A/N: So I don't actually have any proper excuse for the literal years of delay in getting this written/posted. University? Sorry. Um. It's likely no consolation that the word document has been nearly continuously open for all of those years. On the bright side, the next part will definitely be done much more quickly, because it was originally the second half of this part (which in consequence ends kind of awkwardly). Also, I know there's an awful amount of talking, talking, talking, but there is meant to be other stuff (read: as close to action as I can ever get) actually happening later on (if I ever get it written, I know, I know). And lastly: there's a particularly tired joke in the middle of this bit, and I'd be much obliged if everyone could politely ignore how tired.
Part Fourteen
By mid-morning, Carter has dismissed SGA-9 with the usual formulaic, ritual reminder to write mission reports, and is beginning to thoroughly regret her lost hours of sleep. The caffeine had worn off a few minutes before the end of the debriefing, and it hadn't taken long, after that, for her body to realise that, yes, it would actually appreciate some more rest. But she's worked straight through far worse conditions than a few hours lost sleep, and her body will just have to cope with that (forcing her mind to cope with lost sleep will be harder, of course, and mentally subdividing herself like this isn't necessarily the most promising evidence of her success).
On the other hand, maybe trying to make a dent in her inbox full of paperwork isn't the best method of ensuring she stays awake. It's an undeniably useful exercise, and certainly needs to be done at some point. But for the paperwork to remain unsigned, or uncompleted, or unread, for a few more hours probably won't make much of a difference to anyone, least of all the papers themselves (although it will, of course, make a difference to Carter when she needs to get it done later).
The thought that she can postpone the more dreary aspects of her job is appealing, and lingers. It is no doubt helped along by the knowledge that the vast majority of the rest of Atlantis' residents feel much the same way. Paperwork tends to be where the non-essential data accumulates, and where any crisis-relevant information resides only after the fact. Any information that it is immediately necessary for Carter to know is usually boiled down to the bare bones of the matter, and is given to her verbally while everyone is in crisis mode and trying to make sure that they all survive to see the day out.
Written reports, produced after the fact, sometimes prove useful in the aftermath, if a specific incident reappears, or becomes of renewed importance, and because the practice is traditional. But written interim reports are rarely helpful, and are avoided as such.
Carter frowns, and taps her pen absently against her other hand.
She's stalling, she realises.
It doesn't take more than a moment's further thought to understand why (and it doesn't merely boil down to avoiding paperwork). She's being predictable, again. Her hindbrain is urging her to talk to O'Neill, and she honestly can't say if that's because her subconscious knows there are still answers she needs that Jay hasn't given her, or if her subconscious is simply fixating itself on him. The latter option sounds unprofessional and embarrassing, but worryingly (and exasperatedly) likely. It doesn't, however, actually exclude the first option from also being the truth.
But she can't tell her motivations apart, and in the end she isn't entirely sure if it really matters: the urge is there regardless.
The only question left, in Carter's mind, is if she should give in. The answer, she thinks, is probably "no".
But that knowledge doesn't make a mite of difference to the inexorable drift of her subconscious mind, which is undeniably travelling in the opposite direction. So either she needs to formulate a more specific question, one with an answer giving her comfortingly sufficient justification for her practically-inevitable next actions, or she needs to ignore the whole matter of justification and go ahead with what she wants to do anyway.
Somehow, Carter thinks, she's going to end up going with an uncomfortable third path between the two. She'll go ahead with what she wants to do anyway, but the unresolved necessity for justification will be hovering uneasily in her mind for the duration (the duration of what, exactly, Carter isn't sure, and doesn't want to know).
And, just like that, Carter has her answer (and no matter that she'll be steadfastly ignoring the means she used to achieve that answer, because she can't bring herself to feel satisfied with the process of gut-feeling prediction of what will happen). With it, she can feel free to (temporarily) leave aside the other associated problems.
But it does raise another pressing question: how she plans to find the pair.
She can, of course, use the tracking device still holding down her paperwork. She even still might if not that her every instinct rebels at the idea. It's a breach of trust. Added to which, it would be mostly useless anyway, or at least more trouble than it's worth. A direction and a distance, neither of which will take into account the basic architecture of Atlantis, will not leave Carter much better off. Looking at it like that, she can almost construct an argument in favour of using the technology—that if it will give Carter a mere hint, at most, then it can hardly be as serious a breach of trust as she seems to think—but she isn't going to touch it (she isn't).
O'Neill attracts trouble as often as he causes it, and with similarly life-threatening degrees of magnitude, but he can occupy himself for a few hours without her supervision. He isn't a child. He really isn't (she just has to keep telling herself that, so that eventually she will be able to interact with him without the cognitive dissonance between eyes and brain, what she sees and what she knows).
And while technically Carter is responsible for him and his actions, O'Neill would—she knows—detest the suggestion that she, or anyone, should take that responsibility from him. There's a difference between a commanding officer having a share of liability in what happens under their command, and usurping their subordinates' free will. Being given orders in the regular course of military life is one thing, but having your every action dictated, in every moment of life, is something else entirely. And in any case, she may have become his parole officer, but Carter frankly has her doubts as to whether that makes her his commanding officer in any but very specific circumstances (and, she thinks, it would be disconcertingly uncomfortable to find herself in those circumstances).
So she'll leave the tracking device precisely where it is, and check the logical places the old-fashioned way, and engage in a touch of judicious eavesdropping on the way to refine her search, and trust in Atlantis' occasionally-temperamental transporter system to get her where she needs to be, and do her best to appear unsuspicious.
Probably the worst thing about Atlantis, Clara Kwong thinks, is the risk of getting incontrovertibly and irreversibly lost in the city's bowels, or the corridors, or the spires, or basically anywhere up to and including the path between her office and her living quarters.
The absolute worst, no lies.
Oh, there's the alien invasions, and the threat to life and limb, and the near-constant peril, but then she's living in another galaxy, so Clara feels like that stuff is more or less justified as part and parcel of the experience. Getting periodically lost—so often that it's less a risk than a sure thing—doesn't really rate on the same scale as the other inherent dangers of her job, but it isn't really what Clara regards as a wholly justifiable side-effect of the whole living-in-an-ancient-alien-city situation. Even if it is a logical one.
It is hands-down the most niggling petty irritation in Clara's life. And niggling petty irritations are by far the easiest to complain about—just as well, because Clara needs something to contribute to mealtime gripe sessions. And losing her way when she really just wants to find another pot of coffee definitely counts, even if her navigation problems do, objectively speaking, have some occasional advantages. Because, alright, Clara does have to admit that getting lost so often gives excellent opportunities to first discover and then study new sections of the city. Or even to study already-discovered sections, because there are always rooms that have been passed over in favour of others.
Not to mention the eavesdropping opportunities, which are usually very much appreciated by the rumour mill. The technique is so appreciated, actually, that Clara knows for a fact that she is not the only one to eavesdrop on key supposedly-private conversations—Clara had not been the one to spill the beans on the Greenbancke Affair, no matter what that-bastard-Burnett alleges—even if she isn't sure how many others get legitimately accidentally lost first.
But actually, it's kind of weird, the ratio of getting-lost to getting-lost-and-finding-or-hearing-something-significant. It isn't often that Clara loses her way—or anyone else loses theirs, for that matter—and then smoothly re-finds it with no other consequence. She hasn't been able to explain it—the rumour mill has, of course, given the matter its best shot.
And, yes, the city being arguably sentient could account for some instances of navigation-difficulties-followed-by-discoveries. The sentience theory is really only rumour, because no one has ever been able to prove anything. But it isn't as if anything needs to be definitively proven for most of Clara's colleagues to accept it as practically fact. They've all seen more than enough to keep an open mind on advanced AI, if not even more esoteric explanations.
But if Atlantis is sentient, then Clara is really forced to wonder just why the city is so preoccupied with her citizens' grapevine.
She takes the other option available, and, because she knows all too well that Atlantis won't let her find her way until she has made use of her unintended detour, finds a room she can't remember as having been entered in the database that has been growing since the very first day the Expedition had found the city. It's obviously just her luck that she's been engrossed in the fine indentations in the wall for less than a minute—well, okay, it could have been more like ten or twenty, in fact probably was, she loses track of time when studying aliens, so sue her—when some tiny signal in the back of her mind alerts her to the fact that there is someone in the corridor.
Her eyes take a while to focus on something further than a few inches away, and when they do, it takes Clara's brain a few moments more to kick into a suitable gear. But when all systems are online and operational, she realises that, first, someone just walked past her room with some purpose in their step, and second, that it had been Colonel Carter.
The irrepressible urge to eavesdrop wells up, and Clara spends a handful of moments hopelessly trying repress it—it isn't like listening in on Richard Marchant ranting about the injustices of petty dictatorships as the subject applies to Sophia Waters, for heaven's sake, or finding out that the entirety of a 'gate team had needed their mouths and throats examined for alien-squid, or even like overhearing that Ned Harman's sister-back-on-Earth had been arrested.
This is actually the woman in charge of the whole city, she deserves her privacy, and anyway what if the imminent conversation is actually something classified and which Clara could actually get into real trouble for knowing—and this is, Clara mentally backtracks and clarifies, all assuming that the Colonel is about to have a conversation with someone and not just passing through, or lost herself.
Not that Clara really thinks that Colonel Carter is the sort of woman to get lost, or anything, because the Colonel looks to always have her wits about her. Not that that always helps with the vagaries of Atlantis' layout and navigation. Not that Clara is actually achieving anything by this line of thought except confusing herself. She stops, loses her place in the not-going-to-eavesdrop argument, and not-so-grudgingly gives in.
On balance, it would probably be acceptable to go and examine a wall just a little closer to Colonel Carter's destination—even a wall within earshot, say.
Carter finds her quarry, in shorter order than she'd dared hope, on a balcony. Atlantis is spread out beneath their feet, sunlight glinting off its spires and reflecting in the water. It's a beautiful sight, and Carter has never needed to wonder why so many of her citizens gravitate to Atlantis' numerous balconies.
It isn't a surprise, therefore, to find Jay and Captain Dalton outside. It's even less a surprise to find Jay in mid-gesture at the handful of puddlejumpers in the air (green recruits, Carter's mind labels them, being familiarised with the Ancient tech). The captain looks equally entranced by the ships' movements.
Carter stands for a moment hovering on the threshold, and then steps forwards to say, 'You know, I think you'd stand a chance of getting the permission to fly one.' She waves at the puddlejumpers.
She's being at least half sarcastic, because of course Jay stands a significant chance, particularly if he asks Carter; he's in Atlantis, and cleared to know, and already knows how to pilot both aircraft and spacecraft. With the way life in Atlantis runs, there will probably end up being a crisis that necessitates, in some roundabout circumstance, Jay having had experience with a puddlejumper. There's no real reason to deny him the request (at least not from Carter's perspective, which she must acknowledge is likely not widely shared).
There's certainly no denying the definite note of enthusiastic interest in Jay's eyes when he turns to look at her. But all he says is 'You know me too well.'
Carter shrugs. She has, at any rate, never known O'Neill to turn down the chance of piloting any flying object, whether identified, unidentified, experimental, or some risk-laden combination of the three. And despite not really knowing Captain Dalton, she can hazard a guess that he, too, would appreciate a closer look at the Ancient spacecraft Atlantis has to offer—there's fervour in his expression, behind the bland professional-parole-officer look he seems to cultivate (bland, noncommittal, determinedly calm, with a vein of dry humour; there are worse approaches to take, Carter thinks, for a man in the captain's position).
The usual greetings are exchanged—formal on Dalton's part, significantly more familiar on Jay's part, and Carter somewhere in the middle—and Carter joins the pair on the balcony, staring out across the water.
'The debriefing went well?' Dalton questions her, after a brief pause. 'I understood the team was delayed,' he continues, which is sufficient justification for the inquiry even if Carter suspects it isn't the entirety of his motivations. There'd been a hint of true curiosity in his voice; he hadn't only asked to make polite small talk.
Carter smiles. Because for once, the delays hadn't spelt danger; they'd spelt diplomacy. 'It went well,' she says.
The two men make inquiring expressions at her.
She shrugs. 'There weren't any sudden infestations of airborne simians.'
Dalton looks mildly surprised, presumably at the news that flying-monkey infestation had ever been an option. Jay's expression is largely unchanged (his eyes are laughing, a little; Carter isn't the only person here who remembers P6Y-572, although she had never once heard O'Neill refer to that planet by its official designation).
'Diplomatic efforts were made and well-received,' Carter elaborates (it isn't much more detail, of course, because she knows how to keep debriefings at least moderately secure, and she knows how to draw out a story, too—for all the little drama that this tale has).
'Well enough to try for continued contact?' Jay asks.
Carter nods. Hoping for a genuine, mutually-beneficial alliance might be expecting too much, too soon, as everyone present likely well knows—but continued contact is in this case a promising certainty.
'And,' she says, 'we weren't even the ones requesting another visit in the very near future.'
Following a low murmur of voices through the corridors is all well and good, Clara thinks, and is usually actually a legitimately workable method of navigation. By the time she's drawn closer, she's managed to determine that the conversation, whatever it's actually about, is being held between two men with largely unfamiliar voices in addition to Colonel Carter. And even the very briefest of attention paid to rumour generated in the past day or so—and Clara usually makes sure to pay much more attention to rumour than that—offers up a very likely option to suggest tentative identification of the two men.
But it's made more difficult when trying not to be heard by the other party, and of course by the time Clara's managed to get close enough to hear actual words, they've fallen silent. Which, really, is utterly typical of her life in general.
Clara rolls her eyes, and settles down to make a closer study of the nearest room, opening her laptop and wishing she had coffee near to hand. Hands poised atop the keyboard, she waits for the silence to stop.
And then one of the men says flatly 'You want to go to an alien planet.'
'Technically,' Colonel Carter says, 'this is an alien planet.'
There's another pause, and Clara can only assume there's either some impressive facial expressions or equally impressive telepathy filling it, probably just like the bout of silence she'd walked in on.
The Colonel sighs softly. She says 'I know what you mean.'
Clara frowns. She doesn't know what it means, and annoyance is the least of her response; isn't eavesdropping supposed to give her more information? This is hopeless. She doesn't even know what it is, that has apparently communicated some meaning she doesn't understand. She'd settle, even, for knowing who is meaning something. Or to know anything about whoever it is standing with Colonel Carter on the balcony, or whatever's going on there.
She'd just wanted coffee, damn it all.
The same man as before adds lowly 'It's still house arrest even when the house is a city on an alien planet, huh?'
House arrest?
Well, that sounded like some promising gossip-fodder, at least.
Of course, it might be even better if the line of conversation ever gets continued, Clara adds to herself, because the comment only garners a quiet half-laugh as someone exhales.
But then, even so, even if the hint is abandoned—
'Something like that,' a new, male voice says dryly. 'But it'll be much more difficult to escape a floating city in another galaxy. Just plain houses are easy.'
—even then, she'll still have a new clue as to what is going on in Atlantis these days. And no doubt the conglomerate forces of her colleagues will be able to add their own piecemeal guesswork of half-heard semi-private conversations. As is, she knows more than enough of current gossip to guess at the identities involved in this conversation: two unfamiliar men, casually discussing house arrest and offworld missions with Colonel Carter, can only be the mysterious newcomers Jay-and-Captain-Dalton.
Whoever it is that they might be when they're at home, and have all parts of their names filled in.
Although names are just a little less interesting to Clara's mind, at the moment, than the fact that a pair of strangers seem to know Colonel Carter well enough to hold a casual conversation, and have that conversation mostly in what Clara's guessing is body language and facial expression and eye contact.
'But somehow I doubt that means that my job's going to get any less difficult,' the first man—presumably Captain Dalton—says. 'Would that be accurate?'
'I'd hate for you to get bored,' Jay retorts, which seems to be enough of an answer to satisfy his companions.
'We're on an alien planet,' the captain says flatly. 'I don't think you'll need to go out of your way to manufacture excitement.'
Clara smiles crookedly, and pokes half-hearted at her laptop. Because ain't that the truth, she thinks.
'Yeah, exactly,' Jay tells him, wholly non-explanatory.
Colonel Carter adds 'That is more or less how everything seems to work.' Beat. 'Not that knowing it ever stops anyone from finding their own piles of trouble.' Another pause. 'Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between natural background excitement and the sort we've actively blundered our way into. The same people always seem to be involved.'
'Natural talent,' Jay murmurs in an undertone. 'It's those damn flagship teams.'
Clara frowns. It's an uncalled-for jab at people who have personally and directly saved Clara's actual life. It isn't warranted at all, and it tells Clara pretty plainly that Jay has obviously already met SGA-1. And that is probably due cause for everyone to pay attention, because anyone who immediately runs into Atlantis' flagship team tends to also wind up in trouble. What does SGA-1 know about this pair?
Also: does Jay know that the woman he's speaking to had been on a flagship team herself? Because that part makes the jab even more unwarranted, to Clara's mind.
Colonel Carter does another good job ignoring him. 'So in other words,' she says, a bit more brightly, a bit less dry, 'you seem to be getting the hang of how it all works around here pretty quickly.'
'For someone who was only told that Atlantis even existed on the day we were herded onto a spaceship heading off-planet, you mean?' Dalton asks, sounding mostly-rhetorical.
Curiouser and curiouser, thinks Clara, because almost none of the information in that sentence makes any sense in the normal order of things. Of course, that only makes it par for the course.
'For anyone,' the Colonel says, part-reassuring and part-wholly serious.
And, Clara muses, the Colonel's probably right at that.
The newcomers are the subject of gossip, of course, but they seem to be taking even that in stride. And what with the number of eyes and ears turned in their direction, Clara knows that she would almost certainly have heard if either of them had had some sort of nerve-ridden breakdown in the face of sudden alien presence—after all, she knows for as-close-to-fact-as-gossip-gets that the quietly enthusiastic Doctor Waite had been hyperventilating last night, and some of the Marine recruits had had curiously blank stares at dinner.
But there hadn't been anything of the sort for Captain Dalton or Jay, and not in the face of anything else either.
And is that at all relevant to Clara's interests? Maybe. But even if not, she's still pretty sure that the rumour mill could easily use it as a pertinent fact, or supplementary evidence or something of the sort.
But the conversation seems to have stalled with the Colonel's observation, or pleasantry, or whichever, because its three participants have apparently reached a dead-end in that particular line of dialogue, and fallen silent once more.
Wonderful, Clara thinks insincerely, this isn't getting at all old, and concentrates on staying still and quiet—and whether that's in aid of preventing being overheard and found out for eavesdropping, or in aid of focusing her willpower on subliminal, empathic encouragement of further conversation, Clara wouldn't really want to say.
Captain Dalton seems to agree with Clara, at least as regards the now-stumbled conversation, because he says 'Colonel—sorry, but—is there anything you needed us for?' He sounds a little shamefaced at the question.
And, Clara thinks, sorry, what? These people seem to be doing conversation wrong. Because how has this not actually been answered yet?
...tbc...