Crossing the Line
Chapter Two
Team movie night was the day after he got Weir's official permission. Not that it was an official team movie night, but Cadman had taken to calling it that when their team had ended up watching a movie the same night at the same time five weeks in a row. It had become a bit of a tradition with them, broken only when one of them was in the infirmary - or on leave, which happened so rarely it wasn't even worth mentioning.
This week's selection was Rear Window, which Cadman and Lt. Riley had assured him was a classic; he had to admit he was slightly suspicious of a movie suggested to him by a tap-dancing explosives expert and a several-times black belt who had read all of Jane Austen's works, but it seemed he had little choice in the matter, as Danny had steadfastly refused to back him up.
He thought he would stop by her room a few hours early, tell her the news, and invite her to watch the movie with them. Quite simple, really
He wasn't sure exactly where her room was, so it took him half an hour of being misdirected by well-meaning souls to find it.
He was surprised when he did find it, though. It was in a newer section of the city that he hadn't really gone through yet, a small, secluded area. No other people in sight. From inside the room drifted the sound of something - a piece of music. Ave Maria? On the cello. Nicely done, too. Not, perhaps, professional standards, but pretty close to it. She must have spent hours practicing that.
Right. Team. Movie night.
He knocked. The cello screeched to a halt, and he winced. She probably hadn't been expecting company.
"Just a minute - Cadman?" Her voice sounded muffled, like there was cloth over her head. Changing, probably - or, judging by Cadman, perhaps merely dressing.
Kid sister, kid sister. . . . Right, she had asked who it was - or something like that.
"No, it's Lorne."
Silence.
Quick scraping and shuffling sounds. An opening and closing of what he was pretty sure were closet doors. Hurried scrambling. He snickered. Apparently Jason Riley wasn't the only person on Atlantis who was lax about cleanliness. Though most people hadn't brought over many personal effects - even the dirtiest of rooms could only be a bit cluttered at most.
He had been leaning a bit on the door without noticing, so he stumbled when they slid open, and for a few moments he was painfully aware of just how clumsy he must look.
She, on the other hand. . . . He had never seen her wearing civvies before; she looked. . . cute. Her hair was slung back in a messy bun; she wore some soccer jersey, boy's basketball shorts, and a pair of dusty socks. She looked - relaxed. He had never seen her so; she was always rigidly tense when he was near. Ah, the downfalls of being a superior officer: no matter how wonderful the people serving below you were, you could never really get to know them for what they were in real life. No matter where you were, no matter what the situation, there was always the matter of rank to consider. But tonight he had caught her alone, off guard. She had forgotten who she was and who he was, and he was glad of it.
He realized she had said something - oh yes, inviting him in. He looked down; he had slumped back against the door.
Her room was nice. Very nice. There were candles and incense placed around the room; it smelled like cranberry. He wondered how she had gotten permission to actually burn anything in the sleeping quarters. There were several cushions thrown on the bed, but her pillow was nowhere to be seen. There were several posters on the wall, of some Hitchkock movies and Monty Python. The shelves had several books on tape, some dictionaries, and a few 'learn-how-to-speak-' CDs: Turkish, Danish, and Punjabi, from what he could tell. Strange mix, that. The poor thing really was a nerd at heart. Dr. Jackson would have been proud. There wasn't much else - a chair and a desk with a laptop, notebook, and a mug of coffee. There were several open letters on her bed, too. Ah yes, the Daedelus had docked in today; he would have to go check if he had gotten any mail this time.
"Won't you sit down?" She giggled, and he realized he had been gawking.
He looked around. She was standing next to the bed, which left the chair for him. He sat. The Ancients, no matter what their shortcomings, had known how to build chairs. It was far more comfortable than it looked. He waited until she got comfortable on the bed before he began. Or until he got comfortable with his own thoughts; he was not sure which it was, himself. The things he wanted to say he meant, and he hoped they would be enough; he had chosen her for his team, yes- but would she choose to be on it?
"I didn't expect much from you when I trained you, you know. You don't look like much for a soldier." She was stoic; what could be passing through her mind? She was good, when she wanted, at not showing emotion. He had noticed it. But she was tense again; he wished she weren't. "But appearances, as I have learned, have been deceiving."
One of her fingers twitched, and he looked down at his own hands. He had not even noticed he was rubbing them together. Strange how the mind worked sometimes, wasn't it?
"You're a good airman, lieutenant. Good enough to be on Atlantis - good enough to be on a team." He paused; her fingers had twitched again, and again he wondered what she was thinking.
Oh no. He had chosen Petit, and he was going to put her with Abidal. She knew he was going to put her with Abidal. It's not that she didn't like Abidal's CO, Major- what was her name? But. . . not Abidal! Anna knew Lorne had no problems with the man, but she did. Ever since they had boarded the Daedelus he had made it his mission to prove that he was better than her in every way possible. Not just in age, rank, and combat experience, but in knowledge of Ancient devices, in control of the ATA gene, in the ability to fly a jumper, in anything and everything he could possibly think of. He was a pompous, self-absorbed idiot, and she had been glad to be free of him. But then one of his team members had left, and the spot had been opened for either her or Petit. And now-
"Yesterday Dr. Weir gave me permission to add another person to my team - and I want it to be you."
Oh.
Well, that changed things a bit, now didn't it?
"Well, I-"
He looked up for an instant; his gaze was sharp. She had never noticed that before. His hands rubbed together, almost as if he were nervous. Why should he be nervous?
"You don't have to answer right now- or even today, really. We, we usually - my team, that is - we usually watch a movie together on Tuesday nights; and I would like-" He had been staring down at his hands, but now he looked her eye to eye, blue to brown. "If you would like to come, we'll be happy to have you."
He left the rest unsaid and walked out of the room.
There. It was done. Final. Nothing now to do but wait. If Marcus knew anything about her, he would have his answer by tonight.
If she was the sort of person he was hoping she was, by tomorrow his team would have as a new member the youngest and most inexperienced officer in Atlantis; if he had been wrong in his assessment of her, then by tomorrow his team would have another explosives expert - and he would no doubt feel free to flirt with any civilian he wanted to.
Major Lawrence's team, to which Cap. Abidal had been assigned, was a good team, sure. But it was a team that, for the most part, stayed on Atlantis. Major Lawrence didn't get her promotion for action, she got it for negotiation; she was one of Elizabeth's minions; her job was to keep the peace with the allies they had, not go and make new friends - or enemies. That was why Captain Abidal was the only other member of her team with military training; the others, including the man who had just left, were all doctors of one form or another. They tagged along with Lawrence and had a field day on planets where they were about as likely to be murdered as Marcus was likely to make it to retirement.
It's not that Lawrence and Abidal weren't brave, it's just that their job didn't necessarily require a lot of bravery.
Being on his team did. In the past year, six men whom he had commanded had died; in short, two-thirds of the people who had served under him were KIA. The odds of surviving for an extended amount of time while on his team were small, very small. Voluntarily accepting an appointment on his team, when given the chance to serve with Major Lawrence, would cement his opinion of her as one of the best, bravest, and, of course, craziest women he had ever met.
If she was the person he thought - or perhaps imagined - her to be, she would join his team.
If, if, if. . .
Waiting would be difficult.
There wasn't much in the way of celebration food on Atlantis, but Anna did find some blue jello and chocolate pudding in the mess and took some to the labs. She was popular in Atlantis around almost everybody, but nowhere as much as among the civilians - botanists, astronomers, and linguists, archaeologists, they would always go out of their way for her; she supposed it was because she was the only airman - or soldier, for that matter - who was actually curious enough about their research on Atlantis to ask intelligent questions about it. That she also bothered to read up about their fields of expertise so she could hold conversations with them also may have helped endear her to them; for her it was as much about self defense as it was being friendly: she had been stuck on Atlantis for seven weeks with them, and while all the off world teams were, well, going off world, she had joined the military personnel temporarily assigned with escorting the scientists around some unexplored regions of the city when it was necessary. If she had to babysit them, she might as well be able to chat with them intelligently; she had quickly learned that there was nothing like the sheer boredom caused by pacing, fully armed, around a small hallway, watching Dr. Parrish and Dr. Brown jabbering excitedly over some moss they found growing in a crack in the wall. It was enough to drive a saint mad.
She was heading towards Dr. Brown's lab right now; though there were almost twenty years between them they had become friends, of a sort. Anna had no delusions about how close they were likely to become, but, then, she didn't get close to people easily, not since Rebecca. But- but that was then, and this was now, and the one was completely irrelevant to the happenings of the other.
She found Dr. Brown in her lab, surrounded by various buzzing lab rats - also known in some circles as assistants. Oh, so the mold they'd found on that planet had turned out after all. She walked up behind the doctor and looked over her shoulder.
"M3Z-499?"
Katie jumped and swiveled around.
"Oh, hello Anna. Yes, that's the mold from there - it has the most amazing properties." She stretched out her hand to shake Anna's, but blinked when Anna handed her a cup of chocolate pudding instead.
"Do you have a few minutes?" Anna clinked together two plastic bottles of jello and grinned toothily. "I've just found out something you'll like to hear. . ."
Katie glanced at her assistants and nodded.
"It all seems to be under control. Here, we can use Parrish's office."
The room was small, cramped, and filled with file boxes and papers; only a scientist could have gotten so many with a system ruled by computers. Katie gingerly removed some from a chair and plopped down and started on her pudding, while Anna merely perched on top of several handy boxes. Oh, if Parrish were really going to look at them he would have done so all ready, really.
"So? What's the big news?"
Anna giggled. What she really felt like doing was bouncing up and down and squeaking, but she doubted the nervous older woman would appreciate that.
"Well. . . .I've been assigned to a team." She took a spoonful of jello and savored it; blue had never tasted this good.
"Oh, that's wonderful! Who's team is it?"
"Oh, nobody special. . . just Major Lorne's."
Katie actually squeaked and jumped in her chair, slopping some pudding on her lab coat.
"So, did he tell you he likes you yet?"
"Honestly, Katie, I don't know where you get your ideas. Even if he weren't my superior officer, he's almost old enough to be my father - I'm fairly certain I can say that there is no one on this base who could be any less attracted to me than he is." Anna rolled her eyes. "Oh, so how's Rodney doing?"
"Don't you try to change the subject - I've seen the way he looks at you. But Rodney is doing fine; actually, we have a date for tomorrow - do you think I should make cordon bleu or that new fish they got from M3X-472? I'm leaning towards the chicken myself, but. . ."
Anna leaned back and let her thoughts wander as the other woman debated the merits of chicken and fish, respectively. The way he looked at her. . . . Was there something in it, after all? There was no reason there should be, after all, and every reason there shouldn't. He was now, officially, her immediate commanding officer, and, from what she had heard and seen of him, he was nothing if not a man who followed regulations as best he could. And then there was the matter of his age; she wasn't sure precisely how old he was, but he had to be topping thirty-five; not that she had any problem with age differences: her first- and, to date, last- serious relationship had been with a man seven years older than her, but she didn't think it likely that Major Lorne would be attracted to someone so much younger than himself.
No, there was nothing there, nothing at all. But there was that in the way he had rubbed his hands together, had mumbled out his half-praises, nervously, something that almost made her wish there was.
7:42. Danny was playing solitaire at the table and Jason was sitting on the couch with a surfing magazine. Usually Marcus joined his friend for some black jack or speed, or they made it a threesome for poker, but he didn't feel like playing tonight. He would much rather sit on the loveseat and watch. Not that he was nervous or anything, he just didn't feel like playing.
7:44. Really, he wasn't nervous. He just couldn't get into a comfortable position on the couch: it was most definitely not fidgeting. Really.
7:52. See? Calm. Calm, clear-headed, and did he mention calm? The pacing was just because he was bored. Inside, he was merely calm, calm, calm. See? Calm. Not nervous. Definitely not nervous.
7:56. Well, Cadman was early, for once. Usually she was late - liked to get comfortable or something, and, of course, it took her at least half an hour to do so. Honestly, it's not like she were going on a date with Carson back on earth; it was just a night out with the team. Ah yes, the team. Team, team, team. He wasn't worried. Nope, not at all. He had faith she would come. She would come. And if she didn't. . . what difference did it make? It was just a slight attraction, nothing particularly life-changing. It was meant to be short and stunted before it began; not only was he her commanding officer, he was practically old enough to be her father.
No, nothing was ever going to come of it.
So why was it that he couldn't stop smiling when she walked into the room and sat down to join her team?
