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TITLE: Kindred - Part 3
SUMMARY: John is propositioned and learns a few things about Lian of the Noyians.
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: I realise that some of the characterisation of Ronon doesn't quite fit with certain revelations made in Sunday. My excuse is that this was written long before that episode aired and my perspective of Ronon was slightly different then.
Part Two
Kindred - Part 3
"Sheppard." Ronon caught up with John as he was leaving Milla's tent. "Enjoying yourself?" There was a knowing smirk to the other man's features that made John want to smack him.
Upon returning to the camp, Lian had promptly spirited Teyla away, and all John's enquiries as to their whereabouts had been met with distractions and hedging. He was a little worried in spite of knowing she was more than capable of looking after herself. It was just that John would have liked to keep an eye on Teyla after all the attention Lian had been paying her this morning. Just in case.
Rodney was back in the cave, mentally cataloguing the Ancient finds with two Noyian women who fawned all over him. John told Rodney that they were good to trade, and Rodney nodded and promptly turned his attention back to the women. John hovered around for a while, but Teyla and Lian's absence began getting on his nerves - and he hadn't seen Ronon for a while.
Once John got out of the caves, the redoubtable Anneka accosted him, and he'd promptly been dragged off to Milla's tent. Anneka had chattered on and asked all manner of questions, but Milla had offered him refreshments - food, drink, and, quite blatantly, herself.
John made his exit with as much speed as was polite; and blew out a long, relieved breath when he finally managed to extract himself from the uncomfortable scenario.
"I've spent more pleasant afternoons," he told Ronon dryly.
Ronon fell into step beside him, the long legs measuring John's pace. "The women here are...direct."
John eyed him. "Did Delyn try seducing you?"
A grin, slightly wolfish. "She tried."
With most guys on the expedition, John wouldn't even think of asking. This was Ronon. "Did you--?"
The dark eyes gleamed. "Don't you have the saying, 'a gentleman never tells'?" The smirk died a little as they moved out from between the tents into a large, grassy area that sloped up into the hills, only to turn scrubby and rocky as it reached a jagged edge of the underlying rocks of the hills. "They'd welcome new blood in their tribe though."
John began heading for a vantage point a little up on the hill. Maybe he could spot Teyla and Lian from higher up. He'd tried her radio earlier, but it was turned off.
And Ronon's words weren't helping his state of mind at all.
"We're not here to sleep our way through the camp," John said, aiming for severe. Not that he could entirely blame Ronon; Delyn seemed nice, and Ronon had been on the run for seven years. That probably didn't mean much time for the finer things in life.
Most of the women in Atlantis regarded Ronon with no small amount of apprehension, although a couple had shown some interest. The chief exception was Teyla who seemed to enjoy his company, although John was pretty sure nothing was happening between his team-mates. And Teyla seemed to enjoy John's company, too, and she hadn't made any moves on him yet.
"Maybe not," Ronon said, and there was a note of seriousness as he climbed up on one of the rocks, his dreadlocks swinging free about his face. "But Lian has." At John's look, he shrugged. "He's got about twenty children by various women of the camp."
John did a double take. "Twenty?" Lian couldn't have been more than thirty. Thirty-five at the oldest. Of course, a guy could have several women pregnant at once, but still...
And Rodney thought John's flirting counted as 'kirking'.
"They weren't exaggerating?"
"No." Ronon leaned back against a stony outcropping, folding his arms across his chest. "They said we'd better keep an eye on Teyla."
Great. That was just wonderful. John hadn't been worried before. He was now. "And you're telling me this now?"
His reply was a shrug of broad, muscled shoulders. "Teyla can look after herself."
John might have thought the same if he hadn't had the conversation with Teyla about how she didn't belong in Atlantis, or heard her admission of feeling comfortable with Lian.
The Noyian would have Teyla over John's dead body because the thought of Lian and Teyla was all kinds of wrong and bad.
For starters, John would lose his team-mate.
"You'd hope so," John muttered.
"She's never been turned by a pretty face before."
"There's always a first time."
Ronon didn't hide his surprise. "You really don't trust him."
"Let's just say I'm withholding judgement," John said, surveying the camp. "See any sign of Teyla?"
The other man shaded his eyes against the light. His higher vantage point meant the sun caught the top of his head as it moved slowly into the west. "No. But McKay's finally come out of the caves."
John watched the tiny figure stump down the path from the caves and flicked his radio on. "I see you've dragged yourself away from Tutankhamen's tomb?"
"Oh, very funny, Sheppard. Yes, I figured I hadn't heard from any of you in a while and should come and check that you didn't need saving."
Ronon's snort probably wasn't loud enough to carry to Rodney's ears, but John heard it clear enough.
"Anything interesting?"
"Well, we won't know until we get them back to the labs, but there are some interesting possibilities. One of them looks like a variant of the personal shield that I activated the first week we were in the city--"
"The one that we had to drain before you could take it off?"
"Except that this one looks like it has an off-button!" Rodney said, never missing a beat. "At least, that's what it looks like. Although the design is slightly different--"
John didn't quite roll his eyes. He just interrupted before Rodney could get any further. "Do you have any idea where Teyla is?"
There was a pause. "Probably with Lian. Anyway, as I was saying--"
"Are the girls still with you?"
Another pause. "Yes. But why would you--"
"Ask them if Lian has any spots he likes to go. Scenic places. Somewhere he'd take Teyla."
John saw Ronon's expression and ignored it.
"You know," Rodney said after a moment, "if he wanted to take Teyla somewhere private then he probably doesn't want to be interrupt--"
"Just ask," said John. He wasn't going to stand around waiting for Teyla to turn up any longer. And she was a big girl and well able to take care of herself, but Lian was the father of some twenty kids and a man didn't manage to get around like that in a community this size without having some serious charm.
A minute or so later, Rodney's voice came through the radio. "Apparently there's a trail through the western side of the valley that leads to one of the hunting grounds for hireni... Sharen says there are vantage points..." There was some background discussion transmitted through the radio, and John spent the time studying the western face of the valley, looking for anything that might indicate trails. Then, after a few seconds, Rodney was back on again. "The girls think that Lian might have taken Teyla to see the hireni. She was interested, if you recall."
"Thanks, Rodney."
It was difficult to see the western face of the valley; trees and shrubs obscured it - as well as the tents that were pitched all the way up to where the gradient of the slopes became too steep - but John thought he could make out a trail. At the least, it would be somewhere to start looking.
But the other man wasn't finished with John. "Look, if you interrupt Teyla's tryst with someone she's going to be really mad. As in, probably worse than those days when she's got the you-know happening and even Ronon won't fight her."
"Rodney, she's not having a tryst with anyone," John said shortly, his eyes narrowed as he moved to the right, the better to see the line of the trees. "She's just been missing for the last..." he checked his watch, "hour and a half and I don't like it when members of my team go missing."
"You know, they'll probably turn up for dinner or something."
Rodney really wasn't getting it. John gave up.
"Leave your radio on, okay? I want to be able to contact you." He glanced at Ronon. "And do some socialising. Preferably without flirting."
"Oh, and like you're one to talk," came the scoff from the other end.
"Converse with people," John said. "I want to know more about these people - what they might want or need that we can trade them for those devices. I'm going looking for Teyla."
Ronon scrambled down beside John. "You think she's in trouble?"
'In trouble' wasn't the phrase John would have used, but it would do. "I think I'm going to go looking for her," was all he said. "Keep an eye on Rodney and try not to climb into the beds of any of the women."
The grin Ronon gave him was decidedly discouraging on that front.
John strode off, heading back through the village as he tried to work out which of the branching paths from the main thoroughfare might lead to the western slope. It was hard to tell. As he'd discovered when he reached the bottom of the entry trail behind Anneka, once off the wide main track that zigzagged its way through the encampment, the paths seemed to wind without any particular direction or determination. They looped around themselves, wending between tents of vastly differing purposes, and past people doing everything from food preparation to sleeping.
"You're looking for Lian." Umaya slipped out of nowhere, falling into step beside John.
"Actually, I'm looking for my team-mate," he said. "Who's probably with Lian."
The girl eyed him at the distinction. "Do you know where you're going?"
He was going to take that in the non-metaphorical sense. "Vantage points in the hireni hunting ground."
Dark eyes gleamed with laughter. "You have good sources." Her hand slipped into his, drawing him off along one of the side paths. "This way."
John let her lead him into the side path, then took his hand back under pretext of checking his watch. After Milla - and the warning about Lian - he was more than a little wary of any of the Noyian women.
After a couple of tents, the track led them up into the tree line, not quite a switchback trail, but steep enough. "Did your people agree to trade?"
"Actually, they did. Once we figure out what you want and whether we can provide it, we'll be more than happy to give it to you."
Umaya's glance was amused. "The devices mean so much to your people then?"
"We wouldn't have agreed to trade if they didn't," John pointed out. "Why haven't your people ever used the weapons against the Wraith?"
"The Wraith have not come to this planet in years - not since I was a child."
John refrained from pointing out that, by his standards, Umaya was still a child. It was the sort of thing teenagers tended to take badly on Earth, and he didn't imagine that things were that different in Pegasus. "So, you missed out on the recent cullings through the galaxy?"
She shrugged, scrambling up what looked like a vertical rock face and reaching down to help him up. "We heard about them when we went trading," she said. "But they did not come here." John dug his toes into small clefts in the rock and levered himself up without taking the proffered hand.
"And they haven't been here in years?" That was very unusual.
Umaya shrugged, apparently unbothered by his refusal to touch her. "We have been in this camp for the last five years and the Wraith have not come for us." The look she gave him was confiding, "We consider it better not to question."
Not a mentality John had ever adopted.
"Rodney said that you came from a place where there are no Wraith."
Wondering what else Rodney had absently said, John confined himself to saying, "Yeah." The climb was tiring him, too. This side of the valley might be less steep than the main entrance, but the path went straight up, and he wasn't twenty any more. Or even thirty.
Umaya wasn't even twenty. And the girl was probably part mountain goat given that she was climbing this path like she'd been born to it.
John paused to take a breather. Between three trips from the 'jumper to the campsite, various wanderings through the camp, and a long day, he was just a little on the tired side. Besides, Rodney wasn't here to rag him about being unfit, and Ronon wasn't here to smirk with the superior fitness provided by seven years living on his own; John could take a break.
If Umaya had been, say, Teyla's age, then he probably would have pressed on out of pride, determined to do what she could. He didn't remember what it was like to be a teenager anymore, but he was pretty sure he'd had about as much energy as Umaya - if not more. Exactly what he spent that energy on had been a point of contention between him and the old man.
But that was long ago.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm not as young as I was," he said. On one hand, his pride resented even the suggestion that he was 'old'; John was in the prime of his life with an expectation of another forty years...assuming he survived Pegasus, the Wraith, and dealing with Rodney McKay and all the attendant trouble therein.
The girl smiled, transforming her face. If she was stunning when she was severe and serious, she was breathtaking when she laughed. "You're not that old."
"I'm at least twice your age."
Umaya shrugged, still smiling. "Lian's twice my age, and he has no trouble with this."
John pushed off immediately. Never mind that the Noyian man was used to this kind of terrain. Humility took you so far, but few things beat pride as a goad. He ignored the girl's smile as he indicated the trail. "So how far is it to these vantage points?"
"Oh, not far. Once we reach the top I can run there and not be winded."
He didn't note that she was young enough to run anywhere and not be winded. "Great," he muttered.
"It is not long to the top," said Umaya. "See?" She pointed to a cleft between the rocks that seemed forever away. John peered up and sighed, but climbed in silence the rest of the way.
At the top, the terrain looked less scrubby than it did up the path he and his team had arrived at earlier today, running through the thick of the forest that began at the base of the hill he and Umaya had just climbed. It didn't look like a hunting ground of any description. "And you hunt the hireni through this?"
She glanced up at him, apparently pleased by his disbelief. "It is a challenge of skill."
"I'll say," he muttered as they started off through the undergrowth. The leaf canopy overhead made it more or less permanently shady on the forest floor, but a lot of plants were growing down here anyway. Hunting anything through here with bow and arrow - or spear and knife - would be pretty dangerous; close quarters, if nothing else.
He'd have to ask Teyla what a hireni was like, when he found her. John was imagining a deer, but she'd mentioned that most people hunted them in armour, which suggested that they weren't easy kills.
"I hunted the hireni two seasons ago," Umaya said, in a tone of voice that implied it had been a big thing for her. "And brought down a buck without injury."
"Sounds impressive," said John. "So you're an adult now by your standards?"
She frowned. "Would I not be considered adult in the way of your people?"
"We assign legal adulthood by physical age," John said. "So, when you're eighteen, you're legal for most things except buying alcohol."
"Most things?"
"Uh... You can own property. Vote - although not many people do that. Get married without your parents' permission..."
Umaya shrugged. "Here, once you are capable of sustaining your own household through your own hunting, you are adult."
"Teyla's people work the same way," John said.
"I am adult by our standards," said Umaya. "I am permitted to have my own household, choose my own partners, bear children."
"Uhuh."
"You disagree, Colonel?"
He stopped in the middle of the forest. "Your friend, Milla? Pretty much issued me with an invitation to her bed this afternoon. I just don't consider her 'adult'."
The girl looked nonplussed. "That is Milla. I would not be so forward."
Well, at least they'd gotten this far. "Look," John said, striving for 'reasonable'. "Not to be dismissive - you might be an adult among your people, but you're definitely not one among mine. And that's not even taking into account the fact that I didn't come here for this."
He left out exactly what 'this' entailed. Because the girl was pretty, but that was as far as it went. John's ego was pleased that he still 'had it' but his common sense was pointing out all the reasons that even flirting with a teenaged local was a bad idea - from the fact that he really wasn't here to get laid, to the fact that he was old enough to have been her father.
"So what did you come here for?"
"To this planet? To trade. Make friends." John indicated the forest. "Right now, I'm trying to find my team-mate."
"Are you worried that Lian might seduce her? She is clearly adult - even by your standards." The note of jealousy in her voice surprised him.
"Teyla's been gone for two hours," he said flatly. "I'm worried about her."
"You said she was not bonded."
"She isn't."
"Then is she not capable of looking after herself?"
He ignored the gut-deep revulsion he felt at the thought of Teyla and the Noyian man. "It's not a matter of capability. It's a matter of responsibility."
"And you are responsible for her."
"I'm responsible for all my team."
"Yet you are not as concerned for either Dr. McKay or Ronon Dex."
"Because I've seen them in the last half-hour." And neither of them have been spirited away by a guy that's fathered twenty children in the last fifteen years.
"If your friend welcomes Lian's attention--"
"Look," John said. "All I want is to find my team-mate, bargain the price of those devices with your leader, and get my people home before midnight. It's been a long day."
Umaya turned as he walked past her. He could feel her gaze on him, pinning him between the shoulder blades as she called after him, "You will not find them."
Frustrated by both the conversation and the reminder of Teyla's continued absence, and more than a little irked by the girl's stubbornness, John turned on his heel. "Then why don't you help me?"
Somewhere above them, there was a rustle in the leaves as some creature made its way from bough to bough. "I will," Umaya said in the silence. "But you are going the wrong way."
Yeah, that would figure.
They trudged on for a few minutes, with Umaya dividing her attention between the trail and him.
John ignored her as much as possible. He was angry - at her pointed comments about Teyla, at himself for letting Teyla out of his sight for so long, at Teyla for not thinking he'd be worried about her gone for so long.
"You would not even consider--?"
"No." It came out harsher than he'd intended and he stopped. "Look, you're pretty - I'm sure there are heaps of guys who'd be interested in you--"
Her about-face was graceful and unexpected. John blinked as he found himself nearly lip-to-lip with her as she held the webbing of his flak jacket, preventing him from moving away without shoving her off. "But you are not."
He'd reared back when he found her face so close to hers. "Umaya--"
"Would you say her name with more tenderness?" She asked pointedly, her eyes searching his face. Her eyelashes were long and thick, the same shade as her hair in the dappled afternoon light, but the look in them was definitely not childlike.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
"John?"
"Teyla." When he turned his head, she and Lian stood only a few yards away, her expression querying the pose in which they'd found him with Umaya. John didn't quite sigh in relief, but he did relax a little. He'd have to thank her later for the timely interruption. Even if the sight of Lian's arched brow from behind her shoulder was as unwelcome as ever. "We were just looking for you."
"And you have found us," Lian said. "Or, rather, we seem to have found you." The pale eyes moved from John to Umaya, who still hadn't quite let go of his jacket, although at least she wasn't pressed up against him anymore.
"There was no need to come looking for us, Colonel," said Teyla, moving around them, as though she would walk on and leave him to Umaya's untender mercy. "We were just returning for the evening meal."
"Good," he said, gently disengaging Umaya's hands from his jacket and not looking at the girl. "We'll return with you."
The walk back was longer than John remembered, tense with things that nobody was going to say as long as they had an audience.
For the most part, he focused on his team-mate. Teyla seemed annoyed with him, and John didn't know why. He'd come after her when she'd gone missing, hadn't he? And she was the one who'd been incommunicado for the last couple of hours. He was just looking out for his team.
Okay, so he was looking out for his team and keeping an eye on Teyla. Because it was one thing to get friendly with the locals, but another to get friendly with a local known for his philandering ways.
They entered the camp without fanfare, and John touched her arm before she could walk away again. "We need to talk." He smiled politely at both Lian and Umaya, "Privately."
Teyla didn't protest, but she didn't say anything to John until they were on the grassy slope above the camp. "Were you truly worried, or did you not trust me with Lian?"
The words were more acid than he was used to hearing from her. John scowled. "I was worried!"
"And you do not trust Lian."
"Strangely enough, I don't - especially not when he spirits you off for two hours without so much as a 'we're going exploring, back in a couple of hours'."
"Do you not consider me capable of looking after myself, Colonel?"
"On a planet with people who we know and who are our allies, I have no problem," John said with pointed emphasis. "On a planet with people who we only just met this morning and who we found hiding things from us, I think that's a reasonable cause for concern." He rested his hands on his hips, irked that she was annoyed with him after he'd fretted over her and her whereabouts. Behind her, he could see Rodney and Ronon climbing the hill to join them - hopefully with some information about what they could trade for those devices before getting the hell off this planet.
John wanted out of here. The sooner, the better.
"Lian is harmless. He merely wished to speak of the challenges of leading his people with someone who understood."
"And he had to show you his 'hireni hunting ground' to do it?"
She frowned, tilting her head in pointed focus. "I asked him to."
The innuendo passed right by her. John wasn't sure whether to be relieved or not. On one hand, she seemed unaware that the Noyian was trying to get into her pants; on the other, she was missing the point.
"Teyla, the point isn't that you went off with him," even if John wasn't happy about the amount of time they were spending together - or her friendly response to Lian's overtures, "the point is that it was two hours with your radio turned off! If something had happened, we wouldn't have had any way to get in contact with you!"
Automatically, Teyla reached for the radio on her shoulder strap. Her finger brushed along the edge of it, checking the switch that turned it on or off. "I am sorry, Colonel," she said then, apologetic. "I did not know that it was off." Her expression hardened. "It was still no cause for you to come looking for me."
He blew out a harsh breath as Ronon reached them. "Did you find out anything that they'd be willing to trade for those devices?"
"Ronon."
"Teyla." He turned to John. "You asking me or her?"
"Anyone who's got an answer."
"Well, I know something that you don't know," Rodney said as he toiled up the last bit and huffed out a long breath.
"Care to share it with the class, then?"
"Someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning," retorted his team-mate. "Or maybe just the wrong bed?"
"Rodney--"
"Did you know that Lian is considered 'gifted' among his people? That he's been known to be able to tell when the Wraith are near?"
He was looking at Teyla, and John saw Ronon turn as his own gaze came to rest on her. "Sounds like you," Ronon commented.
John felt oddly betrayed. "Did you know this?"
She looked back at John, surprise on her face. It went some way towards mollifying the brief cramp of betrayal he'd felt squeeze his ribs at not being told. "I...I was not aware of it."
"I don't see how you couldn't be," Rodney said. "Although it explains why he's got so many kids - survival of the fittest - Darwin's theory in action."
"It explains why Lian's all over her," said Ronon with a smirk.
Teyla glared at Ronon. "If he and his people are sensitive to the Wraith, then they might be useful allies to us."
The big man didn't seem bothered by her glare - in fact, he looked more amused than angry. "So do you want him as an ally or a mate?"
As he had once before - at Ford's hideout - John looked at the two and was reminded of a couple of siblings arguing. Next, Teyla would slap Ronon and it would all descend into full-blown squabbling.
"If they're willing to trade with us for the Ancient devices - which assumes that they have things they want that we can provide them - then we'll be allies," he interrupted before Teyla could formulate a retort. John wasn't going to mention the other. Sure, Teyla was her own woman, but she had responsibilities to her own people - as well as to the Atlantis expedition. "Do we know of anything they want?"
Silence.
"Medicines, medical aid," Ronon said. "You provide that to Teyla's people anyway."
"Metal," Rodney said. "Metal things. And raw metals. At least, that was what one of the guys asked about. Ronon's height, but built really solid. Arms like Arnie. Only bigger."
Teyla nodded. "The blacksmith. Raw metals would be considered worth the exchange of the devices," she said.
"Even though he was sitting on them like a dog in the manger?"
The look she turned on him was colder than the freezing cold of a wormhole's disembodiment phase. "Lian is aware that the devices are of no use to him."
"But he didn't want to tell us about them."
"He trusts you no more than you trust him," came the reply, with more asperity than she usually used on him. John felt more than a little stung by her continued defence of Lian - as well as distinctly conscious of both Rodney and Ronon were staring. "Colonel--" She paused, her shoulders stiffening as her eyes lifted to the sky.
John felt the chill of foreknowledge trickle down his spine. Shit. No. Not now.
"Teyla?"
And when she turned to him, her eyes wide and black with concern, he knew he was right. "The Wraith are coming."
- tbc -
Part 3
SUMMARY: John is propositioned and learns a few things about Lian of the Noyians.
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: I realise that some of the characterisation of Ronon doesn't quite fit with certain revelations made in Sunday. My excuse is that this was written long before that episode aired and my perspective of Ronon was slightly different then.
Part Two
Kindred - Part 3
"Sheppard." Ronon caught up with John as he was leaving Milla's tent. "Enjoying yourself?" There was a knowing smirk to the other man's features that made John want to smack him.
Upon returning to the camp, Lian had promptly spirited Teyla away, and all John's enquiries as to their whereabouts had been met with distractions and hedging. He was a little worried in spite of knowing she was more than capable of looking after herself. It was just that John would have liked to keep an eye on Teyla after all the attention Lian had been paying her this morning. Just in case.
Rodney was back in the cave, mentally cataloguing the Ancient finds with two Noyian women who fawned all over him. John told Rodney that they were good to trade, and Rodney nodded and promptly turned his attention back to the women. John hovered around for a while, but Teyla and Lian's absence began getting on his nerves - and he hadn't seen Ronon for a while.
Once John got out of the caves, the redoubtable Anneka accosted him, and he'd promptly been dragged off to Milla's tent. Anneka had chattered on and asked all manner of questions, but Milla had offered him refreshments - food, drink, and, quite blatantly, herself.
John made his exit with as much speed as was polite; and blew out a long, relieved breath when he finally managed to extract himself from the uncomfortable scenario.
"I've spent more pleasant afternoons," he told Ronon dryly.
Ronon fell into step beside him, the long legs measuring John's pace. "The women here are...direct."
John eyed him. "Did Delyn try seducing you?"
A grin, slightly wolfish. "She tried."
With most guys on the expedition, John wouldn't even think of asking. This was Ronon. "Did you--?"
The dark eyes gleamed. "Don't you have the saying, 'a gentleman never tells'?" The smirk died a little as they moved out from between the tents into a large, grassy area that sloped up into the hills, only to turn scrubby and rocky as it reached a jagged edge of the underlying rocks of the hills. "They'd welcome new blood in their tribe though."
John began heading for a vantage point a little up on the hill. Maybe he could spot Teyla and Lian from higher up. He'd tried her radio earlier, but it was turned off.
And Ronon's words weren't helping his state of mind at all.
"We're not here to sleep our way through the camp," John said, aiming for severe. Not that he could entirely blame Ronon; Delyn seemed nice, and Ronon had been on the run for seven years. That probably didn't mean much time for the finer things in life.
Most of the women in Atlantis regarded Ronon with no small amount of apprehension, although a couple had shown some interest. The chief exception was Teyla who seemed to enjoy his company, although John was pretty sure nothing was happening between his team-mates. And Teyla seemed to enjoy John's company, too, and she hadn't made any moves on him yet.
"Maybe not," Ronon said, and there was a note of seriousness as he climbed up on one of the rocks, his dreadlocks swinging free about his face. "But Lian has." At John's look, he shrugged. "He's got about twenty children by various women of the camp."
John did a double take. "Twenty?" Lian couldn't have been more than thirty. Thirty-five at the oldest. Of course, a guy could have several women pregnant at once, but still...
And Rodney thought John's flirting counted as 'kirking'.
"They weren't exaggerating?"
"No." Ronon leaned back against a stony outcropping, folding his arms across his chest. "They said we'd better keep an eye on Teyla."
Great. That was just wonderful. John hadn't been worried before. He was now. "And you're telling me this now?"
His reply was a shrug of broad, muscled shoulders. "Teyla can look after herself."
John might have thought the same if he hadn't had the conversation with Teyla about how she didn't belong in Atlantis, or heard her admission of feeling comfortable with Lian.
The Noyian would have Teyla over John's dead body because the thought of Lian and Teyla was all kinds of wrong and bad.
For starters, John would lose his team-mate.
"You'd hope so," John muttered.
"She's never been turned by a pretty face before."
"There's always a first time."
Ronon didn't hide his surprise. "You really don't trust him."
"Let's just say I'm withholding judgement," John said, surveying the camp. "See any sign of Teyla?"
The other man shaded his eyes against the light. His higher vantage point meant the sun caught the top of his head as it moved slowly into the west. "No. But McKay's finally come out of the caves."
John watched the tiny figure stump down the path from the caves and flicked his radio on. "I see you've dragged yourself away from Tutankhamen's tomb?"
"Oh, very funny, Sheppard. Yes, I figured I hadn't heard from any of you in a while and should come and check that you didn't need saving."
Ronon's snort probably wasn't loud enough to carry to Rodney's ears, but John heard it clear enough.
"Anything interesting?"
"Well, we won't know until we get them back to the labs, but there are some interesting possibilities. One of them looks like a variant of the personal shield that I activated the first week we were in the city--"
"The one that we had to drain before you could take it off?"
"Except that this one looks like it has an off-button!" Rodney said, never missing a beat. "At least, that's what it looks like. Although the design is slightly different--"
John didn't quite roll his eyes. He just interrupted before Rodney could get any further. "Do you have any idea where Teyla is?"
There was a pause. "Probably with Lian. Anyway, as I was saying--"
"Are the girls still with you?"
Another pause. "Yes. But why would you--"
"Ask them if Lian has any spots he likes to go. Scenic places. Somewhere he'd take Teyla."
John saw Ronon's expression and ignored it.
"You know," Rodney said after a moment, "if he wanted to take Teyla somewhere private then he probably doesn't want to be interrupt--"
"Just ask," said John. He wasn't going to stand around waiting for Teyla to turn up any longer. And she was a big girl and well able to take care of herself, but Lian was the father of some twenty kids and a man didn't manage to get around like that in a community this size without having some serious charm.
A minute or so later, Rodney's voice came through the radio. "Apparently there's a trail through the western side of the valley that leads to one of the hunting grounds for hireni... Sharen says there are vantage points..." There was some background discussion transmitted through the radio, and John spent the time studying the western face of the valley, looking for anything that might indicate trails. Then, after a few seconds, Rodney was back on again. "The girls think that Lian might have taken Teyla to see the hireni. She was interested, if you recall."
"Thanks, Rodney."
It was difficult to see the western face of the valley; trees and shrubs obscured it - as well as the tents that were pitched all the way up to where the gradient of the slopes became too steep - but John thought he could make out a trail. At the least, it would be somewhere to start looking.
But the other man wasn't finished with John. "Look, if you interrupt Teyla's tryst with someone she's going to be really mad. As in, probably worse than those days when she's got the you-know happening and even Ronon won't fight her."
"Rodney, she's not having a tryst with anyone," John said shortly, his eyes narrowed as he moved to the right, the better to see the line of the trees. "She's just been missing for the last..." he checked his watch, "hour and a half and I don't like it when members of my team go missing."
"You know, they'll probably turn up for dinner or something."
Rodney really wasn't getting it. John gave up.
"Leave your radio on, okay? I want to be able to contact you." He glanced at Ronon. "And do some socialising. Preferably without flirting."
"Oh, and like you're one to talk," came the scoff from the other end.
"Converse with people," John said. "I want to know more about these people - what they might want or need that we can trade them for those devices. I'm going looking for Teyla."
Ronon scrambled down beside John. "You think she's in trouble?"
'In trouble' wasn't the phrase John would have used, but it would do. "I think I'm going to go looking for her," was all he said. "Keep an eye on Rodney and try not to climb into the beds of any of the women."
The grin Ronon gave him was decidedly discouraging on that front.
John strode off, heading back through the village as he tried to work out which of the branching paths from the main thoroughfare might lead to the western slope. It was hard to tell. As he'd discovered when he reached the bottom of the entry trail behind Anneka, once off the wide main track that zigzagged its way through the encampment, the paths seemed to wind without any particular direction or determination. They looped around themselves, wending between tents of vastly differing purposes, and past people doing everything from food preparation to sleeping.
"You're looking for Lian." Umaya slipped out of nowhere, falling into step beside John.
"Actually, I'm looking for my team-mate," he said. "Who's probably with Lian."
The girl eyed him at the distinction. "Do you know where you're going?"
He was going to take that in the non-metaphorical sense. "Vantage points in the hireni hunting ground."
Dark eyes gleamed with laughter. "You have good sources." Her hand slipped into his, drawing him off along one of the side paths. "This way."
John let her lead him into the side path, then took his hand back under pretext of checking his watch. After Milla - and the warning about Lian - he was more than a little wary of any of the Noyian women.
After a couple of tents, the track led them up into the tree line, not quite a switchback trail, but steep enough. "Did your people agree to trade?"
"Actually, they did. Once we figure out what you want and whether we can provide it, we'll be more than happy to give it to you."
Umaya's glance was amused. "The devices mean so much to your people then?"
"We wouldn't have agreed to trade if they didn't," John pointed out. "Why haven't your people ever used the weapons against the Wraith?"
"The Wraith have not come to this planet in years - not since I was a child."
John refrained from pointing out that, by his standards, Umaya was still a child. It was the sort of thing teenagers tended to take badly on Earth, and he didn't imagine that things were that different in Pegasus. "So, you missed out on the recent cullings through the galaxy?"
She shrugged, scrambling up what looked like a vertical rock face and reaching down to help him up. "We heard about them when we went trading," she said. "But they did not come here." John dug his toes into small clefts in the rock and levered himself up without taking the proffered hand.
"And they haven't been here in years?" That was very unusual.
Umaya shrugged, apparently unbothered by his refusal to touch her. "We have been in this camp for the last five years and the Wraith have not come for us." The look she gave him was confiding, "We consider it better not to question."
Not a mentality John had ever adopted.
"Rodney said that you came from a place where there are no Wraith."
Wondering what else Rodney had absently said, John confined himself to saying, "Yeah." The climb was tiring him, too. This side of the valley might be less steep than the main entrance, but the path went straight up, and he wasn't twenty any more. Or even thirty.
Umaya wasn't even twenty. And the girl was probably part mountain goat given that she was climbing this path like she'd been born to it.
John paused to take a breather. Between three trips from the 'jumper to the campsite, various wanderings through the camp, and a long day, he was just a little on the tired side. Besides, Rodney wasn't here to rag him about being unfit, and Ronon wasn't here to smirk with the superior fitness provided by seven years living on his own; John could take a break.
If Umaya had been, say, Teyla's age, then he probably would have pressed on out of pride, determined to do what she could. He didn't remember what it was like to be a teenager anymore, but he was pretty sure he'd had about as much energy as Umaya - if not more. Exactly what he spent that energy on had been a point of contention between him and the old man.
But that was long ago.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm not as young as I was," he said. On one hand, his pride resented even the suggestion that he was 'old'; John was in the prime of his life with an expectation of another forty years...assuming he survived Pegasus, the Wraith, and dealing with Rodney McKay and all the attendant trouble therein.
The girl smiled, transforming her face. If she was stunning when she was severe and serious, she was breathtaking when she laughed. "You're not that old."
"I'm at least twice your age."
Umaya shrugged, still smiling. "Lian's twice my age, and he has no trouble with this."
John pushed off immediately. Never mind that the Noyian man was used to this kind of terrain. Humility took you so far, but few things beat pride as a goad. He ignored the girl's smile as he indicated the trail. "So how far is it to these vantage points?"
"Oh, not far. Once we reach the top I can run there and not be winded."
He didn't note that she was young enough to run anywhere and not be winded. "Great," he muttered.
"It is not long to the top," said Umaya. "See?" She pointed to a cleft between the rocks that seemed forever away. John peered up and sighed, but climbed in silence the rest of the way.
At the top, the terrain looked less scrubby than it did up the path he and his team had arrived at earlier today, running through the thick of the forest that began at the base of the hill he and Umaya had just climbed. It didn't look like a hunting ground of any description. "And you hunt the hireni through this?"
She glanced up at him, apparently pleased by his disbelief. "It is a challenge of skill."
"I'll say," he muttered as they started off through the undergrowth. The leaf canopy overhead made it more or less permanently shady on the forest floor, but a lot of plants were growing down here anyway. Hunting anything through here with bow and arrow - or spear and knife - would be pretty dangerous; close quarters, if nothing else.
He'd have to ask Teyla what a hireni was like, when he found her. John was imagining a deer, but she'd mentioned that most people hunted them in armour, which suggested that they weren't easy kills.
"I hunted the hireni two seasons ago," Umaya said, in a tone of voice that implied it had been a big thing for her. "And brought down a buck without injury."
"Sounds impressive," said John. "So you're an adult now by your standards?"
She frowned. "Would I not be considered adult in the way of your people?"
"We assign legal adulthood by physical age," John said. "So, when you're eighteen, you're legal for most things except buying alcohol."
"Most things?"
"Uh... You can own property. Vote - although not many people do that. Get married without your parents' permission..."
Umaya shrugged. "Here, once you are capable of sustaining your own household through your own hunting, you are adult."
"Teyla's people work the same way," John said.
"I am adult by our standards," said Umaya. "I am permitted to have my own household, choose my own partners, bear children."
"Uhuh."
"You disagree, Colonel?"
He stopped in the middle of the forest. "Your friend, Milla? Pretty much issued me with an invitation to her bed this afternoon. I just don't consider her 'adult'."
The girl looked nonplussed. "That is Milla. I would not be so forward."
Well, at least they'd gotten this far. "Look," John said, striving for 'reasonable'. "Not to be dismissive - you might be an adult among your people, but you're definitely not one among mine. And that's not even taking into account the fact that I didn't come here for this."
He left out exactly what 'this' entailed. Because the girl was pretty, but that was as far as it went. John's ego was pleased that he still 'had it' but his common sense was pointing out all the reasons that even flirting with a teenaged local was a bad idea - from the fact that he really wasn't here to get laid, to the fact that he was old enough to have been her father.
"So what did you come here for?"
"To this planet? To trade. Make friends." John indicated the forest. "Right now, I'm trying to find my team-mate."
"Are you worried that Lian might seduce her? She is clearly adult - even by your standards." The note of jealousy in her voice surprised him.
"Teyla's been gone for two hours," he said flatly. "I'm worried about her."
"You said she was not bonded."
"She isn't."
"Then is she not capable of looking after herself?"
He ignored the gut-deep revulsion he felt at the thought of Teyla and the Noyian man. "It's not a matter of capability. It's a matter of responsibility."
"And you are responsible for her."
"I'm responsible for all my team."
"Yet you are not as concerned for either Dr. McKay or Ronon Dex."
"Because I've seen them in the last half-hour." And neither of them have been spirited away by a guy that's fathered twenty children in the last fifteen years.
"If your friend welcomes Lian's attention--"
"Look," John said. "All I want is to find my team-mate, bargain the price of those devices with your leader, and get my people home before midnight. It's been a long day."
Umaya turned as he walked past her. He could feel her gaze on him, pinning him between the shoulder blades as she called after him, "You will not find them."
Frustrated by both the conversation and the reminder of Teyla's continued absence, and more than a little irked by the girl's stubbornness, John turned on his heel. "Then why don't you help me?"
Somewhere above them, there was a rustle in the leaves as some creature made its way from bough to bough. "I will," Umaya said in the silence. "But you are going the wrong way."
Yeah, that would figure.
They trudged on for a few minutes, with Umaya dividing her attention between the trail and him.
John ignored her as much as possible. He was angry - at her pointed comments about Teyla, at himself for letting Teyla out of his sight for so long, at Teyla for not thinking he'd be worried about her gone for so long.
"You would not even consider--?"
"No." It came out harsher than he'd intended and he stopped. "Look, you're pretty - I'm sure there are heaps of guys who'd be interested in you--"
Her about-face was graceful and unexpected. John blinked as he found himself nearly lip-to-lip with her as she held the webbing of his flak jacket, preventing him from moving away without shoving her off. "But you are not."
He'd reared back when he found her face so close to hers. "Umaya--"
"Would you say her name with more tenderness?" She asked pointedly, her eyes searching his face. Her eyelashes were long and thick, the same shade as her hair in the dappled afternoon light, but the look in them was definitely not childlike.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
"John?"
"Teyla." When he turned his head, she and Lian stood only a few yards away, her expression querying the pose in which they'd found him with Umaya. John didn't quite sigh in relief, but he did relax a little. He'd have to thank her later for the timely interruption. Even if the sight of Lian's arched brow from behind her shoulder was as unwelcome as ever. "We were just looking for you."
"And you have found us," Lian said. "Or, rather, we seem to have found you." The pale eyes moved from John to Umaya, who still hadn't quite let go of his jacket, although at least she wasn't pressed up against him anymore.
"There was no need to come looking for us, Colonel," said Teyla, moving around them, as though she would walk on and leave him to Umaya's untender mercy. "We were just returning for the evening meal."
"Good," he said, gently disengaging Umaya's hands from his jacket and not looking at the girl. "We'll return with you."
The walk back was longer than John remembered, tense with things that nobody was going to say as long as they had an audience.
For the most part, he focused on his team-mate. Teyla seemed annoyed with him, and John didn't know why. He'd come after her when she'd gone missing, hadn't he? And she was the one who'd been incommunicado for the last couple of hours. He was just looking out for his team.
Okay, so he was looking out for his team and keeping an eye on Teyla. Because it was one thing to get friendly with the locals, but another to get friendly with a local known for his philandering ways.
They entered the camp without fanfare, and John touched her arm before she could walk away again. "We need to talk." He smiled politely at both Lian and Umaya, "Privately."
Teyla didn't protest, but she didn't say anything to John until they were on the grassy slope above the camp. "Were you truly worried, or did you not trust me with Lian?"
The words were more acid than he was used to hearing from her. John scowled. "I was worried!"
"And you do not trust Lian."
"Strangely enough, I don't - especially not when he spirits you off for two hours without so much as a 'we're going exploring, back in a couple of hours'."
"Do you not consider me capable of looking after myself, Colonel?"
"On a planet with people who we know and who are our allies, I have no problem," John said with pointed emphasis. "On a planet with people who we only just met this morning and who we found hiding things from us, I think that's a reasonable cause for concern." He rested his hands on his hips, irked that she was annoyed with him after he'd fretted over her and her whereabouts. Behind her, he could see Rodney and Ronon climbing the hill to join them - hopefully with some information about what they could trade for those devices before getting the hell off this planet.
John wanted out of here. The sooner, the better.
"Lian is harmless. He merely wished to speak of the challenges of leading his people with someone who understood."
"And he had to show you his 'hireni hunting ground' to do it?"
She frowned, tilting her head in pointed focus. "I asked him to."
The innuendo passed right by her. John wasn't sure whether to be relieved or not. On one hand, she seemed unaware that the Noyian was trying to get into her pants; on the other, she was missing the point.
"Teyla, the point isn't that you went off with him," even if John wasn't happy about the amount of time they were spending together - or her friendly response to Lian's overtures, "the point is that it was two hours with your radio turned off! If something had happened, we wouldn't have had any way to get in contact with you!"
Automatically, Teyla reached for the radio on her shoulder strap. Her finger brushed along the edge of it, checking the switch that turned it on or off. "I am sorry, Colonel," she said then, apologetic. "I did not know that it was off." Her expression hardened. "It was still no cause for you to come looking for me."
He blew out a harsh breath as Ronon reached them. "Did you find out anything that they'd be willing to trade for those devices?"
"Ronon."
"Teyla." He turned to John. "You asking me or her?"
"Anyone who's got an answer."
"Well, I know something that you don't know," Rodney said as he toiled up the last bit and huffed out a long breath.
"Care to share it with the class, then?"
"Someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning," retorted his team-mate. "Or maybe just the wrong bed?"
"Rodney--"
"Did you know that Lian is considered 'gifted' among his people? That he's been known to be able to tell when the Wraith are near?"
He was looking at Teyla, and John saw Ronon turn as his own gaze came to rest on her. "Sounds like you," Ronon commented.
John felt oddly betrayed. "Did you know this?"
She looked back at John, surprise on her face. It went some way towards mollifying the brief cramp of betrayal he'd felt squeeze his ribs at not being told. "I...I was not aware of it."
"I don't see how you couldn't be," Rodney said. "Although it explains why he's got so many kids - survival of the fittest - Darwin's theory in action."
"It explains why Lian's all over her," said Ronon with a smirk.
Teyla glared at Ronon. "If he and his people are sensitive to the Wraith, then they might be useful allies to us."
The big man didn't seem bothered by her glare - in fact, he looked more amused than angry. "So do you want him as an ally or a mate?"
As he had once before - at Ford's hideout - John looked at the two and was reminded of a couple of siblings arguing. Next, Teyla would slap Ronon and it would all descend into full-blown squabbling.
"If they're willing to trade with us for the Ancient devices - which assumes that they have things they want that we can provide them - then we'll be allies," he interrupted before Teyla could formulate a retort. John wasn't going to mention the other. Sure, Teyla was her own woman, but she had responsibilities to her own people - as well as to the Atlantis expedition. "Do we know of anything they want?"
Silence.
"Medicines, medical aid," Ronon said. "You provide that to Teyla's people anyway."
"Metal," Rodney said. "Metal things. And raw metals. At least, that was what one of the guys asked about. Ronon's height, but built really solid. Arms like Arnie. Only bigger."
Teyla nodded. "The blacksmith. Raw metals would be considered worth the exchange of the devices," she said.
"Even though he was sitting on them like a dog in the manger?"
The look she turned on him was colder than the freezing cold of a wormhole's disembodiment phase. "Lian is aware that the devices are of no use to him."
"But he didn't want to tell us about them."
"He trusts you no more than you trust him," came the reply, with more asperity than she usually used on him. John felt more than a little stung by her continued defence of Lian - as well as distinctly conscious of both Rodney and Ronon were staring. "Colonel--" She paused, her shoulders stiffening as her eyes lifted to the sky.
John felt the chill of foreknowledge trickle down his spine. Shit. No. Not now.
"Teyla?"
And when she turned to him, her eyes wide and black with concern, he knew he was right. "The Wraith are coming."
- tbc -
Part 3
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