Chronicles of Lantia – Conscience
By Alassiel
Summary:After the events of First Strike, John Sheppard has an unexpected visitor who makes him see some important things
Rating: PG
Characters: John Sheppard, Elizabeth Weir, Original Character
Genres: Alternate Universe, Episode Tag, Drama
Disclaimer:Nothing's mine except for my dreams.
Warnings: None
Author's notes: Hello everyone, this is my first English fan fiction and my first complete sparky one as well, so be gentle :D
The whole story came from me being incredibly pissed because of John's behavior in First Strike. I was very disappointed in him and I needed to write this story to forgive him myself.
I plan on having more stories involving Lantia, but I highly depend on my muse, so I can't promise anything. Tell me if you're interested though, that would certainly help ;) Have fun!
John Sheppard woke up abruptly.
Somebody was in his room. Of that he was entirely sure, although he couldn't see a soul in the dim light. He blinked around quickly then decided that he must be experiencing the aftereffects of the dream he had been having. What a strange dream, he thought, but he could not picture exactly what he was dreaming about. He knew only one thing: it was very disturbing. Like somebody had been going around his head without his permission.
He was just about to close his eyes again when he heard a strange female voice.
"I'm here." It came from the far corner near the big picture window.
When he focused his eyes on the intruder, he found the silhouette of a slim woman, whose face he couldn't see in the weak backlight.
"Don't be a afraid. I won't hurt you." The voice was sweet and low, very calming and strangely familiar.
"Who are you?" John jumped up from the bed, fully awake now, automatically reaching for his gun.
"Trust me, please." The woman came closer, seemingly completely unafraid of anything that might happen to her. "I'm here on an important matter."
His hand stopped just inches away from the weapon so he could grab it any second, but still didn't take it. He couldn't explain it for his life but somehow his guts told him to trust this woman.
She took a couple of steps forward and came into proper view so he could see her entirely. And see her, he did. The woman, or girl more so, had long shiny black hair, trustful and smart brown eyes and features that made her look like an angel and a warrior at the same time. She was breathtakingly beautiful, but something about her just wasn't human.
"Who are you? How did you come in?" he asked again "Answer me, or I swear I will use it." pointed Sheppard to the gun.
For a moment a slow, gentle smile seemed to be the only response, than the woman began her speech.
"What I am about to say is hard to accept and very important. I'm asking you not to interrupt me. I promise that you can have questions after I finished. As I said before, I'm completely harmless, but if you prefer to have that thing within reach…" she pointed to the gun "Very well, I accept it. You can see my hands; I do not carry any weapon. Now, shall I proceed?"
"What do you want from me?" he asked angrily, still not trusting the stranger.
"I just want you to listen. Please listen to me first. Trust me. Then when I'm finished you may do whatever you please with me. Just give me a couple of minutes, to tell my story. Can you do that?"
Acting like he was under a mysterious spell, Sheppard nodded reluctantly and the woman began slowly.
"Very well… My name is Lantia. I was born an unimaginably long time ago in this very city, which I haven't left since."
John wanted to interrupt already. Was she an ancient? How did she survive? Suddenly there were millions of questions inside of his head but he promised not to speak and he was damn curious of her story anyway.
"I am what your people call an artificial intelligence." She paused for a second to emphasize her words and – especially if he took her word seriously – strangely enough her voice seemed to be tight with sad acceptance. "But I'm so much more than that. Basically I'm the result of an experiment; an accident in a way." She took a deep breath. "In the golden era of Atlantis, well before the great war with the Wraith, the people who you call the Ancients, wanted to create a superior system interface that made the communication and the control of their precious city easier and more manageable. Using their already existing experiment of which the results later were the beings you now call the replicators, they tried to embody the very essence of Atlantis. And they succeeded. They succeeded more than they pictured before. I was born that day with abilities beyond your understanding, or theirs for that matter. Somehow, in a way unclear even before my creators I had previously unplanned… features."
There was an ironic little smirk on her lips.
"It turned out that probably due to the DNA they used I became more like them, than they wanted me to be. It became obvious quite soon that I'm capable of developing… feelings."
John shook his head unconsciously, finding her story quite unbelievable, yet somehow something told him to believe the stranger, who continued relentlessly.
"Feelings like love, hatred, anger, fear, happiness, loneliness and basically everything you have, and that made me more than just an application or a machine. More than just an entity. But never enough to be equal to their kind. And I learned to accept it. I lived many decades, centuries even with countless generations, being there always, helping them, loving them, but never getting too close, because inevitably I lost them all. That was my doom, and it still is.
Then when the great war came upon us, everything changed. Everything started to fall apart and there was no way out. And on top of that something happened to me that I never thought possible. I… I fell in love…" she smiled slightly despite herself, and looked meaningfully at him, like she was trying to measure up if he understood the weight of her words.
Seemingly he did.
John Sheppard didn't say a word, but he closed his eyes for a long moment. This was a step. Maybe she can achieve what she came here for.
"It took me a long time to realize what had happened, but in the end there was no doubt. He was a scientist. We were working together; I helped his team a lot to secure the most important systems and to prepare for a very possible moving." Her voice broke for a moment, but she forced herself to continue.
"We knew all along how hopeless our situation was. It is impossible for me to leave this place. I am Atlantis. I cannot exist anywhere else but here. Still… we couldn't help it. We couldn't deny ourselves no matter how weird is was, how bad the timing was and how everybody seemed to judge our relationship. Slowly, but certainly we fell for each other… When the end came, I let him go. I let him go knowing that I will never find anybody like him again, that I'll never feel like this again. I knew that I only had to ask him to stay and he would have stayed willingly, but I told him to go. To survive without me. He hated me for that, but he left. And I never forgave myself for doing that. You always tell yourself that you can't be selfish, but… sometimes you're just not selfish enough. There are times when you do have to be selfish in order to preserve your soul."
He had a knot in his throat.
She stopped for a second, her voice trembling a little, then carefully she locked her eyes with John's as if preparing herself to tell him something important.
"There's more. I never told anybody about one of my abilities, because I knew if they found out, it would have made me too powerful, too much of a jeopardy to have around. I… could see into the Alterrans' head. Not very clearly, not every thought, just the most important ones, and that was enough. I knew what Breno was thinking, how he was feeling about me, and I know he wanted to stay. I know he would have been happy here with me, even if it had been just us in an underwater city. He waited for me to stop him, but I let him slip away, thinking that can't be with him forever anyway."
John took a deep breath involuntarily, and the woman took a single step towards him.
"Many years came, the city became weaker and weaker, and I fell asleep with it. I'm not a primary system, so the failsafe procedure turned me off when Atlantis lacked the energy to keep me alive. My body was frozen quite soon just like the body of the other Elizabeth Weir you found a couple of years ago, because it needed more energy to maintain itself than my mind. But eventually my mind joined my resting figure. It was like a very long coma."
She took another step so now she was standing next to the bed.
"I woke up the day you arrived. We lacked the energy, so I was dizzy for months, barely awake. Then as the city became powerful once again, I gained more and more consciousness. Not being a primary function, I still cannot use my body, or affect the city operations until the third ZPM is in place, but my mind is as active now as ever. And I observe since the first day. I could have let you know about my presence a long time ago, but I chose not to. I had to know who you all were, what kind of people, what were your intentions, if I could trust you. And I came to like you."
Not breaking the eye contact, Lantia sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.
"I told you already that I had a certain telepathy with the Alterrans. I discovered that I have the same ability with the people here who have their special gene. And the stronger the gene is, the more I can see into them." Her eyes fell as if being embarrassed about her behavior, and at that moment John was almost sure about was she was trying to tell him. He opened his mouth to react, but she stopped him.
"Let me finish, please. You can have your questions afterwards."
He nodded reluctantly.
"I've been watching in awe how well your team brought Atlantis to life again. How you bonded, how you all found a new home, a new family here. It was an amazing and a very moving experience. I couldn't help being fascinated by all of it. And although I knew you'd never let me do it, I took the opportunity to look into your mind."
"Excuse me?" he couldn't stop the exclamation rising from his lungs although he knew beforehand that she was going to say that.
"Please, don't be angry with me. I swear all your secrets are completely safe with me and it's not like I can read each and every thought that goes through your head. As I said before, I couldn't even see the Alterrans' thoughts perfectly clearly, much less yours, who are just part Alterran. My ability was just a way to confirm what I observed anyway by your behavior."
"Still. You don't have the right do such thing. It's… It's… It's personal." He said angrily. "And you should know that if you really capable of what you claim to be capable of. Feelings, that is." He fumed and she let him. "Damn it!" he swore and stood up to go to the window. The moon was shining very brightly that night.
"I'm… I… I could say I'm sorry, but I can't. I know I had no right to do so, but I can't say I regret it. During all those years I was never able to pick up one special habit no matter how often I saw people around me doing it. I can't lie, John. I have never been able to and I still cannot do it. I can keep a secret, but I can't go and lie that I'm sorry about what I've done with you. I'm sorry that this bothers you, but I came here on purpose, risking being eliminated, uncovering my existence and my abilities, but I had to do it. I just had to." While she was talking, she stood up and looked towards him, but he was still staring stubbornly out of the window.
Though a part of him was terrified of what he knew she was going to say he couldn't help asking the next question. "Why?"
"Because the city is in danger now. Not just physically, that's something we can deal with, but you still don't know a lot of things about Atlantis. It's more than a city or machine or… me. As you took hold of Atlantis, you became part of it. More than you think. You all live in a complicated symbiotic relationship with Atlantis. The city needs you to heal. All of you. And one of you now is in danger. But she needs YOU to heal. That's how it all comes to a full circle. That's why I'm here. I care about you and I need to heal myself. You can't let her go, John…"
Her. She deliberately didn't use her name, knowing that John will know instantly who she was talking about. He didn't reply though, just kept staring out to the endless ocean, his posture fixed and stiff, his muscles tensing visibly. He took a couple of long, achingly deep and slow breaths.
She tried different tactics. "I know how it feels… I let Breno go a long time ago and I still think I will never be able to exist without him. Don't make the same mistake."
"It's not the same mistake." He turned finally. "It's not… I'm… We're not… Oh, for God's sake, I'm not good at this! Look, whatever you are… whatever you think, you're mistaken, it's…"
"If you let her go now, you'll regret it every day for the rest of your life. The city will survive but never be the same. Neither will you. Stop lying to yourself."
"Look, at the moment she must be pissed like hell at me. And it's not that I can convince her now. She's…" He couldn't say it aloud.
"It's going to be too late."
"Too late…" he repeated "It's already… It's all fucked up, don't you see?"
"No. It's not. You can save her. If you let your heart guide you. If you let her in. If you let her… care about you. If you don't let her soul go, she'll come back. To you."
"Look, even if you're right about me, and… and I'm not saying you are, you can't look into her head. She doesn't have the gene." He couldn't explain even to himself why he started to believe this stranger or why he didn't throw her out of his room immediately after she finished her impossible story. He guessed that his skeptical side must have been considerably weakened by the years he spent in Atlantis. Or he just couldn't let the newly found, faint glint of hope slip through his fingers.
"I don't have to look into her head." She smiled gently. "I was working mainly by observation here. And she is quite obvious, believe me. Even more than you are." She could tell that this took him by surprise, making his anger fade, so Lantia continued while she had this advantage. "So far she did everything to keep you here with her. She was patient with you, she protected you against the powers that be, she even got you a promotion, and although she was constantly worried about you, she always let you go, when she had to. Even when you were going towards your own death. You don't need a mind reader to know that she loves you. She loves the others as well, but you're special. And it didn't take a mind reader either to understand why you hurt her so much."
"Really?" he asked with and ironic, unbelieving undertone, not having a better response. John Sheppard was seriously pondering if what she had just said could be true. Could it be true that the strong, capable and wonderful Elizabeth Weir really felt that way towards him? No other than him? Yes, they have certainly gotten close during these past years, having been through together as much as they have, but wasn't it just an inevitable side-effect of all that? He didn't even know how he felt about her, although he did know that he cared about her, maybe more than he was supposed to… and he was attracted to her… and he missed her when they were separate… he thought a lot about her…
Hell, yeah, if he put all these stuff together, he had to admit, that there was something about Elizabeth… and yes, maybe – if he was really lucky – she felt something similar too.
"You should have shown her that you believe in her. You should have trusted her decision. You should have taken her side instead of the Air Force's… You shouldn't have betrayed her."
"I…" he began, but somehow the protesting words didn't reach his lips. He took a deep irritated breath and turned back towards the window. "I wanted to prove her… wanted to make her see that… I wanted to save her, save Atlantis, save everybody." As he spoke, his words faded into quiet guilty whisper.
"I know." Lantia smiled despite herself. "I know why you feel that, but you have to understand that you are not infallible and she doesn't need you to be. That's not what this is all about. It's about being there by her side, support her and fighting together…"
"I know." John interrupted. "I know and I'm sorry but that's just the way I am, I'm trying, I'm trying so hard and she…"
"You have already changed a lot. More that you think."
"Because of her…" he nodded. "If I lose her, if she… if she doesn't wake up…" his voice was soaked by sheer panic, but he refused to let go. He wouldn't have been John Sheppard if he'd let go.
"She will. Eventually. If you don't let her go, you can save her. And everything will be alright." replied Lantia slowly "Until then you have to be here, to support and defend her while she's not here to do it herself. She'll forgive you. She needs you. Just like you need her."
He sighed audibly.
"You have to be strong, John, and you have to be loyal to her and… to yourself. You have to be patient. You can't let her go like I let Breno go. You mustn't. She's your second chance. You two and your team are Atlantis' second chance."
He shook his head and said barely above a hoarse whisper. "I won't let her go."
The girl took a step towards him, and placed her hand on his shoulder. John turned to face her, but by the time his head reached the angle where he could actually see her, she'd already dissolved into thin air. He glanced around the room, but he was completely alone again. Not being entirely sure what'd just happened, he went back to his bed and laid down on it. He couldn't fell asleep immediately as thoughts were playing catch me if you can in his head. Thoughts about Elizabeth, about the recent battle, about Atlantis, about himself and about how he changed during these past years. Finally slumber took control over his brain.
When he woke up in the morning, the bright light of the new planet's Sun was coming through his window. After a moment of shock that he was certainly late from somewhere, he remembered that Dr. Keller gave him a free day, to catch up with sleep after the recent events. He put his head back on the pillow and the night's events came into his mind.
He kept asking himself if what he saw was a dream or reality, but he had no idea.
Whether a girl called Lantia visited him during the night either physically or mentally… or his bad conscience had him just conjure up the whole vision… he didn't know.
Nothing seemed to be out of place, there was no physical evidence; than again he didn't remember either of them touching or moving anything so there couldn't have been one.
He made a mental note to ask McKay to check if such a thing like an A.I. who's the "soul of Atlantis" can exist, but he had to do something else first.
He got up, took a quick shower, got dressed and headed towards the infirmary.
It was frightening how busy the medical facility was. He didn't dare to think about how many casualties this last battle brought to Atlantis, and about the bitter fact that among them there was also the heart and the leader of the city.
Elizabeth.
Her bed was the last one in the row, right beside the wall, surrounded by a thin a white curtain.
The doctors and nurses were walking around having too much work to pay attention to the visitor. He considered talking to Keller for a moment, but he knew if there was any change, she would have surely contacted him. He knew the deal. She was in a coma. After a quick surgery the doctors fixed what they could but the hit her head took and the amount blood she lost were to severe problems. They didn't know the exact reason of the coma, but still… there was nothing more to be done but wait.
He hated waiting.
John slipped around the curtain and saw her beautiful, strangely pale face. He missed the glint in her big green eyes – he realized.
"'Lizabeth…" he sighed "I don't know if you hear me, but… Damnit I hated this last time…"
He remembered when the nanites were taking over her body. He was so frightened back then. This time there was no plastic curtain, so he could do what he wanted to and eventually did do last time: he touched her. He took her hand in his and linked their fingers together carefully.
"I'm sorry." He said finally. "I'm so sorry for not trusting you, it's not like that, it's… You know who I am… I'm a jerk with a huge hero complex and this time… this time I really screwed up. I just want you to know that I'm sorry. I want you know…" he sighed restlessly. "Hell, I'm not good at this. I want you to know that we're waiting for you. I'm… waiting for you. And… if you do wake up, I promise that I'll try harder… I promise I'll do anything to… to not waste my second chance. That is, if you're still willing to give me one." He blurted out finally, a bit proud of himself that he managed to be more or less profound.
He squeezed her fingers, than lifted them to his lips and gently kissed them. He closed his eyes and pictured Elizabeth smiling at him.
"I won't let you go."
THE END
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