The Saints of Atlantis 11
“Congratulations,” Sheppard said. “So how many sets of twins are there in your family and who is having this pair?” Caught up in the conversation no one, save Ronon who was leaning against the wall, noticed that Teyla had entered the suite. She kept quiet and joined her pouting friend in listening to the others.
“There have been sets of twins before us, but until now we were the only ones still living. There are two sets of triplets though. One set is identical and they’re priests. The other set are fraternal girls and all of them are married and have a bakery in town. Everyone expected that one of them would be the next one to have multiples, but it looks like we’re it.” Conner sill looked stunned as he answered. “We’re going to be Da’s again, Murph.” Murphy just nodded, still in shock.
“Wait a minute, what do you mean you’re both going to be dads? That doesn’t make any sense!” Rodney objected. Radek dissolved into giggles, pleased to have gotten the answer before Rodney. “Oh shut up!”
“We’re both Jacob’s Da, and Gretchen is pregnant and having twins,” Conner said, the shock of the surprise wasn’t going to go away anytime soon.
“Ok, that’s as weird as you two not knowing which one of you is older,” Cadman said. Now that the video was over, everyone was moving around so that they could see the twins.
Murphy was jolted back into thinking again. “Our Ma won’t tell us. Thirty five years we’ve been asking, and the only answer we’ve ever gotten outa her is, ‘the one with the bigger cock!’” he said sourly.
“Well, aside from the appalling vision of being told that by your own mother, and I really, really hope you keep such other memories to yourselves, why don’t you just look up your birth certificates?” Rodney wanted to know as he sat down.
“We have,” Conner said, “on the off chance that she told the doc who wrote them out but she didn’t.”
“We were born in the backseat during rush hour,” Murphy explained. “Not even Da knew which one of us was born first, and believe me, we asked.”
“Aye, he was too busy trying to get all of us to the hospital. We were two months early,” Conner said.
“Oh dear God,” Beckett breathed in horror. “How did the two of ya survive? Thirty five years ago, seven month babies had half of a chance, but the two of you being twins would have only put ya at maybe three or four pounds at most, and not being born in the hospital would have sent yer chances inta a nose dive.”
“Two point nine,” Murphy raised his hand.
“Three point two,” Conner raised his. Then he continued. “Murphy almost didn’t make it. To this day the doctors have no idea why he did. Ma insists that it was my fault he survived. She insisted that I be put in his incubator to say goodbye. When the nurse did,”
“Over the doctor’s objections by the way,” Murphy interrupted.
Conner gave his brother a smack to the back of the head. “This idiot stabilized and didn’t have a problem after that.” The smile he gave his brother left no one any doubt how he felt about it.
“And we’re not sure who Jacob’s biological Da is because we’ve never bothered to check,” Murphy said with a shrug. “There’s no reason to. We’re both hand-fasted to his mother.”
“Ok,” said Lorne, who’d been silent up until now. “That’s weird and more than a little creepy.”
“Why? There’s plenty of men out there who have more than one wife. Why can’t a woman have more than one husband?” Murphy wanted to know.
Conner shook a finger over at Lorne. “Besides, didn’t you wonder just why the general told you not to separate us?”
“Because you’re phobic,” John answered for his second. “Oh, you’re that phobic?”
The twins nodded. “Thirty five years and we’ve never been apart for more than a few hours. We tried dating, but none of them got it, not even the other set of twins our cousins set us up with.”
“How did you end up with Gretchen then?” Cadman asked. She’d taken advantage of everyone shifting around to sit next to Beckett and was now petting his hand. Beckett didn’t notice, still caught up in thinking about Mrs. McManus delivering premature twins in the backseat of her car while her husband tried desperately to get her to a hospital.
“The good Lord led us to her,” Conner said simply.
“We were in New York, and we landed a job translating for the NYPD’s special victims unit,” Murphy said. “We didn’t try to get it. The job just landed in our laps.”
“Aye, there was a huge accident in the subway, and we happened to be in a car with two of the unit’s detectives along with a lot of others who didn’t speak any English,” Conner said. “We ended up translating for them and they started calling us whenever they ran into someone they needed to talk to that didn’t speak the language.”
“They rescued Gretchen, but she only spoke German at the time. Poor girl had been sold by her father to a pedophile as a slave when she was ten. She’d been trapped in his home for years. We took her home to Ireland for Ma to look after. There’s no one in the world who can teach a lad or lass how to grow a backbone like our Ma,” Murphy said with a smile.
“Aye, that was nearly six years ago. Two years after that God released us from our calling so we went home and Gretchen was waiting for us. She was determined to marry one of us, and when we explained why we thought we wouldn’t ever get married, well, she hauled us off to our Uncle Seibal, who was the village priest and demanded that he hand-fast us both to her. Hand-fasting is still legal in Ireland and unlike a Catholic wedding; there are no restrictions on who can marry who. Well, she managed to talk him and us into it and Jacob was born almost a year later,” Conner finished the tale.
“And now she’s having twins,” Murphy said with a huge grin on his face.
“What are twins?” Teyla asked, breaking her silence.
The others looked at her in surprise, but Doctor Beckett said, “The Athosians don’t have multiples. I think the trait has been culled out of their gene pool.”
“That’s terrible!” the twins said in horror. They couldn’t imagine any people being denied the closeness that was the result of multiples being born.
“Teyla, twins are two children born from the same mother and the same pregnancy. Any pregnancy that results in more than one child are termed a multiple pregnancy and is considered to be a risky one; the more children the more risk. With your people being on the run from the Wraith, I’m not surprised that any woman who was capable of bearing multiples was culled long before she could pass the trait on,” Beckett explained.
“That is unfortunate,” Teyla said. “Among my people, such a thing would be considered a gift, especially now with our numbers so low.” She turned to the twins. This trait, on top of the ATA gene and being mila poppaaem, made their seed most precious. She knew after so long with the Earth born that the men would not sleep with any but their wife, but perhaps she could trade for their seed. “Would either of you consider trading your seed?” she asked.
“What?” they asked, not sure that they had heard her correctly.
“Here in Pegasus many of our planets have populations that are so small that if seed were not traded between planets those people would die out entirely. The Athosians are but one of them. I am not asking that you sleep with any Athosian woman, just if you would consider trading your seed for some item. ATA men are more highly valued than others, as the two of you are twins, this makes your seed even more valuable than Colonel Sheppard’s,” Teyla patiently explained. She was used to explaining such customs to the Earth born, and she would not cheat these men out of what they were due should they agree.
Conner and Murphy stared at her while Sheppard laughed. “You two wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve been asked that.”
Rodney snorted. “The minute they find out that he can turn on their ‘sacred object’ which is usually something incredibly stupid, they’re all over him. That is when the priestess/princess/ascended female just isn’t chasing him from the minute they set eyes on him!”
“Hey when we stop on advanced planets they’re all over you for your big brain!” Sheppard pointed out.
“Of course they are, they’re advanced enough to know a good thing when they see it,” Rodney said, not realizing how he sounded. To him it was simply a fact. They should want his genetics for their superior intelligence potential.
“No, they’re just so concerned about inbreeding that they overlook your personality,” Ronon said, joining the conversation for the first time since the twins had trounced him. That brought a round of laughter from everyone.
Ronon was not happy about being beaten in a fight. He couldn’t figure out exactly how they’d managed to do what they’d done. It wasn’t that he was arrogant enough to believe that he was invincible; the Wraith had rammed that down his throat. He simply couldn’t understand how they’d managed to coordinate their attack way they had. He also did not understand what Conner had told him when he’d been sure he was about to be broken the same way he sometimes broke the Marines, but from their laughter it was a joke at his expense. He didn’t like that either.
“HEY!” Rodney sputtered.
“What did you mean you were released from your calling?” John asked, both to change the subject before Ronon and Rodney got going and because he was curious. He hadn’t thought that it was possible for them to retire unless they were put six feet under.
“When we’ve finished what the good Lord wishes for us to do, we no longer see the marks. It doesn’t mean that we won’t be called again, just that it’s his way of giving us a time of peace,” Murphy told them. “If that lasts for the rest of our lives, it is a blessing.”
“If it doesn’t, it just means that we’re needed somewhere,” Conner said. “Although I certainly wasn’t expecting to end up out here!”
“Nah,” Murphy laughed. “We were just going after Panza and Yakavetta for killing Father McKinney. Bastards killed the good Father in his own chapel, right in front of the altar. No way we were going to let that slide, especially not since we’d woke up seeing the signs three days before we were told.”
“Aye, the good Lord gave us time to get ready this time. The first time we were given our first hit before we’d even had breakfast,” Conner remembered.
“You and your fucking rope,” Murphy muttered.
“It was damned useful rope!” Conner began, but Romeo interrupted.
“Hey, no arguing. We’ve got something to celebrate.” Romeo raised his beer. “To the next set of McManus twins! May they be as faithful and good with guns as their fathers.”
“Here here!” came from around the room.