Team, Week 3: Seasons of Gold
Title: Seasons Of Gold
Author: tielan
Prompt: endings and beginnings
Word Count: 5000
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: major Season Four spoilers.
Summary: What began six months ago when John began to form his own team is complete. Maybe not the way John imagined it - not the way it began all those months ago, but complete all the same.
Notes: Much thanks to my betas, allisnow and madjm for their efforts!
Seasons Of Gold
Uncertain Glory
You asked for this.
John paces through the corridors of the Wraith complex, the footsteps of his team echoing around him in the still, damp cold.
He can just imagine Elizabeth's expression if he complained, ball-breaking steel beneath the pretty features. You asked for Ronon Dex on your team, John.
Which he doesn't deny. He did ask for Dex on his team. But while he got a chance to talk to the guy about a few things - ground rules, philosophies, getting-to-know-you kind of stuff - Dex was extremely close-mouthed: one syllable answers, a carefully impassive, arms-folded, no expression face. John asked if there were any questions, Dex considered it, then said, simply, "No."
Currently, his newest team-mate is taking point.
John's not quite sure how this happened, and the uncertainty - as well as the fact that Dex is leading - irks. He suspects it has something to do with the fact that the man walked straight into the corridor, his weapons out and ready to fire. Rodney snarled that it was amazing that he didn't set anything off. Ronon's brisk answer was that the Wraith either had forward guards or nothing at all. Teyla looked as though she didn't know whether to laugh or weep.
He figures Dex will probably warm up after a bit. Ford was shy, too - for all of about six seconds.
Thinking about the young Lieutenant stings. Thinking about the half-mad man he became with the Wraith enzyme - driven and focused, preferring to be taken by the Wraith than go back with John - squeezes his chest. He pushes both sensations away and walks on, following Teyla. There'll be plenty of time to grieve over what Ford's become in the coming months, even as they keep up the search for him.
Ahead, Teyla pauses. Beyond her, unaware that anything's wrong, Dex and Rodney keep going.
John stops as she turns back. "Teyla?"
Her eyes flicker past him, and he turns, his weapon leaping into his hands with the cold kiss of industrial gunmetal.
There's nothing there.
"What? What's she seen? What's happening?"
Teyla's not answering. John looks at Rodney. He's got a bad feeling about this.
"Check the life-signs detector."
"I've been checking it all this ti--" The halt says everything they need to know.
John grabs Teyla's shoulder, dragging her out of whatever state she's in. His grip is hard because he's terrified for her - and, although he'd never admit it out loud, maybe a little of her. It takes some getting used to, the Wraithgene. "Teyla?"
Her fingers curl around his wrist as she looks up at him. "There are Wraith."
"How many?"
Rodney answers. "Just one... No, wait..." The detector suddenly shows a wealth of life-signs, rising out of the hibernatory state from which they aren't visible on the Ancient device. "I think we're in trouble. We must have activated something that started to wake them up - a routine or a breaker or..."
Ronon's weapons are already in his hands, and he steps across the corridor. The soldier in John notes that the man has moved to get maximum visibility in both directions along the curved corridor. The leader in John approves.
The commander in John is pleased by the way the big man looks at him for cues. "Back the way we came?"
"Have I mentioned that we're in trouble?" Rodney jabs a finger at the life-signs detector. "Because there are way more of them than we can handle."
John looks at his team-mates, at their faces in the blue shadows of the Wraith's idea of interior decoration. He makes a decision. "Teyla?"
"I...I believe I can find a way out of here," she says after a moment.
"Take the way with the least Wraith."
"Preferably none at all," Rodney adds.
"Teyla's point, Dex, you're six. Rodney, stay behind me but keep your weapon out..."
"And don't shoot you in the butt," says Rodney with a huffy note in his voice. "I know how to behave in these situations."
"Good," John says, curtly. "Prove it. And let me know if there are power clusters in the walls. We'll plant some C4 on the way out." He nods at Teyla. "Let's go."
They start out at something close to a run, back the way they came. John doesn't remember the twists and turns they took - he hopes Teyla does.
It's a risk, putting Teyla in front to lead the way out. Her memory's better than Rodney's and as good as John's when it comes to layouts and twists and turns, but her Wraithgene's a weakness as well as a strength.
John figures that if he puts her in front, he'll be able to keep an eye on her.
She moves in bursts, a pause and then swift movement through several corridors. John notices they're going down, an endless slope out of the complex as they way in was a steady slope up.
"Here." Rodney says from behind him.
"What?"
"You wanted to know about the power clusters?"
Teyla stops, and John has a block of C4 out and a transmitter embedded in moments. His fingers know the drill, he could do it - has done it - in pitch darkness and numbing cold.
"Left side of the corridor," Rodney says and John tucks it into a corner.
"There are Wraith coming."
"How many?"
Rodney consults the life-signs detector. "Five."
"We taking them moving or still?"
"We've got a dozen more coming for us."
John jerks his head further along the corridor. "Moving."
In fact they take the Wraith at a run, mowing them down like grass. Teyla falls to the left and John moves right. Dex takes high and Rodney moves to stand in Teyla's shadow so he can shoot wide right.
Exultation mingles with adrenaline, the pulse and chatter of the weapon in his hands, the echo of Teyla's P-90, Rodney's single-shot Beretta, the pew-whumph of Dex's gun.
A minute later, they're stepping over the bodies of five Wraith riddled with bullets. John plants another wedge of C4 and they're moving again.
It's a pattern that they fall into as neatly as if they've been doing it for years. What began six months ago when John began to form his own team is complete. Maybe not the way John imagined it - not the way it began all those months ago, but complete all the same.
On the run to the gate, Rodney stumbles and Ronon hauls him up. Teyla dials Atlantis. And John detonates the Wraith complex a second before his team steps through the gate to go home.
Fire and flame and acrid smoke consume what they leave behind.
"O! how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day!"
-William Shakespeare-
(Two Gentlemen Of Verona)
-o-o-
In Beauty Barbarous
Blood wells up from her lip as she bites down hard enough to break skin. Her muscles scream with strain as she wraps her legs around the chain and grabs the hook with her fingers, before lowering her body down again.
This time, though, she drops to the floor, collapsing on cold cement.
Her joints ache with the flat chill. Her skin stings. The open welts seep sluggishly as she forces herself to roll up into a sitting position and make her way over to where the knife fell. After a moment's careful angling, the ropes are sliced through, only scraping the back of her wrist as her muscles tremble.
Her tormentor lies on the floor, still unconscious, and she moves as fast as her bruises permit. His eyes open wide enough to see her as she stuns him. Cloth drags beneath her stiff fingers as she strips the Genii soldier of his uniform. Her breastband and undergarments are unsuitable for escape, and she will need a disguise. Luckily, this man was old, small and wiry, his frame much similar to her own. The shoes do not fit so well, but they are well enough
On the table of implements, silver and grey, sharp and blunt, a flask of water sits. Teyla saw the Genii drink from it, and does not hesitate to refresh herself before she takes his weapon and his keys, ties back her hair, and looks down at her tormentor.
Four shallow slashes do the trick, scarlet slashes across his pale cheeks, marking him.
She would know him without the scars, but now others will know him, too.
Teyla steps out of her prison, lifts her chin, and forces her limbs to move with the lazy swing of a soldier in a secure facility. Her muscles ache, there are tiny cuts all along her skin, and she has a feeling her face is more than a little battered.
Her team-mates are held here somewhere in this Genii stronghold, close by.
Not all the Genii are content with Ladon's leadership; there are still some who owe loyalty to Kolya.
She tries to remember the paths and turnings they took to arrive at this room, and traces her way back to the cells. Two guards are disposed of; alert but not expecting trouble. One has time to cry out and then he is down.
Metal keys jingle, too loud in the echoing quiet of the complex. There is no uproar, no outcry to show that she has been found.
She knows her team-mates, and so pushes the door open and stands in the middle of it, not protesting as Ronon grabs her vest and whirls her around, slamming her back against the wall.
White lights flash behind her eyes, and she makes a small grunt of pain as her muscles protest.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Rodney shoulders aside their team-mate, an unexpected hit from an unexpected quarter. "It's Teyla! It's Teyla! Throttle back on the adrenaline, okay?"
Ronon drops her so fast, she does not know whether to be amused or insulted. "Sorry."
Teyla barely manages to keep her feet. Her knees are trying to buckle beneath her. Only the wall holds her up. "Drag the guards in. We will need their weapons. Where is John?" It has only just occurred to her that there are only two men in here.
"They took him, shortly after you." Ronon dumps the first man as Rodney pants and grunts and groans with the second. Then he takes her shoulder, angles her face up so he can see the bruises. "What'd they do?"
Teyla eases out from beneath his hand, wincing. "We must find John, first."
"They took him down the corridor - opposite direction to you."
"Plus side, we haven't heard anything," says Rodney, fishing through pockets with a wince, and pocketing various items of Genii equipment. "Minus side, we haven't heard anything. Why don't these guys carry anything useful?"
"Like a ZPM?"
"Well, yes, we could do with one of those. But I was thinking of a life-signs detector..." Rodney halts as Ronon rummages through the pocket of one of the guards and fishes it out. "How'd you know...?"
"Saw him pocket it when they captured us," says Ronon. "Find Sheppard."
In the moments it takes Rodney to reconfigure the life-signs detector to locate the strongest incidence of the Ancestor gene, Teyla levers herself off the wall and eases herself down beside the guard, trying to strip off his jacket. Ronon has to help her in the end.
"You shouldn't be walking."
"You should not be questioning your rescue," she retorts.
"Am I going to have to separate you two?" Rodney asks, never looking up from the detector. "What? Only Sheppard's allowed the snappy lines? Okay, according to this, Sheppard's two levels up in a room with two others. Two guards outside the door, four people... Oh, we're in trouble."
"Rodney."
"Two people on their way down to this level."
Teyla hands Rodney the jacket Ronon helped her take off the Genii guard. "Then we should move. Put this on."
The plan is simple; shoot everyone on their way to rescue John. Shoot everyone on their way out of the complex. Avoid whatever traps and pitfalls have been set up to take them out on the way to the Stargate. Go home.
Like all things, it is not so easy in practise.
John has been tortured, too - less skilled, more brutal. Teyla's own injuries ache at the sight of the long, shallow cuts in his flesh, at the purpling bruises over his eyes and across his jaw, at the raw welts on his back and buttocks.
But he is still John. "I can walk."
"Shut up," Rodney snaps, pulling a makeshift bandage just a little too tight. Teyla touches his hand and he loosens it a little, his nostrils flaring.
"Teyla's fine." His eyes study her face. "Sort of."
"They did not work on me as hard as they have worked on you," she says with a little more sharpness than is warranted.
John still insists on limping out of the room in borrowed trousers and on his own steam, although Rodney is all for stunning John and having Ronon carry him out. Teyla does not fight John's independence. His pride does not submit tamely to rescue.
Rodney complains at being John's crutch while Ronon takes point and Teyla covers their backs. It's a token complaint.
They leave as they arrived: a team.
And no-one is left behind.
"Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
Stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what
lovely behavior
Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver
Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies?"
~Gerald Manly Hopkins~
(Hurrahing In Harvest)
-o-o-
Shadowless Like Silence
Ronon finds her in one of the rec rooms, sitting on the striped couch with her hands resting on her gravid belly as she stares out into the twilight.
A single candle in a lantern-shield bobs up and down in the invisible eddies off the ocean, but provides enough light to see her face. Her fingers flutter over the swell of her child, a protective gesture of mother to son.
He makes sure he's noisy as he comes in, and flashes her a brief, easy smile. The armchair springs squeak as he flings himself into them. "You okay?"
It's a moment before she smiles and answers. "Very well."
Teyla's turned inwards lately, silent and thoughtful - more than before. There's a distance to her, as though a part of her is with her people - wherever they are - and she doesn't have the energy or desire to reach out to anyone around her. Even her team-mates aren't exempt from the slow closing out of the world as she savours the last few months of communion with her son.
The difference is that her team-mates still try.
"I heard your encounter with the IOA went well." She shifts, leaning over to reach for another pillow to plump up behind her back.
Ronon pulls out the bag of flavoured popcorn he brought back from Earth and offers it to her with a grin. "Better than yours."
"That would not be difficult." Her sigh is long and slow and he waits for her response. "You know that things will not be the same after my son is born."
"I know."
She nods and her voice lowers, barely a whisper in the quiet hum of this section of the city. "I do not believe John does."
Yeah, Ronon got that impression. Much as he admires the man, Sheppard can be pigheaded when he chooses not to see what's obvious. Like Teyla. Like her son.
"He will."
Her smile is small and slightly pained, but she opens the flavoured popcorn and begins nibbling the kernels in silence. Ronon lets her be silent. He doesn't need to hear his own voice.
John arrives just as she offers the popcorn to Ronon, sauntering in with the cooler box in one hand.
"Hey. Rodney's getting his panties in a twist over some theory Zelenka tossed out while we were stuck in the 'jumper, and apparently started the calculations on. He'll be around a bit later." He steps over Ronon's outstretched legs to take the space on the couch next to Teyla. "How's junior?"
"Restless," she says, and her hand strokes the curve of her stomach.
Ronon's pretty sure she doesn't mean the gesture as sensually as it comes across. Her gaze is fixed 'inwards' again, so she doesn't see the way John looks at her, doesn't know of the lump in Ronon's throat.
Lanteans have children's stories about forces that can hold people in place. They call it a 'magic spell'. In moments like these, Ronon thinks he understands that idea. He can't look away from Teyla and neither can John.
The moment draws out, then breaks as she lifts her head to look at them and smiles, breaking the 'spell'. Her hand drops to the couch beside her, and she regards John fondly.
"How are you after your enforced confinement in the 'jumper?"
"Well, I didn't go mad and slaughter everyone," says John, looking down and away. His self-consciousness at being caught staring never ceases to intrigue and amuse Ronon. A moment later, Sheppard seems to remember that he's got the cooler, and pulls out a Dr. Pepper for Teyla. "It was pretty close for a while there, but once I locked them out it was okay."
"Should have taken a photo when we found you." Ronon grins, remembering. "He was all curled up. All he needed was a huggy."
Teyla's answering grin is as deep as John's scowl. "If you use the word 'cute,' I'm going to go find my gun and shoot you. And what's a 'huggy' anyway?"
"Something that you hug to sleep when you're a kid," Ronon glances back. Down the corridor, he can hear the sound of Rodney snapping at someone - probably over his earpiece - and getting closer.
"A sleep-toy," Teyla says, nodding, her own head turning towards the door as Rodney's dulcet tones herald his arrival in the room. "We had those."
"...don't have time for this right now, Radek. Don't do anything. Don't. Do. Anything. I'll be back up there in...oh, an hour or so. Did you hear the part where I said not to do anything? How many times do I...? Fine, then."
To the amusement of his team-mates, Rodney nearly tore the earpiece off his ear and tossed it on the table. "I can't believe he was going to start the calculations without me."
"Well, Rodney, you could have skipped this." John reaches over and grabs a handful of popcorn from Teyla. "No-one said you had to be here."
McKay snorts. "Oh, please. If you don't want me here then don't ask me to come in the first place."
Ronon pulls a Coke out of the cooler box and tosses it over before Rodney can ask.
"Did you have to throw it? Now it's going to spray everywhere..."
Ronon used to wonder why the man grumbled so much. Why everything was a bother, a pain, an inconvenience - why the man acted as though the universe was out to get him. It took him a few months to realise that the complaining, the whining, the snappy retorts were all part of a coping mechanism: complain about the little things and the big things were just a natural extension of the small stuff.
They're all used to it by now.
In spite of Rodney's dire mutterings, the depressurised can doesn't spray the drink everywhere. He takes a noisy slurp and settles back in his chair as Ronon begins to haul out the various packets of food he brought back from Earth.
"So, how was your trip to Tortuga. Or whatever that place was called?" Rodney asks Teyla.
"Torruva. They are great travellers, but they have not seen or heard from my people." The words are simple and weary, and Ronon glances up at her as he pops open a bag of M&Ms. Her smile is tired, but she's still holding out hope. He admires that - even as he knows that holding onto hope is only going to make it worse.
For seven years, Ronon believed Sateda had survived - before the Lanteans showed him the truth. More than all the seven years gone before, that moment strangled him of breath, ripped out his heart and crushed it before his eyes. He went away to the quarters they gave him, put his head in his hands and let his shoulders heave for everything he didn't know he'd lost.
It still aches and it always will.
But Teyla doesn't have to be alone. Her son won't grow up without kin.
It's never been said by any of them, but Ronon knows that his thoughts are John's thoughts, are Rodney's thoughts, are the thoughts of others in the city. Whatever's happened to the Athosians, Teyla and her son belong to Atlantis, too.
It's John who repeats to her what he's been saying all these months.
"We'll find them."
And Teyla's eyes keep faith. "I know."
"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence. "
-Thomas Hood-
(Ode: To Autumn)
-o-o-
Measured Out In Coffee Spoons
Rodney's hip aches as he climbs the stairs to the empty control room.
He tries not to think that this is the last time.
At the top of the main flight, he pauses. Was it so long ago that he walked in here for the first time? His mind does the calculation. Nearly thirty years.
So many years! It feels like it's been mere days - and it feels like it's been forever. His memories are patchy, but he recalls watching the city light up, stair by stair, overhead light by overhead light. Elizabeth in her red-panelled uniform with her eyes wide with wonder, the marines moving past him with their weapons at the ready, Zelenka's sleeve-tugging excitement, Miko's little-girl gasp of delight...
He lets the memories crash in on him, pleasure and pain and the whisper of voices long since dust.
Then he moves on before they can drag him under.
A quick check of the systems shows the near-drained ZPM holding up for the moment. Enough to power the city for the next few thousand years, perhaps. And afterwards... Afterwards, it would all be in the hands of luck and fate and possibility.
With some significant help from Rodney McKay.
It's easier going back down the stairs than up. But the memories come back stronger.
So many memories! So much that happened in such a short time. He remembers fussing with the flak vest as they went down the stairs to the gate that first mission. The vest was heavy and hot and Rodney had complained about it. Sheppard told him to suck it up and deal if he wanted to be on the team, Ford hassled him on the way out the Stargate, and Teyla just smiled and asked him questions about what they were looking for and the life-signs detector he'd been fiddling with. He forgot about the vest after that.
He programs the FRED to move the Mark XII naquadah generator, the MacroDell, and the food and living supplies he brought along for this last trip. He'll set up in one of the spaces near the hologram room while he does the programming and gets the generator connected to the stasis chamber, ready for its last inhabitant.
The air in the city's stale with disuse. At one of the city system interfaces, Rodney programs the windows to open for a few hours, catch that breeze off the sea. They can close at sunset.
For a moment, he wonders when the city's due for the next big storm, then remembers that this planet doesn't have those weather patterns. That was old Lantea.
This is old Rodney McKay, wandering down the deserted halls of the city, listening to the sea breeze whistling through the empty corridors, letting his memories linger a little here and there. Katie listening to his ramblings as she accompanied him to the infirmary. Carson teasing him about the guy on one of the planets they visited who had a thing about intelligent men with snappy retorts. Arguing with Radek on their way to the chair room about the power properties of the chair.
Radek was still in the SGC - an old man who muttered to himself in Czech and snapped at his research assistants. Rodney finds it ironic that he mellowed with age, while Radek went to vinegar.
It had still been good to see his old friend.
Rodney turns into the corridor that leads to the transporter. The transporter will take him down to the level with the holographic room and he'll start work there. After a nap, maybe.
In the transporter, his hand hesitates over the map where once it would have punched in the destination without hesitation.
Ah, there.
And then in a flash of light and a technology that Earth still hasn't managed to master, he's in the corridor that leads out to the hologram room.
An hour later, he has the MacroDell screen set up on one wall with the unit below, his bedding in one corner and the food close by. There's a table for the notes he still likes to write by hand, and three photos he takes with him wherever he goes.
Maddie, Andrew, and Taylor are adults now, no longer the pained-looking teens who stare into the camera's lens. Rodney took a moment to say goodbye to them all before he went to see Jeannie and Caleb for the last time. His sister grumped at him. He grumped back. Caleb sent them to their separate corners and threatened them without supper.
His family. Such as it is.
Jennifer looks out of the photo frame, smiling in a pale blue silk dress the day of their marriage. Rodney went out to her grave just this morning - a last goodbye and an apology. She wanted him to live and he spent his life and his hopes on the next world over.
It's not the life he hoped to live. It's not the life she hoped he would live.
You shouldn't live as though this life is expendable, Rodney. What if it isn't?
The last photograph is old - older than the other two. Crumbling at the edges, re-scanned several times to try to keep the image as the paper disintegrated, fading with time and age and handling.
Four deck chairs out on a pier, with the azure sea visible beyond the grey pier's high edge. A couple of beers sweat circles on the table, a laptop lies beneath his chair, set aside for an hour or two of conversation. Ronon's dreadlocks drape over the edge of the nearest deck chair, Sheppard's hair and jaw and pointed ear peek around the side of his, Teyla's laugh is frozen as she reaches for a piece of fruit, and Rodney gestures at something, his hands trying to describe just how big was the explosion that blew out the windows of his bedroom when he was eleven.
They're gone now.
Teyla died trying to escape Michael, trying to take her son back. Rodney remembers looking at her figure, so still and small on the grey floor.
Ronon died in fire - so his fighters said. Rodney wonders if any of them are still alive, still running from Michael and his hybrids.
And Sheppard...well, Sheppard's travelling through time, the anchor line of this web of hope Rodney's trying to weave about his future and his past.
If he fails, he'll never know it. If he succeeds... He'll never know that either.
It should have been longer.
They should have had longer - more time, more fight, more will, more willingness. Instead, they died, one by one, and Atlantis got itself bureaucracy and lost its spirit.
The grief hits him hard, sitting here in the city he loved and left because he couldn't live with the knowledge that just past the event horizon were a thousand worlds engaged in a fight from which Earth had seceded. Because he couldn't walk through this city and not remember the friends that were gone and how he'd felt among them - how, for a small slice of his life, barely three years - Rodney McKay had been a part of something bigger than even his ego.
Twenty-five years later, Rodney still remembers how it felt to sit on that pier among friends; sun, laughter, and his team-mates on a perfect day.
Will it be worth it, after all? All the years of equations and reclusion, of questions and second-guesses?
As well ask the elderly Elizabeth, who slept in a city for ten thousand years to give another expedition a chance.
Rodney doesn't know if the mermaids will sing for him.
But as he slips on the MacroDell's tri-finger mouse and activates the screen with a snap of his fingers, he hopes.
Hope - and his equations - will have to be enough.
"For I have known them all already, known them all:˜
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
-TS Eliot-
(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
-o-o-
Author: tielan
Prompt: endings and beginnings
Word Count: 5000
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Spoilers: major Season Four spoilers.
Summary: What began six months ago when John began to form his own team is complete. Maybe not the way John imagined it - not the way it began all those months ago, but complete all the same.
Notes: Much thanks to my betas, allisnow and madjm for their efforts!
Seasons Of Gold
Uncertain Glory
You asked for this.
John paces through the corridors of the Wraith complex, the footsteps of his team echoing around him in the still, damp cold.
He can just imagine Elizabeth's expression if he complained, ball-breaking steel beneath the pretty features. You asked for Ronon Dex on your team, John.
Which he doesn't deny. He did ask for Dex on his team. But while he got a chance to talk to the guy about a few things - ground rules, philosophies, getting-to-know-you kind of stuff - Dex was extremely close-mouthed: one syllable answers, a carefully impassive, arms-folded, no expression face. John asked if there were any questions, Dex considered it, then said, simply, "No."
Currently, his newest team-mate is taking point.
John's not quite sure how this happened, and the uncertainty - as well as the fact that Dex is leading - irks. He suspects it has something to do with the fact that the man walked straight into the corridor, his weapons out and ready to fire. Rodney snarled that it was amazing that he didn't set anything off. Ronon's brisk answer was that the Wraith either had forward guards or nothing at all. Teyla looked as though she didn't know whether to laugh or weep.
He figures Dex will probably warm up after a bit. Ford was shy, too - for all of about six seconds.
Thinking about the young Lieutenant stings. Thinking about the half-mad man he became with the Wraith enzyme - driven and focused, preferring to be taken by the Wraith than go back with John - squeezes his chest. He pushes both sensations away and walks on, following Teyla. There'll be plenty of time to grieve over what Ford's become in the coming months, even as they keep up the search for him.
Ahead, Teyla pauses. Beyond her, unaware that anything's wrong, Dex and Rodney keep going.
John stops as she turns back. "Teyla?"
Her eyes flicker past him, and he turns, his weapon leaping into his hands with the cold kiss of industrial gunmetal.
There's nothing there.
"What? What's she seen? What's happening?"
Teyla's not answering. John looks at Rodney. He's got a bad feeling about this.
"Check the life-signs detector."
"I've been checking it all this ti--" The halt says everything they need to know.
John grabs Teyla's shoulder, dragging her out of whatever state she's in. His grip is hard because he's terrified for her - and, although he'd never admit it out loud, maybe a little of her. It takes some getting used to, the Wraithgene. "Teyla?"
Her fingers curl around his wrist as she looks up at him. "There are Wraith."
"How many?"
Rodney answers. "Just one... No, wait..." The detector suddenly shows a wealth of life-signs, rising out of the hibernatory state from which they aren't visible on the Ancient device. "I think we're in trouble. We must have activated something that started to wake them up - a routine or a breaker or..."
Ronon's weapons are already in his hands, and he steps across the corridor. The soldier in John notes that the man has moved to get maximum visibility in both directions along the curved corridor. The leader in John approves.
The commander in John is pleased by the way the big man looks at him for cues. "Back the way we came?"
"Have I mentioned that we're in trouble?" Rodney jabs a finger at the life-signs detector. "Because there are way more of them than we can handle."
John looks at his team-mates, at their faces in the blue shadows of the Wraith's idea of interior decoration. He makes a decision. "Teyla?"
"I...I believe I can find a way out of here," she says after a moment.
"Take the way with the least Wraith."
"Preferably none at all," Rodney adds.
"Teyla's point, Dex, you're six. Rodney, stay behind me but keep your weapon out..."
"And don't shoot you in the butt," says Rodney with a huffy note in his voice. "I know how to behave in these situations."
"Good," John says, curtly. "Prove it. And let me know if there are power clusters in the walls. We'll plant some C4 on the way out." He nods at Teyla. "Let's go."
They start out at something close to a run, back the way they came. John doesn't remember the twists and turns they took - he hopes Teyla does.
It's a risk, putting Teyla in front to lead the way out. Her memory's better than Rodney's and as good as John's when it comes to layouts and twists and turns, but her Wraithgene's a weakness as well as a strength.
John figures that if he puts her in front, he'll be able to keep an eye on her.
She moves in bursts, a pause and then swift movement through several corridors. John notices they're going down, an endless slope out of the complex as they way in was a steady slope up.
"Here." Rodney says from behind him.
"What?"
"You wanted to know about the power clusters?"
Teyla stops, and John has a block of C4 out and a transmitter embedded in moments. His fingers know the drill, he could do it - has done it - in pitch darkness and numbing cold.
"Left side of the corridor," Rodney says and John tucks it into a corner.
"There are Wraith coming."
"How many?"
Rodney consults the life-signs detector. "Five."
"We taking them moving or still?"
"We've got a dozen more coming for us."
John jerks his head further along the corridor. "Moving."
In fact they take the Wraith at a run, mowing them down like grass. Teyla falls to the left and John moves right. Dex takes high and Rodney moves to stand in Teyla's shadow so he can shoot wide right.
Exultation mingles with adrenaline, the pulse and chatter of the weapon in his hands, the echo of Teyla's P-90, Rodney's single-shot Beretta, the pew-whumph of Dex's gun.
A minute later, they're stepping over the bodies of five Wraith riddled with bullets. John plants another wedge of C4 and they're moving again.
It's a pattern that they fall into as neatly as if they've been doing it for years. What began six months ago when John began to form his own team is complete. Maybe not the way John imagined it - not the way it began all those months ago, but complete all the same.
On the run to the gate, Rodney stumbles and Ronon hauls him up. Teyla dials Atlantis. And John detonates the Wraith complex a second before his team steps through the gate to go home.
Fire and flame and acrid smoke consume what they leave behind.
"O! how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day!"
-William Shakespeare-
(Two Gentlemen Of Verona)
-o-o-
In Beauty Barbarous
Blood wells up from her lip as she bites down hard enough to break skin. Her muscles scream with strain as she wraps her legs around the chain and grabs the hook with her fingers, before lowering her body down again.
This time, though, she drops to the floor, collapsing on cold cement.
Her joints ache with the flat chill. Her skin stings. The open welts seep sluggishly as she forces herself to roll up into a sitting position and make her way over to where the knife fell. After a moment's careful angling, the ropes are sliced through, only scraping the back of her wrist as her muscles tremble.
Her tormentor lies on the floor, still unconscious, and she moves as fast as her bruises permit. His eyes open wide enough to see her as she stuns him. Cloth drags beneath her stiff fingers as she strips the Genii soldier of his uniform. Her breastband and undergarments are unsuitable for escape, and she will need a disguise. Luckily, this man was old, small and wiry, his frame much similar to her own. The shoes do not fit so well, but they are well enough
On the table of implements, silver and grey, sharp and blunt, a flask of water sits. Teyla saw the Genii drink from it, and does not hesitate to refresh herself before she takes his weapon and his keys, ties back her hair, and looks down at her tormentor.
Four shallow slashes do the trick, scarlet slashes across his pale cheeks, marking him.
She would know him without the scars, but now others will know him, too.
Teyla steps out of her prison, lifts her chin, and forces her limbs to move with the lazy swing of a soldier in a secure facility. Her muscles ache, there are tiny cuts all along her skin, and she has a feeling her face is more than a little battered.
Her team-mates are held here somewhere in this Genii stronghold, close by.
Not all the Genii are content with Ladon's leadership; there are still some who owe loyalty to Kolya.
She tries to remember the paths and turnings they took to arrive at this room, and traces her way back to the cells. Two guards are disposed of; alert but not expecting trouble. One has time to cry out and then he is down.
Metal keys jingle, too loud in the echoing quiet of the complex. There is no uproar, no outcry to show that she has been found.
She knows her team-mates, and so pushes the door open and stands in the middle of it, not protesting as Ronon grabs her vest and whirls her around, slamming her back against the wall.
White lights flash behind her eyes, and she makes a small grunt of pain as her muscles protest.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Rodney shoulders aside their team-mate, an unexpected hit from an unexpected quarter. "It's Teyla! It's Teyla! Throttle back on the adrenaline, okay?"
Ronon drops her so fast, she does not know whether to be amused or insulted. "Sorry."
Teyla barely manages to keep her feet. Her knees are trying to buckle beneath her. Only the wall holds her up. "Drag the guards in. We will need their weapons. Where is John?" It has only just occurred to her that there are only two men in here.
"They took him, shortly after you." Ronon dumps the first man as Rodney pants and grunts and groans with the second. Then he takes her shoulder, angles her face up so he can see the bruises. "What'd they do?"
Teyla eases out from beneath his hand, wincing. "We must find John, first."
"They took him down the corridor - opposite direction to you."
"Plus side, we haven't heard anything," says Rodney, fishing through pockets with a wince, and pocketing various items of Genii equipment. "Minus side, we haven't heard anything. Why don't these guys carry anything useful?"
"Like a ZPM?"
"Well, yes, we could do with one of those. But I was thinking of a life-signs detector..." Rodney halts as Ronon rummages through the pocket of one of the guards and fishes it out. "How'd you know...?"
"Saw him pocket it when they captured us," says Ronon. "Find Sheppard."
In the moments it takes Rodney to reconfigure the life-signs detector to locate the strongest incidence of the Ancestor gene, Teyla levers herself off the wall and eases herself down beside the guard, trying to strip off his jacket. Ronon has to help her in the end.
"You shouldn't be walking."
"You should not be questioning your rescue," she retorts.
"Am I going to have to separate you two?" Rodney asks, never looking up from the detector. "What? Only Sheppard's allowed the snappy lines? Okay, according to this, Sheppard's two levels up in a room with two others. Two guards outside the door, four people... Oh, we're in trouble."
"Rodney."
"Two people on their way down to this level."
Teyla hands Rodney the jacket Ronon helped her take off the Genii guard. "Then we should move. Put this on."
The plan is simple; shoot everyone on their way to rescue John. Shoot everyone on their way out of the complex. Avoid whatever traps and pitfalls have been set up to take them out on the way to the Stargate. Go home.
Like all things, it is not so easy in practise.
John has been tortured, too - less skilled, more brutal. Teyla's own injuries ache at the sight of the long, shallow cuts in his flesh, at the purpling bruises over his eyes and across his jaw, at the raw welts on his back and buttocks.
But he is still John. "I can walk."
"Shut up," Rodney snaps, pulling a makeshift bandage just a little too tight. Teyla touches his hand and he loosens it a little, his nostrils flaring.
"Teyla's fine." His eyes study her face. "Sort of."
"They did not work on me as hard as they have worked on you," she says with a little more sharpness than is warranted.
John still insists on limping out of the room in borrowed trousers and on his own steam, although Rodney is all for stunning John and having Ronon carry him out. Teyla does not fight John's independence. His pride does not submit tamely to rescue.
Rodney complains at being John's crutch while Ronon takes point and Teyla covers their backs. It's a token complaint.
They leave as they arrived: a team.
And no-one is left behind.
"Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
Stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what
lovely behavior
Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver
Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies?"
~Gerald Manly Hopkins~
(Hurrahing In Harvest)
-o-o-
Shadowless Like Silence
Ronon finds her in one of the rec rooms, sitting on the striped couch with her hands resting on her gravid belly as she stares out into the twilight.
A single candle in a lantern-shield bobs up and down in the invisible eddies off the ocean, but provides enough light to see her face. Her fingers flutter over the swell of her child, a protective gesture of mother to son.
He makes sure he's noisy as he comes in, and flashes her a brief, easy smile. The armchair springs squeak as he flings himself into them. "You okay?"
It's a moment before she smiles and answers. "Very well."
Teyla's turned inwards lately, silent and thoughtful - more than before. There's a distance to her, as though a part of her is with her people - wherever they are - and she doesn't have the energy or desire to reach out to anyone around her. Even her team-mates aren't exempt from the slow closing out of the world as she savours the last few months of communion with her son.
The difference is that her team-mates still try.
"I heard your encounter with the IOA went well." She shifts, leaning over to reach for another pillow to plump up behind her back.
Ronon pulls out the bag of flavoured popcorn he brought back from Earth and offers it to her with a grin. "Better than yours."
"That would not be difficult." Her sigh is long and slow and he waits for her response. "You know that things will not be the same after my son is born."
"I know."
She nods and her voice lowers, barely a whisper in the quiet hum of this section of the city. "I do not believe John does."
Yeah, Ronon got that impression. Much as he admires the man, Sheppard can be pigheaded when he chooses not to see what's obvious. Like Teyla. Like her son.
"He will."
Her smile is small and slightly pained, but she opens the flavoured popcorn and begins nibbling the kernels in silence. Ronon lets her be silent. He doesn't need to hear his own voice.
John arrives just as she offers the popcorn to Ronon, sauntering in with the cooler box in one hand.
"Hey. Rodney's getting his panties in a twist over some theory Zelenka tossed out while we were stuck in the 'jumper, and apparently started the calculations on. He'll be around a bit later." He steps over Ronon's outstretched legs to take the space on the couch next to Teyla. "How's junior?"
"Restless," she says, and her hand strokes the curve of her stomach.
Ronon's pretty sure she doesn't mean the gesture as sensually as it comes across. Her gaze is fixed 'inwards' again, so she doesn't see the way John looks at her, doesn't know of the lump in Ronon's throat.
Lanteans have children's stories about forces that can hold people in place. They call it a 'magic spell'. In moments like these, Ronon thinks he understands that idea. He can't look away from Teyla and neither can John.
The moment draws out, then breaks as she lifts her head to look at them and smiles, breaking the 'spell'. Her hand drops to the couch beside her, and she regards John fondly.
"How are you after your enforced confinement in the 'jumper?"
"Well, I didn't go mad and slaughter everyone," says John, looking down and away. His self-consciousness at being caught staring never ceases to intrigue and amuse Ronon. A moment later, Sheppard seems to remember that he's got the cooler, and pulls out a Dr. Pepper for Teyla. "It was pretty close for a while there, but once I locked them out it was okay."
"Should have taken a photo when we found you." Ronon grins, remembering. "He was all curled up. All he needed was a huggy."
Teyla's answering grin is as deep as John's scowl. "If you use the word 'cute,' I'm going to go find my gun and shoot you. And what's a 'huggy' anyway?"
"Something that you hug to sleep when you're a kid," Ronon glances back. Down the corridor, he can hear the sound of Rodney snapping at someone - probably over his earpiece - and getting closer.
"A sleep-toy," Teyla says, nodding, her own head turning towards the door as Rodney's dulcet tones herald his arrival in the room. "We had those."
"...don't have time for this right now, Radek. Don't do anything. Don't. Do. Anything. I'll be back up there in...oh, an hour or so. Did you hear the part where I said not to do anything? How many times do I...? Fine, then."
To the amusement of his team-mates, Rodney nearly tore the earpiece off his ear and tossed it on the table. "I can't believe he was going to start the calculations without me."
"Well, Rodney, you could have skipped this." John reaches over and grabs a handful of popcorn from Teyla. "No-one said you had to be here."
McKay snorts. "Oh, please. If you don't want me here then don't ask me to come in the first place."
Ronon pulls a Coke out of the cooler box and tosses it over before Rodney can ask.
"Did you have to throw it? Now it's going to spray everywhere..."
Ronon used to wonder why the man grumbled so much. Why everything was a bother, a pain, an inconvenience - why the man acted as though the universe was out to get him. It took him a few months to realise that the complaining, the whining, the snappy retorts were all part of a coping mechanism: complain about the little things and the big things were just a natural extension of the small stuff.
They're all used to it by now.
In spite of Rodney's dire mutterings, the depressurised can doesn't spray the drink everywhere. He takes a noisy slurp and settles back in his chair as Ronon begins to haul out the various packets of food he brought back from Earth.
"So, how was your trip to Tortuga. Or whatever that place was called?" Rodney asks Teyla.
"Torruva. They are great travellers, but they have not seen or heard from my people." The words are simple and weary, and Ronon glances up at her as he pops open a bag of M&Ms. Her smile is tired, but she's still holding out hope. He admires that - even as he knows that holding onto hope is only going to make it worse.
For seven years, Ronon believed Sateda had survived - before the Lanteans showed him the truth. More than all the seven years gone before, that moment strangled him of breath, ripped out his heart and crushed it before his eyes. He went away to the quarters they gave him, put his head in his hands and let his shoulders heave for everything he didn't know he'd lost.
It still aches and it always will.
But Teyla doesn't have to be alone. Her son won't grow up without kin.
It's never been said by any of them, but Ronon knows that his thoughts are John's thoughts, are Rodney's thoughts, are the thoughts of others in the city. Whatever's happened to the Athosians, Teyla and her son belong to Atlantis, too.
It's John who repeats to her what he's been saying all these months.
"We'll find them."
And Teyla's eyes keep faith. "I know."
"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence. "
-Thomas Hood-
(Ode: To Autumn)
-o-o-
Measured Out In Coffee Spoons
Rodney's hip aches as he climbs the stairs to the empty control room.
He tries not to think that this is the last time.
At the top of the main flight, he pauses. Was it so long ago that he walked in here for the first time? His mind does the calculation. Nearly thirty years.
So many years! It feels like it's been mere days - and it feels like it's been forever. His memories are patchy, but he recalls watching the city light up, stair by stair, overhead light by overhead light. Elizabeth in her red-panelled uniform with her eyes wide with wonder, the marines moving past him with their weapons at the ready, Zelenka's sleeve-tugging excitement, Miko's little-girl gasp of delight...
He lets the memories crash in on him, pleasure and pain and the whisper of voices long since dust.
Then he moves on before they can drag him under.
A quick check of the systems shows the near-drained ZPM holding up for the moment. Enough to power the city for the next few thousand years, perhaps. And afterwards... Afterwards, it would all be in the hands of luck and fate and possibility.
With some significant help from Rodney McKay.
It's easier going back down the stairs than up. But the memories come back stronger.
So many memories! So much that happened in such a short time. He remembers fussing with the flak vest as they went down the stairs to the gate that first mission. The vest was heavy and hot and Rodney had complained about it. Sheppard told him to suck it up and deal if he wanted to be on the team, Ford hassled him on the way out the Stargate, and Teyla just smiled and asked him questions about what they were looking for and the life-signs detector he'd been fiddling with. He forgot about the vest after that.
He programs the FRED to move the Mark XII naquadah generator, the MacroDell, and the food and living supplies he brought along for this last trip. He'll set up in one of the spaces near the hologram room while he does the programming and gets the generator connected to the stasis chamber, ready for its last inhabitant.
The air in the city's stale with disuse. At one of the city system interfaces, Rodney programs the windows to open for a few hours, catch that breeze off the sea. They can close at sunset.
For a moment, he wonders when the city's due for the next big storm, then remembers that this planet doesn't have those weather patterns. That was old Lantea.
This is old Rodney McKay, wandering down the deserted halls of the city, listening to the sea breeze whistling through the empty corridors, letting his memories linger a little here and there. Katie listening to his ramblings as she accompanied him to the infirmary. Carson teasing him about the guy on one of the planets they visited who had a thing about intelligent men with snappy retorts. Arguing with Radek on their way to the chair room about the power properties of the chair.
Radek was still in the SGC - an old man who muttered to himself in Czech and snapped at his research assistants. Rodney finds it ironic that he mellowed with age, while Radek went to vinegar.
It had still been good to see his old friend.
Rodney turns into the corridor that leads to the transporter. The transporter will take him down to the level with the holographic room and he'll start work there. After a nap, maybe.
In the transporter, his hand hesitates over the map where once it would have punched in the destination without hesitation.
Ah, there.
And then in a flash of light and a technology that Earth still hasn't managed to master, he's in the corridor that leads out to the hologram room.
An hour later, he has the MacroDell screen set up on one wall with the unit below, his bedding in one corner and the food close by. There's a table for the notes he still likes to write by hand, and three photos he takes with him wherever he goes.
Maddie, Andrew, and Taylor are adults now, no longer the pained-looking teens who stare into the camera's lens. Rodney took a moment to say goodbye to them all before he went to see Jeannie and Caleb for the last time. His sister grumped at him. He grumped back. Caleb sent them to their separate corners and threatened them without supper.
His family. Such as it is.
Jennifer looks out of the photo frame, smiling in a pale blue silk dress the day of their marriage. Rodney went out to her grave just this morning - a last goodbye and an apology. She wanted him to live and he spent his life and his hopes on the next world over.
It's not the life he hoped to live. It's not the life she hoped he would live.
You shouldn't live as though this life is expendable, Rodney. What if it isn't?
The last photograph is old - older than the other two. Crumbling at the edges, re-scanned several times to try to keep the image as the paper disintegrated, fading with time and age and handling.
Four deck chairs out on a pier, with the azure sea visible beyond the grey pier's high edge. A couple of beers sweat circles on the table, a laptop lies beneath his chair, set aside for an hour or two of conversation. Ronon's dreadlocks drape over the edge of the nearest deck chair, Sheppard's hair and jaw and pointed ear peek around the side of his, Teyla's laugh is frozen as she reaches for a piece of fruit, and Rodney gestures at something, his hands trying to describe just how big was the explosion that blew out the windows of his bedroom when he was eleven.
They're gone now.
Teyla died trying to escape Michael, trying to take her son back. Rodney remembers looking at her figure, so still and small on the grey floor.
Ronon died in fire - so his fighters said. Rodney wonders if any of them are still alive, still running from Michael and his hybrids.
And Sheppard...well, Sheppard's travelling through time, the anchor line of this web of hope Rodney's trying to weave about his future and his past.
If he fails, he'll never know it. If he succeeds... He'll never know that either.
It should have been longer.
They should have had longer - more time, more fight, more will, more willingness. Instead, they died, one by one, and Atlantis got itself bureaucracy and lost its spirit.
The grief hits him hard, sitting here in the city he loved and left because he couldn't live with the knowledge that just past the event horizon were a thousand worlds engaged in a fight from which Earth had seceded. Because he couldn't walk through this city and not remember the friends that were gone and how he'd felt among them - how, for a small slice of his life, barely three years - Rodney McKay had been a part of something bigger than even his ego.
Twenty-five years later, Rodney still remembers how it felt to sit on that pier among friends; sun, laughter, and his team-mates on a perfect day.
Will it be worth it, after all? All the years of equations and reclusion, of questions and second-guesses?
As well ask the elderly Elizabeth, who slept in a city for ten thousand years to give another expedition a chance.
Rodney doesn't know if the mermaids will sing for him.
But as he slips on the MacroDell's tri-finger mouse and activates the screen with a snap of his fingers, he hopes.
Hope - and his equations - will have to be enough.
"For I have known them all already, known them all:˜
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
-TS Eliot-
(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
-o-o-