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sga_santaTitle: They Might Be Giants
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
auburnnothenna
Pairing: teamfic, a little McKay/Sheppard or OT4.
Rating: R
Recipient:sian1359
Beta'd by:dossier
Spoilers: Season Four episodes up to 4.09 The Seer by implication, nothing in particular.
Summary: Human beings weren't meant for any of the things they're doing here, but they wouldn't be human if they let that stop them.
Part 1
Part 2
Act Four:
"There's been no change," Jennifer announced at Atlantis' morning staff briefing three days later. Sam hadn't expected anything else. Someone would have notified her if there had been any news from the infirmary. Jennifer had just made it official for another day.
Stephen Caldwell was sitting in while Lorne and Zelenka filled in as acting head of the military and science divisions.
"I've tried everything I can think of without knowing the cause."
"No change at all?" Zelenka asked.
Jennifer shook her head. "They're in a persistent vegetative state. There's nothing wrong with their bodies or their brains that I can find to explain it and no way to predict whether this is permanent damage or not."
Sam pressed her hands flat on the conference table. "Do you have any idea at all when – ?" She didn't finish the thought, when Atlantis' best gate team would wake up and tell them what the hell had happened to them? She'd stopped in again the night before and feared the answer was never. All four of the team were still gaunt and colorless, despite care aboard the Daedalus and after being transferred to Atlantis. More disturbing than their ravaged bodies was the sense Sam had of utter emptiness. Whatever animated them, even in sleep, seemed completely absent. She thought they had brought back four shells that just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
She couldn't say that though or tell anyone how disturbing she found them.
"If," Jennifer said. She slumped back in her seat. "None. I am so sorry, but they may never recover. We don't even know what happened to them."
Sam bit her lip before asking, "How long can they go on like this?"
"With proper medical support? Indefinitely. But without knowing the underlying reason for their condition, I can't make any predictions. I can't treat them." Frustration and worry raised her voice higher than usual. "Sorry, sorry. I don't know what else to do."
Sam looked down at her hands. She knew this wasn't going to be popular.
"I think we have to look at the possibility that the best thing we can do is send all of them back to Earth," she stated.
"Ma'am, it's been three days," Lorne protested. "Give them a chance. They could wake up tomorrow."
"Is that likely?" Caldwell asked Jennifer.
From the trapped look on her face, it seemed unlikely. "Honestly? I don't think so. To put it brutally, no one's home and only a night light's still burning."
"What can anyone do for them on Earth?" Zelenka asked. "Nothing. I do not like this plan."
"I understand that, Radek," Sam said, "but Atlantis isn't a long term care facility."
"A week, two, even a month, is not long term," he snapped. "We may still discover what has happened to them from the database. How will we help them then, if you have shipped them to Earth, like old shoes?"
"Earth has facilities and doctors – "
"Bah. Earth." Zelenka leaned forward. "Earth is not our home. It is a nice place to visit, with many things, but I do not wish to return there and I do not think Rodney or Colonel Sheppard would want to either. It is not home to Teyla or Ronon. Will you send them to the IOA? Who will care for them on Earth?"
"The SGC would take responsibility for them under their civilian consultant contracts," Sam explained, while she winced inside. She'd expected disagreement, but hadn't predicted it would come from Zelenka.
"Give them, give us some more time," Lorne said. He looked like he wanted to say much more, but stopped after adding, "Give us a chance."
Sam didn't think there was a chance, but she knew better than to alienate the two men who would likely be taking John and Rodney's places on the senior staff. It wasn't that she didn't want AR-1 to wake up.
"Sending them through multiple wormholes could have medical consequences I can't even predict," Jennifer objected.
Sam thought that was bullshit, but she couldn't call the doctor on it without starting a fight she couldn't really win. If she even tried, everyone on base would turn against her. They'd think she was trying to get rid of the team or just McKay with the others as collateral damage. Jennifer might lodge a formal complaint that would eventually reach the IOA. There would be investigations and even if Sam didn't receive a reprimand it would all be a mess.
"All right," she said slowly. "You have one week. But when the Daedalus leaves, if you haven't found something, they will go back to Earth." She looked at Caldwell steadily, daring him to 'offer' to stay and take Sheppard's place until the SGC sent in a replacement, knowing as well as he did that once he did so, they were unlikely to get someone else in to replace him. Caldwell's mouth quirked up, reading her clearly she thought. He nodded, to her relief. She didn't want to fight about him as well as Zelenka and Lorne. Most of the time in Atlantis her military rank meant little, but she would have used it to argue they didn't need Caldwell, if he'd made it necessary.
Maybe she underestimated him, though. She didn't think he'd send the Daedalus out without being aboard, anymore than a Navy captain would his command. Caldwell had grown into command of his ship, the way Sheppard had grown into his command, the way she hoped she would become more comfortable and sure in hers.
"Thank you," Lorne said and this time she thought he was sincere.
Sam made herself visit the infirmary again that evening. It surprised her to hear someone singing softly and she hesitated before stepping inside. Katie Brown had taken a seat between the beds holding Teyla and Rodney. Her voice trailed away and she flushed when she saw Sam in the doorway. She needed the color; the infirmary fluorescents made her look almost as pale as the patients, except for her hair.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"No, it's all right," Sam assured her. If Jennifer didn't object, she had no grounds certainly. "What was that?"
It had been pretty, light and soothing, in a language Sam hadn't recognized.
"Oh, it's a Tarani lullaby. When their people were evacuated to Atlantis, some of us helped with the children. I learned it then." She plucked at the edge of the pale cotton blanket tucked into the side of the bed nearest her. "I should record it, since they're all gone now."
"Gone?" Sam prompted. She hadn't followed Katie's line of thought.
"Wiped out," Katie clarified.
Sam couldn't find anything to say. Yet another aspect of Pegasus she hadn't absorbed yet: entire populations disappeared over night. The Goa'uld enslaved human worlds, but waged war using the Jaffa. They preferred to keep populations intact because they were useful. Her mind still didn't go the places Lanteans did without being prompted.
Katie patted Rodney's hand gently. "He sings, you know, when there's no one to hear. I thought...well, I thought he and Teyla might like it. I know, a lullaby doesn't seem like the greatest idea when we want them to wake up, but it was all I could think of."
"I think it was very nice," Sam said.
Katie rose from her seat. "I should go."
"Not because of me?"
"No. Someone else will be here soon."
She bent and kissed Rodney's stubbled cheek and then left without explaining what she'd meant. Sam discovered that when Major Lorne came in with a tablet PC and sat down next to Sheppard's bed.
"Just doing the duty roster for next week, ma'am," he said.
She realized he had meant to go over the whole thing out loud for his Co's benefit. "Can't let him get away with sticking you with all the paperwork," she ventured.
"Just layin' around, catching up on his beauty sleep," Lorne agreed. "I figure the torture of listening to this should be enough to bring him around."
"I think that's my cue to retreat."
"Good night, ma'am."
She glimpsed Jennifer in her office, obviously still at work, as she passed. The next night Zelenka was with her, while Eldon Bel murmured the latest gossip out of Engineering. She eventually realized that beyond the nurses monitoring the equipment there was always someone, Sgt. Stackhouse, Dr. Parrish, Lars Opticon, Wilmer, Metzinger, Davos, Campbell from the control room, sitting with the silent foursome, talking or reading to them, or just doing some small task while they kept watch. It bothered her more than she let herself admit that this wasn't just like the SGC.
She'd thought her team had been tight-knit, and they had been, but the SGC itself, while everyone there felt a deep loyalty to it, hadn't shared the sense of community Atlantis did. At the end of the day under the Mountain, you went home and left it behind for normal life. At the end of the day in Atlantis there was no escape to an oblivious world outside it. They only had each other and the city and so each one of them became more precious to them all, known and intrinsically woven in their personal as well as their professional lives. There were no dividing lines in Atlantis.
She wanted to find some way to help the four people in the infirmary. She was head of the expedition now; they were her responsibility and her father had taught her both deliberately and by example what it meant to be a good officer. If he hadn't, she would have still had Hammond and Jack to model herself after.
After leaving the infirmary the fifth night, she tried delving into the database herself, but her Ancient had never progressed beyond a few symbols. She'd relied on Daniel for translations and now felt, again, out of her depth because she was surrounded by people who had immersed themselves in the city and its language, even many of the soldiers. The linguists held regular classes open to everyone, teaching Ancient for Idiots. Sam hadn't wanted to reveal her ignorance by attending any of them, afraid it would underscore again how different she was from Elizabeth Weir. Now she wished she'd swallowed her pride. Everyone in the city cross-trained. Most of the civilian personnel had double doctorates and secondary specialties.
Zelenka lingered in the conference room then followed Sam from there to her office after the staff briefing the sixth morning, after Caldwell had beamed back aboard the Daedalus. Sam knew he'd be alerting his medical people to prepare to transport four comatose patients back to the SGC. Everyone in the city had known that and she'd seldom experienced the sort censure she felt from those around her.
"It is a mistake," he said after the door closed, giving them some privacy, a courtesy to her.
Sam took in his fly-away hair, smudged glasses and gray exhaustion and factored that into her response. "I really don't have much choice. I answer to the IOA and the SGC. They will expect it."
He shook his head. "You answer too fast."
"I know I'm not making any friends," Sam told him, "but it has to be done. There's always a possibility the doctors on Earth will discover something that can help them. We've exhausted our abilities here."
"You are still..." He trailed off in obvious frustration. "You cannot do this job without believing in this place, these people. Stop walking backwards!"
"What?"
"Ah!" Zelenka tugged at his hair. "This is not Earth or the SGC. You aren't SG-1; you are head of Atlantis. Be that."
"I can only do my best," Sam said.
She couldn't tell if Zelenka accepted that or not. He left without saying any more. Sam told herself he was only upset over the prospect of losing his friends – naturally – but she couldn't help wondering if she did frame everything in terms of what she had already faced. Maybe her experiences were blinding her to options that hadn't been available before.
There was always paperwork, though. She busied herself finishing the last of that in regards to the Daedalus' time in port. No matter what, it always came down to cost. Atlantis had to justify itself in terms of cost return. In this case, the expenditure of fuel used to retrieve AR-1.
She signed the last form well after the mess stopped serving dinner. There were always sandwiches and fruit, though, along with coffee now that their supplies were in. She deliberately chose one of the yellow things that looked like miniature pineapples topped by tufty red foliage instead of an apple. She ate the tart foliage first, the way she'd seen Teyla do.
The mess hall lights were turned down and she'd taken a seat that let her look out the windows, but also provided a certain amount of shadowy privacy. The two corporals who came in and began cleaning and straightening the room weren't aware of her.
"It's all wrong, sending the Colonel and McKay back there."
"What you gonna do?" the second man replied phlegmatically.
"Yeah, but you know, it'll kill 'em."
"McKay's got some kind of family, right?"
"Sure, but you figure his sister's going to look out for Teyla and Dex and the Colonel too? You figure the IOA's going to let her, even if she wants to?"
A chair was scraped across the floor with a jerk.
"No one gives a damn about taking care of them back on Earth. IOA's just going to warehouse them in some hospital 'til they die."
Sam set down the fruit without ever trying the creamy sweet flesh. She could picture it much too easily. After a week or two at the SGC, the team would be transfered to one of the military hospitals tasked with handling patients with classified backgrounds. Maybe one or two doctors would be cleared to know even some of the circumstances, but none of the nurses, orderlies or other personnel would have a clue.
Jennifer had said that with medical care and support the four of them might go on, drifting in their comas, indefinitely.
If it came to that, she didn't know if the best that could be hoped for, or the worst, was that the care be competent. It would be a long, slow dying that might outlast all mourning for them.
Act Five:
They were nowhere.
They were nothing.
They were numbers.
They were not numbers another insisted.
They latched onto that. Latched onto that concept other, because other implied outside and inside and self. Self was separate.
Selves were aware.
Packets of data – memories, one of them thought – began reintegrating. With them came the ideas of senses and physicality, both of which were still missing.
Ronon panicked as much as a mental construct lacking a body and its responses, the hormones and quick firing nerves, chemicals coursing through blood streams, could. John tried to reach for him and his mind rejected the state of no-body they were in almost as forcefully as Ronon's did. He couldn't feel the emotion that should have gone with it, though.
Having identified Ronon and himself, John put together that Rodney and Teyla were probably part of this existence too. Teyla confirmed this, conveying that she was there.
Not there, Rodney contradicted, because there was no there, no here. Their existence did not include a place. Once more he opined that they were numbers, discrete packages of self-aware, self-modifying information patterns.
Software instead of wetware? John asked.
Ears and sound were not necessary to convey or receive exasperation. Rodney accompanied it with a confirmation. Close enough.
Teyla asked what had happened? John seconded that. Ronon finally pulled himself together enough to add what is this?
The knowledge presented itself the same way a memory did, yet John clearly knew that it came from outside his mind.
They were in a buffer designed to let them communicate with the native sentients of the gas giant. Their consciousness had been transferred into it automatically on their arrival. Originally there had been failsafes that gave visitors some warning and choice, but those routines had been modified.
The Ancients had come to this system to study its habitable planet and seed it with life. They hadn't been interested in the gas giant until they realized that among its natural radio emissions were patterns. Too ordered to be anything but deliberate, but too alien to comprehend, beyond the guess that something sentient on the gas giant was querying the wider system, maybe even beyond, looking for others.
Fascinated, the Ancients had developed an installation that would generate its own sails to maintain altitude, then worked out a way to contact the natives. The base's logs held the entire history of the two races' interactions. They had exchanged vast amounts of scientific knowledge, discoveries gleaned from radically different mental approaches, before the Ancients withdrew again.
Rodney's mental crow of glee echoed through all three of them. He'd known those jammy bastards hadn't figured out zero point energy all by themselves!
John delved through the same logs, disappointed because the information wasn't there, just a précis of what had been exchanged during several sessions.
They would have to light up the station's beacon and hope that someone would want to talk to them.
Rodney initiated it and they were left waiting.
Teyla wanted to know if there was anyway to make their environment less nonexistent. Ronon just wanted to get back to his body, which wouldn't happen for a set amount of time. The transfer back and forth worked on a schedule.
John tried concentrating and a cube took form around them. Gray walls, floor and ceiling resolved into place.
Rodney was not impressed.
John tried to add windows and color, but the entire thing shivered and started to dissolve. He had to settle for the gray.
Teyla added a set of bantos sticks in a corner. Ronon grumbled and presented himself as something that reminded John of a sabertooth tiger, only with a mottled green and brown coat.
Rodney manifested himself as a glowy ball of light and wanted to know where John was, but maintaining the 'room' didn't leave John enough energy to 'make' himself in it too.
John had no idea how long they were there before four other presences joined them. Teyla meditated or seemed to. Ronon stalked back and forth, growling with impatience. Time didn't register unless he checked the station logs. Hours, eons, picoseconds, days, any and all could have passed outside. Rodney occupied himself ranging through the accumulated data within the installation, accessing it through the buffer.
Iss: P482M.³ greeted them with a familiarity that rocked John. Iss: P482M.³ had been among those who interacted with the Ancients before.
It had, like most of its kind, chosen to return it said. John didn't understand clearly and wondered if others had ascended or died as Iss: Cu356v¬ and Rodney began exchanging strings of numbers and mathematical concepts. Their conversation quickly reached levels far too esoteric for John to grasp even while augmenting his abilities with the station's information processors.
Many *syncretized* before they could *translate* Iss: Se3908¨ explained unhelpfully.
*Translate?* Teyla and Ronon echoed.
Iss: Xe18s/au° expanded to define: Low-pressure carbon-based oxygen-burning envelopes were provided to support Iss consciousness outside contact buffer.
Communication wasn't the same. There were no emotions and no physical cues to read. Information moved back and forth between their minds, but some instinct warned it would be a painful mistake to try and share thoughts.
John didn't know if he even wanted to share thoughts. No more than they were already with the deliberate exchanges that mimicked vocalization, anyway.
He found a notation in the logs on the subject. Mindas Ans and Liada Ans had suffered pattern corruption and been withdrawn from the project due to persistent pattern degradation. John figured that meant they'd gotten mixed up in each other and then started falling apart when they separated and didn't come out with some critical bits of information that made up who they were.
He opened a private communication line to Rodney and relayed the file in question.
Confirmation came from the four new ones. Iss: Cu356v¬. *Syncretization* between information patterns resulted in inability to return to proper physical envelopes.
Rodney sent an apology for letting the Iss access their private communication tagged with regret that they couldn't touch each other beyond what they already had. There was always something between them to stop them, it seemed.
Teyla found the logs on *translation* and copied them to John, Ronon and Rodney. Clone bodies had been the medium of exchange between the Iss and the Ancients, a solution arrived at after the other Ancients found *syncretization* too disturbing even for them.
More disturbing than aliens in artificial bodies grown just for them. John found that more than a little uncomfortable to contemplate.
Iss: P482M.³ transmitted: The low-pressure carbon-based oxygen-burning lifeforms who created this meeting place discontinued contact.
John wanted to know why.
They were afraid.
Of what?
Iss: P482M.² returned to *syncretize*. To become Iss: P482M.³.
Iss: Xe18s/au° queried if they wished to *syncretize*.
Iss: Cu356v¬ tagged a final data exchange to Rodney offering to become Iss: Cu356v¬².
Rodney's wordless sense of 'oh crap' didn't need translation as John followed his interrogation of the station's log to the latest entries, including the removal by unidentified means – Asgard beam he realized – of their carbon envelopes and the unanswered hails from the Daedalus. Ronon and Teyla comprehended it with them.
We're stuck here, Ronon stated.
Teyla refrained from anger or fear. They will return. We must only wait.
In the meantime, I can learn so much from the Iss, Rodney added. The rest of you might get bored, but you'll just have to deal.
Indefinite existence without proper support envelopes results in pattern degradation. Once decay begins *translation* or *syncretization* are no longer possible, Iss: P482M.³ informed them.
John checked the logs and confirmed it. If they didn't get back to their own bodies, eventually their consciousness would unravel. The Iss offer might be their only way to survive.
They wouldn't be human anymore, though.
John wasn't sure he was ready to be Iss: P482M.4.
Our people will come back, he thought, and, We'll wait as long as we can.
They did, but eventually alarms started pulsing through the system. Teyla's bantos sticks shivered out of existence first, then John's cube began to dissolve. Ronon's getaya shrank into nothing.
Each of them initiated the transfer as late as they could, leaving the buffer as they began shredding at the edges. They left without discussing their decisions, whether to *syncretize* or finally unravel into true nothingness.
God, you're stubborn, John expressed, already ragged at the edges, hanging together pretty stubbornly himself.
Don't even start.
We could –
You saw the records. It made them crazy.
He synthesized every memory of the two of them together, compressed and purified it, and shoved it at Rodney.
I know, I just –
The energy spike from Rodney meant something, but John couldn't interpret it. He had to go. Iss: P482M.³ was waiting. He held onto one last transmission, though.
Me too.
Rodney's light flickered out last.
Act Six:
"Thank you for making the effort," Sam told Caldwell. He was already aboard the Daedalus, ready to leave the system. So were the four members of AR-1. She'd stood in the infirmary as they were beamed out in a flash of white light. The silence afterward...She'd seen the same shell shocked looks at the SGC when they lost Janet, when they lost Daniel, before they started expecting him to come back. She'd fled back to her office.
"I'll make sure they're taken care of," he replied. The steady determination in his words eased a little of the guilt she felt. He would honor this promise the way he did his officer's oath out of respect for the team.
She couldn't smile and knew he couldn't see a nod. Instead she cleared her throat and forced out the words, "I know you will, Colonel."
"Take care, Colonel Carter," he told her. "Expect us back in two months."
"We will – "
Zelenka bolted into her office without pausing to knock, followed by Keller, Lorne and Justin Metzinger.
"You have to take them back!" Zelenka exclaimed.
"Dr. Zelenka," Sam said, hoping that if she stayed calm, he would do the same.
"Colonel Caldwell!" Zelenka yelled. "You have to take their bodies back to the transferral station!"
"Dr. Zelenka?" Caldwell asked.
"Yes."
"Explain," Sam said.
Zelenka waved at Metzinger, who stepped forward and began explaining. "The station was established to facilitate contact between the Ancients and the indigenous sentients of the gas giant. They transferred their minds into a buffer. I finally found the citation in a serious of classified and coded documents. Apparently, something happened and several of their people defected back to the Iss."
"They cannot wake up until their consciousnesses are transferred back into their bodies," Zelenka finished.
Sam looked at Jennifer. "Is this possible?"
Jennifer shrugged. "Justin showed me the documentation, Colonel. I think he's right."
"What are we going to lose by trying?" Lorne added.
Sam said, "Colonel Caldwell, are you up to another detour?"
"I think I can justify it on my next expenditure report," he replied, having heard everything along with her.
"And a few extra passengers?" Sam asked.
"We can find the space."
They were in hyperspace half an hour later. Sam watched the swirl of deep blue through the view port in the officers' mess and sipped a cup of coffee. She should have stayed back in Atlantis, should have insisted Zelenka and Lorne stay if she didn't, but instead, they'd all handed off their duties to their seconds. She knew why. They had to come so that they would know, down to their bones, even if they failed, that they had tried everything. They'd come too close to missing this chance to risk anyone else not following it through to the end.
At least Zelenka and Lorne and Keller weren't feeling sick with guilt. Sam kept thinking she'd let herself be spooked into making her decisions too quick. She'd fallen back on procedure, instead of trusting her people's instincts, and hated the reflection she'd become of McKay when they'd first met. When had she become the kind of person who would have let Teal'c die in the DHD buffer? No one had looked her to come up with a fix for this; she'd been the nay-sayer standing in their way.
Command sucked, she decided. She had to do better. Oh, God, and she had to apologize to McKay, because she'd never seen his actions from his side before. He'd been wrong, but he'd been technically right. Somewhere along the way he'd learned what she'd always known about team loyalty and taking risks, but she hadn't learned her lesson from him until now. Now she had to put the two together.
Keller joined her. "Why isn't it the same blue as the wormhole?" she asked, referring to view of hyperspace.
"Because it isn't blue at all," Sam replied absently. "No one sees it the same way. We've just all agreed it's blue, so that's what our brains tell us our eyes are seeing."
"Ow," Jennifer said. "That makes my head hurt."
Sam glanced away from the port to her. "No, that's a hyperspace headache. Don't stare too long."
"Oh."
The silence lingered and Sam figured Jennifer had found her to tell her something. Something bad otherwise she wouldn't be delaying now that Jennifer had found her.
"What is it?"
"I read through the entire entry Justin found. It's...freaky, frankly. The Ancients met these aliens and let some of them actually merge their personalities with them when they came back to their bodies."
Weirder things had happened and Sam had already got the idea that the Ancients were not the all-knowing, all-wise bunch of do-gooders Daniel had first thought they were. She personally found the idea shudder-worthy, but she had her own history with Jolinar coloring her reactions.
"But it was voluntary, right?"
"Oh, yes," Jennifer said. "Anyway, that wasn't what freaked the Ancients out."
"What was?" Sam asked.
"A bunch of them suicided, one went crazy, and the rest went back."
"Went back?"
"Went back and joined the Iss, leaving their bodies behind."
"Oh."
"Yeah," Jennifer said. "The Ancients hadn't realized it could go both ways. When two more scientists 'defected', they pulled out entirely."
"I can't imagine Colonel Sheppard or any of his team defecting," Sam told her. She couldn't.
"Well, that's the other thing," Jennifer added. "They might not have a choice. The transfer thingie? If they're in it too long? They'll die."
Sam set down her coffee cup.
"How long?"
Jennifer looked away. The blue hyperspace light bathed her face.
"We may already be too late."
Act Seven:
Waking was a gradual recognition of all the discomforts and pains of a body and gravity added together. Weight, an ache in an ankle twisted to the side, the bite of cold metal decking into his shoulder blades and his ass, stiffness in his back, all of it slowly formed a picture of his body again. It felt like almost too much, too strange, too alien. John had to concentrate on the slow in and out of his own breath, ribs moving, lungs inflating, tell himself it was familiar, to stave off a jolt of panic. Part of him found it all new now.
Different.
He wrinkled his nose at the smells, recognizing his own odor overlain with antiseptics and a confusing mixture of scents from the jumper and the infirmary.
Carbon-based, oxygen-burning.
Someone he thought was Ronon groaned nearby. He flinched at the sound. Too loud, too loud, too strange after the silence of the buffer, to bear. How had they done this before? It seemed impossible.
Blind.
No, not blind, he realized, only the darkness of closed eyes. He could open them and see again.
John blinked his gummy eyes open, wincing at the glare until the blur above him resolved into the jumper's interior. He stared, overtaken by the bronze-gray color, the shadows and reflections, the pure mathematical curve of the interior hull. The opaque white lights set periodically along it left afterimages burnt into his retinas. He had to close his eyes again, watched the bright smears of orange, red and white bloom against the darkness inside for a while, the way he'd done as a child after staring at the sun.
He listened to himself breathe and explored his own mouth with his tongue, intrigued by the sensitivity, the tickle at the roof, the smooth perfect fit of his teeth. He clacked them together, feeling the flex of his jaw muscles, fascinated by the sound, and then swallowed just to feel his throat work. It hurt, he realized, but did it again.
Eyes opened again and this time he turned his head.
"Sheppard?"
That deep voice, gone hoarse and rough, could only be Ronon.
"Ye– " He had to cough through a painfully dry and sore throat. "Yeah." His mouth tasted like shit, too. God, had he been intubated? What had they – Memory unfolded. He scrabbled at the deck, pushing himself up enough to see Ronon and Teyla. Teyla's eyes were opening, watching him, while Ronon had an arm thrown over his. Ronon's hand opened and closed into a fist. Teyla had begun stroking her own forearm.
"Rodney?" he rasped out. His stomach rebelled at the same time and he tasted bile rising up through his throat. He wondered if he would throw up, what he would throw up, what had been done to his body while he wasn't there.
Teyla's eyes shifted to the side. John rolled over and gasped with relief, relief that instantly turned to worry. Teyla and Ronon were both awake, but Rodney wasn't.
John reached out and set his shaking hand on the curve of Rodney's shoulder. Warmth immediately met his palm through the pale, thin scrub top. John looked at the fabric in blank confusion until he figured out they'd all been dressed in scrubs while their bodies were...away. John rubbed his hand down Rodney's arm and then up, all without thinking. His calluses caught on the smooth cotton and pushed it into small wrinkles. Rodney was so solid and there. He knew he should stop, before he went too far, but John couldn't let go. He couldn't slow his racing heartbeat either, because he needed more. He needed Rodney back and not just this slow breathing body. He needed Rodney to still be with them.
He couldn't do this without Rodney. He'd figured that out long ago. Rodney was his key.
The cold from the deck seemed to spread through him. John wriggled closer to Rodney, closer and closer, but it still felt too far. He tucked his face against Rodney's neck, stubble prickling against his lips, and breathed in his scent. He shoved his hand up under the scrub top and slung one leg across Rodney's thighs.
"Come on, come on," he rasped out through a throat gone almost too tight to form the words.
"Unh."
He clutched at him tighter.
"Rodney."
"John."
Rodney flailed around and hit the back of John's head, then his fingers were in John's hair, flexing gently against his scalp, better than he could have dreamed.
Rodney twisted until they were wrapped around each other, mapping skin with fingertips and lips, while the whisper slide of fabric and harsh breaths told him Ronon and Teyla were just as intent. Rodney's mouth was hotter than John's, sour and stale. John didn't care. Rodney's tongue traced his lips over and over, harder and harder, until they were pressed tight to his teeth.
John scrabbled at his waist, getting out of his scrub pants, throwing them away blindly when Rodney's hand shoved between his thighs. They rolled over and he glimpsed Ronon tearing off his clothes and Teyla's. His elbow jolted against the decking with a thump and a flare of agony up his arm. His other hand remained trapped under Rodney's top.
"This is, this is, this is," Rodney repeated as they shed everything else, awkward and urgent. John licked at his collarbone and moaned because Rodney's voice hurt and only silence would have been worse. He needed more. Everything jarred, his senses felt wrong despite a lifetime spent this way and he needed to make it his own again.
Licking and then sucking weren't enough. Tongues weren't enough, hands weren't enough, skating over each other's skin, digging in and leaving purple-dark bruises on each other.
Ronon had his face between Teyla's legs and she had scored his back with her nails. The smell of blood tugged at John's senses, pushing him until he bit the soft skin at Rodney's armpit and Rodney keened in protest, but did nothing to stop him.
Sensations blurred together, instants stitched together without sense: his cheek on Rodney's thigh, the rough hairs catching against John's jaw, the taste of gel or glue on Rodney's chest where a monitor must have been placed, Ronon's grunts, wet-slick slap of skin on skin, Teyla's hand, palm pale, fingers spread starfish-wide open and tense, the mole at the back of Rodney's neck that John had wanted to touch for so long, because it wasn't allowed, Rodney's nipples and Rodney's hand closing around his balls.
Too harsh, too perfect, John curled his fingers around Rodney's broad wrist as he squirmed up Rodney's body. His knee hit Rodney's, his other hand slipped on the decking, but he didn't stop. He plastered himself against Rodney, rutting and rubbing, their arms trapped between them, and grinned at him.
It didn't matter any longer what anyone might see or think, they needed this and John wasn't going to deny anything, not when Rodney was offering him everything.
This was real, they were real again, and the relief this time was so strong it had finally become desperation.
They moved together, panting and wild to ground themselves in their bodies again. Teyla and Ronon were doing the same, sometimes reaching out and touching John or Rodney too, because they needed confirmation of them too.
The hails from the Daedalus only penetrated afterward when all four of them were limp and tangled together in a sweaty sprawl. Body heat and their harsh breaths left the air in the jumper humid and redolent with the scents of sweat, spit and come, mingled with a trace of blood and their own bad breath; the air cleaners were overwhelmed.
"Jumper One, this is the Daedalus, please respond."
Rodney tipped his head toward the cockpit. John groaned softly, but levered himself to his feet. His body felt spent. He ached in places he'd never ached before. He fished up a pair of scrub pants tossed on one of the cushionless benches and pulled them on, nearly falling over before Ronon steadied him, then staggered to the pilot's console, politely averting his gaze from Teyla's bare breasts.
He dropped into the seat and activated the comm.
"Daedalus, this is Jumper One."
"Good to hear your voice, Colonel Sheppard. Is everybody okay?"
That was Colonel Carter on the comm. John blinked stupidly at the console, then coughed and answered.
"We're all..." He glanced back at his team, all uncoordinated limbs and glazed eyes, slowly dressing in whatever came to hand, and couldn't hold back his smile. Everything was new, everything was different, and everything was exactly the same. They needed to clean up, so he'd have to persuade Carter to let them come back in the jumper. "Yeah. Just give us a minute."
Rodney tottered into the cockpit, muttered, "Oh my God," and slumped into the co-pilot's chair with a dead giveaway wince. He looked at John cautiously. John leaned over and placed his hand on the nape of Rodney's neck.
"Rodney?"
"I'm here," he said, a tentative smile curling the corners of his mouth up that John didn't think was for Carter.
"When you get back...I owe you an apology. Actually, I owe all of you an apology."
John laughed at the way Rodney's mouth fell open and then worked, unable to form any words. He rubbed the back of Rodney's neck affectionately.
"I think you broke him, Colonel," he told Carter.
"She did not!" Rodney snapped. "I'm just..."
"Poleaxed?"
"Trying to pick out which instance in particular she owes me for – "
"Maybe we'd better leave this until later," Carter interrupted. "Colonel Sheppard, are you ready to come home?"
"Give us a minute. The jumper's completely charged, we just have to undock and get out of here."
"You're all really okay?"
Ronon clapped Rodney on his shoulder after coming into the cockpit, before seating himself. Teyla followed and drifted her finger along John's temple briefly.
"We're all good."
They would be.
Besides, they had a hell of story to tell.
-end-
Author:
auburnnothennaPairing: teamfic, a little McKay/Sheppard or OT4.
Rating: R
Recipient:
sian1359Beta'd by:
dossierSpoilers: Season Four episodes up to 4.09 The Seer by implication, nothing in particular.
Summary: Human beings weren't meant for any of the things they're doing here, but they wouldn't be human if they let that stop them.
Part 1
Part 2
Act Four:
"There's been no change," Jennifer announced at Atlantis' morning staff briefing three days later. Sam hadn't expected anything else. Someone would have notified her if there had been any news from the infirmary. Jennifer had just made it official for another day.
Stephen Caldwell was sitting in while Lorne and Zelenka filled in as acting head of the military and science divisions.
"I've tried everything I can think of without knowing the cause."
"No change at all?" Zelenka asked.
Jennifer shook her head. "They're in a persistent vegetative state. There's nothing wrong with their bodies or their brains that I can find to explain it and no way to predict whether this is permanent damage or not."
Sam pressed her hands flat on the conference table. "Do you have any idea at all when – ?" She didn't finish the thought, when Atlantis' best gate team would wake up and tell them what the hell had happened to them? She'd stopped in again the night before and feared the answer was never. All four of the team were still gaunt and colorless, despite care aboard the Daedalus and after being transferred to Atlantis. More disturbing than their ravaged bodies was the sense Sam had of utter emptiness. Whatever animated them, even in sleep, seemed completely absent. She thought they had brought back four shells that just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
She couldn't say that though or tell anyone how disturbing she found them.
"If," Jennifer said. She slumped back in her seat. "None. I am so sorry, but they may never recover. We don't even know what happened to them."
Sam bit her lip before asking, "How long can they go on like this?"
"With proper medical support? Indefinitely. But without knowing the underlying reason for their condition, I can't make any predictions. I can't treat them." Frustration and worry raised her voice higher than usual. "Sorry, sorry. I don't know what else to do."
Sam looked down at her hands. She knew this wasn't going to be popular.
"I think we have to look at the possibility that the best thing we can do is send all of them back to Earth," she stated.
"Ma'am, it's been three days," Lorne protested. "Give them a chance. They could wake up tomorrow."
"Is that likely?" Caldwell asked Jennifer.
From the trapped look on her face, it seemed unlikely. "Honestly? I don't think so. To put it brutally, no one's home and only a night light's still burning."
"What can anyone do for them on Earth?" Zelenka asked. "Nothing. I do not like this plan."
"I understand that, Radek," Sam said, "but Atlantis isn't a long term care facility."
"A week, two, even a month, is not long term," he snapped. "We may still discover what has happened to them from the database. How will we help them then, if you have shipped them to Earth, like old shoes?"
"Earth has facilities and doctors – "
"Bah. Earth." Zelenka leaned forward. "Earth is not our home. It is a nice place to visit, with many things, but I do not wish to return there and I do not think Rodney or Colonel Sheppard would want to either. It is not home to Teyla or Ronon. Will you send them to the IOA? Who will care for them on Earth?"
"The SGC would take responsibility for them under their civilian consultant contracts," Sam explained, while she winced inside. She'd expected disagreement, but hadn't predicted it would come from Zelenka.
"Give them, give us some more time," Lorne said. He looked like he wanted to say much more, but stopped after adding, "Give us a chance."
Sam didn't think there was a chance, but she knew better than to alienate the two men who would likely be taking John and Rodney's places on the senior staff. It wasn't that she didn't want AR-1 to wake up.
"Sending them through multiple wormholes could have medical consequences I can't even predict," Jennifer objected.
Sam thought that was bullshit, but she couldn't call the doctor on it without starting a fight she couldn't really win. If she even tried, everyone on base would turn against her. They'd think she was trying to get rid of the team or just McKay with the others as collateral damage. Jennifer might lodge a formal complaint that would eventually reach the IOA. There would be investigations and even if Sam didn't receive a reprimand it would all be a mess.
"All right," she said slowly. "You have one week. But when the Daedalus leaves, if you haven't found something, they will go back to Earth." She looked at Caldwell steadily, daring him to 'offer' to stay and take Sheppard's place until the SGC sent in a replacement, knowing as well as he did that once he did so, they were unlikely to get someone else in to replace him. Caldwell's mouth quirked up, reading her clearly she thought. He nodded, to her relief. She didn't want to fight about him as well as Zelenka and Lorne. Most of the time in Atlantis her military rank meant little, but she would have used it to argue they didn't need Caldwell, if he'd made it necessary.
Maybe she underestimated him, though. She didn't think he'd send the Daedalus out without being aboard, anymore than a Navy captain would his command. Caldwell had grown into command of his ship, the way Sheppard had grown into his command, the way she hoped she would become more comfortable and sure in hers.
"Thank you," Lorne said and this time she thought he was sincere.
Sam made herself visit the infirmary again that evening. It surprised her to hear someone singing softly and she hesitated before stepping inside. Katie Brown had taken a seat between the beds holding Teyla and Rodney. Her voice trailed away and she flushed when she saw Sam in the doorway. She needed the color; the infirmary fluorescents made her look almost as pale as the patients, except for her hair.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"No, it's all right," Sam assured her. If Jennifer didn't object, she had no grounds certainly. "What was that?"
It had been pretty, light and soothing, in a language Sam hadn't recognized.
"Oh, it's a Tarani lullaby. When their people were evacuated to Atlantis, some of us helped with the children. I learned it then." She plucked at the edge of the pale cotton blanket tucked into the side of the bed nearest her. "I should record it, since they're all gone now."
"Gone?" Sam prompted. She hadn't followed Katie's line of thought.
"Wiped out," Katie clarified.
Sam couldn't find anything to say. Yet another aspect of Pegasus she hadn't absorbed yet: entire populations disappeared over night. The Goa'uld enslaved human worlds, but waged war using the Jaffa. They preferred to keep populations intact because they were useful. Her mind still didn't go the places Lanteans did without being prompted.
Katie patted Rodney's hand gently. "He sings, you know, when there's no one to hear. I thought...well, I thought he and Teyla might like it. I know, a lullaby doesn't seem like the greatest idea when we want them to wake up, but it was all I could think of."
"I think it was very nice," Sam said.
Katie rose from her seat. "I should go."
"Not because of me?"
"No. Someone else will be here soon."
She bent and kissed Rodney's stubbled cheek and then left without explaining what she'd meant. Sam discovered that when Major Lorne came in with a tablet PC and sat down next to Sheppard's bed.
"Just doing the duty roster for next week, ma'am," he said.
She realized he had meant to go over the whole thing out loud for his Co's benefit. "Can't let him get away with sticking you with all the paperwork," she ventured.
"Just layin' around, catching up on his beauty sleep," Lorne agreed. "I figure the torture of listening to this should be enough to bring him around."
"I think that's my cue to retreat."
"Good night, ma'am."
She glimpsed Jennifer in her office, obviously still at work, as she passed. The next night Zelenka was with her, while Eldon Bel murmured the latest gossip out of Engineering. She eventually realized that beyond the nurses monitoring the equipment there was always someone, Sgt. Stackhouse, Dr. Parrish, Lars Opticon, Wilmer, Metzinger, Davos, Campbell from the control room, sitting with the silent foursome, talking or reading to them, or just doing some small task while they kept watch. It bothered her more than she let herself admit that this wasn't just like the SGC.
She'd thought her team had been tight-knit, and they had been, but the SGC itself, while everyone there felt a deep loyalty to it, hadn't shared the sense of community Atlantis did. At the end of the day under the Mountain, you went home and left it behind for normal life. At the end of the day in Atlantis there was no escape to an oblivious world outside it. They only had each other and the city and so each one of them became more precious to them all, known and intrinsically woven in their personal as well as their professional lives. There were no dividing lines in Atlantis.
She wanted to find some way to help the four people in the infirmary. She was head of the expedition now; they were her responsibility and her father had taught her both deliberately and by example what it meant to be a good officer. If he hadn't, she would have still had Hammond and Jack to model herself after.
After leaving the infirmary the fifth night, she tried delving into the database herself, but her Ancient had never progressed beyond a few symbols. She'd relied on Daniel for translations and now felt, again, out of her depth because she was surrounded by people who had immersed themselves in the city and its language, even many of the soldiers. The linguists held regular classes open to everyone, teaching Ancient for Idiots. Sam hadn't wanted to reveal her ignorance by attending any of them, afraid it would underscore again how different she was from Elizabeth Weir. Now she wished she'd swallowed her pride. Everyone in the city cross-trained. Most of the civilian personnel had double doctorates and secondary specialties.
Zelenka lingered in the conference room then followed Sam from there to her office after the staff briefing the sixth morning, after Caldwell had beamed back aboard the Daedalus. Sam knew he'd be alerting his medical people to prepare to transport four comatose patients back to the SGC. Everyone in the city had known that and she'd seldom experienced the sort censure she felt from those around her.
"It is a mistake," he said after the door closed, giving them some privacy, a courtesy to her.
Sam took in his fly-away hair, smudged glasses and gray exhaustion and factored that into her response. "I really don't have much choice. I answer to the IOA and the SGC. They will expect it."
He shook his head. "You answer too fast."
"I know I'm not making any friends," Sam told him, "but it has to be done. There's always a possibility the doctors on Earth will discover something that can help them. We've exhausted our abilities here."
"You are still..." He trailed off in obvious frustration. "You cannot do this job without believing in this place, these people. Stop walking backwards!"
"What?"
"Ah!" Zelenka tugged at his hair. "This is not Earth or the SGC. You aren't SG-1; you are head of Atlantis. Be that."
"I can only do my best," Sam said.
She couldn't tell if Zelenka accepted that or not. He left without saying any more. Sam told herself he was only upset over the prospect of losing his friends – naturally – but she couldn't help wondering if she did frame everything in terms of what she had already faced. Maybe her experiences were blinding her to options that hadn't been available before.
There was always paperwork, though. She busied herself finishing the last of that in regards to the Daedalus' time in port. No matter what, it always came down to cost. Atlantis had to justify itself in terms of cost return. In this case, the expenditure of fuel used to retrieve AR-1.
She signed the last form well after the mess stopped serving dinner. There were always sandwiches and fruit, though, along with coffee now that their supplies were in. She deliberately chose one of the yellow things that looked like miniature pineapples topped by tufty red foliage instead of an apple. She ate the tart foliage first, the way she'd seen Teyla do.
The mess hall lights were turned down and she'd taken a seat that let her look out the windows, but also provided a certain amount of shadowy privacy. The two corporals who came in and began cleaning and straightening the room weren't aware of her.
"It's all wrong, sending the Colonel and McKay back there."
"What you gonna do?" the second man replied phlegmatically.
"Yeah, but you know, it'll kill 'em."
"McKay's got some kind of family, right?"
"Sure, but you figure his sister's going to look out for Teyla and Dex and the Colonel too? You figure the IOA's going to let her, even if she wants to?"
A chair was scraped across the floor with a jerk.
"No one gives a damn about taking care of them back on Earth. IOA's just going to warehouse them in some hospital 'til they die."
Sam set down the fruit without ever trying the creamy sweet flesh. She could picture it much too easily. After a week or two at the SGC, the team would be transfered to one of the military hospitals tasked with handling patients with classified backgrounds. Maybe one or two doctors would be cleared to know even some of the circumstances, but none of the nurses, orderlies or other personnel would have a clue.
Jennifer had said that with medical care and support the four of them might go on, drifting in their comas, indefinitely.
If it came to that, she didn't know if the best that could be hoped for, or the worst, was that the care be competent. It would be a long, slow dying that might outlast all mourning for them.
Act Five:
They were nowhere.
They were nothing.
They were numbers.
They were not numbers another insisted.
They latched onto that. Latched onto that concept other, because other implied outside and inside and self. Self was separate.
Selves were aware.
Packets of data – memories, one of them thought – began reintegrating. With them came the ideas of senses and physicality, both of which were still missing.
Ronon panicked as much as a mental construct lacking a body and its responses, the hormones and quick firing nerves, chemicals coursing through blood streams, could. John tried to reach for him and his mind rejected the state of no-body they were in almost as forcefully as Ronon's did. He couldn't feel the emotion that should have gone with it, though.
Having identified Ronon and himself, John put together that Rodney and Teyla were probably part of this existence too. Teyla confirmed this, conveying that she was there.
Not there, Rodney contradicted, because there was no there, no here. Their existence did not include a place. Once more he opined that they were numbers, discrete packages of self-aware, self-modifying information patterns.
Software instead of wetware? John asked.
Ears and sound were not necessary to convey or receive exasperation. Rodney accompanied it with a confirmation. Close enough.
Teyla asked what had happened? John seconded that. Ronon finally pulled himself together enough to add what is this?
The knowledge presented itself the same way a memory did, yet John clearly knew that it came from outside his mind.
They were in a buffer designed to let them communicate with the native sentients of the gas giant. Their consciousness had been transferred into it automatically on their arrival. Originally there had been failsafes that gave visitors some warning and choice, but those routines had been modified.
The Ancients had come to this system to study its habitable planet and seed it with life. They hadn't been interested in the gas giant until they realized that among its natural radio emissions were patterns. Too ordered to be anything but deliberate, but too alien to comprehend, beyond the guess that something sentient on the gas giant was querying the wider system, maybe even beyond, looking for others.
Fascinated, the Ancients had developed an installation that would generate its own sails to maintain altitude, then worked out a way to contact the natives. The base's logs held the entire history of the two races' interactions. They had exchanged vast amounts of scientific knowledge, discoveries gleaned from radically different mental approaches, before the Ancients withdrew again.
Rodney's mental crow of glee echoed through all three of them. He'd known those jammy bastards hadn't figured out zero point energy all by themselves!
John delved through the same logs, disappointed because the information wasn't there, just a précis of what had been exchanged during several sessions.
They would have to light up the station's beacon and hope that someone would want to talk to them.
Rodney initiated it and they were left waiting.
Teyla wanted to know if there was anyway to make their environment less nonexistent. Ronon just wanted to get back to his body, which wouldn't happen for a set amount of time. The transfer back and forth worked on a schedule.
John tried concentrating and a cube took form around them. Gray walls, floor and ceiling resolved into place.
Rodney was not impressed.
John tried to add windows and color, but the entire thing shivered and started to dissolve. He had to settle for the gray.
Teyla added a set of bantos sticks in a corner. Ronon grumbled and presented himself as something that reminded John of a sabertooth tiger, only with a mottled green and brown coat.
Rodney manifested himself as a glowy ball of light and wanted to know where John was, but maintaining the 'room' didn't leave John enough energy to 'make' himself in it too.
John had no idea how long they were there before four other presences joined them. Teyla meditated or seemed to. Ronon stalked back and forth, growling with impatience. Time didn't register unless he checked the station logs. Hours, eons, picoseconds, days, any and all could have passed outside. Rodney occupied himself ranging through the accumulated data within the installation, accessing it through the buffer.
Iss: P482M.³ greeted them with a familiarity that rocked John. Iss: P482M.³ had been among those who interacted with the Ancients before.
It had, like most of its kind, chosen to return it said. John didn't understand clearly and wondered if others had ascended or died as Iss: Cu356v¬ and Rodney began exchanging strings of numbers and mathematical concepts. Their conversation quickly reached levels far too esoteric for John to grasp even while augmenting his abilities with the station's information processors.
Many *syncretized* before they could *translate* Iss: Se3908¨ explained unhelpfully.
*Translate?* Teyla and Ronon echoed.
Iss: Xe18s/au° expanded to define: Low-pressure carbon-based oxygen-burning envelopes were provided to support Iss consciousness outside contact buffer.
Communication wasn't the same. There were no emotions and no physical cues to read. Information moved back and forth between their minds, but some instinct warned it would be a painful mistake to try and share thoughts.
John didn't know if he even wanted to share thoughts. No more than they were already with the deliberate exchanges that mimicked vocalization, anyway.
He found a notation in the logs on the subject. Mindas Ans and Liada Ans had suffered pattern corruption and been withdrawn from the project due to persistent pattern degradation. John figured that meant they'd gotten mixed up in each other and then started falling apart when they separated and didn't come out with some critical bits of information that made up who they were.
He opened a private communication line to Rodney and relayed the file in question.
Confirmation came from the four new ones. Iss: Cu356v¬. *Syncretization* between information patterns resulted in inability to return to proper physical envelopes.
Rodney sent an apology for letting the Iss access their private communication tagged with regret that they couldn't touch each other beyond what they already had. There was always something between them to stop them, it seemed.
Teyla found the logs on *translation* and copied them to John, Ronon and Rodney. Clone bodies had been the medium of exchange between the Iss and the Ancients, a solution arrived at after the other Ancients found *syncretization* too disturbing even for them.
More disturbing than aliens in artificial bodies grown just for them. John found that more than a little uncomfortable to contemplate.
Iss: P482M.³ transmitted: The low-pressure carbon-based oxygen-burning lifeforms who created this meeting place discontinued contact.
John wanted to know why.
They were afraid.
Of what?
Iss: P482M.² returned to *syncretize*. To become Iss: P482M.³.
Iss: Xe18s/au° queried if they wished to *syncretize*.
Iss: Cu356v¬ tagged a final data exchange to Rodney offering to become Iss: Cu356v¬².
Rodney's wordless sense of 'oh crap' didn't need translation as John followed his interrogation of the station's log to the latest entries, including the removal by unidentified means – Asgard beam he realized – of their carbon envelopes and the unanswered hails from the Daedalus. Ronon and Teyla comprehended it with them.
We're stuck here, Ronon stated.
Teyla refrained from anger or fear. They will return. We must only wait.
In the meantime, I can learn so much from the Iss, Rodney added. The rest of you might get bored, but you'll just have to deal.
Indefinite existence without proper support envelopes results in pattern degradation. Once decay begins *translation* or *syncretization* are no longer possible, Iss: P482M.³ informed them.
John checked the logs and confirmed it. If they didn't get back to their own bodies, eventually their consciousness would unravel. The Iss offer might be their only way to survive.
They wouldn't be human anymore, though.
John wasn't sure he was ready to be Iss: P482M.4.
Our people will come back, he thought, and, We'll wait as long as we can.
They did, but eventually alarms started pulsing through the system. Teyla's bantos sticks shivered out of existence first, then John's cube began to dissolve. Ronon's getaya shrank into nothing.
Each of them initiated the transfer as late as they could, leaving the buffer as they began shredding at the edges. They left without discussing their decisions, whether to *syncretize* or finally unravel into true nothingness.
God, you're stubborn, John expressed, already ragged at the edges, hanging together pretty stubbornly himself.
Don't even start.
We could –
You saw the records. It made them crazy.
He synthesized every memory of the two of them together, compressed and purified it, and shoved it at Rodney.
I know, I just –
The energy spike from Rodney meant something, but John couldn't interpret it. He had to go. Iss: P482M.³ was waiting. He held onto one last transmission, though.
Me too.
Rodney's light flickered out last.
Act Six:
"Thank you for making the effort," Sam told Caldwell. He was already aboard the Daedalus, ready to leave the system. So were the four members of AR-1. She'd stood in the infirmary as they were beamed out in a flash of white light. The silence afterward...She'd seen the same shell shocked looks at the SGC when they lost Janet, when they lost Daniel, before they started expecting him to come back. She'd fled back to her office.
"I'll make sure they're taken care of," he replied. The steady determination in his words eased a little of the guilt she felt. He would honor this promise the way he did his officer's oath out of respect for the team.
She couldn't smile and knew he couldn't see a nod. Instead she cleared her throat and forced out the words, "I know you will, Colonel."
"Take care, Colonel Carter," he told her. "Expect us back in two months."
"We will – "
Zelenka bolted into her office without pausing to knock, followed by Keller, Lorne and Justin Metzinger.
"You have to take them back!" Zelenka exclaimed.
"Dr. Zelenka," Sam said, hoping that if she stayed calm, he would do the same.
"Colonel Caldwell!" Zelenka yelled. "You have to take their bodies back to the transferral station!"
"Dr. Zelenka?" Caldwell asked.
"Yes."
"Explain," Sam said.
Zelenka waved at Metzinger, who stepped forward and began explaining. "The station was established to facilitate contact between the Ancients and the indigenous sentients of the gas giant. They transferred their minds into a buffer. I finally found the citation in a serious of classified and coded documents. Apparently, something happened and several of their people defected back to the Iss."
"They cannot wake up until their consciousnesses are transferred back into their bodies," Zelenka finished.
Sam looked at Jennifer. "Is this possible?"
Jennifer shrugged. "Justin showed me the documentation, Colonel. I think he's right."
"What are we going to lose by trying?" Lorne added.
Sam said, "Colonel Caldwell, are you up to another detour?"
"I think I can justify it on my next expenditure report," he replied, having heard everything along with her.
"And a few extra passengers?" Sam asked.
"We can find the space."
They were in hyperspace half an hour later. Sam watched the swirl of deep blue through the view port in the officers' mess and sipped a cup of coffee. She should have stayed back in Atlantis, should have insisted Zelenka and Lorne stay if she didn't, but instead, they'd all handed off their duties to their seconds. She knew why. They had to come so that they would know, down to their bones, even if they failed, that they had tried everything. They'd come too close to missing this chance to risk anyone else not following it through to the end.
At least Zelenka and Lorne and Keller weren't feeling sick with guilt. Sam kept thinking she'd let herself be spooked into making her decisions too quick. She'd fallen back on procedure, instead of trusting her people's instincts, and hated the reflection she'd become of McKay when they'd first met. When had she become the kind of person who would have let Teal'c die in the DHD buffer? No one had looked her to come up with a fix for this; she'd been the nay-sayer standing in their way.
Command sucked, she decided. She had to do better. Oh, God, and she had to apologize to McKay, because she'd never seen his actions from his side before. He'd been wrong, but he'd been technically right. Somewhere along the way he'd learned what she'd always known about team loyalty and taking risks, but she hadn't learned her lesson from him until now. Now she had to put the two together.
Keller joined her. "Why isn't it the same blue as the wormhole?" she asked, referring to view of hyperspace.
"Because it isn't blue at all," Sam replied absently. "No one sees it the same way. We've just all agreed it's blue, so that's what our brains tell us our eyes are seeing."
"Ow," Jennifer said. "That makes my head hurt."
Sam glanced away from the port to her. "No, that's a hyperspace headache. Don't stare too long."
"Oh."
The silence lingered and Sam figured Jennifer had found her to tell her something. Something bad otherwise she wouldn't be delaying now that Jennifer had found her.
"What is it?"
"I read through the entire entry Justin found. It's...freaky, frankly. The Ancients met these aliens and let some of them actually merge their personalities with them when they came back to their bodies."
Weirder things had happened and Sam had already got the idea that the Ancients were not the all-knowing, all-wise bunch of do-gooders Daniel had first thought they were. She personally found the idea shudder-worthy, but she had her own history with Jolinar coloring her reactions.
"But it was voluntary, right?"
"Oh, yes," Jennifer said. "Anyway, that wasn't what freaked the Ancients out."
"What was?" Sam asked.
"A bunch of them suicided, one went crazy, and the rest went back."
"Went back?"
"Went back and joined the Iss, leaving their bodies behind."
"Oh."
"Yeah," Jennifer said. "The Ancients hadn't realized it could go both ways. When two more scientists 'defected', they pulled out entirely."
"I can't imagine Colonel Sheppard or any of his team defecting," Sam told her. She couldn't.
"Well, that's the other thing," Jennifer added. "They might not have a choice. The transfer thingie? If they're in it too long? They'll die."
Sam set down her coffee cup.
"How long?"
Jennifer looked away. The blue hyperspace light bathed her face.
"We may already be too late."
Act Seven:
Waking was a gradual recognition of all the discomforts and pains of a body and gravity added together. Weight, an ache in an ankle twisted to the side, the bite of cold metal decking into his shoulder blades and his ass, stiffness in his back, all of it slowly formed a picture of his body again. It felt like almost too much, too strange, too alien. John had to concentrate on the slow in and out of his own breath, ribs moving, lungs inflating, tell himself it was familiar, to stave off a jolt of panic. Part of him found it all new now.
Different.
He wrinkled his nose at the smells, recognizing his own odor overlain with antiseptics and a confusing mixture of scents from the jumper and the infirmary.
Carbon-based, oxygen-burning.
Someone he thought was Ronon groaned nearby. He flinched at the sound. Too loud, too loud, too strange after the silence of the buffer, to bear. How had they done this before? It seemed impossible.
Blind.
No, not blind, he realized, only the darkness of closed eyes. He could open them and see again.
John blinked his gummy eyes open, wincing at the glare until the blur above him resolved into the jumper's interior. He stared, overtaken by the bronze-gray color, the shadows and reflections, the pure mathematical curve of the interior hull. The opaque white lights set periodically along it left afterimages burnt into his retinas. He had to close his eyes again, watched the bright smears of orange, red and white bloom against the darkness inside for a while, the way he'd done as a child after staring at the sun.
He listened to himself breathe and explored his own mouth with his tongue, intrigued by the sensitivity, the tickle at the roof, the smooth perfect fit of his teeth. He clacked them together, feeling the flex of his jaw muscles, fascinated by the sound, and then swallowed just to feel his throat work. It hurt, he realized, but did it again.
Eyes opened again and this time he turned his head.
"Sheppard?"
That deep voice, gone hoarse and rough, could only be Ronon.
"Ye– " He had to cough through a painfully dry and sore throat. "Yeah." His mouth tasted like shit, too. God, had he been intubated? What had they – Memory unfolded. He scrabbled at the deck, pushing himself up enough to see Ronon and Teyla. Teyla's eyes were opening, watching him, while Ronon had an arm thrown over his. Ronon's hand opened and closed into a fist. Teyla had begun stroking her own forearm.
"Rodney?" he rasped out. His stomach rebelled at the same time and he tasted bile rising up through his throat. He wondered if he would throw up, what he would throw up, what had been done to his body while he wasn't there.
Teyla's eyes shifted to the side. John rolled over and gasped with relief, relief that instantly turned to worry. Teyla and Ronon were both awake, but Rodney wasn't.
John reached out and set his shaking hand on the curve of Rodney's shoulder. Warmth immediately met his palm through the pale, thin scrub top. John looked at the fabric in blank confusion until he figured out they'd all been dressed in scrubs while their bodies were...away. John rubbed his hand down Rodney's arm and then up, all without thinking. His calluses caught on the smooth cotton and pushed it into small wrinkles. Rodney was so solid and there. He knew he should stop, before he went too far, but John couldn't let go. He couldn't slow his racing heartbeat either, because he needed more. He needed Rodney back and not just this slow breathing body. He needed Rodney to still be with them.
He couldn't do this without Rodney. He'd figured that out long ago. Rodney was his key.
The cold from the deck seemed to spread through him. John wriggled closer to Rodney, closer and closer, but it still felt too far. He tucked his face against Rodney's neck, stubble prickling against his lips, and breathed in his scent. He shoved his hand up under the scrub top and slung one leg across Rodney's thighs.
"Come on, come on," he rasped out through a throat gone almost too tight to form the words.
"Unh."
He clutched at him tighter.
"Rodney."
"John."
Rodney flailed around and hit the back of John's head, then his fingers were in John's hair, flexing gently against his scalp, better than he could have dreamed.
Rodney twisted until they were wrapped around each other, mapping skin with fingertips and lips, while the whisper slide of fabric and harsh breaths told him Ronon and Teyla were just as intent. Rodney's mouth was hotter than John's, sour and stale. John didn't care. Rodney's tongue traced his lips over and over, harder and harder, until they were pressed tight to his teeth.
John scrabbled at his waist, getting out of his scrub pants, throwing them away blindly when Rodney's hand shoved between his thighs. They rolled over and he glimpsed Ronon tearing off his clothes and Teyla's. His elbow jolted against the decking with a thump and a flare of agony up his arm. His other hand remained trapped under Rodney's top.
"This is, this is, this is," Rodney repeated as they shed everything else, awkward and urgent. John licked at his collarbone and moaned because Rodney's voice hurt and only silence would have been worse. He needed more. Everything jarred, his senses felt wrong despite a lifetime spent this way and he needed to make it his own again.
Licking and then sucking weren't enough. Tongues weren't enough, hands weren't enough, skating over each other's skin, digging in and leaving purple-dark bruises on each other.
Ronon had his face between Teyla's legs and she had scored his back with her nails. The smell of blood tugged at John's senses, pushing him until he bit the soft skin at Rodney's armpit and Rodney keened in protest, but did nothing to stop him.
Sensations blurred together, instants stitched together without sense: his cheek on Rodney's thigh, the rough hairs catching against John's jaw, the taste of gel or glue on Rodney's chest where a monitor must have been placed, Ronon's grunts, wet-slick slap of skin on skin, Teyla's hand, palm pale, fingers spread starfish-wide open and tense, the mole at the back of Rodney's neck that John had wanted to touch for so long, because it wasn't allowed, Rodney's nipples and Rodney's hand closing around his balls.
Too harsh, too perfect, John curled his fingers around Rodney's broad wrist as he squirmed up Rodney's body. His knee hit Rodney's, his other hand slipped on the decking, but he didn't stop. He plastered himself against Rodney, rutting and rubbing, their arms trapped between them, and grinned at him.
It didn't matter any longer what anyone might see or think, they needed this and John wasn't going to deny anything, not when Rodney was offering him everything.
This was real, they were real again, and the relief this time was so strong it had finally become desperation.
They moved together, panting and wild to ground themselves in their bodies again. Teyla and Ronon were doing the same, sometimes reaching out and touching John or Rodney too, because they needed confirmation of them too.
The hails from the Daedalus only penetrated afterward when all four of them were limp and tangled together in a sweaty sprawl. Body heat and their harsh breaths left the air in the jumper humid and redolent with the scents of sweat, spit and come, mingled with a trace of blood and their own bad breath; the air cleaners were overwhelmed.
"Jumper One, this is the Daedalus, please respond."
Rodney tipped his head toward the cockpit. John groaned softly, but levered himself to his feet. His body felt spent. He ached in places he'd never ached before. He fished up a pair of scrub pants tossed on one of the cushionless benches and pulled them on, nearly falling over before Ronon steadied him, then staggered to the pilot's console, politely averting his gaze from Teyla's bare breasts.
He dropped into the seat and activated the comm.
"Daedalus, this is Jumper One."
"Good to hear your voice, Colonel Sheppard. Is everybody okay?"
That was Colonel Carter on the comm. John blinked stupidly at the console, then coughed and answered.
"We're all..." He glanced back at his team, all uncoordinated limbs and glazed eyes, slowly dressing in whatever came to hand, and couldn't hold back his smile. Everything was new, everything was different, and everything was exactly the same. They needed to clean up, so he'd have to persuade Carter to let them come back in the jumper. "Yeah. Just give us a minute."
Rodney tottered into the cockpit, muttered, "Oh my God," and slumped into the co-pilot's chair with a dead giveaway wince. He looked at John cautiously. John leaned over and placed his hand on the nape of Rodney's neck.
"Rodney?"
"I'm here," he said, a tentative smile curling the corners of his mouth up that John didn't think was for Carter.
"When you get back...I owe you an apology. Actually, I owe all of you an apology."
John laughed at the way Rodney's mouth fell open and then worked, unable to form any words. He rubbed the back of Rodney's neck affectionately.
"I think you broke him, Colonel," he told Carter.
"She did not!" Rodney snapped. "I'm just..."
"Poleaxed?"
"Trying to pick out which instance in particular she owes me for – "
"Maybe we'd better leave this until later," Carter interrupted. "Colonel Sheppard, are you ready to come home?"
"Give us a minute. The jumper's completely charged, we just have to undock and get out of here."
"You're all really okay?"
Ronon clapped Rodney on his shoulder after coming into the cockpit, before seating himself. Teyla followed and drifted her finger along John's temple briefly.
"We're all good."
They would be.
Besides, they had a hell of story to tell.
-end-
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