Kieran shoves the tablet into Sora's hands, throwing a truly shitty apology over her shoulder as she absolutely books it to the infirmary. Both the jumper bay and the infirmary are in the central tower, so she doesn't have to sprint across half the city, just down flights and flights of stairs.
She catches a glimpse of John in a gurney when she gets there. There's red all over. A too-familiar thrum of dread pulses through her body in tandem with adrenaline. She's not out of shape by any means, but right now she can't quite catch her breath.
Rodney is grumbling about a splinter, and the attending nurse doesn't dignify him with a response. She's not too gentle with the tweezers either.
Kieran's not here to check on Rodney.
Her stomach swoops hard as she catches a glimpse of John propped up on a cot. He looks mostly fine, but there's a gnarly cut on his arm that Carson's mopping up. Based on where the cut is, Kieran doubts that it nicked a major blood vessel. Based on the amount of blood covering his arm, it must've been deep.
She can't bring herself to approach John quite yet. It's not a fatal injury by any means. Kieran's seen worse, stitched up worse from exercises and training with her family and friends gone wrong. It's not quite superficial, but John's taking the antiseptic like a freaking champ.
And no wonder—all the blood wipes away, like there was never an injury in the first place.
But Kieran could've sworn—
She doesn't catch whatever Carson's saying to John, but he looks as incredulous as Kieran feels.
"How could a laceration like that just be completely healed?" Kieran blurts as she weeps forward.
"When did you get here?" Carson startles just a bit, digging the cotton swab into John's arm just a bit harder. Not even a flinch.
"I've been here the whole time." Kieran almost wants to touch John's arm, but she latches on to the bars on the gurney instead. "Elizabeth commed me and said John was being rushed here." Kieran glares at John's arm like it did something to offend her personally. "So why all the blood if there wasn't even a cut?"
"See? It's like I was telling Carson—it looked a lot worse than it was." He gives Kieran a meaningful look. "Have you already eaten lunch?"
"Uh—yeah. I did. But I'm down to hang out if you are." Kieran is perfectly capable of reading between the lines. "I'll meet you there."
She walks out of the infirmary, pressing herself to a wall just outside.
"Maybe the wound wasn't all bad," John says.
"Then where did all the blood come from?" Carson asks. "Since you're the medical professional here."
There's a pause, and Kieran can imagine John scowling. "I don't know. Maybe it looked a lot worse than it was."
"I didn't see evidence of any cut at all."
"That's weird, because it hurt like hell."
"You're sure the skin was broken?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. There was a lot of blood. Maybe it was hers."
"It was definitely human."
Kieran can't catch whatever else they're saying; the sound of John's weight shifting off the cot is enough of a signal for her to jet and grab a table at the cafeteria.
It's a good thing Kieran left when she did. She barely had to wait ten minutes before John slid into the seat in front of her.
"So how was work today?" Kieran nurses her tea and gives him a cheeky smile. John shut down the conversation as soon as she showed herself in the infirmary, so she doubts she's going to get more info out of him now. "Sounds like you got to come back early."
"Yeah. Sorry about the fuss." John smiles in a way that's either reassuring or a grimace. She can't quite tell. "It looked pretty bad at first, but better safe than sorry, right?"
"I figured. Who knows what you're dealing with out there," Kieran says. It's still kind of insane that another galaxy with a whole host of unknowns is considered safer than Earth right now. Attempts on her life aren't exactly new, but she has to wonder how badly "the Trust" considers her a loose end of they're gunning for her so hard right now. But that's not the point of this conversation.
"What have you been up to today?" John asks.
"Nothing as exciting as what you've been up to, apparently," Kieran says. "I walked around a bit, then did some jumper maintenance with Radek and Sora later. And the Elizabeth told me you were back."
"Sora?" John raises his eyebrows a bit.
"Mmhm." Kieran takes a long, slow sip of so she doesn't end up just staring at John. There's a swirl of emotions too confusing to untangle right now. She's at least a little angry with him for not telling her about the Wraith. Parents are supposed to tell their kids of something or something or a lot of someones are out to kill them, right? There's also whatever had Carson so concerned about John. That much and not even so much of a hint of a cut or scab or scar . . . it couldn't be nothing. John wouldn't have been rushed back to Atlantis early and whisked away on a gurney just for nothing. So, unless he had some advanced healing factor or something . . .
There's not much use thinking about that. If she wants answers, she'll have to get them herself.
"How were the jumpers?"
The enthusiasm in her voice is plenty real. "They're pretty cool." She cocks her head. "I don't suppose I could talk you into a joyride?"
John grins. "I think I could talk Elizabeth into giving me a day off for that."
"I'll hold you to it," Kieran says. "What else have you got lined up for today?"
"I'm under doctor's orders to take it easy the next couple days. We might be able to squeeze in that joyride after all."
Now seems like as good a day as any to start some schoolwork. It's not like she has a lot of other stuff to do. She's gotten familiar enough with the city that she can get where she needs to go without getting too turned around. Her mind needs something else to do other than marinate in her trauma.
She eases in English, which is counterintuitive. She never had the patience for literature, not when her actual life is a bigger tragedy than anything else she could possibly read about. If there's an author for her story, she just wants their location dropped. She just wants to talk.
She hasn't even gotten her hands on books yet. All she's really doing is looking through are a selection of novels and plays and picking the ones she wants to work through. She's still planning on suffering through the AP track. Might as well make it enjoyable as possible if they're giving her the option.
The quiet busy work is what she needs right now, and Jonas is great company. He absorbs knowledge like a sponge and his memory's better than an elephant. And having someone else's opinion of the themes she'll be dissected will be helpful.
As the leading expert on the Ancient language (besides Daniel Jackson, but the SGC wouldn't give him up to the expedition no matter how much he begged), Jonas' job amounts to translating the Atlantis databases. Elizabeth helps out when she can, but as the administrator of the expedition she doesn't have a lot of free time. IT's the paper pusher equivalent of trying to bail a ship with a punctured hull. Never-ending. And that's on top of whenever he gets sent off-world. He's not on any team, not officially anyways, but his experiences as part of SG-1 is invaluable.
"Does it get boring doing the same thing every day?" Kieran asks.
"Not really!" Jonas says with his ever-present grin. "Monotonous, but there's so much to comb through. It's amazing. Culture, weapons, scientific research, ascension. They really were ahead of us in everything they did."
"If they were so smart," Kieran begins innocently. "How come they got their butts kicked in by the Wraith?"
Jonas nearly spews his coffee all over his set-up. Really, it's a good thing he didn't. He would've sprayed coffee all over his work, but also Kieran and that's really what she's more concerned about.
"You were told about the Wraith?" Jonas wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I thought Colonel Sheppard was going to wait."
"Oh, John never told me anything," Kieran says dismissively. She tries not to be too upset about it. IT's not the first time a parental figure has kept some vital information from her. Vital information about something out to kill her. It's not that big of a deal. Really! It's her life. It's not that important. "I'll talk to him about it."
Things have calmed down enough that she's settling into a route. Which means her brain has plenty of room to get really, really pissed.
"Kieran?"
"What?" Kieran snaps. Jonas blinks. " . . . Sorry. I don't know where that—sorry."
"You're fine." Jonas pauses, drumming his fingertips on the table in thought. "I'm sure Colonel Sheppard isn't trying to hurt you. This is a situation that no could have possibly foreseen. He's doing his best."
Best? Ha! "Not good enough," Kieran mutters bitterly, angrily scratching out Lord of the Flies in favor of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Jonas doesn't have a response to that, though whether it's because he's out of things to say or because he's smart enough not to poke a bear she can't tell. Silence settles in the room, and Kieran is simultaneously too annoyed to care and too awkward to apologize.
After Kieran shut down all of Jonas' well-intentioned . . . Jonas-ing, he tread carefully into "small talk" territory. It's hard to ignore someone who was the human form of a golden retriever and the embodiment of sunshine. He's charming, but not pushy. Curious, but not nosy. He minds Kieran of Goro Akechi when she first met him, before she found out that his charm and honeyed words were an act. Jonas' charisma seems genuine.
Plus, she can't exactly ignore Jonas. She's the one who sought him out. That would be rude. And she needs people to hang out with.
"You know, after I committed treason on my home planet, I was living at the SGC. I didn't get to travel around much. Had to stay on Earth. They didn't let me join SG-1 until a few months after."
Kieran doesn't know which part to address first. "Home planet? Treason?"
"Oh yeah," Jonas grins. "I'm not from Earth. I'm from the country Kelowna on the planet Langara."
"Whoa." Kieran blinks. "And you're like. A human human?"
Jonas nods.
"Jeez. I think I'd go insane not having anything to do. Staring at concrete walls for months doesn't sound . . . enriching."
Jonas flaps a hand dismissively. "It wasn't too bad. I got to through all of Dr. Jackson's old notes. The SGC has an extensive library too. Personally, I found the subscription to the American Journal for Evolutionary Science extremely fascinating."
"Evolutionary science?" Kieran gestures lazily to his workspace, littered in passages and notes and his tablet. Besides Ancient, there was another language. Its script looks similar to Ancient with harsher more triangular characters, but she couldn't make heads or tails of it if she tried. "I thought you were a linguist."
"That's what I did with SG-1 and that's what I do here," Jonas says. "But I dabble in a bit of everything. I'm a fast learner."
Jonas is easy to talk to. To easy, honestly. It's not that he's fishing for information in a way that sets off alarm bells in Kieran's mind, he's just naturally curious and genuine about everything he does.
"What was living in Japan like?" Jonas asks. "I'm curious since I only got to experience other cultures off-world. I didn't get to experience the ones Earth had to offer firsthand besides Colorado Springs. Well—I guess I went to a small town in Oregon, but I don't think that counts since everyone had a snake in their head."
Yeah, she's just going to gloss over that last bit.
"I used to live live in Japan until I was four, but I don't remember much. I uh, I still hold dual citizenship. And my mom and I would visit her side of the family every summer. They live in a small town in the countryside called Inaba. There's not a lot to do there, but I swear they have the best freaking beef bowls you'll have in your entire life. Plus, I have a cousin there. His name's ren. He's like a brother to me. I have a picture."
Kieran shows Jonas a picture on her phone. It's a candid photo of them studying together in LeBlanc, the café Ren lived in during his probation. They're still in their school uniforms. Kieran's face is in her hands. Ren's laughing his ass off.
"I failed an English exam," Kieran says.
"Um." Jonas blinks, like he's making sure they've been speaking the same language this whole time. "You're conversational."
"Yeah. I noticed." Kieran huffs her bangs out of her face. "Did you know that British English has some slight differences? Like they say have a nap instead of take a nap? Stuff like that. I was the foreign exchange student on a super prestigious scholarship. It was so embarrassing I wanted to die."
Jonas laughs out loud.
"Yeah, yeah, it's funny now. I had to talk to the teacher about it and it went up to the principal. It was so annoying. Like, obviously I can prove I can speak English. American English!" Kieran throws her hands up.
"You guys look like you could be siblings." Jonas squints a bit at the photo.
Kieran laughs, hoping it doesn't come out too nervous, and puts her phone away. "I mean, I did say he was like a brother to me."
"It's good you have someone you're close to like that," Jonas says. "But the time difference must've made things interesting."
"Yeah. He's fifteen hours ahead of Colorado Springs, so we usually just stuck to texting each other. We can usually get away with Skyping each other on Sundays, but it drove my mom up the wall being up past midnight on a school night." Kieran shrugs. "It's whatever, I guess. You could probably imagine that we drove the rest of our family crazy whenever the both of us were around."
"It sounds like you have a lot of good memories with him."
"I do." Kieran smiles. She has memories of watching fireflies flicker in the summer night. Of watching lightning lace through clouds and pouring rain. Of counting how many takoyaki they could scarf down before getting sick. "Some bad ones too." Bumps. Bruises. The sounds of a fight. Hiding in a closet with Ren. Small hands slick with warm blood. "Packaged deal, I guess."
"That's always the case."
Thankfully, Kieran's depressing trip down memory lane is interrupted by Teyla Emmagan stepping into the room. She's out of uniform, wearing a brown leather top and skirt. There's a bag slung over her shoulder, and Kieran can spot the long baton-adjacent things sticking out of them.
"I wanted to see if you were interest in joining me for a workout," Teyla says with a gentle smile. "John will be joining me later, but you mentioned yesterday at dinner that you have some martial arts background."
Kieran practically launches herself off the stool.
"Bantos fighting is a martial art of my people," Teyla explains. She has a Bantos rod in each hand. They're wooden, longer than Kieran's arm. The hilt is wrapped in solid black leather and goes about halfway up. The rest of it is carved in concentric grooves that shows off the tree rings.
"It reminds me of something called escrima on Earth." Kieran twirls them experimentally. They're weighted a little differently than what she's used to, mostly due to the difference in length. It's not that difficult of an adjustment once muscle memory kicks in. And stops as soon as she sees Teyla observe her with a critical eye. "Um. I'm out of practice."
"No worries," Teyla reassures her. "This is a lesson on fundamentals."
Teyla's a good teacher. She's knowledgeable and patient, and Kieran's picking up the basics pretty quickly. She's not sure how much of it is a product of Teyla's abilities as a teacher or Kieran's transferable skills kicking in. She fumbles more at first because she's not sure if she should just go with the flow or if she should hold back.
"Relax," Teyla says for the umpteenth time. "If you're stiff, you're immobile."
"Tell me something I don't know," Kieran grumbles. Judging from the look on Teyla's face, she's not as quiet as she thought she was. "Sorry. I'm a little frustrated."
Teyla laughs lightly. "That's to be expected. No one learns a new skill overnight."
Not overnight, sure. But this isn't a completely new skill. Kieran has plenty of transferrable skills, but she's not about to invite a ton of questions with a sudden burst of competence.
Within the hour, Teyla has Kieran going through some basic movement drills. It's unfamiliar enough that it's more tedious than meditative, but she figures she can catch up with a bit more practice. The more she gets a feel for things, the less they feel like an obstacle and more like another tool in her toolbox. By the time John swaggers in, she and Teyla are tentatively trading blows.
"You're early," Teyla remarks. Kieran tries for a swipe to the face. It's deflected with a flick of the wrist. Damn.
"I ran 'round the city with Ronon," John says. "He's being a big baby, but I hardly broke a sweat."
There's something about John that makes Kieran's hackles rise. She isn't quite sure what it is. She hasn't seen him since they say together in the cafeteria. Is it in his voice? Is it the way he's standing? She can't put her finger on it, but something just doesn't feel right.
Paranoid, Kieran chides herself. You're being paranoid.
Historically, being paranoid did have its merits. That thought is not even comforting during normal days. It makes her outright uneasy now.
"The whole city?" Kieran asks anyway. "And you hardly broke a sweat?"
"Yeah." John pins her with a look that's not quite a glare. It's uncomfortable seeing a look meant for high school mean girls on the face of a man pushing forty. "That's what I said, isn't it?"
Now, Kieran hardly knows Teyla. The drills she's done today are the most interaction she's ever had with her. But the laws of girl code aren't bound to any one galaxy apparently, and the side-eye look they shared spoke volumes.
John's a little off, but that isn't exactly a nail in a coffin. Maybe in the span of the four hours since Kieran saw him, but something happened that completely ruined his day.
It's a shot in the dark, but maybe there really was non-human blood or something in John's system. Maybe, just maybe it's affecting John's head in some way. Was it just emotions? Or was it also his spatial skills?
"Teyla was teaching me some stuff with the Bantos rods." Kieran bounces on her toes, forces a brightness in her smile and a cheer in her voice. "Wanna see?"
"Sure." John grabs his own set of rods, twirling them as he walks up. "Though I'm not sure how much you picked up in an hour."
"Excuse me?" Kieran settles into something like the sparring stance Teyla showed her. Her stance is narrower. She's ready on the balls of her feet. She's not twirling her batons. She's ready to pounce.
Teyla, the voice of reason in every situation, tries to interject. "Maybe we shouldn't—"
"No." John and Kieran snap in unison.
The look on Teyla's face is the most condensed concern and skepticism can be, but she steps back anyways. Maybe despite all of their better judgement. "Very well. Begin!"
Kieran moves first, swinging for John's leg. He intercepts it with an aggressive amount of force, sending a jolt racing from her wrist to her shoulder. Kieran doesn't have a choice but to stagger back. And just like that, the tension takes off like a gunshot. They're exchanging blows, destroying any pretense of friendly beginner level sparring.
She's keeping up with him—just barely. Just enough. She's just enough.
Kieran opened with a swing to the leg—an easy target to defend, and she telegraphed that attack all the way to the Milky Way. John didn't even bother, pelting her with the speed and ferocity of a hurricane. She's holding her own, but as long as she's not even trying to incapacitate him, it's an uneasy stalemate.
But she can't keep it up forever.
It starts with Kieran losing ground, getting backed to the wall inch by inch. A baton cracks against her fingertips. Her leg. Her chin.
And then—
"If you fight like that," John sneers. "It's no wonder Mayumi died on your watch."
There is something fragile inside of Kieran that's been kept together by fraying threads for a long time. She's been keeping herself together by sheer force of will, but now—
"SCREW YOU!" Kieran screams. She swings the Bantos rod with all of her might, all undisciplined and unfocused rage like she's a toddler again. "SHUT. THE. HELL. UP!"
"That's enough!"
Teyla must have the utmost confidence in her conflict resolution skills. She doesn't try and restrain either of them but jumps in the middle and pushes them apart with a surprising amount of force.
The situation is diffused. For now. The static charge still hangs in the air. The razor's edge. One wrong move, and she's not sure anything can stop her from ripping John's head off.
Silence settles, heavy. Kieran's chest is heaving with the weight of it.
John drops his Bantos rods, the clatter shattering the silence. He's staring at her, eyes wide, jaw dropped. He stumbles back a few steps, nearly tripping over himself. It's not the face of a man who twisted the proverbial knife in the wound. It's the face of a man horrified he did it.
"I think," Teyla says with the finality of the judge's gavel. "That we are done today."
No, Kieran wants to say. We're not.
John doesn't say anything. He's gone from a deer ready to bolt in the headlights to frozen in place. He stays still long enough that she can spot something raw and red on the inside of his forearm. Right where his wound was.
"What the hell is that?" Kieran demands. The thrum of anger-induced adrenaline is still pumping in her veins, but the snippets of John and Carson's conversation from earlier this morning starts ringing in her ears. "That's not eczema, is it?"
She jabs at his arm with the rod. Probably with a lot more force than necessary, but John doesn't even wince. He really might have an increased pain tolerance. She makes a note of that for later.
John can't meet her eyes. Something like satisfaction twists up in her until she grabs him by the arm and wretches it for her and Teyla to see.
It's not freaking eczema. John's skin isn't raw and red and peeling. It's gray with ridges. And it doesn't feel like flesh. It's cool and smooth like well-glazed pottery.
John's comm clicks on. "Colonel Sheppard." She can just barely hear Carson's tinny voice. "Please report to the infirmary."
Kieran stares at him, like she's on the cusp of discovering something terrible.
Updates are going to slow down, I think. I'm not going abandon this story, but it is hard to come back home and sit down to write when a lot of my job has been sitting down and writing. It's been like pulling teeth lately.
I'll be doing my best to reply to reviews, and you can reach to me on my Tumblr superwrites!