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TITLE: Kindred - Part 2
SUMMARY: Distrust, mistrust, and discoveries.
CATEGORY: team, drama, action-adventure
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Nothing to do with Stargate Atlantis belongs to me, I'm just borrowing them for the moment.
NOTES: Set sometime between Critical Mass and The Long Goodbye.
Part 1
Kindred
Chapter Two
"Were Teyla's people like this when you met them?" Rodney asked as he looked around at the tents and the people going about their tasks.
John smiled at another knot of adolescents who giggled behind their hands and recalled that Rodney hadn't been of the group who originally went out looking for another place to live when it looked like the shields around Atlantis weren't going to hold up against the water. "Pretty much."
"So they've come quite a long way."
"Yep."
The Athosians were more than willing to accept what help the Atlantis expedition was willing to offer in terms of knowledge. To that, they added the information Teyla gained from her occasional studies of Earth culture and technology - ways that her people could improve their lives, adapting and merging the Athosian equipment and materials to Earth concepts.
Oh, the Athosians had the odd pieces of very-advanced technology here and there, but Teyla said much of it had been lost in the cullings and was now little more than a memory. Her people had been focused on their survival and the survival of the community rather than gaining a platform from which the Wraith could be fought, and as their numbers dwindled, keeping everyone safe and fed was more important than weapons and rebellion.
Rodney didn't generally bother himself with the Athosians - they were too low a level of technology for him to have any interest in Teyla's people as anything other than just 'her people'. There were a few expedition personnel who took a more steady interest in the Athosians - mostly medical and anthropological, but that didn't seem to bother Teyla.
Watching his team-mate up ahead as she walked beside Lian, telling him about the ways of her people, John wondered if she did mind that her team-mates never really inquired about the people she'd promised to lead and just didn't say. It was hard to tell with Teyla - she kept her emotions to herself and didn't share them with many people.
He definitely needed to have a few words with her.
The walk back would probably be the best time - assuming Lian didn't attach himself to them on the way back as well.
John would have to figure out a way to dissuade the Noyian from following them back to their ship, though. Lian was almost hovering over Teyla again. Then again, she didn't seem to be minding it too much. Ronon certainly wasn't minding the woman who'd looped an arm through his and was nearly leaning against his shoulder.
"Ronon seems to be making friends," Rodney muttered, his thoughts paralleling John's as a peal of laughter rang out from the woman - her name was apparently Delyn. Their Satedan team-mate smirked with the pleasure of a guy who'd just made a pretty woman laugh.
Now, if Delyn had been John's lunch partner instead of the lovely-if-disconcerting-and-underage Umaya...
"It's called getting to know the locals, Rodney," John said, watching Delyn point something out to Ronon across the camp. "You should try it sometime."
The noise the other man made was something between a snort and a scoff. "I'll leave the Kirking to you, Sheppard."
Never mind that the sum total of women John had actually slept with in this galaxy was a grand total of two. And both had been...extenuating situations: Chaya's mind-blowing sharing-of-souls thing had led to intimacy, and he'd been stuck in the commune for over five months - in his time - when Teer made her offer, never mind that only a few hours had passed outside.
Other than that, it wasn't John's fault that women liked him.
Of course, he would never say that to Rodney, who was fun to tease.
"Jealous?"
"Why would I be jealous?" Rodney asked, defensive at the first sign that anyone was denigrating his social ability. "Some of us prefer intellectual stimuli to more...earthy motivations."
"There's nothing 'earthy' about being friendly with the locals," John said with lofty superiority. "Or being friendly at all. You might try it sometime."
"I am friendly! I talk to people when we're exchanging technical information."
"I meant socially," he said, shaking his head. "In social situations. Like lunch."
"What?" Rodney asked. "The kid didn't want to talk."
"Or you interrupted him every time he tried - or just kept eating."
"I was hungry!"
"The food wasn't going anywhere!" John held up a hand to stall Rodney's next response. He'd been keeping track of the conversation ahead and a slight change in tone had caught his ear. He picked up the pace as Teyla stopped and turned back towards them. Or, more correctly, towards Ronon and Delyn. John saw her lips move in a question that he only just heard the end of.
"...have Ancestor artefacts here?"
Delyn paused, disconcerted by the response. "I...they are..." Beyond Teyla, John saw Lian's expression harden and his hand reach out to cup her elbow.
"Some of our people believe these things belonged to the Ancestors," said Lian, speaking over Delyn's sudden stammer. "However, they are not in the usual style of such items belonging to the Ancestors."
"And you know the style of Ancient technology so well?" John asked as he reached the group. He knew he'd been right to distrust the Noyian.
"We have seen the artistry of the Ancestors on other worlds - rooms and ruins that were once inhabited by them, items that are nothing more than fragments. These are not like them."
"Oh, we've had quite a bit of experience with Ancient technology," Rodney said, coming up beside John. "The Ancients built a lot of things in a variety of different styles - I mean, the language doesn't seem to change, which the linguists find very interesting - but there seem to be several different styles to the devices they built, depending on the type of use that the device was for. Actually, it's gotten to the point where we can determine what purpose--"
"Rodney, perhaps the lecture could wait until after we manage to look at the technology?" John turned to Lian, noting how the man looked flatly back at him. "Look," he said. "We want to fight the Wraith. We'd like to stop them from attacking you and us and everyone else in this galaxy. In order to do that, we need weapons. If you have anything that might be Wraith or Ancient weaponry - even broken stuff - then we have people who can probably fix it so it works. And if they can't..." he was tempted to say, 'then they can blow up three-quarters of a solar system in the process.' John let it pass this time. If the Noyians had been friendlier then he wouldn't have hesitated to rag Rodney about it. Instead, he settled for saying, "If they can't, then there's probably no-one short of one of the Ancients who can get it working."
His last words were delivered to a crowd of Noyians, gathering around the group as John and Lian faced off against each other. And his words were making an impact on more than a few of the Noyians.
"Teyla?" Lian never took his eyes from John's face.
"He speaks the truth," Teyla said, her features in profile to John as she spoke. "I have allied with him and his people for that reason." Her words carried, clear and strong through the growing crowd.
John was angry with Lian's refusal to believe anything he said without first running it through Teyla. And, irrationally, even angrier with Teyla for catering to Lian's paranoia at all - even if it did convince the man.
"We have both Wraith weapons and the technologies of the Ancestors," said a new voice from the side. Umaya stepped out of the crowd, her eyes fixed on John.
"Umaya!"
The girl had balls; she stood up to the older man without flinching. "We have hoarded them for years, Lian. The Wraith weapons work against the Wraith - so you say, but the Ancestors' devices are beyond our understanding - if you would only see it!"
"We can make them work," he said, fiercely. "In time!"
"And we do not have time," Umaya said, shortly. In spite of her youth, it seemed that the Noyians were listening to her - especially the younger ones. "We have spoken to many worlds, many cultures who tell us that the Wraith are coming - and have come - in far greater number than even the histories speak of. If John Sheppard and his people can make them work--"
"When," Rodney corrected her, apparently unable to stop himself.
Lian tore his gaze from Umaya. "So sure?"
"I am a genius," Rodney said with all the unconscious arrogance of which he was capable. "Even among my own people."
"He's pretty good," said John, deciding that enough people had argued his case for him. "Look, we just want to take a look at this stuff. There's no point in sitting on it if you can't use it. And it might be that we can't use it either, but it's worth checking out."
Lian looked at Teyla again. Then he looked at Umaya, then at the circle of people watching, and something in his face hardened. "Very well," he said to John, his voice harsh sharp. "We will show you what devices we have kept through the years and if you can use it, we will trade."
"Thanks." John said, not without a touch of anger on his own part. "As Teyla will tell you, we play fair." She seems to be the only authority you trust.
The expression on the Noyian's face was resentful, but after a moment, he nodded. "This way." And with a touch on Teyla's arm to draw her alongside him, Lian walked off, parting the people before him like the proverbial Moses.
Teyla glanced back at John once, her expression eloquent with more things than he could identify. Then she followed Lian.
And, with a glance at the Noyians surrounding them, so did John.
"Not exactly eager," Ronon observed as they began making their way down the low end of the valley, towards the river.
"No," John agreed, keeping his voice hushed. "Watch out for him." He was only too aware of the Noyians who crowded around them, intent on following them to wherever the technology and devices were kept.
Ronon bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. "Already am." Then he loped ahead to where Rodney was engaging Delyn in a discussion of exactly what kinds of technology the Noyians had kept.
"Can your friend truly make devices of the Ancestors work?" Umaya asked, sauntering up alongside John.
"With a lot of yelling, grumbling, and reminding people that he's a genius," he said. "Rodney's almost as good as he thinks he is." He'd give the other man that.
"And you do not have his genius?"
That might be going a bit far. "I have a different sort of genius," he said.
"Which would be...?" Umaya tilted her head to look up into his face.
"Oh...fighting. Being a warrior." There wasn't really a neat way to describe it, so that would have to do.
"John!" A hand tugged at his sidearm, and he looked down at Anneka, skipping beside him to keep up with his strides. "Are you going to see the devices?"
"Anneka, you're supposed to be with Milla!" Umaya's voice was exasperated.
John was seeing a pattern to the girl's movements. He interrupted Anneka as she poked her head around his hip and opened her mouth to retort at Umaya. "Yes, we're going to see the devices. Coming?"
Umaya's sigh was clear enough, but Anneka's face lit up. "Yes!" And, so saying, she held up her arms.
Carrying hadn't been part of the deal, but John obliged - if only because the kid was charming enough.
"You should stay with Milla!" Umaya sulked.
"You challenged Lian!"
"That's not something I should be doing and never do!" Umaya retorted.
John considered that a matter of opinion. "Ladies," he said, looking from one to the other. "No arguing. You can tell me where you got these devices from."
"On other worlds when we go through the Ring of the Ancestors," Anneka said promptly.
"Mostly, we trade for them," said Umaya. "Lian has an obsession with the Ancestors, and the devices are useless to all of us." Another glance found its way towards John, clear and sharp. "You can make them work?"
"Sometimes." There were some things that all the scientists in Atlantis and on Earth couldn't work out, items that had no comprehensible reason, and devices that refused to divulge their secrets. "How do you get the ones you don't trade for?"
"Those are mostly on uninhabited planets. We bring them back here and store them. Lian dreams of finding or training up someone among our people who can make them work."
"I take it you don't agree."
"The Wraith have been hunting us as far back as anyone remembers," the girl said. "And the Ancestors never did anything to stop them. We shouldn't expect any help from them."
"You shouldn't talk about the Ancestors like that!" Anneka seemed horrified.
"Why not? It's true," said the older girl with all the stubborn confidence of an adolescent. "And Lian only makes it worse with his insistence that we could get the devices working. Devices run down over time - the Wraith weapons run out of energy after a time."
Anneka drew breath to protest, and John interrupted. "The Ancients' - Ancestors' - devices still work."
Both girls stared. "Really?" Anneka asked at the same time as Umaya inquired, "You have seen this?"
"Yes," he said to both questions.
"Told you," the little girl said.
Umaya just glared and stalked off ahead of them as they reached a narrow path that curved along a ledge leading up to a cave in the hills. Ronon glanced back, blinking in surprise as he saw the child John was carrying.
Not that John was going to carry her much longer. He didn't want to overbalance as he made his way along the ledge - the river wasn't more than a half-dozen yards below, but it would be cold and hitting it at that distance would hurt.
He set Anneka down, ignoring her whine. "I think this is as far as you're being carried," he told her. "Maybe you should go back--"
She made a face at that and promptly started up the shale-lined path after Umaya. Okay. Not going back. Absently, John wondered how he'd managed to end up as the babysitter when he was the team-leader.
It was a relief to discover that most of the villagers didn't follow them up the ledge. When he looked back, a little surprised that there weren't many footsteps following him, he saw them milling at the plateau from which the path veered off, watching him climb.
A couple of children were still following them, older than Anneka, younger than Umaya, but most of the locals seemed reluctant to hike up the path.
When John entered the cave, he realised why.
Someone had set up the cave like a museum of sorts - complete with dead Wraith fixed to the wall, their ugly faces dried in snarls of hatred. They weren't any prettier dead then they were alive - and it was pretty disconcerting to glance up and look into the wizened face of an enemy who'd probably been dead longer than John had been living.
John didn't know how the Wraith had been killed. Probably starved since the creature seemed otherwise unharmed. John didn't like to think of how many people it would have taken to subdue a single Wraith - and there were maybe a dozen here, in various stages of mummification.
Lian, and Umaya held torches up, illuminating the darkness of the natural cavern, while Teyla had switched on her P-90 light. John did the same, the white beam cutting sharply through the darkness to rest one by one on the Wraith.
"You know, it's just as well we had lunch before we came in here," Rodney was saying to Delyn, who seemed unsurprised by the corpses. "Because this display is totally putting me off food."
"And that takes some doing," John muttered to himself.
By the torchlight, Ronon had an odd gleam in his eye - the glint of fanatical hatred that never stopped being off-putting to John or the other Atlantis personnel. They'd taken Ronon in, but sometimes, the depth of his hatred made them uncomfortable. At one level, John understood it; at another, he couldn't imagine living with that kind of passion every moment of every day. "Why the display?"
"For remembrance," Lian said. "And as a reminder."
"A bit drastic, don't you think?" John said, tearing his gaze away from a particularly malevolent-looking Wraith. If it wasn't for the fact that the creature looked about as living as a 5,000 year-old mummy, he'd have been more than a little freaked by the way the corpse still seemed to watch him with something like avid hatred in its eyes.
His eye lighted on Teyla, standing with her body braced against the air, the light of her P-90 shining on the face of what looked like the most recently-interred Wraith. Something about the way she stood made John cross the room to touch her shoulder. She glanced at him with something like surprise, like someone coming awake after a deep sleep, and took a slow, quiet breath. "I am fine."
"Just checking," he murmured, before turning to address Lian. "So, where are these things you've collected?"
The Noyian was eyeing him warily, but he answered. "This way."
In the inner cave, their footsteps echoed loudly, and the torches cast down a warm orange glow across the piles of weapons leaned against the walls. Dozens of stunners, neatly laid out in long rows; pistols lying in the sand, placed for easy counting; silvery ovoid detonators that winked wickedly in the lamplight...
A treasure trove of Wraith weapons, hoarded and kept for...what? A time when they could fight back?
John didn't get it. If they had the weaponry, why not use it? And if they couldn't use it, why had Khenar Lian been so secretive about them?
Then John realised that a faint bluish-green glow was creeping across the floor, casting his shadow before him, across the Wraith weapons.
He turned to the corner behind him and took a step forward.
Patterns both familiar and foreign danced with the internal light of Ancient design, a collection of weapons and devices and things that glimmered and glittered and blazed in John's presence, flaring as he reached out to trace his finger across a dark design. Behind the trail of his fingertip, designs glowed vividly. He couldn't feel their response to him on his skin, but he could see it with his eyes.
And so could Lian and the other Noyians - Delyn, Umaya, Anneka and the other children who'd followed them into the cave.
John turned, smiling in spite of himself. There was nothing like a light display to get people's attention. And Rodney was a lovely shade of green beneath the bluish light. He might be a genius, but John had the gene - naturally and far stronger than any of the artificially-induced genes.
Moments like these, John loved it.
"We'll take it. All of it."
--
Of course, it wasn't that simple.
"This isn't going to be any use to you anyway," Rodney was saying. "You can't use it - none of your people have the gene."
"Colonel Sheppard has a...natural ability with this technology," Teyla added. "It is something that he and a few others can do. There are ways to simulate it--"
"But even that's imperfect," said Rodney. "Look, Sheppard was born able to do this stuff. He's not the only one, but he's pretty much the strongest carrier of it that we have. I've got the gene, but it's artificial - we developed a retrovirus that-- Never mind. You wouldn't understand my explanation - you hardly understand anything I'm saying right now! Just accept that we've got the people and the technology to be able to use this stuff. You don't. It makes more sense for you to give this stuff to us--"
"Or trade it."
Rodney was in full flow. Teyla's correction barely registered in his tirade, although he adjusted his words with typical fluency. "Or trade it, although there are times when a lack of MasterCard in this universe makes the whole system of barter and exchange really inconvenient."
"These things have belonged to my people for generations!"
"And how much have you used them? What is this? A museum? A mausoleum?"
Teyla didn't exactly interrupt Rodney, but she did manage to get a verbal foot in the edge of the door. "Khenar Lian, your people have collected these for a long time - and yet they lie here unused."
"We would have found a use for them, sooner or later," Lian said. "If Colonel Sheppard possesses this ability--"
"Even among their people it is rare," Teyla said. "Among our peoples it is unknown." She glanced John's way, then back at Lian. "Lian." He turned to her, almost unable to deny her request. "Will you trade or give them to us?"
Lian stared at her for a long moment, then looked suspiciously at John.
"We will trade for them," he said at last.
John was glad he'd decided to remain silent through all this. He'd nearly spoken out, more than once. A look from Teyla had silenced him, and in the end, he figured she knew what she was doing. He didn't like it, but she seemed to be the only person who could really get through to the stubborn son-of-a-bitch, and John had learned enough of the diplomatic stuff to recognise that sometimes Teyla or Ronon could bargain what he and Rodney couldn't, simply because they were local to Pegasus.
Teyla looked to him, her expression questioning. He nodded at her and looked to Lian. "What's your price?"
"What do you have to offer us?"
Okay, this was the point at which things usually went bad. What Atlantis could offer them wasn't what the locals wanted, or what the locals wanted was something that Atlantis couldn't procure.
As Rodney had noted, the lack of universal currency in the Pegasus system made things tricky.
Then again, Atlantis did 'tricky' first thing in the morning, even before they'd had a cup of coffee.
"We can't offer you free rein with our stores," John said after a moment. At the blank look on the Noyian's face, and Teyla's chiding look, he rephrased. "A free hand. Look, we've got medicines, some technological advancements - Teyla's people have taken all kinds of stuff from us."
Lian looked at Teyla.
"They have many concepts and ideas that my people have adopted, quite successfully."
"Including warfare against the Wraith," Ronon added, fingering a Wraith detonator before tossing it back into the pile. "We've got some experience with that."
"I should have thought your people would have more experience against the Wraith," Lian said.
Ronon stiffened briefly, then shrugged. "They're dead. Sheppard's people aren't."
John found himself the focus of the blond man's gaze again. "A price cannot be set until I know what your people have to offer us," he said.
"That works for us," John replied, keeping his temper in the face of the other man's supercilious behaviour. "I should report back to our base and run this by Elizabeth, anyway."
"Umaya can accompany you," Lian said, indicating the blonde girl, who brightened noticeably.
"That won't be necessary," said John, stepping in before anything more could be said. "Teyla and I can manage it." It would give him the opportunity to speak with Teyla as they went along - there'd been time to speak with Rodney and Ronon since they met the Noyian leader, but more difficult to get Teyla alone when Lian was all over her.
"I had hoped Teyla might stay--" Lian looked hopefully at Teyla.
"Oh, Rodney and Ronon know everything there is to know about Atlantis," John said, catching Teyla's eye with a look that he hoped conveyed that he wanted a private word with her - without Khenar Lian or one of his people listening in. "They can fill you in on the details."
"We will not be long," Teyla said to the Noyian, acceding to John's hint.
Lian looked from her to John with suspicion. John kept his expression friendly, ignoring the animosity in the Noyian's gaze. The man had something they wanted, and for this tech, John could be polite. He was not, however, going to give up the talk with Teyla. Finally, the other man shrugged and turned away, striding from the cave full of the things his people had collected and which he would never be able to use.
After a wry, almost chiding look, Teyla followed him out. With a long, studying look at John, Umaya followed both of them.
John didn't sigh, although he wanted to.
Great. Just what he needed; one native leader with an inferiority complex and a crush on John's team-mate, and a room full of Ancient devices that depended on the native leader with the inferiority complex and the crush on John's team-mate deciding he was going to let Atlantis have the devices.
John didn't like his chances.
"Your friend will bring him around, Colonel Sheppard," said the Noyian woman - Delyn. Her voice was light and soft in the echoing cavern. "Lian is accustomed to being...different. Special. He has long hoped that these devices might reveal secrets to destroying the Wraith." Her pale eyes rested on John. "It is difficult for him, but when he has dealt with it, he will see sense."
Difficult, whatever - John wasn't feeling much sympathy for the Noyian leader. But he nodded for Delyn's benefit and it seemed to be enough. She turned to Ronon, who was examining some of the Wraith weaponry, and they started up a soft conversation that echoed through the room, her lighter voice against Ronon's heavier one.
Rodney had already begun inspecting the stash. Several of the children were inspecting him, while others were brushing their fingers along the device patterns, frowning when it became apparent that what John had done didn't work for them.
"Anything?" John asked his friend.
"Lots of things," Rodney said. "You know, this looks like one of the devices that we've been working on back home..."
"You'll have time to explore later. I think we should join Teyla and Lian outside for the moment, don't you?"
It took a while to collect everyone - there was no way that John was leaving the kids behind to get lost or start playing war-games with the weapons. For the most part, they whined but went - even Anneka, with whom John had expected to have the most trouble.
When they emerged into the daylight again, John noticed that Lian was talking with Teyla, his voice low and his tone urgent. She listened, but shook her head, and gave her reply in equally soft tones. The Noyian's expression closed up and his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing otherwise as Teyla walked away from him to where John was speaking quietly with Rodney.
"Why do I get stuck with the job of chaperoning Romeo?" Rodney glared in the direction of Ronon who was chatting with apparent ease to Delyn.
"Nobody said you had to chaperone him."
Rodney looked as though he'd swallowed a lemon - figuratively, not literally. "Oh, and who is it who's going to put a finger wrong and get us all into trouble?"
Privately, John didn't think it was going to be Ronon who put a finger wrong. For all his hatred of the Wraith, Ronon could be pretty circumspect about relationships; John had heard of at least two women in Atlantis who'd attempted to flirt with Ronon and been met with the same politeness Teyla used on unwanted admirers.
Say what you like about Pegasus locals, but they conducted their affairs with as much discretion as any diplomat could wish.
"You could always take the hike back up the hill," John told him as Teyla came up to them. The prospect of a hike to the jumper and back quenched Rodney's complaints. "Look, just take a wander around, see if Lian pumps you for any kind of information, keep an eye on Ronon...make friends." When Rodney opened his mouth to protest again, John gave the other man a look. "Try to make friends. And keep your eyes open."
With an indistinguishable grumble to himself, Rodney stalked off and was soon accosted by one of the locals, asking questions that the scientist obviously found worth answering - he began talking a mile a minute.
Teyla moved into the periphery of his vision, her hands resting on her P-90. "He will find someone to ask the questions he wishes to answer."
"He always does," John muttered to himself. Then he turned to her, noting that Lian wasn't anywhere to be seen. It was a nice change. "Ready to go?"
They walked back through the camp, more or less side by side. As they did, John noted the whispers that followed them through the camp, the fingers surreptitiously pointed at him. It looked like the kids had spread the word about John and the Ancient devices through the camp when they left the cave - certainly there were enough people watching them wide-eyed.
"I feel like a goldfish in a bowl," he muttered as a group of Noyians eyed him, male and female both. It was different to their entry into the camp: that had been curiosity; this was awe.
"The Ancestors are a legend to our peoples," Teyla said, her mouth curving in a faint grin. "The tales of what they could do, the promise of their protection - they are stories told to children. In the cave - what the children saw is like something from their stories. A legend walks among them." Her gaze rested on him with an amusement and affection, and John felt his cheeks heat a little.
"So...do your people look at me like that?"
"No," she said frankly. "Perhaps they did once, but time and familiarity has eroded that reverence. You are just 'John Sheppard' to them." They were passing through the outskirts of the camp, past the pegs holding up the outermost tents.
For the most part, John was glad to be out of the camp. He could still feel the people watching them as they began up the trail out of the valley, but the gazes were distant, and he could only hear the general murmur of conversation, no specific words.
"You know," he said as they hiked up the pass, "I never thought I wouldn't want to be a legend."
"But it is difficult with every eye upon you?" Teyla glanced back at him with a smile before she continued up the trail. "Lian finds it similarly difficult."
John grimaced, relieved that she couldn't see his expression. But all he said was, "Oh?"
At the next turn, he found Teyla waiting, watching him. "You do not like Lian."
It wasn't a question.
There were a lot of things John could say and quite a few things he didn't think would be such a good idea to say. He settled for, "Does it show?"
Teyla didn't do exasperated the way some women did - with the change of expression that let a man know he was in the doghouse. However, John was familiar with Teyla in all her moods and states of mind, and this was definitely 'exasperated'. "Look, Teyla, I just don't trust him. He's been friendly and suspicious by turns from the moment we met him."
"He seemed charming enough to me."
"To you," John said, irked to remember the Noyian's solicitousness towards Teyla. "That whole business with the cave? He couldn't use the Ancient devices and his people aren't doing anything about the Wraith. So why are they stockpiling weapons?"
"For the same reason that Dr. McKay inquires after the technology of all the cultures we encounter," Teyla replied. "Because he has a passion for such things."
"But at least McKay can get those things to work - some of them, anyway," he modified. "Khenar Lian doesn't have a hope of working any of the Ancient devices--"
Her eyes narrowed slightly, fixing him with something close to anger. "Is your dislike simply because he was reluctant to hand the devices over?"
"No."
"Then why are you so set against him?"
"Why are you so keen on him?"
She paused. "Have you ever met someone with whom you felt...familiar. As though you had known them in another time, from another life?"
There was an uncomfortable twist in his gut. "You believe in reincarnation?"
"I do not know," Teyla said after a moment. "But Lian is...familiar. Watching him is like watching a reflection of myself."
"Like he's a part of your soul?" John made the words pointed, and she flushed.
"Like we are kindred."
In a way, her answer was worse than if she'd admitted to being in love with the guy. But at least John could work with this whole 'kindred' thing - the Noyians were a lot like the Athosians, and Teyla hadn't been among her people in a while.
He turned and touched her shoulder, a short, fierce grip. "Teyla, I know you like these guys. They're familiar - like your own people, but bigger, more peaceful. That still doesn't mean you automatically trust them."
"And yet you dismiss them so easily for being as suspicious of you as you have been of others," Teyla responded, her voice turning cool and clipped.
The anger rose in him at her tone of voice, unexpected and unwelcome. "Look, Teyla, I don't like Lian. I don't like the way he behaves towards you - as though he owns you; I don't like the way he views Atlantis - as though we're the bad guys in the galaxy and not the Wraith. I don't like his attitude towards us and I don't like him." John turned on his heel and began up the slope again, silently fuming at her accusation and half-wondering why he was so annoyed by Teyla's defence of Lian.
It wasn't the first time they'd disagreed on the intentions of the people they met while going through the Stargate - but it was the first time John had felt it so personally.
The ironic part was that, out of all his team, John most trusted Teyla's instincts when it came to summing up locals. Rodney could be trumped by technology or the lack of it, and Ronon tended to judge societies by their military strength and willingness to fight the Wraith, but Teyla was rarely wrong.
And when she was - such as in the case of the Gennii - it was fairly spectacular.
He toiled up the trail, hardly caring if Teyla came after him or not.
Of course she did. After another couple of legs up the switchback trail, John could hear the steady tread of her boots on the rough soil and sand of the path. But it wasn't until they were at the top of the climb when she touched his arm and spoke.
"John."
He would have stopped, even without her restraining hand. Teyla almost never used his name, even when they were off-duty.
"Teyla."
"I understand that you do not like Lian," she said. "But I do not believe that you understand me: I see nothing in his behaviour or demeanour that we have not seen before. He is not positive towards Atlantis, but he does not know what I know - he has not seen what I have seen of you or what you are doing to stop the Wraith. Lian only knows this planet and the others with whom his people trade. He has only lived this life and it is all he has."
It didn't make much difference to John. He still didn't like Lian and he doubted he ever would, whatever the circumstances. Some things went deeper than mere knowledge.
But he wasn't going to say all that to Teyla.
"He could be friendlier."
Teyla gave him a reproving look as they began descending the other side of the hill, headed for where they'd left the 'jumper. John returned a wry smile and figured they were okay.
Although he still had questions for her.
He didn't ask until they were nearly at the bottom of the valley, pushing through the bushes that clustered in the low areas. She held back a branch so it wouldn't slap in his face as she moved ahead of him and he took that moment of physical proximity to ask, "Do you miss your people?"
Her expression changed subtly, from resolute to astonished as he passed her, and she let the branch whip back on thin air. "I... There are times when I wish to be among people I know and trust," she said, moving up beside him. "However, there is no lack of opportunity to visit them."
"And you don't know or trust us?"
Teyla hesitated, and John stifled the sudden urge to shake her. Dammit, she'd been a part of his team for over a year now. It wasn't as though it was the first few months when suspicion dogged her and her people every time they turned around. "It is not--" She started again. "You are my friends," she said. "But there are times when you are as strange to me as the Wraith were to you when you first arrived in Pegasus."
Okay, John could understand that. It didn't make things entirely better. "You can count on us, Teyla."
"I would not remain with you in Atlantis if I could not," she replied.
John could feel a 'but' coming along and said as much.
"Being here has reminded me of my own people," she said at last. "I have felt...at home here. As though I had never left Athos."
He didn't think he'd like the answer, but he asked the question anyway. "Do you ever wish you'd never met us?"
"No." That answer was immediate, at least. "Colonel, you have brought my people hope - that is something that we treasure. Only--"
Here it came. "Only what?"
"I do not belong to your world," she met his gaze with a hint of resignation. "Neither do I belong among my people. It is...different now. Since the siege against Atlantis, I see them less, and when I go to the mainland, it is only a visit, never a return home."
Displacement. John knew the feeling well. Before Atlantis, it had been years since he'd had somewhere to call 'home'; since Atlantis...well, everything had changed after he'd come to Pegasus.
"You know," he said, "there's a saying back on Earth: Home is where the heart is." John caught the eyebrow she arched at him. "Okay, so it's a tacky saying. But that doesn't mean it can't be true, too."
Teyla sighed and touched his sleeve again, halting him. "I trust you - and Rodney and Ronon - with my life, Colonel. There...there are few people with whom I have been more comfortable. As your proverb says, I am closer to being 'home' with you and the others I have met in Atlantis than I have been since Athos."
"But it's not Athos."
"No," she replied. "It is not Athos."
No surprise there.
"Is that enough?" Her question had enough asperity to make it pretty clear she didn't feel the need for this conversation the way John did.
"I dunno," he said. "Is it?"
She rolled her eyes and they kept walking. The topic was left by the wayside.
They reached the 'jumper a little while later, and John took the pilot's chair as Teyla strapped herself into the passenger seat. "We'll do a fly-by past the Stargate," he told her. "Then set the 'jumper down cloaked nearer the camp."
Her smile was light, "Rodney will be relieved not to walk the distance."
"My ears will be relieved not to have to listen to him complain," said John, lifting the 'jumper up in the glade where they'd parked it and weaving them through the wide-spaced tree trunks, just for the hell of it.
Teyla looked sideways at him as he did so, and he glanced at her, grinning. Rodney had a tendency to protest when he tried this, and Ronon didn't understand the pleasure of such manoeuvring. Then again, Ronon had never been a pilot.
Neither had Teyla, but there was something in her expression - in the way her hands flexed on the sides of her chair, in the glimmer of excitement in her eyes - that said she enjoyed the thrill of this flying almost as much as John did.
They hovered before the Stargate, at the top of a hill overlooking a lake, while Teyla dialled Atlantis.
On the other end of the channel, Elizabeth sounded a little harried as they related to her the details of the Noyians and their hoard. "And the Noyians have collected Ancient technology?"
"Hoarded quite a bit of it," John said. "The leader's reluctant to trade, but Teyla think he can be brought around." He glanced at Teyla.
"His people are very similar to my own," she said, staring out the windscreen at the open Stargate as though she could see through to Atlantis. "They would most likely welcome the medicines and items that you provide mine, have you any to spare."
John watched her face as she spoke, the austere serenity that she'd learned through years of living under threat of the Wraith. He found himself watching her sometimes, in quiet moments when there wasn't anything else to take his attention. She didn't seem to mind, and it was better than staring at Rodney or Ronon; not that there was anything wrong with the guys, just that...they were guys.
And Teyla was definitely easy on the eyes. That wasn't the sum total of her, but it damn sure helped.
"We can bring in more from Earth if they need more medicine," Elizabeth was saying. "That's easy enough. And not as difficult to trade as weapons or explosives."
The intonation of her words caught John's attention. "That was once," he defended, glancing at Teyla, as though he could take her to task for Elizabeth's comment.
"And we all remember that once," said Elizabeth, her voice more wry than might be expected of a woman who'd spent several hours at gunpoint as a result of the Gennii covetousness. "All right. Has Rodney taken an inventory of the Ancient devices yet?"
"Not yet," John said. "We left him and Ronon at it."
There was a pause. Then, "You left Rodney and Ronon alone in a camp with a leader who's reluctant to trade?"
"Yes." He sounded defensive and knew it. It only made him more defensive.
Another pause. "Okay, then. So you'll be back sometime in the next ten hours?"
"Assuming all goes well."
"Assuming." Again, the dry note to her voice. "Try to get those devices - and the Wraith weapons if you can. We acquired a lot of them in the siege, but seem to have been losing them since."
"Gotcha. 'Jumper One out."
"Atlantis out."
John nodded at Teyla, who pressed the 'reset' button on the console and the Stargate shut down, closing the connection with Atlantis. He leaned back in his chair, leaving the 'jumper hovering. "Do you really think Khenar Lian will trade those devices for medicine?"
"They are of no use to him," Teyla said, turning in the chair so she was facing him across the dialling console. "He showed a great interest in the advances of your people and how they have helped mine."
"Yeah, but he wasn't all that eager to have us find out about the devices," John pointed out. The phrase that came to mind was 'dog in the manger', but he wasn't going to say that to Teyla. "Look," he said, seeing her expression, "you know I don't like him and I don't trust him."
"I am sure he returns the sentiment."
John closed one of his hands into a fist and sat up, pulling up the console display as a distraction. "Oh, he does. Believe me, he does." He began plotting their course back to the camp, using the 'jumper's natural navigation capabilities to scope out the lay of the Noyian planet.
Arguing about this was going to get them nowhere, and while he didn't like Lian, it was a personal thing, not a professional thing - yet.
Sometimes...you just didn't get along with people. That was he and Lian. The fact that the Noyian was practically chatting up Teyla was incidental. Really.
But when he glanced up, Teyla was watching him.
"What?"
"Lian will treat you as you treat him," she said. "He is...sensitive to such things."
"I wouldn't have guessed it," John muttered, looking back at the navigational screen that had popped up over the dashboard. He got another look for that comment, but at least she wasn't using his name the way she did Ronon's. There were times when John wondered who'd died and made Teyla Ronon's mom. "Okay, I'll be nice."
"Be more than nice and he is likely to allow you to take the devices."
Okay, now that sounded like his mom chiding him. "I'll remember that." The bird's-eye view on the nav screen had changed to a topographical chart, side on, showing the terrain they'd be flying through, complete with overlying forest and a site that wasn't too far from the lip of the valley. "You know," he said to Teyla as they lifted off, "the Ancients might not have been able to defeat the Wraith, but they sure knew how to make some pretty cool stuff!"
She settled back in her seat with a smile. John grinned to himself as he set the 'jumper of with a thought. The situation was never so bad when you could make an attractive woman laugh.
They headed back to the Noyian camp in amicable quiet.
- tbc -
Part 3
SUMMARY: Distrust, mistrust, and discoveries.
CATEGORY: team, drama, action-adventure
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Nothing to do with Stargate Atlantis belongs to me, I'm just borrowing them for the moment.
NOTES: Set sometime between Critical Mass and The Long Goodbye.
Part 1
Chapter Two
"Were Teyla's people like this when you met them?" Rodney asked as he looked around at the tents and the people going about their tasks.
John smiled at another knot of adolescents who giggled behind their hands and recalled that Rodney hadn't been of the group who originally went out looking for another place to live when it looked like the shields around Atlantis weren't going to hold up against the water. "Pretty much."
"So they've come quite a long way."
"Yep."
The Athosians were more than willing to accept what help the Atlantis expedition was willing to offer in terms of knowledge. To that, they added the information Teyla gained from her occasional studies of Earth culture and technology - ways that her people could improve their lives, adapting and merging the Athosian equipment and materials to Earth concepts.
Oh, the Athosians had the odd pieces of very-advanced technology here and there, but Teyla said much of it had been lost in the cullings and was now little more than a memory. Her people had been focused on their survival and the survival of the community rather than gaining a platform from which the Wraith could be fought, and as their numbers dwindled, keeping everyone safe and fed was more important than weapons and rebellion.
Rodney didn't generally bother himself with the Athosians - they were too low a level of technology for him to have any interest in Teyla's people as anything other than just 'her people'. There were a few expedition personnel who took a more steady interest in the Athosians - mostly medical and anthropological, but that didn't seem to bother Teyla.
Watching his team-mate up ahead as she walked beside Lian, telling him about the ways of her people, John wondered if she did mind that her team-mates never really inquired about the people she'd promised to lead and just didn't say. It was hard to tell with Teyla - she kept her emotions to herself and didn't share them with many people.
He definitely needed to have a few words with her.
The walk back would probably be the best time - assuming Lian didn't attach himself to them on the way back as well.
John would have to figure out a way to dissuade the Noyian from following them back to their ship, though. Lian was almost hovering over Teyla again. Then again, she didn't seem to be minding it too much. Ronon certainly wasn't minding the woman who'd looped an arm through his and was nearly leaning against his shoulder.
"Ronon seems to be making friends," Rodney muttered, his thoughts paralleling John's as a peal of laughter rang out from the woman - her name was apparently Delyn. Their Satedan team-mate smirked with the pleasure of a guy who'd just made a pretty woman laugh.
Now, if Delyn had been John's lunch partner instead of the lovely-if-disconcerting-and-underage Umaya...
"It's called getting to know the locals, Rodney," John said, watching Delyn point something out to Ronon across the camp. "You should try it sometime."
The noise the other man made was something between a snort and a scoff. "I'll leave the Kirking to you, Sheppard."
Never mind that the sum total of women John had actually slept with in this galaxy was a grand total of two. And both had been...extenuating situations: Chaya's mind-blowing sharing-of-souls thing had led to intimacy, and he'd been stuck in the commune for over five months - in his time - when Teer made her offer, never mind that only a few hours had passed outside.
Other than that, it wasn't John's fault that women liked him.
Of course, he would never say that to Rodney, who was fun to tease.
"Jealous?"
"Why would I be jealous?" Rodney asked, defensive at the first sign that anyone was denigrating his social ability. "Some of us prefer intellectual stimuli to more...earthy motivations."
"There's nothing 'earthy' about being friendly with the locals," John said with lofty superiority. "Or being friendly at all. You might try it sometime."
"I am friendly! I talk to people when we're exchanging technical information."
"I meant socially," he said, shaking his head. "In social situations. Like lunch."
"What?" Rodney asked. "The kid didn't want to talk."
"Or you interrupted him every time he tried - or just kept eating."
"I was hungry!"
"The food wasn't going anywhere!" John held up a hand to stall Rodney's next response. He'd been keeping track of the conversation ahead and a slight change in tone had caught his ear. He picked up the pace as Teyla stopped and turned back towards them. Or, more correctly, towards Ronon and Delyn. John saw her lips move in a question that he only just heard the end of.
"...have Ancestor artefacts here?"
Delyn paused, disconcerted by the response. "I...they are..." Beyond Teyla, John saw Lian's expression harden and his hand reach out to cup her elbow.
"Some of our people believe these things belonged to the Ancestors," said Lian, speaking over Delyn's sudden stammer. "However, they are not in the usual style of such items belonging to the Ancestors."
"And you know the style of Ancient technology so well?" John asked as he reached the group. He knew he'd been right to distrust the Noyian.
"We have seen the artistry of the Ancestors on other worlds - rooms and ruins that were once inhabited by them, items that are nothing more than fragments. These are not like them."
"Oh, we've had quite a bit of experience with Ancient technology," Rodney said, coming up beside John. "The Ancients built a lot of things in a variety of different styles - I mean, the language doesn't seem to change, which the linguists find very interesting - but there seem to be several different styles to the devices they built, depending on the type of use that the device was for. Actually, it's gotten to the point where we can determine what purpose--"
"Rodney, perhaps the lecture could wait until after we manage to look at the technology?" John turned to Lian, noting how the man looked flatly back at him. "Look," he said. "We want to fight the Wraith. We'd like to stop them from attacking you and us and everyone else in this galaxy. In order to do that, we need weapons. If you have anything that might be Wraith or Ancient weaponry - even broken stuff - then we have people who can probably fix it so it works. And if they can't..." he was tempted to say, 'then they can blow up three-quarters of a solar system in the process.' John let it pass this time. If the Noyians had been friendlier then he wouldn't have hesitated to rag Rodney about it. Instead, he settled for saying, "If they can't, then there's probably no-one short of one of the Ancients who can get it working."
His last words were delivered to a crowd of Noyians, gathering around the group as John and Lian faced off against each other. And his words were making an impact on more than a few of the Noyians.
"Teyla?" Lian never took his eyes from John's face.
"He speaks the truth," Teyla said, her features in profile to John as she spoke. "I have allied with him and his people for that reason." Her words carried, clear and strong through the growing crowd.
John was angry with Lian's refusal to believe anything he said without first running it through Teyla. And, irrationally, even angrier with Teyla for catering to Lian's paranoia at all - even if it did convince the man.
"We have both Wraith weapons and the technologies of the Ancestors," said a new voice from the side. Umaya stepped out of the crowd, her eyes fixed on John.
"Umaya!"
The girl had balls; she stood up to the older man without flinching. "We have hoarded them for years, Lian. The Wraith weapons work against the Wraith - so you say, but the Ancestors' devices are beyond our understanding - if you would only see it!"
"We can make them work," he said, fiercely. "In time!"
"And we do not have time," Umaya said, shortly. In spite of her youth, it seemed that the Noyians were listening to her - especially the younger ones. "We have spoken to many worlds, many cultures who tell us that the Wraith are coming - and have come - in far greater number than even the histories speak of. If John Sheppard and his people can make them work--"
"When," Rodney corrected her, apparently unable to stop himself.
Lian tore his gaze from Umaya. "So sure?"
"I am a genius," Rodney said with all the unconscious arrogance of which he was capable. "Even among my own people."
"He's pretty good," said John, deciding that enough people had argued his case for him. "Look, we just want to take a look at this stuff. There's no point in sitting on it if you can't use it. And it might be that we can't use it either, but it's worth checking out."
Lian looked at Teyla again. Then he looked at Umaya, then at the circle of people watching, and something in his face hardened. "Very well," he said to John, his voice harsh sharp. "We will show you what devices we have kept through the years and if you can use it, we will trade."
"Thanks." John said, not without a touch of anger on his own part. "As Teyla will tell you, we play fair." She seems to be the only authority you trust.
The expression on the Noyian's face was resentful, but after a moment, he nodded. "This way." And with a touch on Teyla's arm to draw her alongside him, Lian walked off, parting the people before him like the proverbial Moses.
Teyla glanced back at John once, her expression eloquent with more things than he could identify. Then she followed Lian.
And, with a glance at the Noyians surrounding them, so did John.
"Not exactly eager," Ronon observed as they began making their way down the low end of the valley, towards the river.
"No," John agreed, keeping his voice hushed. "Watch out for him." He was only too aware of the Noyians who crowded around them, intent on following them to wherever the technology and devices were kept.
Ronon bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. "Already am." Then he loped ahead to where Rodney was engaging Delyn in a discussion of exactly what kinds of technology the Noyians had kept.
"Can your friend truly make devices of the Ancestors work?" Umaya asked, sauntering up alongside John.
"With a lot of yelling, grumbling, and reminding people that he's a genius," he said. "Rodney's almost as good as he thinks he is." He'd give the other man that.
"And you do not have his genius?"
That might be going a bit far. "I have a different sort of genius," he said.
"Which would be...?" Umaya tilted her head to look up into his face.
"Oh...fighting. Being a warrior." There wasn't really a neat way to describe it, so that would have to do.
"John!" A hand tugged at his sidearm, and he looked down at Anneka, skipping beside him to keep up with his strides. "Are you going to see the devices?"
"Anneka, you're supposed to be with Milla!" Umaya's voice was exasperated.
John was seeing a pattern to the girl's movements. He interrupted Anneka as she poked her head around his hip and opened her mouth to retort at Umaya. "Yes, we're going to see the devices. Coming?"
Umaya's sigh was clear enough, but Anneka's face lit up. "Yes!" And, so saying, she held up her arms.
Carrying hadn't been part of the deal, but John obliged - if only because the kid was charming enough.
"You should stay with Milla!" Umaya sulked.
"You challenged Lian!"
"That's not something I should be doing and never do!" Umaya retorted.
John considered that a matter of opinion. "Ladies," he said, looking from one to the other. "No arguing. You can tell me where you got these devices from."
"On other worlds when we go through the Ring of the Ancestors," Anneka said promptly.
"Mostly, we trade for them," said Umaya. "Lian has an obsession with the Ancestors, and the devices are useless to all of us." Another glance found its way towards John, clear and sharp. "You can make them work?"
"Sometimes." There were some things that all the scientists in Atlantis and on Earth couldn't work out, items that had no comprehensible reason, and devices that refused to divulge their secrets. "How do you get the ones you don't trade for?"
"Those are mostly on uninhabited planets. We bring them back here and store them. Lian dreams of finding or training up someone among our people who can make them work."
"I take it you don't agree."
"The Wraith have been hunting us as far back as anyone remembers," the girl said. "And the Ancestors never did anything to stop them. We shouldn't expect any help from them."
"You shouldn't talk about the Ancestors like that!" Anneka seemed horrified.
"Why not? It's true," said the older girl with all the stubborn confidence of an adolescent. "And Lian only makes it worse with his insistence that we could get the devices working. Devices run down over time - the Wraith weapons run out of energy after a time."
Anneka drew breath to protest, and John interrupted. "The Ancients' - Ancestors' - devices still work."
Both girls stared. "Really?" Anneka asked at the same time as Umaya inquired, "You have seen this?"
"Yes," he said to both questions.
"Told you," the little girl said.
Umaya just glared and stalked off ahead of them as they reached a narrow path that curved along a ledge leading up to a cave in the hills. Ronon glanced back, blinking in surprise as he saw the child John was carrying.
Not that John was going to carry her much longer. He didn't want to overbalance as he made his way along the ledge - the river wasn't more than a half-dozen yards below, but it would be cold and hitting it at that distance would hurt.
He set Anneka down, ignoring her whine. "I think this is as far as you're being carried," he told her. "Maybe you should go back--"
She made a face at that and promptly started up the shale-lined path after Umaya. Okay. Not going back. Absently, John wondered how he'd managed to end up as the babysitter when he was the team-leader.
It was a relief to discover that most of the villagers didn't follow them up the ledge. When he looked back, a little surprised that there weren't many footsteps following him, he saw them milling at the plateau from which the path veered off, watching him climb.
A couple of children were still following them, older than Anneka, younger than Umaya, but most of the locals seemed reluctant to hike up the path.
When John entered the cave, he realised why.
Someone had set up the cave like a museum of sorts - complete with dead Wraith fixed to the wall, their ugly faces dried in snarls of hatred. They weren't any prettier dead then they were alive - and it was pretty disconcerting to glance up and look into the wizened face of an enemy who'd probably been dead longer than John had been living.
John didn't know how the Wraith had been killed. Probably starved since the creature seemed otherwise unharmed. John didn't like to think of how many people it would have taken to subdue a single Wraith - and there were maybe a dozen here, in various stages of mummification.
Lian, and Umaya held torches up, illuminating the darkness of the natural cavern, while Teyla had switched on her P-90 light. John did the same, the white beam cutting sharply through the darkness to rest one by one on the Wraith.
"You know, it's just as well we had lunch before we came in here," Rodney was saying to Delyn, who seemed unsurprised by the corpses. "Because this display is totally putting me off food."
"And that takes some doing," John muttered to himself.
By the torchlight, Ronon had an odd gleam in his eye - the glint of fanatical hatred that never stopped being off-putting to John or the other Atlantis personnel. They'd taken Ronon in, but sometimes, the depth of his hatred made them uncomfortable. At one level, John understood it; at another, he couldn't imagine living with that kind of passion every moment of every day. "Why the display?"
"For remembrance," Lian said. "And as a reminder."
"A bit drastic, don't you think?" John said, tearing his gaze away from a particularly malevolent-looking Wraith. If it wasn't for the fact that the creature looked about as living as a 5,000 year-old mummy, he'd have been more than a little freaked by the way the corpse still seemed to watch him with something like avid hatred in its eyes.
His eye lighted on Teyla, standing with her body braced against the air, the light of her P-90 shining on the face of what looked like the most recently-interred Wraith. Something about the way she stood made John cross the room to touch her shoulder. She glanced at him with something like surprise, like someone coming awake after a deep sleep, and took a slow, quiet breath. "I am fine."
"Just checking," he murmured, before turning to address Lian. "So, where are these things you've collected?"
The Noyian was eyeing him warily, but he answered. "This way."
In the inner cave, their footsteps echoed loudly, and the torches cast down a warm orange glow across the piles of weapons leaned against the walls. Dozens of stunners, neatly laid out in long rows; pistols lying in the sand, placed for easy counting; silvery ovoid detonators that winked wickedly in the lamplight...
A treasure trove of Wraith weapons, hoarded and kept for...what? A time when they could fight back?
John didn't get it. If they had the weaponry, why not use it? And if they couldn't use it, why had Khenar Lian been so secretive about them?
Then John realised that a faint bluish-green glow was creeping across the floor, casting his shadow before him, across the Wraith weapons.
He turned to the corner behind him and took a step forward.
Patterns both familiar and foreign danced with the internal light of Ancient design, a collection of weapons and devices and things that glimmered and glittered and blazed in John's presence, flaring as he reached out to trace his finger across a dark design. Behind the trail of his fingertip, designs glowed vividly. He couldn't feel their response to him on his skin, but he could see it with his eyes.
And so could Lian and the other Noyians - Delyn, Umaya, Anneka and the other children who'd followed them into the cave.
John turned, smiling in spite of himself. There was nothing like a light display to get people's attention. And Rodney was a lovely shade of green beneath the bluish light. He might be a genius, but John had the gene - naturally and far stronger than any of the artificially-induced genes.
Moments like these, John loved it.
"We'll take it. All of it."
--
Of course, it wasn't that simple.
"This isn't going to be any use to you anyway," Rodney was saying. "You can't use it - none of your people have the gene."
"Colonel Sheppard has a...natural ability with this technology," Teyla added. "It is something that he and a few others can do. There are ways to simulate it--"
"But even that's imperfect," said Rodney. "Look, Sheppard was born able to do this stuff. He's not the only one, but he's pretty much the strongest carrier of it that we have. I've got the gene, but it's artificial - we developed a retrovirus that-- Never mind. You wouldn't understand my explanation - you hardly understand anything I'm saying right now! Just accept that we've got the people and the technology to be able to use this stuff. You don't. It makes more sense for you to give this stuff to us--"
"Or trade it."
Rodney was in full flow. Teyla's correction barely registered in his tirade, although he adjusted his words with typical fluency. "Or trade it, although there are times when a lack of MasterCard in this universe makes the whole system of barter and exchange really inconvenient."
"These things have belonged to my people for generations!"
"And how much have you used them? What is this? A museum? A mausoleum?"
Teyla didn't exactly interrupt Rodney, but she did manage to get a verbal foot in the edge of the door. "Khenar Lian, your people have collected these for a long time - and yet they lie here unused."
"We would have found a use for them, sooner or later," Lian said. "If Colonel Sheppard possesses this ability--"
"Even among their people it is rare," Teyla said. "Among our peoples it is unknown." She glanced John's way, then back at Lian. "Lian." He turned to her, almost unable to deny her request. "Will you trade or give them to us?"
Lian stared at her for a long moment, then looked suspiciously at John.
"We will trade for them," he said at last.
John was glad he'd decided to remain silent through all this. He'd nearly spoken out, more than once. A look from Teyla had silenced him, and in the end, he figured she knew what she was doing. He didn't like it, but she seemed to be the only person who could really get through to the stubborn son-of-a-bitch, and John had learned enough of the diplomatic stuff to recognise that sometimes Teyla or Ronon could bargain what he and Rodney couldn't, simply because they were local to Pegasus.
Teyla looked to him, her expression questioning. He nodded at her and looked to Lian. "What's your price?"
"What do you have to offer us?"
Okay, this was the point at which things usually went bad. What Atlantis could offer them wasn't what the locals wanted, or what the locals wanted was something that Atlantis couldn't procure.
As Rodney had noted, the lack of universal currency in the Pegasus system made things tricky.
Then again, Atlantis did 'tricky' first thing in the morning, even before they'd had a cup of coffee.
"We can't offer you free rein with our stores," John said after a moment. At the blank look on the Noyian's face, and Teyla's chiding look, he rephrased. "A free hand. Look, we've got medicines, some technological advancements - Teyla's people have taken all kinds of stuff from us."
Lian looked at Teyla.
"They have many concepts and ideas that my people have adopted, quite successfully."
"Including warfare against the Wraith," Ronon added, fingering a Wraith detonator before tossing it back into the pile. "We've got some experience with that."
"I should have thought your people would have more experience against the Wraith," Lian said.
Ronon stiffened briefly, then shrugged. "They're dead. Sheppard's people aren't."
John found himself the focus of the blond man's gaze again. "A price cannot be set until I know what your people have to offer us," he said.
"That works for us," John replied, keeping his temper in the face of the other man's supercilious behaviour. "I should report back to our base and run this by Elizabeth, anyway."
"Umaya can accompany you," Lian said, indicating the blonde girl, who brightened noticeably.
"That won't be necessary," said John, stepping in before anything more could be said. "Teyla and I can manage it." It would give him the opportunity to speak with Teyla as they went along - there'd been time to speak with Rodney and Ronon since they met the Noyian leader, but more difficult to get Teyla alone when Lian was all over her.
"I had hoped Teyla might stay--" Lian looked hopefully at Teyla.
"Oh, Rodney and Ronon know everything there is to know about Atlantis," John said, catching Teyla's eye with a look that he hoped conveyed that he wanted a private word with her - without Khenar Lian or one of his people listening in. "They can fill you in on the details."
"We will not be long," Teyla said to the Noyian, acceding to John's hint.
Lian looked from her to John with suspicion. John kept his expression friendly, ignoring the animosity in the Noyian's gaze. The man had something they wanted, and for this tech, John could be polite. He was not, however, going to give up the talk with Teyla. Finally, the other man shrugged and turned away, striding from the cave full of the things his people had collected and which he would never be able to use.
After a wry, almost chiding look, Teyla followed him out. With a long, studying look at John, Umaya followed both of them.
John didn't sigh, although he wanted to.
Great. Just what he needed; one native leader with an inferiority complex and a crush on John's team-mate, and a room full of Ancient devices that depended on the native leader with the inferiority complex and the crush on John's team-mate deciding he was going to let Atlantis have the devices.
John didn't like his chances.
"Your friend will bring him around, Colonel Sheppard," said the Noyian woman - Delyn. Her voice was light and soft in the echoing cavern. "Lian is accustomed to being...different. Special. He has long hoped that these devices might reveal secrets to destroying the Wraith." Her pale eyes rested on John. "It is difficult for him, but when he has dealt with it, he will see sense."
Difficult, whatever - John wasn't feeling much sympathy for the Noyian leader. But he nodded for Delyn's benefit and it seemed to be enough. She turned to Ronon, who was examining some of the Wraith weaponry, and they started up a soft conversation that echoed through the room, her lighter voice against Ronon's heavier one.
Rodney had already begun inspecting the stash. Several of the children were inspecting him, while others were brushing their fingers along the device patterns, frowning when it became apparent that what John had done didn't work for them.
"Anything?" John asked his friend.
"Lots of things," Rodney said. "You know, this looks like one of the devices that we've been working on back home..."
"You'll have time to explore later. I think we should join Teyla and Lian outside for the moment, don't you?"
It took a while to collect everyone - there was no way that John was leaving the kids behind to get lost or start playing war-games with the weapons. For the most part, they whined but went - even Anneka, with whom John had expected to have the most trouble.
When they emerged into the daylight again, John noticed that Lian was talking with Teyla, his voice low and his tone urgent. She listened, but shook her head, and gave her reply in equally soft tones. The Noyian's expression closed up and his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing otherwise as Teyla walked away from him to where John was speaking quietly with Rodney.
"Why do I get stuck with the job of chaperoning Romeo?" Rodney glared in the direction of Ronon who was chatting with apparent ease to Delyn.
"Nobody said you had to chaperone him."
Rodney looked as though he'd swallowed a lemon - figuratively, not literally. "Oh, and who is it who's going to put a finger wrong and get us all into trouble?"
Privately, John didn't think it was going to be Ronon who put a finger wrong. For all his hatred of the Wraith, Ronon could be pretty circumspect about relationships; John had heard of at least two women in Atlantis who'd attempted to flirt with Ronon and been met with the same politeness Teyla used on unwanted admirers.
Say what you like about Pegasus locals, but they conducted their affairs with as much discretion as any diplomat could wish.
"You could always take the hike back up the hill," John told him as Teyla came up to them. The prospect of a hike to the jumper and back quenched Rodney's complaints. "Look, just take a wander around, see if Lian pumps you for any kind of information, keep an eye on Ronon...make friends." When Rodney opened his mouth to protest again, John gave the other man a look. "Try to make friends. And keep your eyes open."
With an indistinguishable grumble to himself, Rodney stalked off and was soon accosted by one of the locals, asking questions that the scientist obviously found worth answering - he began talking a mile a minute.
Teyla moved into the periphery of his vision, her hands resting on her P-90. "He will find someone to ask the questions he wishes to answer."
"He always does," John muttered to himself. Then he turned to her, noting that Lian wasn't anywhere to be seen. It was a nice change. "Ready to go?"
They walked back through the camp, more or less side by side. As they did, John noted the whispers that followed them through the camp, the fingers surreptitiously pointed at him. It looked like the kids had spread the word about John and the Ancient devices through the camp when they left the cave - certainly there were enough people watching them wide-eyed.
"I feel like a goldfish in a bowl," he muttered as a group of Noyians eyed him, male and female both. It was different to their entry into the camp: that had been curiosity; this was awe.
"The Ancestors are a legend to our peoples," Teyla said, her mouth curving in a faint grin. "The tales of what they could do, the promise of their protection - they are stories told to children. In the cave - what the children saw is like something from their stories. A legend walks among them." Her gaze rested on him with an amusement and affection, and John felt his cheeks heat a little.
"So...do your people look at me like that?"
"No," she said frankly. "Perhaps they did once, but time and familiarity has eroded that reverence. You are just 'John Sheppard' to them." They were passing through the outskirts of the camp, past the pegs holding up the outermost tents.
For the most part, John was glad to be out of the camp. He could still feel the people watching them as they began up the trail out of the valley, but the gazes were distant, and he could only hear the general murmur of conversation, no specific words.
"You know," he said as they hiked up the pass, "I never thought I wouldn't want to be a legend."
"But it is difficult with every eye upon you?" Teyla glanced back at him with a smile before she continued up the trail. "Lian finds it similarly difficult."
John grimaced, relieved that she couldn't see his expression. But all he said was, "Oh?"
At the next turn, he found Teyla waiting, watching him. "You do not like Lian."
It wasn't a question.
There were a lot of things John could say and quite a few things he didn't think would be such a good idea to say. He settled for, "Does it show?"
Teyla didn't do exasperated the way some women did - with the change of expression that let a man know he was in the doghouse. However, John was familiar with Teyla in all her moods and states of mind, and this was definitely 'exasperated'. "Look, Teyla, I just don't trust him. He's been friendly and suspicious by turns from the moment we met him."
"He seemed charming enough to me."
"To you," John said, irked to remember the Noyian's solicitousness towards Teyla. "That whole business with the cave? He couldn't use the Ancient devices and his people aren't doing anything about the Wraith. So why are they stockpiling weapons?"
"For the same reason that Dr. McKay inquires after the technology of all the cultures we encounter," Teyla replied. "Because he has a passion for such things."
"But at least McKay can get those things to work - some of them, anyway," he modified. "Khenar Lian doesn't have a hope of working any of the Ancient devices--"
Her eyes narrowed slightly, fixing him with something close to anger. "Is your dislike simply because he was reluctant to hand the devices over?"
"No."
"Then why are you so set against him?"
"Why are you so keen on him?"
She paused. "Have you ever met someone with whom you felt...familiar. As though you had known them in another time, from another life?"
There was an uncomfortable twist in his gut. "You believe in reincarnation?"
"I do not know," Teyla said after a moment. "But Lian is...familiar. Watching him is like watching a reflection of myself."
"Like he's a part of your soul?" John made the words pointed, and she flushed.
"Like we are kindred."
In a way, her answer was worse than if she'd admitted to being in love with the guy. But at least John could work with this whole 'kindred' thing - the Noyians were a lot like the Athosians, and Teyla hadn't been among her people in a while.
He turned and touched her shoulder, a short, fierce grip. "Teyla, I know you like these guys. They're familiar - like your own people, but bigger, more peaceful. That still doesn't mean you automatically trust them."
"And yet you dismiss them so easily for being as suspicious of you as you have been of others," Teyla responded, her voice turning cool and clipped.
The anger rose in him at her tone of voice, unexpected and unwelcome. "Look, Teyla, I don't like Lian. I don't like the way he behaves towards you - as though he owns you; I don't like the way he views Atlantis - as though we're the bad guys in the galaxy and not the Wraith. I don't like his attitude towards us and I don't like him." John turned on his heel and began up the slope again, silently fuming at her accusation and half-wondering why he was so annoyed by Teyla's defence of Lian.
It wasn't the first time they'd disagreed on the intentions of the people they met while going through the Stargate - but it was the first time John had felt it so personally.
The ironic part was that, out of all his team, John most trusted Teyla's instincts when it came to summing up locals. Rodney could be trumped by technology or the lack of it, and Ronon tended to judge societies by their military strength and willingness to fight the Wraith, but Teyla was rarely wrong.
And when she was - such as in the case of the Gennii - it was fairly spectacular.
He toiled up the trail, hardly caring if Teyla came after him or not.
Of course she did. After another couple of legs up the switchback trail, John could hear the steady tread of her boots on the rough soil and sand of the path. But it wasn't until they were at the top of the climb when she touched his arm and spoke.
"John."
He would have stopped, even without her restraining hand. Teyla almost never used his name, even when they were off-duty.
"Teyla."
"I understand that you do not like Lian," she said. "But I do not believe that you understand me: I see nothing in his behaviour or demeanour that we have not seen before. He is not positive towards Atlantis, but he does not know what I know - he has not seen what I have seen of you or what you are doing to stop the Wraith. Lian only knows this planet and the others with whom his people trade. He has only lived this life and it is all he has."
It didn't make much difference to John. He still didn't like Lian and he doubted he ever would, whatever the circumstances. Some things went deeper than mere knowledge.
But he wasn't going to say all that to Teyla.
"He could be friendlier."
Teyla gave him a reproving look as they began descending the other side of the hill, headed for where they'd left the 'jumper. John returned a wry smile and figured they were okay.
Although he still had questions for her.
He didn't ask until they were nearly at the bottom of the valley, pushing through the bushes that clustered in the low areas. She held back a branch so it wouldn't slap in his face as she moved ahead of him and he took that moment of physical proximity to ask, "Do you miss your people?"
Her expression changed subtly, from resolute to astonished as he passed her, and she let the branch whip back on thin air. "I... There are times when I wish to be among people I know and trust," she said, moving up beside him. "However, there is no lack of opportunity to visit them."
"And you don't know or trust us?"
Teyla hesitated, and John stifled the sudden urge to shake her. Dammit, she'd been a part of his team for over a year now. It wasn't as though it was the first few months when suspicion dogged her and her people every time they turned around. "It is not--" She started again. "You are my friends," she said. "But there are times when you are as strange to me as the Wraith were to you when you first arrived in Pegasus."
Okay, John could understand that. It didn't make things entirely better. "You can count on us, Teyla."
"I would not remain with you in Atlantis if I could not," she replied.
John could feel a 'but' coming along and said as much.
"Being here has reminded me of my own people," she said at last. "I have felt...at home here. As though I had never left Athos."
He didn't think he'd like the answer, but he asked the question anyway. "Do you ever wish you'd never met us?"
"No." That answer was immediate, at least. "Colonel, you have brought my people hope - that is something that we treasure. Only--"
Here it came. "Only what?"
"I do not belong to your world," she met his gaze with a hint of resignation. "Neither do I belong among my people. It is...different now. Since the siege against Atlantis, I see them less, and when I go to the mainland, it is only a visit, never a return home."
Displacement. John knew the feeling well. Before Atlantis, it had been years since he'd had somewhere to call 'home'; since Atlantis...well, everything had changed after he'd come to Pegasus.
"You know," he said, "there's a saying back on Earth: Home is where the heart is." John caught the eyebrow she arched at him. "Okay, so it's a tacky saying. But that doesn't mean it can't be true, too."
Teyla sighed and touched his sleeve again, halting him. "I trust you - and Rodney and Ronon - with my life, Colonel. There...there are few people with whom I have been more comfortable. As your proverb says, I am closer to being 'home' with you and the others I have met in Atlantis than I have been since Athos."
"But it's not Athos."
"No," she replied. "It is not Athos."
No surprise there.
"Is that enough?" Her question had enough asperity to make it pretty clear she didn't feel the need for this conversation the way John did.
"I dunno," he said. "Is it?"
She rolled her eyes and they kept walking. The topic was left by the wayside.
They reached the 'jumper a little while later, and John took the pilot's chair as Teyla strapped herself into the passenger seat. "We'll do a fly-by past the Stargate," he told her. "Then set the 'jumper down cloaked nearer the camp."
Her smile was light, "Rodney will be relieved not to walk the distance."
"My ears will be relieved not to have to listen to him complain," said John, lifting the 'jumper up in the glade where they'd parked it and weaving them through the wide-spaced tree trunks, just for the hell of it.
Teyla looked sideways at him as he did so, and he glanced at her, grinning. Rodney had a tendency to protest when he tried this, and Ronon didn't understand the pleasure of such manoeuvring. Then again, Ronon had never been a pilot.
Neither had Teyla, but there was something in her expression - in the way her hands flexed on the sides of her chair, in the glimmer of excitement in her eyes - that said she enjoyed the thrill of this flying almost as much as John did.
They hovered before the Stargate, at the top of a hill overlooking a lake, while Teyla dialled Atlantis.
On the other end of the channel, Elizabeth sounded a little harried as they related to her the details of the Noyians and their hoard. "And the Noyians have collected Ancient technology?"
"Hoarded quite a bit of it," John said. "The leader's reluctant to trade, but Teyla think he can be brought around." He glanced at Teyla.
"His people are very similar to my own," she said, staring out the windscreen at the open Stargate as though she could see through to Atlantis. "They would most likely welcome the medicines and items that you provide mine, have you any to spare."
John watched her face as she spoke, the austere serenity that she'd learned through years of living under threat of the Wraith. He found himself watching her sometimes, in quiet moments when there wasn't anything else to take his attention. She didn't seem to mind, and it was better than staring at Rodney or Ronon; not that there was anything wrong with the guys, just that...they were guys.
And Teyla was definitely easy on the eyes. That wasn't the sum total of her, but it damn sure helped.
"We can bring in more from Earth if they need more medicine," Elizabeth was saying. "That's easy enough. And not as difficult to trade as weapons or explosives."
The intonation of her words caught John's attention. "That was once," he defended, glancing at Teyla, as though he could take her to task for Elizabeth's comment.
"And we all remember that once," said Elizabeth, her voice more wry than might be expected of a woman who'd spent several hours at gunpoint as a result of the Gennii covetousness. "All right. Has Rodney taken an inventory of the Ancient devices yet?"
"Not yet," John said. "We left him and Ronon at it."
There was a pause. Then, "You left Rodney and Ronon alone in a camp with a leader who's reluctant to trade?"
"Yes." He sounded defensive and knew it. It only made him more defensive.
Another pause. "Okay, then. So you'll be back sometime in the next ten hours?"
"Assuming all goes well."
"Assuming." Again, the dry note to her voice. "Try to get those devices - and the Wraith weapons if you can. We acquired a lot of them in the siege, but seem to have been losing them since."
"Gotcha. 'Jumper One out."
"Atlantis out."
John nodded at Teyla, who pressed the 'reset' button on the console and the Stargate shut down, closing the connection with Atlantis. He leaned back in his chair, leaving the 'jumper hovering. "Do you really think Khenar Lian will trade those devices for medicine?"
"They are of no use to him," Teyla said, turning in the chair so she was facing him across the dialling console. "He showed a great interest in the advances of your people and how they have helped mine."
"Yeah, but he wasn't all that eager to have us find out about the devices," John pointed out. The phrase that came to mind was 'dog in the manger', but he wasn't going to say that to Teyla. "Look," he said, seeing her expression, "you know I don't like him and I don't trust him."
"I am sure he returns the sentiment."
John closed one of his hands into a fist and sat up, pulling up the console display as a distraction. "Oh, he does. Believe me, he does." He began plotting their course back to the camp, using the 'jumper's natural navigation capabilities to scope out the lay of the Noyian planet.
Arguing about this was going to get them nowhere, and while he didn't like Lian, it was a personal thing, not a professional thing - yet.
Sometimes...you just didn't get along with people. That was he and Lian. The fact that the Noyian was practically chatting up Teyla was incidental. Really.
But when he glanced up, Teyla was watching him.
"What?"
"Lian will treat you as you treat him," she said. "He is...sensitive to such things."
"I wouldn't have guessed it," John muttered, looking back at the navigational screen that had popped up over the dashboard. He got another look for that comment, but at least she wasn't using his name the way she did Ronon's. There were times when John wondered who'd died and made Teyla Ronon's mom. "Okay, I'll be nice."
"Be more than nice and he is likely to allow you to take the devices."
Okay, now that sounded like his mom chiding him. "I'll remember that." The bird's-eye view on the nav screen had changed to a topographical chart, side on, showing the terrain they'd be flying through, complete with overlying forest and a site that wasn't too far from the lip of the valley. "You know," he said to Teyla as they lifted off, "the Ancients might not have been able to defeat the Wraith, but they sure knew how to make some pretty cool stuff!"
She settled back in her seat with a smile. John grinned to himself as he set the 'jumper of with a thought. The situation was never so bad when you could make an attractive woman laugh.
They headed back to the Noyian camp in amicable quiet.
- tbc -
Part 3
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Second part just as good as the first and long too, my favorite. Jealous!John is always a plus.
There were times when John wondered who'd died and made Teyla Ronon's mom.
Ha! That describes their relationship perfectly.
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I'll put up an icon post in a day or two, once I get all the icons uploaded. :)