Stole Soul Picnic 11/?
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Chapter 10
Can’t Be Vinced
Caldwell didn’t return until late the next day. That in itself wasn’t surprising, given the distance between Atlantis and M2Y-559. What was surprising was the news he dropped on everyone at supper when he got back.
“Have any trouble taking out that hive?” Sheppard asked him.
“What hive?” Caldwell returned. “By the time we got there, it was nothing but shrapnel.”
“What?!” McKay gasped.
Caldwell sighed and sat down. “We scanned the debris field and found a fading energy signature. Kavanagh said it’s consistent with Asgard weapon fire.”
Sheppard leaned back a little and narrowed his eyes. “That’s convenient.”
“You’re telling me. ’Course, if it was the Asgard, I’m just glad they didn’t show up until after the hive took care of the demons.”
Ronon frowned. “Why would they show up at all?”
“Well, Todd said the queen had set up some kind of distress signal,” McKay replied. “Emergency message, broadcasting on a wide range of subspace channels. Maybe the Asgard picked up something-or the Genii, if they’ve somehow managed to reverse-engineer weapons from that ship they stole. Kind of doubt it, though.”
Teyla tilted her head a little. “Didn’t the Asgard reject Shiana’s warning?”
“Well, we are talking about Shiana,” Lorne noted. “She makes Madame Defarge look like a sweet old lady.”
“True,” McKay conceded, “but even if the Asgard think the rest of the galaxy’s lost its collective mind, they hate the Wraith enough to be willing to check out a distress signal and take out a hive that’s basically a sitting duck. I mean, who wouldn’t?”
Ronon snorted in agreement.
“Still makes me a little nervous, whether it’s Asgard or Genii,” Sheppard admitted. “I’m not opposed to taking out hives, don’t get me wrong. But if the Wraith decide to stake out the edge of the galaxy just in case, we’re better off leaving ’em there.”
Caldwell huffed. “Good luck convincing the Asgard of that.”
Lisa leaned toward Sam a little and whispered, “Who are the Asgard?”
“Think Roswell,” Sam whispered back.
He would have explained further, but his train of thought was derailed by the sudden realization that Dean was giving Ben a summary of A Tale of Two Cities to explain who Madame Defarge was. When would he....
When you were at Stanford, Salim answered before Sam could fully formulate the question. He wanted to be able to converse intelligently with you about the books you’d read, at least the ones that were of interest to him.
Sam blinked.
Oh, you might be quite surprised at the books your brother has read, Salim continued casually. Dishon was rather surprised at the ones Dean knew well but Mary didn’t.
Mary-you mean Dr. Adamson?
Yes. Vonnegut you know about, of course, and Tolkien you deduced, but... yes, much more Dickens than Mary or Peter would have expected. Mary’s interests lay more with Jane Austen and things called “traveling pants” and “ya-ya sisterhood.”
Sam nearly choked.
And Dean noticed. “What?” he asked warily.
Sam coughed. “Nothing... Darcy.”
Dean turned purple. “Shut. Up.”
Sam grinned unrepentantly but shut up and watched his back for three days. Yet somehow, coming out of kel’no’reem on the fourth day to find himself sporting a regulation haircut was almost worth it.
Salim, of course, thought Sam deserved it.
After that, though, December settled into a relatively normal routine, which gave Ben and Lisa the ability to take their time learning about the city, the expedition, and the rest of the galaxy. The biggest differences from before the trip to Earth were that Sam’s assignment had become the continued translation of his section of Janus’ journal and Zelenka put Dean on a team researching how to turn a Prior inhibitor into something that would inhibit the demons’ ability to use the new combat techniques Abaddon had learned from Ion. The Nox solved the problem almost before Dean started on it, however-which both pleased and annoyed Dean-and also adapted the design so the device attached easily to a Gate and added a feature that generated a field containing a devil’s trap just past the event horizon, essentially creating a demon-proof iris. Their willingness to share surprised everyone but SG-1, who had seen firsthand just how close to the line Lya had been willing to walk in the past.
By the week before Christmas, therefore, the SGC’s contractors had manufactured enough of the demon inhibitors to prepare the Apollo to bring a shipment out to Pegasus. Most Pegasus cultures relied on the Stargate network for trade and couldn’t afford to bury their Gates, so even though the combined efforts of the Wraith and the angels had so far succeeded in keeping the demons from reaching Pegasus again, Landry and Woolsey agreed that the galaxy needed the extra protection. There was no guarantee that Abaddon wouldn’t find a way to improve the Alliance ships’ hyperdrives, after all, or that there wasn’t a hellmouth hidden on some other planet that would give her a back door into the galaxy.
Shortly after that news arrived, Sam was taking a walk through the city’s halls, in deep discussion with Salim trying to solve an Ancient knowledge puzzle that held the key to decoding the next section of Janus’ journal, when he was startled to hear Woolsey call, “Ms. Braeden! May I speak to you for a moment, please?”
It took a moment of looking around for Sam to determine that he wasn’t within sight of Lisa or Woolsey. Still, curious and concerned, he moved over to a wall so as to be out of the flow of traffic while he eavesdropped.
“How are you enjoying your stay in Atlantis?” Woolsey asked cordially.
“Fine,” Lisa replied, sounding surprised but honest. “It’s very different from what I imagined, but the people are nice, and... yeah, she’s a beautiful city.”
“I... take it you intend to stay, then.”
“Um. Yes, but-”
Sam pictured Woolsey holding up a hand as he interrupted, “Visitors don’t usually refer to Atlantis as ‘her.’ Those who do tend not to remain only guests for very long.”
Lisa probably blushed at that. “Well, that’s the way Dean talks about her. I guess I picked up his habit.”
“It wasn’t a criticism. In fact, had you not already made up your mind, I was going to extend an official offer, especially in light of what we know about Samuel Campbell.”
“Yes! Yes, that pretty well sealed the deal-but we’re planning not to tell my son until Christmas Day, make that one of his presents.”
“I can certainly understand. Is Ben enjoying himself? He seems to be, the few times I’ve seen him.”
“Definitely! In fact, I just left him down in the hologram room getting another tutorial. I haven’t seen him this excited about history... ever!”
Woolsey chuckled. “Gen. Landry wanted me to ask whether you would agree to move your household officially to Colorado Springs.”
“I don’t see why not, sure.”
“He also asked whether there’s anything remaining at your house that you’ll need. This supply run by the Apollo may be our last for some time.”
“Oh? Why?”
“There’s been another assault on the Pentagon. The wards held this time, but Gen. O’Neill is preparing to cancel all Earth-side leave and confine all personnel already on Earth to warded areas, purely for their own protection. Inias has already confirmed that the Apollo’s crew has not been compromised, but... until this is over, we can’t be too careful.”
“W-what about Bobby and Henry?”
“Being only civilian consultants, they’re not subject to the general’s orders. I’m sure they’re taking due precautions, though.”
“Rotten timing for everyone else,” Lisa remarked, voicing Sam’s own thoughts on the matter.
Woolsey hummed in agreement. “Unfortunately, Abaddon won’t be allowing us a Christmas truce-or Hanukkah, for that matter.”
“No, or Diwali.” Lisa sighed audibly. “I can think of a few things I might need. Of course, the biggest one is some kind of homeschool curriculum for Ben.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged. Shall we discuss the matter further in my office? We should also take a look at the PT schedule to see when you might offer your classes.”
Lisa agreed, and suddenly Sam couldn’t hear any more. Blowing the air out of his cheeks, he pulled himself together and turned the nearest corner to find...
... no one in the hall except Dean, who was coming toward him. “Hey,” Dean said.
“Hey,” Sam returned. “Where’s Lisa?”
Dean frowned. “In the Gateroom.”
Sam blinked. He wasn’t sure where in the city they were, but if he had to guess, he’d say they were closer to one of the piers than to the Gateroom, which was in the central tower. Deciding not to worry yet about how he’d managed to hear Lisa’s conversation from halfway across the city, though, he said, “Um. I... just heard that O’Neill’s-”
“About to cancel all Earth-side leave. Yeah, I know. Lantea told me.”
Lantea. Oh, of course. She would want the brothers to have heard that conversation.
“Probably means he won’t let Bobby and Henry come out for Christmas,” Dean continued, sounding disappointed.
Sam blinked again. “You... actually want to spend time with Henry?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“No, no, it’s just... the whole thing with Josie and all....”
Dean winced a little but replied, “I just like having the whole family in one place, y’know? Makes it easier to keep everyone safe.”
For someone Sam had known literally all his life, Dean never ceased to amaze him. Sam felt the old familiar surge of annoyance and affection as he noted, “As long as they stay in the bunker, nothing can get to them.”
Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head, but Sam could tell that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to worry. Yet all Dean said was, “At least we’ve finally got Ben and Lisa out here.”
Sam smiled at that. And as they headed back the way Dean had come, falling into step out of nearly ancient habit, Sam casually bumped Dean’s shoulder. Dean bumped back and started asking about the status of the journal translation.
And neither brother let on to Lisa that Lantea had let them eavesdrop on her conversation with Woolsey.
So apart from the grousing of people who’d had plans to return to Earth for Christmas, the holiday season was pretty quiet and normal by Atlantis standards. Dean and Lisa took Ben aside before breakfast Christmas morning to drop the dual bombshell of Lisa’s decision and Dean’s paternity, and the poor kid was too overwhelmed to speak until Torren pounced on him in the mess hall and started demanding to know all his favorite Christmas traditions. Sam and Dean and the Tok’ra exchanged video greetings with Bobby and Henry mid-morning, and Dean was reassured by Bobby’s report that everything was progressing as well as could be expected on their end. But then some of Teyla’s Athosian friends came to join in the international festivities and even brought some Pegasus-native bird roasted like turkey to share, and war took a back seat in everyone’s mind for the rest of the day. The same was true of New Year’s. And after that, it was back to work as usual, while Ben and Lisa continued peacefully settling in as they waited for the last of their stuff to arrive on the Apollo.
Sam couldn’t help wondering how long the peace would last.
Bobby crossed his arms. “Dragons aren’t real.”
“Nonsense,” Henry replied, pulling a massive illuminated bestiary off a shelf in the library. “You’re only saying that because no one’s seen any for seven hundred years.”
Bobby rolled his eyes.
“What makes you so sure this thing in Portland is a dragon?” Rufus pressed.
Henry hauled the bestiary over to the nearest table. “There’s been a spike in petty gold thefts-rings, watches, necklaces, all minor things that wouldn’t attract much attention individually but might make the beginning of a good hoard. The victims are young, unmarried women, all of them ‘good girls’ according to the news reports.”
Bobby frowned. “Virgins?”
Henry tilted his head. “Hardly a discreet question to ask, I know, but it’s something to check into. And then there’s Sky King-I mean, Penny Dessertine’s beau, recovered miles from the crash site and burned beyond recognition. That to me sounds like a fairly standard dragon infestation.”
Bobby shot a questioning look at Rufus, who simply said, “I’m glad I ain’t the only one who thought of Sky King.”
Sighing, Bobby couldn’t help wishing they hadn’t found this place. Sure, it was even more secure than his house, though not nearly as comfortable, and the ancient computer (or was that Ancient computer?) was doing a great job of helping them keep tabs on this Purgatory mess. But the reason it pinged the map table for Portland hadn’t made any sense, given how far outside their usual hunt parameters the case seemed to be. Or at least, it hadn’t made sense until Henry had started digging through the reports and showed just how much skill John had inherited from his old man without knowing it. Now... well, Bobby had to admit the explanation fit as well as anything, but he wasn’t quite ready yet to let his list of nonexistent critters get narrowed down to only unicorns.
Life was so much simpler before the Apocalypse.
Henry slipped on a pair of cotton gloves and carefully paged through the bestiary until he reached the section on dragons. Bobby and Rufus could both read upside down, though, and kept up as best they could as Henry skimmed through the Latin text, which seemed to be pretty standard lore aside from noting that some dragons could take human form.
“They settle in caves,” Henry noted out loud. “Could be a challenge in a place like Portland. But someplace secluded, dark, and dank-”
“Sewers,” said Rufus, who’d spent far more time in cities than Bobby had.
Henry nodded. “Could work, sure.”
“So how do we kill one?” Bobby asked.
Henry turned the page and skimmed further before answering, “Says here, ‘Only a blade that has drunk of a dragon’s blood at its forging may taste the blood of a dragon in slaying.’ So... a sword that was quenched in dragon’s blood when it was forged?”
Rufus nodded. “Bet those are pretty damn rare, though.”
“Mm. Here’s a list of the few this author knew of-Excalibur; Gram, the Sword of Wieland; Balmung, the Sword of Siegfried; the Sword of St. George; the Sword of Yvain, ‘whom the Germans call Henry the Lion and the Czechs Bruncvik’-”
Bobby let slip a Tok’ra curse and didn’t realize it until Rufus looked at him funny.
Henry looked up. “What? Bruncvik sounds familiar?”
“More than familiar. That sword’s in the States-and I know who’s got it. Old girlfriend of mine.”
Rufus blinked. “You don’t mean Ellie Visyak, do you?”
“I do.”
Henry frowned. “Eleanor Visyak? Doctor Eleanor Visyak?!”
Now it was Bobby’s turn to blink. “How the hell do you know about her? She’s my age.”
“Not unless there’s some extremely strange coincidence... or perhaps the woman you know is the daughter of the woman Larry Ganem brought to Normal to lecture on medieval lore a few times. Do you know anything about her family?”
Bobby thought for a moment. “Never came up, honestly.” Hell if he was going to explain why, but their conversations hadn’t covered much beyond the hunt and the bedroom. “We didn’t exactly part on good terms, either, so I ain’t gonna ask her now.”
Henry’s frown deepened, and he looked away. “There was something in Janus’ journal, from 1937, something about the death of H. P. Lovecraft and the disappearance of a woman called Eleanor....”
“We can figure it out later,” Rufus interrupted. “Main thing is, Ellie’s got this Sword o’ Burgoo-”
“Bruncvik,” Bobby and Henry corrected at the same time, though Bobby suddenly realized it had been a while since breakfast.
“-and we’re gonna have to play nice to get it, and if there’s one thing that don’t include, it’s askin’ the lady her age.”
Bobby sighed. “You wanna eat now or later, Rufus?”
Rufus considered. “We better eat in the car. Frisco’s a hell of a long drive, and ain’t no sense riskin’ any more lives than we have to.”
“All right. You comin’, Henry?”
Henry hesitated. “Actually, I think I should stay here in case you need more research. I should see if I can find those entries about Lovecraft in Janus’ journal, too; they might be relevant.”
“Think you’ll be all right here by yourself?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Because it’s barely been two months since your world ended, idjit, Bobby thought but didn’t say. He knew all too well the futility of arguing with a Winchester who insisted he was fine. “Suit yourself,” he said instead. “Just make sure you touch base with Landry or somebody every day, so we know Abaddon ain’t found a way through the wards.”
“Oh, sure, no problem. And I’ll call if I find anything.”
Stifling his misgivings, Bobby bade Henry farewell and followed Rufus first to the kitchen, for enough food to get them to a town with a drive-through, and then to the garage, where Cas had delivered the Chevelle shortly before Christmas. And then they were off, almost like old times... except that now they were old timers and had to stop for the night in Cheyenne. Once they finally reached San Francisco, Rufus dropped Bobby at the library to check for any further abductions and came back an hour later with a triumphant grin and a broadsword in the trunk.
“Do I want to know how you got that?” Bobby asked warily.
Rufus shrugged. “‘Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil’-only this time there wasn’t an anvil.”
Bobby snorted and closed the trunk. “Let’s go, Palomides. Got another possible attack, Catholic schoolgirl. Knocked her down, clawed her up, and took her purity ring.”
“Gold?”
“Yup.”
Rufus cursed in Yiddish, and they were off again.
They were just about to Mount Shasta when Bobby’s phone rang. “I found the entries on Lovecraft,” Henry reported. “Had to get Dr. Jackson’s help, since the Ancient text was somewhat encoded, but we cracked it.”
Bobby put him on speaker. “Let’s hear it.”
“Lovecraft threw a dinner party on March 10, 1937. He and his friends had been dabbling in black magic, trying to open a portal between dimensions; he apparently tried to get information from the Men of Letters, but when they refused to help him, he consulted with the Campbells. Janus doesn’t say what help they provided, only that Moishe Campbell met with Lovecraft. Anyway, the spell cast at the dinner party succeeded in reaching Purgatory, but no one knew it at the time. The spirit that came through possessed Lovecraft’s maid, Eleanor Westborough. Within the year, everyone who’d been at the dinner party was dead except for Eleanor, who disappeared, and her son, who was committed when he claimed his mother had become a monster.”
“So?” Rufus prompted. “What happened next?
“Well, that’s why Janus encrypted most of these entries. He found Eleanor a year later at Cambridge, working on a doctorate under the name Eleanor Visyak. She’s some kind of half-ascended Ancient-monster hybrid, native to Purgatory. Evidently the human Eleanor Westborough died when she came into contact with Visyak’s spirit-that much was purely accidental. But the reason Visyak killed Lovecraft and his guests was to prevent them from spreading knowledge of the spell to open Purgatory. She even destroyed every copy of the spell she could find. She hated Menva and wasn’t thrilled to meet another Ancient, but she swore to Janus that she would do everything in her power to keep that dimension sealed. Janus in turn swore to record her secret ‘only for those with eyes to see and wit to understand true danger,’ and once she had her degree, he introduced her to the Letters as a specialist consultant.”
After a pause, Rufus said, “I thought she let me take that sword too easy. She wants us to stop them dragons.”
“But why the hell would the dragons want to open a door to Purgatory?” Bobby asked.
“No idea yet,” Henry confessed. “The bestiary says they’re clever creatures and have their own lore, but that doesn’t help much... unless maybe they’re trying to help Menva return to Earth or something.”
Bobby sighed. “All right, keep digging. We’ll see what we can find out in Portland tomorrow.”
The long drive ended with a short night, followed by plenty of coffee. But by mid-morning, Agent Jackson and Agent Willis were hard at work asking awkward questions and generally not finding anything to contradict the conclusion that they were in fact dealing with dragons. Then came the challenge of finding an accurate map of the city’s sewers, locating the most likely area in which the dragon might be hiding, and gearing up to go spelunking.
“I’m too damn old for this,” Bobby groused as they headed out once more.
Rufus slapped him on the back. “Chin up, baby boy. At least we beat the Campbells to this one.”
“Yeah, and Abaddon. Makes me wonder if we ain’t got more help than just Ellie.”
“Gift horse, Bob. Gift horse.”
“I know, I know. I just wonder, is all.”
But nothing angelic or demonic showed itself between the time they got into the car and the time they slew both of the dragons in their lair and rescued the captured virgins, who helped cart the stolen gold and the dragons’ grimoire up to street level. Portland PD came quickly to get the girls checked out and returned to their families, and Bobby and Rufus went wearily back to their motel, washed off the worst of the sewer stink, and crashed into bed.
Both hunters were too exhausted to even think about driving back to Frisco the next day, never mind clear back to Lebanon. So Rufus worked on cleaning the Sword of Bruncvik and sorting through the gold hoard, and Bobby tried to glean as much from the grimoire as he could. The dialect was somewhere between Ancient and classical Latin, despite its probable fourteenth-century provenance, but what little he could make out hinted that Henry’s guess had been right. Mater or Mater Omnia was the only name given, but the text was clearly about Menva and Purgatory and how to spring Menva from her captivity. The exact spell, however, appeared to have been on one of the human-skin pages missing from the beginning of the book.
The sun had nearly set that afternoon, with Bobby not much the wiser, when the ground suddenly shook.
Seconds later, Bobby’s phone rang. “Bobby!” Henry hollered over a blaring alarm. “We’ve got a Class 4 event at Mount Rainier!”
Bobby uttered one of Dean’s favorite Goa’uld curses. “There musta been more than two dragons!”
“What can you do?”
“Hell if I know, but we’ll go do it!”
Rufus was already halfway out the door by the time Bobby hung up. They checked out hurriedly and sped north toward Olympia, where they discovered that the Seattle-Tacoma metroplex had also been subject to a rash of kidnappings. It took longer than Bobby had hoped to get enough support to head out to Mount Rainier, but the emergency team was needed when they found the abandoned van full of victims-all but one of the girls who had gone missing were there.
Unfortunately, the vics all told the same story the next day. The dragon they hadn’t caught had taken the still-missing girl up to the lip of the suddenly active volcano... and when he brought her down again, her dress was dirty and singed, and he addressed her as Mother. The police assumed a more natural form of assault, but Bobby and Rufus knew the truth.
“Ellie’s gonna kill us,” Bobby said when they got back to the car.
Rufus sighed. “Hell, Bob, not like we knew there even was more’n one to begin with. But I guess we oughta see if they’re still in the area.”
“Yeah. Reckon so.”
But the trail was already cold by then. No omens had shown up since the earthquake, and there were no more assaults or kidnappings that fit the dragon’s profile-naturally, since he already had what he was after. Even Balthazar, who showed up around suppertime, didn’t have much intel to share. Bone weary, Bobby was about to give up and call it an overdue night when his phone rang again.
“Mr. Singer?” Gen. Landry asked. “Have you heard from Henry today?”
Bobby took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he thought. “No, not since the earthquake yesterday. Why?”
“He’s not answering his phone or email.”
When Henry came back to awareness, he had a terrible headache and a very spotty memory. The last thing he remembered clearly after getting the alarms silenced was being trapped in the memories of the night the Letters fell, unable to get the screams to stop. He’d tried to drown them out in a way he seldom chose, a way that still seemed like the safest of the many options the bunker had to offer. He hadn’t been aware what time it was when he started drinking, how much he’d drunk, how much time had passed. All he’d known were the screams that would not stop... until a hand had gently pulled the glass from his grasp and helped him to his feet.
A deep voice that was faintly familiar had said something he hadn’t caught. A female voice as familiar as his own had said, “I’ll look after him.”
He didn’t remember what he’d said, if he’d said anything. He thought he remembered hands going where they shouldn’t, but he didn’t remember much of a struggle or even a protest-maybe one or two “You’re drunk”s, but then she’d caught his seeking mouth with her own, and then... stumbling through the nearest open doorway... and after that was all a blur, although the aftermath was plain enough even through the pain and lingering haze of alcohol, even though he hadn’t opened his eyes yet, given that she was still draped over him like a blanket.
Then she stirred and started trying to kiss him awake. His response was automatic, what little of his rational mind was functioning shutting down again under his body’s assault of more, yes, now. He heard himself calling a name over and over... he was only partly sure it was the right one.
Finally, however, all was still and quiet again, and she was settled with her head on his shoulder, and his mind slowly cleared enough for the sour state of his stomach to feel an awful lot like guilt.
“Josie,” he said thickly, “we need to stop.”
He caught sight of flame-red hair as Josie turned her head to look at him with puzzled blue eyes. “I thought you wanted this.”
“I do. That’s the problem.”
“Henry, you’re not married anymore.”
“Yes, but you and I aren’t married.”
“Well, we can fix that. Nebraska doesn’t have a waiting period.”
He ignored that. “And what if you’re pregnant?”
She caressed his surprisingly fuzzy-feeling cheek. “Look, I will never be Millie, and any child we might have will never be John. I know that. I’m not asking you to replace them. I’m asking you to let me fill that void for you.”
“What... what will the boys say?”
“The boys are in another galaxy. And besides that, you’re thirty years old. It’s time to stop living in the past.”
He sighed and sat up. “I don’t know if I can. At least... not today.”
She sat up, too, but facing the headboard and looking down and away from him, and toyed with the edge of her pillowcase for a moment. “You should know... if I am pregnant, I’m keeping the child.”
“I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.” He hugged her and pressed a kiss into her hair. “I do love you. More than... all this. I always have. I hope you know that. And yes, maybe I do want to marry you. But now’s not the time. I’ve got a job to do here, and I can’t keep letting you distract me.”
She laughed bitterly.
“We’re at war. We’re both old enough to know what that means.”
She turned back to him. “Old enough to know that war doesn’t end when we want it to. If not today, then when?”
He looked away, unable to answer.
“Look, just give me today, all right? Let me be your war bride. Take me across the state line so we can have the ring and the vow and make it all official. I’ll go back to the SGC tomorrow if you want-but if I do go, Landry’s going to send someone else to be here with you.”
He frowned and looked at her again. “Landry? What’s Landry got to do with it?”
“He was looking for someone to check on you. I volunteered because I was worried, and Castiel brought me straight here from the SGC. You hadn’t checked in for two days.”
“Two days?!” He looked away in shock and ran a hand over his chin. That would account for the hangover and the length of his beard, but he’d had no idea he’d lost more than the one night. He drew his knees up to his chest and put his arms around them as if that would steady him better. “Two days....”
She looked at him more closely. “You didn’t know?”
He shook his head and couldn’t stop the tear that escaped as his eyes closed. “All I knew was that I couldn’t stop the screaming.”
She turned around and started slowly rubbing his back, with nothing in the touch but comfort. “I know how it goes. At least you’re not the one who was tied up in shotgun while she caused it.”
He looked at her again. “You were awake?”
She nodded. “She wanted me to feel every bone snap, smell every drop of blood. It was... it was....”
He took her other hand in both of his and just held it. “You don’t have to tell me.”
She leaned her forehead against his with a small sob. And they sat like that for a long moment, her absently rubbing his back, him rubbing her hand, both crying quietly.
Finally, he drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s get cleaned up and dressed and get me sober and checked in so I can take you across the state line and make an honest woman of you.”
She laughed, and he kissed her.
“Your grandfather got married yesterday.”
Dean looked up from his lunch to stare at Sheppard. “Excuse me?”
Sheppard looked up from the tablet where he was going over stuff that had come in with the latest data burst from Earth. “Henry, he and... Josie, says here they eloped yesterday.”
Dean let a Goa’uld curse slip.
Better her than a stranger, Dishon noted. At least Henry and Josie have a history.
“That’s not the point, Dishon!”
Sam frowned. “Dean... we can’t expect him not to move on.”
“What if they have kids, Sammy?” Dean objected, sounding more plaintive than he meant to. “We-we could end up with uncles who’re younger than Ben! That’s just wrong!”
Lorne started singing “I’m My Own Grandpa” until Dean hit him between the eyes with a wad of foil.
“What does elope mean?” Ben piped up.
Dean looked at Lisa with a smirk. “Something I ought to do to your mom one of these days.”
“Oh, stop,” Lisa laughed.
Sheppard cleared his throat. “That’s the good news. The bad news is, Mr. Singer says the dragons managed to bust Menva out of Purgatory. And she’s as far off the radar as Abaddon is.”
Dean didn’t dare voice his thoughts about that in front of Ben, even in Goa’uld. Dishon was swearing enough for both of them anyway.
Next
Chapter 10
Can’t Be Vinced
Caldwell didn’t return until late the next day. That in itself wasn’t surprising, given the distance between Atlantis and M2Y-559. What was surprising was the news he dropped on everyone at supper when he got back.
“Have any trouble taking out that hive?” Sheppard asked him.
“What hive?” Caldwell returned. “By the time we got there, it was nothing but shrapnel.”
“What?!” McKay gasped.
Caldwell sighed and sat down. “We scanned the debris field and found a fading energy signature. Kavanagh said it’s consistent with Asgard weapon fire.”
Sheppard leaned back a little and narrowed his eyes. “That’s convenient.”
“You’re telling me. ’Course, if it was the Asgard, I’m just glad they didn’t show up until after the hive took care of the demons.”
Ronon frowned. “Why would they show up at all?”
“Well, Todd said the queen had set up some kind of distress signal,” McKay replied. “Emergency message, broadcasting on a wide range of subspace channels. Maybe the Asgard picked up something-or the Genii, if they’ve somehow managed to reverse-engineer weapons from that ship they stole. Kind of doubt it, though.”
Teyla tilted her head a little. “Didn’t the Asgard reject Shiana’s warning?”
“Well, we are talking about Shiana,” Lorne noted. “She makes Madame Defarge look like a sweet old lady.”
“True,” McKay conceded, “but even if the Asgard think the rest of the galaxy’s lost its collective mind, they hate the Wraith enough to be willing to check out a distress signal and take out a hive that’s basically a sitting duck. I mean, who wouldn’t?”
Ronon snorted in agreement.
“Still makes me a little nervous, whether it’s Asgard or Genii,” Sheppard admitted. “I’m not opposed to taking out hives, don’t get me wrong. But if the Wraith decide to stake out the edge of the galaxy just in case, we’re better off leaving ’em there.”
Caldwell huffed. “Good luck convincing the Asgard of that.”
Lisa leaned toward Sam a little and whispered, “Who are the Asgard?”
“Think Roswell,” Sam whispered back.
He would have explained further, but his train of thought was derailed by the sudden realization that Dean was giving Ben a summary of A Tale of Two Cities to explain who Madame Defarge was. When would he....
When you were at Stanford, Salim answered before Sam could fully formulate the question. He wanted to be able to converse intelligently with you about the books you’d read, at least the ones that were of interest to him.
Sam blinked.
Oh, you might be quite surprised at the books your brother has read, Salim continued casually. Dishon was rather surprised at the ones Dean knew well but Mary didn’t.
Mary-you mean Dr. Adamson?
Yes. Vonnegut you know about, of course, and Tolkien you deduced, but... yes, much more Dickens than Mary or Peter would have expected. Mary’s interests lay more with Jane Austen and things called “traveling pants” and “ya-ya sisterhood.”
Sam nearly choked.
And Dean noticed. “What?” he asked warily.
Sam coughed. “Nothing... Darcy.”
Dean turned purple. “Shut. Up.”
Sam grinned unrepentantly but shut up and watched his back for three days. Yet somehow, coming out of kel’no’reem on the fourth day to find himself sporting a regulation haircut was almost worth it.
Salim, of course, thought Sam deserved it.
After that, though, December settled into a relatively normal routine, which gave Ben and Lisa the ability to take their time learning about the city, the expedition, and the rest of the galaxy. The biggest differences from before the trip to Earth were that Sam’s assignment had become the continued translation of his section of Janus’ journal and Zelenka put Dean on a team researching how to turn a Prior inhibitor into something that would inhibit the demons’ ability to use the new combat techniques Abaddon had learned from Ion. The Nox solved the problem almost before Dean started on it, however-which both pleased and annoyed Dean-and also adapted the design so the device attached easily to a Gate and added a feature that generated a field containing a devil’s trap just past the event horizon, essentially creating a demon-proof iris. Their willingness to share surprised everyone but SG-1, who had seen firsthand just how close to the line Lya had been willing to walk in the past.
By the week before Christmas, therefore, the SGC’s contractors had manufactured enough of the demon inhibitors to prepare the Apollo to bring a shipment out to Pegasus. Most Pegasus cultures relied on the Stargate network for trade and couldn’t afford to bury their Gates, so even though the combined efforts of the Wraith and the angels had so far succeeded in keeping the demons from reaching Pegasus again, Landry and Woolsey agreed that the galaxy needed the extra protection. There was no guarantee that Abaddon wouldn’t find a way to improve the Alliance ships’ hyperdrives, after all, or that there wasn’t a hellmouth hidden on some other planet that would give her a back door into the galaxy.
Shortly after that news arrived, Sam was taking a walk through the city’s halls, in deep discussion with Salim trying to solve an Ancient knowledge puzzle that held the key to decoding the next section of Janus’ journal, when he was startled to hear Woolsey call, “Ms. Braeden! May I speak to you for a moment, please?”
It took a moment of looking around for Sam to determine that he wasn’t within sight of Lisa or Woolsey. Still, curious and concerned, he moved over to a wall so as to be out of the flow of traffic while he eavesdropped.
“How are you enjoying your stay in Atlantis?” Woolsey asked cordially.
“Fine,” Lisa replied, sounding surprised but honest. “It’s very different from what I imagined, but the people are nice, and... yeah, she’s a beautiful city.”
“I... take it you intend to stay, then.”
“Um. Yes, but-”
Sam pictured Woolsey holding up a hand as he interrupted, “Visitors don’t usually refer to Atlantis as ‘her.’ Those who do tend not to remain only guests for very long.”
Lisa probably blushed at that. “Well, that’s the way Dean talks about her. I guess I picked up his habit.”
“It wasn’t a criticism. In fact, had you not already made up your mind, I was going to extend an official offer, especially in light of what we know about Samuel Campbell.”
“Yes! Yes, that pretty well sealed the deal-but we’re planning not to tell my son until Christmas Day, make that one of his presents.”
“I can certainly understand. Is Ben enjoying himself? He seems to be, the few times I’ve seen him.”
“Definitely! In fact, I just left him down in the hologram room getting another tutorial. I haven’t seen him this excited about history... ever!”
Woolsey chuckled. “Gen. Landry wanted me to ask whether you would agree to move your household officially to Colorado Springs.”
“I don’t see why not, sure.”
“He also asked whether there’s anything remaining at your house that you’ll need. This supply run by the Apollo may be our last for some time.”
“Oh? Why?”
“There’s been another assault on the Pentagon. The wards held this time, but Gen. O’Neill is preparing to cancel all Earth-side leave and confine all personnel already on Earth to warded areas, purely for their own protection. Inias has already confirmed that the Apollo’s crew has not been compromised, but... until this is over, we can’t be too careful.”
“W-what about Bobby and Henry?”
“Being only civilian consultants, they’re not subject to the general’s orders. I’m sure they’re taking due precautions, though.”
“Rotten timing for everyone else,” Lisa remarked, voicing Sam’s own thoughts on the matter.
Woolsey hummed in agreement. “Unfortunately, Abaddon won’t be allowing us a Christmas truce-or Hanukkah, for that matter.”
“No, or Diwali.” Lisa sighed audibly. “I can think of a few things I might need. Of course, the biggest one is some kind of homeschool curriculum for Ben.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged. Shall we discuss the matter further in my office? We should also take a look at the PT schedule to see when you might offer your classes.”
Lisa agreed, and suddenly Sam couldn’t hear any more. Blowing the air out of his cheeks, he pulled himself together and turned the nearest corner to find...
... no one in the hall except Dean, who was coming toward him. “Hey,” Dean said.
“Hey,” Sam returned. “Where’s Lisa?”
Dean frowned. “In the Gateroom.”
Sam blinked. He wasn’t sure where in the city they were, but if he had to guess, he’d say they were closer to one of the piers than to the Gateroom, which was in the central tower. Deciding not to worry yet about how he’d managed to hear Lisa’s conversation from halfway across the city, though, he said, “Um. I... just heard that O’Neill’s-”
“About to cancel all Earth-side leave. Yeah, I know. Lantea told me.”
Lantea. Oh, of course. She would want the brothers to have heard that conversation.
“Probably means he won’t let Bobby and Henry come out for Christmas,” Dean continued, sounding disappointed.
Sam blinked again. “You... actually want to spend time with Henry?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“No, no, it’s just... the whole thing with Josie and all....”
Dean winced a little but replied, “I just like having the whole family in one place, y’know? Makes it easier to keep everyone safe.”
For someone Sam had known literally all his life, Dean never ceased to amaze him. Sam felt the old familiar surge of annoyance and affection as he noted, “As long as they stay in the bunker, nothing can get to them.”
Dean conceded the point with a tilt of his head, but Sam could tell that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to worry. Yet all Dean said was, “At least we’ve finally got Ben and Lisa out here.”
Sam smiled at that. And as they headed back the way Dean had come, falling into step out of nearly ancient habit, Sam casually bumped Dean’s shoulder. Dean bumped back and started asking about the status of the journal translation.
And neither brother let on to Lisa that Lantea had let them eavesdrop on her conversation with Woolsey.
So apart from the grousing of people who’d had plans to return to Earth for Christmas, the holiday season was pretty quiet and normal by Atlantis standards. Dean and Lisa took Ben aside before breakfast Christmas morning to drop the dual bombshell of Lisa’s decision and Dean’s paternity, and the poor kid was too overwhelmed to speak until Torren pounced on him in the mess hall and started demanding to know all his favorite Christmas traditions. Sam and Dean and the Tok’ra exchanged video greetings with Bobby and Henry mid-morning, and Dean was reassured by Bobby’s report that everything was progressing as well as could be expected on their end. But then some of Teyla’s Athosian friends came to join in the international festivities and even brought some Pegasus-native bird roasted like turkey to share, and war took a back seat in everyone’s mind for the rest of the day. The same was true of New Year’s. And after that, it was back to work as usual, while Ben and Lisa continued peacefully settling in as they waited for the last of their stuff to arrive on the Apollo.
Sam couldn’t help wondering how long the peace would last.
Bobby crossed his arms. “Dragons aren’t real.”
“Nonsense,” Henry replied, pulling a massive illuminated bestiary off a shelf in the library. “You’re only saying that because no one’s seen any for seven hundred years.”
Bobby rolled his eyes.
“What makes you so sure this thing in Portland is a dragon?” Rufus pressed.
Henry hauled the bestiary over to the nearest table. “There’s been a spike in petty gold thefts-rings, watches, necklaces, all minor things that wouldn’t attract much attention individually but might make the beginning of a good hoard. The victims are young, unmarried women, all of them ‘good girls’ according to the news reports.”
Bobby frowned. “Virgins?”
Henry tilted his head. “Hardly a discreet question to ask, I know, but it’s something to check into. And then there’s Sky King-I mean, Penny Dessertine’s beau, recovered miles from the crash site and burned beyond recognition. That to me sounds like a fairly standard dragon infestation.”
Bobby shot a questioning look at Rufus, who simply said, “I’m glad I ain’t the only one who thought of Sky King.”
Sighing, Bobby couldn’t help wishing they hadn’t found this place. Sure, it was even more secure than his house, though not nearly as comfortable, and the ancient computer (or was that Ancient computer?) was doing a great job of helping them keep tabs on this Purgatory mess. But the reason it pinged the map table for Portland hadn’t made any sense, given how far outside their usual hunt parameters the case seemed to be. Or at least, it hadn’t made sense until Henry had started digging through the reports and showed just how much skill John had inherited from his old man without knowing it. Now... well, Bobby had to admit the explanation fit as well as anything, but he wasn’t quite ready yet to let his list of nonexistent critters get narrowed down to only unicorns.
Life was so much simpler before the Apocalypse.
Henry slipped on a pair of cotton gloves and carefully paged through the bestiary until he reached the section on dragons. Bobby and Rufus could both read upside down, though, and kept up as best they could as Henry skimmed through the Latin text, which seemed to be pretty standard lore aside from noting that some dragons could take human form.
“They settle in caves,” Henry noted out loud. “Could be a challenge in a place like Portland. But someplace secluded, dark, and dank-”
“Sewers,” said Rufus, who’d spent far more time in cities than Bobby had.
Henry nodded. “Could work, sure.”
“So how do we kill one?” Bobby asked.
Henry turned the page and skimmed further before answering, “Says here, ‘Only a blade that has drunk of a dragon’s blood at its forging may taste the blood of a dragon in slaying.’ So... a sword that was quenched in dragon’s blood when it was forged?”
Rufus nodded. “Bet those are pretty damn rare, though.”
“Mm. Here’s a list of the few this author knew of-Excalibur; Gram, the Sword of Wieland; Balmung, the Sword of Siegfried; the Sword of St. George; the Sword of Yvain, ‘whom the Germans call Henry the Lion and the Czechs Bruncvik’-”
Bobby let slip a Tok’ra curse and didn’t realize it until Rufus looked at him funny.
Henry looked up. “What? Bruncvik sounds familiar?”
“More than familiar. That sword’s in the States-and I know who’s got it. Old girlfriend of mine.”
Rufus blinked. “You don’t mean Ellie Visyak, do you?”
“I do.”
Henry frowned. “Eleanor Visyak? Doctor Eleanor Visyak?!”
Now it was Bobby’s turn to blink. “How the hell do you know about her? She’s my age.”
“Not unless there’s some extremely strange coincidence... or perhaps the woman you know is the daughter of the woman Larry Ganem brought to Normal to lecture on medieval lore a few times. Do you know anything about her family?”
Bobby thought for a moment. “Never came up, honestly.” Hell if he was going to explain why, but their conversations hadn’t covered much beyond the hunt and the bedroom. “We didn’t exactly part on good terms, either, so I ain’t gonna ask her now.”
Henry’s frown deepened, and he looked away. “There was something in Janus’ journal, from 1937, something about the death of H. P. Lovecraft and the disappearance of a woman called Eleanor....”
“We can figure it out later,” Rufus interrupted. “Main thing is, Ellie’s got this Sword o’ Burgoo-”
“Bruncvik,” Bobby and Henry corrected at the same time, though Bobby suddenly realized it had been a while since breakfast.
“-and we’re gonna have to play nice to get it, and if there’s one thing that don’t include, it’s askin’ the lady her age.”
Bobby sighed. “You wanna eat now or later, Rufus?”
Rufus considered. “We better eat in the car. Frisco’s a hell of a long drive, and ain’t no sense riskin’ any more lives than we have to.”
“All right. You comin’, Henry?”
Henry hesitated. “Actually, I think I should stay here in case you need more research. I should see if I can find those entries about Lovecraft in Janus’ journal, too; they might be relevant.”
“Think you’ll be all right here by yourself?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Because it’s barely been two months since your world ended, idjit, Bobby thought but didn’t say. He knew all too well the futility of arguing with a Winchester who insisted he was fine. “Suit yourself,” he said instead. “Just make sure you touch base with Landry or somebody every day, so we know Abaddon ain’t found a way through the wards.”
“Oh, sure, no problem. And I’ll call if I find anything.”
Stifling his misgivings, Bobby bade Henry farewell and followed Rufus first to the kitchen, for enough food to get them to a town with a drive-through, and then to the garage, where Cas had delivered the Chevelle shortly before Christmas. And then they were off, almost like old times... except that now they were old timers and had to stop for the night in Cheyenne. Once they finally reached San Francisco, Rufus dropped Bobby at the library to check for any further abductions and came back an hour later with a triumphant grin and a broadsword in the trunk.
“Do I want to know how you got that?” Bobby asked warily.
Rufus shrugged. “‘Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil’-only this time there wasn’t an anvil.”
Bobby snorted and closed the trunk. “Let’s go, Palomides. Got another possible attack, Catholic schoolgirl. Knocked her down, clawed her up, and took her purity ring.”
“Gold?”
“Yup.”
Rufus cursed in Yiddish, and they were off again.
They were just about to Mount Shasta when Bobby’s phone rang. “I found the entries on Lovecraft,” Henry reported. “Had to get Dr. Jackson’s help, since the Ancient text was somewhat encoded, but we cracked it.”
Bobby put him on speaker. “Let’s hear it.”
“Lovecraft threw a dinner party on March 10, 1937. He and his friends had been dabbling in black magic, trying to open a portal between dimensions; he apparently tried to get information from the Men of Letters, but when they refused to help him, he consulted with the Campbells. Janus doesn’t say what help they provided, only that Moishe Campbell met with Lovecraft. Anyway, the spell cast at the dinner party succeeded in reaching Purgatory, but no one knew it at the time. The spirit that came through possessed Lovecraft’s maid, Eleanor Westborough. Within the year, everyone who’d been at the dinner party was dead except for Eleanor, who disappeared, and her son, who was committed when he claimed his mother had become a monster.”
“So?” Rufus prompted. “What happened next?
“Well, that’s why Janus encrypted most of these entries. He found Eleanor a year later at Cambridge, working on a doctorate under the name Eleanor Visyak. She’s some kind of half-ascended Ancient-monster hybrid, native to Purgatory. Evidently the human Eleanor Westborough died when she came into contact with Visyak’s spirit-that much was purely accidental. But the reason Visyak killed Lovecraft and his guests was to prevent them from spreading knowledge of the spell to open Purgatory. She even destroyed every copy of the spell she could find. She hated Menva and wasn’t thrilled to meet another Ancient, but she swore to Janus that she would do everything in her power to keep that dimension sealed. Janus in turn swore to record her secret ‘only for those with eyes to see and wit to understand true danger,’ and once she had her degree, he introduced her to the Letters as a specialist consultant.”
After a pause, Rufus said, “I thought she let me take that sword too easy. She wants us to stop them dragons.”
“But why the hell would the dragons want to open a door to Purgatory?” Bobby asked.
“No idea yet,” Henry confessed. “The bestiary says they’re clever creatures and have their own lore, but that doesn’t help much... unless maybe they’re trying to help Menva return to Earth or something.”
Bobby sighed. “All right, keep digging. We’ll see what we can find out in Portland tomorrow.”
The long drive ended with a short night, followed by plenty of coffee. But by mid-morning, Agent Jackson and Agent Willis were hard at work asking awkward questions and generally not finding anything to contradict the conclusion that they were in fact dealing with dragons. Then came the challenge of finding an accurate map of the city’s sewers, locating the most likely area in which the dragon might be hiding, and gearing up to go spelunking.
“I’m too damn old for this,” Bobby groused as they headed out once more.
Rufus slapped him on the back. “Chin up, baby boy. At least we beat the Campbells to this one.”
“Yeah, and Abaddon. Makes me wonder if we ain’t got more help than just Ellie.”
“Gift horse, Bob. Gift horse.”
“I know, I know. I just wonder, is all.”
But nothing angelic or demonic showed itself between the time they got into the car and the time they slew both of the dragons in their lair and rescued the captured virgins, who helped cart the stolen gold and the dragons’ grimoire up to street level. Portland PD came quickly to get the girls checked out and returned to their families, and Bobby and Rufus went wearily back to their motel, washed off the worst of the sewer stink, and crashed into bed.
Both hunters were too exhausted to even think about driving back to Frisco the next day, never mind clear back to Lebanon. So Rufus worked on cleaning the Sword of Bruncvik and sorting through the gold hoard, and Bobby tried to glean as much from the grimoire as he could. The dialect was somewhere between Ancient and classical Latin, despite its probable fourteenth-century provenance, but what little he could make out hinted that Henry’s guess had been right. Mater or Mater Omnia was the only name given, but the text was clearly about Menva and Purgatory and how to spring Menva from her captivity. The exact spell, however, appeared to have been on one of the human-skin pages missing from the beginning of the book.
The sun had nearly set that afternoon, with Bobby not much the wiser, when the ground suddenly shook.
Seconds later, Bobby’s phone rang. “Bobby!” Henry hollered over a blaring alarm. “We’ve got a Class 4 event at Mount Rainier!”
Bobby uttered one of Dean’s favorite Goa’uld curses. “There musta been more than two dragons!”
“What can you do?”
“Hell if I know, but we’ll go do it!”
Rufus was already halfway out the door by the time Bobby hung up. They checked out hurriedly and sped north toward Olympia, where they discovered that the Seattle-Tacoma metroplex had also been subject to a rash of kidnappings. It took longer than Bobby had hoped to get enough support to head out to Mount Rainier, but the emergency team was needed when they found the abandoned van full of victims-all but one of the girls who had gone missing were there.
Unfortunately, the vics all told the same story the next day. The dragon they hadn’t caught had taken the still-missing girl up to the lip of the suddenly active volcano... and when he brought her down again, her dress was dirty and singed, and he addressed her as Mother. The police assumed a more natural form of assault, but Bobby and Rufus knew the truth.
“Ellie’s gonna kill us,” Bobby said when they got back to the car.
Rufus sighed. “Hell, Bob, not like we knew there even was more’n one to begin with. But I guess we oughta see if they’re still in the area.”
“Yeah. Reckon so.”
But the trail was already cold by then. No omens had shown up since the earthquake, and there were no more assaults or kidnappings that fit the dragon’s profile-naturally, since he already had what he was after. Even Balthazar, who showed up around suppertime, didn’t have much intel to share. Bone weary, Bobby was about to give up and call it an overdue night when his phone rang again.
“Mr. Singer?” Gen. Landry asked. “Have you heard from Henry today?”
Bobby took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he thought. “No, not since the earthquake yesterday. Why?”
“He’s not answering his phone or email.”
When Henry came back to awareness, he had a terrible headache and a very spotty memory. The last thing he remembered clearly after getting the alarms silenced was being trapped in the memories of the night the Letters fell, unable to get the screams to stop. He’d tried to drown them out in a way he seldom chose, a way that still seemed like the safest of the many options the bunker had to offer. He hadn’t been aware what time it was when he started drinking, how much he’d drunk, how much time had passed. All he’d known were the screams that would not stop... until a hand had gently pulled the glass from his grasp and helped him to his feet.
A deep voice that was faintly familiar had said something he hadn’t caught. A female voice as familiar as his own had said, “I’ll look after him.”
He didn’t remember what he’d said, if he’d said anything. He thought he remembered hands going where they shouldn’t, but he didn’t remember much of a struggle or even a protest-maybe one or two “You’re drunk”s, but then she’d caught his seeking mouth with her own, and then... stumbling through the nearest open doorway... and after that was all a blur, although the aftermath was plain enough even through the pain and lingering haze of alcohol, even though he hadn’t opened his eyes yet, given that she was still draped over him like a blanket.
Then she stirred and started trying to kiss him awake. His response was automatic, what little of his rational mind was functioning shutting down again under his body’s assault of more, yes, now. He heard himself calling a name over and over... he was only partly sure it was the right one.
Finally, however, all was still and quiet again, and she was settled with her head on his shoulder, and his mind slowly cleared enough for the sour state of his stomach to feel an awful lot like guilt.
“Josie,” he said thickly, “we need to stop.”
He caught sight of flame-red hair as Josie turned her head to look at him with puzzled blue eyes. “I thought you wanted this.”
“I do. That’s the problem.”
“Henry, you’re not married anymore.”
“Yes, but you and I aren’t married.”
“Well, we can fix that. Nebraska doesn’t have a waiting period.”
He ignored that. “And what if you’re pregnant?”
She caressed his surprisingly fuzzy-feeling cheek. “Look, I will never be Millie, and any child we might have will never be John. I know that. I’m not asking you to replace them. I’m asking you to let me fill that void for you.”
“What... what will the boys say?”
“The boys are in another galaxy. And besides that, you’re thirty years old. It’s time to stop living in the past.”
He sighed and sat up. “I don’t know if I can. At least... not today.”
She sat up, too, but facing the headboard and looking down and away from him, and toyed with the edge of her pillowcase for a moment. “You should know... if I am pregnant, I’m keeping the child.”
“I wouldn’t have expected otherwise.” He hugged her and pressed a kiss into her hair. “I do love you. More than... all this. I always have. I hope you know that. And yes, maybe I do want to marry you. But now’s not the time. I’ve got a job to do here, and I can’t keep letting you distract me.”
She laughed bitterly.
“We’re at war. We’re both old enough to know what that means.”
She turned back to him. “Old enough to know that war doesn’t end when we want it to. If not today, then when?”
He looked away, unable to answer.
“Look, just give me today, all right? Let me be your war bride. Take me across the state line so we can have the ring and the vow and make it all official. I’ll go back to the SGC tomorrow if you want-but if I do go, Landry’s going to send someone else to be here with you.”
He frowned and looked at her again. “Landry? What’s Landry got to do with it?”
“He was looking for someone to check on you. I volunteered because I was worried, and Castiel brought me straight here from the SGC. You hadn’t checked in for two days.”
“Two days?!” He looked away in shock and ran a hand over his chin. That would account for the hangover and the length of his beard, but he’d had no idea he’d lost more than the one night. He drew his knees up to his chest and put his arms around them as if that would steady him better. “Two days....”
She looked at him more closely. “You didn’t know?”
He shook his head and couldn’t stop the tear that escaped as his eyes closed. “All I knew was that I couldn’t stop the screaming.”
She turned around and started slowly rubbing his back, with nothing in the touch but comfort. “I know how it goes. At least you’re not the one who was tied up in shotgun while she caused it.”
He looked at her again. “You were awake?”
She nodded. “She wanted me to feel every bone snap, smell every drop of blood. It was... it was....”
He took her other hand in both of his and just held it. “You don’t have to tell me.”
She leaned her forehead against his with a small sob. And they sat like that for a long moment, her absently rubbing his back, him rubbing her hand, both crying quietly.
Finally, he drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s get cleaned up and dressed and get me sober and checked in so I can take you across the state line and make an honest woman of you.”
She laughed, and he kissed her.
“Your grandfather got married yesterday.”
Dean looked up from his lunch to stare at Sheppard. “Excuse me?”
Sheppard looked up from the tablet where he was going over stuff that had come in with the latest data burst from Earth. “Henry, he and... Josie, says here they eloped yesterday.”
Dean let a Goa’uld curse slip.
Better her than a stranger, Dishon noted. At least Henry and Josie have a history.
“That’s not the point, Dishon!”
Sam frowned. “Dean... we can’t expect him not to move on.”
“What if they have kids, Sammy?” Dean objected, sounding more plaintive than he meant to. “We-we could end up with uncles who’re younger than Ben! That’s just wrong!”
Lorne started singing “I’m My Own Grandpa” until Dean hit him between the eyes with a wad of foil.
“What does elope mean?” Ben piped up.
Dean looked at Lisa with a smirk. “Something I ought to do to your mom one of these days.”
“Oh, stop,” Lisa laughed.
Sheppard cleared his throat. “That’s the good news. The bad news is, Mr. Singer says the dragons managed to bust Menva out of Purgatory. And she’s as far off the radar as Abaddon is.”
Dean didn’t dare voice his thoughts about that in front of Ben, even in Goa’uld. Dishon was swearing enough for both of them anyway.
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