Chapter Ten

Shades of Grey

Bridget walked through Atlantis, going to all of the normal places to find her father. Cyntha had opted to stay in her room and finish the latest borowed book from Rodney, something along the lines of a Blind Watchmaker and Dawkins, who ever that was.

John had argued with himself up and down in the Jumper, wishing and promising himself that Linda would appear any second now, with Susan safely in tow. But seconds turned to minutes, than hours and Linda still didn't show up.

Rodney and Carter were walking down a hallway, arguing about the latest science project that was going on and how Cyntha was coming along with her apprenticship to Rodney. Walking past the Jumper bay, they spotted John hugging Bridget. Rodney thought nothing of it but words that John uttered stopped him in his tracks.

"It'll be alright, Bird. We'll find her no matter what, I promise you." John wrapped his arms around the crying girl, not even thinking about the tears staining his shirtfront.

Turning to Sam, Rodney started to ask, pointing his finger back at the Sheppards. "What's up with..."

"I'll tell you when we get to your lab, McKay." Carter pulled him through the halls of Atlantis, trying to get the image of father and Daughter out of her head. It was not her place to have stepped into their time.

Bridget leaned her ear against the door of Cyntha's room. Her dad had just told her and it had gone deathly quiet in there. Knowing how much Red hated to show her emotions, Bird guess that that she was starring out of the window, blinking rapidly. Suddenly something hit a wall and it sounded like it had shattered, making Bridget wince with symathy. She just hoped it hadn't been the glass figurines that their mom and Susan had given to her. After that Bridget heard Cyntha yelling and screaming, guessing it was about the time where she chose being mad over the tears yet to come.

A couple days after Cyntha and Bridget learned that Susan was never coming back, the Daedalus arrived at Atlantis, on one of it's numerious runs. They would be staying on the ship while it traveled back to Earth so about seven weeks traveling total.

The remaining Sheppards stood in the gateroom, with their bags packed when Ford came hurrying down the steps with a bag slung over his shoulder.

"Where are you going?" John asked him, while Aiden came to stand beside the three of them.

"Respectfully sir, She was my team mate, partner, and most of all, she was my friend. I wouldn't be standing here if she hadn't put her life in jepadory to save mine, I owe it to her. I'm coming along to say goodbye." Aiden told him, facing frontwards and not looking at John, missing the look that he gave the young Liuentant.

Bridget walked through the hallways of the Daedalus, missing her family. She knew that Cyntha and her dad had different ways of dealing with pain, but locking yourself up in your room for days while claiming that Susan was still alive didn't help matters. Cyntha had kicked everyone out of her room, when they had tried to get her to believe that She was really dead. And by She, Bridget meant Susan. It hurt like twisting a knife in a wound bad even uttering or thinking of her sister. Susan once told her when they first arrived that she was going nowhere. She would always be there if Bridget needed her.

Cyntha wrote and wrote and tried to figure out the odds of Susan surriving, believing that she was alive. Bridget had tried many times to get Cyntha to believe that she was dead and gone before they reached Earth. A note was tapped to the outside of Cyntha's door, when Bridget walked past it. It was addressed to her, so she took it with her while getting some lunch.

Aiden sat down across the only Sheppard to show themselves while on the three week voayage. Seeing that she was reading something, he didn't say anything, just ate his sandwich and thought about his dead partner.

"Cyntha actually was right?!" Bridget put down the paper and looked into the dark eyes of Aiden Ford.

"Right about what?" Aiden asked around his turkey and swiss cheese sandwich.

"This." she handed him the paper. Aiden looked at it and saw that the words were misspelled and out of order.

"It's in code, kid." He told her, handing it back to Bridget. "Even if the odds were on our side, it won't matter. Susan is dead, she's not coming back kid."

"Oh, sorrry. Cyntha writes things like this for me because of my dislexia. Comes in handy when trying to decode or read a mess of writing but it's a pain for homework, let me tell you." Bridget unfolded the page and grabbed a pen and notebook from one of the pockets in her cargo pants. She wrote the correct note, scrunching her eyes close together and covering everything but the line that she was writing.

"Hey. You don't have to do that, you know. Maybe Cyntha is dealing with her grief by thinking that she can bring her back. I did the same thing when my parents died years ago." Aiden put his hand overtop of Bridget's, stopping her from continuing in her fruitless quest.

"She's alive, Aiden! I can feel it in my heart." The last part, Bridget said it like she despertally needed to believe what she was saying, wishpering it to the air.

"Sheppards, the craziest of the crazies." Aiden muttered to himself underneath his breath, finishing the rest of his lunch and leaving Bridget to her own devices.

"Clarissa?" A thick Russian accent broke through her dream of confusing images. It was like watching a movie and the sound to it had been damaged somehow. Slowly she peeled her eyelids apart, looking into the bluest eyes she had ever saw. "Your awake finally. That's good to see."

"Do I..."She started to ask but started to but stopped relizing her throat was dry as the Sahara desert.

"Don't talk. Here." The old man held a straw to her lips while she drank the cold water inside the styrofoam cup. "You don't remember me do you?" He finally asked when she had pushed the cup away, signally that she was done.

"Why do you keep calling me Clarissa ?" She asked, shaking her head no that she didn't remember him.

"I am Pavel Bazhenov, I am your great uncle on your father's side. You were caught in an explosion caused by several rogue Russians trying to over power the government several days ago. Your real name is Clarissa Romanova, you work for the Russian Secret Service." He gave her a folder full of pictures and documents.

"Clarissa is a Spanish name is it not?" She asked, looking at the pictures trying to get a feel of who she really was.

"I'm afraid so, your mother was a spanish digninarty that married your father when they meant several years before you were born."

"What was she like?" Clarissa asked, feeling like she was missing a big part of the puzzle here. It all sounded off to her somehow, she just couldn't put a finger on what.

"Your mother?" Pavel sat in the chair beside Clarissa's bed, his eyes going dreamy. "She was vibrant and full of life. She could be fiery with passion one moment and have a balzing temper the next. That woman could cuss you out of every country and still be able to come up with more words than you would think possible." Pavel told Clarissa about her, his face lighting up with the memories. "She was one of a kind lady. We were all devasted when she died three years ago from cancer. I think your father just couldn't live without her anymore because he died three days later. They loved eachother very deeply and you, they loved you almost as much."

The funeral for Susan Teryl Turner-Sheppard was held on a raining Saturday, the fifth of September. The same day that she had held as her birthday. John and his daughters were staying in a hotel nearby the place where she grew up in, Soda Springs Idaho, a little town about an hour and half from Salt Lake, where they had disbarked from a private plane. Ford had opted to visit his grandparents until the day of the funeral, which had been secedualed for two weeks.

"I'm not wearing a dress." Cyntha had put her foot down, when John had made her wear a black dress. "I'll wear my black leather but no dress."

"Fine." John gave up on making Cyntha wear a dress. He was wearing his dress blues to the funeral, while Bridget was wearing an off the shoulder long sleeves black dress with comfortable combat boots, something that John had raised his eyebrows at.

John watched as the magonhany casket was lowered into the ground, thinking about Cyntha's words. He was starting to believe her when he started to dig into the file on the explosive in Russia. Something wasn't right but he didn't know what.

Turning he saw Aiden Ford trying to cheer up the girls, putting his grief away for the moment. He was hurting almost as badly as his family. Susan was his best friend, he thought that he owed her one for bringing him back and missed his partner. They knew that the other would always have their back no matter what. Making up his mind, John headed towards the rental that they had borrowed, tossing the keys in the air and catching them.

"Come on! There's someplace where we need to go." He called to the young women.