think along lines of specialization still; besides, she knew as well as he did that his time was valuable, and that problems that needed to be solved right then and there were more important than preparing for problems that hadn't happened. But Sheppard understood that they didn't have the luxury of not doing their best out in the field, and he wouldn’t…he wouldn't spare McKay from pushing himself to do more, which maybe he needed right now.

Rodney felt something in him unknot, and something else in him break a little, because despite everything, part of him had wanted Sheppard to argue a little, to say it wasn't necessary for him to learn how to fly better than he did. I'm asking you to teach me how to prepare for you being so critically hurt that six minutes might make a difference. I'm asking you to prepare me for your death, he thought, and looked over at Sheppard, blithe and unconcerned and resilient.

***
Sheppard had to fight down the urge to nudge McKay's hands off the controls for the first half-hour, but that basically used up his supply of impatience and he reached the state of zen calm that occurred in people who had been standing in lines for a very long time. Somewhere about two hours in, he thought that it was actually pretty relaxing to be the passenger, which was how he discovered that the co-pilot's seat reclined--cool!--and that he could call up the various position and strategy screens to hover above his head. He had fun with summoning and banishing those while keeping half an eye on Rodney's progress.

"You're a completely unhelpful teacher," McKay pointed out bitterly, though his flying had gotten better once he'd decided that Sheppard wasn't paying attention so closely. "Is this how you taught all those pilots who came in with Everett? It's a wonder they didn't all crash on the first day."

"Well, they were *pilots,*" Sheppard said, wincing at the memory of that particular day, because it had consisted of him waving his hands at the consoles and saying vague things about letting the jumper guide you, because there wasn't a lot to say about the puddlejumper systems except that they existed and they basically met all your needs. "Mostly they had the basics of flight already picked up, and the jumper's a dream to fly. Anyway, you're doing fine. Just…um…think a little less. Go more with your instincts."

McKay looked peevish. "All right, you've said that before. A, that's going to be difficult because, for me, thinking a little less is still thinking a lot more than other people. Plus, B, I think that's a cliché anyway. I've seen you fly, and you're thinking all the time while you're doing it. I've seen you pull five or six screens up at a time and analyze them all, and you can't tell me you're doing all that by instinct."

"Point," Sheppard conceded, and considered it. "I'm not thinking about it with my hands, though," he said thoughtfully, and made the seat go back upright. "My hands are just…doing. Like when you're typing out whatever you're working on, you're not paying attention to your hands, you're just thinking about what you want to show up on screen. I'm just thinking about where I want the jumper to move, and not about how my hands need to move to get it there." He glanced at the corner of the display in front of Rodney and said, "Something to think about, since we should head back to the city. It's getting late."

They'd taken the jumper pretty far out, and it was neat to see the city come back into view. McKay slowed them down almost to a stop, and they hovered, watching the sunset as it spilled over the towers. Sheppard had exhausted the "look, I can seeeee!" reaction on the first day of his recovery, but he still appreciated the view a lot this time around.

"Did you want to take it in the rest of the way?" McKay asked abruptly.

Sheppard almost agreed automatically, was shifting his weight to get out of his chair, but something kept him still. McKay was looking upset--really upset--and Sheppard guessed he wasn't thinking about sunsets and light but was noticing the damage the Wraith had done. He probably hadn't gotten the full aerial view before. That'd kill anyone's mood. Except…

"You do the honors," Sheppard said, keeping his voice light. Because that was part of flying, flying when you were upset and angry and under pressure, and that was part of what McKay needed to learn.

"Right," McKay said flatly, sitting stiffly in his seat, and the jumper didn't move. After a moment he said, "Looking at the city, my first thought was, we were lucky." He turned his face to look at Sheppard, and his eyes were full of grief. "And we were, really, weren't we?"

Sheppard nodded.

"And then I thought about the last time I spent such a long time in a puddlejumper. It didn't even occur to me until now. It was on the way back from the space station, Miller and me and Peter Grodin's ghost." He turned back to face front. "I slept for most of it. I didn't have anything to do and I knew I wouldn't get a chance to sleep once I got back to the city. Peter was hours dead and I just--" he gestured vaguely, "slept."

"You did what you needed to," Sheppard said softly.

"Yes." Rodney shrugged a little, and the jumper began moving forward again slowly. "And I still think it, that we were lucky."

"We were," Sheppard said, and dropped his eyes, listening to McKay breathe and watching his own hands. He shifted uncomfortably. "I know it…feels like stealing from the dead, to be happy. But I am, um…" They'd offered him the chance to go back on the Daedalus and he hadn't had to think twice about staying. Part of it loyalty, part of it duty since he had the ATA gene, part of it stubbornness, and part of it the fact that despite the death, the war, and the missions that went bad with blindness and vomiting and pain (and the fact that the blindness and vomiting and pain were the *good* ways in which a mission could go wrong), he was… "happy here," he finished in a rush.

When he looked up from his hands, Rodney was looking at him with a mixture of ruefulness and pain and what looked like affection. "We have all gone insane," he said matter-of-factly.

Sheppard nodded. "I'm enjoying it, though," he informed McKay, "Now, you know, fly us in." McKay did so, while John watched the city as it got closer, strong and damaged and bright.

END