DISCLAIMER: see chapter one
Peter Grodin had just looked up from taking his first sip of his latest mug of coffee when he spotted them walking through the corridor towards the stairs. He had been the first to see them, but others had spotted movement from the marines, and with the impending Wraith attack, and possible invasion, weren't being too careful.
The one who led the bunch of people was the Major's son, according to rumour, and, with the colour of the man's hair, could only surmise that his mother was Teyla, although how that had come about, would come about, whatever! That was why he hated dealing with time travellers, you could never get your tenses right! Although the way Stargate personnel travelled, it wouldn't be long before someone invented the correct tenses!
To the side of the man walked Sergeant Bates, presumably assigned to watch over the group whilst they were in the city, as he was in charge of Atlantis' security, although the way he was behaving seemed to be more friendly and less guard dog, an unusual appearance for the Sergeant.
An extremely unusual group followed them, up the stairs and into the main briefing room. One of them, a female, was breathing in and out of a paper bag, and it took no second guesses to think about whose child she could be. The only question was who was the mother?
A few seconds elapsed, and then it hit him at the speed of a shooting bullet. Elizabeth! That was why they were acting like that earlier. The blushes, the touches, the glances. They got together in the time-line the kids were from. They weren't together now, there was no mistake about that, from the way they had reacted in each other's presence other. Bloody Hell, imagine meeting your children before you had even done the deed.
The click-clacking of the keys behind him hadn't even paused during the groups re-entrance. Rodney hadn't even noticed the arrival of his daughter.
He spared a thought. The group had moved to a different briefing room. He took a glimpse around to Elizabeth's office, only to find it bare. Rodney was the only member of the Atlantis team who had been in the meeting earlier that was still here, and, as he hadn't noticed…
He sighed slightly, noticing the amount of concentration Rodney was putting into his work, and opened up a com-line to Elizabeth. He never noticed the slight fault in the click-clack rhythm at Elizabeth's name.
The mess hall was starting to empty. Second shift had been off for nearly two hours, and most people were going to other places to socialise. Elizabeth nodded to a few people who glanced up when they saw her enter the room, but following their reply, immediately began to continue their conversations, in a lower volume this time.
Which only led her to believe they were talking about her, Rodney, her and Rodney, or the time travellers. And from the small amount she overheard when passing by, it was the time travellers, thank God. She didn't know if she could bear to hear what the latest rumours between the two of them where, following that incident in the control room.
Elizabeth had just placed three carafes of coffee, a good few mugs (mere cups would never be able to hold the sheer amount of coffee either she or Rodney drank in one sitting), loads of sugar sachets and those little milk cartons onto a large tray. Attempting to pick it up, she paused, and called over Lieutenant Ford, who had just had something to eat and was leaving to go back to the briefing.
She explained the situation, and he picked up the tray and moved out of the way of the queue forming behind her, placing the tray on a table nearby. She grabbed another tray from the pile, and placed quite a few sandwiches on the tray, remembering John's fascination with the meat that tasted remarkably like turkey, a couple of pieces of fruit they had found on another planet, but was described as delicious by the Athosians, and a few of the ration packs that Rodney liked to eat.
She picked up the tray, and began to motion to the Lieutenant for him to follow, but before she could even take five steps, the comm. in her ear opened up.
She stopped, placing the tray down on the table, and answered the link. Ford had been lucky enough not to have even managed to pick up the tray before she got the link, so luckily there wasn't any spilt coffee from the sudden halt.
She heard the explanation, and told Peter to contact anyone else who was in the briefing room earlier to inform them of the room change, informing him that she would tell Lieutenant Ford herself as they were standing in the same room.
She explained the situation to the Lieutenant, and they picked up the trays. She was thankful that they hadn't been somewhere along the route where there was nowhere she could have placed the tray to answer the call.
They started to walk out the room, and due to the noise levels in the cafeteria, Aiden was the only one fortunate enough to hear the rare occurrence.
"Fuck", he heard from Dr. Weir. It had taken a few minutes for her to catch on that she had specifically gotten food for Rodney.
The Lieutenant's eyebrows had lifted at her expletive, and never lowered anytime along their journey to the main briefing room.
The group had been waiting for a few minutes in the briefing room before a thought crossed Jet's mind.
"Did anyone send them a message to tell them we were moving here?"
And from the looks shared about the room, no-one had.
Suddenly, the doors to the room opened, Rodney walking in slowly, although his face was slightly red, which they took to mean he had run here and decided to walk in, trying to save face.
"Sorry I'm late", he started, before seeing that he was the first one of his team to even enter the room. "Oh. Right then. I'll just be over here." Rodney walked over to where he normally sat and parked his arse, turning slightly red again.
It took him a few seconds to notice the girl staring at him, a paper bag clasped in her hand, and wow, didn't she look a lot like Elizabeth. Sure the hair was darker, and longer, and slightly wavy, but hell if he wasn't looking at what he now realised was his daughter. Except for her eyes. They were a lot like his. And as that thought bolted past, it decided to come back and whack him on the head with a sledgehammer.
His daughter. His daughter. His daughter. His and Elizabeth's daughter. He felt slightly faint.
She was just watching him. What did she see when she saw him? Did she see Dr. Rodney McKay, astro-physicist extraordinaire, or did she see a father, or even a daddy? He probably would never get to here himself being called daddy, he thought to himself.
For years, he'd been thinking he'd never have children. And then suddenly, out of the blue, he'd gotten children. Children with Elizabeth. A woman he'd had an ever so slight crush on for the few months.
His thought train was derailed when the doors opened again, (when had they closed?), and Elizabeth herself walked in, followed by Lieutenant Ford, carrying, was that, coffee?
They had hardly put their trays down when Rodney swooped in, grabbing one of the carafes, a mug, and loads of sugar sachets, with only one or two milk containers.
He spotted a few ration packs on the other tray, and seeing the other food offerings to be fruit and those strange turkey like sandwiches Major Sheppard favoured, took the presence of the ration packs to mean they were solely for him.
He took both of the ration packs, one being chicken, the other beef, and opened the chicken one taking a huge mouthful, and whilst chewing, started to make his latest mug of coffee for the day, and his first one of the evening.
Evening on Atlantis started at 21:00, with 'midnight' being at 30:00, or 0:00, and he hadn't had a mug of coffee since 20:45. It was now 22:00, so yes, this was his first mug of the evening, and looking at the faces of the group across from him, knew it would be the last.
God, Elizabeth! Rodney diverted his eyes from the woman sitting across from him to Elizabeth, seeing her studying the woman as the woman studied the both of them. Elizabeth's eyes were opened slightly more than normal, betraying their shock at seeing the woman sitting across from them. His daughter truly was beautiful. Had to get it from Elizabeth and some sort of latent genes in him, because him, not so much of the beauty, more of the unseen handsomeness.
During his unheard monologue, the rest of the Atlantis team entered the room in various fashions, the most common one, however, being red faced. As they sat down, conversations quietened down, until silence was all that could be heard, and watched as the woman, Elizabeth and Rodney stared at each other.
A few minutes later, and with no-one moving a muscle, the sudden movement across the room from Rodney startled him, as another woman, Hex if he recalled correctly, nudged his daughter in the side with her elbow. He barely managed to stifle a laugh as she automatically elbowed the other female back.
The nudge however, ended the unconscious staring contest the three of them had entered into. The slamming of the elbow had ended the recalling of the past, the funerals, her mother's a month before her father's, both of them buried in the apple grove where the group had spent the last seven years, hiding from the Wraith. The coffins being lowered into the ground, the flowers thrown on top, the dirt silently flowing in on top of the wooden cases. Daemon holding her softly as she had cried at their graveside. Engulfing her in his empathy, his love.
As he was doing now. His hand had slid into hers; gently holding as she grasped the lifeline he held out to her, his emotions reaching through the bond they shared.
The room was silent. She plucked up the courage to say something. "Hey." She swallowed hard. That's all she could say when facing her parents again. "I'm Z." That was not a stutter; she merely needed to take a deep breath. After one word.
She could do this, she could do this, she couldn't do this. She got up, Daemon still holding her hand, and left the room, Daemon following her, still holding her hand. Rodney and Elizabeth both rose simultaneously, seeking to follow her, when from across the room, Jet spoke.
"She needs time. She watched you both die, watched them bury you. She's never forgotten." They sat down, faces paling, and Rodney reached to take a gulp from his mug, forgetting that he'd emptied it minutes earlier.
"We're dead? I mean, we died? Going to die?" Rodney's voice managed to produce some noise, and turned it into some audible, but it was still several notes above his normal pitch. "I mean, it's not like I expected to live forever, but, we're dead?"
"Seven years ago, our time, February and March were, quite possibly, the worst months for us. We lost five of the Leaders, we had to move to Beta site, we lost so much. We only had our own people from then on." Hex was reflective almost. Her words brought the entire group to pause. They could almost see the attacks, the funerals, the aftermath.
The room was completely silent. John, Aiden, hell, anyone in the room who was military or had been, knew that one day you could be alive and the next day dead, but this was up in your face confirmation. Most people never knew. Now these two important people, important in so many ways, knew how it could end.