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A/N: Okay, next part, slightly longer than usual...also, I'll probably be more or less incommunicado for the next month and a bit, due to real life being unfortunately hectic and an accompanying extreme and pressing need to study. Sorry.
Days Like These
Part Ten
Carter had only been half-listening to Sergeant Bartlett, and she suspects that she is far from alone in that respect. Although she might well be the only person absently clutching a paper aeroplane as she leans against a wall and ignores the lecture, it's probably best not to look too deeply into that particular question. Just in case she comes up with some strange answers, because she certainly has in the past.
But her attention had been suitably regained when the lecture had ended, and the assembly ordered into two groups. Or rather, it had caught her attention when Jay had, quietly and without any fuss or drawing any particular attention to himself (that is, he hadn't been doing anything to deliberately draw attention), separated himself from Dalton and moved to join the sprawling crowd of civilians. When she thinks about it, now, watching the last few instructions be given out and everyone milling around giving off a fair impression of aimlessness, it is of course a reasonable (almost obvious, in fact) conclusion to draw, that Jay would now be classified as a civilian. Or that he would willingly admit to being one.
But whatever he is to the government, or to the military (and she needs to find that out, Carter reminds herself), Jay's existence, or at least the particulars of it, is far from an open secret. He can't simply announce himself to be in the military. For all she knows, he isn't, officially. It is only that she can't stop herself, instinctively, from linking O'Neill in her mind with military, and CO, and SG-1 (and other things she tries not to think about too often, too much, from force of long habit). And so in the back of her mind, subconsciously, she had been expecting Jay to file into the (far more orderly) line of soldiers.
Except he lined up with the scientists, and the linguists, and the anthropologists, so she has spent the past minute turning her mind in knots trying to be self-reflexive (Carter never has much liked psychoanalysis). And in the end it doesn't matter much. As long as she can get some answers out of him, it will stop her worrying, or at least to such a degree.
Carter wilfully and deliberately ignores that it may well be none of her business anyway; even if Jay had wanted to avoid her, and with her any reminder of his (his? O'Neill's?) old life, he has turned up under her nose and he can't expect her to ignore him. And he can't expect her not to poke her nose in, even if she does try her best to interfere politely.
She shifts impatiently from one foot to another, switches the paper plane from one hand to another (briefly wondering why she is still holding it), and tries to turn her mind off for a minute. Or at least get it away from that subject and pay attention to events around her. With that objective, Carter begins again to watch the ongoing proceedings.
The two lines are not to be tested simultaneously, presumably to allow the civilians a last fleeting glimpse of how to correctly behave. Few of the civilians are watching the soldiers divide themselves into a number of smaller lines, ready to be allocated weapons and enter whichever firing booth their row has been given (although the civilians' state of disorganisation is, Carter believes, because they enjoy showing that we don't have to be military-style organised and obey every single order, no matter how stupid, more than any inherent inability to concentrate). Carter is, therefore, unsure if the procedure is entirely worth it, but it had been developed long before she had arrived at Atlantis. It is unlikely that anyone (and she's thinking mainly of Sheppard, here, but doesn't exclude, well, the entire rest of the city's population) would wish to change the tradition.
Worth its while or not, this tradition (and of course "tradition" is merely something that happens three times or more) gives the civilians ample time to congregate into assorted groups, and combine gossip with a vague Brownian motion that allows for the greatest yield of rumour-sharing. It also gives Jay all the latitude he needs to find his way through the crowd and insinuate himself into the empty space beside Carter. She deliberately doesn't show any surprise.
'You came to watch,' Jay says, sounding pleased (Carter chooses to take the emotion as genuine).
'Someone has to keep you away from trouble,' she replies.
'That's what Dalton's for,' he tells her.
'He's occupied. And I seem to recall you mentioning that you had two parole officers.'
He rolls his eyes, and says comfortably 'Whatever.'
Not talking, they watch the first of the soldiers begin shooting, the noise of the gunshots faded almost into nonexistence by some Ancient trick of advanced acoustics. But with the conversation around them, they aren't standing in silence, and Carter decides to chance the possibility of their conversation being overheard.
'Why are you here?' she says, starting with the question she has asked before, because persistence will eventually win through Jay's walls of determined misdirection (and the question is only somewhere to begin, and she is planning that the misdirection will this time lead in the direction she wants).
Jay doesn't say anything initially. This is possibly because the first time he opens his mouth to reply Carter glares at him, silently and effectively warning him not to be so unoriginal as to repeat his earlier trust-issues-and-death-threats-but-really-it's-nothing-you-need-to-worry-about non-answer.
Then he shrugs, and says 'Orders.'
It's a simple enough reason that Carter thinks it is probably exactly the truth, however much detail is being omitted. It is Carter, this time, who takes her time to formulate a response.
'You're officially a civilian, now,' Carter says, starting with a known fact. 'But you still get given a lot of orders,' she suggests (and she hates talking in circles like this, neither of them saying what they mean, but it's necessary, if they want to breach the subject, and in public at that; and they understand what each other means anyway).
'Not the sort of orders they'd let me talk about,' he says bluntly (warning her off, maybe, but she knows his meaning already and won't be deterred). 'Not the sort of orders most people would care to obey.' He grimaces, and repeats a phrase Carter has heard before, a long time ago. 'Damn distasteful things.' He stops.
'So why obey?' Carter says, after a long pause, trying to find the phrasing to correctly express her meaning. 'If you just – just left,' she continues, stumbling over the words, 'then surely there would only be so much that could be done about it. It is technically illegal, so they couldn't exactly complain about it,' she finishes, feeling she must have left out most of her argument, or her logic, or possibly her mind. She deliberately hasn't bothered, however, to add "if you planned it properly", because if O'Neill ever decides to abandon his current line of work, he will not be sloppy about it.
'I thought about it,' he says, tone careful, refraining to mention what he had thought about it (although Carter can guess).
'And?' she prompts after a moment of silence.
Jay's mouth twists bitterly as he replies 'I'm here, aren't I?'
'Yes,' she agrees. 'You are. And how do you find it so far?'
'Not so bad,' he says slowly, considering. The corners of his mouth curl up, just a little. 'Not so bad.'
And in her quest for an authentic reaction, that isn't a bad result, Carter thinks. She studies his expression a moment longer, and then frowns when his eyes focus on something in front of them, and his grin widens. Still genuine, but this is amusement, Carter knows. She follows his gaze to where a minor commotion is beginning to be heard above the general chatter.
One of the soldiers, heading up his row, isn't moving forward. Or rather, Carter sees as she looks closer, he is attempting it but has found himself inexplicably unable to pass the threshold of the firing booth. Carter squints at the empty air preventing the man's access (part of her mind wondering if she needs to intervene and, if so, what she could possibly do about it), and sees from the corner of her eye the shimmer that proclaims the air to be not empty, but containing one of Atlantis' patented forcefields (actually, she hopes that no one has patented them).
Carter looks back at O'Neill, in time to see his grin fade into something closely resembling a self-satisfied smirk. Catching Carter's eyes on him, he blinks, looking innocent (or relatively innocent, anyway). And whatever forcefield had taken an irrational dislike to the soldier vanishes.
Apparently, Carter had been more than correct when she had guessed earlier that O'Neill has managed to sweet-talk Atlantis. She doesn't want to know how he did so, possibly because she doesn't really want to know just how literal (and, therefore, potentially disturbing) a comparison "sweet-talk" might be; the degree of sentience Atlantis has displayed in the past has never quite been substantial enough to prove the matter beyond reasonable doubt, but more than enough to raise it.
The antics displayed in this case (whether by Atlantis or O'Neill, either) have been mitigated solely by the fact that there are weapons involved, Carter is sure, and that if something were to go wrong it would go badly wrong. She hates to think what other strange accidental trivial irritants are going to infect the city in the near future. By his instinctual backwards glance at Jay, from his place amidst a sea of Marines, Dalton feels exactly the same.
'Stop playing with Atlantis,' Carter murmurs to Jay, quietly enough so none of the bystanders can hear her.
He shoots her a wounded look, and exclaims, sotto voce, 'Carter!' His injured tone is made less believable by his swiftly returning grinning amusement.
'I mean it,' Carter says firmly. 'No fooling around with any artificial intelligences unless I specifically say otherwise.'
She thinks she might just hear a murmur of 'Is that what they call it these days?' But Jay makes no other objection, so she feels she can let the questionable comment (questionable in each tone, taste and logic) pass.
They lapse into silence. After two more rows of soldiers have completed their turns in the firing booths, Carter has heard nothing more from Jay, and there have been no more unruly forcefields. She carefully doesn't look over at him, for it might encourage him to further acts of restless boredom. This is perhaps a mistake, as it means she doesn't catch on to Jay's latest idea until she sees a paper plane sail over the crowd.
Carter frowns, getting a sinking feeling in her stomach, and, just in case, double-checks that she is still holding her own paper plane. She is. She turns her head to see Jay, his hands busily folding another paper missile, someone's stolen pad of paper wedged between him and the wall he is leaning on.
She just stares at him for a moment. Baby-sitting had never really been her thing, and baby-sitting a rebellious teenager who had been her superior, in another life, really, really isn't her thing. And then Carter reaches over and tugs the pad towards her. The movement ends with the pad of paper safely in Carter's hands, and Jay, unexpectedly dislodged from the wall, just managing to recover his equilibrium without falling over.
'Oy,' he grumbles under his breath, sending a disapproving glance Carter's way.
She frowns back at him. 'Stop it.'
Jay makes a face, and throws his now-completed paper plane over the crowd in petty retaliation.
'You're not getting any more paper,' she tells him.
He mutters something she can't make out, and then says 'Fine.'
She nods approvingly. 'Good.'
'Don't patronise me,' Jay says, irritated (and, evidently, she's managed to hit a nerve, flying blind like this).
'Stop acting even younger than you look,' she returns, outwardly calm, 'and I'll stop treating you like it.'
He glares at her (and, she admits privately, even that last comment had had a tinge of patronisation about it), and doesn't otherwise respond.
Carter drums her fingers on the pad of paper, makes up her mind that no, she will not be giving it back however guilty she's feeling, and then forcibly stills her fingers. This would be so much easier if she only knew how he wanted her to treat him. He isn't a child, and she does know that, but even when he had been Colonel O'Neill he had acted childish, and she had put miles of patronisation into her deadpan "Sir," back then.
And now he looks young, and deliberately acts it, and snaps at her when she responds as she instinctually would. Carter doesn't want to try to decipher whatever thoughts are running through his mind (or hers, for that matter, but ignoring her own thoughts is easier by far because she has had plenty of practice).
She stares out over the crowd, and realises that she has missed watching Captain Dalton shoot when she spots him exiting a firing booth, along with the last of the lines of military recruits. But by the reactions and the body language of the men standing around him, she thinks he has probably displayed some exemplary skills (probably; she can find out later if this is true, a benefit of actually being in charge and not simply holding some vague hero-status that had been mildly erratic in the process of gaining results to which she wasn't entitled).
It is after a few minutes of silent contemplation of the myriad problems of communication that Carter realises that, earlier, Jay had only replied to half of one of her statements.
'Are you a civilian?' she asks him quietly.
He looks at her, startled out of sulky silence, and she can see the bitterness lurking in his eyes (and, yes, she thinks; she had missed a trick earlier, there).
'I haven't been permitted to enlist,' he says quietly, the low volume not detracting from the venom in his voice. 'Apparently it would only get in the way, and create paperwork that would force them to admit I exist. So, yes, I'm a civilian. But because they like to have it both ways, I'm a civilian who has to obey orders without question.'
For a moment the only thing Carter can think, repeating herself yet again, is: so why haven't you just left? But that would probably be too much prying for one day. She can leave it for tomorrow. Getting straight answers out of O'Neill will take longer than she has (and, she knows, possibly will take longer than anyone has), and he has probably left bits out of even his last honest answer (but he will have left them out for a reason, even if the reason is nothing more than he is a very private person).
And then Captain Dalton arrives, having navigated through the crowd to find his charge, and it is too late for Carter to ask. She still hasn't she realises, found out how much of Jay's story Dalton knows (but she will, although she may need to ask Dalton himself, given the way her conversations with Jay have been going, one step forward and two back).
'Ma'am,' Dalton says, nodding to her, before saying to Jay, 'I think it's your turn,' motioning back over his shoulder to the firing booths.
Sure enough, the latest line of civilians has a hole in it, and no one is looking pleased at the hold up.
'I'd wish you luck,' Carter starts, 'but somehow I doubt you'll need it.'
Jay grins at her for that, bright and genuine, his eyes alight.
She smiles in return, and watches as Jay practically swaggers over to take up his position amongst the rest of his row of scientists. Looking around her, it seems that the crowd has swelled exponentially in the last few minutes. Carter doesn't have to guess why, and Dalton doesn't seem to be paying it any attention, standing beside her and watching Jay with a concentration equal to every other bystander (although Dalton does actually have orders to be doing so).
In the end, as Carter could have predicted had anyone asked her, the event that so many inquisitive people have gathered to witness proves to be anticlimactic in its rapidity. Jay listens attentively to the soldier instructing him on the correct procedure, although not attentively enough to be accused of some subtle mockery (even if Carter is moderately convinced that Jay is mocking the man, quietly). The soldier removes himself, allowing Jay access to the standard 9mm with which civilians are mandated to become proficient.
Jay picks up the weapon and, although Carter can't see clearly from her position on the crowd's outskirts, she knows what he is doing; going quickly and smoothly through the motions he could complete in his sleep. The crowd mutters to itself in interest; from an unknown young man, Jay has in little more than half an hour become an unknown young man, a self-proclaimed civilian, demonstrating a depth of knowledge in handling a gun.
It is no time at all later that she hears the muted sounds of shots, and even less time until Jay lowers the gun. The scientists keep shooting for a handful of moments more before they too fall silent. The crowd is silent (or at least, it is far quieter than it has been so far), craning their necks to discover how deep that knowledge of Jay's was.
Stepping out of the firing booth, Jay weaves his way ably through the crowd that is suddenly talking again (and Carter knows that they have managed to discover the results, and have found them unexpected), and ends up leaning against the wall in his old position. His body language does not encourage discussion of the past minutes' events, and neither Carter nor Dalton is especially inclined to discuss it anyway. Carter knows without looking that Jay will have managed to find the bullseye with every shot, because she has seen O'Neill do it before, and Dalton probably holds the same knowledge, even if Carter doesn't know when or where he gained it.
They stand in silence, watching and waiting for the final row to finish the qualifications (what the recruits aren't being told is that these aren't official qualifications, which had already taken place back at the SGC, and will occur once again at a pre-determined later date; these are so the Atlantis personnel can gain some idea of whom they are supposed to work with). The three of them don't have to wait long, barring a brief altercation between a particularly argumentative woman and about five soldiers she had managed to irritate.
The crowd, the regular personnel along with the recruits, are dismissed by Lorne for lunch when the last group of civilians have finished. It takes them a moment to register the words, another moment to start moving, and Carter predicts that it will take the newest recruits several minutes more to remember where they are supposed to be eating that lunch (but that's fine; a double handful of Marines are already prepared to round up strays). Carter, on the other hand, stays exactly where she is, and Dalton and Jay follow her example, letting the multitudes stream by.
When the tail end of the crowd has all but vanished around the corner, leaving only the last few stragglers behind, Carter finds that her small group of three has achieved the addition of Major Lorne.
'Major Lorne?' she asks.
'Ma'am,' he replies. 'I was about to find lunch, but,' he pauses, here, and then continues 'if there is anything you need done first…?'
Carter doesn't give her revelation away in her expression (or so she hopes, for the millionth time in the recent past), but she comprehends that Lorne had been trying to find a polite way of asking why on Earth she had come to watch the action at the firing range. That query would perhaps present some negative implications regarding her ability at commanding the city, but Carter suspects that Lorne is fishing for information slightly beyond that. She isn't going to give it to him (it is hardly her secret to tell, and Jay would not appreciate a breach of trust).
'No,' she says, and tells him to eat lunch, because he will surely need it to maintain the strength of willpower to continue the seminars in the afternoon, and then compliments his progress with the recruits thus far.
'Thank you, ma'am,' Lorne says.
And then Carter, as the major finishes speaking, comes to an impulsive decision that may possibly be an abuse of her position. 'Oh, and Major Lorne?' she adds, before she can stop herself (and before she can regret the decision). 'I'm going to pull these two out of the remainder of the settling-in-and-lecture routine,' she says, gesturing at Jay and Dalton.
Lorne's expression briefly shows something like relief, before resettling into careful neutrality. 'Yes, ma'am,' he says.
They exchange nods, and the major heads off to – Carter assumes – eat something, just as she plans to do. When she turns to locate the two men for whom she now has to think up something else to do, Carter finds the pair standing about a metre away, evidently waiting for her to finish her conversation with Lorne. Captain Dalton, at least, has manners enough to pretend that he hadn't been eavesdropping, and is watching the people flowing slowly by.
Jay has no such qualms about being rude. His expression is one of deep thought, and Carter wonders (with a touch of something like pride) if she has surprised the young man (who isn't a young man at all, except that he sort of is; and she isn't sure if she should treat him like a young man who deserves a life of his own, or as the older man he probably feels himself to be, except that he might not and she simply doesn't know and doesn't really want to ask; in situations like this, Carter would usually ask Daniel, and maybe that habit shouldn't be broken yet). She suspects that Jay is attempting to decide whether completing the introductory course would have ended up a source of greater irritation to himself than he could have, in the process, given to anyone within range.
All he says, though, is 'Playing favourites, Carter? Isn't that an abuse of your position?'
It isn't a complaint (although it does, in its perfect reflection of her own thoughts, provide a worrying thought as to just how much General O'Neill influenced her without either of them ever realising), so Jay must have concluded that he would have gained more annoyance than he could have passed on.
'Not at all,' Carter says, nodding to Dalton as they fall into step, walking back towards the main sectors of the city. 'I'm using the additional knowledge my position gives me to save everyone the stress of putting you both through rehashed basic training.' She smiles. 'Not everyone would have survived.'
Jay snorts, startled into brief amusement, and shoves his hands in his pockets. Dalton gives a faint smile himself (still, it seems, unsure as to how protocol applies in this situation; Carter isn't sure herself, because O'Neill complicates everything, so she won't be enlightening him).
'On my part,' the captain says, 'I'd like to thank you for your commendable judgement, ma'am.'
'Thank you, Captain,' Carter replies.
end part ten