The Inheritors

Chapter Nine Night Watch

Torren was already asleep when John got to Teyla's quarters. Jeannie Miller was curled up on the couch, her tablet propped on her knees. She looked up as he came in, and put a finger to her lips with the tired ghost of a smile.

"He sleeps like a rock," John said quietly. "Thanks for watching him."

"It was no trouble," Jeannie said. "He went down about an hour ago. If you're good for a while, I want to go see Meredith. If that's okay?"

"Sure. Don't worry about McKay, though. He's fine, just kind of cranky."

"Well, he is in a cell." She frowned. "You don't really think he's still… brainwashed, or whatever?"

"I don't know if he was ever brainwashed, or if he just couldn't remember who he was and believed what they told him. But I've seen them turn our own people against us before. They did it to Ronon, and he hates the Wraith more than just about anybody."

"My brother." She raised her chin bravely. "He does get into the weirdest kinds of trouble."

"That would be McKay for you."

"I wish he'd come to see me when we were on Earth. The rest of you are always welcome, too, you know. Torren ought to meet Madison, since they're kind of related in a weird kind of way."

"Not exactly related."

Jeannie looked at him, her head to one side. "Close enough. I think whatever happens with Jennifer Keller…" There was a question in her voice, and John shrugged. He had no idea how that one was going to turn out, and at the moment just hoped they'd live long enough for it to matter. "Whatever happens with that, he's found sort of a weird surrogate family out here, and… I'm glad. I want him to be happy. I just want to see him sometimes."

"Next time I'll twist his arm and make him go to Canada," John said. He should have done that last time they were on Earth, he thought, but he'd been busy feeling sorry for himself. He'd thought there was no point in trying to stay in touch with his team, because they weren't going to be his team anymore. Now he was only sorry that he'd wasted time. "If there is a next time," he added quietly.

Jeannie bit her lip. "Is it that bad?"

"It's not good," John said. "I'm going to take Torren to his father on New Athos."

"They tell me they're evacuating non-essential personnel in the morning," Jeannie said, unfolding herself from the couch and tucking her tablet under her arm as she stood and came over to him. "So I want to see Meredith before I go. Not because I think you won't be fine, but I can't pass up the chance to have him as a literally captive audience."

"Go on," John said.

She managed to smile. "Good luck, John."

"Thanks," he said.

"Take care of my stupid brother." Jeannie leaned up to kiss him lightly on the cheek. Before he could figure out what he was supposed to do about that, she was already gone.

John tossed Torren's clothes and favorite toys into a bag, wondering when that had started to feel like familiar routine, and then scooped up Torren, who made a sleepy noise of protest.

"Going to go see Papa," John said, and Torren curled heavily against his shoulder, accepting.

Torren woke up more in the gate room, his eyes lighting at the sight of the bright blue wormhole. John curled his hand around the back of Torren's head for a moment, feeling the soft warmth of his hair, and then stepped through.

On the other side Kanaan was waiting in a soft circle of torchlight. Jinto held the torch, and reached out willingly to shoulder the bag of Torren's belongings. John handed Torren to Kanaan, who settled him in one arm.

"Thanks for meeting me at the gate," John said.

"I know you are a busy man," Kanaan said, not entirely graciously.

John glanced down at Torren. "Jinto, could you take Torren for a minute? Torren, go with Jinto, buddy."

Jinto shrugged and traded torch for child. "Did you have fun in Atlantis, Torren?"

John drew Kanaan aside, far enough away that Jinto and Torren were dark shadows at the edge of the circle of torchlight. "Queen Death's fleet is going to reach Atlantis in less than twelve hours," he said. "We're going to put up a hell of a fight, I can promise you that."

"But not that you will be victorious."

"I wish I could promise me that."

Kanaan nodded. "And Teyla?"

"She's on a mission," John said. "Trying to get us some allies."

"That is what she does best," Kanaan says. "And then I expect she will join you in fighting the Wraith."

"She does a pretty good job of that, too," John said. "When she has to."

"If you see her, tell her not to worry about Torren."

"I will."

Kanaan's eyes searched John's face. "Don't worry about Torren," he said.

John nodded wordlessly. He extended a hand, and Kanaan clasped his arm and then, after a moment's hesitation, drew him into the Athosian bowed-head gesture of farewell. It felt awkward — for both of them, he thought— but John didn't flinch away.

"All right, Torren," Kanaan said, raising his voice as he straightened. "It is long past time you were in bed."

"Not sleepy," Torren protested, but his voice was already blurred by sleep.

"Goodbye, kiddo," John said. "I'll see you back in Atlantis." Teyla had told him once that it always sent a shiver down her spine to say that, that I will see you in the City of the Ancestors were the words of a man who sees his own death coming.

He let himself linger just long enough to see Kanaan and Jinto round the trees out of sight with Torren, and then dialed the gate for Atlantis.

In the dark middle of the night, Ronon sat alone in his quarters, Hyperion's weapon resting on his knees, his fingers tracing its curves. He ought to turn it over to Sheppard, one part of his mind said. He ought to pull the trigger, another part said. Wipe out the Wraith in one blow, like a legendary hero.

Of course, there would be a price. In that kind of story, there always was.

Sheppard would kill him, afterwards. At least, he'd have every reason to try, and Ronon wouldn't have much reason to run. He'd have done what he meant to do, and he'd have nowhere to go. Sateda, maybe, but he couldn't actually imagine going to Sateda and trying to make a life there after he pulled that trigger.

Not any more than he could imagine the rest of his life as the coward who let the Wraith live.

He looked up at Tyre's sword where it hung on the wall. The choice had been simple for Tyre in the end, to trade his life to regain his broken honor. If firing that weapon and killing the Wraith would have meant Ronon's death, he would have done it in a heartbeat.

Instead all he had to do to defeat the Wraith was pull the trigger and kill his friends.

It felt like a choice out of a fable for children, one of the stories his grandfather had told him as a child that started with "Time was…"

Time was, there was a man who lost everything to the Wraith. They killed his friends and his family and the girl he loved; they destroyed his home; they made him a hunted animal instead of a man. And one day he came to the City of the Ancestors, and there he learned that he was still alive.

And then…

He didn't know the ending. He only knew there had to be one, some reason he was still alive. And maybe this was the meaning staring him in the face. He had suffered and thousands of Satedans had died, but no one else would have to die at the hands of the Wraith, or crawl to them as their minions. The Wraith had trained him to kill more ruthlessly than his instructors ever had, and now he would be the one to end them.

All he had to do was kill his friends. But he would have killed Tyre, if he had to, to free him from the Wraith. Tyre would have wanted him to do it, for the sake of his own honor. If McKay were still a Wraith queen's worshipper, her trained animal, and if Teyla were too changed to know it, or maybe too changed to care–

His fingers tightened on the weapon. If he closed his hand, it would all be over.

His hand opened.

They still might defeat Queen Death without either using or destroying the weapon. Todd would have to face facts eventually. He couldn't afford to hold his forces back from the alliance when it was his best chance to get Queen Death out of the way.

If they defeated Queen Death, there would be time to decide what to do with the weapon. Maybe one of the scientists could even find a way to modify the weapon so that it would destroy the Wraith without killing humans who shared Wraith genes. Or a way to cleanse the blood of humans with the Gift so that they were no longer any kin to the Wraith.

And if Todd didn't join the battle, and the only other choice was to let the Wraith take the City of the Ancestors…

Ronon tucked the weapon into his belt under his shirt, feeling it hard and cool against his skin. If it came to that, then at least that would answer the question of how the story ended.

And in time, he made the Wraith pay for what they had done.

He stretched out on his bed, eyes open, and waited for dawn.

The quarters aboard Just Fortune were the same as the last time Steelflower had been aboard, but the queen was not. Now, like Perssen and Thessen, Teyla was merely part of Alabaster's entourage. To be sure, she was taken for a body servant rather than a guardsman, a human handmaiden who tended her queen's clothing and person, but it was very strange to Teyla to see the same blades and clevermen who had fallen at her feet when she was Steelflower completely ignore her. Their eyes passed over her, and her mental voice remained silent.

Only when she was alone with Alabaster in the rooms that had so recently been hers did she dare speak. That, at least, they could not fail to recognize.

Alabaster caught her thought and held it, turning to Teyla with a quizzical expression on her face. “Do you wish you were Steelflower in truth?” she asked.

Teyla looked around the queen's chambers, lush with soft lighting and fine fabrics, cool mist rising from the floor to ease breathing and soothe the skin, each screen and fret designed to give delight, all while Just Fortune moved through the coldness of space, an oasis amid a desert of stars. “No,” she said. “I would not want Osprey's choice. To kill or to starve.”

Alabaster nodded slowly. “So it must seem to you, a choice. But it is not a choice to those who have never known anything else. We are not the First Mothers, and we were born this way.”

“If I were Osprey,” Teyla began. But who knew what she would do if she were Osprey? How could anyone who had not lived her life know?

Alabaster sat down on the edge of a soft chair and held out a hand to her. “Let me show you,” she said. “Let me show you what I remember.”

The transport ship Cormorant had carried a cargo of raw wool, bale upon bale of it stacked up in the hold. They had captured it grounded on Nemors, a swift rush and a sudden departure.

"We might as well throw all this out the airlock," Ashes said with disgust. "What's it good for?"

On the other side of the hold examining pallets of whole sheepskins, Wind shrugged. "Might be something. Trade, maybe."

"It's good for quite a lot," Osprey said indignantly, prying open a plastic shipping case by the door. "In case you haven't noticed, our clothes are in tatters." It contained what she had hoped, spun yarn fine drawn, one full dye lot done in near-black.

"There's the crew," Wind said, climbing up on one bale of sheepskins to look behind it. "They won't need theirs anymore."

"I should like some clothes of my own that fit," Osprey said decisively. "Not something you've pillaged from a crewman you killed." The next plastic container was marked differently. She thought those symbols meant that the wool was dyed dark blue.

"I don't see what this gets us," Ashes replied. He came back toward the door, the dim lights shining off his pale hair pulled back in a short tail, still stocky and solid as he always had been.

Osprey looked at him with astonishment. "And you think I can't weave? You, born in the same village?"

"I don't see a loom, do you?" Ashes said. "And building a freestanding loom is a lot of work.”

"Knit, then."

Ashes put his head to the side. "A fine lot of deadly pirates we'll look, kitted out in little knit overalls like Athosian babies!"

"Nothing wrong with knitting," Wind said mildly from behind a bunch of pallets. Only the silver top of his head was visible. "We used to do it on shipboard to pass the time."

"And we can do it on this ship as well," Osprey said firmly. "Everybody can learn to knit. All of you. We'll have a class and everyone can learn together."

"No needles," Ashes said stubbornly.

"I can make those," Wind said. "Metal's hard, but I could do them from wood or bone."

"We've plenty of spare bones just now," Osprey said.

"Do you ever hear yourselves?" Ashes demanded suddenly. He was leaning on the door and his greenish face looked pale. "Do you ever hear what you're saying?"

Osprey looked up at him from a case of moss green yarn, dyed to just the color of late summer leaves. "We can't afford to," she said gently. "Not if we're going to live. It's the same as cattle at home. When the time comes you have to make a neat job of it and not waste anything."

"Kine," Ashes said flatly.

"There are some whole tanned hides back here," Wind called from across the hold. "That's handy."

The lights brightened and then dimmed again, everyone looking up.

"Bellwether playing with the ship's environmental systems," Osprey said.

"You hope," Wind replied.

"Does he actually know how to fly this thing?" Ashes asked.

"He'd better," Wind said darkly.

"He says he does." Osprey straightened up. The next box was gold-yellow. She'd teach them simple stitches first, but there was no reason she couldn't knit patterns. "He says he thinks he's flown ones like this before. Bellwether thinks he was the mate on a cargo ship before he owed gambling debts he couldn't pay."

"He thinks." Ashes shook his head.

"He got us off the ground and into hyperspace while they were shooting at us," Wind said sensibly. "That's something."

Osprey stood up, shaking the dust of the floor off her hands and tattered baggy pants, a revenant indeed, gray and torn and filthy. "Do you realize what this means?" she asked. "Hyperspace, I mean?"

Wind looked at her over the pallets, waiting. "What?"

"We're safe. Truly safe for the first time in…forever!" She turned about, white hair following her, long and untidy like a beldame. "No one can find us in hyperspace! No one can track us or know where we are! No one can come upon us unexpectedly! For days and days and days we'll be really, truly safe!"

Wind's face changed, sharp lines relaxing as he realized it was true. An end to watchfulness, to the constant wariness…. He was always on guard, day upon day, dozing fitfully a few hours here and there.

"We can wash and sleep and sew and rest and no one can attack us! No one can find us. We can stop and think for a change."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Ashes said. He put his hand to the doorplate and went out into the corridor, the hold doors sliding shut behind him.

Osprey frowned, looking after him.

Wind climbed back over the pallets. "He's been like that since Fable killed himself."

"I know." Fable refused to feed, and yet could not stop himself when starvation riddled him. And so instead he had taken his own life, wordlessly and without warning. Those who would not feed died one way or another.

She waited as Wind came up to her, his crossed belts holding long knife and stunning truncheon on opposite sides. She looked up into his face, willing him to understand. "But if we are going to live, then we have to live. We have to build some sort of life, not just survive. Not just stay one step ahead until we step wrong. If we're going to live we have to be more than that." She looked at him and saw his face change. "I am not done, Wind. I want beauty and rest and joy and love. I want to live."

Wind nodded slowly. "And because you do, we all will. I'll protect you. I'll protect them all. As long as I can."

"I know you will," she said, and put her feeding hand against his chest as he inclined his head to hers.

Teyla opened her eyes. Alabaster's hand was smooth and oily in hers. It should have been frightening, a Wraith queen's hand, but it wasn't. Not given their shared memories. “Ashes didn't want to feed,” she said.

Alabaster nodded. “And yet he did. And Wind…. I think there is something of my father in him.”

“There is something of John.” The thought escaped her before she could stop it. Yes, that was John. Even in the most desperate straits, he found purpose in protecting others, in being the shepherd always.

“They lived,” Alabaster said. “And in the centuries to come, Osprey bore three daughters and fourteen sons, and they spread across the spaceways in ships made of bone and shell, living in the spaces beyond the heliopause where the Lanteans did not go. And why should they? They controlled the Stargates, and with them they might go anywhere they wished in the blink of an eye. The long routes between stars were for lesser folk, for subject peoples who traded through the great void. And in those places we lived. We sewed our clothes and raised our children and built our weapons and our scanners, made our plays and our rites and joined our bodies in ecstasy.” Her voice quieted. “And there too we killed our enemies and became strong, until at last Death fed on the children of Athos. The prey became the hunter, and we destroyed the Lanteans and their works.”

Teyla bent her head. “That vengeance was achieved long ago,” she said. “Who seeks it now, and why? It is not needful, sister. Queen Death slays for joy, not for food, and they spoil what they cannot take. This is revenge, not necessity.”

“I don't know,” Alabaster said. “But at least if we could abjure that, it would be a beginning.”