They had defeated the Wraith. Beaten the Replicators. Mourned the dead. Rejoiced at their wins. While their defenses were lowered, something small and insignificant entered unannounced and unnoticed. It wiped out more than three-quarters of the City before it could be stopped, and even then left it's mark on them all. The Expedition would always be carriers of the virus. They could never come back home to Earth.
A virus. Small, yet deadly.
It seemed to strike the weaker members first. Rodney fought the virus as long as he could before simply collapsing one evening in the lab, his stylus and computer still clutched in his arms. Ronon carried the now much smaller man to the infirmary, but by then it was too late. The biologists were next, each of them having the same symptoms as McKay. Nausea, high fever, and dehydration. Before long, the military was fighting the effects of the virus. Then, Teyla and Ronon.
Everything they tried, everything they did, only mutated the virus more. When Teyla died, Sheppard took Torren to raise. It wasn't long before, eyes glazed with fever, Sheppard brought the little boy in to the infirmary to be checked.
Funny how the smallest member, was also the strongest. Little Torren's blood carried the cure, the doctors all said it was because Teyla had acquired the virus while pregnant with him, and he had escaped certain death through her. It was given throughout Atlantis, yet only the members with the ATA gene or gene therapy survived. Sheppard pulled through, along with the other gene carriers.
Months later, when the virus was finally beaten, they held a memorial service for their fallen team members on New Athos. Only simple gravestones bearing the name, birth, and death of each member was raised. Slightly to the side of the military burial grounds, in a place of honor, were Teyla and Ronon's markers bearing their names and date of death.
Only graves marked where the greatest of them all lay.
