Lorne didn't feel entirely at ease about leaving Reed behind. But Helton insisted that the lieutenant was in no condition to be traveling anywhere, and Reed patiently reminded Lorne of the sturdiness of a puddle jumper as well as reassuring his leader that he was still fully capable of wielding a firearm should it become necessary. He would be fine on his own. Lorne briefly tried to justify Helton staying behind, but the doctor said Reed didn't need that close a watch, and the fact that Reed looked appalled by the idea of being forced to stay with Helton made Lorne drop it.

The civilian team clearly wanted out of the jumper, even if that meant landing directly in ice-cold mud and sinking up to their knees. And Lorne couldn't afford to leave Coughlin or Wilson behind with four civilians needing to be kept track of and protected.

Coughlin took point, leading the way to the cliffs. Wilson trailed behind, about as far back as he could reasonably get, apparently having no interest in hearing anything of the civilians' conversation. Wilson was young, new to the Stargate Program, and he didn't fully appreciate the value of civilians as of yet. He'd come around eventually, Lorne was confident of that. He just needed some time and experience.

Meanwhile, George, loud and animated as usual, was expounding on certain features of the planet that he found curious and unusual, and looking for confirmation from Janella and Souci that they too had noticed these things the day before, and pointing them out anew to Helton, who was pretending to be listening but clearly wasn't. Helton cracked a few feeble geology jokes, which made George laugh and the rest of them struggle not to roll their eyes.

The last thing Lorne expected was for Souci to drop out of the cluster of her fellow scientists and fall in beside him. He would have expected it of the quiet Janella, who seemed to often find George a bit overwhelming in volume and emphasis. But Souci was at home with her fellows, and it was Lorne's experience with her that she wasn't big on military types, despite Helton's assertion of a crush.

Helton was one of those people who held that everyone was looking for that "special someone" all the time. If anyone showed the slightest interest in anyone else, even if it was merely a professional courtesy or curiosity, they were automatically "a thing" in his mind. Lorne knew the type, and they were highly irritating. It was entirely possible for people to work alongside one another and not have romantic designs. Yes, even men and women. Atlantis was full of single people, men and women, most of them under forty, who were here to do their jobs, not hook up.

"I noticed, last night, when you were talking about Christmas Eves at your grandparents," Souci said cautiously, "You didn't mention your parents. I thought maybe you didn't have any, but then you said they were still alive, and so were your grandparents. I just… well… I kind of wondered about that."

Lorne sighed. He knew bringing up personal matters last night had been a mistake. Normally, Lorne preferred to keep his life private. Besides, he didn't want to speak ill of his parents, or give anyone a negative impression of them. He'd only spoken about his home and family last night as a desperate measure to keep the team spirit from dying out, and because he'd been unable to think of anything else. Now he'd trapped himself.

"I… uh… don't usually like to talk about it," he said rather lamely.

"Oh," Souci replied, then nodded a little too enthusiastically, her brow furrowing as she tried not to frown too deeply, "Oh yeah, of course. That's fine."

She was quiet for a moment, and Lorne hoped she'd go back to her people. No such luck.

"I just thought… maybe they didn't approve of your being in the military or something. My parents certainly weren't happy to hear I'd taken a job with the government. Especially a job they weren't allowed to know anything about," she continued, "Not to mention Nikki. She said she had a bad feeling about this 'shady governmental research program or whatever-the-hell-it-is,' just like she had a bad feeling about Scott. She was my maid of honor, but she never liked him."

"Actually my parents are very pro-military," Lorne replied, looking to avoid another diatribe about her ex-husband, and willing to say almost anything in order to do so, "My grandfather was in the Air Force, and he was thrilled I was carrying on the tradition."

"So what happened?" Souci asked, hearing the story Lorne wasn't telling.

"P3X-403 happened."

Souci cocked her head, puzzlement in her blue eyes, "I'm not familiar with that one."

"Right. You joined the Stargate Program this year," Lorne reminded himself aloud, "But you do know about the Goa'uld, naquadah mining and so on, right?"

"Of course," Souci said, "Everybody does."

"You'd be surprised," Lorne told her dryly.

He went on to give her the broad strokes of the naquadah mining operation of P3X-403. The months of working hard to find little or nothing, the mounting feeling of uselessness and frustration of his first off-world mission. He had learned that there was an alien threat, bigger than any he had perceived on Earth. He had been trained to recognize signs of Goa'uld influence in cultures, learned how to kill Goa'uld, and been taught a basic understanding of their most common dialect, their weapons and their tactics… and then he'd been planted on a backwater planet, assigned to play in the dirt. For three long, insufferable months, during which time he had done nothing to contribute to the fight against the Goa'uld. It had felt like a waste of time and manpower, and there was a particular degrading quality to being a trained fighter pilot relegated to overseeing a pick and shovel mining operation that seemed destined never to get off the ground at all.

"So I finally snapped," Lorne confessed, "I went to my CO, and I asked him what the hell we were still doing here. As usual, my timing was bad. I didn't know it, but he'd just received a letter on our last supply pickup. He came down on me like a ton of bricks. He even threw a book at me. He told me to look for my answers in there, and if I found any, I should come back and tell him why his wife of thirty-three years had cheated on him with his brother. I didn't know what to say to that. In fact, I didn't even know what book he'd hit me with until I bent down to pick it up."

He paused, lost in the memory of that moment when his life had changed forever in a way that even joining the Air Force and Stargate Program hadn't changed it.

Souci urged him to continue, "So what book was it? Some kind of self-help book or something?"

"Or something," Lorne replied, thinking that calling it a self-help book wasn't so far off from accurate, "He was still yelling at me, saying that he'd been a good husband, exactly what a Christian husband is supposed to be. Faithful. Loyal. True. So why had God taken his marriage away like that?"

Souci inclined her head in sudden comprehension, "He threw a Bible at you."

"He threw a Bible at me," Lorne confirmed with a nod, "I wasn't raised religiously, and I sure wasn't taught it in school. Not that I'd had anything against Christians; religious beliefs were kind of like… political opinions. Something some people felt strongly about… and I didn't. But, given where we were and why, I did have to start wondering..."

Catching his drift, Souci said, "How could anyone believe or trust in God with the Goa'uld out there pretending to be gods, and with so many of the mysteries of our own origins connected with the Ancients? Science and the Stargates seem to have all the answers."

"Exactly. But…" he shrugged, "After months on that rock, I was about out of my mind with boredom. So I read it."

"And you found it so meaningful that you realized your whole existence was a lie and you decided to worship God and it changed everything. The End," Souci remarked with a sarcastic eye roll.

Annoyed despite himself, Lorne retorted, "You asked, remember?"

Souci sighed resignedly, "Okay. Fine. What's the rest?"

"I actually didn't get that much out of it," Lorne admitted softly, "You'd think after learning to read Goa'uld, King James would be easy. But it wasn't. It didn't make sense to me, and it wasn't much fun either, even given the circumstances. In the meantime, my CO didn't have anything better to do than lay into his subordinates and send back reports to the SGC that we had continued to find nothing. Watching how angry, how bitter he was, I thought, 'if that's what happens when you're a lifelong Christian, I want no part of it.'"

"But all that changed when you finally found some naquadah and all the struggles were worthwhile," Souci interrupted, then checked herself this time, "Sorry. Habit. My parents… they aren't just nonbelievers. After four miscarriages and then getting cancer that required a hysterectomy, forever ending their dreams of a big family… they were pretty much done with God."

"I understand."

Recollecting his thoughts, Lorne described the events that followed. The finding of the naquadah, the subsequent attack by the Unas, the escalating skirmishes, the doctor nobody believed in who managed to broker a peace between these two violently opposed sides. And then what happened after he left.

"My CO couldn't take it," Lorne said, "He knew we were allies, had to work together. But he could hardly look at an Unas without wanting to shoot it. I'd picked up some of their language from Dr. Jackson, so lucky me, I got picked to be the liaison between the Unas and the Tau'ri."

Souci's eyes flickered at the term Tau'ri, which was uncommon to hear in the Pegasus Galaxy.

"So I'm walking across the camp, grumbling to myself. I didn't come here to be a diplomat. I came to fight the Goa'uld. Instead, I was being asked to make nice with people who had killed my friends and hung them up like so many lion skins. And I had to work with these things? How could I possibly be expected to do that?" Lorne continued, "I said 'Lord, help me.' I'd said it a hundred times before, at least. It was always just a turn of phrase, didn't mean anything. But I felt something that time. And… in a moment of clarity I don't think I'll ever understand, I understood what I had to do."

"Which was?"

"I had to forgive them. Or else all that hate, anger and fear would eat me alive, and I'd do or say something I'd regret. Something that might ruin the alliance Dr. Jackson and Chaka had forged with the Unas, our best chance at a supply of naquadah… a means of defeating the Goa'uld," Lorne paused, then concluded, "That's what most people don't tell you about forgiveness. It's not just about the person you're forgiving. It's about you. All withholding forgiveness does is burn a hole inside you that nothing can fill up."

"Okay," Souci said dismissively, "But what does that have to do with your parents?"

"Everything," Lorne replied neutrally, "Because I came home from that mission, and I wasn't the son they knew anymore. Worse, like most new believers, I couldn't shut up about it. I couldn't wait to tell everyone everything I thought I'd learned, as if there was any chance they had never heard it before. Finally, my parents had enough. Especially because it upset my grandmother; she couldn't understand why anyone who saw the news would believe in a good and loving God, especially not someone like me, who'd been to war after 9/11, seen the worst the world had to offer. So they said if I couldn't keep my religion to myself, I was not welcome to visit them anymore."

"So why not just shut up about it when you visited your family? I've known you for months, and this is the first time you've ever mentioned any of this."

Lorne shrugged, and didn't answer.

As Sheppard had predicted, it had been a long night, one that ultimately felt like a waste of time. They did not see the creature again, nor did they experience any further technical glitches. But the ones they were already trying to resolve were certainly enough. They had teams stranded off-world. With the jumpers down, those in Atlantis couldn't even escape to the mainland if their lives depended on it.

Zelenka's team had been working all night on a jumper, while Rodney had taken a team to the 'Gate control systems of the city itself. But all attempts to repair or bypass the issue had failed, and he was running out of ideas. Not to mention energy. In the meantime, the Stargate remained functionally dead.

Now he had stopped for a break, and a meal, in the nook, the secondary mess hall near the main tower. Because it was smaller than the one on the West Pier, it had initially been referred to jokingly as "the breakfast nook," which had eventually been shortened to "the nook."

The nook was entirely deserted when Rodney arrived, and remained so until Sheppard showed up. Rodney had been eating, but by the time Sheppard arrived, he'd been reduced to picking at his food. He'd gone through nervous and anxious, which always made him hungry, and reached mere weary frustration, which generally left him feeling heavy and empty, but not in a way food was going to fix. So he'd pushed his plate aside and begun concentrating on his sixth cup of coffee in the last twelve hours. Sheppard came in and sat down across from him, carrying his own mug of caffeine brew. Actually, he less sat down and more threw himself into the chair with a loud sigh.

"Well that was a complete waste of time," Sheppard muttered, "We've been all over the West Pier. Not a trace of either of our little friends. It's like combing a beach looking for a piece of glass."

"At least you get to change scenery. I've been in the control room all night," Rodney muttered.

Most of it under the control panels. His entire right side was aching from the hours spent lying on it, peering in at power crystals and trying to figure out why he couldn't get them to do his bidding. His knees were tired of his getting up and down from the floor, and making the journey between Stargate Operations and the jumper bay dozens of times over because a sudden thought would hit him about the jumpers, and he'd try to relay it to Zelenka over the radio, but that was basically impossible because the man was incomprehensible other than face-to-face, so Rodney was obligated to go and test the idea out himself. All to no avail, of course, as the jumpers remained stubbornly inactive.

Sheppard was, as usual, entirely unsympathetic, "Oh yeah, wandering up and down halls, looking in every crevice I could find was great fun, I especially enjoyed the part where I didn't find anything."

"Well we know it exists," Rodney said, his tone revealing his continued hurt annoyance over Sheppard's earlier disbelief, "Or they exist, I suppose."

Sheppard merely grunted. He wasn't the apologizing kind.

After a few minutes of silence, during which they each tried to draw energy from hot water soaked in the grounds of roasted beans, Sheppard spoke again, "You know, before this thing really got started, I was talking to Elizabeth. About Major Lorne."

Rodney hadn't thought of Lorne all night, nor did he feel remotely guilty about that. So the man was stuck off-world? So what? M6S-868 had looked safe enough, and they weren't scheduled to be back for another couple of days anyway. So really, Lorne's team were the lucky ones, being a very long way away from these malicious little space weasels as well as the now largely aborted and somewhat forgotten Christmas preparations.

"You know he took the mission to M6S-868 because he thought he was doing us a favor?" Sheppard inquired, then shook his head wonderingly, "And here I thought he didn't want to be exposed to holiday cheer any more than we did. Which is why I let him go without a fight."

"Dear God," Rodney realized, setting his coffee mug down hard, "You Gift of the Magi'd yourselves."

"What?" Sheppard asked.

"You know, the story about the husband and wife who are too poor to buy each other Christmas presents," Rodney answered with an offhand wave, trying not to show the emotional scarring that was touched by even mentioning the story, "They each sell something that matters to them to buy the other a gift. Unfortunately, the gift is useless because it would have gone with what each of them had sold."

The story had been one of his mother's favorites, while his father had always ridiculed it and pointed out that the wife's hair would eventually grow back and she could use the combs, but the watch fob was useless forever without a watch for it, so the wife came out as the ultimate winner in the long run, while the husband came away with nothing of value. Rodney's father would go on to grumble that was always how it went, while his mother would argue that hadn't been the point of the story. It was supposed to be a fun story meant to lightly make a point about gift giving and love, and he was missing that on purpose just so he could have something to complain about. And then of course the real arguing would start and Rodney would go hide in his room until it was over.

"Cheerful, Rodney," Sheppard remarked sourly, "Real cheerful."

"Ho ho ho," Rodney spat, downing the last of his coffee, then standing up, to the objection of every joint in his body, "I don't know about you, but I have more work to do."

"You mean more time to waste," Sheppard replied.

"Whatever," Rodney said over his shoulder.

He decided he'd make a stop at the jumper bay before returning to operations, just in case Zelenka's team had come up with some good news while he was eating. However, the transporter had other ideas, for when it stopped, the lights inside it went out, but the doors remained shut.

There was no mystery as to what had happened. The creatures were in the transporter systems. Rodney understood it immediately, though he wished he didn't. There wasn't reason to panic yet, he sternly told himself, much as the fear bubbling up inside wanted him to. Instead, he tapped his earwig.

"Zelenka," but no one answered, "Zelenka, this is McKay."

It dawned on him. The creatures had been quiet all night. What had they been doing? Figuring out Earth technology which, while not complicated, was previously unknown to them. Clearly, they'd done it. They were into the Earth-based part of the comms system now. He realized this a split second before a hissing, grating, ungodly shrieking voice filled his ear, saying only one thing.

"Burn…!" this was followed by wild, apparently gleeful cackling which slowly dissolved into static.

Alone in the pitch black of the suddenly too-cramped space, Rodney didn't understand for a moment. But then he became aware that the sweat suddenly soaking him wasn't just terror, the temperature inside the chamber was rising, and rising fast.

Now seemed like a good time to panic.