The Astonishing Persistence Of Memory: Present Tense
Chapter Two
By the time the sun rose over the glittering wash of the river, Teyla had her bundle packed and bound, ready to go. There was little enough to take back – she had not brought much with her during this brief trip.
She paused at the tanning clearing, partly to speak with Miva and partly to allow Halling and Kanaan to catch up with her before she returned to Atlantis. Certain agreements among her people had been in negotiation and she had been unable to leave them hanging any longer. In the midst of the chaos of Colonel Sheppard's return to the city, she had not been able to make time for her own people. As it was, this had only been a short visit – the space of a day and a night with which to arrange the business of her people.
"I thought you'd stay longer," Miva said, glancing up from the hides that she had stretched out in preparation for the tanning solution.
"You would be bored of me if I stayed too long," Teyla said, smiling.
"You are our leader." The older woman's glance was swift yet sharp, like the piercing thrust of an arrow through the heart of a bird. "The daughter of Tagan."
The phrase caught her unprepared – it had been many years since anyone had mentioned her lineage. In Atlantis, the lines of birth and birthing were not considered so important as they were in Athos, and Teyla had found it a relief to live without her antecedents looking over her shoulder.
"That," she said simply, "is not for the now."
"Then when?" Miva crossed to the centre of the clearing, lifting a stirring stick from the nearby hook on which it had rested. "You should have had children long since, Teyla."
"To be food for the Wraith?" The argument was specious, and Teyla knew it even before Miva's frowning look her way. It had long been a question among her people – why she had not formed an alliance of blood and childbearing?
Before John and his people had come to Athos, Teyla had contemplated several such alliances. There had been a boy from among the Genii – her first lover at seventeen, a Mathran man who had found someone else more to his liking, various encounters both casual and pleasurable while trading, and even hints from among her own people. But the seed of her lovers had never taken root, and she had supposed it was not the time.
When she went to Atlantis, she had seen it as a sign that children and childbearing were not in her future – not when the Wraith were still to be defeated. If she had ever held a hope that the Lanteans might contemplate a more intimate alliance than the one they held, then that had been soon put away. With a world crowded full of people, the Lanteans held little value in the perpetuity of birthlines.
"Perhaps there will be a time for children in the future, Miva," she told the tanner firmly as she watched the stirring of the pot of tanning solution. "But not now."
For starters, Teyla presently had no lover – a rather essential part of the conception of a child.
"If it is always to be 'later' then it is more likely to be 'never,'" said Miva. "Charin would have told you as much if she'd lived, and you'd do well to think on that, Teyla."
And without a further word, Miva picked up a giant ladle and began dishing out the tanning solution onto the prepared hides. The liquid reeked of offal and the herbs that would help preserve the leather, and Teyla breathed carefully through her mouth for a few minutes.
Teyla watched for a moment, before footsteps along the track caused her to turn.
"Are you ready to return to the city?" Kanaan asked, pausing just before her at the clearing.
"Halling is not coming?"
"Jinto brought news from one of the hunting parties." Lean shoulders shrugged beneath the loose, comfortable shirt he wore in the summer warmth. "And Halling has spoken of all that lies on his heart."
"Was Jinto's news of any concern?" Teyla asked as they headed off up the path through the rocky bluffs that 'hid' the Athosian encampment from the easiest trails past the Ring.
"Only that they needed more hunters – the hireni are flocking."
Which would require not only the hunters, but many other hands to do the jointing and skinning of the fleet-footed creatures, who usually only met to mate in the early autumn amidst the cooling rains. "It is early in the season for this," she murmured as she made her way up a rocky path that wound its way up and along the hillside.
"Not truly," said the man behind her, sounding easy and comfortable. "Sahsha said that the warmer, wetter weather might mean an earlier mating gathering and therefore earlier flocking. But you have not been here to see it."
There was a chiding in his words that Teyla felt keenly.
"Things in Atlantis have been busy."
"With the return of Colonel Sheppard," Kanaan finished for her as they came onto the track that would lead them to the Stargate. He fell into step alongside her as he had so many times before. "His memory has returned in full?"
"So it seems."
"And you will be rejoining his team?"
She heard the layers beneath his question, the delicate threads of curiosity and condemnation in his voice. If Halling had revered the Ancestors while resenting the Lantean influence, Kanaan had never cared for either Lanteans or Ancestors. In the social circles of the Athosians, that had gained him no small amount of status after the Ancestors had refused to interact with any of the Pegasus cultures they had grown, then abandoned. His star had risen since that revelation.
"If he is permitted to leave the city again," Teyla said after a moment.
"They would prevent him from passage?"
"It is...complicated," said Teyla, thinking of all the angles and aspects of the Lantean politics. Some she understood, others were so foreign to her thinking as to be almost incomprehensible. "They wish to be certain that he will retain his memories and his health."
"Lantean caution again."
"There is no shame in being cautious."
"Nor any in trust."
"You know it is different for us."
"I know that after so many seasons, they have not integrated into Pegasus. That they cluster together in distrust of any others."
"They have reason." Teyla said, a little shortly. "Kanaan, we are not going to argue about this."
"I was not arguing." His mouth curled a little at the side, beneath the dark beard that covered his jaw. "You were taking offense at my criticisms."
"They have their faults, and yet they are our allies against the Wraith."
"Your allies against the Wraith," he corrected her. "Teyla, we have survived this long–"
"Survival is not enough," she said, interrupting him. "Our people have survived the long years of wandering, never remaining still for more than a season-cycle. Yet we have made no advances, learned few things anew – the Genii built themselves cities underground, while other cultures sought to resurrect their heritage. The firelighters are a lost technology to us, the rot-rods the same. We can be more. We should be more than we are, Kanaan."
Kanaan stopped in the centre of the path. "Yet we are what we are. Will Athos never be enough for you again, Teyla?"
Teyla turned to behold him, framed by the great trees that lined the light forests they had chosen to surround the Ring on New Athos. "Athos will always be my home, Kanaan, wherever you and the rest of our people live. But I am committed to the fight against the Wraith, too." And to the friends who shared that purpose.
His lips pressed together, as though he had something he wished to say, but when she tilted her head in silent question, he only shook his head and walked on.
Teyla chose not to make conversation. She understood Kanaan well enough to know that he would speak when he had something to say. If he would not be silent in the face of what he deemed foolishness, neither would he stand in her way when she had determined a course.
That much, she understood of him.
Yet this dissatisfaction with her chosen course sat uneasy with her.
They had been friends since childhood, sharing the same gift through a familial connection. Teyla trusted him above and beyond everyone else in Athos, even Halling. They were, as the Lanteans would have said, cut from the same cloth. And yet Kanaan had never felt the drive to fight back, to claim their people's safety inviolate. He traded and bargained, gathered information and settled disputes – but the kind of war that Atlantis might propose was not something he could comprehend or support.
Teyla had never expected her people to enter the fight alongside her. They would defend Athos, but more than that was beyond them.
She had always thought Kanaan had accepted that the fight was an intrinsic part of her desire to protect her people.
Perhaps not.
They continued on through the forest paths in silence, unerring, unhurried through the morning's dappled sunlight, until they reached the Ring. Kanaan stood back as she contacted Atlantis and sent through the recognition code. But when she turned to bid him farewell, he stepped in and his head lowered to hers.
Expecting the touch of forehead to forehead, Teyla was surprised when he dipped his head even lower to brush his lips across her mouth, a gentle kiss of invitation.
She froze for a moment, shocked by the gesture. His lips were warm and soft, and tasted a little of the morning's grainmeal.
When she did not immediately reciprocate, he released her shoulders and stepped back without an apology in his expression. His eyes met hers, and beneath the dark-fringed lashes she saw the steady calm that she had always expected of him, touched with a heat that brought an answering warmth to her cheeks.
Words eluded her, confusion spreading through her mind. "This is...unexpected."
"I know that you will fight the Wraith to your dying breath." His eyes sought hers, their darkness an anchor she had always clung to. "You feel loyalty to the Lanteans for what they have done. I would not expect otherwise."
"And yet you waited to make this claim until I was about to leave."
Something like a rueful smile touched his expression, gentle as dawnlight across the pillow. "Call it cowardice if you wish. Only...consider my tent open to you when you return to Athos."
"And this is all you would ask of me? To share your tent when I am here?"
"I would ask of you whatever you are willing to give. Nothing more."
And yet, from both his demeanour and the way his eyes sought hers, Teyla did not doubt that Kanaan would not accept anything less than what she was willing to let him take.
There were many things she wanted to say, questions she wished to ask. Yet the passage lay open and beyond, Atlantis must be wondering where she was, why she had not yet appeared.
"This cannot be answered now."
She felt as though he had seized a rug under her feet and dragged it out from beneath. Had that been his purpose? To leave her unbalanced, questioning?
No. That was not Kanaan's way, surely.
And yet...
Something flickered across his face as she hesitated in her answer. Pique? Disappointment? Resignation? Whatever it was, it faded too swiftly for her to read.
"Then go," he said, simply enough. "And I will see you when you return."
And rather than wait for her to go through, Kanaan turned away, glancing back only once with a twist gracing his lips when he found her still watching him go.
Hurriedly, her mind in confusion, Teyla stepped into passage and rode the memory of his smile back to Atlantis.
She walked out of passage and into the eye-dazzling brightness of morning.
At this hour, the mid-morning sun reflected up off the Gateroom floor, a wash of light that blinded any traveller coming through the Gate. It dimmed the surrounding balcony of the control room and the corridors leading from the Gateroom, turned people into mere shadows, and filled Teyla's eyes full of tears as her eyes tried to compensate for the brightness.
There had been some debate as to whether the choice of angle was deliberate – one of the Marines had suggested it might be a weapon against invaders, until someone else pointed out that that would only work if you could rely on your enemies to attack through the Gate between the hours of eight and nine-thirty.
Either way it was an inconvenience, however momentary.
Walking forward, Teyla could hear the sound of weapons being stood down from their ready positions, the click and clatter of the technicians up in the Gateroom as they ran diagnostics, or managed the city systems, the occasional voice lifted in commentary or conversation. The noises reassured, a comforting familiarity – as much as, if not more than, the peace of the woods on New Athos.
As she reached a line of shade out of the vivid blaze of sunlight, Teyla paused to get her sight back. The dark splotches faded from her vision and John morphed out of the dark shadow that had cast stark contrasts against the reflecting brightness.
"We were getting worried." Features burned by the mid-morning light gradually lost their dark blurriness and developed definition enough for her to see his smile. "Welcome home, Teyla."
Teyla took one long draw of breath in the salt-fresh air and let the mantle of Atlantis settle around her. Accustomed as she was to travelling through the Ring, there were still moments when she needed to accustom herself to the minute changes in air, temperature, weather, and even gravity. There were moments when she needed to feel with all her senses that she'd returned home.
And Atlantis was home to her now, as much as, if not more, than Athos.
Will Athos never be enough for you again, Teyla?
Her old friend's question had stung her pride, even as his stated desire for a change in their relationship had confused her. What had changed? Why had he chosen those last few moments to make his intentions known? What would she have done had he given her time to think about it?
Questions for which there were no ready answers.
Resolutely, Teyla put those thoughts to the side and returned John's smile, warm and easy, with the tilt to it that lately had begun to curl something in her stomach.
"It is good to be home," she said with perfect truth and more fervency than she had initially intended. A glance up at Elizabeth's office showed a crowd of people in there, and John's gaze followed hers.
"Meeting with the biology department," he said. "Something about extending the hydroponics suite. She said she'll drop by to chat with you after."
Teyla nodded. "What news has come while I was gone?"
John fell into step alongside, matching his pace to hers as he stuck his hands in his pockets. "Not much. Elizabeth's authorising the start-up of the geothermal deep-sea station down beneath the outpost and Zelenka's been assigned to put the procedure together. Apparently Edwards isn't going to let them touch a single thing until he's sure they know what they're doing."
Was there a thin thread of mockery in his statement about his senior officer? Teyla glanced sideways at him, found him looking grim-mouthed.
"Radek is putting the plan together? Has Rodney yet complained?"
"Every time I walk into his lab," said John. "Which is why I'm avoiding him right now."
Teyla did not shake her head at his statement. She would go past Rodney's lab later – a habit into which she had gotten during the months of John's long absence from Atlantis. Ronon would find her, seek her out if he wanted company or needed her counsel, but Rodney insisted that people come to him, that people meet him on his terms.
She did not make issue of it. Rodney was Rodney – without that insistence, he would not be the man she counted friend.
"Are you prepared for your appointment with Carson?"
"What's to prepare for?" He shrugged. "It's just a final check-up before I'm cleared to go through the Gate again."
And yet his discomfort – and Teyla's knowledge of the Lanteans and the way everything required documentation and care – suggested otherwise.
Teyla hesitated before asking the next question. Her conversations with Elizabeth over the last couple of weeks had been enlightening, but also somewhat disturbing.
"Would the IOA attempt to prevent you from resuming your duties?"
"Maybe, on Edwards' recommendation." John shrugged, his hands tucked deep into his pockets as they walked along the corridor. "At some stage, they'll want me to go back to Earth for 'evaluation'."
"If they are so determined to return you to Earth, will you be allowed to come back?"
"I'm still the strongest gene carrier we've got," he said after a moment. "I'm needed here."
Yet Teyla could sense the doubt in him. Atlantis had survived several seasons without John, and if they had not thrived, they had managed. The city did not revolve about John – life had continued on without him. For a man whose identity was so tied into the city and its people, that knowledge would be a struggle.
John had gained his place in the expedition through luck, then kept his position as Atlantis' military through heroism – and no small amount of politics. Atlantis was where he had made – or, perhaps, remade – himself; where he had accepted who he was and started to become who he could be.
Kolya and the Wraith who had betrayed John had not merely taken his freedom or his sense of self, they had taken John's sense of his place in the universe.
Without it, he was as a tent without anchor-pegs, loosely dashed and torn against the landscape.
That the IOA would try to take that from him again knotted a hot anger in her chest.
Even after several years with the expedition, Teyla found it difficult to understand why the Lanteans would so blithely waste a useful, brave man by putting him aside to do nothing. Life was not so plenteous in Pegasus that they could afford to waste even one person – certainly not someone as resourceful and determined as John.
"General O'Neill would support your return here, surely."
"If only to keep me out of trouble in the Milky Way," said John with a wry smile as they approached the transporter that would take them out to the rest of the city.
"If you cannot be famous, be infamous?"
This time the humour showed in the twist of his mouth to one side. "Who showed you Chicago?"
"That is the movie from which the quotation comes?" There were so many Lantean entertainments, sometimes she felt it was a wonder that anyone from Earth completed any task they were set. "I do not believe I recall it."
"Catherine Zeta-Jones in garter stockings? Or, in your case, Richard Gere singing and dancing?"
Teyla laughed. "That is no assistance to my memory, John." She never remembered who any of the Earth actors were anyway. According to Laura, an entire industry had grown up around these people, what they did, what they wore, who they bedded, their children, their lives. It made little sense to her, although she kept her thoughts on this to herself and merely asked, "Perhaps, after your evaluation this evening, we could watch it?"
His expression froze, halfway between dismay and embarrassment as the doors of the transporter slid smoothly shut behind them.
"Yeah," he said with a weak smile. "Sure."
"If you would rather dig your own eyeballs out with a rusty fork, I quite certain we could find something else to watch," Teyla told him, struggling to hold back a laugh but not disguising her amusement at his horror. As far as she knew he had planned some 'team time', although he had not specified what activity they would be doing. More often than not, it involved watching a movie or a TV show from Earth; sometimes it involved playing Pegasus games, or telling stories until late into the night.
Sometimes it simply involved them sitting in the room together, doing their own things, whatever they might be.
"See, I don't mind it," John said, lifting a hand to jab at their destination. "It's not that bad – kind of crazy, maybe. Okay, we can watch it. But only as long as I don't have to put up with anyone singing along to the musical numbers."
Within the transporter, there was no sense of movement, nothing that might indicate that anything had happened. And yet when the doors opened again, they were far from the central spire of the Stargate, out towards the personnel quarters of the city.
"So, no Lieutenant Vogel?"
"Definitely not Lieutenant Vogel," he said with such emphasis that Teyla let her laughter fly before she restrained it.
"Perhaps," she suggested, "rather than watch it in the rec room, we could have a private team movie night with Ronon and Rodney?"
"Watching Chicago?" John sounded incredulous. Then something like a gleam of mischief appeared in his eye. "Okay."
Teyla's eyes narrowed. She distrusted such willing capitulation, especially from him. Elizabeth had once said that when John changed his mind, she started looking for the trapdoor and the whoopee cushion. "John?"
"A team movie night sounds good, Teyla," he said, and did not bother to disguise his glee. But when she eyed him with suspicion, his expression turned innocent and she did not have the heart to bully him into telling her his plans.
She would find them out soon enough, anyway, if his expression was any indicator.
"So how are your people, anyway?" John asked as they hit the edge of the personnel quarters. Teyla was a little surprised at the question, and more surprised to realise he seemed to intend to follow her to her quarters as she put her pack away.
It took her a moment to answer.
"They are well," she said at last. "Busy with the summer's activities."
This time, it took him a moment to answer, and when he spoke, there was a strained quality to his voice. "Harvest?"
"Hunting," she said and felt his tension ease. The Orawi had been farmers, she recalled, although John had been a hunter among them. Even as John Sheppard he retained the memories of Yan Stormborn – of a less complicated life. Living in Atlantis, among the Lanteans, Teyla understood that feeling. "There was news of a flocking just as I left."
This time, the pause was thoughtful rather than tense.
"Flockings – that's when the hireni gather to mate, right? Or...after it?
"After."
"They become like...big working parties, don't they? Everyone joins in?"
"It is a big event," she agreed. "Most of the camp joins in – even the children are set to help by picking herbs and fetching water, and the older ones are taught the skinning and jointing."
Her own childhood memories intruded – days of sitting shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the other Athosian children as they were taught how to carve and to skin, of sneaking through the woods to collect herbs and fragrant woods for the smoking process, even of daring into the cold-caves to steal scraps of meat from the carcasses before escaping to toast them by the children's fires.
"Good times?"
Startled from her memories, she found John watching her and smiled. "There was a hireni flocking in my ninth year – we had to send through the Ring for other allied clans to help us with the preparation. It was...a great celebration."
Even amidst the death of the beasts, Teyla had remembered the life and liveliness in everything from the skinners and jointers, bloody to their elbows, to the youths who sang their songs as they hewed wood – a female and male harmony, to the Elders who combed and spun out the great manes of the hireni into threads while they spun tales and lessons for the children to learn as they helped with the work.
She had never shared that with her allies from Earth, suspecting that they would find the slaughter barbaric. And yet the core of it was a community working together for survival, just as Atlantis did, the living threads of her people woven into a cloth of memory.
John was still watching her.
"It is hard to describe," she said, simply. "It must be experienced."
He nodded, accepting her explanation. "Ivali said that when the hireni flocked on Orawi, everything stopped."
There was a hint of wistfulness in his voice as he spoke, and Teyla found herself regarding him with surprise.
John had not spoken openly of his time among the Orawi since he had regained his memory – at least, not in Teyla's presence. This was not something she would have expected John to share with her – either the memory of his time on Orawi, or something that Ivali of the Orawi had told him.
Teyla had supposed it too painful, too intimate for him to share with the other Lanteans, although there was curiosity from many quarters regarding his experiences as 'a Pegasus native', from Elizabeth's curiosity about the trade and interaction of the Orawi leadership with the planets beyond Orawi to the anthropologists' avid questions about the minutiae of daily life.
She had not ventured questions; the missing time of his history was not hers to demand and never had been.
"It is much the same among my people – both work and celebration. It is a good time."
Envy flickered across his expression before he moved out of the way of a group of scientists making their way down the corridor. She felt the warmth of his chest close by her shoulder; then they passed, and John stepped back again.
"I never saw the hireni flocking while I lived on Orawi."
"The hireni will flock in future years on Athos," Teyla said as they reached her quarters and the doors slid open. "When they do, you will be welcome to come and participate."
"I'll hold you to that, you know."
It was surely her imagination that painted him with a soft glint in his eyes as he paused outside her room. Teyla answered evenly in spite of the catch in her heartbeat.
"I would not expect otherwise."
Still, as she swiped at the entry panel to her quarters, Teyla reflected that, of late, John's behaviour had become uncharacteristic of what she'd come to expect from him in the years before he was taken. The lines had been drawn long ago, and in her dealings with John Sheppard, they had become familiar. She knew where they were and how close she could tread; she knew when she was crossing them and what his reactions would be; she knew her own mind and heart on this matter and trusted that she knew his, also.
After the return of his memory while saving the outpost, Teyla had presumed the old boundaries had retained their inflexibility. She was beginning to doubt that initial presumption.
Something had changed within him, and she was uncertain as to what.
In truth, she found it a little unnerving. She had always been attracted to John Sheppard – as were many women in the city. Attraction, however, was not the only thing she felt for him. As team-mates they had become good friends, and she had become accustomed to his manner and his idiosyncrasies – the markings of his trails and the pitch and sway of his tent, as went the Athosian phrase.
This was new territory.
"If you will wait a moment for me to unpack, I will accompany you to the infirmary. I have questions I would like to ask of Carson."
"Do you want me to wait outside?"
"No, this will only take a moment."
She could feel his eyes on her as she began pulling out the clothing and tools in her pack. She had travelled light, not intending to spend very long among her people, so there was little to clear up.
John was silent, scuffing his toes against the floor. Clearly he had something on his mind. Teyla glanced up at him but did not ask him his thoughts. He would tell her if he felt she needed to know.
"Are you okay with this?"
"With what, John?"
"With coming back to the team."
Startled, Teyla paused in hanging up her coat in the wardrobe. "Why would I not be okay with returning to the team?"
He shrugged and his eyes skittered up to hers for a moment, then drew away as though ashamed. "You're... You've been spending time with your people again, and now that they've got this new planet and everything... I wouldn't blame you if you'd prefer to stick with them rather than come back to the team. I'd understand."
She smoothed her hands down the nubbled fabric of the coat, giving her a moment to choose how best to say what she wanted him to understand. When she closed the wardrobe door, she had the words she needed.
"I wish to be on your team, John," she said. "We have missed you."
"We?"
"Ronon, Rodney, and myself." She waved one hand to indicate the city beyond. "Atlantis."
She wondered if she should tell John that, since his return, there had been a measure of life to Rodney that had been missing during John's disappearance. At his best when in disagreement and disagreeableness, Rodney had found no-one willing to constantly engage in conflict with him in John's absence – no-one who could satisfy that part of him that craved someone to push back, to prod, to provoke.
She wondered if John realised that, if Ronon had made friends among the Marines, he also missed the silence and acceptance of someone who comprehended the solitude endured through those years running alone. John had run by himself for a long time, too, before making himself a family here in Atlantis.
She would not mention that her own life in Atlantis had been lonelier without him – without someone who was both willing and able to reach out. With the advent of Colonel Edwards, Elizabeth had become limited in the time she could spend with Teyla, and even when they spent time together, it was not the comfortable closeness Teyla had enjoyed with John.
Sometimes she wondered if John realised how much of a gap he had left in their lives.
"Your friendship is important to us, John," she said, trusting the simple affirmation to convey her meaning. "You are important to us. Of course we would wish you back, to return to our work together as a team."
"I just..." He hesitated. "I wasn't looking for reassurance."
"You have it nevertheless." She turned to put her empty bag away in a storage chest, and gave him a moment in which to be private.
"It's pretty mutual," he said after a moment. "Just so you know."
It was so very John in its delivery. Halting and uncertain of reciprocation, offering up and yet holding back, all at once – a contradiction in body and spirit both.
Teyla felt the grip of profound tenderness at that difficult, halting confession that nevertheless came from his heart. Which was foolish, because she had heard such sentiments before when they had gone to find Ronon on Sateda. She had known how much John cared for his people before he even realised it himself. And yet, there was something in the confession from him now – quiet and raw from a man who doubted himself so wholly and yet should not have.
She swallowed hard and blinked before she straightened up from the storage trunk and faced John where he stood by her door, his hands casually in his pockets, his head turned aside.
"I am ready to see Carson," she said gently, changing the tone of their conversation. "Shall we go?"
He lifted his gaze and his eyes held hers as he stepped back and swept an arm out to show the corridor behind him.
--
"You pulled me off the Outpost Project just so Carson could say you're medically unfit to go back out through the Gate?"
Ronon hid his grin behind a forkful of mash. In spite of changes in command, memory loss, and time, some things remained essentially the same. McKay would have complained even if Sheppard had been declared ready to go; that Beckett had been forced to hold off signing the authorisation another day was just falithit to the spark.
Sheppard knew that, of course, but his pride demanded a response to McKay's accusation. "I'm not medically unfit, Rodney."
"It's a medical fitness test," said Rodney, huffing slightly. "You weren't cleared. Therefore, you must be medically unfit."
They were sitting in a room off one of the recreational spaces – a room of great black lounges that started off hard against your skin but softened after a few seconds, becoming malleable as they form-fitted themselves to your body. Ronon and Sheppard had brought dinner up from the mess hall, Teyla had brought the drinks, and Rodney had produced a stash of the crisp-bits and jellies for snack fare during the movie.
Privately, Ronon would rather have been doing something else – something fun, like fighting or picking a random planet to go out and explore. But it was Sheppard who'd wanted this, and so Ronon acquiesced. Sometimes it was good to retreat, hunker down, and tell stories of old in the silences.
Sheppard rolled his eyes, but it was Teyla who answered. "Carson said one of the tests revealed an anomaly in John's DNA typing."
"So…medically unfit?"
"Edwards wouldn't sign the paperwork without it," grumbled John, poking at his stew. "Beckett even said it was probably part of a shipment of contaminated swabs from a couple of years back."
It hardly seemed possible that McKay's voice could go any higher, but it did. "They've been using contaminated swabs?"
Ronon reflected that his team-mate had had an arrow in his butt, had caught all manner of Ancient bugs and viruses, diseases, sicknesses, and had accumulated his own set of scars – impressive by Rodney's standards. The news that a pack of swabs had been contaminated was small by comparison.
"They were not known to be contaminated when they were delivered by the Daedalus after the siege," Teyla said, and Ronon caught the soothing pitch of it. "It was only after they arrived and were unpacked that a recall was made on Earth. They thought that they located it all, but Carson says perhaps not."
Rodney sniffed. "And the upshot is that we're stuck waiting another week for Sheppard to get his act together."
"We'd be waiting anyway," Ronon reminded him. "IOA's got to have their say."
"The IOA can kiss my–"
"Rodney…" said John warningly with a glance towards Teyla.
"If it comes to that," said Teyla as she poked her fork through a chunk of meat, "they may kiss mine."
This time, Ronon couldn't help the guffaw that escaped him. The Lanteans had strange notions of politeness – strange to Satedan standards, anyway.
"Yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball," Rodney muttered.
"It won't be a week," said Sheppard. "Just a few more days. And, yes, I'll have to go back to Earth for a few days at least, but it'll be a cursory interrogation before O'Neill sends me back."
"I thought they were sending you back for mind-stability testing," Ronon said.
"And that." Sheppard sounded like he'd rather have his tongue cut out of his head.
Ronon thought he had finally gotten to the place where he understood that reluctance.
The military on Sateda had been nothing like that of Earth. On Sateda, everyone got mind-stability testing – it was part and parcel of your fitness report, like your daily run, or your Wraithkills. People got damaged in the course of the fight against the Wraith – body damaged, mind damaged. Some people had weak knees or ankles, some people broke bones more easily than others, some people struggled with the scenarios they were put into, but the Satedan attitude towards weakness wasn't to avoid or deny it – it was to know where it was so it could be watched, dealt with, and prepared for.
He'd said as much to Teyla, who merely shrugged. "They do not accept life as we do. Perhaps because their dominant cultures have not had to struggle towards it, so they lack the ability to empathise."
"What if you don't pass their psych evals, though?" Rodney persisted.
John didn't look happy at the idea. "I'll pass," he insisted. "And Elizabeth said O'Neill wants me out here anyway. So I'm coming back."
"When?"
"Whenever they send me back!" John threw his hands up into the air. "When the second coming happens! Jeeze, Rodney, I don't know!"
"You know the final plans for the Outpost Project—"
"I spoke to Elizabeth about it this afternoon," John interrupted. "You're earmarked for the preliminary stages – which is all that you'd be interested in. You'd get bored later on, Rodney."
Another man might have been grateful. McKay, deprived of the excuse to grumble, subsided into a momentary grumpy silence. It was, being McKay, only momentary. "Do we have to watch Chicago?"
"Teyla wants to."
"You may blame me, Rodney," Teyla said at the same time.
John looked at her, slightly defensive. "I didn't say anything about blame."
"It was implied," she said, so matter-of-factly that Ronon couldn't help a grin. When Teyla wanted to hit back, she didn't pull her punches. "And while it is true that I would like to see it, it is not true that we must."
"It's a musical."
"I thought you liked music," Ronon said to Rodney.
"I like classical music. Not this...singing and dancing stuff."
"You like the singing and dancing at the harvest celebrations," Ronon noted, remembering at least one night involving beer and what Rodney had termed 'the funky chicken'.
McKay scowled pinkly and glared at his dinner plate. "That's...different. It's a different kind of singing and dancing."
Ronon frowned. The way McKay phrased it suggested that one type of singing and dancing was acceptable, but the other was not. Yet both were practised. He'd noted the same reluctance among the Marines – there were some activities considered suitable compared with others, He opened his mouth to ask, but caught Teyla's eye. She shook her head slightly. Ah. One of the Earth sexuality limits then. The Lanteans were inordinately fond of that – of binding up their ideas and ideals of gender and sexuality in so many restrictions that Ronon considered it a wonder they ever had sex at all.
"How about we compromise," said John in a tone so reasonable, it made Ronon narrow his eyes. Across from him, Teyla had a similar reaction, her lashes lifting in flaring surprise as she looked at John. "How about WALL-E instead?"
Rodney's agreement was instantaneous, and Teyla took only a moment longer to acquiesce, although the speculative look she shot John suggested something had been made clear to her in the last couple of hours. Ronon shrugged – it was all the same to him, whether singing and dancing stories or the kinds of stories that Earth children were taught. It was still a sharing in which they all participated. If it was more passive than he would have liked, well, this wasn't Sateda, and they weren't his troop.
The screen was not one of the bigger ones in the city but it was big enough for them all to see, even if Rodney complained that they could have booked the projector in the main rec room or gone to his lab where a projector screen was set up – mostly so he could play computer golf.
"It's a trade-off, Rodney," John said, with pointed patience. "We won't get disturbed up here."
"Nobody would disturb us in my lab!"
"But you would work," said Teyla.
"I wouldn't!"
"You would," Sheppard was unsympathetic. "You'll survive the smaller screen, Rodney – you spend most of the day staring at a smaller screen."
"Only because Helen Gregory stole the 28-inch screen after Kavanaugh went back," Rodney grumbled.
"God, Rodney – you're not still angry about that are you?"
"I deserved that screen!"
"Can you not put in a requisition?" Teyla asked. "Carson applied for the large monitors in the infirmary, and I believe the control room personnel have an arrangement with many other divisions in the city..."
"It's the principle of the thing. I was promised that screen..."
Sheppard sighed and Teyla's mouth curved. "Just remember," she said. "You asked for this."
"I did. And I bet that Elizabeth told you to say that, didn't she?"
"She might have mentioned it," said Teyla with a hint of smugness. "But it is no less true."
Ronon grinned at the exasperated look Sheppard shot her. "Thanks." The sarcasm had an edge that could slice through bone.
"Regretting it, Sheppard?" Even McKay was in on it, a smug twist to his lips.
Sheppard flashed them all a pointed glare. "Not even for a moment."
They ate the rest of their dinner in comfortable conversation since Sheppard refused to allow them to do a 'TV dinner'. Instead, they traded city gossip and various items of news from around the city, and listened to Rodney complain about the people he was working with on the Outpost Project.
"So they believe they can get the geothermal station working?" Teyla asked.
"That's what Ottley thinks," McKay sniffed. "Although if she's trusting to Asehi's equations then she's going to be disappointed – it can't provide that much power – not by a long shot."
Ronon remembered a conversation with one of the scientists, one afternoon during a hand-to-hand lesson. "Hayes said that even half that would help."
"They'll make it work," said Sheppard. "Even without you, Rodney."
As they settled back down after dinner, Ronon reflected that he'd missed his friends without John. He and Sheppard had just been growing familiar when the other guy was taken. They'd been working out what they knew about each other, sorting out how they would work together. Ronon had instantly known that he and Teyla would get along, but it was different with guys who hadn't trained in the same squadron.
A team was a delicate web of personality politics interwoven with professional skills, and as soon as he walked into Atlantis and met Dr. Weir, Ronon had known that he wouldn't be an easy fit with most of the personnel in the city.
As it turned out, though, he'd been a perfect fit for Sheppard's team.
Sprawled in his lounge as the movie started, Ronon glanced around at his team-mates.
Sheppard was teasing Teyla with the bowl of popcorn, a faint smile hovering about his mouth. In the couch beyond, Rodney was typing what he claimed was an urgent email on his laptop. He'd been threatened with dire consequences if the laptop wasn't closed down when the email was done, and Ronon had been given permission to take it off him if they caught McKay doing anything else.
"Rodney, are you done yet?"
"Nearly!"
"Rodney!"
A patter of clicks later, McKay closed his laptop. "Look, it was important!"
"It couldn't wait until after the movie?"
"If it could, then I wouldn't have said it was important!" McKay pushed the laptop to the side as the little lamp bounced across the screen and squashed one of the other letters. "See? I'm not on it now..."
They plunged into a world of flickering light and dusty earth; where an abandoned world was tended to by a tiny little robot who moved about his duty with cheerful persistence.
Ronon let himself be drawn into the story, ignoring McKay's comments on the technology, and Teyla's occasional inquiry regarding some detail or another that caught her eye. As far as Ronon was concerned, he didn't need to know the details, he was content to let it all flow past him and let the little things be lost in the broad flow of the story.
It was a good story, too. After two or three years, he was beginning to get the hang of the Earth stories – the visual cues they used to associate things with concepts. Very Lantean.
Some time during a sequence in the captain's chambers, Ronon glanced over and saw that Sheppard had fallen asleep, his body easing down to one side, his head cupped by the form-fitting chair cushion that had formed a kind of pillow in support.
For a moment, he thought about waking the guy, but decided against. No reason to have Sheppard shaken out of what looked like a well-needed rest. Ronon hadn't noticed anything particularly wrong for his team-mates, but then, he hadn't been actively looking lately.
McKay and Teyla were still watching the screen, though – Teyla looked utterly rapt in the story, her hands folded in her lap, her legs crossed beneath her as she leaned back in the seat.
The robots saved the ship, the ship went back to Earth, and EVE saved WALL-E with his replacement parts and a kiss.
The credits rolled.
"Okay," McKay said at the end with something like a cough. "That wasn't too ba– Teyla?"
She was still sitting as she'd been halfway through the movie, her eyes fixed on the screen, her legs beneath her, her hands in her lap, barely blinking.
"Teyla?" Ronon touched her shoulder, shook her gently, but she didn't jerk out of it. "Teyla!" Sudden visions of the Wraith filled his head, and he gripped her shoulder and slapped her face, a swift, hard smack to break her out of whatever trance she was in.
She swayed a little, but no change.
"Jesus, he's freezing!" McKay looked up from where he'd just tried to wake John. "What's going on?"
"Don't know," Ronon said bluntly. "But she's not coming out of it. Sheppard?"
"He's breathing; just cold as ice."
Ronon settled his earpiece and contacted the infirmary. "Beckett?"
"Ronon?" The soft, questioning voice was definitely not Beckett. "Sorry, it's Jennifer Keller. Dr. Beckett's just gone out for a break. What's wrong?"
"Sheppard and Teyla, in the small upstairs rec room. We can't wake them. Sheppard looks asleep but he's cold like snow – still breathing. Teyla's in a trance of some sort. Eyes open but unresponsive."
"You can't wake– Okay. Um. I'm sending a medical team up there now–"
It was very sudden. One moment, Sheppard lay like one dead, the next, he thrashed like a man held down by the Wraith, knowing his death was coming, struggling against it.
"Sheppard!" Ronon added his voice to McKay's as they tried to gain John's attention through the flailing terror that marked the line between sleeping and waking. "JOHN!"
John jerked, turning towards Ronon. And there was an instant in which Ronon saw madness in the other man's eyes before it drained away, leaving only the man he knew. John blinked, lifted his hand, and pushed at his forehead. "God, that was the most awful dream..."
Teyla made a noise somewhere between a choke and a gasp. Her hands rose from her lap as her shoulders heaved, like she'd just taken the first breath of air after struggling beneath water for a long time.
"Teyla?" Sheppard reached out, his hand questing for her shoulder, and without even seeing it coming, Teyla twisted away.
Ronon grabbed her hands, held them in his own. Her fingers were chilled, like she'd been out all night in the cold. Her grip was fierce – as though it sought reality out of the smoke of whatever she'd seen in her head. "Teyla?"
Her eyes fixed on him for a moment, and if there wasn't madness in them, Ronon saw that who he was didn't matter in this moment. He wasn't the person she sought in this instant – he wasn't important. Then she turned her head, her gaze fixing on the man whose hands had fisted in his lap, whose gaze held the glimmering start of a terrible revelation.
"What just happened?" McKay demanded.
Teyla looked at him, looked at Ronon, looked back at John.
"The Wraith are coming."
And her fingers gripped Ronon's to the pain-point.
- tbc -