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TITLE: Partnership
SUMMARY: John and Teyla under fire to gain a treasure of the Ancients.
CATEGORY: gen, action-adventure, drama
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: More details of the story in Part 1.
Partnership
Part Two
The compass led them on and the terrain began to change. The sun shifted its position slowly across the sky, and John felt the hot sting of its rays on his hair and on his skin as they walked past the discarded piles of a thousand worlds.
"How would they bring all this here?" Teyla wondered as they passed a set of heavy blocks. The blocks formed a tall wall that loomed several yards in the air, with a slim niche about halfway along the wall that wasn't more than half a yard wide or deep.
"If it was dumped by the Ancients, then they would have had the 'jumpers to move things around, I guess." John shrugged, his mind on more practical things. "You know, we're going to need water pretty soon. And somewhere to rest. The sun's too harsh overhead, and if we don't get some water, we're going to collapse." He was accustomed to the desert heat, but even during that nightmare in Afghanistan, he'd had supplies to keep him going - food and water. "At the least, we need a bolthole."
He saw the movement ahead of them first - the flash of a white hood over a bright red head - and touched Teyla's shoulder. "Incoming."
John turned back and paused. They'd taken the path down this way because it was the shadiest and the least open, and the compass pointed in this direction. But while the discarded materials built high provided shade, they didn't provide protection from the synapser fire.
"It's too far back to the previous intersection," he muttered. A long, straight stretch, with nowhere to hide and people behind them, shooting at them? They'd be the proverbial fish in barrels.
"Then we must go forward," said Teyla, breaking into a run. She fired twice down the long path, trying to ensure nobody had a chance to return fire at them. John followed as closely as he could, struggling to keep up with her. Teyla had an amazing turn of speed for such a petite woman.
He was pretty sure he felt at least one shot go past his head - a buzzing, itchy sensation that set his hair on end. Rodney would have sneered that his hair was already on end. Thankfully for John, Rodney wasn't here.
They reached the next intersection and Teyla cornered, then stopped dead and spun on her heel. "That way," she said.
"What?"
With unusual force from her, she shoved him back across the intersection into the other side. "Go!"
John ran, feeling her hand at the back of his waist, clenching his t-shirt. "You going to explain this, Teyla?"
"It was not a good path to follow," was all she said. A moment later she let go of his shirt, and John went several steps further before he realised she wasn't following and glanced back over his shoulder.
"Teyla?"
She was standing facing the wall - not metal, not stone - which formed one side of the alley along which they'd been running. All across the face of the wall were inscribed symbols - a bizarre kind of decoration.
"Can we look at the décor later?"
Teyla glanced at him. "Colonel, I believe that this is..." She trailed off. Then she touched one of the symbols on the wall and stepped back when it glowed a dull, fiery red.
"Okay," John said. "Pretty. Teyla, what's this going to do?"
"Wait, John." She thrust the weapon at him, and John took up position alongside her, dividing his attention between her and the two directions from which their opponents would come, hoping that he wouldn't need to do any precision firing. Teyla was studying the wall, her eyes skimming over the designs as she stepped back, looking for something that John couldn't see.
"Teyla?"
She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instead, she reached out to touch other points on the wall - seven or eight of them by John's count, and spread out across the face of the wall. Each symbol she touched glittered, darkly scarlet.
"Teyla..." He didn't know what was going on, but he was trusting she knew what she was doing. He just felt exposed and nervous.
"I am nearly done." She reached out and traced her finger through the lines of the first symbol. Stepped back as the eight symbols flashed incandescent white, and a door opened in the wall - an archway that rose to a peak about a foot above John's head.
"Okay. That was unexpected." John was surprised, but Teyla was already stepping into the darkness beyond the door, fearless.
No point in asking if she was sure about this. John had no idea what she'd seen to suggest that this was here, let alone how to open it, but she'd moved with the kind of certainty that said she knew what she was doing.
And if Teyla knew what she was doing, John figured he could follow.
John glanced both ways down the avenue, and walked into the darkness, one hand stretched out in advance warning.
"Trace through the symbol on the door," came Teyla's voice from the darkness. "It will close."
John wondered if they wanted to close the door. It was pitch-black inside, he could only just see Teyla's outline, and in spite of the brilliance of the light outside, very little reflection illuminated the room. They couldn't see where they were, what they were doing, or what was in the room.
But if his military training made him question, his experiences with Teyla prompted him to comply.
It was just trust.
John ran the little finger of his left hand along the lines of the symbol in the middle of the door - a swirling shape that ended in a V-like bounce up to the right.
And stepped back as the door swung shut, sealing them into the dark.
As the last crack of light disappeared, John reached out to where he'd last seen Teyla, and touched something warm and smooth - her arm. At least, he hoped it was her arm.
"John?"
"Unless you're expecting someone else to be around," he said. "You're sure about this?"
Light flooded the room, abrupt as if someone had flipped a switch. Teyla glanced at him, a slight smile on her lips. "I am now."
They were standing in the corner of a large, rectangular room that looked a little like one of the rooms in Atlantis. The architecture was very similar, although the colours were wrong for Atlantis - instead of the green-blue walls and rust-red floor, the colours were cream and a deep, leafy green.
In the middle of the room was a table set with two plates of food, two water bottles and a tall jug of water.
"Nice," John commented as they crossed over to the table and inspected the food that had been left them - a large pastie each and several pieces of fruit. "Someone's been listening to our conversations."
"Or they knew that we would require sustenance," Teyla murmured. She seemed less interested in the food than in the room itself, stepping away to study the designs on the walls and panels of the room.
"Or that." His fingers brushed over the water bottles - stretched and dried hide over a curving bone frame, with a cork stopper and a leather strap for going over the shoulder. "Looks like we've been given something to go forward with, anyway."
No response came from Teyla, and John glanced up to find her staring at the wall. "How'd you know this was here, anyway?"
Teyla turned, and he saw her confusion. "I... It was something I remembered from the city on Athos."
John stared at her, remembering the shadowy buildings across the river from the Athosian camp that long-ago morning and her warning to Sumner. "I thought your people didn't go down into the city."
"We did not," she said, tugging out her hair-tie and finger-combing through her hair. "But it was a game of the children and the adolescents to see how close people would go."
"And you went in." He picked up one of the pasties and bit into it. It contained meat and some kind of root vegetables, and was just spicy enough to set his tongue tingling with the first bite. But the pastry was crisp and buttery, and melted on his tongue, balancing out the spiciness. "This is good."
Teyla eyed her portion as she bound back her hair again. "I went as far as the stone archway that marked the edge of the city boundaries. The markings upon the arch were the same as the symbols that were on the wall."
"Okay." John wiggled his fingers, sprinkling pastry flakes. "So what do the symbols mean?"
She seemed pensive, her eyes on the pastry as her finger trailed along one crimped edge. "According to my father, the symbols said, Through this arc of stone, find your rest."
John swallowed his mouthful. "Through this arc of stone... Is that...?" He hesitated. "Is that where your ceremony for the Athosian dead comes from?" He hadn't been there for her when her mentor died, but he'd gone to see her as soon as he could get away from cleaning up after the crisis with the Goa'uld and the bomb in the city.
"Yes." Teyla said.
"So the Combori have similar roots to the Athosians?"
"They may." She hesitated, broke off a flake of pastry and licked it from her fingertip. "Now I am wondering if my people were supposed to be as the Combori are - keepers of the treasure of the Ancestors. We had devices of the Ancestors, once, long ago."
John put his pastie down. "Teyla--"
"It is possible that, over time, we forgot our responsibilities to the Ancestors," she murmured. "That what was left to us were given away in exchange for other things. Food, supplies, trading rights." Her lashes lifted, meeting John's gaze for just a moment, before sweeping back down again. "There were times in my people's history when we did not revere the Ancestors quite so much."
"You've met a few of the Ancients yourself," John pointed out. "They're not quite as wise and noble as some of your people would like to think."
Teyla regarded the pastie, and eased off another flake of the pastry. "No. However, if my people were given such responsibility..."
"If your people were given responsibility," John pointed out. "It's not like you know this for sure, Teyla."
A few seconds passed during which John wondered if she was going to listen to him.
"You are right," she said after a moment. "But still..." Her glance around the room was slightly wistful.
John thought about asking if she wanted to go back to Athos and check out the city when they got out of this - maybe they might find some answers to the questions she was asking.
He decided against it. After the Wraith razed Athos, they'd gone back to pick through the wreckage of the Athosian camp. John still remembered the pain on Teyla's face as she sifted through the rubble and tried not to look at the scorched earth around her. Maybe later, he could bring it up - but not right now when she was caught up in the past and how her people might or might not have failed the Ancients.
"Well," he said, "we found rest through an arc - although it wasn't of stone." He hesitated a moment, then reached out and squeezed her hand. He still felt uncomfortable, attempting to offer comfort, but she'd understood him last time, and he figured she'd understand him this time.
Her smile, slow and warm, was more than worth the discomfort. "Thank you."
"I don't know. Maybe I should be thanking you - I mean, we've got food and drink and somewhere out of the sun for a while." John glanced back to the corner where they'd 'entered' the place, and wasn't entirely surprised to find no sign of the door. "I guess we're not done yet?"
"I believe that this is a waystation," Teyla said. "Somewhere to rest. We have not reached the other end of the arena yet."
John watched as she finally took a bite from her pastie.
"I'm beginning to wonder if we will," he said, taking over the conversation so she could eat. "I mean, we've pretty much wandered around in circles all morning. The compass provides us with a direction, but we don't know what direction that is."
Teyla frowned as she swallowed her mouthful of pastie. "But you have been following it all morning."
"Yeah. Because we didn't have much choice. Or a chance to stop and think about it. And stopping to argue in the middle of a war zone is even more stupid than following blindly. Not," he added, seeing the glitter in her eye, "that following you was stupid."
She'd been the one willing to trust the word of the Combori; John was the suspicious one.
"An adequate save," she allowed with a brief smile.
John made a face at her. "Thank you." He pointed at the fruit, bulbous and heavy, but with a skin that was leathery like a banana peel and with a bit of 'give' to the flesh. "Do you know what these are? Do we peel them or eat them straight?"
Teyla shook her head and John shrugged and went with trying to peel it from base of the stem. It was surprisingly juicy, with a sweet, slightly tart taste to it, and Teyla laughed as he tried to catch a fruity droplet that slid down his hand.
"Don't laugh until you've eaten yours," he retorted. "How much longer do you think this challenge is going to take, anyway?"
She considered the question, her head tilted a little to the side. "I do not believe they intend to keep us here overnight."
Comforting. But John noticed that she didn't answer the question. "So how long do you think they're going to keep us here?"
Teyla reached for the water bottle, unstoppered it, and took a drink. She seemed to be thinking, so John waited for her answer. "When they discovered we were from Atlantis - the city of the Ancestors - they were both excited and apprehensive. Their people have been waiting a long time to discharge this duty." The bottle was set aside and the last of the pastie picked up. "They set Ronon to fight their champion, and Rodney to fix something that has been long broken. A physical challenge and an intellectual one. So far, we have faced mostly physical challenges."
"The wall outside?"
"Perhaps this is not a challenge of physical or intellectual capability, but to see how well those two are melded together."
John frowned a little. "You're saying that Ronon's one extreme, Rodney's the other, and we're kinda in the middle?"
"That is one interpretation."
"Huh." John took another bite of fruit and dabbed at the juices that slid down his chin. "All right," he said, when Teyla laughed. "Let's see you eat yours."
She wasn't much more successful in her attempt, dripping juice across the plate and her hands, while John sat back and grinned at her mess. He was a little less comfortable as she sucked on her fingers without embarrassment or self-consciousness, licking delicately from base to fingertip until she caught John watching her.
John cleared his throat. "You know, maybe this is about co-operation," he said as she fished out a damp wipe from one of her pockets and finished cleaning her fingers. "How we work together."
"Earthling and Athosian?"
"Or Pegasus native and non-native. Co-operation, maybe. Your brains and my beauty." He waited for her smile, caught it, kept going. "Or maybe it's just part of their procedures. Everyone on the team needs to be proven worthy." He grimaced as he sat back and surveyed the room. "I really wish they'd told us more about this before they sent us in."
"Perhaps it would not have served the purposes of the test," Teyla suggested. "If they wished to observe us in co-operation, telling us would defeat that purpose."
John shrugged. "I don't like it."
"Demanding answers will get you nowhere, John."
He glanced over at her and didn't ask how she'd known his thoughts. There were times when her intuition was uncanny and John had always found it was better not to ask. Instead, he changed the topic, moved forward instead of digging his heels in. "So, you ready to move on?"
"I am not eager to go back out into the day" Teyla admitted. "But there is no indication of how long we may stay here."
"I just want to get this done with." John stood and picked up the water bottle, pulling the strap over his shoulder and realising as he did so that his arm felt better. He hadn't been paying that much attention to it in the 'safehouse' and now that they were out, it seemed he had full movement and feeling again.
As he turned towards the corner of the room from which they'd come, he rolled the shoulder and tested the fingers. All feeling and movement was back - had come back while he was eating lunch. Huh. And he'd hardly even noticed it.
He noticed the lack of door about the time he glanced up at the blank corner. And turned around, looking for an alternative exit.
The room had none.
"Okay," he said. "Perhaps the question should be, how do we get out?"
With her water bottle settled over her shoulder, Teyla turned to survey the room, apparently unconcerned by the lack of egress.
Teyla frowned a little at the wall she'd been studying before. "I do not think that..." She trailed off. "Oh."
"Oh?" As she brushed past him, moving to a corner of the wall where an intricate set of carvings had been done in wall, circled by painted designs. "Is that a good 'oh' or a bad 'oh'?" Her exasperation was plain enough. "I'm just asking."
She turned to study one of the designs in the wall, crouching down to see the work better. Then, without a word to John, she turned so she was facing parallel to the wall, and walked past, brushing her fingers across its surface as she went.
A wave of light washed over her form and she was gone.
"Teyla!" John lunged forward, his heart pounding in his chest, even as he tried to reason it all through.
Okay, assume these tests are benign. They're not going to hurt us or disassemble us - I hope. Teyla had been looking at something before she touched the wall. John had no idea which design she'd been studying, but if he got a closer look himself... Not that I'd even know what I'd be looking for.
It would be better than standing around waiting.
He frowned at the wall, trying to see what Teyla had seen. There were at least three distinct sets of designs around slightly raised wall decorations. In Atlantis, the wall decorations were square-ish shapes with rounded edges. Here, the decorations were round, spinning off tendrils that swirled out across the wall in connecting patterns.
John wondered if it had had any meaning to Teyla, or if she'd just gotten lucky - or unlucky.
With more than a little trepidation, he reached out to touch the centrepiece of the nearest design.
Nothing.
No beams of light, no choral voices, no sudden change of location.
All right. Not that one, then. John took up position about where Teyla had started her walk and looked along the wall. Nothing suggested itself there. She began here, and brushed her fingers across the wall. She's a bit shorter than you, so...
As his fingers drifted across the rough surface of one of the designs, everything went white, then gold.
- tbc -
Part 3
SUMMARY: John and Teyla under fire to gain a treasure of the Ancients.
CATEGORY: gen, action-adventure, drama
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: More details of the story in Part 1.
Part Two
The compass led them on and the terrain began to change. The sun shifted its position slowly across the sky, and John felt the hot sting of its rays on his hair and on his skin as they walked past the discarded piles of a thousand worlds.
"How would they bring all this here?" Teyla wondered as they passed a set of heavy blocks. The blocks formed a tall wall that loomed several yards in the air, with a slim niche about halfway along the wall that wasn't more than half a yard wide or deep.
"If it was dumped by the Ancients, then they would have had the 'jumpers to move things around, I guess." John shrugged, his mind on more practical things. "You know, we're going to need water pretty soon. And somewhere to rest. The sun's too harsh overhead, and if we don't get some water, we're going to collapse." He was accustomed to the desert heat, but even during that nightmare in Afghanistan, he'd had supplies to keep him going - food and water. "At the least, we need a bolthole."
He saw the movement ahead of them first - the flash of a white hood over a bright red head - and touched Teyla's shoulder. "Incoming."
John turned back and paused. They'd taken the path down this way because it was the shadiest and the least open, and the compass pointed in this direction. But while the discarded materials built high provided shade, they didn't provide protection from the synapser fire.
"It's too far back to the previous intersection," he muttered. A long, straight stretch, with nowhere to hide and people behind them, shooting at them? They'd be the proverbial fish in barrels.
"Then we must go forward," said Teyla, breaking into a run. She fired twice down the long path, trying to ensure nobody had a chance to return fire at them. John followed as closely as he could, struggling to keep up with her. Teyla had an amazing turn of speed for such a petite woman.
He was pretty sure he felt at least one shot go past his head - a buzzing, itchy sensation that set his hair on end. Rodney would have sneered that his hair was already on end. Thankfully for John, Rodney wasn't here.
They reached the next intersection and Teyla cornered, then stopped dead and spun on her heel. "That way," she said.
"What?"
With unusual force from her, she shoved him back across the intersection into the other side. "Go!"
John ran, feeling her hand at the back of his waist, clenching his t-shirt. "You going to explain this, Teyla?"
"It was not a good path to follow," was all she said. A moment later she let go of his shirt, and John went several steps further before he realised she wasn't following and glanced back over his shoulder.
"Teyla?"
She was standing facing the wall - not metal, not stone - which formed one side of the alley along which they'd been running. All across the face of the wall were inscribed symbols - a bizarre kind of decoration.
"Can we look at the décor later?"
Teyla glanced at him. "Colonel, I believe that this is..." She trailed off. Then she touched one of the symbols on the wall and stepped back when it glowed a dull, fiery red.
"Okay," John said. "Pretty. Teyla, what's this going to do?"
"Wait, John." She thrust the weapon at him, and John took up position alongside her, dividing his attention between her and the two directions from which their opponents would come, hoping that he wouldn't need to do any precision firing. Teyla was studying the wall, her eyes skimming over the designs as she stepped back, looking for something that John couldn't see.
"Teyla?"
She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instead, she reached out to touch other points on the wall - seven or eight of them by John's count, and spread out across the face of the wall. Each symbol she touched glittered, darkly scarlet.
"Teyla..." He didn't know what was going on, but he was trusting she knew what she was doing. He just felt exposed and nervous.
"I am nearly done." She reached out and traced her finger through the lines of the first symbol. Stepped back as the eight symbols flashed incandescent white, and a door opened in the wall - an archway that rose to a peak about a foot above John's head.
"Okay. That was unexpected." John was surprised, but Teyla was already stepping into the darkness beyond the door, fearless.
No point in asking if she was sure about this. John had no idea what she'd seen to suggest that this was here, let alone how to open it, but she'd moved with the kind of certainty that said she knew what she was doing.
And if Teyla knew what she was doing, John figured he could follow.
John glanced both ways down the avenue, and walked into the darkness, one hand stretched out in advance warning.
"Trace through the symbol on the door," came Teyla's voice from the darkness. "It will close."
John wondered if they wanted to close the door. It was pitch-black inside, he could only just see Teyla's outline, and in spite of the brilliance of the light outside, very little reflection illuminated the room. They couldn't see where they were, what they were doing, or what was in the room.
But if his military training made him question, his experiences with Teyla prompted him to comply.
It was just trust.
John ran the little finger of his left hand along the lines of the symbol in the middle of the door - a swirling shape that ended in a V-like bounce up to the right.
And stepped back as the door swung shut, sealing them into the dark.
As the last crack of light disappeared, John reached out to where he'd last seen Teyla, and touched something warm and smooth - her arm. At least, he hoped it was her arm.
"John?"
"Unless you're expecting someone else to be around," he said. "You're sure about this?"
Light flooded the room, abrupt as if someone had flipped a switch. Teyla glanced at him, a slight smile on her lips. "I am now."
They were standing in the corner of a large, rectangular room that looked a little like one of the rooms in Atlantis. The architecture was very similar, although the colours were wrong for Atlantis - instead of the green-blue walls and rust-red floor, the colours were cream and a deep, leafy green.
In the middle of the room was a table set with two plates of food, two water bottles and a tall jug of water.
"Nice," John commented as they crossed over to the table and inspected the food that had been left them - a large pastie each and several pieces of fruit. "Someone's been listening to our conversations."
"Or they knew that we would require sustenance," Teyla murmured. She seemed less interested in the food than in the room itself, stepping away to study the designs on the walls and panels of the room.
"Or that." His fingers brushed over the water bottles - stretched and dried hide over a curving bone frame, with a cork stopper and a leather strap for going over the shoulder. "Looks like we've been given something to go forward with, anyway."
No response came from Teyla, and John glanced up to find her staring at the wall. "How'd you know this was here, anyway?"
Teyla turned, and he saw her confusion. "I... It was something I remembered from the city on Athos."
John stared at her, remembering the shadowy buildings across the river from the Athosian camp that long-ago morning and her warning to Sumner. "I thought your people didn't go down into the city."
"We did not," she said, tugging out her hair-tie and finger-combing through her hair. "But it was a game of the children and the adolescents to see how close people would go."
"And you went in." He picked up one of the pasties and bit into it. It contained meat and some kind of root vegetables, and was just spicy enough to set his tongue tingling with the first bite. But the pastry was crisp and buttery, and melted on his tongue, balancing out the spiciness. "This is good."
Teyla eyed her portion as she bound back her hair again. "I went as far as the stone archway that marked the edge of the city boundaries. The markings upon the arch were the same as the symbols that were on the wall."
"Okay." John wiggled his fingers, sprinkling pastry flakes. "So what do the symbols mean?"
She seemed pensive, her eyes on the pastry as her finger trailed along one crimped edge. "According to my father, the symbols said, Through this arc of stone, find your rest."
John swallowed his mouthful. "Through this arc of stone... Is that...?" He hesitated. "Is that where your ceremony for the Athosian dead comes from?" He hadn't been there for her when her mentor died, but he'd gone to see her as soon as he could get away from cleaning up after the crisis with the Goa'uld and the bomb in the city.
"Yes." Teyla said.
"So the Combori have similar roots to the Athosians?"
"They may." She hesitated, broke off a flake of pastry and licked it from her fingertip. "Now I am wondering if my people were supposed to be as the Combori are - keepers of the treasure of the Ancestors. We had devices of the Ancestors, once, long ago."
John put his pastie down. "Teyla--"
"It is possible that, over time, we forgot our responsibilities to the Ancestors," she murmured. "That what was left to us were given away in exchange for other things. Food, supplies, trading rights." Her lashes lifted, meeting John's gaze for just a moment, before sweeping back down again. "There were times in my people's history when we did not revere the Ancestors quite so much."
"You've met a few of the Ancients yourself," John pointed out. "They're not quite as wise and noble as some of your people would like to think."
Teyla regarded the pastie, and eased off another flake of the pastry. "No. However, if my people were given such responsibility..."
"If your people were given responsibility," John pointed out. "It's not like you know this for sure, Teyla."
A few seconds passed during which John wondered if she was going to listen to him.
"You are right," she said after a moment. "But still..." Her glance around the room was slightly wistful.
John thought about asking if she wanted to go back to Athos and check out the city when they got out of this - maybe they might find some answers to the questions she was asking.
He decided against it. After the Wraith razed Athos, they'd gone back to pick through the wreckage of the Athosian camp. John still remembered the pain on Teyla's face as she sifted through the rubble and tried not to look at the scorched earth around her. Maybe later, he could bring it up - but not right now when she was caught up in the past and how her people might or might not have failed the Ancients.
"Well," he said, "we found rest through an arc - although it wasn't of stone." He hesitated a moment, then reached out and squeezed her hand. He still felt uncomfortable, attempting to offer comfort, but she'd understood him last time, and he figured she'd understand him this time.
Her smile, slow and warm, was more than worth the discomfort. "Thank you."
"I don't know. Maybe I should be thanking you - I mean, we've got food and drink and somewhere out of the sun for a while." John glanced back to the corner where they'd 'entered' the place, and wasn't entirely surprised to find no sign of the door. "I guess we're not done yet?"
"I believe that this is a waystation," Teyla said. "Somewhere to rest. We have not reached the other end of the arena yet."
John watched as she finally took a bite from her pastie.
"I'm beginning to wonder if we will," he said, taking over the conversation so she could eat. "I mean, we've pretty much wandered around in circles all morning. The compass provides us with a direction, but we don't know what direction that is."
Teyla frowned as she swallowed her mouthful of pastie. "But you have been following it all morning."
"Yeah. Because we didn't have much choice. Or a chance to stop and think about it. And stopping to argue in the middle of a war zone is even more stupid than following blindly. Not," he added, seeing the glitter in her eye, "that following you was stupid."
She'd been the one willing to trust the word of the Combori; John was the suspicious one.
"An adequate save," she allowed with a brief smile.
John made a face at her. "Thank you." He pointed at the fruit, bulbous and heavy, but with a skin that was leathery like a banana peel and with a bit of 'give' to the flesh. "Do you know what these are? Do we peel them or eat them straight?"
Teyla shook her head and John shrugged and went with trying to peel it from base of the stem. It was surprisingly juicy, with a sweet, slightly tart taste to it, and Teyla laughed as he tried to catch a fruity droplet that slid down his hand.
"Don't laugh until you've eaten yours," he retorted. "How much longer do you think this challenge is going to take, anyway?"
She considered the question, her head tilted a little to the side. "I do not believe they intend to keep us here overnight."
Comforting. But John noticed that she didn't answer the question. "So how long do you think they're going to keep us here?"
Teyla reached for the water bottle, unstoppered it, and took a drink. She seemed to be thinking, so John waited for her answer. "When they discovered we were from Atlantis - the city of the Ancestors - they were both excited and apprehensive. Their people have been waiting a long time to discharge this duty." The bottle was set aside and the last of the pastie picked up. "They set Ronon to fight their champion, and Rodney to fix something that has been long broken. A physical challenge and an intellectual one. So far, we have faced mostly physical challenges."
"The wall outside?"
"Perhaps this is not a challenge of physical or intellectual capability, but to see how well those two are melded together."
John frowned a little. "You're saying that Ronon's one extreme, Rodney's the other, and we're kinda in the middle?"
"That is one interpretation."
"Huh." John took another bite of fruit and dabbed at the juices that slid down his chin. "All right," he said, when Teyla laughed. "Let's see you eat yours."
She wasn't much more successful in her attempt, dripping juice across the plate and her hands, while John sat back and grinned at her mess. He was a little less comfortable as she sucked on her fingers without embarrassment or self-consciousness, licking delicately from base to fingertip until she caught John watching her.
John cleared his throat. "You know, maybe this is about co-operation," he said as she fished out a damp wipe from one of her pockets and finished cleaning her fingers. "How we work together."
"Earthling and Athosian?"
"Or Pegasus native and non-native. Co-operation, maybe. Your brains and my beauty." He waited for her smile, caught it, kept going. "Or maybe it's just part of their procedures. Everyone on the team needs to be proven worthy." He grimaced as he sat back and surveyed the room. "I really wish they'd told us more about this before they sent us in."
"Perhaps it would not have served the purposes of the test," Teyla suggested. "If they wished to observe us in co-operation, telling us would defeat that purpose."
John shrugged. "I don't like it."
"Demanding answers will get you nowhere, John."
He glanced over at her and didn't ask how she'd known his thoughts. There were times when her intuition was uncanny and John had always found it was better not to ask. Instead, he changed the topic, moved forward instead of digging his heels in. "So, you ready to move on?"
"I am not eager to go back out into the day" Teyla admitted. "But there is no indication of how long we may stay here."
"I just want to get this done with." John stood and picked up the water bottle, pulling the strap over his shoulder and realising as he did so that his arm felt better. He hadn't been paying that much attention to it in the 'safehouse' and now that they were out, it seemed he had full movement and feeling again.
As he turned towards the corner of the room from which they'd come, he rolled the shoulder and tested the fingers. All feeling and movement was back - had come back while he was eating lunch. Huh. And he'd hardly even noticed it.
He noticed the lack of door about the time he glanced up at the blank corner. And turned around, looking for an alternative exit.
The room had none.
"Okay," he said. "Perhaps the question should be, how do we get out?"
With her water bottle settled over her shoulder, Teyla turned to survey the room, apparently unconcerned by the lack of egress.
Teyla frowned a little at the wall she'd been studying before. "I do not think that..." She trailed off. "Oh."
"Oh?" As she brushed past him, moving to a corner of the wall where an intricate set of carvings had been done in wall, circled by painted designs. "Is that a good 'oh' or a bad 'oh'?" Her exasperation was plain enough. "I'm just asking."
She turned to study one of the designs in the wall, crouching down to see the work better. Then, without a word to John, she turned so she was facing parallel to the wall, and walked past, brushing her fingers across its surface as she went.
A wave of light washed over her form and she was gone.
"Teyla!" John lunged forward, his heart pounding in his chest, even as he tried to reason it all through.
Okay, assume these tests are benign. They're not going to hurt us or disassemble us - I hope. Teyla had been looking at something before she touched the wall. John had no idea which design she'd been studying, but if he got a closer look himself... Not that I'd even know what I'd be looking for.
It would be better than standing around waiting.
He frowned at the wall, trying to see what Teyla had seen. There were at least three distinct sets of designs around slightly raised wall decorations. In Atlantis, the wall decorations were square-ish shapes with rounded edges. Here, the decorations were round, spinning off tendrils that swirled out across the wall in connecting patterns.
John wondered if it had had any meaning to Teyla, or if she'd just gotten lucky - or unlucky.
With more than a little trepidation, he reached out to touch the centrepiece of the nearest design.
Nothing.
No beams of light, no choral voices, no sudden change of location.
All right. Not that one, then. John took up position about where Teyla had started her walk and looked along the wall. Nothing suggested itself there. She began here, and brushed her fingers across the wall. She's a bit shorter than you, so...
As his fingers drifted across the rough surface of one of the designs, everything went white, then gold.
- tbc -
Part 3
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I just wanted to say that I wait impatiently for your stories and this one is really great. I can't wait for the next part :) Thank you
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So, this is a plot? ;)
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Yes, this is a plot! :D
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I just wanted to say that I wait impatiently for your stories and this one is really great. I can't wait for the next part :) Thank you
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So, this is a plot? ;)
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Yes, this is a plot! :D
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