Looking at the meals currently on the offering in the canteen, Blue wrinkled her nose and asked for a coffee instead. Sipping, she turned to leave the line and find a table where she could sit and glare menacingly at strangers.
"Good morning."
Blue jumped, squeezing the foam cup. Coffee splashed over her fingers. Hot coffee.
"Jesus Christ!" She cursed on reflex, shaking her hand.
"You may call me Your Grace."
She glared at Rodney McKay, who was standing beside her with his hands clasped behind his back. Blue ground her teeth, biting off her first impulse to abuse him for indirectly burning her fingers. "What can I do for you, Doctor McKay?"
"Well, I had been considering that since you had been elevated to the vaulted and somewhat exclusive fraternity that is Colonel, I thought I would come by and introduce myself."
"I already have been made privy to your presence, doctor."
"Ah, the dry wit. Yes, you will fit in very nicely." The doctor nodded somewhat briskly, and trailed along behind as Blue headed for an empty table. Military men fell back before her, seeing that McKay had latched onto her and was not throwing his barbed comments their way for the time being.
Blue felt terribly strange sipping what was left of her coffee, Doctor McKay sitting opposite her with his chin resting on his steepled fingers, watching her levelly like he could read her mind if he stared at her hard enough and avoid that messy business of actually having to talk to her. "So." He finally began.
"So."
"I've got some questions for you."
"I thought you might." She sighed, setting her cup aside.
"You aren't surprised. You knew." There was no doubt about what he was talking about.
"Yes. He told me."
For a fraction of a second he actually looked surprised. And then he was Rodney McKay again. "And you didn't think it was worth mentioning that to anyone?"
"Why?" Blue said impatiently. "I'm a career soldier, and I've been in Atlantis for as long as you have. I've seen what this place does to a lone alien when they're trying to figure out how he works or what secrets he may know."
McKay opened his mouth to protest, but reluctantly had to concede that she was correct. He'd never say that, though. "Why are you even talking to me about this?" She asked. "Lose a bet?"
He folded his arms. "Command decreed I was the more qualified to talk to you about this Maxel Delwynn as I am the more familiar with the Ancient technology of Atlantis."
"Lucky you. Maxel del-what?"
"Your pal. Max."
"Oh." She looked at the table. "If you're thinking I'm going to give you all some big revelations about the Ancients, you're wrong."
"Really?"
"Max never speaks much about Ancients or ascension stuff. There's a lot of bad blood."
"How do you mean?"
Blue gave him an unnervingly blank stare. "Anubis? Ori? Ringing any bells with you?" She narrowed her eyes. "It's no use asking me to ask him to give you any of the Ancient's technology, anyway." She said.
"Why's that?"
"Because of what Ascension eventually did to the universe, the Ascended won't let him."
Blue sat back and let McKay digest that bit of information. He was silent for the longest she had seen him. "Is he Ascended?" He finally asked carefully.
"No." Blue looked peered at the dregs of her coffee, and swirled them around the cup. "He's sort of... stuck here."
There was an awkward silence as the soldier and the scientist avoided looking at each other directly.
"There's something else,"
"I kind of thought so."
"We can't hope to win a war on the magnitude the Commander of the Furlings was talking about." McKay said. "So the Generals have taken the Furling's suggestion to lean on our galactic reputation and try to broker some sort of alliance between the warring races."
"And what has this got to do with Max?" She asked suspiciously.
"Ah, the government has conferred and they'd like your – friend to accompany the SGC's mediating team to the edge of the universe."
"Accompany?"
"Well, it's more of a spearheading operation. He's kind of an ace in the hole, if you will."
"He's not a performing monkey."
"No. He's the last of a very technologically advanced race which is responsible for our own existence and has pioneered Ascension, which every species we have encountered aspires too. Can you begin to understand the advantage that would bring us in our negotiations?"
"I can. I'm not sure he would."
"Colonel Jones, I quite clearly heard you say that the Ascended would stop him from giving anyone information on ascension or Ancient technology. Not on using his particular celebrity in a possibly volatile situation to broker peace."
"Bloody hell, Laura was right. You are slippery for a geek."
"Laura?" He immediately looked sour. "Laura Cadman?"
"How many other Lauras do you know?" She raised an eyebrow. "She's my roommate. It's easier to split the rent considering we're hardly ever there."
"Ah." He stood, and pushed his chair back in neatly under the table. "Can you at least approach your friend with the idea? Try to impress on him the seriousness of the situation, and that we need his decision as soon as possible."
With one last awkward half-wave, he left the canteen into the bowels of Stargate Command.
Blue sighed. It was time to save the universe again.
Since none of the Atlantis teams had officially resumed duty, Blue eventually managed to leave the office, carting along several armloads of paperwork that had managed to pile up while she was in Atlantis.
Laura Cadman was already home. Blue had met her during the battle of Atlantis, and that night they shared a bar of chocolate and talked about the respective craziness that brought each of them there.
Even her crazy hours on board the Daedalus were more predictable than Blue's life. She unlocked the door. The smell of pizza and beer hung faintly in the air. Once, on Earth, when Laura had still been dating that doctor, she'd forced Blue to join her in a complete overhaul of their respective diets. Of course, the very moment both of them set foot on Atlantis once more, the carrots and celery were out the window and it was back to living on energy drinks and microwave dinners.
Dr Beckett. Blue liked him. Everyone liked him. His blue canvas jacket was still hanging behind the door from the very last dinner he had shared with Laura in the apartment. Several times Blue had looked at it and considered sending it back to his family, but somehow she couldn't bear to touch it.
They'd buried too many friends in the last five years and bit by bit, she felt herself turning to stone, wondering when her time would be up.
You're a bloody cheerful bugger, aren't you, Jones?
"Are you awake?"
"No." Came a muffled voice from down the corridor. Blue smiled, dumping the file of papers on the coffee table. Casting a look at her inviting-looking armchair in front of the TV, she sighed and pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket. Scrolling through her address book, she scanned the names. Her finger hovered over the dialling button when she got to her mother's number, but she rung the number merely entered as M.
OO7 calling.
Max, Harry and DJ were being put up in Stargate Command, so Blue had no idea whether he'd be getting reception, but the rest of him was so outlandish she wouldn't have been surprised. As the line began to ring, she stepped back out into the chilly night, the wind waiting to steal her words away.
"Hello?"
"Max."
"Oh, it's you."
"Don't sound so overjoyed." Blue grinned, though he couldn't see her. "How's the room?"
"Very homey. I especially like how the guards who walk by every ten minutes and have a look inside to make sure I haven't dematerialised."
"Yes, sorry about that. They sort of figured out who you were on their own." She said uncomfortably.
"I expect that it would have come out sooner or later." He hesitated.
"Doctor McKay thinks you might be the last hope for the universe."
Max didn't answer straight away. "Somehow that doesn't inspire me with confidence."
"Why do you have to be so cynical about everything?"
He laughed dryly. "If you'd seen some of the things I've seen..."
"The bottom line is that I haven't. Either you can help us now or I'll sort out something so you can disappear, but there is no more room for you to sit around being all angst-y emo. Pull yourself together already."
"I think, in over ten thousand years, you would have to be the first to tell me that."
"So?"
Max sighed, the sound coming out as a wave of static over the line. "I think I'm a little over the hill now to be saving the universe. Those days are far behind me."
"Oh, right, because it must be such a pain in the ass to be stuck at thirty five for the rest of time." Grey hairs and sagging were starting to become one of her concerns, whereas a few years ago she couldn't have cared less. "You know, Max, any other time I could actually give a crap. You might live past the universe self-destructing, you might not. I don't think you'll care either way. But you know, I'm not quite tired of living yet. I'm nearly forty, and I've got a date. Do you have any idea how rare that is?
"Come on, Max. You're going to live forever. Might as well enjoy the ride."
He was quiet for a long moment, and then he laughed. "See you at work tomorrow." He said, and hung up, leaving Blue standing in the pitiful overgrown garden staring at the dead phone in her hand. He had hardly been off the phone for a minute when it began to buzz. Blue looked down at the screen. Any other time her stomach would have done a funny little flip like it used to do when she was back in high school, but right now she was too tired.
She answered the call.
"This is strike one, Major Lorne."
"I was worried." Could be classified as sweet, I guess. "You didn't look too good when you left work."
"You know, shotgun promotion, save the galaxy, imminent destruction, and try to convince a depressed alien that he's the last hope for the universe. I feel like I'm in a Douglas Adams book."
"You were promoted? Congratulations."
"I now outrank you, so be careful or I'll report you for improper conduct."
"Do you want to talk?"
And, surprisingly, she found she did.
She couldn't feel any movement underneath her feet, but an uncomfortable feeling still formed in her throat as she realised that she was indeed moving and she should be able to feel... something.
She'd almost always felt like she shouldn't have been there, and especially now the feeling had grown exponentially. Blue found she really wasn't prepared to be a Colonel; people treated her differently. Those that were once her peers aside from Laura, would not speak to her in a social setting and she was generally avoided by those on board.
Or perhaps it was just because that McKay had decided to hang around her, plying her with questions about Max in particular. It was worse after Blue had seen the boys; Harry was a spy and was more likely to turn the questions back on the doctor, DJ was a student and his mind was a twisty maze of hypothetical situations which he relied on under the Canadian's scrutiny, and Max just wouldn't answer if he didn't like the question.
McKay wanted to squeeze her, put her under so much pressure that she would let something slip. What he forgot was that she was a soldier. She was used to being under pressure.
But he was getting kind of annoying.
"I told you, and I'll tell you and I'll keep telling you. Max did not impart any intergalactic knowledge to me. I don't think he ever would."
"Oh? And why do you think that?"
"Well, I remember reading a report somewhere which suggested the alliance of Four Races did not think we had evolved enough to cope with the sensory overload. Also, there's the fact that he thinks I talk too much."
She could see by the way McKay's eyes were darting back and forth that he was thinking of a witty reply. Blue looked down at the touch screen she held in her hands. On the screen, as it had displayed almost continuously since they had left Earth, was the progress of the Daedalus to this new galaxy that the Commander had directed the ship to. Colonel Carter and her people had almost broken into conniptions when their scanners had picked up the galaxy and roughly charted the age of it.
It was 17 billion years old, well beyond the time of the Big Bang. Even Blue's head had been left spinning. Is it true? Are the Furlings really the people left over from the last Universe?
And now they were going there. Actually going there. And Blue would be with the Earth delegation that consisted of herself, Max, the Furling, Colonel Carter, Doctor Jackson, General O'Neill and Teal'c.
She never though anything would terrify her more than the Goa'uld. More than the Replicators. More than the Ori or the Wraith, but this, the prospect of unifying the whole universe or dying horribly scared the crap out of her.
She didn't even really know what she was supposed to be doing here, aside from hanging on to Max's coattails and trying not to make an idiot of herself.
Static buzzed in her ear, and Blue activated her headset.
"Hi, Max." She said.
"I need you."
"Woah, Max, you're a nice guy and all-"
"No, seriously. I need you."
"On way." Blue turned to McKay, who was looking wistful. "Well, this has been interesting." She clasped her hands in front of her. "But I've got a disaster to attend to."
Thank God.
"Disaster."
"My outer space friend is having a crisis of conscience. And when Max gets upset, things get messy." Blue said. "You're welcome to join in if you feel like some heart to heart."
McKay blinked at her, trying to ascertain whether she was joking or not. "I'm sure they could use your expertise on the bridge." Blue inwardly winced, hoping she wouldn't go to hell.
"Perhaps you're right." The doctor agreed, telling by her expression that she did not want any company with this personal call. And he knew from experience that trying to waylay anyone with some kind of military background was just asking for trouble.
Several minutes later, Blue knocked against Max's door, which whooshed open. He had been waiting for her.
Inside was as freakishly neat as Blue had expected. The bed didn't even look slept in. But then again, for all Blue really knew, Max slept standing on his head in the cupboard. "Max?"
"Close the door." She did as he asked and stepped into the room. Unlike the rest of the crew, there were no memories festooning the walls, no little mementos scattered around the room. Max must have had a very lonely life.
"What did you want?" She asked aloud to the seemingly empty room. "Like, not that I'm complaining. You saved me from Q&A with McKay."
He muttered something too low for her to hear.
"What?"
"Don't you dare laugh," He warned.
"Promise." She said, grinning. To be on the safe side, she crossed her fingers behind her back.
Max stepped from the shadows.
"What the hell are you wearing?"
"I'll have you know that this was the height of fashion in Atlantis for a thousand years." He said, affronted.
He'd cut his hair back and had shaved, exposing the hard angles of his face. It rather suited him, the robe he was wearing, with its long embroidered sleeves and sash across one shoulder. Blue's smirk faded. Whereas she couldn't before, now she could see the man that had changed the universe for the best. And the worst.
And he was absolutely terrifying.
Max looked at her blank expression, eyebrows raised. "Are you alright?"
"Okie dokie." Blue swallowed. "That's a new look for you."
"Or a very old one." Max laughed dryly. "Daniel though we might try for something a little imposing on our arrival."
Of course Max and Dr Jackson would be on first name terms.
Blue shook her head. "Why am I even here, Max?"
Max folded his arms. "Well, I just thought I'd get your opinion, and-"
"Not that, here. Going into hostile territory, with no idea what I'm supposed to do. I'm not a negotiator; I'd be standing around holding the coats." She began to pace, head down. "Why am I even here?"
"Because you're supposed to be here."
"What does that even mean?"
Max shrugged, smiling apologetically. "I have absolutely no idea."
