Title: Children of the Legend: Dawning
Summary: It appears to be a normal day in Atlantis, but the city is having a bit of a glitch. Ashlei Sheppard may hold the key to fixing this glitch, but what is so special about her, and will her overprotective father even let her try?
Rating: T
The all important disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis, its characters, settings, and themes are NOT mine. The Only things that belong to me are the things you don't recognize.
Author's note: Hi people, this is Nimeria, welcome to my latest Fan fiction, Dawning. Yes, I said MY. My dearest Chibi is currently busy with her own Harry Potter based story that is being updated at a very slow rate. Sadly I cannot help you with this. Chibi posts when Chibi posts. This story, Dawning, is the first of a series of at least four stories detailing…. Well, I'm not gonna tell you the details just yet. You'll just have to read and find out. Ok, so. There will be a follow up author's note at the end of this chapter. So please don't forget to read it because it explains a few things. So until the next note… Laters. Oh. P.S. because of the prologue, this chapter is like two chapters so… have fun. And it could be awhile before an update because I'm lazy and like to procrastinate everything that I can, especially now that my research paper is in.
Thank you: To my dearest Bann, my beta and my dear friend, also for keeping me from going too crazy with this. To my darling twinling, Chibi, for poking me to keep writing and not ever letting the story get too serious.
Prologue
An old woman sat comfortably in an armchair pushed into a corner of her room. Normally, when one thinks of old women sitting in comfy chairs, they envision a frail-looking, grey-haired lady, whose veins are clearly visible, and whose eyes are tired, alone in a room in a nursing home. But this woman isn't frail-looking. The white in her naturally black hair gives it a blue-ish color. You can hardly see her veins and her eyes are full of spark. She isn't in a nursing home and she is definitely not alone.
Fourteen children are running around the room playing tag. Two more sit on her bed and another is hiding in her closet. The fourteen running about seem to be ages six to eleven; the one in the closet, five, and the two on the bed about thirteen. The old woman surveys the chaos before here with a fond look on her face. But these kids are here for a reason and its time for her to calm them.
"Alright, ya little hooligans, settle down. Sasha, stop biting your brother. Kyle, don't pull on her hair. Mary, sweetie, it's okay. You can come on out of the closet. All of you sit over here on the floor. Get comfy because this is a long tale." With much coaxing, eventually all seventeen kids are gathered at her feet. A soft smile graces her aging face as the children before her bring back memories of times long past. "Now, you want to hear a story?"
Choruses of 'yes' and 'yay' assault her ears and she takes yet another few minutes quieting them again.
"I have just the thing." She pulls a book from a drawer in the nightstand beside her. The cover is tattered and the color faded. "But before I begin, I should give you a bit of a background story." She closes her eyes for a moment to think. "Ah. Yes. Here we go then.
"Many years ago, a team of explores set out from Earth through the device we know as the Stargate in search of the Lost City of Atlantis. They found the city, built by a race of beings called the Ancients, abandoned on the bottom of the ocean, protected only by a shield that started to fail almost as soon as the expedition arrived. They tried everything they could think of to maintain the power to the shield, but their technology was too inferior to generate anywhere near enough power. It appeared that the glorious Lost City would have to be abandoned yet again and lost forever to the sea.
"Then, the failsafe, created by the Ancients to save their city, activated and Atlantis rose to the surface. The expedition settled in, but not all was happy and safe. In their attempts to save their lost people, the New Atlanteans woke the Wraith. Not just a few, but all; all of the Wraith, awake, hungry, and searching for those who now lived in the City of the Ancients. But the Wraith were not the only enemy the New Atlanteans would make in their time. The Asurans were also glad at every chance they got to cause pain to the expedition.
"The expedition was, however, not friendless in this galaxy. The first race they ever encountered, the Athosians, became their closest friends, and after a rocky start and despite the fate that trust was never unwavering, the Genii also befriended the Atlanteans.
"Time wore on and the New Atlanteans did many things. They created miracles. They fought the Wraith and the Asurans with more success than anyone who came before. They saved planets from destruction and cured disease. And so these New Atlanteans slowly worked their way from heroes to legends.
"But this is not their story. Nor do they feature prominently. No, this story is about those who followed. The ones who would inhabit Atlantis after the original expedition was dead and gone. This story is about the children of the expedition. The Children of the Legend, if you will. But to be honest, the story isn't even about all of that generation, my generation.
"This story is mainly about four young girls. Three were the daughters of members of the Atlantis Senior Staff, and the other the daughter of the leader of the SGC on Earth. Three of the four girls were friends almost from birth and the fourth joined their circle at some point in their youth.
"Over time, the girls grew together. They became inseparable. They matured in to lovely, intelligent and highly gifted women each at the top of her field. Eventually they would create their own legend.
"But this story starts long before that. This story starts with the tale of an event that began a chain reaction that would eventually lead to the re-evolving of the Ancient Race and the re-establishment of Atlantis as a place of safety and power in this galaxy." The old woman stopped of a moment and happily took in her enraptured audience. She flashed a sparkling smile at the young girl right in front of her and opened the book sitting in her lap.
"This story was written in great detail by people who actually experienced it. If you listen very closely and close your eyes, you may very well hear the falling footsteps, and alarms sounding, or the rain and thunder of a storm. So listen closely, close those eyes and allow yourselves to be transported back in time to the beginning of a new era." Then the old woman looked at the page and began to read.
Chapter 1: Good Morning Atlantis
It was dawn in the city of Atlantis. The sun was shining and the rain that had been persistent for the last week or so had finally stopped. The 'gate was quiet and those who had the dawn shift in the control room were relaxing. Across the walkway, Elizabeth Weir's office was vacant, its regular occupant having been coaxed away from her paperwork to sleep by a combination of exhaustion and the undeniable puppy dog face of a certain messy haired Colonel, who also happened to be her husband.
The quiet of the city extended, amazingly, even down to the mostly empty science labs. A few of the junior staff who had been unlucky enough to be chosen to keep an eye on the ongoing experiments sat around a small lab table, sipping coffee and having a small debate on the best tactics to staying clear of the bad side of the Chief of Science, who was harsh enough even to those on his good side, and not irritating his occasionally hard to understand second, who was prone to yelling in Czech, beyond said chief's ability to endure. Both of the aforementioned were, thankfully and by some small miracle, absent as they too were catching up on sleep.
Even the infirmary was quiet and mostly empty, the most serious injuries being a broken ankle and a fractured wrist, and the patients in question were only being held until morning to ensure they slept. In his office, on a cot put there for just this reason, the enthusiastic Scottish CMO dozed gently, taking a break from whatever it was on the computer screen on his desk.
Down in Senior Staff Quarters all was quiet. The corridor had been designated as such because obviously, this was where the senior staff had eventually chosen to have their quarters since the rooms were of fairly good size, practically dead center of the city, and rather hard to find if you didn't know where to look, thereby making it easier for a few choice members of the staff to hide from paperwork and annoying underlings who couldn't take a hint. The new CO of the Daedalus snored quietly in his temporary quarters. Down the hall, the head Athosian slept peacefully in the room across the hall from the sleeping leader of Atlantis. The other rooms down that particular corridor were also silent as their occupants enjoyed the peace, though a few rooms were missing one of their occupants.
On a catwalk somewhere in the city, two of those people were out for their morning run. The run was going as it usually did, with the dread-locked Satedan leading and the semi-silver haired bed-headed Air Force General attempting to keep up. In his defense, it must be said that John Sheppard was doing better that he used to, but Ronan could still run his butt into the ground.
In the tallest spire of the East pier at the very top there is a room. At least, by some definitions it could be called a room. The chamber has twelve sides. One is occupied by a transporter, the only access to the level. The one directly across the room is a sliding glass like door that leads to the balcony that wraps all the way around that floor of the tower. The area between is occupied by tables and couches that fold out into beds. These are set in various groupings. In the dead center of the room a large flat screen TV sits on a table. On one side sits a DVD player and on the other the latest version of the Play Station game system. A large number of the couches and tables are grouped around the TV.
One of these couches is folded out into a bed and is occupied by a sixteen-year-old girl with dark brown hair. At the moment her hair is slightly tousled, but it is about shoulder length and is gently wavy. She is wearing a loose grey T-shirt over her khaki pants. Her tennis shoes lie on the floor next to the bed and the whole image gives the impression that she hadn't bothered changing when she had gone to bed the night before. However, since she is fast asleep and, rare occurrence such as it is for her to be not just sleeping but sleeping in an actual bed, she rather takes after her father in that respect. I think we'll leave her alone for now.
The other ten sides of the Central Chamber are all doors, each leading to a bedroom and attached bathroom. All ten rooms are occupied by kids ranging from ages seventeen to seven. While most of the rooms are quiet and serene, in one of them the lighting is flashing and small beeps are being emitted by the strange looking device on the bedside table. This room's occupant is also a teenage girl. Her messy, boy-cropped black hair is oddly reminiscent of her father's, and she has managed to kick the sheets off her bed. She is sleeping with her head on the bed, not the pillow, and is wearing a dark red tank top over a camisole of the same color and light grey sleep pants.
This messy haired person, ladies and gentlemen, is me, Ashlei Marie Sheppard. Yes, I said Sheppard, as in John, as in the Military CO of Atlantis. Elizabeth? Yep, she's my mom.
Anyway the person in the bed is me and the beeping is actually my alarm clock, or at least the Ancients version of one, and the lights, well, I'm not real sure what's wrong with the lights. Groaning, I roll over and attempt to smack the alarm clock to turn it off. As usual, I miss the first few times. Finally my hand makes contact and the beeping stops. I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed, wincing slightly as my feet make contact with the cold tile floor. No carpet. The control room has carpet, mother's office has carpet. Heck even Central Chamber has carpet. But do the bedrooms have carpet? Nope. They're cold, icy tile.
Even as I'm ranting about it in my head I feel the floor heat up under my feet. I grin happily. Score one for the Ancient gene. Now that my attention isn't fully concentrated on the floor, I notice that the lights are still flashing. Touching the Ancient trigger in my mind, I think 'Stop' at the lights. They continue to flicker on and off. I frown. 'Stop' I think more firmly. The lights continue with their flashing. My frown deepens. While having trouble getting the gene activated systems can be a problem for some people, I grew up in this city. It never does this to me. Ever.
Closing my eyes, I hold tightly to the Ancient trigger and think 'STOP' as loudly and firmly as I can. For a minute I think it isn't going to work as the lights flicker again, but then the lights click on and this time they stay on. I stand up, relieved.
"Lady, you must speak with me." Falling back onto the bed in surprise, I snap my head around, looking for the person who had spoken. But there is no one else. I remain sitting on the bed in confusion for a minute. Then my eye catches the clock. 7 AM. I blink the rack my memory, trying to figure out why the hell I'm up this early, and on a Sunday, too.
Then it hits me. Sunday. No classes. My eyes flick to the door in the back of my room that leads to the wrap around balcony. I can see the ocean through the railing. Nice weather and good waves. I feel my face light up with glee. We're going to the mainland to go surfing. Or at least, that's my plan. I'm sure we can get someone to take us. I dash out of my room in to the 12-sided Central room, and encounter the aforementioned dark brown haired girl sleeping on the couch bed. She didn't bother to change out of her clothes when she went to bed last night, but though I feel a faint twinge of irritation at her, in not as irked as I normally might be.
This is Del, well really her name's Delilah but she hates being called that. So we just call her Del. Her last name is McKay; yes that McKay believe it or not, and she has the trademark ice blue eyes and the scientific know-how that go with the name. Del, at sixteen, is a year younger than I am, and, though from the way we snipe at each other you couldn't really tell, we are best friends. I may have mentioned we take after our dads. That's going to come up a lot, so get used to that.
I pause a moment, considering whether or not to wake her up. I decide to go get my other friend first, that way she catches some extra sleep. I shuffle as quietly as possible across the room to a door on the other side. I guess I should mention that, because it's a twelve sided room and sometimes it's hard to keep the sides straight, we've done a kind of military directional thing and each side is a clock time. For instance, the main room balcony door is 12 o'clock, the transporter is 6, and my room is 8 o'clock. The room I'm headed to is 1 o'clock.
I open the door with a mental command and am relieved to see it work on the first try. I walk into the room and survey its occupant in mild amusement. The room itself is a lot neater than mine, but its owner? Chaos. The girl's caramel colored hair is all over the place, the sheets are on the floor, and her pillow is under her feet because she somehow managed to flip upside down in her sleep so her head was at the foot of the bed. Yet despite all this, she somehow still manages to appear calm and serene. A walking, or in this case sleeping, contradiction our Rayne is. Not that we'd ever tell her that to her face. Great friend she may be, but Rayne is a Dex, and she, like her parents (Ronon and Teyla if you can't figure that one out) has no problem looking scary when she needs to. Oh and just in case you're wondering, Rayne is a year older than I am.
I creep over to the bed as quietly as possible.
"Rayne," I whisper. "Ray-ayne" I stop moving as I reach her bed. Leaning down as close to her face as I deem safe, I smirk slightly
"Ray-"
SLAM!
Next thing I know, I'm flat on my back on the cold, tile floor, which, as I forgot to mention, is also extremely hard. Rayne's appears over the edge of the bed and she laughs softly at me, her dark brown eyes twinkling with mischief.
"Ashlei," she says levelly, somehow managing to remove the smile from her face. "What are you doing on my floor?" straightforward and to the point, even when she's trying really hard not to laugh in my face.
"Well, you see Rayne," I answer back, gamely. "I just couldn't get comfortable in my bed last night so I decided to see how comfortable your floor was." I sit up slowly, wary of another 'attack' from her quarter.
"I'm sure." Then there's a brilliant flash of teeth as she smiles again and moves to stand up. Her feet hit the now heated floor and she blinks in surprise at the warmth. She looks at me as she stands up and offers me a hand up.
"Thanks." We both say at the same time.
"Welcome." Again we speak in unison. We laugh slightly and then Rayne gets right back to the point.
"So what are you doing here? At…" she glances at her clock and give a short cry. "7:15 AM?!"
"Yeah," I start sheepishly. "Sorry for the early wake up call but we gotta go."
"Where exactly?"
"Mainland of course." My friend regards me for a minute then sighs.
"Surfing?"
"How'd you know?" I feign amazement at her insight.
"Lucky guess." Another sigh. Rayne doesn't really like mornings. "Go get Del up."
I smile happily, the bounce out of Rayne's room to the Central. I bounce all the way over to and then onto Del's bed. My knees bounce inches from her side and she jerks awake as she is forcibly bounced upward slightly on the bed. She doesn't make a sound or say anything. Just glares at me with her penetrating blue eyes. Anyone who wasn't as close to Del as I was might have turned and run away to hide, but I just grinned.
"Morning Del!" I greet brightly. Realizing that it's not doing her any good, she stops glaring at me.
"Whadyawa?" she whines, which is Del morning speak for 'what do you want'.
"Time to get up!" I start jumping up and down on my knees so she is continually jolted around and unable to go back to sleep. She glances at the clock on the nearby coffee table and moans. She then grabs one of her pillows and pulls it over her head. With a slight growl, Del throws her pillow off her head and glares at me again, any trace of morning-ness completely gone.
"Ashlei, this is my bed! Not a trampoline!" Del snaps angrily and this time her glare works and I immediately stop bouncing.
"But you gotta get up." I protest.
"Ash, it's not even 7:30. We don't get up this early when we have classes. Today is Sunday, we don't have classes. So why must I get up?" she demands, and while normally I might have kept playing around, I could tell she was getting miffed and I wanted to come with Rayne and I, so I decided to just tell her.
"Because we gotta get ready to go. We got to eat and change, and get our stuff together. Find one of the adults and get them to come with us."
"Where?"
"The mainland of course. It's a lovely day, and we're going surfing." I answer happily.
"Decide this just now did you?"
"No, right before I fell asleep last night." Del stares at me, and then groans.
"I can't believe you woke me up for this." But she gets up and moves off the bed anyway. I smile inwardly. Del may whine and complain but in truth I think she's glad that I always want to take her along. She turns around and gives me a meaningful look and I slide off her bed. Del waves a hand over a panel by the foot of the bed, and it folds itself back up into a couch. I flop down on it immediately and Del rolls her eyes and shakes her head. The she walks to my room to shower and change.
When we first discovered this place a year ago or so, Rayne, Del, and I immediately decided that we wanted to move out here. Naturally, as soon as our siblings found out about it they wanted to come, too. But that would have left the little Beckett kids all alone down in the corridor the lot of us used to live in and that wasn't fair to them so we asked them to come with us. Only thing was that made eleven kids and only ten bedrooms, so we had a bit of a problem. Or so I thought.
Del, on the other hand, saw no problem whatsoever. She'd realized rather quickly that the couches folded in Central folded out into beds. One of us could just sleep there and share closet and bathroom with one of the others. She even volunteered. Rayne and I protested loudly as Del had been the one to originally lead us up here. But she rationalized it out as she was rarely in her room anyway and she needed to come and go and wouldn't wake anyone else up this way. She had a point so we let her have her way, and she shares my closet and bathroom.
As I lay comfortably on the couch, Rayne walked out of her room. She'd changed form her sleep clothes into day clothes, which she likely already had over her board shorts and top. She had brushed her hair and pulled it back into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck. She is carrying her lime green Crocs (courtesy of the latest Daedalus run) and her Athosian made leather sandals in the other. She holds them up for me to see.
"Which ones?" she asks me. I consider the shoes and then the dark green skirt made of a loose breezy fabrics and the lighter green shirt of a kind of shiny material. It wasn't as loose at the skirt but it wasn't exactly what could be called tight either. I guess the best way to describe it would be to say it had been a little to big then shrunk a tad more than perfect in the wash. The sleeves cam to a little above her elbows and the neck cut deep but laced up.
"Definitely the sandals, Rayne." I insist. "The Crocs are nice and all but lime green clashes with the darker shades." She looks down at her clothes and back to her shoes.
"You know, that's a good point." Then she sets the crocs down on a nearby table before sitting on the armrest of the couch and proceeding to strap the sandals to her feet. "So Del's up and changing or did she never make it back up here last night?"
"She's changing. She slept in her clothes but…"
"She slept."
"Yeah." I hear a door swoosh open behind me and I turn to see a boy with sleep mussed brown hair and half lidded light green eyes. He's just wearing his boxers and is still too asleep to notice that I'm not the only one I the room.
This is Aaron. He's my brother and he's older than me by about three minutes. We're triplets. My younger brother you'll meet later. He tends to sleep really late. Aaron brushes his hair out of his eyes and looks at me.
"Ash-" He stops as he notices Rayne. Then he blinks as if trying to get his brain to compute the fact that she's there. His face flushes beet red, and he turns around and dashes back to his room, just next to mine at 7 o'clock. I turn to look at Rayne who just raises an eyebrow at me as I break into a fit of giggles.
"What are you giggling about?" Del asks me as she walks out of my room and over to us. "Morning Rayne." She adds. Rayne nods at her and I manage to calm down long enough to answer her question.
"My brother is an idiot."
"Most are." She quips. "And if you're just now figuring this out then I worry about you."
"I knew." I protest defensively. "But you asked why I was giggling and I told you." I roll of the couch and onto my feet before heading back to my room to change. I wouldn't bother with a shower. In an hour or so I'd be so coated in salty sea water and sand it wouldn't matter.
I walk to my closet and think it open. It hesitates a moment, then slides open. I frown then shrug. I'll mention the problem to Rodney if it keeps up. But only then, he is busy enough as it is. I turn my attention to my half of the closet.
My clothing, besides the uniform cargo pants and frame fitting white t-shirt that I wear when I have classes, isn't really all that varied. Several pairs of jeans in varying shades of dark blue and one pair of black jeans, three or four of black sweatpants, a two pairs of track pants, a pair of tear-aways, several pairs of shorts (jean shorts and gym shorts) and various styles of shirts, most in shades of dark blue. My favorite color is blue. Stupid I know. I live in a city, mostly blue, in an ocean, definitely blue, lit with lights, blue with few exceptions, and my favorite color is blue. But it isn't that kind of blue. It's that dark, sapphire, indigo, hour-from-midnight blue. And I love it.
I grab a low rise pair of flares and a blue tank top, then shuffle over to my drawers and pull out a pair of board shorts and a top. I change quickly then slide my feet into my Adidas flip flops and walk back out into the lounge
A/N: Right. So. There you have it. Chapter one of many in this installment alone. As I mentioned this series will run at least four stories, possibly more. But it will also take time. I want to say that I have the entirety of this first installment, Dawning, completely written out but its only about half typed and this first chapter is the only one that's been edited. So. For those of you who may be wondering, yes the old woman from the prologue is a character in the story. But I'm not going to tell you which one. She may be one of the main four or she may just be a minor character. But she will be mentioned in this …. I'm just gonna call this a mini series and Dawning is chapter one. I know who she is, but I want to see if anyone else can figure it out. With each prologue and epilogue you'll get more clues and if no one's figured it out by the epilogue of the fourth episode THEN and only then will I tell you. If you have a guess post it in a review and be sure to leave an email address so I can get back to you if you're right. I will then announce it in the Author's Note of the next chapter I post. If you don't hear back from me… you were wrong. And Chibi and Bann, if you're reading this, and I know at some point you both will, you guys don't get to guess because I'm going to tell you so I can bounce ideas off you. Going back to the subject of reviews… I want them. Please. And I do welcome constructive criticism as I'm not so vain as to think my writing is perfect. If you want to flame me, go right ahead, but don't expect me to respond in any way, shape, form or fashion. I think that's it for now so until next chapter,
This is Nimeria, over and OUT!