Understudy

Author: Cheryl W.

Author's Note: I know, you all thought I abandoned this story but I didn't. But I am having a heck of a time getting a full length chapter penned that I'm satisfied with. So I'm giving you the first tidbit that I'm pleased with and hoping there's someone out there who's still interested in reading it. Then the next chapter should get hammered out and posted.

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Chapter 18: Changes in Latitude

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Ara tried to keep up with Ronon's long legged pace, decided to use her words to slow down her fellow Satedan. "I don't understand how you can be loyal to one so undisciplined. On Sateda, he'd be too weak to be considered a soldier. So what does he have that you want?"

Gritting his teeth against defending John, Ronon grumbled instead, "Want?"

"All you've wanted was vengeance, so don't pretend you're not here for that, using him to meet that end. Does his people have resources you need? Because he might not know you, but I do." Then she swung into Ronon's path and kissed him. When Ronon roughly yanked her free of him, she simply laughed, ran a finger down his cheek. "You vowed to never take anyone else's orders after Kell. Let's find what we need and go. Tell Rakai they were killed by the sandstorm, Sheppard and Tyre. We take the intel and you lead the resistance, not Tyre. It's what you wanted, you told me. So don't pretend to be all offended now." She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again. Grabbing her arms, he roughly disentangled them.

"I've changed," Ronon growled, was starting to really not like this universe's version of himself. Made him realize that Tyre's lack of trust in him, lack of trust in the version of him that Tyre knew intimately, wasn't wrong. That was why Trye had taken Sheppard, to safeguard against a coup by him.

"Ha, you may convince Tyre of that, not me," Ara scoffed at his declaration that he wasn't still all about power. "If you hadn't gone after Kell alone, you would have been the leader instead of Trye. So tell me the truth. When I learned that Kell was alive, I thought that meant you weren't but here you are, all in one piece. Did you lie to me when you said you were going after him? Did you instead simply run from our battle like a coward?"

"Guess you have me all figured out," Ronon demurred as he began heading toward the energy source again.

Ara huffed behind him before following in his wake.

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John and Tyre reached their destinated hot zone, which was a humming generator, not the computer system. "You bet on the wrong horse," John teased his companion.

"Maybe that's what you counted on," Tyre replied more lighthearted than accusatory.

"Trust me, if my luck was any good, I wouldn't have owed Big Mike as much as I did. Guess I should have told you that before you chose to go my way," John drawled, stepping forward to inspect the generator. Was amazed that something thousands of years old was still functioning. Talk about 'they don't build them like they used to'.

"Let's head back," Tyre decided, starting to walk away and drawing the chain link binding him to John taut.

"Wait," John commanded, had to give the chain between them a yank to get Tyre to take his suggestion seriously. "There is something over there I want to see." Taking into consideration their linked statis, he drawled, "Ok, that we both should investigate."

Tyre, with an amazing show of complacency, walked to John, followed him to a corridor that led out of the room. John bent down to inspect what had caught his eye: Sand, on the floor. As he looked down the corridor, there was more of it. Nature insinuating its way into the structure, but the real troubling detail was that this was a centermost section of the building. Starting to head down the corridor, he came up short when his arm was halted by the chain, looked back to Tyre. "I know curiosity killed the cat but sometimes it's a lifesaver. We need to know what'S going on."

"I'm no…..cat," Tyre remarked, proving he didn't know what the heck a cat was but was affronted to be compared to one. But he joined John on a trek down the corridor. They found more and more sand underfoot and then they turned a corner and the way was cut off by a landslide of the desert's grainy composite. Looking above them, John saw that the ceiling had caved in. Even then, he felt the sand pelting him as it swirled in the air. Moving to the left, he stepped on something not sand, something more solid. Looking down, he moved his foot and found a hand under his boot. A hand that wasn't a scaly green appendage of a wraith. Bending down, he started digging around the hand, uncovered a torso and then a face.

"Yarvell," Tyre identified, crouching beside John. His eyes met John's. "This cave-in recently happened. He was in town a few days ago."

His eyes drawn again to the ceiling, John grimly determined. "Which might mean this whole thing is unstable."

"It's been here thousands of years and by Yarvell has come here for months, so why now?" Tyre wondered.

"Don't know but I don't like it," John grumbled back.

"Because with your luck…" Trye began, managed to smirk even with the new threat they were facing.

"Yeah, bad things tend to happen around me," John sullenly agreed as he came to his feet.

"And yet, Ronon choses to remain by your side." This said with curiosity, as if Tyre expected John to explain Ronon's poor choice in his friendship.

"Trust me, I've told him what a bad bet being around me is. But you know the big guy, doesn't listen to reason sometimes," John groused, now worried that Ronon had also met with a dead end or worse, was caught in a cave-in. "I say we cut this venture short. I rather take my odds outside than inside doing the whole 'drowning in sand' scenario."

"Agreed," Tyre said as they began stalking back the way they had come. Said aloud the anomaly that he had tried and just couldn't comprehend. "Ronon doesn't trust easily."

'Could have fooled me,' John denied but didn't say it aloud, knew Ronon's trust of him had a bedrock of Ronon's relationship with his own Sheppard, not him. Still, Ronon was trusting him for his own pledges this trip. "He doesn't talk about his time before. So he was your leader?"

"Yes, before he sought out his ill-advised vengeance on his own. We thought him dead." The shock that they were wrong still ebbing through him. They had lived so long believing that misconception it still felt true. Was probably why he was getting tripped up on the changes wrought in Ronon since they'd been teammates.

Feeling a little awkward that Trye's assumption that HIS Ronon was dead might not be wrong, John stamped down a nervous tell that he just might be bluffing as he lightly retorted, "Yeah, you said that. Ronon's harder to kill than we give him credit for, Thank God." Because where would he be now if Ronon wasn't in his life? Easy: Dead in the desert of Vegas.

But Tyre was giving John a long sideways look, openly scrutinizing him for untruths. "And he's always been one not to give up his anger as well. Which is why it makes little sense he won't join us on our resistance of our leaders." Couldn't fathom that Ronon's loyalty to this man could sate his anger, trump his fealty to his home world. Tyre had never truly been the sentimental type..until now.

Sensing that Trye thought he was the one holding Ronon back from joining their crusade, John shrugged, "Man makes up his own mind."

Surprised at Sheppard's comeback, Trye probed, "Does that mean you fear he will leave with us?"

John found that, he honestly didn't fear that. Maybe it was because Ronon's Sheppard had been killed at another Trye's hands and therefore Ronon would never trust or forgive Trye, any universe's Trye. 'Or maybe I count on Ronon's loyalty to me to be unshakeable.' And John didn't know if that was really naïve of him, really preceptive of him, or really just downright sappy.

Tyre watched the man's expression beside him. "I guess my linking a bomb to you isn't earning me any fealty from him."

John snorted at that understatement of the year because Ronon truly hadn't needed even a grain of sand more reason to want to take Trye's life with violent relish. "No, it's not. Course if you took them off…" he lifted his wrist and rattled the chain between them, "…he might reevaluate how he feels about this little reunion you have going on." But honestly, he had little hope of really convincing Tyre.

Trye laughed. "Does this charm work for you most times?"

John gave him a surprised scoffing sound. "I haven't been accused of being charming lately…more like being detrimentally void of charm." Remembered McKay telling him he should have charmed Sumner when he met him for the first time. Charmed Sumner? Right. Only putting his own butt on the line to save men and the mission had dented the Colonel's distrust in him.

"Maybe charm's not the right word," Trye amended, "more like…" Sheppard didn't know what he was more like because at that moment the ground under their feet shook.

Trye staggered against the corridor wall while John rode out the tremors, well tried to but they only increased until he lost his own footing and shoulder checked the gooey wall. Shoving himself upright, he met Tyre's gaze and growled, "Earth tremors," because his piss poor luck was holding out. Grimly stated the obvious conclusion, "That's what happened to the corridor."

Then as one, the two soldiers broke into a run, neither one wanting a freaking Wraith compound in a long-deserted planet to be their final resting place. But the tremors only intensified, sending them stumbling to the ground like they were caught in an 8 Richter scale earthquake. They were trying to regain their feet amongst the shaking when the ceiling overhead cracked open, dumping gooey Wraith ship ceiling over the two men and then the sand swirled in, howling like a banshee.

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TBC – I Promise!

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Have a great day!

Cheryl W.