STARGATE: ATLANTIS: Compassion Cloak

by Mirwalker

A/N: Sorry for delay on this and all stories. Work, holidays and competing stories have kept me from completing installments of anything since fall. Hopefully, I can build some momentum with this... Thanks for patience, and as always, for constructive reviews!

CHAPTER TWO

"Can I join you?" she asked, standing beside his table in the nearly empty cafeteria about an hour before local midnight.

"Jen, hi! Of course," the tired looking officer said, standing politely out of habit, and gesturing to the seat across from him.

"You're up late," she pointed out as she took the offered seat, and mixed a little sugar into her breakfast oatmeal.

"My team's already done with their post-mission stuff, and off to bed. I was just…," he began to gesture at the files stacked beside him on the table.

"Working alone, late at night, on stuff that Colonel Sheppard has put off for a while, and so could easily wait until morning? Especially after a busy day off- world...," Keller named, explicitly, with a clearly judgmental smirk.

The soldier just grinned back guiltily; caught.

"Evan," his friend smiled back and reminded quietly, "I know you miss him. But working yourself into the ground isn't going to help, or change that."

"I know," Lorne sighed, letting down his guard a little with this one person in this galaxy he didn't have to pretend around. "By midday tomorrow, he'll be beyond Pegasus, and well on his way to be safer back on Earth; and we'll be less at risk when not here together. But..."

The unfortunate paradox hung between them, not needing to be said. Evan felt it enough; and Jen felt bad for him, beyond missing her first Atlantis friend for herself.

Evan patted the pile beside him. "And… it's not like I don't have plenty to do to keep up, much less catch up around here of late."

She nodded. It had been busy: Just since her and Max's arrival, Michael had been created, and escaped. Evan had recovered from injuries sustained capturing Michael, only to have Max diagnosed with a deathly "allergy" to most Stargate-based technology. The Alpha team had been nearly killed rescuing a planet from the super-volcano the locals had accidently awakened. Then, Michael had returned to lead a hive to Atlantis, and gotten them all double-crossed by the Queen, who then made an attempt to reach Earth. Defeated, Michael and her hive had been treated with the retrovirus, but recovered and nearly escaped. And the City population was still reeling from having been brainwashed—chemically—and briefly subjugated by the huckster, Lucius.

Come to think of it, it had rarely been quiet, or simple, or safe, since she'd arrived. Above and beyond normal exploration operations, that clearly generated a lot of stress, and paperwork. But it also meant they needed more of a break, not more of the same. So, she smiled with some seriousness, "Would it do any good if I medically ordered you to take the night off?"

He grinned back, "I appreciate the thought; but until I get through this backlog…"

"OK," she conceded. "As long as this isn't just avoiding missing Max. I'll be watching you, Major. And I made a promise to tell him if you weren't taking care of yourself. If you don't fear me…"

"Loud and clear, doc," he laughed with her. He took more than a little comfort that his fiery redhead was watching out for him, even if soon to be a galaxy away.

"Where is he?" McKay shouted from inside the smaller room just off the large hall. While he'd immediately holed up in the lab, or control room, or computing facility—whatever it was, as soon as the Atlantis teams had found it a few buildings over from the Gatea stargate, their chief science officer had still continued to make himself known to everyone else as he demanded equipment brought to him, people out of his space, a sandwich delivered, and now, yet another update on his custom-ordered assistant.

"The jumper isn't here yet, Rodney," Sheppard shouted over his shoulder, with all the irritation of a parent explaining that they weren't "there" yet. Giving the whine no more thought than that, in fact, he turned back to checking in with his personnel using the paper-drawn sketch of this area of the city, since their scans were spotty at best, especially inside this complex. "Roger that, Ndele. Sheppard to all teams, that should complete our perimeter for now. Let's keep check-ins every ten minutes, eyes sharp, and bark at anything that varies from the status quo…"

"This place really does make you uncomfortable, John?" Teyla asked, not accustomed to this level of tight security or tense senior officers.

"This place gives me 'the creepers' too," Ronan added in defense of Sheppard's heightened defenses.

"It is a place created by the Ancestors," Teyla reminded, with a peaceful smile. "And the forest is simply reclaiming it now that they no longer have use for it."

"It's too quiet," Sheppard de-romanticized quickly, as he and Ronan started slightly as his shoulder-clipped radio announced, "Levesque to Sheppard, Major Lorne's jumper is arriving…"

That jumper was almost upon the sentries before they could finally make it out, skimming just below the low, ionizing cloud cover. It settled into the courtyard one building over from the crowded Gate colonnade, where the gate was being kept open as a quick escape exit to a neutral site, and to prevent anyone else from dialing in on the sensitive operation. The two jumper occupants exchanged friendly hellos with the relief pilot who boarded and kept it ready to lift off again quickly, if needed.

The new arrivals made their way deep into the crumbling complex, with friendly nods to a few of the vigilant Marines along the way. A smiling German soldier waved the brown-haired officer and the red-haired scientist into the large and improvised HQ room, where they dutifully checked in with the lead team members.

"Colonel," Royce nodded from just beyond handshake distance, before sharing a pleasant smile with Teyla and Ronan as well.

"Doctor," Sheppard nodded back with matching professionalism. "Sorry to have pulled you from your homeward travels; but, what Rodney wants…" He waved toward the open doors to the smaller side room where Rodney was waiting "to get."

Royce took a large, deep breath, glanced to Lorne, and headed into the mouse's den.

"Never mind facing us all again, was he keen on having his trip interrupted for more quality time with Rodney?" Sheppard asked with a knowing grimace. They all knew Royce still held their treatment of Michael, and of him in that fiasco, against them to some degree; but they also knew McKay held a special place in most people's hearts.

"McKay may get on his nerves; but he's also a geek at heart," Lorne reminded. "Another chance to get his brain around some new Ancient text is hard to pass up…"

"My money's still on Max, if it comes to it," volunteered Ronan, with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Your hair's a little messed up," McKay pointed out, as a means of greeting his former supervisee.

"Yours is thinning," Royce fired back immediately, smiling at the quick return to familiar insulting semi-jest. "How's Zelenka?" he added to soften the exchange.

"Still Czech," remained the firm judgment.

As he waited for McKay to look up again with instructions for their task, Royce ran his hand through his hair, hoping that Evan's shorter cut showed less tousling, or that the others had been less observant than the physicist. Another reason his return to Earth was for the best, if not easy.

After several moments, McKay seemed to remember that he was there; and shot him an irritated glance, before realizing the soft scientists needed him to explain the task at hand. Gesturing, he broke the work into small pieces that he felt the linguist could handle, "I've got power connected to a few parts of the system, and am going to try to activate it in sections; I need you to watch the monitors for indications of content. Despite the complete lack of neighborly indications on the scanner," he nodded to the tablet on the counter, "Sheppard is convinced we're going to be overrun at any moment. So we need to prioritize recovery of only 'vital' material… At least at first. Think you can handle that?"

"You don't think it odd that there's no life showing near us; none at all?" Royce asked, ignoring the implied jab, and instead looking at all the empty spots on the scanner screen. He'd enjoyed camping long enough to expect that some wildlife would remain or return quickly after the human's initial intrusion into their home territory.

"We've probably just scared away all the critters from the areas we're operating in," McKay dismissed, resuming his tinkering with the console in front of him.

"Every single one of them?"

"I don't know; thankfully, I'm not a zoologist… As long as they're giving me the same safe distance as I'm offering them, I don't really care about the local fauna. And, if that distance changes, we have guns, which I'm guessing they don't. So, while I'm thrilled not to be the paranoid one for once, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop it with the spidey sense nonsense and irrelevant questions, and focus on the data possibilities here, before Sheppard gets too warm or bored, and decides it's time to leave."

Satisfied with the strength of his chiding, McKay expected Royce to turn back to the tablet he'd pointed out; but with his peripheral vision he could tell that Royce had not moved at all. "Any time you want to get to it," he barked.

"Rodney?" came the quiet response.

"What?"

"Rodney!"

"What?!" the Chief Science Officer shouted with raw irritation.

McKay turned to find the little room was somehow and suddenly full of unfamiliar and armed people, one standing far too close to a tense Royce, who pointed out that "It seems the locals do have guns."

tbc...