A/N: Not done just yet. But this post was getting on to 8+ pages in my writing program and I try to keep them around 5 for ease of reading. So sorry if you were expecting this to be the last chapter, not quite yet. It is a bit on the rough side because I had been expecting this to be the last part of the story and then saw just how long it was getting.

Also, I have finally gotten my P treon and Ko-fi Accounts going so if you like my stories and want to follow me there for access to Original Content or helping me design areas of the worlds I'm writing about or anything else I share over there, feel free to go check that out. My fanfictions will always be free to all and accessible here or Ao3 or where ever I post them. I just consider P treon and Ko-Fi as a tip jar that helps me fund my passion for writing. I will be posting the links on my Bio page but we all know how "likes" links. So just in case, my user name is always the same as my pen name if I can possibly help it.

As always, like, follow, favorite, subscribe, and review!

Much love,

JR

Recap:

After Ronon is accosted by a sick Atlantis Team Member and he is stuck in quarantine. The days are counting down until the formal mating. And the city has been given an ultimatum due to the rising threat of the Lucian Alliance in the Milky way, return to Earth or make a run to Pegasus. They have one opportunity and it is now. Repairs proceed at a rapid pace with all hands on deck. Jack and Sam are scheduled to leave the city, but what about the wedding? Is Ronon even going to get out of Quarantine for it? Or will his marriage begin in the Med-wing?

Chapter 13 Quarantine Part 4

Hours Later Inside The Walls Of The North Pier Power Distribution Relay

Taking a deep breath, Sophie rested her head on the smooth metal plating. There was a short in one of the hair-like cables that ran through this section like veins and between herself and five other engineers, that she had pulled from slightly less dire areas, they had crawled or shimmied into the tightest places known to mankind to find the blasted thing.

There was something to be said for Lantean construction and engineering, having lasted for ten thousand plus years, but it didn't always make sense. Neither did the fact that she had decided to not have the replicator bots take care of this repair.

But since she had them crawling over every single inch of the outer hull looking for problems, there really was none to spare. Already they had found and repaired a malfunctioning emitter that decided to short out after their last jump. They would have survived if it hadn't been found, but they might have ended up in a star as it was part of the impulse navigation systems. So all in all? Saving the humans from having to suit up and check the outside had been time-saving.

Next, she just had to find out why the emitter short hadn't sent a malfunction alert. But that small thing would wait until later. It was likely an isolated problem and this was a big city. Things were bound to go on the fritz occasionally. Which was why she had a job after all.

"Anything?" She asked her team over the coms, panting in the enclosed space.

After receiving negatives, one of her engineers let out a whoop of jubilation. "Think I found it! Tiny scorch mark on the filament! Looks like a seal came loose and dust got on it. Should have it fixed in five!"

"Oh thank the spirits." Another voice panted back. "Anyone up for a stiff drink after this?"

"A shower actually would be nice." Another one, one of the youngest who had been nicknamed Luna, groaned already pulling himself to his access hatch. "I'm sweating like a hog. Probably lost a gallon of water since we got in here.

"No one wants to know that, Luna." Broussard, one of her old hands, breathed in her lazy drawl that made most men consider calling a phone sex line. "Only one reason a woman wants a man sweating and this ain't it, cher."

Sophie could almost picture every single male currently listening to the cajun woman looking down and willing himself not to react to that purring voice. "Everyone head back out and someone check the computer to make sure that was it. If it was, I think we all need some homebrew after we clock off."

"Your daddy's?" Broussard asked almost immediately, no stranger to homebrews at all. "Or yours?"

"Well, it ain't moonshine." She chuckled pulling to the hatch. "But I think the engine 'shine is done." The group laughed, familiar with all things engine 'shine. It was tradition after all.

"Computer says clear, boss." Another one of the new ones said with a chuckle. 'Shine was new to the engineer, who if she remembered correctly was from South Africa, but he liked it so far. "Go ahead with the test?"

"Hit it!" She answered, laying her hands on the hatch entrance.

Medical Quarantine. Room 1.

It was the sitting and waiting that always got to Jennifer. When she had done everything that she reasonably could and now she just had to wait and see if it worked. She hated the nerves that always set in. Despite the knowledge that it was those nerves that made her a better doctor. All too often in residency, she had seen a good doctor fail his or her patient because they were so certain that they had all the answers that they refused to listen when someone else had an idea or things weren't going right.

"Oh just give it time." They would say.

John had told Rodney that pilots had the same problem. Swearing that they could pull out right up until they hit the ground instead of ejecting when they had the chance. Rodney told her that during one particularly nerve-wracking night, and she had never forgotten it. Although he had quickly backtracked, realizing that it might not be the most comforting thing he could have said. But she had gotten the point, even if it had been the fact that he held her tight and not the words providing the comfort that night.

Never let overconfidence stop you from seeing the truth of the situation.

And now staring at her patient through the protective plastic of her suit, breathing in recycled air as she monitored Connors, watching for any change at all Jennifer truly wanted to throw up in her mouth. Just a bit. It was the nerves talking, even after years as the head of medicine on this alien city.

It didn't happen quickly. Each second seeming to drag on for hours, each hour like a year. But Connors started breathing easier.

Labored, ragged gasps eased and slowed. Her cool dry skin broke out in a torrent of sweat as the fever did its job and purged the toxic spore from her blood. But unlike normal sweat, as clear and thin as raindrops, this was thick and the same shimmering green that they had seen in the blood panel. As it hit the air though, the droplets seemed to recoil and turn a rusty red as it began staining Connor's clothes and the sheets that covered the bed beneath her.

"Suzie!" She yelled over the coms. "Fire up the incinerator and get me three bags of saline and EPO!"

Deep within her gut, a tiny seed of hope took root and refused to be shifted.

Medical Quarantine. Room 2.

Ronon had stopped pacing hours ago, mainly because his legs had begun to cramp, and had slid to the floor, resting his back against the wall. "Please tell me that we're at the end." He sighed hearing yet another sheet of paper move. Drawing his knees up and resting his forearms on them, he hung his head. "I rather take on a wraith queen than another form."

Snorting softly, Rota stood to set the sheet into the tray that was built into the wall so that things could be slid into the room without opening the main door and suiting up. "Just a signature this time."

"Another one?" He groaned, long legs straightening with a crack from an old injury in his left knee.

"Last one," Rota said with a smile, laying a pen on top. "I promise. We're gone after this."

Scratching at the mark he had received upon graduating from his military training and getting into his specialist unit, Ronon stood with a huff and scrawled what he had adopted as a signature across the line provided for it. Sateda didn't have signatures. They had found that a simple scratch on a page was much too easy to manipulate. They had more genetic locks and biometrics than the Earthlings had.

Something that he found endlessly funny since they were supposed to be the more advanced culture.

"And I'm Luka's father now?" He asked, setting the pen down much more carefully than he normally would. As if it had been made of glass instead of plastic.

Rota smiled. "According to Earth Law, as soon as the paperwork is filed and approved yes." The tray slid back and picking up the single sheet with a flourish she admitted. "I like the Furling way myself. Blood oaths are much more binding for our kind. Paperwork," she waved it in the air, "is as flimsy as the sheet it's written on."

"Blood oath?"

Rota nodded. "Easy as breathing." She assured. "When you get out of here, as part of the marriage ceremony if you like since it's the same basic thing as the wedding oaths. Tiny cut," She pointed to the inside of her own forearm, "right here on both of you. You join arms, I say a few words. There's a tiny light show. And that's it. Unless of course, you treat his as anything but your own son." The older woman shrugged off the concern as if it was of no concern to her.

Her faith in him with her precious great-grandson settled around his shoulders like a warm hug and he honestly felt humbled by it. He hadn't had family in so long other than his chosen ones in Atlantis. And now here was one ready and willing to take him on as a son.

"It won't hurt Luka will it?"

"Slight scar but nothing drastic. Same as his mother and you. Normal cut, nothing major." She assured with another wave, but stopped and straightened with a thought. "Well, except for the fact that it will go silver right away instead of staying red and healing like normal. Part of the side effect of that weird energy thing that Furlings have. Also, don't be surprised if you suddenly start shocking things kind of like that shield that Sophie did the day we met."

"Huh?"

Rota only smiled knowingly.

Command. Central Tower. A Few Hours Later.

"Engineering reports that we're a go for a jump to the edge of the system, sir." The technician that Rodney had assigned to keep him informed of the progress of the repairs so he didn't have to leave his lab where they were monitoring all of the "idiot lights" as Sophie had termed it. "They say the jump should only take an hour with the modifications and then they will need six at the edge of the system to run a quick check."

Nodding, Woolsey carefully closed the file that he was reading over and placed it in his file cabinet where the very few paper copies of important files were held before locking it up. He wanted a copy of that one himself so that the IOA couldn't outmaneuver him. It paid to be paranoid at times. "Yes. Rodney had mentioned the stop. Will the general's lift arrive on time?"

"Better to stop before we leave the system than getting caught between them," the new tech, or duckling as had been appropriately nicknamed, agreed. "And the Selene is jumping straight there. A good breaking in for her engines, Captain Miraz said."

The Selene was one of the latest battle-cruiser 305 class ships that had been rushed into commission after the destruction of the superhive using quite a few innovations from Atlantis itself. It was based on a jumper, but the size and capacity of the Daedalus. It was more aerodynamic, although maneuvers in atmo were still inadvisable, sleeker, had the same weaponry and shielding, but it was the engines that were the most exciting part according to the engineers. They were faster, more agile, and capable of precision action. It was as if the engineers had mashed the carrying capacity of a battlecruiser with a fighter.

The only thing that they hadn't quite been able to do was to give the ship the ability to topple end over end easily. Apparently, that was being worked on for the next designs. Along with things like tractor beams and replicators, not the mechanical bugs but the thing that the Asgard had that could create anything out of energy. Also apparently, it was simply too much of a power drain unless you were the Ori and had a mini star to power your ship.

There was also talks of something more mid-sized like a troop carrier that could be modified to allow the scientists to carry larger pieces of equipment when needed, or even live out of them for long-term missions. No one was foolish enough to ignore the other possibilities of that one. Everything from actually moving troops to disaster relief was being considered in it's design, up to and including a double complement of drones when they finally found the machine that created them somewhere in the city.

"Now if only I knew why Doctor McIntyre put in a requisition for every single depleted ZPM." Woolsey sighed quietly, straightening his uniform once again.

"That would be the ZPM room, sir." The tech answered without looking up from his tablet. "It's not operational yet, Chief McIntyre has been pulled in too many directions to give it the attention she needs to and she refuses to let anyone in without Zelenka, McKay, or herself to oversee. Something about only having one of them and if we break it we don't get a reset because we don't have a working model to reverse engineer yet. But we should be able to sort of recharge the ZPMs if we get it working. That's what it looks like anyway."

Woolsey damn near walked into a wall from the shock. Re-charge the most important power sources that they knew of in multiple galaxies? "Recharge?" He choked. Three of them alone kept the city protected for ten thousand years under several million tons of ocean water.

"Ancients were apparently big into renewable energy sources." The tech spun on his heel and back to the door. "We could learn something from them, sir."

Resident's Wing. Sophie's quarters.

Bending over the plans that Sophie had been working on in her spare time, Sam was once more fascinated by what her friend was capable of. The simplicity and elegance of the complex designs that she had cobbled together. Some of the same systems that Sam herself had been, proverbially, banging her head against a wall trying to figure out were all there in black and white, or in this case black, white, blue, red, etc.

"If this works, I'm buying you a drink," Sam muttered, tracing a line on the page that was just for the gravity generator fields that ran through each pier in blocks.

Sprawled across the small couch where she had fallen in a heap, Sophie chuckled tiredly. "Find me a new hacker/programmer with that game thing that you designed and we'll call it even. Timmons is good but she's no Romanov."

"One programmer who can think outside the box," Sam muttered, pushing her blond hair back as she flipped to another page, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "Check." A moment later, she straightened in surprise. "This isn't an ancient design. You borrowed."

"From Goa'uld, Asgard, Nox, Ori, Lantean, Tollan, and that captured Alliance ship, yes." Sophie yawned, not bothering to move from her comfortable place on the couch. Everything was hurting. Even her little toe on her left foot which she swore felt like it was broken despite the doctor's assurance it wasn't. It hadn't been Jennifer that checked her out and she wasn't too sure of their opinion.

"Why?"

"Which part are you looking at?"

"Air filtration."

Stifling a yawn, Sophie closed her eyes. "Ah. Nox design by way of the Tollan wreckage. Why fix what works much better than what we have currently. The idea is to make sure the design will work with our designs then improve on it later."

"Surprisingly, it's more elegant than the Lantean design," Sam remarked.

"Lanteans were not the best in everything." The younger woman yawned.

Medical Quarantine Room 1.

Jennifer felt like crying in relief. Connors was finally stabilizing. Her temperature had been lowered a full hour ago and as of the last blood panel, which was less than ten minutes ago, the spore was no where to be seen.

She sighed, returning to her rolling swivel chair, and with a tiny little yip of glee, she kicked her feet and spun the chair in a circle rapidly. Stopping a moment later, she looked around guiltily, a small secretive smile pulling at her lips. No one had seen their head of medicine behaving like a child in her relief.

If she was clear in twenty-four hours, Keller was reasonably hopeful that she was out of the woods. Now on to Ronon and the rest of the infected.

Pulling up Ronon's latest blood panel she frowned. That was odd. His spore levels were decreasing without treatment. They had assumed that because of his technically Furling genetics he would be slightly more immune like Sophie and Luka seemed to be. But his white cells seemed to be actively attacking the spores that had infected him.

Well how about that, she mused, sometimes nature finds a way.

Medical Quarantine Room 2.

Surprisingly, after all of the forms were filled out, Rota had not left him alone. They couldn't play cards to pass the time and checkers or chess were out because, as she had accurately guessed, he would rather have shot the board. And since Furling lessons required participation of some kind, they were out currently. He really didn't like being confined.

So she had decided to do the one thing he couldn't stop her from doing and didn't require his input at all. She read to him, sang to him, told stories and legends that he had never heard of. Epic tales of sea monsters and battles and tiny mischievous creatures called the fae. And of trickster gods, crows, and wolves alike.

Sateda had its own legends but somehow the ones he learned in school and in festivals seemed so dry in comparison. Was it the story or the storyteller, he wondered getting swept away in the words. Maybe that was what the legends were supposed to sound like but because the details had been lost over millennia, the words themselves had lost all meaning.

When the door slid open with a hiss, she broke off cocking at ear to who entered so abruptly and Ronon had to chuckle. Even in the relative safety of the city, this woman who was old enough to be his grandmother was on alert. The only time he had ever seen her truly relax was when her husband was around. He had asked her in passing one time why that was, and her answer never failed to make him laugh.

"A man is a natural warrior." She had said with the sweetest, most innocent smile that had ever been seen. "A woman though is truly bloodthirsty. Especially in defense of her family. But when my husband is around? I would never dream of stealing his fun."

"Doctor all of that doesn't answer my question." General O'Neill broke over Doctor Keller's objections. "If he can't be moved into his quarters for the rest of his quarantine then can she go in?" He asked, sweeping into the visitor's side of the room like he owned the room, and to be honest, he probably could reasonably make the claim. But he was smiling, at least Ronon thought that was a smile. It was kind of tight around his eyes and the corners of his mouth, and he didn't quite know Jack enough to know exactly what that smile meant.

"He is under quarantine!" Jennifer yelled, showing just how long this argument had been going on. "That means no one but medical personnel in or our and you know it General!"

Meeting Rota's puzzled gaze with a suppressed smile, both of them shrugged minutely, trying not to be seen by the arguing pair.

"But you said his levels of the spore were decreasing and that he was no longer in danger, Keller. You're only keeping him for observation now." Jack reminded his own smile loosening and turning slightly more mischievous. "I also heard that your treatment was to raise the temperature of the infected person. Now I don't know of anything that would raise a man's blood as fast as fighting or a beautiful willing woman. Now I'm leaving by the end of the day, and I promised to get Sophie and Ronon married before I left so here are your choices. Either they marry here or in their quarters. And then they stay there for the rest of his quarantine."

"Do I get a vote?" Ronon asked, not really liking the idea of spending his first days mated in a room that had glass observation walls on all sides. He didn't exactly like the idea that anyone could see his time with Sophie. He knew Earthlings were into some weird things and he personally had no interest in sharing.

"Yes." Both Rota and Jack answered calmly, turning to him while Jennifer cried out an emphatic "NO!"

"If Luka can stay with the boys or Kara, or even you Rota," he nodded, using some of the few old-world manners that his matriarch had been able to hammer into his hard head. "I don't mind being confined to quarters."

Snorting a laugh, Rota murmured, her light eyes twinkling in delight, "I just bet you don't. Don't think we didn't hear the request Luka made."

Very used to teasing, Ronon only grinned.