Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.

Chapter 9. Could be Home.

Radek walked past her into the living room. He looked at the whiteboard. Maybe he'd forget the scolding she was about to get and decide to just work on whatever it was.

No such luck. "Sit down."

Anna slumped onto the couch, dropping her shopping bags at her feet. He had a tone she'd never heard from him before. It was a tone she was familiar with, sure. Whenever she did something or went somewhere she wasn't supposed to.

As if she could talk about going somewhere she wasn't supposed to. No idea where he'd been.

"I'm sitting," she said after a minute of silence.

"I'm thinking," he answered. He turned from the whiteboard a moment later. "What did Rodney tell you?"

Nothing. But enough to make sure she knew there was definitely something. "Enough to know you weren't telling the truth." She waited. He didn't seem too concerned about that part, the lying-thing. It concerned her. "He said you could tell me. He couldn't."

"At least he gave me that," he said sarcastically. He looked at her critically and pursed his lips. Still deciding whether or not to tell her the truth maybe?

"I don't know what this is about," Anna said finally. "Doctor McKay said you have a week to change your mind. He said you're making a big mistake."

"Don't give too much thought to that. He thinks everything I do is a mistake."

Anna didn't get that impression from their little conversation this morning. If nothing else, she got the impression that Doctor McKay resented her being there. Doctor McKay thought that she was the mistake.

"No," Radek said. He looked at her squarely, apparently answering his own internal questions aloud. "This is the most important thing I've ever done."

It was a nice sentiment, but beside the point. "But he said he wanted me to know the truth." And make her own decision. She wasn't sure what that decision would be, especially with Radek emphatically calling the shots around here. On the other hand, he'd already bought her everything she wanted despite his objections.

"The truth is complicated."

"Lies are complicated," she shot back. "How long were you going to stick to the 'Antarctica' story?" Besides, what in the world was there for him to do in Antarctica?

"I did work in Antarctica," he said. "Just not in the last year." He went to the bookshelf and picked up an envelope sitting on the bottom shelf. A single page of what must have been a hundred slid out easily. "You have to sign this first."

She took the page from his hand. It was small font on a long page, all in Czech. In short, it was a confidentiality agreement essentially promising life in prison or worse if she were to reveal some secret. It must have been very big.

"You sold your soul to the US government?" she asked.

He smirked. "I suppose it looks that way."

"Do you have a pen?"

"You're going to sign it?" He looked dismayed, but he looked around for a pen anyway. He found one in his breast pocket. He held the pen out to her, only to draw it back when she reached for it. "This will change everything, malá."

She leaned forward and snatched the pen. "I thought I wasn't so little anymore."

He sighed and sat on the other side of the couch. "You're littler than you know."

She signed her name and turned toward him. He was staring at the paper like his life was over. Or maybe her life. Looking at it like someone died. Well, that had already happened and whatever secrets this paper was hiding was the reason he wasn't here for it.

"Well?" she prodded.

It took him a long time, but Anna decided to wait. She tried to ignore her heart hammering in her chest—it couldn't have been that earth-shattering. He'd missing for four months—so missing he didn't hear about his ex-wife's death. Dropped off the planet and resumed life here in Colorado Springs like nothing had happened. Nothing except the death of Anna's mother. It seemed like nothing could be bigger than that… That changed everything.

Could this secret change everything? Shopping? School? Music? Family?

"The reason I didn't get word about your mother for so long was because I was in another galaxy." Was that hyperbole? "An old city—very old, ten-thousand years old and more—was discovered by explorers from Earth."

"Literally another galaxy?" she asked. She'd missed the second part of whatever he said. She had a hard enough time visualizing this galaxy, much less another one.

"Everything I say until further notice is literal," he said.

Literally another galaxy. Literally ten-thousand years old. Literally explorers from Earth. She didn't want to ask where else they could possibly be from. She felt like she was listening to a fairy tale or a bedtime story.

"May I continue?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. He took a breath to go on, but Anna found herself interrupting almost without her will. "How?"

"I'm getting to that. In short, we've discovered a device that allows travel from one planet to another by artificial wormholes." He paused long enough for her to nod. "I was on the team that went to explore this city in the Pegasus galaxy. It was very dangerous. The city, when we first found it, was anchored to the bottom of the ocean. I recorded a message for you explaining what happened when we first arrived, but it required security clearance so I sent a different message. The message you did get."

He paused and looked at her. She realized that she must have had a blank stare for his entire speech. She looked straight through him, not at him, trying to put this together. She was still stuck in the "other galaxy" part of the explanation.

"The city is full of technology created by a race we call the Ancients. They're gone now, but they were very advanced."

That explained what he was doing there. Radek didn't strike her as an explorer. Not the kind that climbed mountains and sailed seas. She felt a small smile creep to her lips.

Of course, he was an explorer. He was always looking for something new.

"What?" he asked.

She shook her head, trying to shed her smile. "You went to study their technology? The aliens?"

"Yes. It was incredible. Really something. We found things and learned things I never imagined possible. I'll never forget it for as long as I live."

Now he sounded sad, sounded like he looked when he watched her sign the paper, like someone died. And maybe something did…

"But you can't go back," Anna finished. She understood Doctor McKay's resentment now. She didn't imagine herself an explorer, but if she was as smart as Radek she wouldn't turn down the opportunity to go to another galaxy for anything. "Because I'm here."

"No, no, you mustn't think that," he said. He laughed slightly. "I said it was dangerous. It is very dangerous. There are aliens there who want to destroy us. In the beginning it seemed like the city itself didn't want us there."

But what was danger in comparison to an ancient city with wonders she could never possibly imagine? Even he couldn't imagine them.

"You want to go back, though." Maybe he didn't realize how sad he sounded. Broken-hearted. She couldn't assign a likeness to it. Maybe like she felt whenever she thought of her mother. She'd lost something important she could never get back.

Except Doctor McKay seemed to think he could get it back.

"Sometimes," he answered. "To be honest, it is more trouble and stress, I think, than it's worth…" He didn't sound completely convinced. He added flippantly, "The money is good."

"Doctor McKay thinks you still have time to change your mind."

"Doctor McKay." He sighed, almost growled, the name. "He doesn't think things through. He's very smart, but… not always, and not about everything." He paused and looked at her. Took a very deep breath. "He thinks I should take you with me."

She sat up straighter at that. Take her to another galaxy?

"But I can't," he said before she got to imagine too much of that. "There are aliens who… well, for lack of a better word, eat humans." He looked at his hands. "There are probably millions of them in space ships as big as downtown Colorado Springs. Or bigger. I don't know a good comparison."

"They… eat humans?"

"They—well, it's a little gruesome."

"I've seen Alien. Do they eat you from the inside out?"

He frowned in distaste. "When did you see that?"

"I'm fifteen."

"Yes, yes. I'm sorry." He paused and then got back on track. "No, they suck the life out of you with their hand." He pointed to his palm. "When I sent you the message, we were about to be attacked. The city is safe now—as safe as it ever is, anyway—but we all thought we were going to die horrible deaths in one way or another. I can't take you there."

"But don't they need you?" she asked.

"I can be replaced. I will be replaced. That's the deadline."

He was right. Nothing would ever be the same. She'd remember this conversation for as long as she lived. It wasn't just the new reality she had to get used to: aliens and other galaxies and cities and technology ten thousand years old. She could never look at the world the same, could she? She could never look at him the same. She could never forget how lost he sounded when he talked about the city in another galaxy. He couldn't go home.

She shook her head. "You? You can't be replaced."

He laughed. "That's nice of you, but I can be replaced. It won't be as hard as Rodney imagines." He paused, then.

"Doctor McKay said he wanted me to know the truth so I could decide for myself," she said.

She didn't know what decision she had in this, but she knew she had to try. She'd wanted to be like him all her life. He was brave enough to go to another galaxy. She wanted to be brave enough, too.

"There's no decision," he said. "It's too dangerous."

"You were small when two-thousand tanks invaded Czechoslovakia," she said. He frowned at the comparison. She didn't care what he thought. "The world isn't safe."

"Significantly safer than Pegasus," he said.

She got the feeling she wasn't going to be able to convince him. But the last thing she wanted was for both of them to be miserable. She'd accepted that for herself already. Maybe if she was in another galaxy, she'd forget.

"I don't care where I am," she said.

"You don't understand the Pegasus galaxy."

"No, I don't." She hesitated and tried to think. Tears welled up in her eyes, though she willed them to go away. "But I don't understand Colorado, either. I don't understand anything." She hadn't meant to say that, however true it was. She didn't understand this country. She didn't understand her father. She no longer understood her life. "I can't go home. Mom is—is gone." She blinked at her tears. It seemed to work.

He looked around. Anna did, too. "I'd like to think this could be home," he said. "For both of us."

She shook her head as she looked around. But it would always be the place she learned about aliens, now. It would always be the place he would never be happy with. "I don't think it will be. For either of us."

"We should give it a try, though."

"For a week? Then it will be too late and you'll lose home forever."

He looked at her. "I was afraid I already did, eight years ago."

Anna shrugged. There it was again, that "nice sentiment." She didn't know if he actually believed that. She certainly didn't. Not when there were aliens and ancient cities involved.

He was right. Before she signed the paper, everything was about the same, minus her mother. As overwhelmingly large as that darkened hole in her soul was, this was bigger. So big it didn't compare. He was right… the whole world was different. She was smaller than she thought to imagine.

There was one thing he didn't understand yet: he had lost her eight years ago. The world lost her four months ago. The world didn't matter. "Then does it matter where we live?"

Radek watched her for a few seconds. "If two hearts are tied together, no distance is too far. Is that what you're saying?"

Anna doubted that was what she was saying, but she remembered it from Elizabeth's fortune cookie a few hours ago. She didn't know if her heart was tired to anything at all. But it wasn't tied to Earth anymore, that was certain.

No. She finally decided that wasn't true. Radek's heart was millions of lightyears away. That distance mattered.

"I guess so," Anna said finally, just to oblige him. Maybe, she thought, being in another galaxy would make her forget just how far apart two hearts could be.

Czech Things

Malá = Little.

A/N: Huzzah, Anna finally knows about Atlantis! Well. No one could accuse me of rushing.