Thank you to everyone for being patient! I'm now back at home and ready to get back at the fanfictioning like never before!
Ah, okay, maybe exactly before, actually...
But here's the thing: I'm in my last semester of university, and I'm quite sure it's going to be difficult. So apologies in advance should I be late or miss one or two. And expect another short hiatus around May. Because I'll be moving. And hopefully have a new job.

Anyway. Anybody remember where we were...? Because I don't...
It's okay, it's just a bit of catch-up reading... #universitylife

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

Previously: Anna's being a good girl and not putting any weight on that ankle of hers (since chapter 77). Even though Sheppard's team is missing (since chapter 74), things are looking up because Rodney just came through the 'gate (last chapter). High on Wraith enzyme. But at least he's not missing anymore. But Radek might actually the time to spend some bonding time with the team (since he was invited in chapter 70) while waiting for Rodney to construct a cogent sentence.

Chapter 79. B-Team.

Doctor McKay wasn't offering any useful information any time soon.

Anna had never seen anyone hysterical under the influence of drugs or alcohol before, but Doctor McKay's attitude and behavior was… scary. She couldn't think of a better way to describe it. It was just terrifying when someone wasn't themselves. Doctor Adams gave Anna an assortment of pain pills and sent her back home. Anna had never been so happy to leave.

"Do you think he'll get better?" Anna asked. Because, according to Doctor Beckett, the odds that Doctor McKay would die were still very real. And if Doctor McKay died, then that meant their chances of getting the rest of his team back just put them right back where they started.

Not to mention that would be awful.

"Carson is the best doctor in two galaxies. If anyone can help Rodney, he can." Radek paused by the couch and looked at her in concern. "Are you sure you're alright if I leave?"

Anna nodded for what felt like the fiftieth time. "Yes, of course, go. I'm sure you will have a good time. Don't you like games?"

"Poker is just not one of my favored approaches to social activity," Radek said.

Anna giggled. "Okay, well, I didn't know you had a favored approach."

Before Radek could rattle off a list of ways he'd rather spend his time with someone, the door buzzed again. Radek turned toward the door like it had said something obscene. "Good lord, we go for months without a single visitor and suddenly…?" He opened the door.

Anna couldn't see who was there from her location on the couch.

"Um. Can I help you?"

"Does Anna live here?"

Anna's heart skipped a beat. Iskaan? What was he doing here? How did he get here? How did he know where she lived? Probably asked Elizabeth…

"Oh, yes, she does." Radek took a step and asked, "Who are you?"

"I apologize, my name is Iskaan…" he said quickly.

"Hi, Iskaan." Anna pulled herself up to sit on the couch instead of lying across it like she had been. "He's one of the Athosians I've been spending time with on the mainland," she offered to Radek, not mentioning that he was essentially the Athosian that she'd been spending time with. The other was an annoying twelve-year-old.

"Oh." Radek took a careful look up and down the visitor. It was almost amusing, except… she wasn't sure how she felt about Radek examining any male visitors she might ever have. "Doctor Zelenka," he offered, with a handshake.

Iskaan seemed baffled, but accepted his hand anyway.

Anna was glad, since the Athosian way of greeting was decidedly more intimate. Radek was having trouble going to play a poker game. Forget touching foreheads.

"Nice to meet you, Doctor Zelenka," Iskaan said.

"Hm." Radek didn't offer a similar sentiment for several seconds. Didn't exactly give Anna hope for her future. This wasn't even a romantic relationship. Probably.

She sighed.

"Yes, you, too," Radek said finally. He followed Iskaan to the couch.

Iskaan looked around the space like he was unsure about what to do and finally sat down on the floor within arm's reach of Anna. "How is your ankle?" Iskaan asked stiffly.

"It's fine," Anna said. "I still can't really walk on it, but I have been practicing writing the alphabet with my toes." At the strange look Iskaan gave her, she laughed. "Just an exercise to help me get mobility back." She started turning her ankle about to write the letter a. Then the letter b. "I don't have much yet, so… they probably wouldn't look like letters if I were writing with my toes."

"Most Athosians don't know how to write at all…" Iskaan said.

Radek sighed at that proclamation, and Anna glared up over the back of the couch at him. He pretended he had done no such thing, and held up the empty tea kettle. "Would you like tea?"

"Um… no, thank you," Iskaan said. He watched Radek carefully, maybe like he was a wild animal whose behavior he didn't know how to predict. "But that's very generous."

"You don't have to hang around here, Radek," Anna offered.

"But—"

"What about the poker game?" Anna reminded. She pulled herself up to look over the back of the couch at him to communicate more clearly that he really didn't need to be here. "You said you should go."

"I did say that, but I also said I didn't want to," Radek muttered.

"Prosím?" Anna didn't know if begging would help, but it was worth a try.

Radek gestured weakly in Iskaan's direction, asking, "While he's here?" *

Finally, when his eyes met hers, he sighed again and shook his head. "Alright, alright, I'll go." He picked up his radio off the counter and hooked it over his ear. "I'll have my radio. If you need anything at all, please call."

"I will," Anna agreed.

"I'm serious. Please. Call."

Anna giggled. "If you don't come back in two hours, I will send a rescue mission."

"Two hours…" Radek mumbled before he left the room. He paused at the door and caught Iskaan in what Anna could only properly describe as a glare. "It was good seeing you again."

"You, too," Iskaan answered quietly.

Radek left.

Anna sighed and looked at Iskaan.

Iskaan looked back. "So what's this alphabet you're writing?"

Anna sighed and started over. A, b, c... "Symbols that I make the shape of with my foot." She sighed. "Thirty-five of them…" As if being painful wasn't enough, it was also dreadfully boring.

"Symbols." Iskaan pondered that for a few seconds and then smiled at her. "Like on the Stargate."

That was as good an idea as any. Far more interesting to draw the 'gate symbols with her foot than the regular old alphabet. But she only knew one off the top of her head: Atlantis's point of origin symbol. "Do you know the all the 'gate symbols?"

"All of them… no. I know many of them. Every 'gate—"

"I know every 'gate has one symbol that's unique to that 'gate," Anna interrupted. "I mean any of the other symbols."

As soon as Iskaan nodded, Anna handed him her tablet open to a blank canvas.

"Can you draw them so I can make the shapes?"

Iskaan smiled and drew his finger over the tablet, like he was drawing in the sand. He held up the tablet for Anna to see three shapes, one right after another, that looked half part of an hourglass, part of a square, and two sides of a triangle.

"This is Acjesis," Iskaan said. "In the bulrushes."

"What?" Anna paused her drawing to arch an eyebrow at Iskaan.

He laughed. "Do your people not tell stories about the pictures in the stars?"

"I guess we do…" Anna said finally. "Or, we used to. I know there is a constellation called Kozoroh. There's a story for it, I think, but I don't know what it is. It's a, um… goat." Anna never quite knew how she felt about her astrological symbol being a goat. Not that she really cared or bought into it at all, but there was that one phase in her school days when everyone was crooning over their horoscopes and looking for love under all the wrong stars.

It held even less meaning now, in another galaxy, than it did on Earth.

Iskaan went back to his tablet, swiping away the symbols for Acjesis and tracing out another, rather complicated one. This one had five discrete groups. Anna started swiveling her ankle around while Iskaan said, "Lenchan, the forest."

"You're going to have to tell me these stories someday."

"I should tell you about this one." Iskaan started drawing again while Anna finished the forest. It was such a long symbol, Anna didn't wonder why they did call it a whole forest. "This is Elenami, the 'gate traveler." His tablet now had a pentagon on it, with some lines shooting off, and a short line near it.

"The 'gate traveler?" Anna stared for a long time at the lines Iskaan drew on the tablet. "Is he supposed to be that little stick right there?"

Iskaan looked at the lines and the dots. "She is. Yes. And this is the 'gate. It's opening, see?" He pointed to the other lines and dots to next to the supposed-traveler.

"Where's her head?" Anna wondered. "And her arms?"

Iskaan turned the tablet around to look at it. "You don't know anything about constellations, do you?"

Anna giggled. "Okay, okay. I'll take your word for it."

Iskaan laughed, too. "Good." He drew another symbol and proclaimed it was Alura and her lover.

"Were you going to tell me about Elenami or weren't you?" She started drawing Alura, anyway. She wasn't sure which one of the stick drawings was supposed to be Alura and which was supposed to be her lover.

"Yes," Iskaan said quietly as he drew another. "Patience. This is Ca Po, the Wraith eater."

Anna held up her hand. "Stop it right there. How is that a Wraith eater?"

Iskaan sighed and started pointing to the various parts of his drawing, identifying the Wraith, the Wraith's victim, and Ca Po. Anna still didn't see it and she told him as soon as he took a breath so she could get her words in.

But she didn't have to tell him she was glad he was here. Even though she would have been just fine, even happy, alone at home tonight… this was definitely better.

#

"Oh, look who decided to show up." Reed stepped back and to the side to allow Radek entrance to Lorne's quarters. A card table was set up in the center, and decidedly too small for all the people sitting around it. Lorne, Reed, Coughlin, with Chuck the 'gate technician and Doctor Keller for good measure, apparently.

"Give him a break," Lorne said, waving Radek over to the table. "He's been busy taking care of Anna for a week or something when he wasn't untangling a mess of 'gate symbols though fifty sheets of paper."

If anyone was confused by that statement, no one said anything.

"How is Anna?" Chuck asked as Radek took the seat Lorne slid in his direction.

Radek ended up taking the barely-empty spot at the table between Chuck and Lorne, directly across from Doctor Keller. It was a strange group. "She seems to be none the worse for her concussion. She still can't walk on her ankle," Radek said. "But she's definitely improved."

"Glad to hear it," Chuck said.

"Ligaments take forever." Doctor Keller shook her head sadly before asking, "Ever play Texas hold 'em?" She took the deck of cards that Reed gave her and shuffled.

Thank you, Collins… Radek nodded. "Yes, I'm quite familiar."

"Good. How about you weird Canadians?" Doctor Keller looked at Chuck playfully.

Chuck returned her good-natured glare and assured her, "Yes, the weird Canadians do know how to play." He hesitated and grinned. "The weird Canadian is also going to kick all your American asses." And then he looked at Radek like he didn't know what to do about him.

"How very un-Canadian of you…" Reed commented with a smile.

Radek checked his cards and watched the table.

"Any news about McKay?" Coughlin asked while play passed.

"Besides 'we need to stop the ship from getting to where the ship is going'?" Lorne chuckled. Then he became serious. "It's a Wraith ship, by the way."

"And I heard Ford was there," Reed said.

Radek arched an eyebrow toward Reed. "This isn't another of your wild stories?"

Reed spread his hands and grinned. "Just telling you what I heard."

"Ford?" Doctor Keller asked.

It occurred to Radek that Lorne hadn't exactly met Ford, either. Even if he met Ford offworld, it was probably not the one that everyone on Atlantis had come to appreciate. Reed gave a short explanation for them, from the beginning when Ford proved himself as a valuable member of Sheppard's team and a likeable kid on top of that, right up until the end. He should have died that day. If not one way, then another. Everyone stayed quiet and didn't say anything about the game while Reed finished his story.

Ford was the only person on the expedition Radek told about Anna directly before he received word of Eliška's death. Not because he knew him well or because he was pleasant or trustworthy. No… it was simply because Ford was nobody to Radek. He liked him well enough, sure. Didn't dislike him. But he was no one of consequence. He imagined the military members of the expedition felt about Ford's near- and assumed- death the same way Radek felt about Collins' death.

Exactly as Radek had gambled, he was nobody to Ford, too. Anna remained a secret between Radek, Ford, and the camcorder.

"That's awful," Doctor Keller said softly.

Reed nodded. "Yeah. I gotta admit, I miss that kid."

Lorne shook his head in partial disbelief. "Every day, every month that goes by just goes to show how unstable things are around here." He looked around the table briefly, then explained, "I was brought in either to fill Ford's place or the place of whoever replaced Ford. Whatever happens, good or bad… I'm next."

He didn't sound pleased. He sounded resigned. Radek knew the feeling.

"Weird how aware of the hierarchy you are," Chuck joked, and the game resumed. "Not gunning for team one, are you?"

Lorne chuckled darkly and shook his head. "Hell, no. Trust me, when you're this close to the top, that hierarchy does nothing but scare the hell out of you." Lorne glanced at Radek. "Right, Doc?"

Radek nodded knowingly.

"Becoming chief medical is one of my worst nightmares," Doctor Keller offered.

"Yet, look how close you are," Lorne said.

Radek glanced at Doctor Keller. Everyone seemed to know something he didn't: that Doctor Keller was a first-rate doctor despite her youth. He never would have pinned the title of chief surgeon on her, this blushing and diminutive girl. He knew it wasn't fair, but they were shoes that she hadn't seemed to grow into.

She shook her head. "I'm not exactly close."

"You're not the accomplished geneticist Doctor Beckett is, but you're made plenty of advancements in… uh…" Chuck hesitated and looked at her sideways. "I forget—what field did you study specifically?"

"Epidemiology," she said.

"Was zur Hölle…?" Coughlin mumbled.

Radek respected her more already. He didn't know much about it, but epidemiology was a branch of social and biological science that he could almost appreciate. Almost. She wasn't just a doctor, she was an engineer, seeing patterns and reasons where other people might only see chaos. Her science was still imperfect, still only brushing the surface of what science was, but it could have been closer than the guess-work so many social and biological sciences were forced to attend.

People were impossible to study. That was just the long and short of it. The reason he was in physics and not… well… anything else. People didn't have anything to do with the placement of atoms in the universe.

"The study of epidemics," Doctor Keller explained. "Basically… it's studying where diseases originate and where they move based on environmental factors. And then, treatment and prevention of those diseases. I'm only interested in communicable diseases, though, so nothing like obesity or allergies or something."

"Sounds like… fun." Coughlin's lack of sincerity was amusing.

"And why did that bring you here?" Lorne asked.

Doctor Keller shrugged and thought about that for a while. Radek got the impression that she wasn't saying plenty of things that came to mind in the short time that she didn't answer before she finally settled on, "I always wanted to practice, you know, make a difference? I felt cornered on Earth, doing lab research and other things that I didn't want to do." She paused and smiled. "Besides, epidemiology has the chance to get pretty interesting once you get the Stargates involved."

"Especially since the control crystals don't keep track of what planets have been dialed," Lorne muttered. "What's with that? You'd think they'd have some sort of system to record that." Lorne looked at Radek accusingly, as if he personally had decided to cut that functionality out of the DHD.

Radek held a hand up in innocence. "I swear, the next time I design a DHD, I will include that capability."

"You'd better." Lorne chuckled and went back to watching the cards on the table.

Coughlin ended up winning the hand, and they continued for a few more rounds.

Radek was surprised with how comfortable he felt in this company. Major Lorne was like Colonel Sheppard, a well-liked and capable military commander. Radek knew from previous work that Chuck was a gifted engineer, probably more suited to designing things like Stargates than simply operating them. Of course, no technician only operated the Stargate, but Radek didn't know what he did exactly. He crossed paths with select few engineers on Atlantis.

Doctor Keller remained mostly quiet as the evening went on, the only doctor and the youngest and a woman… Even though she couldn't have felt very comfortable, Radek knew that he felt much like the rest of them must have: she belonged there. Like Lorne and Radek. They were all second-bests in their fields.

In a place like Atlantis, that made them forgotten.

Chuck excused himself and Coughlin changed the game to some other variety of poker.

Anna never called.

But Radek didn't mind.

Czech Things

* Please?

Thank Yous & Etc.

Linda: Thank you! It was a great opportunity, and I'm happy to have gone. It's going to take a while to get back into the swing of writing this, but I'm looking forward to it.

Guest: Thank you! I hope it continues to be fun for you.

Next time: Don't think too much of it.