#2 - Suit of White
"Well, there's things that never will be right I know, And things need changin' everywhere you go, But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right, You'll never see me wear a suit of white."
Johnny Cash "Man in Black"
Set on Atlantis after "Heres" but before "Dei et Viri," just before the episode "Duet" picks up.
"Y'know," Lieutenant Cadman tells him as they're getting ready to step through the porta for a world rumour has it has been recently culled. They're hoping to find survivors from the descendant population there; people who can tell them how many darts came, how many they took, and how long they were there. It's not as good as sneaking aboard a Wraith hive and stealing information on their troop movements and numbers, but they've been able to maintain the fiction that they'd destroyed Atlantis rather than let the Wraith get their hands on it for almost four months now and doing something so blatant would give them away for certain, "if the goal is to remain hidden, shouldn't we be flying under false colours or something here?"
"False colours?" he asks. There are thousands of idioms in the Terran language of English. He's picked up a lot, and Atlantis has updated his translation matrix to include several of Expedition members' native tongues, but he's not heard this one before.
"Like not wearing the Expedition uniform when we go off-world. Something Athosian, maybe." She wrinkles her nose, perhaps thinking costumes like Teyla's would be difficult to hide body armour under, "Or Ancient. I bet no one would mess with us if we were dressed up like Ancients."
Iohannes considers this for a moment. One could at least hide a Kevlar vest underneath the elaborate outfits some of his people had worn, but, "Impractical," he decides in the end.
"Yeah. I guess it'd be pretty hard to make P90s and M249s look like Ancient energy weapons."
"That too."
"Why? White not your colour sir?"
"Not exactly, no." It's actually the laces he's thinking about – the elaborate ties down the back of the ribbed brigandines and heavy leather vambraces that were part of the standard guardsmen'suniform. Tying (and especially untying them) was impossible to do with any alacrity. Several career military, like himself, rarely bothered removing the vambraces at all during the Siege, the quicker to get into uniform should the Wraith suddenly decide to attack.
They're standing at the foot of the Control Room stairs, he and Cadman, with a couple other Marines as they wait for the rest of their away team – primarily Rodney and Carson, who Elizabeta has insisted on talking to right before they're set to leave. Major Lorne, however, is really the only one close enough to overhear their conversation, and snorts at the last.
Cadman just laughs. "You do pull off the whole man in black thing fairly well. Sir."
"Don't know that one either."
She looks confused for a moment, pausing in the middle of retying her hair before answering. "No, it's not a metaphor. It's Johnny Cash. I brought some of his music with me – you can borrow it if you like after the mission. Y'know, if none of us wind up in the infirmary after."
Iohannes nods non-committally. Other members of the Expedition have tried introducing him to Terran music, but he's discovered that after so many years of listening to Atlantis and her never-ending song that nothing else sounds quite right. Not even the classical artists that Rodney had tried introducing him to.
"I wouldn't have pegged you for a country music fan, Lieutenant," Lorne says.
She shrugs, settling her hat back on her head. "I shared an apartment with a girl from Nashville for a while. It was either learn to like it or go mad, and I figured a disappearing roommate wouldn't look good on my service record, so..."
Before she really has a chance to continue, the rest of their team joins them, and then Chuck's dialling the gate and, well, that was that.