Back on schedule, kiddies. Looks like I might actually kinda sorta keep to an updating schedule. Go me! I wanted to have this up this morning, but Daniel suddenly decided he wanted to have a chat with Rodney at the end. Having not yet seen any episode where those two boys actually interact, I kinda winged it in terms of that conversation.
Things are starting to pick up speed again and John's power is starting to sort itself out. Don't think you've got everything figured out yet, though, he's got a few surprises still in store for him.
Disclaimer: don't own nothin'.
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Chapter Five- Awakening- The Ancients are gone but not forgotten and John's remembering a little more than he should.
Something was pulling at his hair.
He managed to ignore it at first. Then the gentle tug became a firm yank and he reached up to swat it away. He encountered nothing but air.
"Morning there, Danny boy," a familiar voice drawled from somewhere nearby. Daniel groaned and lifted his head to squint at his visitor.
"Jack?" he mumbled, pointlessly since the general was the only one who could get into Daniel's apartment without an invitation. He glanced around- fell asleep at the dining-room-turned-work table again, no surprise there- then looked back at his visitor.
"Uh huh." Jack retreated to the other side of the table and sat down in the chair, careful not to touch anything on the table- rule number one to survival in Daniel's apartment: never touch anything pre-twentieth century. One eight-foot-tall axe wielding statue coming to life was more than enough, thank you.
"Did you need something?" Daniel asked in confusion. Jack frowned at him for a long moment, forbidding and dark, then sighed slightly and relaxed.
"I tried to call, but you weren't answering. I got a little- look, Daniel, the Genii tried to kill Rodney McKay earlier."
Daniel's gaze had been wandering over the table, trying to find where he had left off. At Jack's words he snapped his eyes back over to the general. He didn't have to ask, didn't even have the chance to try.
"He's fine. Bitchy as ever, according to Lorne."
Fine or not, this meant serious trouble. Daniel sighed and pushed his glasses up so he could rub the heel of his hand against his eyes. This certainly explained Jack's presence.
Exactly when Daniel Jackson had become the personal responsibility of Jack O'Neill, neither could quite tell. It was simply that Daniel had to be near the Stargate to do his job and Jack happened to be there. After almost fifty years of trying and failing to operate the Stargate from their side, they had decided that the physicists and scientists had done everything humanly possible, and that the fault lay within the realm of the paranormal. Therefore the 'gate and its stubborn refusal to work became Daniel's problem, as he was the closest they had to an expert in the power and its uses.
"So what's this thing anyways?" Jack asked, pointedly steering clear of potentially treacherous emotional territory. Daniel looked at the thing in question, a piece of smooth blue-tinted metal that looked as though it had once been a part of something much bigger.
"No idea," he admitted wryly. "We're assuming it's Ancient. It's perfectly safe," he added, since as much as touching stuff was a bad idea Jack was rarely able to restrain himself. Sure enough, he'd barely finished the sentence and the general was scooping up the chunk of metal. He made a face and quickly put it back down.
"Perfectly safe?" he asked, shaking the offended hand. Daniel stared at him for a long moment, confused. Then he stood up- successful on the second try, the first probably earning him a nice big bruise on the knee that impacted the underside of the table- and got a glass of water.
"It vibrates," he said, which Jack obviously already knew, and put the glass down on the table right next to the object. The water trembled minutely, almost too subtle to be seen. "How or why, I can't say. It seems to be a varying effect based on who's nearby. I can't feel it at all." He reached out, touching one finger to the surprisingly chilly metal, and the water stilled. He pulled away and gestured for Jack to touch it. Even as the older man reached over the trembling began again, the glass itself starting to rattle in place when Jack actually touched the thing.
"Huh." Jack stared at the water, then at the object itself. Then, since it apparently bore repeating, he huh'ed again. He pulled his hand away, watching as the water steadied itself back to its barely-there vibration.
"According to the refugees from various worlds, all true Ancient technology does this; reacts differently to different people. Most people get the same response as I do. A few get a response like yours. The woman who brought it through the 'gate said, when her twelve-year-old son touched it, it glowed and hummed."
"The boy didn't make it through?" Jack asked, meeting Daniel's gaze briefly. Daniel merely sighed. For whatever reason, children were a favorite of the Wraith; by the time the Wraith launched their attack on a planet most of the world's kids had already vanished.
"When I asked her where she got it, she said it was a piece of an object that had been a gift from someone who came from..." Daniel paused, trying to remember her wording. "A place where the land is metal and the sky is an ocean."
"O-kay," the older man drawled in answer. He reached out and flipped over the piece of metal to study it, pulling his hand away quickly. He wasn't used to things reacting to him like this; matter of fact, he was used to things like this ignoring him, completely unaware of his presence.
The object itself was a simple piece of metal. It looked like it had once been part of a hull, such as on a boat or something. It was a roughly triangular shape, its sides shiny in the way of metal torn by massive stress. Approximately half an inch thick, looked like blue-tinted steel, except was a hell of a lot stronger.
"Hey, this is that thing that stuck itself to the wall!" Jack realized suddenly. He pulled back a little and stared at it. Adjusted as he was to the weird crap that happened around the Stargate and the people that came through it, he'd still been caught off-guard by this one. Daniel allowed himself a quirked smile.
"Yes, this is it. Although in all fairness, it didn't stick itself to the wall, it stuck itself to the steel beam inside the wall. The wall just got in the way."
And that was one of those things that would go down in the history books as a good example of why wandering around a military base carrying an alien artifact was not a good idea. The metal had some element in it that apparently reacted rather violently to electromagnetic waves; an aide had been carrying it past the base's infirmary when the MRI had been running and the metal had sucked the power out of the MRI's magnet. It had gone flying, attaching itself to the nearby wall as solidly as if it was a part of the cement, and repelled all other metal objects with such strength that the corridor had to be shut down. After three months of fruitlessly trying to get it loose it simply let go one day and that was that.
The thing had been handed over to Daniel very quickly after that- disposing of all but the most necessary tests in exchange for less opportunity for a repeat performance- and had been as well-behaved as any inanimate object could. Then again, Daniel didn't have many powerful medical-grade magnets laying around to encourage rebellion.
"So this thing glows... what's so interesting about it?" Jack asked. "I mean, a lot of normal things glow, especially around people like you."
"No, Jack," Daniel groaned. This was something he had explained before and Jack was just as unlikely to listen now as he had the first three times. "The power has no physical form but it is visible, to a certain degree. It's most easily noticed when we contain it and channel it through an object. Our brains interpret it as light. The object isn't actually glowing."
"I think I've heard this before," the general mused, and Daniel fought off the desire to say yes, he has, and if he would bother paying attention one time he would never have to hear it again. Once the urge was reined in, the younger man continued.
"So technically the power doesn't make things glow, unless it's being intentionally used to produce light. But this," and here he picked up the metal, "this thing is different. It has no interaction with the power, either free or tame. The fact that it responds to you only proves it."
Jack eyed the metal fragment with new respect. "So it glows because...?"
"I don't know. Whatever triggers it, it's got something to do with the person touching it and nothing whatsoever to do with their power."
"Old Ancient trick or new breed of power?" Jack asked, and Daniel could only shrug. It was a fair question, since he was basing his findings on the sorts of power he was familiar with, which were no longer the only ones on Earth. Ever since the Stargate had been dug up and people began to filter through, Earth's familiar array of power had begun to change. Some older powers were being forgotten- including a few of Daniel's own eccentric scattering of talents- while new powers arose. It was a cycle of finding and losing and finding again, triggered by any one of a dozen things bust most often by the rise or fall of a powerful society, that had gone on for thousands of years.
There was an easy silence after that, the sort of calm quiet that could only be achieved by two people who had spent years getting used to each other. Daniel swept his gaze over the papers and photos scattered over the table. He was still trying to figure out the Ancient's dialect. Earth's Stargate had a message carved onto its base in Ancient and he knew, with a certainty normally reserved for Elizabeth Weir, that translating it would solve all their problems. Well, all their 'gate-related problems; he was pretty sure even the Ancients weren't all-knowing enough to have foreseen their need for a Dummy's Guide to Handling the Genii.
Daniel didn't even realized he'd picked up his pencil and started drawing out the known Ancient alphabet until he suddenly realized Jack had said his name at least twice. He looked up, one eyebrow lifted questioningly.
"Are you done with this?" the general asked, tapping a finger on the table just shy of the chunk of metal. Daniel stared blankly for a long moment, his brain still in Scribe mode.
"Uh, yeah," he said finally. Jack nodded once and stood.
"Good. I'm gonna send it up to Vancouver, give McKay something to work on so he doesn't end up chewing through the walls." At Daniel's confused look, he explained. "I had Weir put him under house arrest until this whole Genii thing is dealt with. Could be months, maybe even years."
And as long as he had access to a computer and a phone line, McKay could make anyone's life a living hell no matter what country he happened to be in. Daniel grabbed the metal and headed into the living room in search of the warded box it had come in. As soon as it was packed in he handed the box over and Jack started to head out.
"Oh, and Daniel?"
The archaeologist paused and turned back. "Yeah?"
"Security's getting stepped up and I'm not taking any chances. You don't answer your phone again, you get shipped up north too."
And on that pleasant note, Jack left.
---
One moment John was sleeping soundly; the next he was sitting bolt upright in the bed and staring around a little wildly. He found himself to be confused, hungry, and sore as hell.
A few moments' grace to remember the previous day solved the first problem. Pulling on some clothes and staggering down to the kitchen to help himself to some cereal and coffee took care of the second. The third issue was a bit trickier. The pain was the mixed result of being stunned and tossed around by his own and McKay's power, not exactly familiar experiences for him. He stretched carefully, feeling the tense knots loosening with the motion, then headed outside.
There was no official path around the estate, but there was a worn trail that ringed the inside of the fence. John circled the place three times before the morning's pain had given way to a more comfortable ache. Once back inside, the smell of coffee- real coffee, good coffee, not the cheap store brand in the kitchen- seized his attention. Follow the smell of coffee, find the master of this lair. He hadn't seen McKay since the conversation about the Stargate the previous afternoon. Some part of him whispered that he ought to be grateful. He told that voice to stuff it.
He wandered down the hallway and down the stairs, into a large and well-furnished basement. The space was huge, easily a thousand square feet, partitioned by shape into one large room and three small ones. In one of the small rooms was everything any mad scientist worth his salt could possibly need, including a huge cupboard filled with bottles stamped with the worryingly familiar biohazard symbol. In another was a table bearing a row of laptops. The last small room had another table, this one with a handful of... things. Technological gizmos John had never seen before.
The big room was empty; instead of furniture it had a single giant piece of some sort of cloth spread out. Drawn on it in thick, bold lines was some sort of giant circle. Around the circle were thousands of haphazard scribbles in various colors. John paused on the last stair, studying the design and abstractly wondering where the hell McKay got his hands on a piece of fabric that big. Then he took the last step and peered around the large room.
There was a door tucked into the corner, between the gizmo room and the wall with the stairs. John walked over and pushed it open, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee hitting him. Down a short hallway, he found himself in a small apartment-like area. He'd had a flat like it in college, where the entire place was one decent-sized room with the bed in one corner and the kitchen in another and only a small postage-stamp-sized bathroom.
"Just so you know, I didn't actually have to let you in here."
McKay was standing at the kitchen area, mug of coffee in one hand and laptop in the other. His hands were stained with marker ink and his fingers tapped out a staccato rhythm on the laptop's case. His eyes were bloodshot and slightly glazed. His normal acerbic wit had abandoned him. He hadn't changed or shaved or probably even slept since John had last seen him and he looked tired and vulnerable and utterly endearing.
"Yeah, I know," John answered, taking a few steps closer to the Keeper. "Ice-cold shower, remember?"
Rodney smirked at that and John surprised by the gentle, almost friendly edge to both that look and his words. "Magic soap, remember?"
Whatever hostile, fuck-the-world kick McKay had been on, he was either too tired to remember or to care. John kept moving until he was leaning a hip against the counter next to the other man. He glanced at the small crinkly pouch of coffee beans; he'd seen it in the grocery store before, one bag of the stuff would have set him back two weeks' rent in his apartment in Boulder.
"When was the last time you slept?" he asked, trying not to say something to upset the Keeper. He liked this McKay a lot better than the man he had first met.
"I don't know," Rodney admitted, looking as though he knew he should be bothered by his answer but wasn't. "I have coffee."
"I noticed." John nodded once, folding his arms loosely and studying those tired blue eyes.
"Is that why you're here? To steal my coffee?"
"Nope. Just wanted to see what was down here."
"Oh."
And that was it. Rodney proceeded to drain half the coffee pot and John simply watched him. Relaxed and complacent were two words he felt were rarely associated with this man; seeing him so calm and still was almost eerie.
"So what's with the circle thing?" John asked when the coffee was gone. Rodney frowned at him. "On the ground, out there," he added.
"Stargate."
"How's it work?" And that, apparently, was either the best or worst thing to ask, since Rodney's eyes lit up and he launched into a long explanation in which John might have caught one word out of twenty. As he talked he caught John by the elbow and dragged him back into the main room so he could point out various parts on the diagram. John was content to just watch that expressive face and those never-still hands until something in his brain that was actually processing the torrent of words went huh?
"Wait, what?"
Rodney stopped mid-word, train of thought derailed. "What? Wait what?"
"You just said- the Ancients couldn't use the power?"
"No," Rodney answered slowly. "They couldn't. They found ways to tap into it and tie it into their technology and use it to- to pad their results, you could say, but the Ancients themselves couldn't use the power. Not like we can."
"Wow." John looked down at the giant sheet before him and studied the ring- according to what Rodney had just said, the real thing was made out of some material called naquadah or something. Very heavy, hard to find and harder to work with. He thought of the Easter Island heads and the Egyptian pyramids. Granted, any race that could build an interconnected planetary network of wormholes wasn't exactly on the same level as primeval humans, but still. Up until just now he had always contributed the Ancients' success in large part to their mastery of the power. Turns out, they hadn't mastered it; they couldn't even use it at all.
"Wow," he said again, as the implications sank in.
"Yes, impressive, isn't it?" Rodney mused. "Can you imagine what they could have accomplished if they could use it? They might even have managed to stick around."
John glanced over and saw the Keeper's face lit up. Clearly getting to meet these people was a pet dream of his, and he was greatly annoyed with the universe at large for the cosmic joke that it had pulled on him. He decided not to point out that the Ancients probably did everything they could in regards to sticking around and, if they could feel anything, were certainly even more annoyed than Rodney that they failed.
"So what's that then?" he asked instead, gesturing towards an odd blob off to the right of the circle. Rodney blinked at it.
"That's the... well, we don't really have a name for it. It's a big black rock. On other worlds, it has Earth's 'gate address on it. Near as we can figure, someone figured out Earth was safe from the Wraith and put those things near every 'gate they could find as a sort of road map."
"Ancients?"
"Probably not. The Stargate was buried in a sealed underground room in Giza for some four thousand years. We only found it about fifty years ago, and people first started coming through it about five years after that."
Not right, not right. Making assumptions about what you don't know. Won't get where you want to go if you can't admit to not knowing the way.
John frowned at the whisper in his mind, the same soft voice as the previous day. He found himself carefully stepping around the fabric and sitting down next to the rock outline. Following some unknown urge, his fingers started to trace out intricate seven-symbol patterns over the cloth surface. "Any idea where Earth's road map points to?"
"Uh, no. From what the refugees tell us, the symbols don't even appear on the stone until the Wraith get near."
"So maybe..." he was still drawing out those symbols, he noticed, repeating one in particular time and again. "Maybe it was the Ancients who put them there."
"No, it wasn't," Rodney snapped in his try not to be more stupid than absolutely necessary tone. "Were you not listening? Earth's Stargate has been operational for only fifty years. Whoever put those stones there must have done so since then."
"Unless the stones don't point to Earth in specific." John leaned over and picked up a black sharpie lying nearby, then scooted back and started sketching out those strings of symbols on the very edge of the cloth. "You said the Ancients couldn't use the power themselves, but that they found a way to use it secondhand via their technology. What if they put those stones there as an anti-Wraith measure and used some sort of power-based machine to identify and locate the planet safest from the Wraith? So before Earth's Stargate was dug up, the safest planet was somewhere else, but once we found the 'gate, the stones changed to show Earth's address instead."
By then he'd written out at least a half dozen of the symbol groups. He only wrote out the first six symbols since the seventh never changed. Rodney was standing over his shoulder, staring.
"How do you know those?" he asked, sounding confused and alarmed and angry, as if he had any right to get upset. John was the one being hijacked by his own brain and used as some sort of information conduit.
"I don't know," John muttered despairingly. He leaned over and drew out that constant seventh symbol, a capital A minus the line in the middle and a small circle balanced on its point. He drew the symbol much larger than the tiny scribbles following the edge of the cloth. "What does that mean?"
"That's Earth's origin point. Basically the name the Ancients gave the planet." Rodney knelt beside him, tugging at the cloth so he could better see the marching row of symbols.
"This one's wrong." John tapped the other end of the sharpie on the last group.
"Wrong how?"
"I don't know," he ground out. "It's missing one."
"One what? Each address only has six coordinates. Seven if you count the origin point, but you're leaving it off all of them."
Stargate addresses. Of course. Not that that actually explained what the hell was going on here, but at least it made sense to someone. John gave a half-hysterical laugh and shoved his hand almost violently through his hair. Unfortunately the hand in question was the one holding the marker, and he ended up with a thick black line leading straight up his forehead.
"It's just wrong," he said helplessly. Then, half-pleading, "What the hell is wrong with me?"
"Nothing," Rodney answered, and he would have been more convincing if he'd been able to keep his voice from trembling. "Nothing's wrong. It's just- you've got- you're a wild power, weird things happen around wild powers all the time."
"Weird things like this?" John asked desperately, gesturing to the scribbles in front of him.
"Well, no, not exactly. No wild power is exactly alike, though, so this just may be some new variation of the power, it's always changing-"
"So you're saying this isn't normal." He wasn't going to freak out. Was not.
"I'm saying there is no normal," Rodney snapped, and hearing him impatient and annoyed did wonders to soothe John. "Not around you."
John grunted, not sure how much he really liked that answer, hastily stabbing the cap back onto the marker and throwing it towards the center of the sheet. He lunged to his feet in one smooth motion and paced away. Rodney meanwhile took up his place and began to mutter to himself as he studied the scribbles.
"Are you sure-?" John began, and Rodney cut him off.
"My seventh birthday, I locked my parents out of our house," he said casually. "They were fighting again- they were always fighting- and I was so sick of it I sort of just... asked the house if it would not let them in." He sat up and glanced at John. "They were locked out for three days. They had to stay in a hotel room. My father's car was in the driveway but he didn't have the keys, so they had to take a cab or the bus everywhere. I only let them back in because I got tired of changing Jeannie's diapers."
"Uh huh," John murmured, not entirely sure what he was supposed to think of this. Rodney continued obliviously.
"Some of my happier childhood memories were from those days. Not to mention I now had a power useful for keeping annoying little sisters out of my room."
"That... explains a lot," John smirked. "I mean, the whole happiest memories thing. Not why it's suddenly show-and-tell time."
"It's supposed to make you feel better," the Keeper grumbled.
"By hearing you had a fucked-up childhood?" It was just far too easy to bait Rodney, and a good deal more comfortable than thinking about what had just happened.
"By showing you how weird things happen around us!" Rodney's hands flailed- there was no better word to describe the motion- in aggravation. John paused and turned to face him properly, meeting those clear blue eyes that couldn't lie to save the world.
"So it's just my power?"
"What else could it be?" Rodney asked in exchange, and John sighed. There was the problem: if it was something to do with the power, he had people who could help him and who understood what was going on. If it wasn't, he was screwed.
"Right. What else. Well, I'm gonna go now. You should probably get some sleep." He glanced once more at the cloth on the floor, then headed up the stairs.
Ronon walked past just as he reached the top stair. As John took the last step, the Satedan pivoted on one foot to study him closely.
"What?" John demanded.
"Your power's all wired," came the reply, as if that was supposed to mean something.
"Okay," John muttered, turning his head to regard Ronon from the corner of his eyes. "Good-wired or bad-wired?"
Ronon, he of the silver tongue, grunted and shrugged. "Like you were using it. Like it was tame."
"Is it?"
"Dunno."
Clearly the art of conversation would be dead and buried if it were up to Ronon. John decided it might be a good time to track down Teyla and bug her with the eight thousand questions he couldn't or wouldn't ask the other two guys in the house.
"Where's McKay?" Ronon asked before John could decide where he was going.
"Downstairs, hopefully getting some sleep before he collapses. Why?"
Ronon's dark eyes tracked over to the stairs, then panned across the wall as though he could see through it. Which wasn't entirely impossible, John told himself, since he had absolutely no idea what Ronon's power was, only that he had inherited it. He couldn't read the Satedan at all, and so when Ronon abruptly switched gears, John was caught completely off-guard.
"Heard you were military."
"Uh, yeah," John answered warily. Not quite a question or statement, leading to something he couldn't identify.
"McKay's got a home gym."
Still the lightbulb wasn't going on. "And...?"
Ronon graced him with a slight grin. "You wanna spar?"
"Wanna- wanna spar?" Now he got it. "You'd kick my ass."
"Don't doubt it," came the too-cheerful reply. "Be something to do, though, plus it'd help stabilize your power."
As if being on a first-name basis with the floor could be considered helpful. Still, John had let himself get complacent since his discharge, and the idea of shaping back up appealed to him.
"Bring on the pain," he said with a careless shrug, and Ronon's grin went full-out feral and a tiny bit approving. John factored this into the imminent rearranging of his internal organs and tried not to groan.
Sometimes he couldn't help but think that someone out there hated him.
---
Rodney wasn't really asleep so much as comatose when his cell phone started ringing. He snuffled into his pillow and yanked the blanket up over his head, which did absolutely nothing to help block out the sound but served fairly well as a defiant gesture.
The shrill noise stopped drilling holes into his eardrums after four rings and there was glorious silence once more. Rodney had just started to drift off when the sound came back. He whined loudly, seized a double handful of pillow, and proceeded to beat the phone into submission. Unfortunately, this tactic caused the small machine to bounce right off the bedside table and hit the floor at just the right angle to snap open. He could vaguely hear a tinny voice saying his name as he groaned and reached out to grope blindly for the source of his annoyance.
"This had better be really, really important," he calmly informed whoever-the-hell was calling him. Anyone who knew him would know that the lack of harsh words and loud tones spelled doom indeed.
"I could say the same to you," came the response in a voice Rodney might have recognized if he'd felt like putting any effort into it. "Since I've basically been ordered to drag myself and all my research out to Vancouver. Oddly enough, no one has bothered to tell me why; I got the impression they don't know either."
Jackson, had to be. Rodney levered himself onto his elbows and glanced around. He was in the basement still, having collapsed onto the bed about an hour after Sheppard had all but bolted. The nearby alarm clock showed that he'd gotten about four hours' sleep. Rodney had trained himself early on in life to get by with precious little sleep and had never lost that ability. Four hours was good enough. A quick check-in with the house showed all three of his current boarders still on the grounds, Sheppard and Teyla in the house tiself and Ronon pacing the boundary fence like a caged lion.
"Well, I've got something out here you might find interesting. Bear in mind that I am not actually admitting that your studying dusty old pots and statues in any way resembles real science; however, I do admit that you might be in a better position to understand and use this new source of information."
The archaeologist gave a tired laugh. "Why, thank you, Rodney. That was the most backhanded compliment I've gotten since... well, since the last time I talked to you. So what is this new source? Did you find some way to activate the Ancient devices?"
Rodney rolled out of the bed and wandered into the main room, turning to regard the table full of Ancient knickknacks. He may be officially off the Stargate riddle-solving team, but he still got first dibs on the artifacts brought to Earth by refugees, never mind that he occasionally had to send Zelenka or Simpson down to Cheyenne to retrieve a few of the more interesting things Jackson wasn't quite willing to give up.
The device on the end, which he had come to realize was some sort of Ancient flashlight, was still glowing a bright harsh blue. He'd watched it slowly come to life as Sheppard had sat down to write out Stargate addresses he had never seen before. After the man had left, he'd spent an hour going over the device with a fine-tooth comb and eventually came to the conclusion that supported his original hypothesis- the thing was meant for nothing more than giving off light.
He had no intention of telling Sheppard about this. Not for a while, at least. The last thing he needed was to scare off his living version of the Ancient devices' on switch.
"Yes and no," he said in reply to Jackson's question. "Yes, I found a way to activate them, but no, nothing useful's come from them so far."
"How?" Jackson sounded interested now. "I mean, we've tried everything-"
"Seems I have something you don't," Rodney interrupted, and if he sounded cheerfully smug it was because he was. "John Sheppard."
"John Sheppard- a person? You found one of the children of the Ancients?"
"He is not a child of the Ancients," the Keeper snapped. God, he hated that phrase, even more now that it applied to that smirking bastard. Even if Sheppard wasn't as offensive as Rodney wished he would be so he could justify hating the man.
"It's just a phrase, it doesn't actually mean anything. He is one, though, right?"
Rodney heard the naked hope in the archaeologist's voice. He looked at the blue light splashed across the wall, then at the Stargate coordinates sketched across the fabric spread on the floor.
"He's definitely something. What that something is, though..."
"Is more my field than yours, right. I'm gonna- I have to call Jack, see if I can find my passport-"
"Uh, no, not yet. Give it a few weeks, Sheppard's power still needs to stabilize." Rodney wandered back into the apartment area and put on a new pot of coffee. More sleep at this point was doubtful.
"Stabilize?" Jackson echoed blankly. "Why do they need to stabilize?"
"He's a wild power," Rodney answered, not bothering to ask if anyone had told him that before. Sheppard was Elizabeth's pet project, Jackson O'Neill's. The two leaders were aware of most of the other's actions but rarely filled their subordinates in on them. It was a case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing; only a few people, such as Evan Lorne, worked both sides of the network.
Jackson wasn't happy about being delayed but understood the need to wait until Sheppard was no longer a volatile time bomb waiting to go off. He dragged every detail of the entire basement encounter out of Rodney, then mentioned that he was sending up the magnetic-wave-eating chunk of metal and asked if he could see how it reacted around Sheppard. Rodney kicked up a fuss at being ordered around and insulted the archaeologist and hung up feeling much better about everything in general.
When he had called Elizabeth just before dropping into bed, she had informed him that she'd already started making the necessary calls. She didn't know the fine details, but she Knew that Jackson's work, if not the man himself, needed to be relocated closer to Sheppard.
Daniel Jackson was, although Rodney would never admit it even under threat of death, as intelligent and successful in his chosen fields as Rodney. More interesting was his power- or, more rather, his powers, since he had several. Of them, his main powers were empathy, the ability to sense people's emotions, and Scribing. A Scribe was a person who could learn foreign languages just by listening to it or reading it enough. The fact that he had that power was somewhat of a frustration for him, for his scattering of talents meant he didn't really excel at any one thing, but rather was good at them all. Unfortunately 'good' wasn't cutting it when it came to mastering the Ancient dialect. He had just enough power to see his goals yet not enough to actually reach them. Rodney wasn't sure he could have dealt with that sort of torture.
As much as Rodney might resent the man for being given the Stargate problem, he was quite willing to admit when he was out of his depth and pass things over to someone who knew what they were doing. Just so long as he didn't have to admit it out loud, and the someone he was passing it over to recognized his bitching and delaying as face-saving tactics.
Rodney plucked at his shirt, which he had been wearing for three days straight. He poured himself a single mug of coffee and left the rest and headed upstairs. He needed a shower and a change of clothes. Maybe he'd have a chat with Ronon about how his pacing on the edge of the safe zone was quite possibly the most annoying thing he could be doing. Then again, knowing Ronon, maybe not.
When he came back down to the family room fresh from his shower, Sheppard was sprawled on the couch, long legs stretched halfway across the room. Rodney kicked at a foot and the infuriating man pitched a handful of popcorn at him. The original Doctor Who was playing on TV and Rodney found himself sitting on the couch next to Sheppard and stealing handfuls of popcorn when he suddenly remembered that he had more important things to do. Except, by that point, Ronon was on Sheppard's other side and Teyla was curled up in the nearby armchair and Sheppard himself was wriggling free of the couch's deathgrip and searching through Rodney's DVD collection in search of something that wasn't, to quote Ronon, 'old crap'.
It wouldn't occur to him for several days that that was the moment when the loneliness made by Jeannie's leaving had finally faded.