Homecoming

Chapter Five Once in a Thousand Years

Torren was finally asleep — not in the crib, of course, but tucked up securely on the couch, worn out by the day and the inevitable meltdown. John hadn’t managed to get his clothes off him, but he had stealthily removed shoes and socks and tucked the blanket firmly over him. He picked a cold French fry from the remains of the room service dinner. Torren hadn’t eaten anything Teyla had packed for him, and maybe the ice cream hadn’t been the best idea, but at least it had gotten something into him. And it had calmed him down enough to sleep.

He looked back at the half bottle of red wine, open but untasted, wondering if maybe he should go ahead and have a glass after all. He’d planned to wait for Teyla, but there was no telling how long the post dinner discussions might last…

The door opened, and he started to his feet, finger to his lips in warning. Teyla saw and nodded, letting the door close very gently behind her. Caught there in the light from the door, unfamiliar in her sober DC suit, she was elegant and strange and maybe somebody he didn’t actually know at all. That was a shock, after five and a half years; but there would always be unsounded depths in her. Like the things she hadn’t shared, like Kanaan, like her plans for a child… He made himself breathe, swallowing that sorrow, as she stooped over the couch to check on Torren, and then came past him into the bedroom of the suite, stepping out of her pumps as she went.

“He would not sleep otherwise?”

John shook his head. “He’s had a hard day.”

Teyla gave him a sideways smile, and reached for a French fry. “So have we all.”

“Any luck?”

Teyla tipped her head from side to side. “Perhaps. It is very difficult to tell.” She gave a mocking smile. “Mr. Woolsey thinks it was more effective when I wore — native dress.”

“Goddammit,” John said, under his breath, and Teyla’s smile widened.

“It might be so, but it is also more conspicuous, or so General O’Neill has said. Mr. Nechayev, however, doesn’t seem to care.”

“I bet he doesn’t,” John said. He couldn’t feel jealous — wouldn’t be jealous, he didn’t have the right. He reached for the wine and the two big balloon glasses. “Want some?”

“Please.” Teyla slipped off her jacket, settled back into the one chair and stretched her feet.

John poured just enough into each glass, handed her one and took the other for himself, automatically swirling it so that the wine left faint traces on the wide bowl. He sniffed it, too — force of old habit, force of being in DC again; Nancy had trained him to that — and Teyla held out her glass in salute.

“Only one more day.”

“Yeah.” John took a sip of the wine, memory stabbing through him. It wasn’t something that had happened, either, which seemed unfair, but a dream, a memory of delusion: him and Teyla drinking wine in candlelight, a last thing to hold on to when he couldn’t hold on to Ronon, both of them trapped in the rubble of Michael’s lab. He saw Teyla frown, knew she’d seen the shadow cross his face, and forced something like a smile. Her lips tightened, but she said nothing, and John drained the wine in a single gulp.

“My turn in the box tomorrow,” he said, and knew his voice came out wrong. He cleared his throat. “Joint Chiefs briefing, with General O’Neill in charge.”

“Yes.”

He set the glass down. “So. I’d better get going.”

“Yes,” Teyla said. Her face was grave, and she didn’t move, still leaning back in the hotel armchair with her elegant legs stretched out in front of her, the glass of wine in one hand. There was a flaw in her silk blouse, a pulled thread just above her left breast. This wasn’t what he’d imagined, but it was painfully too close, and he nodded once, knowing he looked as weird and awkward as he felt.

“Well. Good night.”

“Good night, Colonel,” she said, and he was in the hallway before he realized there might have been sadness in her voice.

Ronon was getting just a little bit tired of Marines. Or maybe it was just a bad batch. You ran into that sometimes, guys who couldn’t adjust to the people who came through the gate, and all you could do was stick them somewhere else and hope they didn’t plan to make soldiering a career. Except that was Sateda, not here. Here that didn’t apply, because the Earth people — Taur’i — whatever their name was, and why they couldn’t agree on one was beyond him — the Earth people kept their gate a secret and didn’t go trading with other worlds. So the Marines didn’t get much practice dealing with strangers. But he was getting tired of smacking them into respect.

He filled his tray without really paying attention — pizza, apple, cookies — and only as he reached the end of the line realized that he could have had something more interesting. Ever since they had landed, there had been paper packets with normal eating utensils among the clutter of knives and forks, and he didn’t have to worry about embarrassing Sheppard or anyone by not knowing the proper etiquette. It was too much trouble to go back; he shrugged to himself, and found a table in the corner. From it, he could see through two sets of glass doors to the sea beyond. It didn’t look like Atlantis’s sea, or smell like it, but the steady breeze was at least something like normal. Like home.

Once in a thousand years the sea/something’d the moon at my window.

He froze, wondering where the hell that had come from, but he couldn’t lie to himself. It was one of the poems he had learned in school, the last year, the year before he’d joined the army, well on his way to a commission and a life to be proud of. He’d learned two thousand lines that year, classic and modern, and been top of his draft cadre as well — and he couldn’t remember two lines correctly any more. He frowned, concentrating, the pizza forgotten in his hand.

Once in a thousand years the sea—?

No: once in a something thousand years, the sea…

“May I join you?”

Ronon blinked, looked up to see Colonel Carter standing patiently on the opposite side of the table, tray in hand. “Sure,” he said, and wondered how long she’d been standing there.

He should have risen, he thought, as she settled herself across from him. Juniors stand for their superior officers, and if he wanted to get respect from the Marines, he’d need to show it. And it wasn’t exactly hard to respect Carter.

“Thanks.” Carter busied herself with her lunch, arranging the dishes so that she could put the tray aside. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“Yep.” Carter smiled, and Ronon wondered if the laconic echo was deliberate. “I have a proposition for you.”

This was the moment he’d been expecting and dreading, the one he’d been rehearsing for when he couldn’t sleep, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Atlantis isn’t going anywhere,” Carter said. Her voice was gentle, regretful, even, but very definite. “The Hammond, on the other hand, is going back to Pegasus before the end of the year. I’d like to have you on my team.”

Ronon took a deep breath. He was still holding the pizza, he realized, and set it aside with a grimace, wiping his hand on his pants. “To do what? Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, Colonel Carter, but I’m not a scientist. I’m not even a soldier, by your reckoning. I’m muscle, and that—” He looked deliberately past her, toward the group of young Marines clattering into the mess hall. “That you’ve got plenty of.”

“We’ll pass on my reckoning for now,” Carter said. She paused. “Can I ask you a question?”

Ronon shrugged, though he could feel his hackles rising. “Sure.”

“What did you do before the military?”

If he hadn’t been thinking about it already, he probably wouldn’t have answered, but the fragment of poetry had loosened something in him. “I was a kid. In school.”

“Me, too.” Something like a smile flickered across Carter’s face. “What did you study? Was it a military prep course, or regular school?”

Ronon looked at his hands, at the tattoo patterning his left wrist, gift of a dead man, a dead traitor. He should keep his mouth shut, but not to answer — it would be disrespect, and, anyway, it was something he’d been proud of once. “It was an exam school. Not just military, though the kids who were planning to join up were encouraged to apply. I passed in on both exams, graduated Third Scholar. I was supposed to get my commission after I’d done my required service.” He shrugged again. “The Wraith got there first.”

“That’s impressive,” Carter said.

Ronon searched the open face for some hint of irony, and found none.

“But it doesn’t surprise me,” she went on. “I figured as much from working with you on Atlantis. Look, I’m not asking you to join the team because I need more muscle. You’re right, I’ve got more than enough of that. And I’m not asking you out of pity. If you want to go back to Pegasus, you can come with us, no strings attached. I’m asking you because you’re a damn good man, a damn good leader. I watched you training our Marines, teaching them to deal with the Wraith, with the Genii — not just tactics, but how they think, what makes them tick. That’s what I want you for.”

“I’m not officer material,” Ronon said. “Not any more.”

“You were,” Carter answered. “If Sateda hadn’t been attacked, you’d be one now. You’d be a commander — if you were one of mine, you’d be fast-tracked for promotion.” She paused. “You can still be that man.”

Ronon sat very still. He had not imagined this was something he still wanted, not until it was put into words, spoken out loud for everyone to hear. He made himself take a breath, and then another, concentrating on the movement of his ribs, the pull of the muscles, the hint of salt that carried through some open door. She was right, he would have been a captain, at least — husband and father, too, that thought like a knife to the heart. “That man is dead.”

“Is he?” Carter waited.

“I—” Ronon looked away from her implacable stare. “I don’t know.”

“Find out,” she said, gently.

“I can’t join your army,” Ronon said, but it was token protest, and they both knew it.

“No. You’d be an independent contractor, working for the Air Force.” She smiled, as though at some private joke. “A technical adviser.”

Once in a thousand years the sea/ smothers the moon at my window/ opens a gate in my heart: the triplet came suddenly complete in his head, and with it the face of the poet who’d written it. Not a classic, or even an accepted modern, but a university poet, bright and beautiful and dead…

“When Sateda fell,” he said abruptly, “Kell — our local commander — threw everybody he had against the Wraith. Regulars, Guard, Elites, the neighborhood volunteer squads and the firemen and the poets’ battalion from the university. All to buy time to get himself to safety.” He closed his eyes for an instant, but made himself go on. “I bribed one of his subcommanders to get my—” There wasn’t a word that translated exactly; he chose one he thought had the right resonances. “—my fiancée onto his staff anyway, to get her out. She wouldn’t go. But that’s the choice I made.”

Carter regarded him gravely. “I hope to offer you better choices.”

“Not always possible,” Ronon answered, but the ache in his chest had eased.

“No.” Carter gave him a rueful smile. “But one can try.”

“I’ll try the Hammond,” Ronon said. He stood up, reached for his tray. “Short contract, no strings? If it works out for both of us — I’ll stay.”

“Fair enough,” Carter answered, and turned her attention back to her food.

Ronon turned away, the tray balanced in one hand. Beyond the windows, a fogbank was moving across the water, the pillars of the great red bridge standing high above the cloud. It was a better choice than he’d expected, a chance to go back and fight the Wraith, to help other people fight the Wraith. It would do for now.

Jennifer glanced around the infirmary, seeing the gaps where equipment had been removed, the strange faces replacing her usual team. It was all part of the transition, especially now that Atlantis wasn’t going anywhere, but she still didn’t have to like it. Particularly since she couldn’t seem to convince the military people not to turn off the Ancient equipment unless they had the Ancient gene themselves and could turn it back on again.

She glared at the blank screen, not even bothering to run her hand over the touchplate. Up until a few days ago, Rodney had been going out of his way to take care of things for her — mostly, he said, because he didn’t have anything else to do — but since he’d resigned, there were fewer options available. No one in sight had the gene, except maybe the Air Force captain — he was new — but she wasn’t about to admit to him that she needed help. Not all of the military sneered at civilians, sneered at her, but she’d seen enough of it since they’d landed that she wasn’t about to give them any opportunities.

“Need a hand with that, then?”

Beckett’s voice broke her reverie, and she turned with a relieved smile.

“If you would.”

Beckett waved one hand over the sensor, and the machine lit, a cascade of data pouring down its display before it steadied. Jennifer eyed it warily, decided everything was in fact normal, and looked back at Beckett.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” Beckett sounded preoccupied, half of his attention on the tablet computer cradled in his other arm, and Jennifer couldn’t help frowning.

“Is everything all right?” She lowered her voice, not wanting the Air Force man to hear, and Beckett matched her tone.

“Oh, aye, well enough.” He paused. “I’m going back to Pegasus, you know.”

“I didn’t.” Jennifer forced a smile. “I’m not that surprised, though.”

“I didn’t think you would be.” Beckett glanced at his tablet, made a note on the screen. “You know — you’ve seen what we’re facing there, what needs to be done. I can’t turn my back on that.”

She nodded. She’d felt the same way just on Earth, working for Doctors Without Borders and then for WHO specialty teams: there was always something more, one more clinic to run, one more surgery to set up, one more shipment of drugs to provide, even though you knew it was never possible to do enough… Carson had an entire galaxy to worry about, and his own mistakes to repair.

“And besides,” Beckett said, with a quick, sideway smile, “I’m still dead.”

Jennifer blinked — she never knew quite how to respond when Beckett said things like that — but said, “I thought the SGC was going to help you make the transition, give some explanation for, I don’t know, a mistake?”

“Oh, they offered,” Beckett said. He reached past her to adjust one of the Ancient devices, frowned at the new readings that appeared on the screen, and made another note on the tablet. “And, believe me, I thought hard about it. But—” He shrugged, tapped a code into a keypad. “It’s not entirely me, is it?”

“Well, yes,” Jennifer said. The vehemence of her answer surprised her. “It is. In every way that matters.”

“Except that I have to take your treatment every day for the rest of my life.”

“What would you say to a diabetic who said that about insulin?” Jennifer asked.

“All right, I take your point.” Beckett gave another of his flickering smiles. “But that’s not all of it. The main thing is, I can’t put my mother through this a second time. Especially when there’s a good chance I won’t come back — not because I think anything’s going to happen, mind you. But Pegasus — this is where my real work is.”

Jennifer nodded. “I understand. I do.”

“Have you made plans?”

“I — sort of?” For some reason, she hadn’t been expecting the question, and found herself flailing. “I mean, now that Rodney’s resigned, I — There’s not really a place for me on Atlantis? He — I heard there was a position open at Area 5, so I’ve applied…”

“I know you’ll want to be with Rodney,” Beckett said gently. “But, should anything change… I’d be very glad of your help.”

“Thank you.” Jennifer ducked her head, smiling, embarrassed and flattered. “I appreciate that. I really do.”

“In the meantime,” Beckett said, “I’ve got permission from Woolsey and Colonel Carter to take a few things with me.” He turned the tablet to face her, and Jennifer blinked.

“A few things,” she said. It looked like most of her dispensary supplies, and at least one of every portable scanner, Ancient and SGC. And all the aid kits that weren’t accounted for in the Air Force manifests.

“Just a few,” he answered, and Jennifer felt a conspiratorial smile spread across her face.

“Of course. Anything you need.”