Can't Find My Way Home #10
Title: Can't Find My Way Home
Rating: PG-13 for now
By: Jendavis
Spoilers: SGA: The Last Man, FF: Serenity
Pairing: Eventual Jayne Cobb/ Ronon Dex
Genre: Crossover
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: Timelines diverge by converging.
Previous: 1. Man of Steel 2. Keys to the World 3. Lost 4. Gone Away 5. House is Not a Home 6. Still Standing 7. I Never Told You What I Do For A Living 8. Scary Eyes 9. Before The Worst
10. Resurrection
There were a few moments where Ronon was certain Jayne was going to blow River's head off, even after he recognized her.
"Shen sheng de gao wan," Jayne snorted, dropping his aim and stalking towards her. "Ai ya, girl. I thought you was done for." Grabbing her by the arm, he jerked her slightly, her feet stumbling over the dirt as he let loose another stream of invective Ronon couldn't follow.
He figured it was best that he didn't intercede. River was looking dazed, a little cowed but not threatened. Mostly, she didn't seem to understand his reaction.
McKay was dialing the gate, and for the moment, there wasn't anything Ronon had to be doing, which gave his muscles the go-ahead to start locking up the way they always wanted to after being stunned. The base of his shoulder began to ache in earnest, then.
A few spans away, irate words apparently spent, Jayne fell silent, glaring at River like he hadn't gotten around to appreciating how easy their reunion had been.
Fair enough. Ronon didn't understand it himself.
But.
Even if she was currently too freaked out to stop staring at Kanaan like she feared what he would or wouldn't do. Teyla had made it out. They'd all made it.
The rest, they could deal with on the other side.
---
They stepped out into chaos, too many people trying to say and do too many things at once. Keller argued with Doctor Suarez about whether or not Kanaan should be sedated in his current state while others ushered Teyla towards the med tent. Zelenka was already trying to get McKay to tell him everything they'd found, already spinning theories.
Ronon was relieved, then, that it was Lorne that called him over to make his report. His role in this, at least, was simple.
"Got out there. Found Teyla. Got the data from Michael's lab, but we didn't find him. Blew up the hive, but we didn't find Michael. Don't think he was there."
Lorne nodded, but Ronon couldn't tell what he thought of the news. There was something else. "Todd?"
"He's dead." River's voice sounded distracted behind him, and he turned to find her staring after Jayne. Sensing their attention, though, she shook herself and looked up at Lorne. "I killed him," she said, but she didn't stick around to explain.
"Right. Well." Lorne considered it for a moment, before breaking out into an amused grin. "Seriously? She's the one that took him out?"
"Shut up."
For once, he decided that he'd go see the doctors about the hit he'd taken, though he knew there wasn't much he could do for it but ignore the confusion in his nerves, which sensed burning, pain, then nothing and back to burning, each in turn. It would fade on it's own in a few days. There wasn't anything he or anyone else could do about it.
He could, however, check in on Teyla and Kanaan.
---
Keller looked at his shoulder, but didn't draw blood, for once. It took Ronon a minute to realize that she had no way of running tests, and she didn't have much by way of monitors, either. Watching Keller checking Kanaan's pulse again, still clearly concerned over the sedatives they'd given Kanaan, Ronon wanted to ask her what she thought of flying blind.
But she'd answer if he asked, and he'd be responsible for making her think about everything she couldn't do.
Teyla was sitting on one of the other cots, clearly still trying to take it all in, but sometimes looking Ronon's way like the familiarity was important.
Keller was talking to him, though. "If you're really fine, than you should get out of here and let me focus on Teyla. If you need to stay," she smiled, her eyes darting away, indicating the cot where Teyla was sitting. "Hang out, get your strength up, you can, but I want you to take the painkillers."
Ronon glanced down at the proffered pills. "Don't want to waste them."
"This is what they're for. It's not a waste. Besides, there are enough supplies here for over two hundred people for six months. We're only fifty seven," she said firmly, sensing her victory as she handed him the pills and some water. "Enjoy."
He'd been wrong, he decided. Without her tools, she was still a doctor. Maybe more so.
Not soon after, his attention began to wander, and it wasn't until he heard Keller's voice talking to…someone, saying that everyone was fine, that he let something drop that he didn't know he'd been holding.
Finally, he let himself sleep. Just for a minute.
---
River paused outside the tent, rehearsing her defense and ordering her thoughts before going in to face Jayne's irritation.
Without knowing the strange language of Todd's thoughts, there was no way to fly the dart. Though he understood wraith tactics, Ronon didn't have the ability to think in their terms. Not enough to operate the only exit available. Not enough to fly a dart.
Cold green minds hissing and spitting and inhuman, the language of bugs, not man.
But the knowledge, that there would be no escape, no way back to the earth… It wouldn't have been enough to stop him. That was the only easy understanding in all of this.
Somewhere along the path of Ronon's life, he came to know that he would die fighting past hope.
It was that expectation that would have killed him.
Still might, someday.
It was hard finding words to explain it to Jayne without giving too much of Ronon away.
He's not mine to give didn't seem the right ones, but they were close.
Stop dithering and go inside.
River let go a breath and allowed herself to listen to the news spreading through the camp, everyone talking about Teyla and Kanaan. New people. Soon, she'd know them, but not yet.
She reined herself in and tried not to smile too much. Jayne was cross enough already.
---
Vera was half disassembled, her parts laid out on his cot, by the time River entered.
"You were holdin' out on us." Jayne didn't bother hiding the accusation in his tone. Wasn't like she couldn't read it herself if she wanted. "What the hell happened?"
You let me think you got yourself killed, he tried not to think.
"Todd was going to beam us into the dart, eject it from his newly taken ship, and blow it using the C4 we supplied." River sat down on her cot, taking off her boots. "The encryption, once he tortured McKay's portion of the password, would have been no problem for his computers. Once you went to assist Ronon, Todd was heading for McKay's location. I merely found him first."
It came damned close, though, and you know it.
"You knew about the two detonators?"
"Yes. McKay didn't want anyone to know. I think that's why Zelenka told me."
"Can't torture info out of a mind if it ain't there," Jayne reasoned, finally feeling like he was sussin' it out. "That what you figured?"
Or do you just not trust me?
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. It's just. Ronon wanted to go." She looked at him square, then. Serious. "He would have gone alone, and he would have died."
You can't know that. I can't know that. He could'a gotten us all killed.
Jayne scratched at his beard. Just deal with what's in front of you.
"Look. I ain't pleased, but it ain't like that's ever changed a gorram thing in the world, so." Jayne looked away, wonderin' if the words were somethin' he'd heard Mal say, or not. They didn't sit right.
Ain't the point, Mal's voice again, for sure this time. Forgive her already an' get over it.
He tried again. "Just don't keep me in the dark like that, is all I'm sayin'. Dong le ma?"
---
Teyla wasn't normally one to resist doctors' orders, but it was her voice, tense and irritated, that woke Ronon.
"I assure you, I am fine. I have been cooped up for too long already, and the sun on my face would be a better medicine than anything you want to give me. And as you do not see fit to answer my questions, I will ask them elsewhere."
By the time Ronon was raising his head, the tent flap was falling shut again. Keller was staring after her with her hand halfway to her radio, but it fell again as she sighed.
"Want me to chase her down?"
Keller started, spinning to find him in the process of sitting up. "What? Oh." She grinned. "She's okay. Just mad at me because I wouldn't tell her what's been going on around here. Lorne's orders. What with. You know." She nodded her head in the direction of Kanaan's curtained-off bed.
"He gonna be alright?"
"He's got a lot of the wraith enzyme in his system, but it's starting to break down. It's going to be a really ugly comedown, though. So…" She brightened, then. "But on the plus side, he should be through the worst of it in time to see their son born."
"Yeah. About that?" Should've been born a season ago.
"From what Teyla says, she was put in stasis. She clammed up pretty quickly, though, when she realized I wasn't going to tell her anything about what's going on here."
"Right." Ronon looked towards the exit. "Am I good to go?"
Jennifer pulled out her annoying little flashlight and shot it into his eyes. "You know. Lorne never ordered you not to talk to her." Stepping back, she smiled, waving towards the door. "Long as it doesn't happen here, you know?"
---
It was later than he'd expected when he stepped out of the tent, the sun hanging low in the sky already.
Teyla hadn't gone far, standing a few spans away with arms crossed over her belly, her irritation apparently keeping the well-wishers at bay. "Hey."
"Ronon." She inclined her head, but did not look away from the scene she surveyed. Ronon couldn't be sure what, if anything, held her attention.
"How're you feeling?"
She regarded him warily, until she realized that he wasn't there to bring her back inside. "Anxious and uninformed. This is not the return I was expecting." A small grin finally broke through. "Not that I am ungrateful," she finished.
Ronon smirked, but there wasn't a lot of humor in it. "Yeah. Things kind of went to hell." This wasn't the sort of thing he'd want to hear about out in the open. He considered the tent, but it was too confined, too close a space, especially with River and Jayne there.
His stomach rumbled, then, and made the decision for him.
"Let's get some food, and I'll fill you in."
---
Their meal was a quiet one. Teyla's mind was elsewhere, and Ronon's didn't know where to begin.
Begin at the beginning.
"After you went missing…" He washed his food down, and started to talk.
Teyla didn't interrupt him as he told her about their search. How Sheppard had disappeared afterwards. How McKay had done what he could, how they both had, and how they both failed.
He tried to gloss over his own departure, because it would be calling it what it was. Abandonment. Teyla didn't call him on it, though. Just asked him how he managed to train a squad in such a short period of time.
He told her about that last bad fight, when a strange ship fell out of the sky and changed everything.
It was then that Teyla began to fill in the rest.
"I was woken from stasis only a few days ago. At the time, I did not understand what was happening, or how much time had passed. Only that the ship was damaged, that in order for the repairs to be made, the power to the stasis chambers had to be… rerouted?" There was a crease in her forehead that she rubbed away. It was a strange gesture, for Teyla, who normally kept her concerns far from her face.
"One of Michael's lieutenants moved me to the cell where you found me, and it was then that I saw Kanaan and realized just how long it must have been. He barely knew me. I don't know what they did to him, and truth be told, I was hoping that the Atlantis infirmary would be available to aid in that regard."
She drew a breath, shaking her head. "All they can promise me is that we will have to wait and see. Keller believes it is a modified form of the enzyme that has caused him to become so changed."
"He's going to be fine," Ronon assured her, hoping Keller wouldn't make a liar of him. "Um. Do you know why Michael put you in stasis in the first place?"
"I believe he wanted to buy more time for his research. There was a problem…"
Her hand went to her belly, but it didn't appear to be a deliberate action, and her eyes looked to him for reassurances that he couldn't honestly promise. "Keller assures me that everything is going to be all right, but nobody knows how being in stasis might affect my child, or if-" Teyla silenced herself, her earlier wariness suddenly returning as she watched Lorne and Cadman enter, approaching their table.
She was going to have to go over all of this, again, and soon.
Now, from the looks of it.
Lorne, for his part, looked reluctant enough to interrupt, but Cadman was eager to see Teyla, all abrasive energy and wide smiles. Ronon kept his glaring to a minimum as he stood. Grasped Teyla's shoulder as he crossed behind her seat, squeezed as he passed.
The gesture was probably only about as comforting as everything he'd actually said, as useful as anything else he'd done.
---
River had gone to sleep, and it sat fine by Jayne. Made it easier to look at her bare arms and shins and throat, scanning for injuries. Listening for ominous sounds in her breathing. Findin' nothing.
Jayne moved back outside, returning to the folding chair set in front of the tent. Watched, for a while, as everyone went about their business, and listened to their snatches of conversation as they passed by. Nodded to a few, here and there, but mostly, just stared off at the grass.
This was stupid, one of those times where Jayne knew he was bein' stupid.
River was fine, uninjured, and no less sane or alive than she'd been that morning. She hadn't needed Jayne worryin' about her in the first gorram place. Just.
She's the only one makes sense worryin' about.
The rest of this place, though. These folk. Makin' deals they didn't expect to win. Ruttin' idiotic is what it was.
He got it. Hell, he'd just lost everything too, but he'd had a hell of a lot distractin' him. Would probably take years to settle right in his brain, get back to normal.
These folk were in the same boat, and Jayne had no clue what their version of normal looked like. No idea how hard they'd fight for it if they found they needed to.
---
Ronon was coming back from the showers, towel slung over his shoulder. His hair was still damp and looked uncomfortably heavy. He dragged his bare feet through the grass, carrying his boots in one hand like he knew he should have them on already. It looked deliberate, like he was forcing himself to dial it down. Jayne wasn't so sure it was working.
He would have gone alone.
Jayne hadn't been meaning to think on the things River'd told him, but they kept risin' up out of nowhere.
He would have died.
Probably because he didn't get it, never really had. You decided what survival meant, and you fought for it, whether it was for gettin' paid or stayin' alive. But it was survival all the same. Kinda the ruttin' point.
Jayne snorted. He'd come out here to think about somethin' else for a spell.
Mal would have understood Ronon better. He was the same sort, liable to get a man killed over nothing but a damn noble reason.
Up close, Ronon looked a little better, like he'd recovered from his injury.
"How's the shoulder?"
"Fine."
Healed or not, it didn't make him any easier to talk to. Jayne let him pass by, and didn't watch him go inside. Just kept starin' out over the camp, tryin' not to look too close at his own irritation.
---
Things looked better in the morning.
Teyla was in the mess when he and River arrived, tearing into her breakfast and talking with McKay, who waved them over. It was Teyla, though, who spoke first.
"Hello. I do not believe we were properly introduced…" she trailed off and an amused expression crossed her features.
Jayne glanced up to see River standing next to the table, staring in horrified contemplation of Teyla's stomach.
"There's a person in there," she eventually said, looking over at Jayne like he needed the explanation.
"Ruttin' hell, River. Could ya sit down and try to be normal?" Jayne shot what he hoped was a properly apologetic look across the table. Teyla seemed to go for it.
"She is correct, after all," she said with a nod of her head, but River was still apparently hypnotized.
Please lord, he prayed. Let someone have told the moonbrain 'bout the birds and the bees.
Moonbrain was talking again. "He's going to be in the world, soon. But right now, he's not really anything. Just exists where he is." She blinked, and sat down next to Jayne, grinning brightly at Teyla. "I'm River. It's nice to meet you both."
---
Ronon caught sight of everyone eating together in the mess tent, apparently listening to McKay's rambling, and discovered he wasn't hungry. It wasn't a deliberate thing. He'd just remembered the half-completed weir was sitting out where anyone could mistake it for kindling.
When Ronon was especially lucky, he found a village that had been recently culled. Sometimes, the food in the cellars hadn't gone off yet.
This wasn't one of those times, but he was too sick, too tired, to try his luck on another world, today. It would have to do.
Most of the food stores had been left exposed to the humid air for far too long, and had already gone to the omnipresent rats. He searched as he mined the village with traps, stringing tripwires and propping heavy weights to crash over opened doors, finding a lightweight shirt that was close enough to fitting, and some soap, but no medicine that he could recognize, and no food.
Eventually, however, his borrowed house was fortified against anything that would make it past the tripwires. He would have enjoyed it more if he wasn’t so damned hungry, so tired and overheated.
It didn't matter. He'd eaten yesterday, and there was water nearby, a slow river, running south of the village. Where there was water, there was hunting.
There was also the chance to wash. Less vital, but almost as pleasant as a full stomach. It had been days since he'd been clean, and longer since he'd allowed himself to strip down fully to bathe.
The shallow stream moved slowly, surprisingly cold on his skin until he remembered that he'd probably been running this fever for weeks, now. There hadn't been much to do about it. The sickness would go away, or it wouldn't.
Upriver, skeletal hands reached out of the water, grappling at nothing. Rubbing at his eyes, he chided himself for worrying about hallucinations. He wasn't that sick.
The wraith wouldn't have bothered to dump the bodies. Most everyone had probably been culled, but there were several bodies that lay where they'd fallen in the woods. Under cover of the trees, where the darts couldn't track them so easily, the hunters had to devour their pray on the spot.
Upon closer inspection, the hands turned into branches, and he could see signs of weaving, here and there. Not quite a net, and not quite a cage, more like a funnel, forcing the fish to go through a narrow gap. Practically right into his waiting hand.
Ronon tossed a few out onto the bank and stepped out to dry, deciding that for all the rats and empty rooms, this wasn't the worst place he could be.
---
He finally managed to scare up a mallet from the supply tent, and returned to find Jayne waiting by the water.
"Hey," Jayne craned his neck to peer into the water. "What's all this?"
"Trapping fish." He didn't look up, still trying to gauge the best placement of the stakes into the riverbed.
"I don't get it,' Jayne eventually said, like it had been bothering him for a while. "Why're you skulkin' around like someone bludgeoned your puppy to death with a rollin' pin? You got your friend back. Just sayin'. If it's all 'cause of the guy who came back with her, well. Right now, he ain't lookin' like he's all-"
What the hell? "You gonna keep talking? Told you before, it's not like that."
"Then what is it like?"
"There's still plenty of problems around here." Ronon mopped the sweat off his face with his sleeve. "Teyla being back doesn't fix any of them."
"Ignorin' her sure as hell won't, and neither will skippin' meals." Jayne narrowed his eyes a little against the glare on the water, but he didn't look at Ronon. "Saw you decide not to come join us, you know."
"I wasn't." Ronon didn't so much roll his eyes as he stared at the sky until the urge to attack passed. This almost felt familiar, with one striking difference. Sheppard hadn't been a complete ass.
Those first few days on Atlantis, being dragged out for meals so Sheppard could talk him into something he wasn't sure he understood yet. Talking plainly enough, but never explaining why Ronon should hear him.
Wanting to be left alone, and not. Wanting anything at all, and finding that it's there.
"Just want to get this done. You wanna help, or just sit there, yammering like McKay?"
Jayne's reaction wasn't very surprising. His lip curled briefly over a row of oddly perfect teeth, but it slid out into an amused grin.
"What d'you need me to do?"
Ronon gave it some consideration. There was only one mallet. "Go get me something to eat, and I'll figure it out."
---
They were calling it a lab, but only for a lack of a better term. When McKay and Zelenka tossed ideas and barbs across the tent, they were Mal and Wash navigating through a meteor belt. It wasn't real anger, just frustration and not knowing and needing to know. Brittle words filling the room with eggshells that no one wanted to crush.
River, though, didn't need to walk. She just wanted to sit, and listened to them argue time and where it all went wrong. One stranger's path intersecting with space at the wrong angle and moment, too close to the sun, rippling out towards a tidal wave that could take a ship three oceans away, and five hundred years.
She knew they wouldn't understand that she understood, so she remained silent. They had moved on, anyhow, though McKay was reluctant to file it away for later study. He wanted to pick at it some more, intrigued as to what it meant, and what he could make it do.
McKay would bend time to his will, given the chance, but he didn't have the time for that right now.
Zelenka, for his part, cast occasional glances over at her in the corner, curious. His pen would hesitate over his paper, or the typing would stutter a moment, like the data wasn't in his head anymore, having been shoved out by something so simple as a girl flying a ship. Their curiosity was a leashed dog, barking at intruders and wanting their bone returned.
But there were new things, pulled from the insides of a ship that breathed and bled. Not air, and not blood, but alive, and it seemed almost silly to study something as banal as navigational data instead.
But there was necessity and priority and demand and requirements. There was a growing fear that wasn't being admitted to.
Not yet.
---
Rating: PG-13 for now
By: Jendavis
Spoilers: SGA: The Last Man, FF: Serenity
Pairing: Eventual Jayne Cobb/ Ronon Dex
Genre: Crossover
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: Timelines diverge by converging.
Previous: 1. Man of Steel 2. Keys to the World 3. Lost 4. Gone Away 5. House is Not a Home 6. Still Standing 7. I Never Told You What I Do For A Living 8. Scary Eyes 9. Before The Worst
10. Resurrection
There were a few moments where Ronon was certain Jayne was going to blow River's head off, even after he recognized her.
"Shen sheng de gao wan," Jayne snorted, dropping his aim and stalking towards her. "Ai ya, girl. I thought you was done for." Grabbing her by the arm, he jerked her slightly, her feet stumbling over the dirt as he let loose another stream of invective Ronon couldn't follow.
He figured it was best that he didn't intercede. River was looking dazed, a little cowed but not threatened. Mostly, she didn't seem to understand his reaction.
McKay was dialing the gate, and for the moment, there wasn't anything Ronon had to be doing, which gave his muscles the go-ahead to start locking up the way they always wanted to after being stunned. The base of his shoulder began to ache in earnest, then.
A few spans away, irate words apparently spent, Jayne fell silent, glaring at River like he hadn't gotten around to appreciating how easy their reunion had been.
Fair enough. Ronon didn't understand it himself.
But.
Even if she was currently too freaked out to stop staring at Kanaan like she feared what he would or wouldn't do. Teyla had made it out. They'd all made it.
The rest, they could deal with on the other side.
---
They stepped out into chaos, too many people trying to say and do too many things at once. Keller argued with Doctor Suarez about whether or not Kanaan should be sedated in his current state while others ushered Teyla towards the med tent. Zelenka was already trying to get McKay to tell him everything they'd found, already spinning theories.
Ronon was relieved, then, that it was Lorne that called him over to make his report. His role in this, at least, was simple.
"Got out there. Found Teyla. Got the data from Michael's lab, but we didn't find him. Blew up the hive, but we didn't find Michael. Don't think he was there."
Lorne nodded, but Ronon couldn't tell what he thought of the news. There was something else. "Todd?"
"He's dead." River's voice sounded distracted behind him, and he turned to find her staring after Jayne. Sensing their attention, though, she shook herself and looked up at Lorne. "I killed him," she said, but she didn't stick around to explain.
"Right. Well." Lorne considered it for a moment, before breaking out into an amused grin. "Seriously? She's the one that took him out?"
"Shut up."
For once, he decided that he'd go see the doctors about the hit he'd taken, though he knew there wasn't much he could do for it but ignore the confusion in his nerves, which sensed burning, pain, then nothing and back to burning, each in turn. It would fade on it's own in a few days. There wasn't anything he or anyone else could do about it.
He could, however, check in on Teyla and Kanaan.
---
Keller looked at his shoulder, but didn't draw blood, for once. It took Ronon a minute to realize that she had no way of running tests, and she didn't have much by way of monitors, either. Watching Keller checking Kanaan's pulse again, still clearly concerned over the sedatives they'd given Kanaan, Ronon wanted to ask her what she thought of flying blind.
But she'd answer if he asked, and he'd be responsible for making her think about everything she couldn't do.
Teyla was sitting on one of the other cots, clearly still trying to take it all in, but sometimes looking Ronon's way like the familiarity was important.
Keller was talking to him, though. "If you're really fine, than you should get out of here and let me focus on Teyla. If you need to stay," she smiled, her eyes darting away, indicating the cot where Teyla was sitting. "Hang out, get your strength up, you can, but I want you to take the painkillers."
Ronon glanced down at the proffered pills. "Don't want to waste them."
"This is what they're for. It's not a waste. Besides, there are enough supplies here for over two hundred people for six months. We're only fifty seven," she said firmly, sensing her victory as she handed him the pills and some water. "Enjoy."
He'd been wrong, he decided. Without her tools, she was still a doctor. Maybe more so.
Not soon after, his attention began to wander, and it wasn't until he heard Keller's voice talking to…someone, saying that everyone was fine, that he let something drop that he didn't know he'd been holding.
Finally, he let himself sleep. Just for a minute.
---
River paused outside the tent, rehearsing her defense and ordering her thoughts before going in to face Jayne's irritation.
Without knowing the strange language of Todd's thoughts, there was no way to fly the dart. Though he understood wraith tactics, Ronon didn't have the ability to think in their terms. Not enough to operate the only exit available. Not enough to fly a dart.
Cold green minds hissing and spitting and inhuman, the language of bugs, not man.
But the knowledge, that there would be no escape, no way back to the earth… It wouldn't have been enough to stop him. That was the only easy understanding in all of this.
Somewhere along the path of Ronon's life, he came to know that he would die fighting past hope.
It was that expectation that would have killed him.
Still might, someday.
It was hard finding words to explain it to Jayne without giving too much of Ronon away.
He's not mine to give didn't seem the right ones, but they were close.
Stop dithering and go inside.
River let go a breath and allowed herself to listen to the news spreading through the camp, everyone talking about Teyla and Kanaan. New people. Soon, she'd know them, but not yet.
She reined herself in and tried not to smile too much. Jayne was cross enough already.
---
Vera was half disassembled, her parts laid out on his cot, by the time River entered.
"You were holdin' out on us." Jayne didn't bother hiding the accusation in his tone. Wasn't like she couldn't read it herself if she wanted. "What the hell happened?"
You let me think you got yourself killed, he tried not to think.
"Todd was going to beam us into the dart, eject it from his newly taken ship, and blow it using the C4 we supplied." River sat down on her cot, taking off her boots. "The encryption, once he tortured McKay's portion of the password, would have been no problem for his computers. Once you went to assist Ronon, Todd was heading for McKay's location. I merely found him first."
It came damned close, though, and you know it.
"You knew about the two detonators?"
"Yes. McKay didn't want anyone to know. I think that's why Zelenka told me."
"Can't torture info out of a mind if it ain't there," Jayne reasoned, finally feeling like he was sussin' it out. "That what you figured?"
Or do you just not trust me?
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. It's just. Ronon wanted to go." She looked at him square, then. Serious. "He would have gone alone, and he would have died."
You can't know that. I can't know that. He could'a gotten us all killed.
Jayne scratched at his beard. Just deal with what's in front of you.
"Look. I ain't pleased, but it ain't like that's ever changed a gorram thing in the world, so." Jayne looked away, wonderin' if the words were somethin' he'd heard Mal say, or not. They didn't sit right.
Ain't the point, Mal's voice again, for sure this time. Forgive her already an' get over it.
He tried again. "Just don't keep me in the dark like that, is all I'm sayin'. Dong le ma?"
---
Teyla wasn't normally one to resist doctors' orders, but it was her voice, tense and irritated, that woke Ronon.
"I assure you, I am fine. I have been cooped up for too long already, and the sun on my face would be a better medicine than anything you want to give me. And as you do not see fit to answer my questions, I will ask them elsewhere."
By the time Ronon was raising his head, the tent flap was falling shut again. Keller was staring after her with her hand halfway to her radio, but it fell again as she sighed.
"Want me to chase her down?"
Keller started, spinning to find him in the process of sitting up. "What? Oh." She grinned. "She's okay. Just mad at me because I wouldn't tell her what's been going on around here. Lorne's orders. What with. You know." She nodded her head in the direction of Kanaan's curtained-off bed.
"He gonna be alright?"
"He's got a lot of the wraith enzyme in his system, but it's starting to break down. It's going to be a really ugly comedown, though. So…" She brightened, then. "But on the plus side, he should be through the worst of it in time to see their son born."
"Yeah. About that?" Should've been born a season ago.
"From what Teyla says, she was put in stasis. She clammed up pretty quickly, though, when she realized I wasn't going to tell her anything about what's going on here."
"Right." Ronon looked towards the exit. "Am I good to go?"
Jennifer pulled out her annoying little flashlight and shot it into his eyes. "You know. Lorne never ordered you not to talk to her." Stepping back, she smiled, waving towards the door. "Long as it doesn't happen here, you know?"
---
It was later than he'd expected when he stepped out of the tent, the sun hanging low in the sky already.
Teyla hadn't gone far, standing a few spans away with arms crossed over her belly, her irritation apparently keeping the well-wishers at bay. "Hey."
"Ronon." She inclined her head, but did not look away from the scene she surveyed. Ronon couldn't be sure what, if anything, held her attention.
"How're you feeling?"
She regarded him warily, until she realized that he wasn't there to bring her back inside. "Anxious and uninformed. This is not the return I was expecting." A small grin finally broke through. "Not that I am ungrateful," she finished.
Ronon smirked, but there wasn't a lot of humor in it. "Yeah. Things kind of went to hell." This wasn't the sort of thing he'd want to hear about out in the open. He considered the tent, but it was too confined, too close a space, especially with River and Jayne there.
His stomach rumbled, then, and made the decision for him.
"Let's get some food, and I'll fill you in."
---
Their meal was a quiet one. Teyla's mind was elsewhere, and Ronon's didn't know where to begin.
Begin at the beginning.
"After you went missing…" He washed his food down, and started to talk.
Teyla didn't interrupt him as he told her about their search. How Sheppard had disappeared afterwards. How McKay had done what he could, how they both had, and how they both failed.
He tried to gloss over his own departure, because it would be calling it what it was. Abandonment. Teyla didn't call him on it, though. Just asked him how he managed to train a squad in such a short period of time.
He told her about that last bad fight, when a strange ship fell out of the sky and changed everything.
It was then that Teyla began to fill in the rest.
"I was woken from stasis only a few days ago. At the time, I did not understand what was happening, or how much time had passed. Only that the ship was damaged, that in order for the repairs to be made, the power to the stasis chambers had to be… rerouted?" There was a crease in her forehead that she rubbed away. It was a strange gesture, for Teyla, who normally kept her concerns far from her face.
"One of Michael's lieutenants moved me to the cell where you found me, and it was then that I saw Kanaan and realized just how long it must have been. He barely knew me. I don't know what they did to him, and truth be told, I was hoping that the Atlantis infirmary would be available to aid in that regard."
She drew a breath, shaking her head. "All they can promise me is that we will have to wait and see. Keller believes it is a modified form of the enzyme that has caused him to become so changed."
"He's going to be fine," Ronon assured her, hoping Keller wouldn't make a liar of him. "Um. Do you know why Michael put you in stasis in the first place?"
"I believe he wanted to buy more time for his research. There was a problem…"
Her hand went to her belly, but it didn't appear to be a deliberate action, and her eyes looked to him for reassurances that he couldn't honestly promise. "Keller assures me that everything is going to be all right, but nobody knows how being in stasis might affect my child, or if-" Teyla silenced herself, her earlier wariness suddenly returning as she watched Lorne and Cadman enter, approaching their table.
She was going to have to go over all of this, again, and soon.
Now, from the looks of it.
Lorne, for his part, looked reluctant enough to interrupt, but Cadman was eager to see Teyla, all abrasive energy and wide smiles. Ronon kept his glaring to a minimum as he stood. Grasped Teyla's shoulder as he crossed behind her seat, squeezed as he passed.
The gesture was probably only about as comforting as everything he'd actually said, as useful as anything else he'd done.
---
River had gone to sleep, and it sat fine by Jayne. Made it easier to look at her bare arms and shins and throat, scanning for injuries. Listening for ominous sounds in her breathing. Findin' nothing.
Jayne moved back outside, returning to the folding chair set in front of the tent. Watched, for a while, as everyone went about their business, and listened to their snatches of conversation as they passed by. Nodded to a few, here and there, but mostly, just stared off at the grass.
This was stupid, one of those times where Jayne knew he was bein' stupid.
River was fine, uninjured, and no less sane or alive than she'd been that morning. She hadn't needed Jayne worryin' about her in the first gorram place. Just.
She's the only one makes sense worryin' about.
The rest of this place, though. These folk. Makin' deals they didn't expect to win. Ruttin' idiotic is what it was.
He got it. Hell, he'd just lost everything too, but he'd had a hell of a lot distractin' him. Would probably take years to settle right in his brain, get back to normal.
These folk were in the same boat, and Jayne had no clue what their version of normal looked like. No idea how hard they'd fight for it if they found they needed to.
---
Ronon was coming back from the showers, towel slung over his shoulder. His hair was still damp and looked uncomfortably heavy. He dragged his bare feet through the grass, carrying his boots in one hand like he knew he should have them on already. It looked deliberate, like he was forcing himself to dial it down. Jayne wasn't so sure it was working.
He would have gone alone.
Jayne hadn't been meaning to think on the things River'd told him, but they kept risin' up out of nowhere.
He would have died.
Probably because he didn't get it, never really had. You decided what survival meant, and you fought for it, whether it was for gettin' paid or stayin' alive. But it was survival all the same. Kinda the ruttin' point.
Jayne snorted. He'd come out here to think about somethin' else for a spell.
Mal would have understood Ronon better. He was the same sort, liable to get a man killed over nothing but a damn noble reason.
Up close, Ronon looked a little better, like he'd recovered from his injury.
"How's the shoulder?"
"Fine."
Healed or not, it didn't make him any easier to talk to. Jayne let him pass by, and didn't watch him go inside. Just kept starin' out over the camp, tryin' not to look too close at his own irritation.
---
Things looked better in the morning.
Teyla was in the mess when he and River arrived, tearing into her breakfast and talking with McKay, who waved them over. It was Teyla, though, who spoke first.
"Hello. I do not believe we were properly introduced…" she trailed off and an amused expression crossed her features.
Jayne glanced up to see River standing next to the table, staring in horrified contemplation of Teyla's stomach.
"There's a person in there," she eventually said, looking over at Jayne like he needed the explanation.
"Ruttin' hell, River. Could ya sit down and try to be normal?" Jayne shot what he hoped was a properly apologetic look across the table. Teyla seemed to go for it.
"She is correct, after all," she said with a nod of her head, but River was still apparently hypnotized.
Please lord, he prayed. Let someone have told the moonbrain 'bout the birds and the bees.
Moonbrain was talking again. "He's going to be in the world, soon. But right now, he's not really anything. Just exists where he is." She blinked, and sat down next to Jayne, grinning brightly at Teyla. "I'm River. It's nice to meet you both."
---
Ronon caught sight of everyone eating together in the mess tent, apparently listening to McKay's rambling, and discovered he wasn't hungry. It wasn't a deliberate thing. He'd just remembered the half-completed weir was sitting out where anyone could mistake it for kindling.
When Ronon was especially lucky, he found a village that had been recently culled. Sometimes, the food in the cellars hadn't gone off yet.
This wasn't one of those times, but he was too sick, too tired, to try his luck on another world, today. It would have to do.
Most of the food stores had been left exposed to the humid air for far too long, and had already gone to the omnipresent rats. He searched as he mined the village with traps, stringing tripwires and propping heavy weights to crash over opened doors, finding a lightweight shirt that was close enough to fitting, and some soap, but no medicine that he could recognize, and no food.
Eventually, however, his borrowed house was fortified against anything that would make it past the tripwires. He would have enjoyed it more if he wasn’t so damned hungry, so tired and overheated.
It didn't matter. He'd eaten yesterday, and there was water nearby, a slow river, running south of the village. Where there was water, there was hunting.
There was also the chance to wash. Less vital, but almost as pleasant as a full stomach. It had been days since he'd been clean, and longer since he'd allowed himself to strip down fully to bathe.
The shallow stream moved slowly, surprisingly cold on his skin until he remembered that he'd probably been running this fever for weeks, now. There hadn't been much to do about it. The sickness would go away, or it wouldn't.
Upriver, skeletal hands reached out of the water, grappling at nothing. Rubbing at his eyes, he chided himself for worrying about hallucinations. He wasn't that sick.
The wraith wouldn't have bothered to dump the bodies. Most everyone had probably been culled, but there were several bodies that lay where they'd fallen in the woods. Under cover of the trees, where the darts couldn't track them so easily, the hunters had to devour their pray on the spot.
Upon closer inspection, the hands turned into branches, and he could see signs of weaving, here and there. Not quite a net, and not quite a cage, more like a funnel, forcing the fish to go through a narrow gap. Practically right into his waiting hand.
Ronon tossed a few out onto the bank and stepped out to dry, deciding that for all the rats and empty rooms, this wasn't the worst place he could be.
---
He finally managed to scare up a mallet from the supply tent, and returned to find Jayne waiting by the water.
"Hey," Jayne craned his neck to peer into the water. "What's all this?"
"Trapping fish." He didn't look up, still trying to gauge the best placement of the stakes into the riverbed.
"I don't get it,' Jayne eventually said, like it had been bothering him for a while. "Why're you skulkin' around like someone bludgeoned your puppy to death with a rollin' pin? You got your friend back. Just sayin'. If it's all 'cause of the guy who came back with her, well. Right now, he ain't lookin' like he's all-"
What the hell? "You gonna keep talking? Told you before, it's not like that."
"Then what is it like?"
"There's still plenty of problems around here." Ronon mopped the sweat off his face with his sleeve. "Teyla being back doesn't fix any of them."
"Ignorin' her sure as hell won't, and neither will skippin' meals." Jayne narrowed his eyes a little against the glare on the water, but he didn't look at Ronon. "Saw you decide not to come join us, you know."
"I wasn't." Ronon didn't so much roll his eyes as he stared at the sky until the urge to attack passed. This almost felt familiar, with one striking difference. Sheppard hadn't been a complete ass.
Those first few days on Atlantis, being dragged out for meals so Sheppard could talk him into something he wasn't sure he understood yet. Talking plainly enough, but never explaining why Ronon should hear him.
Wanting to be left alone, and not. Wanting anything at all, and finding that it's there.
"Just want to get this done. You wanna help, or just sit there, yammering like McKay?"
Jayne's reaction wasn't very surprising. His lip curled briefly over a row of oddly perfect teeth, but it slid out into an amused grin.
"What d'you need me to do?"
Ronon gave it some consideration. There was only one mallet. "Go get me something to eat, and I'll figure it out."
---
They were calling it a lab, but only for a lack of a better term. When McKay and Zelenka tossed ideas and barbs across the tent, they were Mal and Wash navigating through a meteor belt. It wasn't real anger, just frustration and not knowing and needing to know. Brittle words filling the room with eggshells that no one wanted to crush.
River, though, didn't need to walk. She just wanted to sit, and listened to them argue time and where it all went wrong. One stranger's path intersecting with space at the wrong angle and moment, too close to the sun, rippling out towards a tidal wave that could take a ship three oceans away, and five hundred years.
She knew they wouldn't understand that she understood, so she remained silent. They had moved on, anyhow, though McKay was reluctant to file it away for later study. He wanted to pick at it some more, intrigued as to what it meant, and what he could make it do.
McKay would bend time to his will, given the chance, but he didn't have the time for that right now.
Zelenka, for his part, cast occasional glances over at her in the corner, curious. His pen would hesitate over his paper, or the typing would stutter a moment, like the data wasn't in his head anymore, having been shoved out by something so simple as a girl flying a ship. Their curiosity was a leashed dog, barking at intruders and wanting their bone returned.
But there were new things, pulled from the insides of a ship that breathed and bled. Not air, and not blood, but alive, and it seemed almost silly to study something as banal as navigational data instead.
But there was necessity and priority and demand and requirements. There was a growing fear that wasn't being admitted to.
Not yet.
---