Authors Note 1: This story was originally posted in September 2008, and it is the last of the stories I've already completed. Everything here after will be posted as I finish it and (hopefully) get it betaed. Also, the first half was written in the middle of the night while sleep deprived, and it is kind of obvious. I apologize for that.
Authors Note 2: When it comes to a time line, I was going by the episode air dates, so the Pilot was day one, Hide and Seek was a week later, Thirty-Eight Minutes a week after that, and so on and so forth.
Authors Note 3: Expect gratuitous (only spelled right) use of fractured and run-on sentences. In Real Life I ramble when I'm sleep deprived; apparently I do so when I write while sleep deprived, too.
Authors Note 4: The title is not an ode to my awesome writing skillzz or my ego; it is, in fact, a reference to the well known saying that truth is often stranger than fiction (gotta love Mark Twain, among others)
Spoilers: Up through The Storm/The Siege
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit being made
~*~
His first night on Atlantis, he is too physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted to dream. He sleeps like death, and doesn't even notice the sound of the ocean in his ear.
~*~
His second night on Atlantis doesn't start until the youngest hours of the fourth morning. He has been awake for almost two days, trying to help turn this beautiful, amazing, and terrifyingly alien city into a home for this rag-tag group of the most brilliant minds Earth had to offer.
It is only then - standing alone in his room, the quiet shush of the ocean making him feel deaf after forty-nine hours surrounded by the babble of voices shouting orders, asking questions, making discoveries – that the consequences of the last few days hit him. Like a punch to the stomach, he realizes they are in another galaxy and that Earth and home and help are billions of light years away and that they are completely and totally on their own out here and that he is now responsible for the lives of the dozens of scientists and military personnel on this mission, all looking to him for protection from this new, terrifying enemy that they don't know how to fight.
The weight of that responsibility is crushing, pushing him down, making it hard to breathe as he screams in his mind I can't do this, I'm not strong enough, I'm not trained for this, this is too big. His thoughts circle and chase each other, weaving a net of panic that threatens to drown and pull him under and the waves are suddenly crashing in his ears.
He takes a step and he stumbles, falls hard on his knees and the pain is sharp enough to cut through the strands. (Snap out of it, Major!) They still twist around him, ready to tangle and knot the more he struggles, but there is an opening now (Remember your training) and all he has to do is calm down and cut the strands, one at a time (You've been in impossible situations before) until the opening is big enough to slip through (Deal with it!) and swim free.
It takes awhile, but slowly his breathing returns to normal and the panic fades to something more manageable. He is by no means at peace with his new position in life, and responsibility still weighs heavy on his shoulders, but he knows it isn't going to magically go away. It is his burden to carry, brought about by his own actions. The least he can do is bear it as best he can.
He pulls it together enough to stand, wincing as his knees protest their ill treatment. He knows that there will be bruises tomorrow (later today), but he doesn't care because he hasn't slept in forty-nine-and-a-half hours and even though his mind is still terrified at failing command, failing all these people who now look to him to lead, his body is heavy and clumsy and demands rest. He barely even makes it to the bed before it shuts down, and the sound of the waves are calm and constant and inviting, flowing through his mind and washing away his anxieties, at least for a little while. He knows that tomorrow they will all return, but for now, he listens to the waves and this time sinks willingly into their embrace.
~*~
It is no surprise he dreams of the ocean. It surrounds him on all sides, the water mirror-smooth and cool beneath his feet. The sky is overcast, heavy with a promise of rain, but for now there is nothing but silence and the slate-gray clouds reflecting off the water's unnaturally calm surface.
He takes a step and it's like walking across glass, smooth and unyielding. He looks down, expecting to see his reflection, but instead he sees the image of young woman, beautiful and sad and alone, standing in the middle of an empty city with eyes as ancient as the ocean.
He closes his eyes and shakes his head, thinking it is nothing more than a trick of the light. When he opens them, it is his own reflection looking back at him, looking pale and tired but otherwise the same, and he puts the vision off as nothing more than an exhausted mind and over-active imagination.
When he lifts his eyes, however, she is there, standing next to him, close enough to touch but looking into the distance like she's a million miles away. He doesn't blink this time, doesn't close his eyes at all, afraid she will disappear again if he does. Instead he studies her, takes in her appearance, tries to memorize it. It's all he can do because he suddenly can't find his voice.
Her hair multi-toned, blending seamlessly from brown to blond to red and back again, like a beam of sunlight shining into deep water. It falls in a soft wave to the waist of the white robe she is wearing, similar to what the Ancients had on in the holograms they watched when they first arrived at the city. She appears almost delicate beneath the shapeless robes, but the folds of fabric can't disguise the confidence with which she holds herself, and he gets the impression of flexible, almost unbreakable strength, like willow tree that bends in the wind.
Her face is still unmarked by age, but there are deep lines of sorrow around her mouth and eyes. He can't tell what color they are, only that they are looking away from him, focused on the distant horizon, sad and alone. Abandoned. A single step forward would allow him to see the rest of her face and complete his mental profile, but he doesn't want to break the spell. She stands with a stillness that speaks of ten thousand years of patience, and it isn't his place to change that.
Eyes burning and tearing from being open so long, so he turns away and allows them to close and rest, because he's still tired and he's not as afraid she'll disappear anymore. As she turned her gaze outward, he directs his in, focusing on the beat of his heart, slowing the rhythm of his breathing until each breath is a wave gently breaking against the shore.
The sound lull him into a state of calm meditation, but eventually he noticed that the sound of the waves are no longer just in his mind. He opened his eyes and is relieved to discover that the eerie stillness had been broken and there are waves to lap at his feet. A breeze blows against his face, smelling of salt and sea and the promise of rain.
He turns, and she is still there, still beside him, still looking into the distance. The breeze stirs through her hair, and some distant part of him wonders if it is as soft as it looks.
She turns to him finally, and for the first time she sees her face clearly.
I watched over them, kept them safe. I took care of them because I was the only one who could.
Her eyes are grey, like the ocean, like steel, and he thinks he understands.
~*~
After two weeks on Atlantis, he spends the night in the infirmary, weak and exhausted but terrified to go to sleep because he is afraid that he will wake up on the floor in the back of Jumper One, that thing wrapped around his neck, draining his life while he lies frozen and unable to fight.
"You need to sleep, son, or you won't recover." He sees the sedative go in and he tries to fight it but it's no use because he's falling and falling and he can't hear the ocean, only that thing thrilling beneath his ear, the Wraith Queen screaming, the terrified shouts of his people and he can't do anything because he is frozen and helpless, paralyzed by the tendril of death around his neck.
He knows he's dreaming. He wants to wake up. He thrashes against the darkness, but it holds him under. The bug thrills again, this time from his chest, and when he looks down it's not a bug anymore but a Wraith's hand, digging it's claws into his flesh ("When I die, the others will awake") as it starts to feed. He screams.
He jerks awake, heart pounding, breathing heavy, and for a moment he's terrified that this is the dream and that the nightmare is the reality. He focuses on the room around him, pale walls and the hum and beep of monitoring equipment. His heart slows and his breathing quiets, and in the distance he can hear the ocean.
Shhhh, it says, whispering through his mind like cool water. Shhh…shhh…it's okay…you're safe… I've got you now.
He lets Atlantis sing him back to sleep, and he doesn't dream again that night.
~*~
Two months after traveling to Atlantis, he isn't sure what to believe anymore. His head has been messed with so many times that it isn't sure he knows the difference between what's real and what's fiction, and Occam's Razor hasn't applied to his life since he packed it up to step through the event horizon into an entirely new galaxy where nothing is ever, ever as it first seems.
Because today he traveled back to Earth that wasn't Earth, in a reality that only existed in minds of his team. The simplest answer was that it was Earth, their Earth, the world they left behind to take a step into the wide, vast, Unknown. It had to be the truth, because the idea of gating to a world full of sentient mist that could read your thoughts and create an entire new reality in your mind was too complicated, too far-fetched, too unbelievable to ever be real.
His life had become one long, fantastic dream and he isn't sure what he is more afraid of - that one day he will wake up, back in the deserts of Earth with a bullet in his leg and the last several months nothing more than a delusion of his fevered mind; or that Earth was the dream and he is still asleep on a world full of fog, his body dying while his mind dreams of home.
"Is this real?" he asks, lying on his bed, listening to the waves. And then he's standing on a balcony looking over an ancient city that is as beautiful as it is deadly, still haunted by the question...Is any of this real?
She is standing next to him again, the first he's seen of her since those confusing, terrifying days just after the city rose from the depths of the ocean and the monsters were awakened. She's different now, softer, not so distant; closer to the present even if she hasn't quite reached it yet.
You're minds confuse me, she says, voice like cool water on a hot day. You are so restrained by what you know, these laws that cannot be broken, the sciences that can offer the only reasonable explanation. And yet your imagination knows no bounds, and your children are raised to believe that anything is possible, anything at all.
She looks at him, and today her eyes are a pale gold, reflected in the setting sun off the ocean. Is it not also a saying on your world that the most fantastic stories are often the truest, because no one could dream of something so impossible?
Looking back over the city, watching as the sun dips below horizon, she continues. Perhaps this is the most fantastic story of all.
~*~
A week later, he has trouble getting to sleep because for the first time the waves are too loud, too chaotic to create the soothing white noise he has come to depend on. It is a long time before sleep comes, and when it does it is filled with uneasy dreams of chaos and destruction and warnings he can't understand.
When he wakes up, he feels even more tired than he was, and all he knows is that something is wrong and Atlantis is scared.
Later in the jumper, when he follows Teyla's gaze to the storm that fills the entire horizon, he knows why.
~*~
Its another forty-three hours before he sleeps again - twelve hours of playing the most dangerous game of hide and seek ever and thirty-one hours in the control room listening to the storm rage around them, a handful of people alone in the heart of an empty city protected only by an impossible idea and a prayer.
The shield holds and the storm passes, but it's only when the last of his people (his family) step through the gate and back into Atlantis's heart that he lets himself breathe. He catches Elizabeth's eye from where she stands at the balcony looking over the gate room and he knows she feels exactly the same. Her smile says We did it, we're all here, we kept her safe and she kept us safe in return, and he smiles back and knows they have finally come home.
When he closes his eyes, he hears the waves, soothing and calm once again.
This time, when she appears, her eyes are a clear crystal that can't decide if they want to be grey, blue, or green. Her hair, always vibrant, now practically glows with gold and amber highlights, and the shapeless white robes have been replaced with an impossibly blue-grey dress that looks like the ocean when she moves.
For the first time, her eyes are entirely focused on him, on the here and now instead of the distant horizon and even more distant past.
"You're here," he says, and she smiles at him and takes his hands. Her skin is warm, like water heated by the sun.
"You watched over them, kept them safe." Her voice is like cool water, the rush of the waves. "You took care of them because you were the only one who could."
He thinks of these last few months. He thinks of this rag-tag group of explorers who have made a place for themselves among the stars, and how each and every one of them has an important part to play in order to maintain that place.
He thinks of the ancient myth that drew them all together and dared them to take the first step (three hundred million light years) through the event horizon.
He thinks of a beautiful ancient city surrounded by ocean that has become their home, that has watched over them and kept them safe against impossible odds.
"No," he tells her, pulling her into his arms, "we take care of each other."
He listens to her breathe, and he hears the ocean.
~end~