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TITLE: A Kingdom, Broken - Part Two
SUMMARY: Their goal was always to defeat the Wraith - or, at least, to find a way by which Pegasus could live without the shadow of the Wraith over them. But there could be no great success without an equally great price.
CATEGORY: action-adventure, drama
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Much of it occurs after Enemy At The Gates, but no major spoilers.
NOTES: You know, once - just once - I would like to write a simple romance. Boy meets girl, boy and girl get it on like bunnies, happy ending. Obviously, this is not that story.
Still for the We'll Always Have Pegasus challenge at lostcityfound. And, um, yeah, the story is still going. I'm sorry about the month's delay between Part 1 and Part 2 - it's...well, it's been a rough time writing and I've let myself get distracted. I promise to provide a 'finish' at the end of Part 3, such that it isn't absolutely necessary for me to write the Bloody Epic that my muse thinks would be lots of fun to write.
It may be several weeks before I finish Part 3, I'm afraid, primarily due to my attempt to write something for Valentine's Day. (It's still an attempt right now, we'll see if it becomes an actuality before next Saturday, although I'm kinda doubting it.)
In the meantime...
A Kingdom, Broken - Part I
A Kingdom, Broken - Part II
Interlude
The city always had a waiting feel to it in the late afternoons and early evenings.
Beckett had once postulated that the transient, ethereal quality of the sunset and subsequent twilight worked upon the diurnal habits of the expedition causing a lull in activity and a shift in mood.
Upon the airing of this opinion, McKay had declared Carson to be full of it.
John - and just about everyone else in the expedition - had stayed out of the ensuing argument. But John especially. He had no desire to be caught between the doc who gave him his shots and the friend who most often used him as an outlet for everything that was annoying, wrong, or frustrating about his work and his life in Atlantis.
Whatever the reason, twilight in the city usually had its own charm.
Usually.
Tonight, though, John was tense as he paused outside the 'reading room', looking in at the woman sitting in one of the beanbags.
Teyla had seated herself and Torran so they were looking out at the fading sky, with their backs to the door. From where he stood, John could only see the line of her jaw running into her hair, already full of shadows.
He didn't need to disturb her. He could just walk away. He had before.
But the gap between them was wide enough; a careful, polite distance that John both resented and felt relieved by. For a while, he'd placed the blame on Teyla - she was always too busy with Torran, she had Kanaan to lean on so she wouldn't want him, she was the one who no longer participated in team meals or team nights.
Then Kanaan had left the city a month ago and Teyla had withdrawn even further. At the time, John had figured that if she wanted to be social with her team-mates again, then she could, she just didn't want to.
Two nights ago, Ronon had given him a pithy Satedan smackdown. "You never organise anything she can participate in."
"Hey, she's the one who decided she couldn't spend time with us!"
"But you're the one with the freedom to change the schedule," said Ronon. "She's bringing up a child. Maybe that's not important to you Lanteans, but it's important to her."
The confrontation had thrown John. Ronon wasn't usually so blunt - or so condemning.
Something in him resented that he had to be the one to make amends to her. After all, she was the one who'd withdrawn from them after Torran's birth.
But Ronon's words hadn't given him any peace.
Maybe that's not important to you Lanteans, but it's important to her.
The accusation of not caring about Teyla's concerns had hit harder and closer than John liked. And, privately, he admitted he was tired of being carefully distant. It had been easier when he hadn't had to think about their friendship.
He took a deep breath and stepped into the room. "Hey."
She glanced up. "John." It was obvious he'd surprised her, but other than that one sharp move, she did nothing else.
The silence stretched out for a moment before John forced himself to break it. "How's he doing?"
"Growing," she said, looking back down at her son. Something flitted across her face - pleasure and joy, but tinged with regret. "So fast."
"Yeah, I heard they do that." John was never good at small talk - once upon a time, he'd known what to say to her - back in the early days, when the city and the people and everything was new, when it was just them. Now, he was a stranger. Somewhere along the way, they'd lost something, and John still wasn't sure what it was. "Is he still waking up at 2am?"
Teyla stilled, just a moment. "Not as often as he did. His rhythms are getting better."
"Or maybe you're getting more used to them," John offered. Then he felt like an idiot. Of course she was getting more used to them! "Look, I just wanted to say..." He hesitated. The last time she'd been trying to soothe Torran and come across John - the nights before and after Michael's city takeover attempt, he'd mostly ignored her situation - it had just been easier.
It would still be easier.
It just wouldn't be right. He acknowledged that now. "Now that Kanaan's no longer around to help...if you need a break, you can ask me to mind him for a while."
She blinked. "I..." It was her turn to hesitate. "I did not think you had any experience with children."
John could hear what was said underneath. I didn't think you wanted to help. And, at one level, it was true. At another...
"Well, I'm sure I can learn," he said after a moment. "It's not exactly rocket science."
Teyla's mouth twisted a little. "No," she agreed. "It is not. John, why are you here?"
"I was looking for you."
"And you have not felt the need to 'look for me' while off-duty for the last nine months."
He scowled. "Look, if you want me to leave, I can leave."
"What I want does not matter," she said.
"That's not true."
His instinctive response went unnoticed; she mowed right over him.
"John, you have no interest in my son's upbringing or his care. I should rather you be indifferent than pretend interest simply to...to satisfy whatever guilt Ronon has planted in you."
He stared at her, at the corner of her mouth that dragged to the side in a grimace. "Ronon hasn't..."
"He says he snapped you in the heels. And while his interference is well-intentioned, it is unnecessary. I do not wish for my son to imagine that your people endure his presence simply because his mother is useful."
There was a moment when the balance teetered, when John contemplated getting up, walking out and going to Woolsey to ask for Teyla to be transferred from his team. He'd thought she'd be glad of his help, not angry because he hadn't offered earlier!
He opened his mouth and a little niggling voice - one that he'd been ignoring for the last six months every time Teyla came into the conversation - pointed out that he'd earned her disbelief fair and square. Maybe it stung, but she had every right to be sceptical of his offer.
He forced himself to think past the reactive anger - this was Teyla. And...she was avoiding his gaze, looking down at her son with her fingers brushing back a strand of hair.
"We don't endure his presence. We're just... We're not like your people."
"No," she agreed. "John, I have been thinking of returning to Athos."
For all that he'd been contemplating transferring her from his team a moment before, John's world went blank.
It was just a moment's shock - one more of life's slaps in his face. Then he scrabbled for something to say, just as an ejected pilot grabbed for anything that might be the emergency 'chute release on his free-falling chair. "I... Teyla, we can change."
She made a gesture with one shoulder - indistinct movement in the falling shadows but clear enough in meaning. "There is the joke about the therapist and the lightbulb, John - the lightbulb must want to change."
"We want to change." The protest was weak, and she made a noise that, in anyone else, would have been a snort of disbelief.
"John, Kanaan left because he feared to have his son believe him worthless." Her eyes measured his shift in the beanbag, the way he looked away at the mention of the other man. "Your people considered him unworthy of respect because he wished to bring up his child instead of doing 'worthwhile work.'"
John opened his mouth to contradict her, then closed it.
No, he'd never said any such thing, but he hadn't seen Kanaan as anything more than a babysitter, either. And if he hadn't joined in with Rodney's sneers at 'unskilled work', or the marines' jokes about the Athosian man being henpecked, he hadn't stopped them.
Maybe that's not important to you Lanteans, but it's important to her.
Ronon had made it important - had been making it important over the months since Torran's birth. And maybe it was a uniquely Pegasus perspective, but they were in Pegasus, after all.
"We can change," he repeated.
The silence stretched out for a long time, pushed back only a little by the noise of the waves down on the pontoons far below the window, and the occasional sound of voices along the far ends of the corridors.
When she spoke, her voice was low. "John, I cannot do this anymore. If these are merely hollow platitudes, then I would prefer that you did not lie to me, and just let me leave the city. As long as Kanaan was here, I could be both mother and fighter; but alone... Your people - your way of life - leaves me no choice."
"I mean it," he said, stiffly after a moment of trying to sort through the confusion and conflict inside him. "We can change. I meant what I said about bringing him around if you needed a break." And he would take the kid for a bit to make it easier on Teyla - and find other people to do the same if he had to. "Atlantis can change, Teyla."
"I would like to believe you can," she said after a while. "But the sapling cannot promise the tree's shade."
In Pegasus terms, she'd believe it when she saw it. John told himself he could understand that, even if it stung his pride. "That'll do," he said. " And you won't leave Atlantis without talking to me first?"
It wasn't as though she could leave without talking to him, but it mattered to John that he wouldn't find out about it second-hand. When had he dropped out of the loop with Teyla? Had he been too busy nursing his sense of injury and insult to notice?
"I will not make plans to leave the city without telling you."
It wasn't quite what he'd asked for, but it was a start. And, given that John was beginning to understand she felt, it was probably all he was going to get from her right now. He'd set fire his bridges in pique and jealousy. Now was the time to scrape them back together and work out what was left and whether he could make something of it.
Torran lifted his head and made a burbling noise, then arched in what looked like a pretty obvious attempt to get out of his mom's arms. Teyla eased him up against her shoulder and began to attempt button up her top as her son squirmed.
"Do you want me to take him?"
Teyla's fingers paused over the buttons, and he lifted his eyes to meet her questioning gaze without apology. He was going to make good on this decision; he wasn't going to lose someone else he cared about, and he certainly wasn't going to lose her just because he was piqued that she'd fallen in love with someone else.
The thought zapped through him, like a live wire against his skin as his brain made the connection he'd been trying to avoid for a long time.
Of all the times to come face to face with the realisation...
John swallowed hard. Teyla was holding Torran out towards him - a bridge of trust that he still wasn't sure he wanted to cross. His life was a series of screw-ups, and the only thing that had made the last five years bearable had been Atlantis and the people in the city - among them, Teyla.
He didn't want to screw this up, too.
It took him a moment too long to respond. Her expression grew distant and she dropped her gaze back to the button she'd been struggling with.
Seize the moment, or lose it all. John got up from his beanbag, his arms outstretched to take Torran. "I'll try not to drop him," he said, only half-joking.
When she let him take the now-burbling kid into his arms, John felt a small sense of relief, like he'd been flying blind and had just dropped out from mist and clouds to familiar terrain.
Maybe things weren't perfect now, but they'd get better.
He'd make sure of it.
--
Chapter Two
She recognised the woods - the forest on Old Athos, pine-scented needles redolent beneath her bootheels as she walked through the silent land, unnerved.
The woods were never quiet - not like this, without creature or critter, no wind or rustle of leaf, only the sound of her breathing and the thud of her heart above the crunch of dry needles under her feet.
There was no-one but her beneath the leaden sky, nothing living or moving in this place from which the Wraith had scorched all things alive and living on the planet in revenge against their escape from the hiveship. 'The One That Got Away' said the Lanteans, and Teyla had never explained to them that it had nothing to do with getting away and everything to do with the Wraith being Wraith.
But that had been years ago.
The forests would not yet have grown back, Teyla knew, so this was not real - could not be real.
She had fallen into darkness and woken to Old Athos.
Teyla had heard the talk of 'near death' experiences among the Lanteans: visions and seemings that had taken them during times of delirium or confusion. She had never experienced it herself - not like this, with such clarity.
Her people had always believed that death was another journey; that there was something else beyond the body's end.
Was this, then, her ending? She recognised this path - the moss-covered rocks and needle-strewn sod intimately familiar to her. This was the track leading from the camp to the Ring of the Ancestors - and the galaxy beyond Athos.
Metaphors for the journey beyond life?
Teyla turned back, to look in the direction of the camp, and saw only a wall of pale mist - no going back, only the journey forward, then. She took a deep breath and spared a tender thought for her son, for John. They would make their way in the universe without her from now on. John would stand for her son, as protector and guide. He might not feel himself up to the task, but Teyla knew Torran would want for nothing. John had his own care, even if he felt inadequate to the needs of others.
As she looked back at the mist, she saw something move within the whiteness. Amorphous and indistinct, it formed swiftly into shadows, coalescing into a man's form. Fear ran through her, coldly, and she stepped back, only to hesitate as something about it became familiar.
A moment later, the form became solid, a steady figure, clad warmly in boots and a coat Teyla remembered from long ago - worn and shabby, but kept for comfort's sake. "Teyla."
"Kanaan." Her heart gave a great leap of pleasure. She held out her hands and felt the anchoring warmth of his hands drawing them together, touching heads. "I have missed you."
"And I, you." His hands rested on her shoulders, a light grip, without the possessiveness she had experienced at the hands of Michael's imitation of Kanaan. This was the friend she remembered, the man she'd loved. "Torran?"
"He lives," she said. "Sometimes it seems he grows daily...."
It occurred to her that she would never see her son grow up, and sharp grief clutched at her heart as she lifted her head from Kanaan's.
"I was a fool not to realise that Michael had made more plans than I could hope to thwart," Kanaan said, moving easily into the silence. "And in the end, I doomed not only myself, but you and Torran, also." His fingers brushed her cheek and she allowed herself to lean into the caress.
"Torran still lives," she reminded him. "And John will care for him."
He nodded. "I know. He did not think much of me, but I knew he cared for you and Torran, even if he stayed away..." His eyes clung to hers as she looked at him, surprised. "You truly did not know?"
Teyla knew now; it had not occurred to her that Kanaan would have realised... But she did not give him his due. He had often known her better than she had known herself. How galling to realise she had not known him so well - that Michael's semblance of him had deceived her so easily. Even looking at Kanaan now, she could see the difference. "I did not realise you did."
His smile was tender and he bent his lips to her forehead. "Perhaps it is selfish, but I am glad you did not, then."
"Kanaan..."
"Just as I am glad that you do, now," he continued, ignoring her interruption. He stepped back, and all trace of amusement and tenderness faded from his expression, leaving it serious and shadowed. "You must go back, Teyla. Atlantis and our son need you."
Teyla turned, following his gaze down the path that led towards the Ring of the Ancestors. She was confused. "I am not dead?"
"Not yet," said Kanaan. "Your body still lives, clinging to life - it is only your spirit that is wanting."
She turned back. "And you?"
The smile on his lips was warm and wry, full of the tenderness she had never seen until the night he'd invited her to share his bed and she had accepted. They had loved and cared, but, with the advantage of hindsight, Teyla saw that they could not have gone on forever. Kanaan's pride - easy though it was - would not have allowed him to be seen as inferior by the men of Atlantis; and Teyla would have grown bitter without her dreams of freedom from the Wraith and her ability to fight in the war.
Still, they had tried.
"I am dead, Teyla. You accepted it - and Colonel Sheppard's interest - long ago."
"Kanaan... He is not a substitute for you." She felt the need to say it out loud, to tell him what John had never understood. Neither would ever be a replacement for the other - they were two different men, loved in two different ways. What she had shared with Kanaan was not the same as that which she had with John now. She loved them both; it was not an exclusionary choice to her.
Kanaan shook his head, a rueful smile tilting his lips as he shook her, lightly. "You have lived among the Lanteans too long, Teyla. Do you think I did not know that?"
Her cheeks tinted with the heat of embarrassment. "It is easy to forget."
"And I'm so easily forgotten then?" He laughed when she opened her mouth to protest. "Ah, Teyla." His hand lingered by her jaw and after a moment, Kanaan bent forward and pressed a kiss lightly to her lips - no passion, just a gentle brush of mouth against mouth. He stepped back, and if there was a wistfulness in his expression, Teyla felt his tenderness like fire against her skin. "Love is never a substitute, Teyla, whatever form it finds. You and I both know that, and if he is lucky, he will understand it too. Now," he added, "go and save those you love."
She let her eyes rest on him for a moment more, and then turned to go.
The Ring of the Ancestors flared as she approached it, opening without need of a destination address.
At the stairs, Teyla glanced back to see the dark figure standing at the edge of the white mist. One hand lifted in greeting and she felt rather than saw his smile as he turned and walked back into the mist.
Then she was alone before the Ring.
On the other side waited life and love - her people, her friends, and her future.
Teyla walked up the stairs and into passage.
--
John went looking for Torran as soon as Woolsey let them out of the meeting.
"Where are you going?" Rodney sounded positively peevish as John made for the stairs.
"To get Torran from Miko," said John. "They've had him for over five hours now, and other than the message from Nicolas saying they're okay, we haven't heard from them at all."
"You're not going to go and...and baby-sit, are you?" Rodney demanded as he stopped dead in the middle of the darkened corridor. "Because in case you haven't noticed, we've got more pressing matters!"
"I know." John put calm emphasis on the words to make Rodney listen. "And as soon as I've found someone to take Torran, I'll be back to work with the chair."
He could feel the back of his neck heating up as he said the words, knew that Rodney wasn't going to get it. After all, John hadn't gotten it until Ronon had pointed it out, either. And Rodney was, well, a lot more close-minded than John in the balance between work and personal. It was a good thing Keller wasn't in a rush to have children.
If Teyla had been conscious and capable of looking after her son, John would have left the arrangements to her and headed straight for the chair room. But he was only too aware that without her, he was the 'responsible adult' for Torran John Emmagan.
The chair was a slim hope, anyway - John had planned to go and help Ronon hunt up people all through the city. There were some areas of the city that were dark, and others where people hadn't yet sent someone around to check in, so Ronon had offered to check things out.
John had offered to help, before being co-opted by Rodney.
But in the back of his head lurked the knowledge that someone was going to have to deal with Torran sooner or later. Preferably sooner rather than later since Miko had been dealing with him for the last four hours.
"Sheppard..."
"Rodney." John went and tried not to feel guilty.
If it was urgent - as in right this moment now, then sure, John would have left it. But he could spare fifteen minutes to get Torran and explain the situation to him, take him to see Teyla, and find someone to look after him. He hoped one of the infirmary nurses would be obliging, though.
He felt a bit better when he found Torran in the throes of a full, screaming tantrum in one of the labs.
"You're here to take him?" Asked Dionne Morris at the door, her lip curled in distaste. "Good. He's been like this for the last fifteen - ever since Miko said he had to stay here until his mom came for him."
John grimaced. Teyla wouldn't be coming for Torran anytime soon.
Which was why he was here now.
The kid was on his back on the ground and screaming at the top of his voice, tears pouring down his scrubby red cheeks as Miko tried to placate him. Her attempts weren't working too well.
The thing was, right now, everyone was on edge; this was just Torran's way of letting his fears be known. And, unlike everyone else in the city, he wasn't even two years old.
If John had been allowed to throw a screaming tantrum, he wasn't sure he'd have passed up the opportunity.
John touched Miko's shoulder to gesture her away. Her expression was pathetically grateful. He crouched down by Torran, letting his fingers rest on the ground by the screaming boy. "Are you finished?" He asked the child curtly, much as he would have asked a rebellious subordinate.
The screaming subsided for a moment as Torran blinked at him through tear-glazed lashes and hiccuped. "Want mama!"
So do I, John thought to himself, a lump rising in his throat. Instead, he said, "We'll go see mama, then. But," he added as the toddler scrambled up and flung himself against John, "say thank you to Miko and the scientists for looking after you. And apologise for disturbing them."
It came out more like, "Dankymikascitisdory," over John's shoulder, but he shrugged at Miko and smiled to relieve her anxious expression. She'd done as good a job as she knew, and even a mumbled, indistinct apology was better than nothing.
Plus, Torran had been locked up with several scientists who would give John a screaming fit after four hours, so he wasn't entirely unsympathetic.
"You caused them a lot of trouble," he told the kid as they walked out.
Torran hiccuped. "Mama."
"Yeah, well, Mama was busy before, but we're going to see her now." John hesitated, wondering how he was going to explain the situation to the boy. "But...you know how the doors locked and you were stuck with Miko for a long time?"
"Meh."
"Yeah. Well, the thing with the doors locking is that your mama got sick while the doors were shut and...and there wasn't anyone there to help her get better."
Torran stuck his hand in his mouth, but didn't say anything. John went on. "She's... sleeping and we're not sure..." He forced the words through the lump in his throat. "We're not sure when she's going to wake up. You can see her, but you have to be careful, okay?"
Dark eyes considered John, then nodded. "Mama hurt?"
"Yeah," he said huskily. "Mama's hurt. She's sleeping it off, though."
His heart had clenched when he and Ronon had reached Teyla's room.
For a moment, John hadn't been able to breathe, hadn't been able to think past the overwhelming sense of betrayal. Teyla had been lying on the bed with Kanaan curled up against her, his head tucked into the curve of her throat, his hand on her waist.
He'd been wrong. It wasn't him that Teyla had wanted after all.
Then Ronon had strode forward to the edge of the bed, and John realised that neither Teyla nor Kanaan were moving, and fear had propelled him forward, even though something inside him was bleeding.
Kanaan had been long dead, his body stiff with rigor mortis. Teyla had been barely breathing, her skin clammy but still warm, her pulse thready but there. Her top was torn and there was blood beneath her fingernails - matching the scrapes and scratches across Kanaan's face and arms.
At first, John thought the growl was Ronon's. It had taken him a moment to realise that the noise came from his throat.
She'd fought Kanaan. Whatever he'd been going to do to her, she hadn't been compliant.
Suddenly, John could breathe again. The evidence was still damning, but it wasn't conclusive. And Kanaan... What had gotten into the man? He could understand Kanaan being angry that Teyla had found someone else, but this?
"Don?"
The question broke him back into the present.
They were in the transporter.
John shook himself. He'd been too caught up in the memory of the moment when he'd realised what Kanaan had been trying to do to Teyla to realise that he'd walked into the transporter while on autopilot - the transporter that wasn't presently working since the city's power was out.
Torran had already levered himself up in John's arms to bat at the destination board, poking a finger at the destinations he'd seen Teyla or John prodding when they got into the transporter.
"I forgot," John told him. "It's not working because the lights are off. We'll have to walk."
The kid sat back and pouted. "I can walk."
"We've got a long way to go," John said as he took them out of the transporter and headed off down one of the corridors that would take them to the infirmary.
"I can walk!"
Afraid of a tantrum at a time when it would be unhelpful, John acquiesced.
In the end, Torran got to walk through the halls, but John picked him up for the stairs. And John was very glad that the earpieces weren't working either. It meant he didn't have Rodney demanding where was he and why wasn't he at the chair?
It meant a few minutes with a toddler who was holding tight to him with one damp hand and looking anxiously about him at the darkened city.
There were lights on in the infirmary - an oddly reassuring sight. The infirmary had its own naquadriah generator for when the main power went out, so the cooling fridges for the medicines, and the monitor systems were working. It looked like someone had hooked up some lights separate to the usual ceiling lights, and compared with the rest of the corridor, the place was bathed in a golden glow as people went about their business, shooting curious glances at John and smiling ones at Torran, but not interrupting them on their way to Teyla.
Carson was peering at a laptop. His expression was a little haggard, but it softened as he saw Torran and John.
"How're you doing?"
"Mama!"
Their eyes met over Torran's head and John saw that there hadn't been any change. He hadn't expected here to be any, but something in his chest tightened a little, even as Carson addressed Torran. "She's over here, laddie."
The last time John had been in here, the aides had just been laying Teyla out on the bed. Woolsey had called him up to the office to give and get the updates on what was happening around the city. Since then, they'd put her in an infirmary gown and attached a pulse monitor to the middle finger of her right hand. She lay with her hands by her sides, eyes closed, her head tilted slightly to one side. Sensor pads were positioned on her temples, and the wires ran out of sight around the back of the bed.
Before Torran came along, John had convinced himself that his gut reaction to Teyla injured or in distress was simply a natural protectiveness, brought on by the injury or helplessness of someone who he was used to seeing as strong.
Looking back, John could see how it had ripped a part of him out to step back during those nine months - to force himself to hold back and walk away, to not give into the temptation to be close.
Now, he swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped up to the side of the bed, jiggling Torran so the boy could see his mom.
"Mama?"
"Shh," he told Torran. "She's sleeping." It wasn't a good answer, but it would have to do.
"Mama!"
"Torran!" He raised his voice enough to get the kid's attention. "Mama's...sleeping. Deep sleep. She can't wake up."
"Sleep?" Torran struggled, trying to climb onto the bed.
"Be careful of the IV," Carson said, and John lifted the now-squealing boy.
"Stop that or...or..." John failed to come up with something suitably punitive.
"Want Mama!"
"You can sit by her if you don't disturb her," he told the boy. "Quietly, okay?"
Torran hung limp for a moment, then nodded. "Torran quiet."
And when John let him down on the bed, Torran wriggled his way in against Teyla's side and curled up next to her, his fingers still in his mouth.
Footsteps echoed faintly through the halls, and John leaned his elbows on the bed beside Teyla, exhausted. "How is she?"
"Physically, we think she's fine. Kanaan didn't... That is to say..." Carson hesitated. "There's nothing wrong with her from what we can determine. She's just...somewhere else."
John let his eyes linger on the familiar lines of cheek and jaw and brow, willing the dark lashes to lift, willing Teyla to look blurrily at him before asking him what he was staring at.
He let his fingers brush her forearm.
Staying wasn't an option. There was a crisis in the city and although he'd stolen the time now, he'd be needed elsewhere pretty soon. Rodney was probably grinding his teeth, and Woolsey would be sending someone to find him before long.
But Torran...
Torran was looking comfortable, snuggled up against Teyla's side, even if he seemed far more subdued than he'd been on the walk over here. John half-smiled, bittersweet, as the kid burrowed into Teyla's shoulder and looked hopefully up at her. It would be nice to lie down and curl up next to Teyla, with no concern other than whether she was going to wake up or not.
You don't get to leave like this, Teyla, he thought, wondering if she could 'hear' him. You survived everything else, so you're going to get through this.
"What's happening out there?" Carson asked gently, and John was only too glad to let his mind get caught up in the exigencies of their situation instead of spending time in morose and maudlin thoughts.
"Power's still off - Radek says the virus corrupted the subroutines that direct power from the ZPMs to the city functions. Rodney managed a burst of power to unlock all the doors, so we can move about the city, but other than that...everything's pretty much stuck as it is."
"And we don't know how it all happened? Other than it being the device..." Carson trailed off and glanced towards Teyla and Torran.
"No."
John's answer was terse. During the brief on Teyla's situation and Kanaan's death, Rodney had made the comment, "Maybe Kanaan decided that boiling the bunny just wasn't enough and decided to boil the whole warren as well."
More than a few eyes had rested on John at that moment, before Woolsey pointed out that Kanaan wouldn't have known of the change in Teyla's status. "This was planned even before he returned to the city."
And the question that nobody could answer was 'why'.
Kanaan hadn't made any good friends in Atlantis while he was there. After Teyla, the only person who could have said they knew him was Ronon, and he admitted that he hadn't known the man all that well - he could only say that from his experience, this wasn't anything he'd expected the man.
Right now, though, the 'why' mattered less than the 'what'. And the 'what' was looking pretty extensive.
"Well," Carson concluded, "Rodney's on it." He eyed John. "I guess you'll want to be getting back?"
He did. And he didn't. But it wasn't as though he had a choice. "Yeah."
"I can look after Torran for a while," Carson said quietly. "You'll need to send someone along from the kitchen with a bottle, though."
"Thanks." John went up to the side of the bed and caught Torran's eye. "Hey, little buddy. They need me upstairs, so you stay here with mom and Carson, okay?"
Torran pouted briefly, but nodded. "Don come back?"
"Yeah, I'll come back." It was terrifying to think this child needed him - that he was responsible for Torran.
"'Kay."
John squeezed the damp little hand that reached out to him, hesitated, then, hearing Carson's footsteps going out of the room, bent to kiss Torran on the head, and Teyla briefly on the lips.
"Be good," he told Torran, and headed out to work.
--
"Well?"
Rodney had done something with one of the city connections so a direct audio line was possible between the control room and the chair room. It meant he could sit in the powered-up control room and harangue John while John sat in the chair.
"A minute, Rodney." John rolled his eyes at Radek, who shrugged. They were both accustomed to Rodney's drive and the impatience that came with it. In situations like this, everyone was tense and everyone's coping mechanisms were different - Rodney's was to jabber, rant, insult, and be snippy with everyone until he solved the problem, at which point he switched over to smug and self-satisfied.
"I can do what I did with the control room to give enough basic power for the chair," Radek told him, amidst a tangle of cables and a converter box. "But it will be very little and I would not advise trying to fly the city. It would seem that it is only small uses of power that the virus does not attack."
Which would be why Rodney's attempt to reboot the city power systems had opened the doors, only to promptly shut down again.
"So...don't overload the system?"
"Don't overload the system."
With a sigh, John let his mind sink into the city's awareness, into a state from which he could sense the city in its entirety. The idea was to use him as a detector to work out a starting point for what was happening to the city - a point of entry for them to begin work on getting Atlantis' systems back up.
It wasn't SOP, and John wasn't entirely comfortable with it.
Usually, when firing off the drones, or flying the city, John was in direct control of the city. It was no more than a 'jumper or an X-303 being told where to go, what to do.
This wasn't about control. In fact, the two times they'd tried this, the more control John tried to exert over the city, the less information he got from it.
He hated being passive.
Desperate times, he told himself as he closed his eyes and let the city block everything else out.
John was always conscious of the city as a faint hum in his blood, a cellular 'white noise' that told him where he was, that welcomed him home. This was like easing himself into the midst of the hum, immersing himself in the constant ebb and flow of the city's strange consciousness so he could pick up every flutter and variation in the city.
A wisp of thought rose up from the hum. This was a bit like the meditation stuff Teyla had tried to take him through - except that he got stuck at the point where he was listening to the city's hum, not putting it behind him - as though it was a barrier he couldn't pass through to get to the next level - if there was a next level to be gotten.
Maybe, in spite of Teyla telling him that he simply wasn't concentrating, it was simply that this was as far as he was supposed to get. Maybe the trance which connected him with the city at a genetic level was all he would get while in a city that recognised him as one of her own.
There.
Like an explosion through his senses, John felt his consciousness expand beyond his body, beyond the limits of his flesh, and the confines of the chair room.
For a moment, John felt like he was the city.
It was a bit like flying, if he thought about it. A series of instinctive responses and adjustments to the flow around him, except that the flow was the city's ethereal presence, not the currents and turbulence of air. There was even the familiar exhilaration, the familiar sense of freedom and release John got from flying.
John 'skimmed' across and through the workings of the city, looking for things that didn't fit, feeling for things that weren't right. He could sense the wrongness, but he couldn't work out what it was, where it was, what was needed to fix it.
Frustration tensed him, and with that tension came a brief resurgence of awareness of his body in the chair room.
"Has he found anything?"
"Not yet, Rodney." Radek's voice was patient.
Their voices were muted in the background of his mind, like sounds heard on the edge of sleep. But the 'sleep' was the humming swirl of Atlantis all around him, beckoning him in.
"Tell him to hurry up. We've just isolated a subspace signal coming from the city. We're broadcasting our position through the galaxy and we need to turn it off now!"
Telling the Wraith where we are...
And suddenly everything became urgent.
"Can't you temporarily power the system--?"
"Look, we've already tried it. Fifteen seconds and it powers down. What's he doing anyway?"
"Colonel?"
John was trying to get out of the trance.
On the two other occasions he'd done this, it had been as simple as a thought: Let me out.
Then, the city had let him out, lifting him out as though on a wave rising up to the solid footing of the shore. This time, it barely stirred, lethargic against John's mind.
But something else moved. A grinding undertone rose beneath the hum of the city, as though something was waking from its sleep and clawing its way into consciousness, disrupting the city's flow.
Halfway between his body and the city, John felt the first stirrings of fear as something rasped past him, leaving an impression of sandpaper and ground glass. His mind felt raw, dangerously open to whatever was seeping into the city.
Let me out, he told the city again, and this time felt it shiver, like a ripple through the sea.
And then whatever he'd sensed beneath the city's flow rose, no longer sleepy but awake and antagonistic. It came at him suddenly, a fire-bright slash of sharp edges, stabbing into his mind. And suddenly his world was broken glass and broken bones, raw flesh and gritty sand, and a pressure on his skin - or whatever passed for the sense of his skin - that pinched him into agony.
John screamed and the scream kept going.
--
SUMMARY: Their goal was always to defeat the Wraith - or, at least, to find a way by which Pegasus could live without the shadow of the Wraith over them. But there could be no great success without an equally great price.
CATEGORY: action-adventure, drama
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Much of it occurs after Enemy At The Gates, but no major spoilers.
NOTES: You know, once - just once - I would like to write a simple romance. Boy meets girl, boy and girl get it on like bunnies, happy ending. Obviously, this is not that story.
Still for the We'll Always Have Pegasus challenge at lostcityfound. And, um, yeah, the story is still going. I'm sorry about the month's delay between Part 1 and Part 2 - it's...well, it's been a rough time writing and I've let myself get distracted. I promise to provide a 'finish' at the end of Part 3, such that it isn't absolutely necessary for me to write the Bloody Epic that my muse thinks would be lots of fun to write.
It may be several weeks before I finish Part 3, I'm afraid, primarily due to my attempt to write something for Valentine's Day. (It's still an attempt right now, we'll see if it becomes an actuality before next Saturday, although I'm kinda doubting it.)
In the meantime...
A Kingdom, Broken - Part II
Interlude
The city always had a waiting feel to it in the late afternoons and early evenings.
Beckett had once postulated that the transient, ethereal quality of the sunset and subsequent twilight worked upon the diurnal habits of the expedition causing a lull in activity and a shift in mood.
Upon the airing of this opinion, McKay had declared Carson to be full of it.
John - and just about everyone else in the expedition - had stayed out of the ensuing argument. But John especially. He had no desire to be caught between the doc who gave him his shots and the friend who most often used him as an outlet for everything that was annoying, wrong, or frustrating about his work and his life in Atlantis.
Whatever the reason, twilight in the city usually had its own charm.
Usually.
Tonight, though, John was tense as he paused outside the 'reading room', looking in at the woman sitting in one of the beanbags.
Teyla had seated herself and Torran so they were looking out at the fading sky, with their backs to the door. From where he stood, John could only see the line of her jaw running into her hair, already full of shadows.
He didn't need to disturb her. He could just walk away. He had before.
But the gap between them was wide enough; a careful, polite distance that John both resented and felt relieved by. For a while, he'd placed the blame on Teyla - she was always too busy with Torran, she had Kanaan to lean on so she wouldn't want him, she was the one who no longer participated in team meals or team nights.
Then Kanaan had left the city a month ago and Teyla had withdrawn even further. At the time, John had figured that if she wanted to be social with her team-mates again, then she could, she just didn't want to.
Two nights ago, Ronon had given him a pithy Satedan smackdown. "You never organise anything she can participate in."
"Hey, she's the one who decided she couldn't spend time with us!"
"But you're the one with the freedom to change the schedule," said Ronon. "She's bringing up a child. Maybe that's not important to you Lanteans, but it's important to her."
The confrontation had thrown John. Ronon wasn't usually so blunt - or so condemning.
Something in him resented that he had to be the one to make amends to her. After all, she was the one who'd withdrawn from them after Torran's birth.
But Ronon's words hadn't given him any peace.
Maybe that's not important to you Lanteans, but it's important to her.
The accusation of not caring about Teyla's concerns had hit harder and closer than John liked. And, privately, he admitted he was tired of being carefully distant. It had been easier when he hadn't had to think about their friendship.
He took a deep breath and stepped into the room. "Hey."
She glanced up. "John." It was obvious he'd surprised her, but other than that one sharp move, she did nothing else.
The silence stretched out for a moment before John forced himself to break it. "How's he doing?"
"Growing," she said, looking back down at her son. Something flitted across her face - pleasure and joy, but tinged with regret. "So fast."
"Yeah, I heard they do that." John was never good at small talk - once upon a time, he'd known what to say to her - back in the early days, when the city and the people and everything was new, when it was just them. Now, he was a stranger. Somewhere along the way, they'd lost something, and John still wasn't sure what it was. "Is he still waking up at 2am?"
Teyla stilled, just a moment. "Not as often as he did. His rhythms are getting better."
"Or maybe you're getting more used to them," John offered. Then he felt like an idiot. Of course she was getting more used to them! "Look, I just wanted to say..." He hesitated. The last time she'd been trying to soothe Torran and come across John - the nights before and after Michael's city takeover attempt, he'd mostly ignored her situation - it had just been easier.
It would still be easier.
It just wouldn't be right. He acknowledged that now. "Now that Kanaan's no longer around to help...if you need a break, you can ask me to mind him for a while."
She blinked. "I..." It was her turn to hesitate. "I did not think you had any experience with children."
John could hear what was said underneath. I didn't think you wanted to help. And, at one level, it was true. At another...
"Well, I'm sure I can learn," he said after a moment. "It's not exactly rocket science."
Teyla's mouth twisted a little. "No," she agreed. "It is not. John, why are you here?"
"I was looking for you."
"And you have not felt the need to 'look for me' while off-duty for the last nine months."
He scowled. "Look, if you want me to leave, I can leave."
"What I want does not matter," she said.
"That's not true."
His instinctive response went unnoticed; she mowed right over him.
"John, you have no interest in my son's upbringing or his care. I should rather you be indifferent than pretend interest simply to...to satisfy whatever guilt Ronon has planted in you."
He stared at her, at the corner of her mouth that dragged to the side in a grimace. "Ronon hasn't..."
"He says he snapped you in the heels. And while his interference is well-intentioned, it is unnecessary. I do not wish for my son to imagine that your people endure his presence simply because his mother is useful."
There was a moment when the balance teetered, when John contemplated getting up, walking out and going to Woolsey to ask for Teyla to be transferred from his team. He'd thought she'd be glad of his help, not angry because he hadn't offered earlier!
He opened his mouth and a little niggling voice - one that he'd been ignoring for the last six months every time Teyla came into the conversation - pointed out that he'd earned her disbelief fair and square. Maybe it stung, but she had every right to be sceptical of his offer.
He forced himself to think past the reactive anger - this was Teyla. And...she was avoiding his gaze, looking down at her son with her fingers brushing back a strand of hair.
"We don't endure his presence. We're just... We're not like your people."
"No," she agreed. "John, I have been thinking of returning to Athos."
For all that he'd been contemplating transferring her from his team a moment before, John's world went blank.
It was just a moment's shock - one more of life's slaps in his face. Then he scrabbled for something to say, just as an ejected pilot grabbed for anything that might be the emergency 'chute release on his free-falling chair. "I... Teyla, we can change."
She made a gesture with one shoulder - indistinct movement in the falling shadows but clear enough in meaning. "There is the joke about the therapist and the lightbulb, John - the lightbulb must want to change."
"We want to change." The protest was weak, and she made a noise that, in anyone else, would have been a snort of disbelief.
"John, Kanaan left because he feared to have his son believe him worthless." Her eyes measured his shift in the beanbag, the way he looked away at the mention of the other man. "Your people considered him unworthy of respect because he wished to bring up his child instead of doing 'worthwhile work.'"
John opened his mouth to contradict her, then closed it.
No, he'd never said any such thing, but he hadn't seen Kanaan as anything more than a babysitter, either. And if he hadn't joined in with Rodney's sneers at 'unskilled work', or the marines' jokes about the Athosian man being henpecked, he hadn't stopped them.
Maybe that's not important to you Lanteans, but it's important to her.
Ronon had made it important - had been making it important over the months since Torran's birth. And maybe it was a uniquely Pegasus perspective, but they were in Pegasus, after all.
"We can change," he repeated.
The silence stretched out for a long time, pushed back only a little by the noise of the waves down on the pontoons far below the window, and the occasional sound of voices along the far ends of the corridors.
When she spoke, her voice was low. "John, I cannot do this anymore. If these are merely hollow platitudes, then I would prefer that you did not lie to me, and just let me leave the city. As long as Kanaan was here, I could be both mother and fighter; but alone... Your people - your way of life - leaves me no choice."
"I mean it," he said, stiffly after a moment of trying to sort through the confusion and conflict inside him. "We can change. I meant what I said about bringing him around if you needed a break." And he would take the kid for a bit to make it easier on Teyla - and find other people to do the same if he had to. "Atlantis can change, Teyla."
"I would like to believe you can," she said after a while. "But the sapling cannot promise the tree's shade."
In Pegasus terms, she'd believe it when she saw it. John told himself he could understand that, even if it stung his pride. "That'll do," he said. " And you won't leave Atlantis without talking to me first?"
It wasn't as though she could leave without talking to him, but it mattered to John that he wouldn't find out about it second-hand. When had he dropped out of the loop with Teyla? Had he been too busy nursing his sense of injury and insult to notice?
"I will not make plans to leave the city without telling you."
It wasn't quite what he'd asked for, but it was a start. And, given that John was beginning to understand she felt, it was probably all he was going to get from her right now. He'd set fire his bridges in pique and jealousy. Now was the time to scrape them back together and work out what was left and whether he could make something of it.
Torran lifted his head and made a burbling noise, then arched in what looked like a pretty obvious attempt to get out of his mom's arms. Teyla eased him up against her shoulder and began to attempt button up her top as her son squirmed.
"Do you want me to take him?"
Teyla's fingers paused over the buttons, and he lifted his eyes to meet her questioning gaze without apology. He was going to make good on this decision; he wasn't going to lose someone else he cared about, and he certainly wasn't going to lose her just because he was piqued that she'd fallen in love with someone else.
The thought zapped through him, like a live wire against his skin as his brain made the connection he'd been trying to avoid for a long time.
Of all the times to come face to face with the realisation...
John swallowed hard. Teyla was holding Torran out towards him - a bridge of trust that he still wasn't sure he wanted to cross. His life was a series of screw-ups, and the only thing that had made the last five years bearable had been Atlantis and the people in the city - among them, Teyla.
He didn't want to screw this up, too.
It took him a moment too long to respond. Her expression grew distant and she dropped her gaze back to the button she'd been struggling with.
Seize the moment, or lose it all. John got up from his beanbag, his arms outstretched to take Torran. "I'll try not to drop him," he said, only half-joking.
When she let him take the now-burbling kid into his arms, John felt a small sense of relief, like he'd been flying blind and had just dropped out from mist and clouds to familiar terrain.
Maybe things weren't perfect now, but they'd get better.
He'd make sure of it.
--
She recognised the woods - the forest on Old Athos, pine-scented needles redolent beneath her bootheels as she walked through the silent land, unnerved.
The woods were never quiet - not like this, without creature or critter, no wind or rustle of leaf, only the sound of her breathing and the thud of her heart above the crunch of dry needles under her feet.
There was no-one but her beneath the leaden sky, nothing living or moving in this place from which the Wraith had scorched all things alive and living on the planet in revenge against their escape from the hiveship. 'The One That Got Away' said the Lanteans, and Teyla had never explained to them that it had nothing to do with getting away and everything to do with the Wraith being Wraith.
But that had been years ago.
The forests would not yet have grown back, Teyla knew, so this was not real - could not be real.
She had fallen into darkness and woken to Old Athos.
Teyla had heard the talk of 'near death' experiences among the Lanteans: visions and seemings that had taken them during times of delirium or confusion. She had never experienced it herself - not like this, with such clarity.
Her people had always believed that death was another journey; that there was something else beyond the body's end.
Was this, then, her ending? She recognised this path - the moss-covered rocks and needle-strewn sod intimately familiar to her. This was the track leading from the camp to the Ring of the Ancestors - and the galaxy beyond Athos.
Metaphors for the journey beyond life?
Teyla turned back, to look in the direction of the camp, and saw only a wall of pale mist - no going back, only the journey forward, then. She took a deep breath and spared a tender thought for her son, for John. They would make their way in the universe without her from now on. John would stand for her son, as protector and guide. He might not feel himself up to the task, but Teyla knew Torran would want for nothing. John had his own care, even if he felt inadequate to the needs of others.
As she looked back at the mist, she saw something move within the whiteness. Amorphous and indistinct, it formed swiftly into shadows, coalescing into a man's form. Fear ran through her, coldly, and she stepped back, only to hesitate as something about it became familiar.
A moment later, the form became solid, a steady figure, clad warmly in boots and a coat Teyla remembered from long ago - worn and shabby, but kept for comfort's sake. "Teyla."
"Kanaan." Her heart gave a great leap of pleasure. She held out her hands and felt the anchoring warmth of his hands drawing them together, touching heads. "I have missed you."
"And I, you." His hands rested on her shoulders, a light grip, without the possessiveness she had experienced at the hands of Michael's imitation of Kanaan. This was the friend she remembered, the man she'd loved. "Torran?"
"He lives," she said. "Sometimes it seems he grows daily...."
It occurred to her that she would never see her son grow up, and sharp grief clutched at her heart as she lifted her head from Kanaan's.
"I was a fool not to realise that Michael had made more plans than I could hope to thwart," Kanaan said, moving easily into the silence. "And in the end, I doomed not only myself, but you and Torran, also." His fingers brushed her cheek and she allowed herself to lean into the caress.
"Torran still lives," she reminded him. "And John will care for him."
He nodded. "I know. He did not think much of me, but I knew he cared for you and Torran, even if he stayed away..." His eyes clung to hers as she looked at him, surprised. "You truly did not know?"
Teyla knew now; it had not occurred to her that Kanaan would have realised... But she did not give him his due. He had often known her better than she had known herself. How galling to realise she had not known him so well - that Michael's semblance of him had deceived her so easily. Even looking at Kanaan now, she could see the difference. "I did not realise you did."
His smile was tender and he bent his lips to her forehead. "Perhaps it is selfish, but I am glad you did not, then."
"Kanaan..."
"Just as I am glad that you do, now," he continued, ignoring her interruption. He stepped back, and all trace of amusement and tenderness faded from his expression, leaving it serious and shadowed. "You must go back, Teyla. Atlantis and our son need you."
Teyla turned, following his gaze down the path that led towards the Ring of the Ancestors. She was confused. "I am not dead?"
"Not yet," said Kanaan. "Your body still lives, clinging to life - it is only your spirit that is wanting."
She turned back. "And you?"
The smile on his lips was warm and wry, full of the tenderness she had never seen until the night he'd invited her to share his bed and she had accepted. They had loved and cared, but, with the advantage of hindsight, Teyla saw that they could not have gone on forever. Kanaan's pride - easy though it was - would not have allowed him to be seen as inferior by the men of Atlantis; and Teyla would have grown bitter without her dreams of freedom from the Wraith and her ability to fight in the war.
Still, they had tried.
"I am dead, Teyla. You accepted it - and Colonel Sheppard's interest - long ago."
"Kanaan... He is not a substitute for you." She felt the need to say it out loud, to tell him what John had never understood. Neither would ever be a replacement for the other - they were two different men, loved in two different ways. What she had shared with Kanaan was not the same as that which she had with John now. She loved them both; it was not an exclusionary choice to her.
Kanaan shook his head, a rueful smile tilting his lips as he shook her, lightly. "You have lived among the Lanteans too long, Teyla. Do you think I did not know that?"
Her cheeks tinted with the heat of embarrassment. "It is easy to forget."
"And I'm so easily forgotten then?" He laughed when she opened her mouth to protest. "Ah, Teyla." His hand lingered by her jaw and after a moment, Kanaan bent forward and pressed a kiss lightly to her lips - no passion, just a gentle brush of mouth against mouth. He stepped back, and if there was a wistfulness in his expression, Teyla felt his tenderness like fire against her skin. "Love is never a substitute, Teyla, whatever form it finds. You and I both know that, and if he is lucky, he will understand it too. Now," he added, "go and save those you love."
She let her eyes rest on him for a moment more, and then turned to go.
The Ring of the Ancestors flared as she approached it, opening without need of a destination address.
At the stairs, Teyla glanced back to see the dark figure standing at the edge of the white mist. One hand lifted in greeting and she felt rather than saw his smile as he turned and walked back into the mist.
Then she was alone before the Ring.
On the other side waited life and love - her people, her friends, and her future.
Teyla walked up the stairs and into passage.
--
John went looking for Torran as soon as Woolsey let them out of the meeting.
"Where are you going?" Rodney sounded positively peevish as John made for the stairs.
"To get Torran from Miko," said John. "They've had him for over five hours now, and other than the message from Nicolas saying they're okay, we haven't heard from them at all."
"You're not going to go and...and baby-sit, are you?" Rodney demanded as he stopped dead in the middle of the darkened corridor. "Because in case you haven't noticed, we've got more pressing matters!"
"I know." John put calm emphasis on the words to make Rodney listen. "And as soon as I've found someone to take Torran, I'll be back to work with the chair."
He could feel the back of his neck heating up as he said the words, knew that Rodney wasn't going to get it. After all, John hadn't gotten it until Ronon had pointed it out, either. And Rodney was, well, a lot more close-minded than John in the balance between work and personal. It was a good thing Keller wasn't in a rush to have children.
If Teyla had been conscious and capable of looking after her son, John would have left the arrangements to her and headed straight for the chair room. But he was only too aware that without her, he was the 'responsible adult' for Torran John Emmagan.
The chair was a slim hope, anyway - John had planned to go and help Ronon hunt up people all through the city. There were some areas of the city that were dark, and others where people hadn't yet sent someone around to check in, so Ronon had offered to check things out.
John had offered to help, before being co-opted by Rodney.
But in the back of his head lurked the knowledge that someone was going to have to deal with Torran sooner or later. Preferably sooner rather than later since Miko had been dealing with him for the last four hours.
"Sheppard..."
"Rodney." John went and tried not to feel guilty.
If it was urgent - as in right this moment now, then sure, John would have left it. But he could spare fifteen minutes to get Torran and explain the situation to him, take him to see Teyla, and find someone to look after him. He hoped one of the infirmary nurses would be obliging, though.
He felt a bit better when he found Torran in the throes of a full, screaming tantrum in one of the labs.
"You're here to take him?" Asked Dionne Morris at the door, her lip curled in distaste. "Good. He's been like this for the last fifteen - ever since Miko said he had to stay here until his mom came for him."
John grimaced. Teyla wouldn't be coming for Torran anytime soon.
Which was why he was here now.
The kid was on his back on the ground and screaming at the top of his voice, tears pouring down his scrubby red cheeks as Miko tried to placate him. Her attempts weren't working too well.
The thing was, right now, everyone was on edge; this was just Torran's way of letting his fears be known. And, unlike everyone else in the city, he wasn't even two years old.
If John had been allowed to throw a screaming tantrum, he wasn't sure he'd have passed up the opportunity.
John touched Miko's shoulder to gesture her away. Her expression was pathetically grateful. He crouched down by Torran, letting his fingers rest on the ground by the screaming boy. "Are you finished?" He asked the child curtly, much as he would have asked a rebellious subordinate.
The screaming subsided for a moment as Torran blinked at him through tear-glazed lashes and hiccuped. "Want mama!"
So do I, John thought to himself, a lump rising in his throat. Instead, he said, "We'll go see mama, then. But," he added as the toddler scrambled up and flung himself against John, "say thank you to Miko and the scientists for looking after you. And apologise for disturbing them."
It came out more like, "Dankymikascitisdory," over John's shoulder, but he shrugged at Miko and smiled to relieve her anxious expression. She'd done as good a job as she knew, and even a mumbled, indistinct apology was better than nothing.
Plus, Torran had been locked up with several scientists who would give John a screaming fit after four hours, so he wasn't entirely unsympathetic.
"You caused them a lot of trouble," he told the kid as they walked out.
Torran hiccuped. "Mama."
"Yeah, well, Mama was busy before, but we're going to see her now." John hesitated, wondering how he was going to explain the situation to the boy. "But...you know how the doors locked and you were stuck with Miko for a long time?"
"Meh."
"Yeah. Well, the thing with the doors locking is that your mama got sick while the doors were shut and...and there wasn't anyone there to help her get better."
Torran stuck his hand in his mouth, but didn't say anything. John went on. "She's... sleeping and we're not sure..." He forced the words through the lump in his throat. "We're not sure when she's going to wake up. You can see her, but you have to be careful, okay?"
Dark eyes considered John, then nodded. "Mama hurt?"
"Yeah," he said huskily. "Mama's hurt. She's sleeping it off, though."
His heart had clenched when he and Ronon had reached Teyla's room.
For a moment, John hadn't been able to breathe, hadn't been able to think past the overwhelming sense of betrayal. Teyla had been lying on the bed with Kanaan curled up against her, his head tucked into the curve of her throat, his hand on her waist.
He'd been wrong. It wasn't him that Teyla had wanted after all.
Then Ronon had strode forward to the edge of the bed, and John realised that neither Teyla nor Kanaan were moving, and fear had propelled him forward, even though something inside him was bleeding.
Kanaan had been long dead, his body stiff with rigor mortis. Teyla had been barely breathing, her skin clammy but still warm, her pulse thready but there. Her top was torn and there was blood beneath her fingernails - matching the scrapes and scratches across Kanaan's face and arms.
At first, John thought the growl was Ronon's. It had taken him a moment to realise that the noise came from his throat.
She'd fought Kanaan. Whatever he'd been going to do to her, she hadn't been compliant.
Suddenly, John could breathe again. The evidence was still damning, but it wasn't conclusive. And Kanaan... What had gotten into the man? He could understand Kanaan being angry that Teyla had found someone else, but this?
"Don?"
The question broke him back into the present.
They were in the transporter.
John shook himself. He'd been too caught up in the memory of the moment when he'd realised what Kanaan had been trying to do to Teyla to realise that he'd walked into the transporter while on autopilot - the transporter that wasn't presently working since the city's power was out.
Torran had already levered himself up in John's arms to bat at the destination board, poking a finger at the destinations he'd seen Teyla or John prodding when they got into the transporter.
"I forgot," John told him. "It's not working because the lights are off. We'll have to walk."
The kid sat back and pouted. "I can walk."
"We've got a long way to go," John said as he took them out of the transporter and headed off down one of the corridors that would take them to the infirmary.
"I can walk!"
Afraid of a tantrum at a time when it would be unhelpful, John acquiesced.
In the end, Torran got to walk through the halls, but John picked him up for the stairs. And John was very glad that the earpieces weren't working either. It meant he didn't have Rodney demanding where was he and why wasn't he at the chair?
It meant a few minutes with a toddler who was holding tight to him with one damp hand and looking anxiously about him at the darkened city.
There were lights on in the infirmary - an oddly reassuring sight. The infirmary had its own naquadriah generator for when the main power went out, so the cooling fridges for the medicines, and the monitor systems were working. It looked like someone had hooked up some lights separate to the usual ceiling lights, and compared with the rest of the corridor, the place was bathed in a golden glow as people went about their business, shooting curious glances at John and smiling ones at Torran, but not interrupting them on their way to Teyla.
Carson was peering at a laptop. His expression was a little haggard, but it softened as he saw Torran and John.
"How're you doing?"
"Mama!"
Their eyes met over Torran's head and John saw that there hadn't been any change. He hadn't expected here to be any, but something in his chest tightened a little, even as Carson addressed Torran. "She's over here, laddie."
The last time John had been in here, the aides had just been laying Teyla out on the bed. Woolsey had called him up to the office to give and get the updates on what was happening around the city. Since then, they'd put her in an infirmary gown and attached a pulse monitor to the middle finger of her right hand. She lay with her hands by her sides, eyes closed, her head tilted slightly to one side. Sensor pads were positioned on her temples, and the wires ran out of sight around the back of the bed.
Before Torran came along, John had convinced himself that his gut reaction to Teyla injured or in distress was simply a natural protectiveness, brought on by the injury or helplessness of someone who he was used to seeing as strong.
Looking back, John could see how it had ripped a part of him out to step back during those nine months - to force himself to hold back and walk away, to not give into the temptation to be close.
Now, he swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped up to the side of the bed, jiggling Torran so the boy could see his mom.
"Mama?"
"Shh," he told Torran. "She's sleeping." It wasn't a good answer, but it would have to do.
"Mama!"
"Torran!" He raised his voice enough to get the kid's attention. "Mama's...sleeping. Deep sleep. She can't wake up."
"Sleep?" Torran struggled, trying to climb onto the bed.
"Be careful of the IV," Carson said, and John lifted the now-squealing boy.
"Stop that or...or..." John failed to come up with something suitably punitive.
"Want Mama!"
"You can sit by her if you don't disturb her," he told the boy. "Quietly, okay?"
Torran hung limp for a moment, then nodded. "Torran quiet."
And when John let him down on the bed, Torran wriggled his way in against Teyla's side and curled up next to her, his fingers still in his mouth.
Footsteps echoed faintly through the halls, and John leaned his elbows on the bed beside Teyla, exhausted. "How is she?"
"Physically, we think she's fine. Kanaan didn't... That is to say..." Carson hesitated. "There's nothing wrong with her from what we can determine. She's just...somewhere else."
John let his eyes linger on the familiar lines of cheek and jaw and brow, willing the dark lashes to lift, willing Teyla to look blurrily at him before asking him what he was staring at.
He let his fingers brush her forearm.
Staying wasn't an option. There was a crisis in the city and although he'd stolen the time now, he'd be needed elsewhere pretty soon. Rodney was probably grinding his teeth, and Woolsey would be sending someone to find him before long.
But Torran...
Torran was looking comfortable, snuggled up against Teyla's side, even if he seemed far more subdued than he'd been on the walk over here. John half-smiled, bittersweet, as the kid burrowed into Teyla's shoulder and looked hopefully up at her. It would be nice to lie down and curl up next to Teyla, with no concern other than whether she was going to wake up or not.
You don't get to leave like this, Teyla, he thought, wondering if she could 'hear' him. You survived everything else, so you're going to get through this.
"What's happening out there?" Carson asked gently, and John was only too glad to let his mind get caught up in the exigencies of their situation instead of spending time in morose and maudlin thoughts.
"Power's still off - Radek says the virus corrupted the subroutines that direct power from the ZPMs to the city functions. Rodney managed a burst of power to unlock all the doors, so we can move about the city, but other than that...everything's pretty much stuck as it is."
"And we don't know how it all happened? Other than it being the device..." Carson trailed off and glanced towards Teyla and Torran.
"No."
John's answer was terse. During the brief on Teyla's situation and Kanaan's death, Rodney had made the comment, "Maybe Kanaan decided that boiling the bunny just wasn't enough and decided to boil the whole warren as well."
More than a few eyes had rested on John at that moment, before Woolsey pointed out that Kanaan wouldn't have known of the change in Teyla's status. "This was planned even before he returned to the city."
And the question that nobody could answer was 'why'.
Kanaan hadn't made any good friends in Atlantis while he was there. After Teyla, the only person who could have said they knew him was Ronon, and he admitted that he hadn't known the man all that well - he could only say that from his experience, this wasn't anything he'd expected the man.
Right now, though, the 'why' mattered less than the 'what'. And the 'what' was looking pretty extensive.
"Well," Carson concluded, "Rodney's on it." He eyed John. "I guess you'll want to be getting back?"
He did. And he didn't. But it wasn't as though he had a choice. "Yeah."
"I can look after Torran for a while," Carson said quietly. "You'll need to send someone along from the kitchen with a bottle, though."
"Thanks." John went up to the side of the bed and caught Torran's eye. "Hey, little buddy. They need me upstairs, so you stay here with mom and Carson, okay?"
Torran pouted briefly, but nodded. "Don come back?"
"Yeah, I'll come back." It was terrifying to think this child needed him - that he was responsible for Torran.
"'Kay."
John squeezed the damp little hand that reached out to him, hesitated, then, hearing Carson's footsteps going out of the room, bent to kiss Torran on the head, and Teyla briefly on the lips.
"Be good," he told Torran, and headed out to work.
--
"Well?"
Rodney had done something with one of the city connections so a direct audio line was possible between the control room and the chair room. It meant he could sit in the powered-up control room and harangue John while John sat in the chair.
"A minute, Rodney." John rolled his eyes at Radek, who shrugged. They were both accustomed to Rodney's drive and the impatience that came with it. In situations like this, everyone was tense and everyone's coping mechanisms were different - Rodney's was to jabber, rant, insult, and be snippy with everyone until he solved the problem, at which point he switched over to smug and self-satisfied.
"I can do what I did with the control room to give enough basic power for the chair," Radek told him, amidst a tangle of cables and a converter box. "But it will be very little and I would not advise trying to fly the city. It would seem that it is only small uses of power that the virus does not attack."
Which would be why Rodney's attempt to reboot the city power systems had opened the doors, only to promptly shut down again.
"So...don't overload the system?"
"Don't overload the system."
With a sigh, John let his mind sink into the city's awareness, into a state from which he could sense the city in its entirety. The idea was to use him as a detector to work out a starting point for what was happening to the city - a point of entry for them to begin work on getting Atlantis' systems back up.
It wasn't SOP, and John wasn't entirely comfortable with it.
Usually, when firing off the drones, or flying the city, John was in direct control of the city. It was no more than a 'jumper or an X-303 being told where to go, what to do.
This wasn't about control. In fact, the two times they'd tried this, the more control John tried to exert over the city, the less information he got from it.
He hated being passive.
Desperate times, he told himself as he closed his eyes and let the city block everything else out.
John was always conscious of the city as a faint hum in his blood, a cellular 'white noise' that told him where he was, that welcomed him home. This was like easing himself into the midst of the hum, immersing himself in the constant ebb and flow of the city's strange consciousness so he could pick up every flutter and variation in the city.
A wisp of thought rose up from the hum. This was a bit like the meditation stuff Teyla had tried to take him through - except that he got stuck at the point where he was listening to the city's hum, not putting it behind him - as though it was a barrier he couldn't pass through to get to the next level - if there was a next level to be gotten.
Maybe, in spite of Teyla telling him that he simply wasn't concentrating, it was simply that this was as far as he was supposed to get. Maybe the trance which connected him with the city at a genetic level was all he would get while in a city that recognised him as one of her own.
There.
Like an explosion through his senses, John felt his consciousness expand beyond his body, beyond the limits of his flesh, and the confines of the chair room.
For a moment, John felt like he was the city.
It was a bit like flying, if he thought about it. A series of instinctive responses and adjustments to the flow around him, except that the flow was the city's ethereal presence, not the currents and turbulence of air. There was even the familiar exhilaration, the familiar sense of freedom and release John got from flying.
John 'skimmed' across and through the workings of the city, looking for things that didn't fit, feeling for things that weren't right. He could sense the wrongness, but he couldn't work out what it was, where it was, what was needed to fix it.
Frustration tensed him, and with that tension came a brief resurgence of awareness of his body in the chair room.
"Has he found anything?"
"Not yet, Rodney." Radek's voice was patient.
Their voices were muted in the background of his mind, like sounds heard on the edge of sleep. But the 'sleep' was the humming swirl of Atlantis all around him, beckoning him in.
"Tell him to hurry up. We've just isolated a subspace signal coming from the city. We're broadcasting our position through the galaxy and we need to turn it off now!"
Telling the Wraith where we are...
And suddenly everything became urgent.
"Can't you temporarily power the system--?"
"Look, we've already tried it. Fifteen seconds and it powers down. What's he doing anyway?"
"Colonel?"
John was trying to get out of the trance.
On the two other occasions he'd done this, it had been as simple as a thought: Let me out.
Then, the city had let him out, lifting him out as though on a wave rising up to the solid footing of the shore. This time, it barely stirred, lethargic against John's mind.
But something else moved. A grinding undertone rose beneath the hum of the city, as though something was waking from its sleep and clawing its way into consciousness, disrupting the city's flow.
Halfway between his body and the city, John felt the first stirrings of fear as something rasped past him, leaving an impression of sandpaper and ground glass. His mind felt raw, dangerously open to whatever was seeping into the city.
Let me out, he told the city again, and this time felt it shiver, like a ripple through the sea.
And then whatever he'd sensed beneath the city's flow rose, no longer sleepy but awake and antagonistic. It came at him suddenly, a fire-bright slash of sharp edges, stabbing into his mind. And suddenly his world was broken glass and broken bones, raw flesh and gritty sand, and a pressure on his skin - or whatever passed for the sense of his skin - that pinched him into agony.
John screamed and the scream kept going.
--
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