A/N: The tale of the Wanderer is based both from Irish folk tales and an idea from Shadow – you know which one I mean. lol

The Orion on its way to Atlantis

Rodney still couldn't believe it. Lorne had found not one, but TWO ZedPMs in the Wraith hive ship that they'd destroyed. He'd never have believed that anyone getting captured and interrogated would be a good thing. However, the thought of the ZedPMs' destruction under those conditions was horrifying. He had told Sheppard that Lorne deserved a medal for not being stupid even before Lorne had typed up his mission report.

"McKay, my XO is not stupid," Sheppard said, exasperated that he'd brought up the subject again.

"He's short, military, paints landscapes, and he lets your goons know it. That right there puts a question mark on the subject of his intelligence," Rodney pointed out. He'd been around a lot of goons in his years of working for the United States government, and he knew exactly what they would think about such a pastime. Plus, it wasn't like he didn't respect the man, he did because after all this was the guy who kept Sheppard out of trouble with the idiot generals back on Earth.

Lorne just wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box when it came to important things. If he was he would have listened to Rodney about the dangers of solar radiation on that planet where they found Ronon. The man had spent enough time at the SGC to learn to pay attention to the scientists when they say something is dangerous. As it was, Lorne and the rest had needed two weeks of treatments for radiation sickness. That the man had recognized – on his own - that the ZedPMs were that dangerous under those conditions deserved some sort of recognition.

Sheppard looked up from the desk to where Rodney was leaning over his shoulder to read Lorne's report. The man had been lucky that the medical team wasn't working with Earth tech. Although his jaw had been immobilized so that the bone would heal, it wasn't wired shut and would only take three weeks to heal instead of six to eight. So instead of making a verbal report, he'd simply quickly typed up a written one and sent it to Sheppard's tablet. "Sometimes I really worry about your survival instincts," John said, with an incredulous look on his face.

"What?" Rodney asked.

"You don't tell a soldier who panicked while being interrogated that it was the right thing to do. You certainly don't reward him for it in front of his men." Sheppard ran his hands through his hair in frustration. The Orion had a nice office for its captain, but John was simply grateful that it was private. He and Rodney had taken it over, both so that they could have a place to organize reports and keep a 'big picture' eye on everything that happened in their maiden fight against a Wraith hive with the Orion, but also to read the reports of those who had gone into the hive itself. There was no telling what sort of intelligence had been picked up. "The military considers panicking a bad thing," he said slowly.

"Well of course it's a bad thing. You wouldn't believe what happens when the morons I have down in the labs panic, but Lorne panicked at exactly the right time, for the right reasons, and it produced the perfect result. I'm just saying that for once he was smart enough to do everything right. You know that I do tell my minions when they're doing things right, admittedly it isn't very often though as they're all idiots that I suspect found their degrees in a box of cracker jacks," Rodney said, dismissing the scientists in his department.

"Rodney, what I'm going to do is pull him aside privately and tell him all of that. I'm just not going to do that in front of the men he's supposed to be commanding," John explained. "It's like the difference between you pranking me in my quarters and pranking me in front of the Marines."

Rodney nodded, finally realizing that it was how Lorne was perceived by the Marines that was making John ignore his suggestion. "Right, right, Marines are morons."

John sighed, and was about to shake his head and attempt to explain to Rodney that, no, their Marines were not morons and were actually very smart people who knew when to ignore the rules if it meant getting themselves and their people out alive, but instead a smile broke out on his face. Rodney gave a jealous huff. "She never greets me like that," he complained.

Sheppard grinned as he got up from behind the desk. He knew he could trust Conner to fly from point A to point B, so that he could take a break from being in the command chair, but he would never let Conner try to land any ship the size of the Orion on Atlantis' piers. That was just asking for trouble, and they had enough casualties at the moment. "I keep telling you Rodney, she likes you. It's just that your mouse gene isn't strong enough for her to tell you like she wants to. I'm sure that when she gets the ZMPs installed and has more power, she'll tell you herself."

"Two ZedPMs," Rodney said dreamily once more as they walked to the Orion's bridge. Sheppard snickered at him, but he didn't care. "Shields, the ability to move the city, we might even have enough power to fly her, at the very least we'll have the power to explore the rest of the city, maybe we'll be able to find the repair centers and get them up and running," Rodney listed, dreaming about what they'd be able to do.

"Better access to the data base?" Sheppard asked, as he took over the command chair from Conner.

"Oh please, what we need is a decent search engine. More power isn't going to help us there," Rodney said, disgusted once more with the Ancients.

"We keep telling you, Rodney," Conner said, as he stretched. "The Ancients thought like those pansy artsy fartsy types. It's no wonder we can't find fuck all in there."

Rodney just ignored Conner. He'd had that argument with the twins before, and while it did make sense of why the database was such a mishmash, it really didn't help. It also explained why the Ancients were so intelligent on one hand and so stupid on the other. After all, why would anyone want to be a glowy squid thing if they couldn't do anything with the knowledge once they had it?

"Come on McKay. Let's go see Teyla while we've got the chance. From the sounds of things, you'll be busier than a one-eyed cat watching nine mouse holes once Sheppard lands us on Atlantis," Conner told the scientist.

"You're right. With two ZedPMs we are going to be extremely busy and I do need to make sure that Teyla's going to be ok. I got chased off the last time I went down there. I mean, you'd think that after all these years working for the SGC and now with the ART teams, they'd be used to teammates wanting to know what was going on," McKay groused as he and Conner headed down to the Medbay.

Conner laughed. He knew what McKay was really upset over was the fact that Murphy had been the one able to sit with Teyla after she'd gotten out of surgery while the three of them had other duties they'd had to attend to, although he'd been able to be there for a few minutes when she'd first come out of recovery. So he did his best to entertain Rodney while they made the trip down to the Medbay with stories of Doc and his regulars down at the pub.

Murphy saw them from where he was sitting with a seemingly sleeping Teyla as they poked their heads around the corner of the outer ward. The outer ward was one of two large rooms filled with beds and medical equipment. This one was filled with those who's injuries, while serious, weren't immediately life threatening. "Coast is clear," Murphy called softly. "They're all in surgery or whatnot. Word of warning, Doc Beckett says she's going to have to be in bed or a wheelchair for the next three weeks. That Ancient medical shit works fast, but it ain't magic."

Conner and McKay joined him next to Teyla's bed. This ward was full of people with serious, but not life-threatening injuries. Major Lorne was in the bed next to Teyla, a bit put out that he had to stay until they got to Atlantis and a doctor had a chance to discharge him. He waved a hand at his friends and got a hand slapped on his shoulder from Conner and a stilted 'Thank you for saving all of our lives, Major,' from McKay. Lorne gave an embarrassed shrug in return.

"She's going to love that," Conner groaned in response to his brother's report.

"At least we know that she'll pay attention to what the doctor orders, unlike Sheppard," McKay said, conveniently forgetting his own tendency to ignore doctor's orders.

"We should get Teyla to help Ma with the kids. Ma's going to be telling Irish fairy tales stories to the ones in the crèche classes. One of the teachers has had some of the adults, or the kids in the case of the ones who haven't any adults left, legends from their homeworlds. The Genii were last week and our family is up next," Conner said.

"Oh Ma'll love that," Murphy chuckled. He remembered some of the stories that his mother had told them as children. "She'll be spinning granny tales for hours, doing her best to scare the shit outa the kids and anyone else who's listening."

"What sort of granny tales, because the kids in this galaxy don't scare easily. About the only thing that scares them is the Wraith," McKay pointed out.

"Oh, Saint Patrick and the snakes, changelings, leprechauns, banshee, Tir-na-n-Og, the Wanderers," Murphy listed off. "Of course we figure the snakes in those old stories are the Goa'uld."

McKay nodded. That made sense as a lot of the older myths and legends did deal with such aliens. "I recognized all but the last one."

"You know fairy tales?" Conner asked, astonished that McKay would ever lower himself to such a pursuit.

McKay huffed in disgust. "I had to take a literature class for my undergrad and the idiot advisor I had put me in one on mythology. I hated every minute of it. I will admit that it has helped me out with knowing about the various aliens who have passed themselves off as deities though."

"The Wanderer is a granny tale warning youngsters to beware the dangers of a pretty face," Conner began

"My people have such stories as well," Teyla said. After her teammates had bombarded her with questions of how she felt and her reassurances that she was fine, she continued. "I had not thought that your people had such tales; please tell me of this story."

"Well," Conner began, trying to figure out how to explain the Fae to her. "One of our people's myths is what we call the Fair Folk, Fae or Sidhe. They're not human, but they look beautiful beyond measure."

"There's two groups of Fae. One is evil, and their court is where all nightmares are born, and the other is…well, not exactly good, but they're not truly evil either," Murphy said.

The two men didn't notice that the patients who were awake around them were listening right along with Teyla and Rodney. "Now the tale of the Wanderers is about the group that is more selfish than evil. They simply don't see our problems or our lives as being very important. Basically a youngster in their teens or twenties will meet a beautiful stranger and be invited to spend the night at a party, and the one being invited is to be the entertainment. The Fae will offer anything to the young idiot to get the lad to agree. Of course the boy does agree because without that we'd have no story," said Conner with a grin.

"So the lad goes off underhill to have a bit of fun. Now underhill is the place where the Fae live and it's kind of like another dimension. The most important thing to remember about it is that the rules aren't the same there. The Fair Folk, of all kinds, are creatures of magic," Murphy said. McKay snorted but everyone ignored him.

"At some point the lad realizes that he's been there for a long time and he needs to be getting back on home. This makes the Fae fucking mad and they throw the lad out and back where they got him," said Conner.

"But, they take revenge on the boy for ruining their party," Murphy warned. "He doesn't just go back where they got him without punishment. They take all of his clothes out of spite and they take all of his memories away so that no one will know how to get to underhill. Plus, Fae are immortal and time itself doesn't run the same way underhill that it does on Earth. The lad wakes up to find that anywhere from years to centuries have passed while he was underhill. He's lost everything just because he wanted to party with a pretty face."

"Hey that's what happened to Jackson!" one of the other patients cried out. He shrank down on himself for a minute as everyone turned to stare at him. "Well – naked, amnesia, and knowing that he'd been somewhere but that he'd been kicked out because he broke the rules…." he trailed off with a shrug.

"That would explain why our gene is so much stronger than anyone else," Conner said to Murphy.

"Aye, but that still doesn't explain Sheppard," he said in response.

"No one can explain Sheppard," McKay told them. "And what do you mean that it explains your gene?"

"Our gran, Da's ma, was a Wanderer," Conner said.