started but never-to-be-completed
Five stories with nowhere to go.
Pinocchio Syndrome; Little AU On The Prairie; Wraithwolves; Looking For Liz; Slaves In A Strange Land.
The Pinocchio Syndrome
As her flight came out of hyperspace at the gate-point, the star-speckled expanse of black in front of Teyla's flight was only broken by the small, reddish planet visible in the upper right-hand corner of her screen.
Inside her slip-runner, Teyla frowned. The ambassador to Asura should have been waiting here for them - the flight had been delayed out of the Pegasus station due to maintenance issues, and a message pulsed ahead to let the ambassador know that she'd be waiting for her escort.
John? Automatically, she reached out for the AI who connected her to Stargate Central's computer network.
We're on time.
Yet the ambassador is not here.
You're observant today, Teyla. The easy tenor held a hint of a smile in it. For all that he was an AI, he'd been programmed with a sense of humour and a sense of humanity about him. Sometimes Teyla wondered if the programmer had not been a little frustrated with his job - John had a tendency to tease. You're not that late.
Late enough. For a diplomat, two standard hours is a long time. Run an external nav check.
Already on it. What's your navscreen say?
Her navscreen showed the hypergate co-ordinates correct according to the star charts, and there was the message satellite hovering just off to her left. Her spacecraft was analysing the visible spectra against the databank records for the location and coming up green.
Everything was correct, but for the Embassy-class ship that should have been waiting for them at this gate-point.
My readings show that we are where we should be, Teyla told him and sensed his agreement.
The message satellite still has our apology for being late - I've stripped it out of the sat and there's nothing else in there. Guess she's late, too.
"Athos Flight, this is 'Teda Leader. What's the delay?" To a stranger, Ronon would have sounded grumpy, but terse was his usual state of speech. Teyla had become accustomed to it in the last five years of their association as colleagues and friends in the slip-runners.
"The delay would appear to be that our ambassador has not yet reached the contact point," Teyla said wryly.
"Aren't we late?"
"It seems that so is she."
"You know it's a she?"
Teyla paused. John had let slip the defining pronoun in their conversation, and she had repeated it, but it presented a problem of knowing more than she was willing to tell Ronon. After all, her personal mental link to the Stargate networks through John was a Mil-classified secret, and one that she had managed to avoid referring to in over two years since she'd taken the nanochip implant.
Perhaps she should just fob Ronon off with the explanation that her information had been a little more in-depth than his - the mission was assigned to Athos Flight with Sateda Flight as backup, after all...
Even as she considered it, her comms let out a burst-signal that denoted an urgent message from one of her flight. "Leader, this is Sky - we have an incoming hyperhole energy dump."
"Our tardy ambassador," Teyla said, both wry and relieved. She'd been beginning to wonder about the delay without any notice. "Athos Flight--"
Break! Break! Break! John's words broke into her words, cutting her off.
"Break! Athos Flight, split and break!" Teyla reacted on instinct, her heart pounding in adrenalised reaction to her netlink's urgency. She pulled her slip-runner into a vertical climb away from the incoming gate-point, trusting John's call and the instincts of her team as the hyperspace wormhole formed in the air, a perfectly circular, spreading green-white cloud that spewed energy like a star gone nova. John?
The energy dump's too large for just an ambassador class, he said tightly. That's a fleet or a warship class...
He trailed off.
As her slip-runner circled around, Teyla's nav systems pulsed with the beep of a single spacecraft emitting a Stargate-code transponder signal. The Steenburger, John said in her head, even as the screen bleeped, spitting out the requisite recognition codes in an electronic burst that was almost panicked. A moment after, the nav systems went beserk.
Fighters poured out of the wormhole like a colony of angry bees from a hive - flattened, wedge-shaped bees with tiny glowing stings that spat at the larger hawk-nosed craft skimming just head of their firing range.
Her comms exploded in chatter.
--
An Unsuitable Woman
John noticed her the instant he stepped outside the church door that Sunday morning.
In the crowded churchyard, it was difficult not to notice her, standing alone by the fence at the edge of the property with the churchgoers leaving a careful distance around her as they mingled and gossiped in their groups.
As he paused on the threshold of the church, neither within the wooden structure of the building nor yet outside among the throng, John was struck by the way she held herself - like a wild deer in silence, tamed to the hand.
A moment later, he revised that opinion as she lifted one gloved hand to brush a wisp of hair back under the rim of her bonnet and her head turned enough for their eyes to meet.
Her gaze was steady and frank, dark beneath dark lashes, with none of the coquetry that the single women of the town employed for him, just a long, measuring look. And John dismissed his former estimation. Tamed from the wild she might be, and out of place in the churchyard full of the prim, proper ladies of Atlantis town, but there was no terror in this doe.
"Ah, Sheppard," the drawling tones of Rodney McKay interrupted John's observation. "What a surprise to see you at church today."
John relaxed, forcing himself to look away from the mysterious woman and to one of his longest acquaintances in town. "No more than it is to see you in church, McKay."
"Yes, well, while I have no use for the moralising of the church, it's an acceptable social event, if you like such things."
"And you don't." John eyed the other man. "So why are you here?"
McKay fell into bluster, the way he often did when caught off-guard. "I need a reason other than simply being sociable? Can't a man just enjoy a Sunday morning at church?"
There were quite a few words John would use to describe Rodney. 'Sociable' wasn't one of them. He hooked his thumbs in his trouser pockets and decided he could leave Rodney his secrets - for the moment. He'd winkle them out later. "All right then. Since you're so well aquainted with the church crowd," he let his disbelief edge through his voice as he made this pronouncement, "you can tell me who the lady over by the fence is."
The broad brow wrinkled slightly as Rodney turned, not bothering with concealment or subtlety. John reflected that he might as well have bellowed the question for all the care the other man showed for the proprieties. "Lady by the fence, lady by the-- Oh. Teyla Athos?"
"If Miss Athos is the one wearing the hat with the curled black feather in it, then, yes, her."
Rodney turned back immediately and, for a wonder, dropped his voice in the manner of one confiding a secret. "Gossip says she's Athos' daughter."
John turned his head enough so he could just see Miss Athos. "I'm guessing you mean Old Man Athos rather than Halling?" He studied the girl from the corner of his eye, noting the darker skin and the strong cast of her bones. It went halfway to explaining why she was in Atlantis town, and a lot of the way to explaining why most of the townswomen were snubbing her.
Old Man Athos had died before John arrived in Atlantis town, but from the tales told around town, the crusty old farmer had been quite a character. Possibly the most sedate things said about him were that he'd liked wicked women and wild living - and loved the farm that bore his name and was now run by his son.
So he'd had a daughter...
"There's all kinds of rumours floating around about her mother," said Rodney. "It seems safe enough to say she probably wasn't white. But the gist of the story is that the girl ran wild as a child, then was taken in hand by the Old Man and sent back East to be schooled. And now she's back to take up keep of the Athos property."
"It's a large property," John said mildly. "Not easy for a man to keep running with only his son and a handful of servants and hired hands." He could say that with certainty, owning a farm that adjoined the Athos lands and was maybe half the size. It wasn't an easy living for a man with no dependants but his workforce, and John couldn't imagine it was any easier for a man who not only had a son, but a sister, and assorted other relatives relying on the sweat of his brow.
Living out west had its advantages - space and land and freedom, for starters - but it wasn't an easy life, as John had first discovered when he moved out here nearly five years ago.
--
Twilight
Teyla woke with the strong desire to be sick.
Her body ached as though she had been beaten, her temples throbbing with a pain that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. It only intensified as she sat up. She dragged in a deep breath of air and wished she had not. What she inhaled was redolent with mud and scat, and she choked, turning her face away in disgust.
Something glittered in the corner of her eye and she forgot pain and stench both as a brilliant starscape spun past the viewscreen of the puddlejumper.
This is not Atlantis.
Within the puddlejumper she felt no movement - as far as she knew, her feet were on solid ground. Her eyes told her differently, dizzied by the tiny stars that wheeled across the midnight velvet of the sky, disoriented by the reddish bulk of the planetary mass as it tilted into her line of sight before sliding out of her line of sight.
Teyla turned away, as much to give her eyes a rest as to check her team-mates.
They lay as dead men, or tumbled children's toys, left lying where they fell.
Stumbling over to John, who had collapsed out of the pilot's chair, Teyla brushed her fingers past his cheek and felt in his throat for a pulse. Strong and steady, and his chest lifted and fell with breath. A quick skim of her fingers around his head found no blood, but an attempt to rouse him with voice and hand did nothing.
Teyla glanced back at the two shapes that lay further back in the cabin. She could not spend time reviving him - not if Rodney or Ronon needed her help.
In the middle cabin, Rodney lay curled on his side in the position the Lanteans termed 'foetal' and which related to the body curl of a baby as it rested in its mother's womb. His pulse was strong, and Teyla rolled him on his back and was encouraged when the chest beneath her hand rose and fell in steady breaths.
Ronon was slumped down on the soft-covered bench of the cargo bay. Aware of her team-mate's reflexes, Teyla merely touched her hand to his arm, waiting for the rise-fall of his chest.
They were alive, just unconscious. And a small tendril of confusion uncurled within within Teyla's belly. Why were they unconscious while she was not?
Why were they here, spinning out in space, and not in Atlantis?
--
Ties Of Loyalty
In the peace of the meadows, the sound of Ronon's stunner was loud and startling.
Teyla turned in time to see Rodney collapse and Ronon turn the weapon on her. She had no time to reach for her weapons, had she even thought to do so. Her mind was taken up with what she saw in the bright sunlight - one team-mate down on the ground, another crouched beside him, and the third watching her with an expression of regret plain on his face as he aimed his gun at her.
"He okay?" Ronon asked, without looking away from her.
John laid Rodney's arm across his belly with a little pat, then rose to his feet, his hands resting casually on the P-90. "He'll survive."
With his back to the bright Latavellian sunlight, he suddenly seemed oddly dark, bronzed as Ronon, whose gun still rested on her. Or perhaps that was simply the intensity of his eyes upon her face.
The Lanteans had a saying: 'hindsight is perfect.' Teyla understood it now. Murmured conversations in the mess hall that had made no sense as she set down her tray beside John's; the objects packed in the 'jumper - unnecessary for this mission; the peace she'd seen on John's face this morning - mingled with regret as he looked up at the city - they were all parts of a whole.
"You are going after Elizabeth."
"Teyla..."
She watched his eyes fall, remembered the guilt on his face when he'd limped back through the Stargate, with Ronon and Rodney on stretchers, and no Elizabeth at all. He thought she did not understand what he was doing; she did.
What she did not understand was why she was to be left behind.
"You did not ask me to come with you."
Ronon glanced at John, and Teyla realised she'd had one ally in this, even unknown. But the decision was John's - no-one else's - and he had chosen to leave her behind.
It stung; a seeming betrayal of his own trust in her.
"You're still your people's leader. They need you."
And you do not? Teyla would not voice it - could not, for fear of the answer. The silence of her mind was bound about by the rustle of the wind through the leafy tree-tops close by, an endless susurrus of doubt and betrayal.
"And Rodney?"
"He wouldn't survive outside Atlantis."
"And you will?" She did not mean it to sound questioning, yet it did.
"I've lived hard before."
"But not in Pegasus."
A tilt of his head indicated Ronon. "Ronon has."
You did not ask me. It burned, that absence of even the request. Anger coursed through her, pulsing in her blood; her breath came in short pants of pain, as though she'd been wounded.
"Why not tell Atlantis if you know where she has been taken?"
"Because we don't know where she's been taken."
Teyla frowned at them. "But then--"
"We've got leads."
"And you will risk your life on it? And Ronon's?"
"Ronon chose this on his own," said John with the stubbornness she recognised. He would not move from this choice, she could back him up or step back from him. "I'm choosing to risk my life on this - nobody else's."
"Atlantis--"
"Doesn't need me." Such bitterness in his voice! The rending of hope and the slow tearing of the bonds that had tied him to the city and the people there. Teyla ached for him, understanding a part of his grief, even if she disliked his actions. "Caldwell has the military in hand, there are dozens of people with the ATA. And Phillips isn't going to expend any energy on a search; Atlantis was the break of his career."
Teyla did not doubt it. But for all that John was telling her, it was not the risk that concerned her in the end. "You did not ask me to come with you."
It was not a complaint, not exactly. She wanted to know why he had thought to ask Ronon, but not Rodney, not her. Had he trusted them so little in the end?
In the bright sunlight, his eyes were pale, like shallow water. "Would you have said yes?"
Teyla opened her mouth and realised she did not know the answer. Yes, she wished Elizabeth back in the city, she wanted to accompany her team-mates on the rescue; but there were other matters that held her back. Her responsibilities to her people were weak, compared to what they had once been, but she still felt them too strongly to break all ties.
"See?" John said, and while his voice was light, she could hear the sadness in him - not merely a leavetaking, but a sundering. "I wouldn't have asked you to give up your people, Teyla."
She wished to say that he should have asked - should have found out. But she could not. Looking into his eyes, she could not.
In the pause, the stunner shot was unexpected - she had forgotten what they intended from the first.
Pain skittered through her flesh and her limbs grew heavy and weak. She slid down to the ground as her body betrayed her. John loomed in her sights, catching her as she collapsed and easing her down to the ground.
A hand brushed past her cheek as he caught her, a distant caress that she barely felt against her skin. "I'm sorry, Teyla."
"Sheppard..." Ronon's tone of voice was urgent.
"I know."
She was lowered into the soft grass, and a cloth laid over her from shoulder to toe as they conferred above her in murmurs. The nap brushed the knuckles of her hand, tactile sensation when everything else was fading from her awareness.
She was sinking into the soil, the bright day blurring as though veils drifted down over her, one by one, palely hazing her senses with every moment that passed.
They lifted briefly as a hand gripped her shoulder, and a bristled mouth pressed to her forehead with brisk affection and a murmured apology. A thumb brushed her chin, the more affectionate version of a grazing of knuckles against the jaw. Then Ronon stood up and his heavy footsteps faded into dust.
Fingers touched her face, and her lashes lifted long enough to see John's regret, painted plain in his expression. His lips brushed her cheek, and a thready whisper of breath sifted through her hair.
Then he was gone.
--
Dark Times In Bright Lands
Teyla only saw the sedan chair out of the corner of her eye as she waded into the fight.
In the twilight, it was hard enough to see the men laying into each other. Pale flesh flashed as fists found their marks, and sweat gleamed like silver across the bare skin of the darker men.
She ducked under a fist that reached for her, gasped as it gripped her hair, then planted her elbow in his solar plexus, before her fingers jabbed into his groin. Her nose wrinkled at the unsavoury scents that rose from his skin, but the agonised cry gave her time to take him by the neck and lay him down into the dirt. His prone nape gave her access to the nerves that disabled a man.
John and Ronon were already in the fray, dragging troublemakers apart with the brisk anger of military men at a civil disturbance. As she observed the fight, judging where and when she should intervene, a movement to the side captured her attention. Rodney was waving the women behind him, standing his ground as not one, but two fighters approached him.
Four strides took her around the edge of the brawl, and one man was disabled within moments. Rodney was struggling against the other, his expression tight and pained as he struggled to remember the lessons their team-mates had tried to instil in him.
Teyla dealt with the second man as well, although not before Rodney doubled up with a fist in his belly. And if she was ungentle, it was not undeserved.
"Thanks," Rodney gasped, his hands clutched protectively over his stomach. One of the women came forward, her eyes wary on Teyla as she reached out to draw Rodney back to the group.
She did not object, although her mouth curved in a grim smile, as she turned to regard the fight. Even the twilight could not disguise the amatory look in the eyes of the women as they regarded her team-mates. They would have no shortage of offers in the coming nights.
Revulsion knotted her belly at the thought, but she looked for another opponent, keeping a careful eye on the way the fight was tending.
"The wardens!" The cry rose from further along the dirt street, and heads lifted like hireni scenting the hunters.
The heavy tread of the wardens' booted feet filled the air with dread, their weapons up and ready to fire.
She saw Ronon hold a man to the ground, savagely muttering something to the downed man, who continued to struggle. John stepped away from his opponent, who'd turned towards the approaching wardens in fear. He held up his hands, but his eyes swept the site of the conflict, looking for his team-mates - Ronon, Rodney, and her.
Teyla nodded once to let him know she was well, then glanced at Ronon, who was rising to his feet, lifting his hands into the air to show that he was not a threat.
If the wardens were not threatened, they would not shoot. Not, perhaps, the most assured of rules, but one that the inhabitants of this quarter of the city adhered to - for what little good it did them.
As the dark shapes surrounded the once-fighting parties in the darkness, Teyla glimpsed a leering smirk sidelong from one face.
"OverWarden Gleico," said the leader of the wardens. "What happened?"
There were assorted glances from side to side before John stepped forward. "Breaking up a streetfight, sir."
"Breaking up a streetfight?"
Teyla saw the swiftly-aborted movement of one of the brawlers as he began to protest John's explanation. "They's hogging the whores! They don't come roun' to us no more!"
The OverWarden's glance towards the women clustered around Rodney was both amused and disgusted. But it brought Teyla into his line of sight. "And this woman? Is she also hogging the whores?"
"My colleague," John said, his voice taking on an edge that warned against presumption of more.
She stood still, her hands held out from her body, open, to show she was no threat. Compared with the scanty garments of the other women, she was fully covered, but the concealment of skin did little to dissuade the man from waving a torch-bearer forward so he could take a good long look at her.
Ronon twitched, but was reined in as Teyla captured his gaze.
Please, Ronon. Do not get involved. Not here. Not for this.
Beyond the blaze of the torchlight, Teyla saw the dark fear in John's face. If the OverWarden took a liking to her, there was nothing they could do. Here, on this planet, they were nothing more than the slave-caste, denied access to the main city, denied access to the Stargate, denied right and privilege alike. Even so meagre a caste as an OverWarden could take what he wanted, do what he desired to a mere slave.
"Your colleague?"
John's voice never wavered. "My colleague."
"She whores for them," sneered another man. "The three of them."
"You're wrong," said Ronon, almost a growl.
"Won't have any of us - we're not good enough for the likes of her..."
"She's a friend and a colleague," John repeated. "She's not... We don't use her like that."
From the way the OverWarden eyed her, his eyes avaricious in the burning red light, he didn't believe that - he didn't want to believe that. "I think that I shall...overlook the matter of this brawl in the annals. In exchange for this woman."
"Like hell," Ronon began, starting forwards, then jerking back as a metallic rod was thrust against his chest.
Teyla could see John's eyes, John's body. He was tense as a stretched skin, holding himself with the stillness of a man who knew he must subdue his body or give in to terror. Her team-mate would fight the Wraith, defend his city, give his life for those he considered his family, but helplessness went against his grain. "She's not for exchange," he said, and his voice held the sinking desperation of a drowning man. "She's her own person."
One finger came up to trace her cheek, clean and well-made, but unwelcome. Teyla did not flinch, but stared straight ahead, unwilling to give him any reason to desire her.
"Not anymore, she's not," said the man, sepulchural and amused. "You can have the whores. One woman in exchange for the dozen. I'm thinking you have a bargain."
"Ronon, no!"
He lunged, reckless of his own safety in anger. The rod flared and he collapsed, twitching. She saw the jerk and shiver of his arms, of his dreadlocks in the dust. Even as John stepped forward, the silver bar swung towards him, and he tensed, waiting for the blow.
It did not come.
--
Pinocchio Syndrome; Little AU On The Prairie; Wraithwolves; Looking For Liz; Slaves In A Strange Land.
The Pinocchio Syndrome
As her flight came out of hyperspace at the gate-point, the star-speckled expanse of black in front of Teyla's flight was only broken by the small, reddish planet visible in the upper right-hand corner of her screen.
Inside her slip-runner, Teyla frowned. The ambassador to Asura should have been waiting here for them - the flight had been delayed out of the Pegasus station due to maintenance issues, and a message pulsed ahead to let the ambassador know that she'd be waiting for her escort.
John? Automatically, she reached out for the AI who connected her to Stargate Central's computer network.
We're on time.
Yet the ambassador is not here.
You're observant today, Teyla. The easy tenor held a hint of a smile in it. For all that he was an AI, he'd been programmed with a sense of humour and a sense of humanity about him. Sometimes Teyla wondered if the programmer had not been a little frustrated with his job - John had a tendency to tease. You're not that late.
Late enough. For a diplomat, two standard hours is a long time. Run an external nav check.
Already on it. What's your navscreen say?
Her navscreen showed the hypergate co-ordinates correct according to the star charts, and there was the message satellite hovering just off to her left. Her spacecraft was analysing the visible spectra against the databank records for the location and coming up green.
Everything was correct, but for the Embassy-class ship that should have been waiting for them at this gate-point.
My readings show that we are where we should be, Teyla told him and sensed his agreement.
The message satellite still has our apology for being late - I've stripped it out of the sat and there's nothing else in there. Guess she's late, too.
"Athos Flight, this is 'Teda Leader. What's the delay?" To a stranger, Ronon would have sounded grumpy, but terse was his usual state of speech. Teyla had become accustomed to it in the last five years of their association as colleagues and friends in the slip-runners.
"The delay would appear to be that our ambassador has not yet reached the contact point," Teyla said wryly.
"Aren't we late?"
"It seems that so is she."
"You know it's a she?"
Teyla paused. John had let slip the defining pronoun in their conversation, and she had repeated it, but it presented a problem of knowing more than she was willing to tell Ronon. After all, her personal mental link to the Stargate networks through John was a Mil-classified secret, and one that she had managed to avoid referring to in over two years since she'd taken the nanochip implant.
Perhaps she should just fob Ronon off with the explanation that her information had been a little more in-depth than his - the mission was assigned to Athos Flight with Sateda Flight as backup, after all...
Even as she considered it, her comms let out a burst-signal that denoted an urgent message from one of her flight. "Leader, this is Sky - we have an incoming hyperhole energy dump."
"Our tardy ambassador," Teyla said, both wry and relieved. She'd been beginning to wonder about the delay without any notice. "Athos Flight--"
Break! Break! Break! John's words broke into her words, cutting her off.
"Break! Athos Flight, split and break!" Teyla reacted on instinct, her heart pounding in adrenalised reaction to her netlink's urgency. She pulled her slip-runner into a vertical climb away from the incoming gate-point, trusting John's call and the instincts of her team as the hyperspace wormhole formed in the air, a perfectly circular, spreading green-white cloud that spewed energy like a star gone nova. John?
The energy dump's too large for just an ambassador class, he said tightly. That's a fleet or a warship class...
He trailed off.
As her slip-runner circled around, Teyla's nav systems pulsed with the beep of a single spacecraft emitting a Stargate-code transponder signal. The Steenburger, John said in her head, even as the screen bleeped, spitting out the requisite recognition codes in an electronic burst that was almost panicked. A moment after, the nav systems went beserk.
Fighters poured out of the wormhole like a colony of angry bees from a hive - flattened, wedge-shaped bees with tiny glowing stings that spat at the larger hawk-nosed craft skimming just head of their firing range.
Her comms exploded in chatter.
--
An Unsuitable Woman
John noticed her the instant he stepped outside the church door that Sunday morning.
In the crowded churchyard, it was difficult not to notice her, standing alone by the fence at the edge of the property with the churchgoers leaving a careful distance around her as they mingled and gossiped in their groups.
As he paused on the threshold of the church, neither within the wooden structure of the building nor yet outside among the throng, John was struck by the way she held herself - like a wild deer in silence, tamed to the hand.
A moment later, he revised that opinion as she lifted one gloved hand to brush a wisp of hair back under the rim of her bonnet and her head turned enough for their eyes to meet.
Her gaze was steady and frank, dark beneath dark lashes, with none of the coquetry that the single women of the town employed for him, just a long, measuring look. And John dismissed his former estimation. Tamed from the wild she might be, and out of place in the churchyard full of the prim, proper ladies of Atlantis town, but there was no terror in this doe.
"Ah, Sheppard," the drawling tones of Rodney McKay interrupted John's observation. "What a surprise to see you at church today."
John relaxed, forcing himself to look away from the mysterious woman and to one of his longest acquaintances in town. "No more than it is to see you in church, McKay."
"Yes, well, while I have no use for the moralising of the church, it's an acceptable social event, if you like such things."
"And you don't." John eyed the other man. "So why are you here?"
McKay fell into bluster, the way he often did when caught off-guard. "I need a reason other than simply being sociable? Can't a man just enjoy a Sunday morning at church?"
There were quite a few words John would use to describe Rodney. 'Sociable' wasn't one of them. He hooked his thumbs in his trouser pockets and decided he could leave Rodney his secrets - for the moment. He'd winkle them out later. "All right then. Since you're so well aquainted with the church crowd," he let his disbelief edge through his voice as he made this pronouncement, "you can tell me who the lady over by the fence is."
The broad brow wrinkled slightly as Rodney turned, not bothering with concealment or subtlety. John reflected that he might as well have bellowed the question for all the care the other man showed for the proprieties. "Lady by the fence, lady by the-- Oh. Teyla Athos?"
"If Miss Athos is the one wearing the hat with the curled black feather in it, then, yes, her."
Rodney turned back immediately and, for a wonder, dropped his voice in the manner of one confiding a secret. "Gossip says she's Athos' daughter."
John turned his head enough so he could just see Miss Athos. "I'm guessing you mean Old Man Athos rather than Halling?" He studied the girl from the corner of his eye, noting the darker skin and the strong cast of her bones. It went halfway to explaining why she was in Atlantis town, and a lot of the way to explaining why most of the townswomen were snubbing her.
Old Man Athos had died before John arrived in Atlantis town, but from the tales told around town, the crusty old farmer had been quite a character. Possibly the most sedate things said about him were that he'd liked wicked women and wild living - and loved the farm that bore his name and was now run by his son.
So he'd had a daughter...
"There's all kinds of rumours floating around about her mother," said Rodney. "It seems safe enough to say she probably wasn't white. But the gist of the story is that the girl ran wild as a child, then was taken in hand by the Old Man and sent back East to be schooled. And now she's back to take up keep of the Athos property."
"It's a large property," John said mildly. "Not easy for a man to keep running with only his son and a handful of servants and hired hands." He could say that with certainty, owning a farm that adjoined the Athos lands and was maybe half the size. It wasn't an easy living for a man with no dependants but his workforce, and John couldn't imagine it was any easier for a man who not only had a son, but a sister, and assorted other relatives relying on the sweat of his brow.
Living out west had its advantages - space and land and freedom, for starters - but it wasn't an easy life, as John had first discovered when he moved out here nearly five years ago.
--
Twilight
Teyla woke with the strong desire to be sick.
Her body ached as though she had been beaten, her temples throbbing with a pain that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. It only intensified as she sat up. She dragged in a deep breath of air and wished she had not. What she inhaled was redolent with mud and scat, and she choked, turning her face away in disgust.
Something glittered in the corner of her eye and she forgot pain and stench both as a brilliant starscape spun past the viewscreen of the puddlejumper.
This is not Atlantis.
Within the puddlejumper she felt no movement - as far as she knew, her feet were on solid ground. Her eyes told her differently, dizzied by the tiny stars that wheeled across the midnight velvet of the sky, disoriented by the reddish bulk of the planetary mass as it tilted into her line of sight before sliding out of her line of sight.
Teyla turned away, as much to give her eyes a rest as to check her team-mates.
They lay as dead men, or tumbled children's toys, left lying where they fell.
Stumbling over to John, who had collapsed out of the pilot's chair, Teyla brushed her fingers past his cheek and felt in his throat for a pulse. Strong and steady, and his chest lifted and fell with breath. A quick skim of her fingers around his head found no blood, but an attempt to rouse him with voice and hand did nothing.
Teyla glanced back at the two shapes that lay further back in the cabin. She could not spend time reviving him - not if Rodney or Ronon needed her help.
In the middle cabin, Rodney lay curled on his side in the position the Lanteans termed 'foetal' and which related to the body curl of a baby as it rested in its mother's womb. His pulse was strong, and Teyla rolled him on his back and was encouraged when the chest beneath her hand rose and fell in steady breaths.
Ronon was slumped down on the soft-covered bench of the cargo bay. Aware of her team-mate's reflexes, Teyla merely touched her hand to his arm, waiting for the rise-fall of his chest.
They were alive, just unconscious. And a small tendril of confusion uncurled within within Teyla's belly. Why were they unconscious while she was not?
Why were they here, spinning out in space, and not in Atlantis?
--
Ties Of Loyalty
In the peace of the meadows, the sound of Ronon's stunner was loud and startling.
Teyla turned in time to see Rodney collapse and Ronon turn the weapon on her. She had no time to reach for her weapons, had she even thought to do so. Her mind was taken up with what she saw in the bright sunlight - one team-mate down on the ground, another crouched beside him, and the third watching her with an expression of regret plain on his face as he aimed his gun at her.
"He okay?" Ronon asked, without looking away from her.
John laid Rodney's arm across his belly with a little pat, then rose to his feet, his hands resting casually on the P-90. "He'll survive."
With his back to the bright Latavellian sunlight, he suddenly seemed oddly dark, bronzed as Ronon, whose gun still rested on her. Or perhaps that was simply the intensity of his eyes upon her face.
The Lanteans had a saying: 'hindsight is perfect.' Teyla understood it now. Murmured conversations in the mess hall that had made no sense as she set down her tray beside John's; the objects packed in the 'jumper - unnecessary for this mission; the peace she'd seen on John's face this morning - mingled with regret as he looked up at the city - they were all parts of a whole.
"You are going after Elizabeth."
"Teyla..."
She watched his eyes fall, remembered the guilt on his face when he'd limped back through the Stargate, with Ronon and Rodney on stretchers, and no Elizabeth at all. He thought she did not understand what he was doing; she did.
What she did not understand was why she was to be left behind.
"You did not ask me to come with you."
Ronon glanced at John, and Teyla realised she'd had one ally in this, even unknown. But the decision was John's - no-one else's - and he had chosen to leave her behind.
It stung; a seeming betrayal of his own trust in her.
"You're still your people's leader. They need you."
And you do not? Teyla would not voice it - could not, for fear of the answer. The silence of her mind was bound about by the rustle of the wind through the leafy tree-tops close by, an endless susurrus of doubt and betrayal.
"And Rodney?"
"He wouldn't survive outside Atlantis."
"And you will?" She did not mean it to sound questioning, yet it did.
"I've lived hard before."
"But not in Pegasus."
A tilt of his head indicated Ronon. "Ronon has."
You did not ask me. It burned, that absence of even the request. Anger coursed through her, pulsing in her blood; her breath came in short pants of pain, as though she'd been wounded.
"Why not tell Atlantis if you know where she has been taken?"
"Because we don't know where she's been taken."
Teyla frowned at them. "But then--"
"We've got leads."
"And you will risk your life on it? And Ronon's?"
"Ronon chose this on his own," said John with the stubbornness she recognised. He would not move from this choice, she could back him up or step back from him. "I'm choosing to risk my life on this - nobody else's."
"Atlantis--"
"Doesn't need me." Such bitterness in his voice! The rending of hope and the slow tearing of the bonds that had tied him to the city and the people there. Teyla ached for him, understanding a part of his grief, even if she disliked his actions. "Caldwell has the military in hand, there are dozens of people with the ATA. And Phillips isn't going to expend any energy on a search; Atlantis was the break of his career."
Teyla did not doubt it. But for all that John was telling her, it was not the risk that concerned her in the end. "You did not ask me to come with you."
It was not a complaint, not exactly. She wanted to know why he had thought to ask Ronon, but not Rodney, not her. Had he trusted them so little in the end?
In the bright sunlight, his eyes were pale, like shallow water. "Would you have said yes?"
Teyla opened her mouth and realised she did not know the answer. Yes, she wished Elizabeth back in the city, she wanted to accompany her team-mates on the rescue; but there were other matters that held her back. Her responsibilities to her people were weak, compared to what they had once been, but she still felt them too strongly to break all ties.
"See?" John said, and while his voice was light, she could hear the sadness in him - not merely a leavetaking, but a sundering. "I wouldn't have asked you to give up your people, Teyla."
She wished to say that he should have asked - should have found out. But she could not. Looking into his eyes, she could not.
In the pause, the stunner shot was unexpected - she had forgotten what they intended from the first.
Pain skittered through her flesh and her limbs grew heavy and weak. She slid down to the ground as her body betrayed her. John loomed in her sights, catching her as she collapsed and easing her down to the ground.
A hand brushed past her cheek as he caught her, a distant caress that she barely felt against her skin. "I'm sorry, Teyla."
"Sheppard..." Ronon's tone of voice was urgent.
"I know."
She was lowered into the soft grass, and a cloth laid over her from shoulder to toe as they conferred above her in murmurs. The nap brushed the knuckles of her hand, tactile sensation when everything else was fading from her awareness.
She was sinking into the soil, the bright day blurring as though veils drifted down over her, one by one, palely hazing her senses with every moment that passed.
They lifted briefly as a hand gripped her shoulder, and a bristled mouth pressed to her forehead with brisk affection and a murmured apology. A thumb brushed her chin, the more affectionate version of a grazing of knuckles against the jaw. Then Ronon stood up and his heavy footsteps faded into dust.
Fingers touched her face, and her lashes lifted long enough to see John's regret, painted plain in his expression. His lips brushed her cheek, and a thready whisper of breath sifted through her hair.
Then he was gone.
--
Dark Times In Bright Lands
Teyla only saw the sedan chair out of the corner of her eye as she waded into the fight.
In the twilight, it was hard enough to see the men laying into each other. Pale flesh flashed as fists found their marks, and sweat gleamed like silver across the bare skin of the darker men.
She ducked under a fist that reached for her, gasped as it gripped her hair, then planted her elbow in his solar plexus, before her fingers jabbed into his groin. Her nose wrinkled at the unsavoury scents that rose from his skin, but the agonised cry gave her time to take him by the neck and lay him down into the dirt. His prone nape gave her access to the nerves that disabled a man.
John and Ronon were already in the fray, dragging troublemakers apart with the brisk anger of military men at a civil disturbance. As she observed the fight, judging where and when she should intervene, a movement to the side captured her attention. Rodney was waving the women behind him, standing his ground as not one, but two fighters approached him.
Four strides took her around the edge of the brawl, and one man was disabled within moments. Rodney was struggling against the other, his expression tight and pained as he struggled to remember the lessons their team-mates had tried to instil in him.
Teyla dealt with the second man as well, although not before Rodney doubled up with a fist in his belly. And if she was ungentle, it was not undeserved.
"Thanks," Rodney gasped, his hands clutched protectively over his stomach. One of the women came forward, her eyes wary on Teyla as she reached out to draw Rodney back to the group.
She did not object, although her mouth curved in a grim smile, as she turned to regard the fight. Even the twilight could not disguise the amatory look in the eyes of the women as they regarded her team-mates. They would have no shortage of offers in the coming nights.
Revulsion knotted her belly at the thought, but she looked for another opponent, keeping a careful eye on the way the fight was tending.
"The wardens!" The cry rose from further along the dirt street, and heads lifted like hireni scenting the hunters.
The heavy tread of the wardens' booted feet filled the air with dread, their weapons up and ready to fire.
She saw Ronon hold a man to the ground, savagely muttering something to the downed man, who continued to struggle. John stepped away from his opponent, who'd turned towards the approaching wardens in fear. He held up his hands, but his eyes swept the site of the conflict, looking for his team-mates - Ronon, Rodney, and her.
Teyla nodded once to let him know she was well, then glanced at Ronon, who was rising to his feet, lifting his hands into the air to show that he was not a threat.
If the wardens were not threatened, they would not shoot. Not, perhaps, the most assured of rules, but one that the inhabitants of this quarter of the city adhered to - for what little good it did them.
As the dark shapes surrounded the once-fighting parties in the darkness, Teyla glimpsed a leering smirk sidelong from one face.
"OverWarden Gleico," said the leader of the wardens. "What happened?"
There were assorted glances from side to side before John stepped forward. "Breaking up a streetfight, sir."
"Breaking up a streetfight?"
Teyla saw the swiftly-aborted movement of one of the brawlers as he began to protest John's explanation. "They's hogging the whores! They don't come roun' to us no more!"
The OverWarden's glance towards the women clustered around Rodney was both amused and disgusted. But it brought Teyla into his line of sight. "And this woman? Is she also hogging the whores?"
"My colleague," John said, his voice taking on an edge that warned against presumption of more.
She stood still, her hands held out from her body, open, to show she was no threat. Compared with the scanty garments of the other women, she was fully covered, but the concealment of skin did little to dissuade the man from waving a torch-bearer forward so he could take a good long look at her.
Ronon twitched, but was reined in as Teyla captured his gaze.
Please, Ronon. Do not get involved. Not here. Not for this.
Beyond the blaze of the torchlight, Teyla saw the dark fear in John's face. If the OverWarden took a liking to her, there was nothing they could do. Here, on this planet, they were nothing more than the slave-caste, denied access to the main city, denied access to the Stargate, denied right and privilege alike. Even so meagre a caste as an OverWarden could take what he wanted, do what he desired to a mere slave.
"Your colleague?"
John's voice never wavered. "My colleague."
"She whores for them," sneered another man. "The three of them."
"You're wrong," said Ronon, almost a growl.
"Won't have any of us - we're not good enough for the likes of her..."
"She's a friend and a colleague," John repeated. "She's not... We don't use her like that."
From the way the OverWarden eyed her, his eyes avaricious in the burning red light, he didn't believe that - he didn't want to believe that. "I think that I shall...overlook the matter of this brawl in the annals. In exchange for this woman."
"Like hell," Ronon began, starting forwards, then jerking back as a metallic rod was thrust against his chest.
Teyla could see John's eyes, John's body. He was tense as a stretched skin, holding himself with the stillness of a man who knew he must subdue his body or give in to terror. Her team-mate would fight the Wraith, defend his city, give his life for those he considered his family, but helplessness went against his grain. "She's not for exchange," he said, and his voice held the sinking desperation of a drowning man. "She's her own person."
One finger came up to trace her cheek, clean and well-made, but unwelcome. Teyla did not flinch, but stared straight ahead, unwilling to give him any reason to desire her.
"Not anymore, she's not," said the man, sepulchural and amused. "You can have the whores. One woman in exchange for the dozen. I'm thinking you have a bargain."
"Ronon, no!"
He lunged, reckless of his own safety in anger. The rod flared and he collapsed, twitching. She saw the jerk and shiver of his arms, of his dreadlocks in the dust. Even as John stepped forward, the silver bar swung towards him, and he tensed, waiting for the blow.
It did not come.
--