by Graham, Jo
John turned and looked back. He could see Teyla’s light probing the darkness. It was a little way, maybe a quarter mile, but in the right direction. And deep enough that they’d all fit comfortably. Some of them could even stretch out and get some sleep.
Sleep. That was the tricky part. Sooner or later he had to sleep. And when he did…
John turned around and started back, the light dancing ahead of him on the jumbled stones.
“Did you find anything?” Teyla called as he came closer.
“Good place,” he said. “Pretty much ideal. How’s Carson?”
“Carson’s adorable,” Carson said with what sounded like a muffled giggle.
John looked at him with horror, wondering what that could be a symptom of.
“Endocet,” Carson said. “It hits me this way. Thought I’d best take it before we tried to move me.”
“Good plan.” Carson’s arm was trussed up, and he looked pale beneath a day’s growth of beard. “Dahlia, can you help him up?”
Dahlia nodded, going around to get her arm beneath his shoulder on the left side. “Just lean on me, Carson.”
“Here now, what are you good for?” Carson demanded. “Big, strong fellow like you?”
“I’ve got to have a hand free,” John said. “And I’ve got to help Teyla.”
“I can walk,” Teyla said through gritted teeth, taking a few steps in the right direction, her breath hissing out in a cry cut off. She nearly fell.
“You can’t. You’ll take too long.” He put his left arm around her back, swinging the P90 forward on the right. “I can cover us, and you can hop along. We’ll all make better time.”
“I didn’t know you were hurt,” Carson said, swaying forward with Dahlia. “I should have a look at that.”
“When we reach shelter,” Teyla said. “I am fine, Carson.”
“You are not.”
“We can’t argue here in the open,” John said. “Those things might still be here. Let’s get under cover, and then you can argue.”
Dahlia shot him a grateful glance.
It seemed like it took forever to cover the quarter mile, with Carson giggling and cursing the entire way, and Teyla’s breath coming in gasps whenever her left foot took any weight, her arm over his shoulder and the P90 weighing a ton in his right hand, the light flickering over the path ahead of them. Whatever she said, she’d really screwed that hip up.
His sweat was cold on his face by the time they reached the last little slope up, and he left Teyla to lean on a rock while he got on the other side of Carson to help him up.
“Cozy,” Carson said. “Just like home.”
“How much Endocet did he take?” John asked Dahlia.
She shrugged. “I do not even know what it is.”
“Morphine derivative,” John said. “It’s a painkiller, probably the strongest one in Carson’s kit.”
“Perhaps Emmagan should take some as well,” Dahlia said.
“I do not need it,” Teyla said firmly. He was kind of with her on that one. He needed her clearheaded, not screwed up like Carson.
John let Carson down gently against the wall. “There you go.”
“Now we huddle together for warmth,” Carson said. “Tee hee.”
Teyla shot him a look that was absolutely foul.
“You’re high as a kite,” John said. “I bet you’re not feeling any pain.”
“Son, I’m not sure I have an arm at all,” Carson informed him solemnly.
“I’m only three years younger than you, Carson,” John said. “You could cut out the ‘son’ part.” He put his pack down and rummaged around. “How about an energy bar on top of all that Endocet?”
“Surely,” Carson said, and reached for it with his good hand.
Teyla slithered down the wall just at the entrance, a muffled gasp escaping her lips as she touched the ground. “I am covering,” she said, her light flashing out over the approach.
John nodded. “I’ll get them settled.” He rummaged around in his pack. “MREs. Here’s one for you, Dahlia. And I’ve got two mylar thermal blankets in here.”
“There is one in my pack as well,” Teyla said.
John tossed the two he had to Dahlia. “Get one around Carson. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
Dahlia nodded, sitting down beside Carson with the MRE in her lap. “All right,” she said, ripping open the package for the thermal blankets. “Let’s keep you warm.”
“You can keep me warm anytime, love,” Carson said, with what might have been meant to be a Sean Connery leer.
John winced. “Dahlia…”
“I know,” she said, cracking a smile. “It’s the medicine. He’s a perfect gentleman otherwise.”
“I am the perfect model of the Scottish physician,” Carson sang somewhere in the vague range of Gilbert and Sullivan. “I rely on pure science, not superstition…”
“That doesn’t even scan, Carson.”
“I’m a doctor, not a poet. Tee hee hee.”
John boggled. “Right.” He pulled out a second MRE and squinted at it. Red beans with rice. One of the better ones. There was no spoon. He edged over and squatted next to Teyla. “Share?”
She nodded, propping her gun against the rock so that the light pointed at the ceiling, diffusing a dim light over them all. He tore it open with his fingers and folded back the foil like a bowl, offering it to her. She took a pinch between thumb and forefinger as John ripped open the cracker pack, using a cracker as a scoop.
“We have been in far worse situations,” Teyla said in a low voice.
“That’s true.” They’d been in worse. He’d been in worse. And he’d been the only one to walk out alive.
“Try to get some rest,” Dahlia said to Carson behind them. “You will feel better after you’ve slept.” Possibly not true, but still a good idea. He’d hurt when the Endocet wore off, but it would have to for them to start walking.
“You could leave us here and go get the warship,” Teyla said. “Come back for us with the ship.” Her voice was low enough that Dahlia couldn’t hear.
John shook his head. “There’s nowhere to set it down here. And if I can’t get it going without Dahlia Radim, that’s going to be a problem.” He took a long drink of water from his canteen. “Besides, once we get to the ship we’ll have climate controlled rooms that we can actually secure against those critters. I can’t leave you here with those things hunting and take half the firepower.”
Teyla nodded seriously, chewing another mouthful of beans and rice. “We will walk out together, then.”
“Right,” he said. “We’ll walk out.”
Chapter Eleven: Quicksilver
Quicksilver dreamed, and in his dreams he walked through blue green corridors lit from above, light pouring in from skylights far up on the side of white towers. Quicksilver dreamed, and in his dream he was looking for something. It was just there, surely. If only he could remember what it was he was seeking.
It might be just around this corner, or down this corridor through heavy doors ornamented with bronze, or past these windows of stained glass. It might be here. It might be just there. If he could remember what it was.
In his dreams, Quicksilver walked Atlantis.
Up a short flight of stairs, and he stood in a huge room where the Stargate waited, glittering with the cold sheen of naquadah, just as the Ancients made it. But it was not what he sought. That was further. Somewhere.
Up another flight of stairs, and consoles beckoned. He could step up to them, could do something.
She stood on the walkway beside him, a slender dark haired woman in a red shirt, and her eyes were on him. “Rodney,” she said, “Wake up.”
“What?”
Her eyes did not leave his, urgent and kind at once. “Wake up, Rodney. You’re dreaming.”
“If I just look at the consoles I can see the dialing address.”
She shook her head gravely. “No. Wake up, Rodney.”
* * *<
br />
Quicksilver woke.
Across the room they shared, his brother slept in his alcove, the lights dimmed for sleeping.
Quicksilver sat up, a curious sense of unreality about him. He had dreamed. He had dreamed of some strange place, and of a queen with dark eyes who spoke to him, who told him within a dream that he slumbered and forbade him the consoles. She had forbidden him. He was sure of that, for all that she had stood quietly by.
He reached for the pipette of chilled water that stood by and drank greedily. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He felt it in every bone in his body.
Dust stirred, rolled over, his eyes hooded with sleep. “Are you well, my brother?”
“I dreamed of Atlantis,” Quicksilver said. His hands shook on the pipette, and he stared at them. Why should he shake? What was wrong?
“What did you dream?” Dust asked.
“I dreamed of a queen,” Quicksilver said slowly. “She spoke to me.”
“Dark haired or fair?” Dust asked.
“Dark,” Quicksilver said. “Dark haired. Small. Slight, I mean.” He pressed his hands together, searching. From somewhere he dredged up words. “Dr. Weir.”
“She Who Is a Strong Place,” Dust said. “You must have known her.”
Quicksilver blinked. “How could I have?” he asked. “You said that she had been dead for years, but I was only captured a few weeks ago. How could I have known her?”
Dust’s mouth opened and closed, an expression of dismay crossing his face. “Well, obviously not. It must have been someone else.”
“Yes, obviously,” Quicksilver said sharply.
And yet. There was something about the way Dust turned from him, something in the dream that made his scalp prickle.
“Do you remember more?” Dust asked.
“No,” Quicksilver said. After all, there was no need to say he had nearly seen the gate address for Atlantis. There would be time enough to tell him later.
Chapter Twelve: Ghosts in the Wind
“Arclight, this is Roundhouse Zero Six. Repeat, this is Roundhouse Zero Six. Do you copy?” The sky was filled with a million stars, the Milky Way stretching from mountains to mountains, glittering like the most amazing special effect a kid ever dreamed up. “Arclight, this is Roundhouse Zero Six.”
The radio crackled. There was no reply.
“It’s no use, Shep.” Holland’s voice was labored.
“Don’t start that.” John thumbed the radio on again. “Arclight, this is Roundhouse.”
“Tell Sabine…”
“Tell her yourself,” John snapped. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Did you tell anybody where you were going?” Holland said. His blue eyes were shadowed in the darkness.
John let out a long breath. “There wasn’t anybody to tell who wouldn’t try to stop me. Not since Mitch and Dex bought the farm.”
“They don’t know where we are. They aren’t coming,” he said. “We’re going to have to walk out.” Holland gave a hollow laugh. “And I can’t walk.”
“Arclight, this is Roundhouse Zero Six.”
“It’s been real, dude.”
“Don’t start.” John looked out across the broken rocks of the canyon at the lambent night sky. “Don’t start with me, Charlie.” There were things he could say, things maybe he should say. But it would be too much like the end. Too much like saying goodbye. At least Charlie wouldn’t start with that honor to have served with you crap. “Just hang in there.”
The sky pulsed with light, stars and galaxies rotating impossibly fast, spinning over the mountains like a wormhole.
He reached for Holland’s hand but it was cold, cold and dry as…
He looked. A dessicated corpse leered up at him, skin aged and withered to leather over bone, the chest wound gaping where it had been fed upon, hand crumbling to dust in his…
* * *
John jerked awake, heart pounding. He was sitting up in the entrance of the little cave, his back against the wall, P90 in his lap pointed out, covering the only approach. Across the broken rocks of the canyon the night sky was lit up with the brilliance of the Pegasus Galaxy, looking toward the center, bright enough to cast strange shadows. Beside him, just where Holland had lain, Teyla slept.
He reached, touched her hand.
Cold and dry as…
His heart shuddering in his throat he grabbed it, crushing it in his, feeling the bones in her hand grind together, his breath escaping in gasp.
“John?” Her voice sounded muzzy with sleep, coming awake suddenly.
Cold ran down his back, shaking with the sudden burst of fear, everything kicking into overdrive with nowhere to go.
Her fingers moved in his. “John?”
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. Not without saying or doing something terrible. Not still seeing before him with his mind’s eye…
Teyla propped up on one elbow, her brows knitting as she looked at him. Her hand closed in his, squeezing his fingers back. She said nothing. She said nothing while he breathed, while his pounding heart slowed.
Beyond her, Carson and Dahlia slept, mylar blankets reflecting dim light, side by side against each other. He had the watch, and he had dozed off. He had to sleep. Sometime he had to sleep and then…
“That is how it happened. Did it not?” she said quietly.
John nodded. He didn’t trust his voice.
Teyla sat up laboriously, careful of her hip, her hand still in his, leaning against the wall beside him, her other arm sliding around his back. It was cold, so very cold. The temperature drops in the desert at night…
“I had to sleep. I fell asleep. I couldn’t stay awake any longer and when…” he stopped. His own voice sounded ragged, strange.
“When you woke he was dead.”
Gentle. Even. That was Teyla. He nodded.
He woke to find a corpse in his arms, already stiffening against his shoulder.
“Yes,” he said.
“Ah, John,” she said, and bent her head to his breast in comfort, her hand tight on his wrist.
He dropped his face against her hair, warm and real and so far from dead. Teyla.
“I grieve for you,” she said, “and for all you lost.”
“I can’t. I don’t…”
She lifted her face, a rueful expression on it. “You forget that I once spent an entire day with you believing that I was Captain Holland.”
“I said…”
“You said a great many things.” Her dark eyes were gentle, but her hand on his wrist was tight enough for him to feel it. “But I am Athosian, and I do not follow your stupid rules. You said nothing that made me think badly of you.”
“I can’t even…” His heart was pounding so loudly, one fear piled on top of another, and nothing to do, nowhere for it to go.
“Look at me.” Teyla’s voice was low and urgent, her hand tightening around his wrist like cuffs. He could not look away. “You have said nothing that makes me think badly of you, then or now.”
He couldn’t look away. He couldn’t disbelieve her. Teyla didn’t lie, not like that. Not with that sound in her voice, not with her eyes snapping as they did.
“I have thought nothing ill of you, John. In all the firmament, you are my fixed star.”
At that he closed his eyes. He couldn’t look, couldn’t see what was written on her face so plainly. There were no words. He had no words. He never did, even in the face of death. “Teyla,” he said, hoping she knew it was apology, that it stood for everything that crowded round in circles, forever unsaid. He dropped his face to her hair, holding her tight, tight as though he would never let go, as though the world would end and they would still be sitting like this, his arm around her and her hand tight on his wrist, his face against the top of her head and hers against his shoulder.
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
She knew everything, knew him to the bone and still dared to look. He rested on her while the stars moved overhead,
unfamiliar stars in strange constellations. One of them was home. One of them was Atlantis.
For as long as it could be. For as long as the powers that be allowed it. Before something happened, and he was sent back to Earth, before there was a road that led to another desert, another death where at least he wouldn’t take anybody with him. Sooner or later, it always goes that way. You can’t escape forever.
“They sent me home,” he said. “After. They sent me home, and Nancy…” John swallowed. “One day they’ll send me home.”
“I will not let you go,” she said, and her voice was fierce. “Do you not understand that I am stronger than that?”
“If I get hurt…” he said. “If I get hurt badly enough I’ll get sent back. And sooner or later I’ll be reassigned anyhow.”
“If you are reassigned you can resign,” she said. “And let them hunt you through Pegasus if they wish, though I imagine Sam would have small stomach for it. And if you are hurt, do you really think that we would allow them to send you back to Earth? Do you think Ronon would allow it, having gone with you and seen your family?”
John shook his head, his face against her hair. “If the Air Force does it, you can’t stop it. If it’s bad enough…”
She lifted her eyes to his. “We are your family, John. When Ronon says he is your brother, he means it. We will not let anyone take you away. We will not let it happen. And do you not think that Carson would move mountains to treat you here no matter what anyone said or allowed? That Radek would open the Stargate for us even if it were locked down? That Sam would fail to find you if you did not want to be found?” Teyla smiled a long, secret smile. “And do you not think that General O’Neill knows that? Do you think he does not know what an asset you would be to the Genii or to any government of Earth as a contractor? Even if you lacked two good legs, do you think that Mr. Desai or the Ariane corporation would not hire you in a heartbeat to be their man? He is too clever for these things not to have crossed his mind. John, you need never return to Earth if you do not want to.”
He let out a long breath he did not know he was holding. It was true.
“John, there is no road that leads to the places you dread. Not anymore. You have passed every turn that led there, and now it is all unknown.”
