Part Seventeen: Paved With Good Intentions

Carson blinked and held out his arms, amazed that he was denied his chance to travel with Ronon on his last journey.

"He will need a proper burial."

Carson's tears were drying on his cheeks as he stood in the high afternoon brightness outside the hut in which Ronon had died. Eoin stood back a few paces, as if Beckett himself were unclean.

"We do not bury our dead," Eoin responded. "If we did, then we would have to prepare them, touch them." He gestured towards a large structure approximately two kilometers away. It seemed to fade out behind a blanket of mist rising from the nearby streams, obscuring the building's finer details.

"You…what? You put them in there, do you?" Eoin nodded. Beckett grimaced at the thought of bodies lying exposed to the elements. He now knew the source of the putrid odor that occasionally settled on the village. "Well, you have to touch the bodies in order to move them, don't you?"

"It is our punishment," he said. "The more severe the crime, the more dead must be carried and laid out in the Pavilion."

"Then why are criminals not sentenced to burying them instead? It's not right or healthy to…to…" He could not finish his sentence.

Eoin said nothing. He simply laid a cloak across Beckett's shoulders and, with a tip of his head, led him along the footpath leading to the structure. The doctor did not wish to go there, could not imagine a worse place on any planet.

"Didn't you kill me? Aren't I dead?" he asked. Then, a moment later, he stood much closer to the Pavilion, as if he had flown there.

Incredulous now, Beckett hesitated. The scene had loosened the bonds of reality and become more fantastical with each passing moment. He felt dizzy and staggered.

Eoin steadied him. But the youth's strong hands withered and grew white and spotted with age. Beckett regained his equilibrium and gazed at Eoin's face, to see that it had changed, that Eoin had now become the old woman, Phoebus.

"I will take you there," she was saying, as her claw-like hand gripped tighter, until Beckett felt ragged fingernails pressing half-moon slits in his skin. The smell of death grew stronger with each forward step.

"No. I don't want to see it!" Beckett pleaded.

The decrepit spectre said nothing, her papery lungs whistling with effort. Beckett had already decided that Ronon would not end up there. He would set up a pyre, send off the man in a torrent of fire, something entirely fitting for a great warrior. Then he would take the ashes and float them down the nearest river.

Without being aware of how he'd arrived, Beckett stood at the entrance to a great hall, its bare foundation carpeted by bodies erupting with decay. A thousand people, perhaps more, lay in the dust. His feet felt cold and, looking down, Carson noticed that he wore no shoes.

"This is what they have done." A child, a girl no older than ten, appeared beside him. "The Wraith."

He looked at her, watched her watching the dead. Her face registered the blankness of someone deeply stunned, fighting for her sanity. He wondered whether his face held that same expression.

"I'm so sorry." Carson really meant that, although Ronon was dead, although there was a high probability that he himself was dead, as well.

"My father lies in this room," she said in a voice so low Carson could barely hear her words. "My sister and brother, as well. We do not speak of the dead. When they pass they are gone as if they had never been."

"How can you be so heartless?" Beckett asked her.

"To protect ourselves lest we lose hope for the future," she replied.

Beckett couldn't imagine a future without memories of the generations gone past. Even in the midst of a galaxy ridiculously far from home, he remembered.

They were quiet for a time. The doctor looked away from the gruesome corpses.

"We are sorry about your friend," said the girl. She, too, looked askance, nothing at all behind her eyes. "We did not mean for him to die. You did not mean to bring him with you on this journey. He would forgive us both if he were here."

This was a difficulty for Carson right now. He wasn't at all certain about the nature of forgiveness, whether it must come from within or from without. Many years ago he had read about people who unwittingly commit evil in an effort to do good. Perhaps what stood him apart from other evil doers was the goodness that always rose within him, trying to find expression.

He couldn't be sure about this, either. Evil doers always try to justify the havoc and suffering they cause. What made him any different? He would have liked to discuss this with Ronon, but now it was too late.

The child took Beckett's hand. "You would die for your friends?" she asked, her tiny voice heavy with sorrow.

"Yes. 'Course."

"Then you are a good man."

"It's not always about dying, lass" Becket sighed. "The dead are out of their misery. It's those who stay behind who suffer, wha' linger on the brink of death themselves or madness." Like all of you, he failed to add.

"Stay with us." Eoin had come to Beckett's side. "You may choose. Go back to your endless war where every lost soul is mourned. Or be with us. Bettina is waiting, we have food here. You need want for nothing."

Beckett appeared to consider this for a moment. "Food and sex are good motivators," he said, pretending to smile at the beguiling temptations.

"Quite." The young man seemed far too inexperienced to be discussing such things. "If Bettina is not to your liking, there are other women. Prettier, younger…"

Eoin's voice trailed off, and Beckett knew that great promise lay within the silence that followed. He supposed Bettina could distract him. Then he wouldn't have to think about his mistakes. If he stayed in the village he wouldn't have to face the damage he had done or try to repair it. Here he was forbidden to cure or grieve or bury.

Beckett imagined a line in the earth separating good and evil, but then realized that this strange village was both and that it was neither. Perhaps the line between good and evil was supposed to be thin. Perhaps it didn't exist at all and he was both and neither, like this place and the people living in it. Ronon might have been able to tell him about this, he thought. Ronon, who surely hated him for throwing caution to the wind, but appreciated that Beckett had wanted to save him. Ronon, who never forgot, who never forgave, either.

He took a deep breath. At that moment, worn from his travels, he felt himself falling, again, and hoped that this time would be his last.