Pastor
A Stargate: Atlantis Fic
The first thing Rodney does after Atlantis rises from the deep is interface his computer into the city systems and try to figure out what the hell just happened because even Ancient cities don't just do things like that for no reason, even, no, especially when they're so low on power breathing could've breached the shields.
The city tells him straight away, but, despite the fact he's been working with Ancient tech for the better part of a year now, it takes him a couple minutes to translate what it's saying into English – not that it helps much, because:
the Custodian raised Us
really didn't really make any sense, unless Atlantis is talking about some really bizarre janitorial code. So he asks the city, via a quick line of code they'd discovered at the Antarctic outpost that was essentially the Ancient version of a F1 button, what the custodian was and why it might care if the human occupants of the city lived or died.
Come See
it says, which is a weird enough thing for a computer to say, even if it hadn't been followed by the even more bizarre statements:
Go to the Cathedra Bring a Physic
Rodney blinks a couple of times at this and rechecks his translation. Cathedra was the Ancient name for a control chairs, like the one they'd found in Antarctica. But why would the city want him to bring a doctor to-?
Tapping his headset violently, "Carson, drop whatever you're doing and meet me in the the Chair Room like five minutes ago," Rodney grabs his laptop and starts purposefully towards the nearest door, only to realize that he'd no idea where the Chair Room in this place was. Before he could stumble to a halt, however, his laptop beeps at him and, upon glaring angrily at it, he discovers that a map had been uploaded onto it. A map that is currently blinking directions to what was, hopefully, the Chair Room, or cathedra, or whatever the hell the Ancients called it.
"Rodney," Carson sounds annoyed, even over the headsets, "I'm trying to set up an infirmary here; I dinnae have time to be your guinea pig-"
"I don't need your gene right at this moment," he huffs, finding the staircase right where the map on his laptop said it should be and taking the stairs three at a time, "I need your rain-man voodoo."
The Doc goes from indignant to worried in less time than it takes Rodney to open the door to what his laptop is telling him is the proper room, "What happened?"
"I'm not entirely certain," he says faintly, 'cause he's still not sure he's not hallucinating the figure sprawled over the arm of the Control Chair, "but I'm pretty sure I've found a real, live Ancient, only I'm not sure how much longer he's going be 'live' if you don't get up here soon..."
The first thing Iohannes notices is the pain. Every inch of him aches and he can feel all the old injuries – the ones the cathedra had held in stasis while he was plugged into the city – clambering to make their presence known.
The second thing he notices is the noise. Atlantis had never been quiet, not even when she'd been empty, but this was more than just the quiet, sleepy song of a slumbering city; it was voices. People, speaking in a language he doesn't know, who'd come through the astria porta. People who, according to the city, had come in a pons astris from Avalon, but weren't Alteran.
Descendants, Atlantis suggests when she catches this thought running in circles 'round his head, from Terra.
Iohannes doesn't remember Terra. He knows his great-grandmother, Ilaria, flew the city from that galaxy to this, and that his father and everyone else left alive at the end of the war had gone back through the porta while he'd remained behind. He knew, in theory, that his people had seeded humanoid life in Avalon just as they had here and in the home galaxy, but he'd always thought... He'd always thought that the others would return with a way to defeat the Wraith within a few decades; absolutely no longer than a few centuries. But if descendants from Terra had found their way through the porta, then it must have been...
How long..? he asks the city.
Ten thousand two hundred and three years, nineteen days, seven hours, and twenty-two minutes, Atlantis answers, an air of concern in her tones. She worries he will be angry for hiding this from him, and it shows as much in the sudden clatter of the air recyclers as it does in her mental tone. She knows how much he wanted to see his people again; how much he'd hoped Melia's plan had worked. We grieve with you, and, for a moment, she dims her lights, sharing his pain.
The flickering lights cause the Terrans to quiet, no doubt scared the city will still fail, despite the fact he'd lifted her to the surface as soon as he'd realized how much their arrival was draining her remaining power. For some reason, this thought amuses him. Atlantis had, after all, withstood three generations of Wraith siege and several thousand years under his own tender ministrations, and it's unlikely a few descendants, wherever they might be from, would be her undoing.
He quickly opens his eyes, intending to reassure them. When he finds himself not in the cathedra chamber but rather what appears to be a makeshift infirmary, he looks heavenward instead and says, "Meretrix," because what else could Atlantis be if she's already betrayed him this way to these people?
Atlantis momentarily brightens the lights overhead (which is about as close, he's discovered, a city can get to sticking her tongue out at him, though she's been known to play with the temperature of showers and small, windowless rooms as well), but makes no effort to refute him. Whatever names he calls her, she knows she will always be his best girl, and, sometimes, that really stinks.
Iohannes glares at the ceiling for moment before sighing resignedly and turning towards the probable Terran descendants cluttered around his bed.
Of the four of them, three are men: one with the hard, harsh lines he'd seen in holos of famous generals from the old wars, from back when his people still fought wars amongst themselves; another wore an expression of deep concern he immediately associated with bad tidings; and the third seemed to quiver with barely contained energy and, even in silence, seemed to being asking who and what and why why why. All three, however, seemed to defer, by varying degrees, to the woman among them – a pretty, dark-haired woman in red who looked torn between amusement and worry.
She says something to him in that strange, guttural language, and frowns when he shakes his head.
"Atlantis is still working on the translation matrix," he tells her in Lantean, smirking a little because, well, he's just found out he's spent the last ten thousand years hooked up to the cathedra and he's never going to see the others again unless he Ascends, but even that might not work and it's not like he ever wanted to go that route anyway, and it's either plastering on a fake smile or freaking out, so fake smile it is. "It'll take a little while. She's not had to do anything more difficult than power regulation for a while."
The woman nods slowly and says something to one of the men, who begins to babble in a way Iohannes suspects might be incoherent to even those who speak his language, and starts fiddling with a device he's carrying. After a moment, he hands it over to the woman, who fiddles with it herself for a moment before reading, "Do you understand me now?" awkwardly from it. Her accent is strange and her wording formal, but it's passable Alteran.
"Yes," he says slowly, giving them time to enter his words into their own translation program. "How do you know Alteran? Did," he swallows uneasily here and feels his smile faltering as he hopes against hope that, maybe, just possibly, Atlantis was wrong, or that some of his people have survived on Terra all these years, "did someone teach you, or..."
Iohannes cannot say the or, but the woman seems to understand. "I'm sorry, but this language is known as Latin on our home world, and while it is basis for many languages on our planet, there have been no native speakers in many thousands of years."
He looks away at that. It's not the loss that hurts, it's the sudden confirmation that he's alone in the universe. He'd always been solitary, even by Lantean standards, but this was something else, worse than the strings of false notes that had pervaded Atlantis' song since the Exodus...
"My name is Elizabeth Weir," she says when he finally looks back, "and I'm the head of this expedition. Might I ask your name?"
Elizabeta is a Lantean name, the city whispered in his mind, so happy to have people within her walls again that she's already forgotten his pain. They are descendants. We can be alive again.
He feels sucker punched at that, more so than he had when he's learned his people were long dead. After all, wasn't he her pastor? Hadn't he been keeping her alive all this time? It's easier hide this pain, however. Iohannes knows Atlantis is grateful to him and she, like a small child, is merely caught up in the excitement of a new toy. She wouldn't even understand if he tried to explain why it hurt. So, instead, he asks, Is the translation matrix finished? his smile never faltering even as the woman – Elizabeth – seems confused by his lack of response.
Yes. Now that I know they are descendants, it is easy. Their language is about thirty percent Lantean, mixed with one of the native tongues catalogued back when we were on Terra, once several hundred generations of drift are taken into account... Uploading now.
He closes his eyes as he feels the neural nodes in his brain flair with sudden life. Nothing seems to happen for a moment, then there's that click and he suddenly understands the voices all around him. "My name," he tells them, his grin completely real as their eyes widen at his use of their own language, "is Iohannes Ianideus Licinus Pastor." He waits at beat, during which Elizabeta and the others don't even blink, before continuing, "It's a bit pretentious, I know, but that's my father for you. Most everyone just calls- called me Iohannes."
Rodney is the first one to regain his voice after the Ancient starts speaking English. "Iohannes?" he asks, "isn't that the Latin version of John?" The Ancient, of course, has no idea what he's talking about, but Elizabeth does and that's all he needs before continuing, "And Latin was based off the language of the Ancients. See, I told you: real, live Ancient."
"Yes, Rodney, but-"
"But nothing. The city told me that the 'Custodian' raised it and told me to go to the command chair to find him, and, voilà, there he is. Just think of all the things he could tell us about-"
"You do realize," the Ancient – John – says, somewhat amusedly, "that I can understand everything you're saying, right?"
Elizabeth smiles at him. "Yes, though I'm curious as to how."
"Translation matrix. Atlantis figured out your language and piped it into my head so we could talk to each other. It's still a little fiddly, but..." he shrugs as if to say what can you do? then grimaces, looking down, seeming entranced by the bandages covering, well, pretty much all of him. He looks odd, this Ancient, in white hospital scrubs. He looks too normal, too human, and a human in pretty bad shape at that. Well, excellent shape if you consider he's probably been around for a couple thousand years.
"You have three broken ribs," Carson tells him, finally giving in to his need to practice his voodoo and moving closer, poking and prodding at the bandages in a way that certainly couldn't be standard medical procedure, "and a broken leg, as well as a mild case of hypothermia, which isn't at all surprising given how cold it was when we first arrived. And I'm still not certain I've managed to get all of the glass out of your cuts. What happened to you, lad?"
Rolling his eyes, John offered, "I was in the auxiliary control room on the north pier when it was hit," as if that explained everything, which, considering the number of windows in this place, it might. "If I'd gone for medical attention, they'd have made me evacuate with everyone else. So I told the city to mask my life signs and high-tailed it to the cathedra to cover their exit. Figured that I wouldn't bleed out before they were able to come back, but... You are a medicus?"
Carson blinks. "I'm a medical doctor, yes, if that's what you're asking. Name's Carson Beckett. I take it then you were a solider, Io- Ionn-"
The Ancient winces. "Iohannes. And, yes, I am- was a solider, of a sort..."
He can almost feel himself deflate. "A solider," he hears himself saying forlornly. What they need is a scientist, someone who knows where the ZedPMs are, or how to recharge the ones they have. The last thing they need is another grunt with a gun running around this place unsupervised, even if he was an Ancient grunt.
"A tribunus, actually," John says with a jutted chin, and it would almost remind him of Jeannie at her most stubborn if not for the subtle hint of power behind his words, as if, even confined to a hospital bed, he is a forced to be reckoned with.
Colonel Sumner picks up on it too and his hand flashes to his weapon. John's eyes narrow at the movement, but so do Elizabeth's, and she tells Sumner to back off. Sumner really doesn't like that, but before their argument can go very far, John's eyes roll up into the back of his head as the city rocks beneath their feet.
When Iohannes comes to again, Atlantis is babbling worriedly in his ear, telling him not to die, that he can't die, that he's hers and she's his and that she needs her pastor, even if there descendants running about her halls, because none of them can hear her at all and they almost destroyed one of the buildings near the Old Sea Port trying to interface a fusion reactor with a damaged power conduit and luckily the loud one who seemed disappointed he was a solider seemed to have a clue what he was doing, because found out what the others had done and stopped them and yelled at them most hilariously for a bit, and could he pass along her list of things-that-needed-to-be-fixed because she thinks that that one might be able to help?
He groans at the onslaught. Calm down, he tells the city, but her enthusiasm is contagious and none of the Terrans seem to be watching him at the moment, so he started unhooking himself from their medical equipment. It's all rather frightfully primitive, but they did pick the glass out of all his wounds, which was all he really needed to be able to heal himself properly.
He finds his uniform at the foot of the bed and changes into it quickly, glad he has enough energy leftover to mend the worst of the damage the attack on the north pier did to it. It's a bit conspicuous, but less so than the all-white outfit they'd stuck him in at the infirmary, and he needed to get to the porta in a bad way, because it was engaged and the cataracta was down and he hadn't had a chance to warn them about the Wraith or the Asurans or anything. Granted, they are probably able to take care of themselves, but he's been taking care of Atlantis for far too long to check it out.
It's madness around the porta when he steps out of the vectura. There are people in strange uniforms trying to interface their devices into the consoles on the upper level, while the lower level was crowded with people and crates of goods. The only one he recognizes from before is Elizabeta and she's having a heated discussion with a young solider on the stairs and, since most everyone is watching them with interest, no one seems to notice him until slouches up behind them.
"What did you do?" he asks, using the tone he'd perfected after he'd been transferred to Triarius, where the praetor had not taken kindly to his city's pastor being a member of the Lantean Guard and his displeasure flowed freely down the ranks.
"Nothing, Sir. It's just-" the solider begins automatically before seeming to realize that Iohannes isn't a superior officer, or, in fact, anyone he recognizes at all.
Apparently, though, he was wrong about Elizabeta being the only one from earlier in the room, because at that moment the blue-eyed one Atlantis likes so much came rushing over towards them, hands all movement, "This is Iohannes, Lieutenant, our resident Ancient. You can call him John. It's what I do."
"You do?" Iohannes hadn't noticed this but, then again, he'd been unconscious most of the time since he'd been taken from the cathedra.
"Yes," he said dismissively. "It's easier."
Iohannes shrugged at that. It wasn't like he'd ever been that attached to his name to begin with. "It's also easier to do introductions both ways, but, seeing as how everyone seems to be in a hurry, I guess we can skip that part and get to the part where you explain about all the shouting and then I – we – do something about it?" He's better with actions then with people. Or talking. Or having free time to think about the fact that it's not Ganos Lal overseeing porta operations from her office on high, and that it will never be Ganos Lal or Melia or Moros or any other Lantean in that office ever again.
"Well, yes, you're right. I'm Doctor Rodney McKay, you already know Elizabeth, and this is Lieutenant..."
"Ford," Lieutenant Ford offers.
"Lieutenant Ford, yes. Now that we've taken care of that, what's this about Colonel Sumner being gone? I mean, sure, the guy was a complete and total ass, but I've been reliably informed that you don't make it to colonel without having some clue what you're doing, even in the American military, so..."
Iohannes is about to ask a question, about what colonel and lieutenant and American meant, when a young boy separated from the group in front of the porta and announced, "They were taken by the Wraith, Ancestor."
Wraith is a term he understands. Ancestor is another. They appear to be one of the few things that haven't suddenly changed since he plugged himself into the cathedra and, together, fill him with an ice-cold dread.
The first is a curse, a reminder that his people were just as fallible as those whose lives they'd seeded throughout multiple galaxies.
The second, though, was worse. It was a reminder of all the laws he'd rallied against – do not interfere, do not intercede, do not show undo interest, do not intervene, - laws that said, despite the hand his people had played in creating the Wraith, he was not allowed to do anything to stop them from terrorizing their descendants in this galaxy. It probably would have gone on like that forever if the Wraith hadn't started attacking Lantean outposts and by then, of course, it was too late for any effective offence.
Despite their ridiculous lack of foresight, the Council had been right about some things and one of those was that they weren't gods to be worshipped because their technology was superior. These new descendants, however, didn't seem to have gotten the message, because they looked about one step away from prostrating themselves before him. It would be so easy to just let them too. If playing the part of a god is what it took to stop the Wraith, to keep untold thousands from dying...
He swallows hard and walks down the stairs to the boy, who's still looking up at him with wide, reverential eyes. The city's still mostly dark, running on the barest of minimum power, but the inscriptions on the steps still glows to life as he walks down them. When he reaches the boy, he kneels down until they are at eye level and offers the only words he can, words he'd once heard Father say on his first trip through the porta: "I am a Lantean, not a god. Our science may be magic to you, but it is only science. I do not want your prayers or your praise, only your friendship. Do you understand?" The boy nodded. Iohannes smiled. Maybe this would work out after all. "Now, what is your name and what can you tell me about the Wraith who visited your world today, and we shall see what we can do to get your people back."
"Let me guess," John says he steps out onto the balcony. The way he leans against the railing seems to suggest that he's reading for a nap more than an argument, but the passion behind his words is clear. "You're going to try to talk me out of rescuing those people."
"You don't even know if they're alive, Iohannes."
John snorts at this. "You don't leave people in the hands of the enemy – especially ones like the Wraith. You're just going to have to trust me-"
"Just listen to me for a moment, alright?" she placates, "I'm not any happier about it than you are, but I'm not about to let you or any member of this expedition risk your lives on a suicide mission. Because that's what it's going to be, unless you know know something you're not telling us, because one of the few things we do know is is that these Wraith defeated the Ancients-"
"I don't need the history lesson," John snaps, everything about him hardening right before their eyes. Rodney wants to say something – to tell them that the door didn't close all the way, that he can hear every word they're saying, even if the wind is snatching most of it away – but can't. He just listens, and feels his own body tense at John's words. "You don't get it, do you? I've been fighting the Wraith my whole life. I know what they can do.
"I've seen good men, men under my command, kill themselves rather than die at their hands... It's a horrible death. The Wraith never kill in the field, not if they can help it. They drag their prisoners back to their ships and feed upon them, sucking all their life – all their potential – out of them. And all that's left at the end are these lifeless husks, worse than corpses..."
Elizabeth pales, but stands her ground. You could always count on Elizabeth for that, no matter how scared she must be. Rodney knows he feels faint just hearing what these Wraith can do. "We're practically defenceless. How do you know going off on this half-baked rescue mission isn't going to bring them all right back here?"
"It probably will," John's voice is calmer now, tired, filled less with indignation than resignation, "either way. You have technology that no other race in the galaxy has, unless the Wraith have radically changed their standard operating procedure in the last few thousand years – which, from what Jinto tells me, they haven't. It won't take them long to realize that Atlantis is alive again, even if your men don't give anything up under torture. She'll always be in danger as long as the Wraith are alive. They'll come. They're always coming. But maybe we can slow them down."
"You don't know that. I mean, who know, maybe we could negotiate a peaceful-"
"Peaceful? Are you kidding? Haven't you been listening to me, Elizabeta?"
It's foreign, the way he says her name, the stress in all the wrong places. If he'd somehow managed to forget that John was an Ancient, it would all have come rushing back with that one word. Because, whatever else, John may be (a solider, not a scientist, who thought his name was pretentious and would rather be thought dead than evacuate Atlantis), he's an Ancient. Maybe not an Ascended Ancient, with all the associated powers, but still an alien. Someone they couldn't trust would want the same things and act the same way as a human would.
"They're intelligent, yes," John continues, "but there's no reasoning with them. Do you sit down and have negotiations with your livestock on Terra? Because that's all they see us as, livestock. And if word gets out that you're from Avalon, a galaxy that hasn't been repeatedly culled to the point of extinction over the last few thousand years, and that the only way there is through Atlantis?" he trails off, running a hand over his face.
"But none of that matters right now, 'cause right now there are good people out there who don't deserve the deaths they're facing, and I'm going to rescue them, if I can," he finishes, looking for a moment as old as he probably is. Confident and cocksure, yes, but tired and oh-so-old.
"I won't authorize a rescue mission if I don't know it has a reasonable chance of success... but that's not going to stop you, is it?"
"No, it's not." Of course it wouldn't, and Elizabeth was stupid to expect otherwise. They'd been on Atlantis for less than a day. John lived here and, presumably, knew it's ins and outs far better than they did. The idea of her needing to authorize anything was laughable – except for the fact that there were thirteen trigger-happy marines inside who hadn't taken too kindly to their leader's abduction. And Ancient or not, those are long odds if they decided John was a threat.
There is a pause, and then, "I can tell Atlantis to stop working for you, if that's what it's going to take. I don't think anyone would be happy with that, though, least of all Atlantis..." There's another, longer, pause, and when he continues, it's in a voice Rodney almost has to strain to hear, even as he tries not to. Despite this difficulty, he's suddenly very certain that John knows he's there and is letting him listen in for just this reason. "I'm perfectly happy just being what I was before: a simple solider who, by a quirk of genetics, just so happens to be one of the pastores Atlantis. I've no desire to take control of your people from you, but I'll do what it takes to get them back."
Elizabeth's the one to draw out the silence this time when it comes. "We're going to have to have a nice long talk about things when you get back."
"Yeah," John agrees with a smile Rodney can't quite read, and then he's heading his way, and Rodney has to scuttle away from the door, just in case by some miracle John hadn't noticed him listening in.
But he can worry about all that later. Right now, it seems, he has to narrow down a gate address for John to go to, and who knew how many of the seven hundred twenty possible combinations might actually lock. And then he has to see if he can get the city up and running with out a ZedPM, and without those idiots who called themselves electrical engineers nearly blowing up the city in the process. And then hopefully he'll be able to take a proper look at the damage a few generations of siege and a couple millennia underwater have done to the the city's systems. If they're lucky – and so far they have been – he'll be able to get a good, proper interface going between their Earth equipment and Atlantis' OS, so they won't have to do all the diagnostics by hand.
And then maybe, just maybe, he'll be able to look up Iohannes Ianideus Licinus Pastor in the Ancients' database, or see if he can't find their equivalent of an Encyclopaedia Britannica and look up a couple of the words John had been flinging around, seemingly unaware that they didn't understand the terms.
It was the only thing you could do, Atlantis whispers in his ear after the debriefing, when she knows he's about five seconds from running. He knows there was nothing more the could have done – not for the Terran legatus, Colonel Sumner, not for the untold millions who must have died while he slept; not for anyone – and, worse, the descendants know it too.
I know, he tells her, slipping into a small office near the control room and slumping against the wall there. Atlantis knows his mood and keeps the lights off, though she hates it when he does this. But all he really needs is a moment to collect himself, to push aside the horrors of this endless day, and then he can go back to the party the descendants are holding and pretend everything is all right.
Iohannes is very good at pretending. Sometimes it seems to him that all he ever does it pretend.
Elizabeta, it appears, is very good at finding, or else the city has nudged her in the right direction, because she finds his hiding spot not long after he does. Cruelly, she turns on the lights. This earns her a glare that doesn't stop her from asking, "How are you doing?"
That earns her a raised eyebrow.
"Okay," she laughs, "I imagine it's been a strange couple of days for you."
"That's one way to put it." He hadn't quite figured out what the other ways might be yet, but figured they'd involve a lot more swearing.
Still, he feels uncomfortable in her presence. She's halfway across the room, quietly pensive, but there's something about her that made him uneasy. He knows now is probably the best chance they'll get for a while for that conversation he promised her, but words cannot describe how much he really, really doesn't want to have another confrontation right now. Food would be good right now, and a shower, and then maybe a nice, soft bed because, despite the fact he'd apparently taken the universe's longest nap ever, he's starting to feel pretty tired.
But, before his escape plan was fully formed, she spoke. "I asked Doctor McKay to look you up in the Ancient database."
"Oh?" he says just as casually because, really, what else was he supposed to say to that? Well, why not just ask me yourself? came to mind, but, then again, so did meretrix, though that one was more directed at Atlantis than Elizabeta. Though if she kept on turning on lights in perfectly nice dark rooms, she might be on the receiving end of that one too.
"Yes. Apparently tribunus means executive officer in Atlantean."
It actually didn't, but the more senior tribuni had been sent on ahead to sent on ahead to secure the encampment on Terra, so it had been true enough in the weeks before the final evacuation. He doesn't bother to correct her, mostly because he can't see the point. "That going to be a problem?"
"The opposite, actually." She gave him a curious grin when he looked up, her eyes crinkling in a way curiously out of line with the rest of her features. "With Colonel Sumner gone, our ranking military officer is Lieutenant Ford and, while he's a good man, the events of the past few days have already proven that we need someone with more experience in charge. I'd ask Sargent Bates, but he has scarcely more and, either way, I'm hesitant to undermine their leadership structure, particularly when we're so far from home..."
"So you want me to do it."
Elizabeta nodded, seeming pleased he'd caught on so quickly.
"You do realize that's probably a spectacularly bad idea, right?"
The praetor Triarii would probably have laughed in her face at the idea, and he had been a spectacularly cold man who must have gotten physical pleasure from chewing out the lower ranks considering how often he did so.
She'd probably have gotten a similar reaction from most of his commanding officers, for that matter. By the time of the Exodus, he'd been in the Lantean Guard for nearly half his life and, in that time, had had three high-level disciplinary hearings, earned five laudescounselium from two different cities, and probably would have been cashiered from service altogether had not the war with the Wraith needed all able bodies. Had he not been a pastor, he probably still would have been discharged and forced to go to Terra after Triarius, but they needed him too much for that. Sometimes Iohannes felt that was the only reason he stayed in the Guard.
You know that's not true, Atlantis urges, the city humming around him with concern, while Elizabeta continues, "Perhaps. But, at the moment, you're the most qualified person I've got."
He tells the city, You only say that 'cause you like me. To Elizabeta, he says nothing.
We say it because it is true, pastor. The Council may have kept you out of need, but you stayed out of want.
"Adulator," he mutters at the nearest wall. "Atlantis likes to lie to me," he tries to explain to Elizabeta, who's looking at him with concern. "I think she thinks it's beneficial to my mental health or something."
She looks like she's about to ask – ask what he means, what he said, what it means to be a pastor Atlantis – but she swallows her questions, perhaps sensing that there are no real answers. True, his people had done the initial encoding that bound their technology to their genetic sequence, and, yes, they had imbued their cities' early computers with a sophisticated VI, but one one – not even Father – had been quite certain how the pastores had grown from the two. All Iohannes knows (or will, at least, admit to knowing) is that, over a few thousand years, the urbes-naves developed sentience and a marked preference for specific gene holders. The ones the cities favour are called custodiae. The ones who go the extra step and have the naniods implanted are pastores, and, to them, the cities speak.
"Besides," Elizabeta asks instead, "would you really be comfortable leaving Atlantis' safety to someone else?"
She has him there, so, "Alright. I just hope you don't regret it."
"I won't," she says with such determination he almost – almost – believes her. But she's not the first person to take a chance on him. So far, without even trying, he's managed to disappoint them all. He doubts it will be any different with Elizabeta. So he says nothing and allows himself to be dragged back to the party.
For a while, he merely watches, but before long, he finds himself cornered by a youngish, dark-haired man who introduces himself as Doctor Sean Corrigan, formerly of Trinity University and currently the head of Atlantis' Department of Anthropology, which means less than nothing to Iohannes. He and a tall, dark-skinned woman he calls Doctor Lazos, the UOC linguist proceed to pepper him with questions about the significance of the inscription on stairs in front of the porta.
"It's a poem, and a promise, of sorts," he tells them, despite the fact he could go into far more detail if he wants, and gives them his best I-only-know-how-to-shoot-things smile. While it works on the Lantean literature front, it invites questions about the position of the military in an Ascension-oriented culture that he's even more uncomfortable answering.
He gets about as far as, "Interesting," before McKay comes up and, thankfully, tells his interrogators that, "As entertaining as I'm sure he finds answering your asinine questions, I'm fairly certain John has better things to do than be the Ancient version of Cole's Notes for help me solve the city's power problems. Unless you want to sit around asking your questions in the dark, which, admittedly, as anthropologists you might, but forgive me if I'd rather we'd actually half a chance of being able to defend ourselves when the Wraith inevitably track us down."
"There aren't any more potentia on Atlantis," he tells McKay once they're far enough away from the party that there's little chance he'll be dragged back to it when this is all over.
"Potentia?"
This morning (relatively speaking) he'd been in the axillary control room with half-a-dozen scientists and most the remaining soldiers, trying to coordinate Atlantis' defences against the Wraith; how he was in a hallway full of offices that had sat empty for ten thousand years and trying to explain the basis of most Alteran technology one of their Terran descendants. Trying to make sense of it all is making his head hurt.
"Well," he begins eloquently, holding up his hands in demonstration, "they're crystals about this big that house pockets of spuma spatii quattuor dimensionum from which we extract energy." Iohannes let his hands fall. "I really don't know how to explain them better than that. We use them them to power the city."
"Oh? Oh! You mean the ZedPMs."
"ZedPMs?"
"Zero Point Modules. It's what we call your potentia, I think. But, yes, I was fairly certain there weren't any left in Atlantis, or else you would have told us about them earlier, what with the Wraith and no shields and all of that. I imagine you want the city to stand just as much as we do."
"Oh," Iohannes says rather vacantly because, well, oh.
We like him, Atlantis feels fit to insert at this point, and your father kept a list of planets to which the Council sent the potentia to in the last days.
I know. And you do? Usually urbes-naves take ages to warm up to anyone, even other cities' pastores, and for her to come to this decision so quickly is nothing short of bizarre. But, then again, this whole day has been nothing short of bizarre:
He remembers waking up after two fitful hours of attempting to rest in the noisily empty barracks and going to the auxiliary control room to help co-ordinate that day's defences. His eyes are still blurry from the lack of sleep.
He remembers the northern pier being hit by a particularly vicious blast, and the room exploding around him. The Terran medicus, Carson, had picked the glass out of his wounds; thin white line still ran across his exposed skin, a sign he'd been too weak to heal himself fully.
He remembers being unable to wake Nicolaa, whose console he'd been hunched over, and being unable to find Josua at all. His uniform had been as much drenched with her blood as his own before he'd used what little energy he'd left to repair it enough to escape the infirmary.
He remembers Atlantis telling him to evacuate and going to the cathedra instead. He remembers telling Atlantis to keep lowering the power, until the shields are barely holding the water at bay and there's barely enough life-support pumping into the cathedra room to keep him alive from one breath to the next. He remembers feeling the porta activate and thinking, they're finally returning, before disconnecting himself from the city.
It seems like a single day to him, those thousands of years he spent cajoling Atlantis to spend less and less power, to sacrifice some of the lower levels to maintain structural integrity elsewhere, having passed in the blink of an eye.
He's never felt so tired in his life.
"The Council sent a lot of potentia off-world before the exodus. There should be a list in my father's lab," McKay's whole face lights up at this, like he's just told him the Wraith are gone, and it's with sincere regret that he has to bring reality back into the equation, "but it may take some time to find – he was protective of his research to the point of paranoia and never known for his organizational skills to begin with."
"Oh. Well. Wow. I mostly just said what I did about the power to aide in my own escape. The power situation really isn't that dire. The naquadah generators have nothing on ZedPMs, but they should be able to power critical systems – other than the shield and weapons and whatnot – for another couple of years at least. It's just there are some things I wanted to look at down in the labs – or, well, at least what that Czech physicist what's-his-name thinks it is; knowing the idiots they've tried to foist off on me, it's probably the Ancient equivalent of a laundromat or something as equally dull that they've gotten so excited over – so I can claim the best one before one of the idiots who won't know how to properly appreciate it gets their hands on it. And, well, you looked like you could use a hand getting away from those soulless piranhas that make up the anthropology department, so, yeah, I figured I'd help the both of us.
"But if you actually think you might have an idea where we might find some ZedPMs, that's even better. Do you want to go now or-?" he looks hopeful, yet, oddly enough, not at the thought of finding more pot- ZedPMs.
Guessing the reason, "No," Iohannes says with a smile. "Go pick out your lab. We'll have plenty of time tomorrow."
"Tomorrow. Right. See you then."
McKay's halfway down the hall before Iohannes asks, "Where are these labs this physicist of yours found?"
Scarcely pausing, "The east pier, in one of the taller towers. Why?"
That sounded about right if he was looking for the science labs. But, if Atlantis liked him... "Try the fifty-third level of this building instead; the last Director of Science turned one of the larger rooms on the north side into a personal laboratory. You'll probably like it better."
McKay does stop at this and even turns around to gape at him, and it's more than evident that he doesn't have a clue what to say. "I, er- Thanks, John. That's- thanks."
"No problem." He gives a jaunty wave and turns towards the nearest vectura. Atlantis is telling him that the Terrans have set up sleeping quarters on the south-east pier and, if he's careful, he should be able to get there without being drawn back into the party.
The rest can wait 'til morning.
a/n: God, I've done it. I've commited SGA fanfiction now. But I just couldn't get the idea of Ancient!John out of my head... and at that the apparent obession with all things Latin I developed a couple years ago and, well, yeah.
Translations, a la SGA:
cathedra: Control Chair
astria porta: Stargate
pons astris: Wormhole
meretrix: literally, prostitute; in context, about as close as it's possible to get to attention whore
pastor: Shepherd
medicus: medical doctor
tribunus: an officer in the Roman Army, which, depending on the situation, correlates anywhere from major to brigadier general in the US ranking system
caracacta: litterally, porticullis; in context, iris
vectura: transporter
praetor: general
legatus: an officer in the Roman Army, which can correlate anywhere from colonel to lieutenant general
laudes councelium: medals
adulator: sycophant
urbes-naves: city-ships
custodiae: guardians
potentia: ZPMs