Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.

Last time: Our Wraith house guests have been here since Chapter 133, so Anna is hanging out on the Daedalus. Last chapter we discovered that we perhaps haven't been pursuing the most ethical course of action, and this might have taken a bit of a toll on our psyches. References to events from Chapters 61-66(ish), 74-81, 116, 117, and 119.

Chapter 136. One Day at a Time.

Radek really should have been sleeping, but… it was tough. He knew it would be, and all the caffeine on the planet wouldn't make tomorrow any better. He wasn't sure if having Anna on the Daedalus at the moment was any better than having her on Atlantis, but he did know that it was in a significantly better position to defend itself.

At least, if things escalated, Daedalus could easily drop Anna in the Central Tower where the 'gate could take her to safety. Rodney would make sure of it.

Anyway, he was quite close to a final solution for the optimal canister placement on the Wraith vessel. He stopped by Carson's quarters to no answer and hoped that meant that he was still in the infirmary doing some late work as well. But, if he wasn't, Radek figured he could hazard to wake up Rodney for a second opinion.

Or was this one of the things that could wait until morning? Probably anything could wait until morning. If things were going to fall apart overnight, Radek's musings about aerodynamic dissemination weren't going to make any difference.

The lights in the infirmary were all off. Radek stood in the silent hallway a few feet away, imagining Rodney's response to being dragged out of bed at almost one in the morning. It wouldn't be good, unless he couldn't sleep either. Then he might be grateful for the distraction in the same way Radek would have been glad for the company.

But, no, someone was definitely in the infirmary. He heard someone breathing.

Oh, no, that… he heard someone crying. Softly.

Radek stepped into the dark infirmary, calling, "Who's here?" even though he knew exactly who it was. Not that he'd ever heard Carson crying before, but it sounded like him.

"It's me." Carson, somewhere in the darkness, took a sharp breath. "Do you need something?"

Radek shook his head and walked toward Carson's voice. Based on the direction, he was at his desk. "Not really, I guess. Do you?"

"No."

Radek paused, contemplating his dim shadow in the black sea of the floor cast from the hallway lights. "Alright… um, are you okay?"

"No."

He thought he knew, probably, what was wrong, but he couldn't help himself. "What's wrong?"

Suddenly, the lights flicked on. Carson was sitting at his desk, and ten feet away was an old man on an autopsy table. The formerly-Wraith test subject. They needed to know how quickly the retrovirus affected the Wraith in its aerosolized form. And the Wraith needed to know if a Wraith turned into a Human would serve as a suitable source of food.

Aware of Carson's eyes on him, Radek crossed the floor to stand next to the body that looked very much like a human. The white hair matched the wrinkled skin, ill-fitting on bones that shriveled as the life had been pulled from his body. Despite the scalpels arranged on a tray nearby, the only wound was the feeding mark on his chest.

Everyone had known this was exactly what they were signing up for.

"This isn't what I do, Radek." Carson hid his eyes in his palm. "I'm a healer. I don't make weapons."

Radek sighed. Carson did, technically, make weapons. A very effective one that Atlantis itself would have used if these Wraith hadn't come along. But that wasn't what Carson meant. It wouldn't help Carson to know that if hadn't been this Wraith at this moment, it would have been another one later. It would have been another Human the Wraith queen would have fed upon.

But Carson meant he wasn't that type of person. Radek didn't know what type of person, exactly, would make weapons. Someone like Radek? Someone with a wife and a daughter or a fleet of racing pigeons. Someone who slept surprisingly well for all the facts and figures in his head about nuclear weapons and how quickly he could get to the nearest shelter with a five-year-old in his arms. And how much it wouldn't matter—because a world after that wouldn't be livable, anyway.

All things considered, these weapons were… different. Probably better. And, by some extension, Carson was, too. Radek knew what he thought the right thing was—and the only problem he had with it was that he knew people like Carson and Elizabeth would have a problem with it. Because they were good people.

"No. You don't make weapons."

"But I do," Carson said, and leaned back in his chair, barely steadying himself with one hand as he did. "God forgive me. Just because I can isolate one gene and switch it on—who knows how many will die a horrific death because of me?"

"And how many won't?" Radek offered. It wouldn't help, but he offered it anyway.

"That man is dead because of—"

"Because he's a Wraith."

"Not anymore, he's not!" Carson looked up, tears on his face he hadn't bothered to catch.

"He wouldn't have been there if he weren't."

Possibly because he knew Radek was right, he didn't answer. He got up, instead, walking unsteadily to the Wraith's deathbed. He was well within arm's reach when he stopped, eyes passing over the still body in what Radek could only describe as grief.

But—for what? Despite the strange similarity in nose shape between this Wraith and his own father's, Radek could still only see the Wraith writhing in pain on the gurney moments before he changed. The green tint to his skin slipping away until he didn't look Wraith anymore. And Radek knew as much as he knew Carson had to have known… he would always be a Wraith. It didn't matter what he looked like. If they had stopped the queen from feeding, he would have been subject to treatments for the rest of his life to maintain his humanity. He would have been followed by a small battalion of marines. He would never know what the Human home planet looked like because, however Human he appeared to be, it would never be his home planet.

Still, Carson shook his head. "This is never what I wanted. This isn't—my god. When I developed this retrovirus, it was to free the Wraith from what I perceived to be an unnatural state. But the only thing they'll get is a horribly painful death. We're still letting the Wraith kill Humans—Humans we made!" He took a breath, sharp but controlled. "We have to stop this. We have to stop it, now."

"We can't."

"I know." Carson's tone turned dark and he picked up a scalpel. Without a word, without warning, he sliced into the Wraith's abdomen and pulled.

To Radek's surprise, the Wraith's interior was just as red as his was—something he wished he hadn't known but had seen far too much of his own blood only recently to have forgotten. He didn't know what color he thought Wraith blood was. But, to Carson's point… he wasn't exactly a Wraith, was he?

It was better to think he wasn't. It was always better to think that. If they weren't Human, it mattered less. Not because that was categorically true, but because it wasn't his responsibility. The Wraith could find their own Carsons, their own Radeks, to solve their problems and worry about whatever Wraith morality happened to be. If there were any such thing at all.

"I'm sorry, Radek, did you need something?" Carson asked, pulling back what was now a flap of skin covering the Wraith internals. Of course, now they looked only Human.

Radek spun to turn his back on the macabre scene. He didn't remember what he was here for at all. "No. I guess not." Carson said nothing at all, and he left.

If Carson was this way, then… what was Elizabeth like? Before he knew it, he was pressing the dot in the map nearest Elizabeth's quarters, standing outside her door before he could really stop himself.

There wasn't much else for him to do. He wasn't waking Rodney. He wasn't talking to Carson. His musings on airflow rates in hiveships placement seemed unimportant, especially when they didn't even have enough of the agent to be effective on a Wraith hive ship. He didn't even bother to check the time. He just knew she was awake.

Elizabeth opened the door, a glass of wine in hand. He'd kind of expected it. She didn't even smile or say hello. She just stepped aside in silent invitation for him to come inside.

The room was a bit of a mess… that was normal, though. Elizabeth was oddly not at all tidy—and he'd never stopped to wonder why that was odd. He wondered if she'd really had all that wine tonight, or if this was just another in a long line of many nights. Her tablet displayed a half-finished game of solitaire.

"Have you heard from Anna?" she asked, sitting down on the couch, curling her legs underneath her. "How's the Daedalus?"

"Caldwell put her with Kusanagi on the Hippaforalkus project."

Elizabeth's eyebrows raised in what seemed to be genuine interest. "How… nice of him?" She chuckled a little and shook her head, pulling her solitaire game into her lap. "I didn't expect him to respond at all, much less favorably."

"Oh, he hasn't." Radek walked past the single counter space where Elizabeth kept her glasses and mugs. Her kitchen space was even more sparse than his own, not that he ever used his. Anna did, though. "He thinks I'm irresponsible, a terrible parent. He's probably right." He chuckled, and picked up another wine glass from a set of what he assumed were clean ones.

He paused next to a package of medication next to the glasses. A familiar name and a familiar shape. Help for sleeping.

By the time he turned back, Elizabeth was looking over the back of the couch at him. "You don't really think that."

Radek shrugged. He didn't, really. He could never have anticipated their bringing Wraith onto Atlantis when he brought Anna here last year. Sometimes it seemed just as irresponsible to have her in the US—driving at sixteen years old? With other sixteen-year-olds on the road as well? But Caldwell, who, if he had children, had raised them there, wouldn't see it that way. And Radek had seen Anna born in a country that no longer existed, under another that had fallen, too, and his perpetual worry over the future could never have predicted the revolution would be so soft.

"You're a wonderful father." Elizabeth turned around, and moved a card on her screen.

Radek found himself standing quite still, shocked for some reason. He'd never heard that before, and he hadn't noticed. And, now that he'd heard it, he knew. He didn't believe it at all.

Caldwell was right. This was irresponsible. It always had been, and he always worried it would be. But, even if he wanted to change it, he couldn't now. This was a genie that wasn't going to be put back in the bottle—because he'd already tried.

But, in comparison to Elizabeth's moral quandaries, that was probably nothing. He sighed, and pointed at the bottle of wine on the coffee table in front of her. "May I?"

She nodded, but didn't look at him. Stared at her game.

Radek poured some wine into his glass and watched it still. He wondered if Elizabeth needed to hear something like that, or if the suggestion would only make clear her failures. That she'd become someone she couldn't stand. But, really, she must have already known that. The difference between the Elizabeth of a few months ago and this one was clear.

This Elizabeth wasn't sleeping. She was angry, and sad. This Elizabeth couldn't finish a game of solitaire. This Elizabeth could barely look at him.

"I don't know what to say…" he finally managed softly.

She looked up, apparent curiosity the only thing holding her attention there, even though she had to know exactly what he was talking about. Carson was weighing a Wraith-turned-Human liver. "There's nothing to say. We're here now."

"I know, but…" There was something in the back of his head, there for months, that he knew he needed to say. To figure out how. And he'd sure picked a good time to try to say it now, considering he didn't even know what it was. "But, Elizabeth, you're hurting yourself. And I don't want to think you can't talk to me about it."

"What do you want me to say?" That was as close to a snap from her as he'd ever seen. It took all his restraint to not step back. "That you were all right all along? That I should have told Carson to come to his senses the second he tried to continue his investigations after Ellia died?"

Ellia? Radek didn't remember who that might have been, but… well, whoever it was, it was important to Elizabeth. "No, of course not…"

"I should have, though. Shouldn't I?"

There was nothing he could do but watch the tears brim. He set the wine down on the table next to the bottle and went to the couch. She didn't make any moves to pull away, didn't give him any indication he shouldn't sit there, so he did. Next to her, as close as he dared, and stared at his hands.

"I just can't watch you do this to yourself anymore." And why he ever had, now, was beyond him. Probably because saying there was something he had to do to stop her was tantamount to saying she'd made a terrible mistake.

But what was the harm in that? She already knew.

"There's nothing I can do, but… bože." He bit back the worst of it, and looked at her. "If there's something, please tell me."

She shook her head, and turned away from him, into the couch's arm. "John was going to die because of that damn retrovirus, and I couldn't just let it be for nothing. Even if Ford didn't die to the Wraith, he died because of them. We almost lost all of them, Radek. John and Rodney and Teyla and Ronon… and what I wouldn't have given to feel invincible like that, even if it was because of Wraith enzyme. Strong enough to take on a Wraith, using them like they use us." She turned her eyes back on him, finally, so he could see what he didn't want to see. "Because they change us, make us stronger, just to make our deaths last longer."

"Elizabeth…"

"I don't feel any guilt." She sat straighter, and looked at him straight on. "Absolutely none."

He nodded, even though he didn't really believe it. And he hoped that she, now that she'd heard it, didn't believe it, either.

"I know I would have. I know I should," she said. "If you'd told me a year ago this would be me today, I'd… I'd…" Elizabeth took a breath, shook her head, and redirected. "I don't know how I got here. I don't know who I am."

One day, you do something you've never done before, and then you're doing it every day like you've always done it.

Radek didn't know what made him think of it, but… Anna was right, wasn't she? One day, Carson was a paragon a virtue. Then, one small decision after another, one day after another, he wasn't anymore. Elizabeth let him go there… and she followed him.

"What would Elizabeth do, then?" he asked, and hoped she understood what he meant. He didn't know how to explain it. The other Elizabeth. The Elizabeth she knew.

For a very long moment, she was quiet. She shook her head, and covered her face with both hands. "I don't know." She shook her head again and sobbed. "I don't know."

He wasn't sure it would help, he wasn't sure she'd take kindly to the gesture, but he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He didn't know why he was surprised when she didn't pull away. Surprised when she turned toward him, put her head on his shoulder.

He didn't know if she felt better about it, but he sure did. She was still Elizabeth, and, of course, she always was. But even if not, she could be again.

Next time: Can't you just tell me what happens next...?