It started with the boost of lights that came alive along the wall when Rodney stumbled out of his quarters at 7 a.m. He was five months stuck in the wrong galaxy, had not yet had his morning coffee, and was in no way prepared to encounter any shade of neon green.
Rodney had lived on Atlantis for almost six years now. He knew the city well. Better than anyone alive, really, and he would argue until he was blue that he knew it better than most of the Ancients who’d left her alone under the ocean for ten thousand years ever had.
He’d never encountered lights of such garish color before, nor noticed circuits that would explain their sudden appearance.
Kusanagi ought to be in the lab, he thought weakly. She always managed to be there an hour before him no matter how early he got up. He was about to call her – had anything unusual had happened in the few hours since he’d left his latest simulation pending? – when John’s voice crackled through his radio. “Rodney, why is there a new set of lights following me?”
Figured.
When Rodney turned his back to the wall and grimly marched toward his lab, the light dimmed slightly but trailed after him. Something that wasn’t quite a voice but couldn’t be called anything else started buzzing in his head.
*
The new lights didn’t turn on and, upon closer look, form tiny greenish arrows for anyone who didn’t have the gene. Or for anyone who wasn’t John or Rodney. Possibly Lorne, Rodney had to concede – he couldn’t get confirmation on the Major either way as he’d been roped into some mining mission by General Landry. For no one except John and Rodney save Ronon and Teyla who, Rodney felt should be noted, were ATA negative.
However.
No matter how peculiar, nothing about the lights seemed to suggest they were a warning or in themselves dangerous. Headbuzz and John’s prodding aside, Rodney had other, much more important things to figure out. “Things like finding a way to get us all back to Pegasus before the IOA decides to reassign and split the expedition all over creation and hand the city over to idiots like those kids that disappeared with the Destiny,” he reminded Woolsey, swallowing down his disappointment when the man agreed.
The buzzing did not stop during the entire ensuing time Rodney spent in the labs.
The moment John and Rodney sat down next to each other at their team’s lunch table, the lights still pointed in the same direction they had all morning but seemed lighter, happier. Less intent to do damage to Rodney’s retinas. When Ronon and Teyla joined them, there was no denying that something not as subtle as all that was happening here.
Three sets of eyes looked at him as if waiting for something. Rodney stared at his lunch tray.
The star drive rated high on the list of most exciting projects in the multiverse. It was absolutely vital to getting them back.
Sometimes he felt that if he had to look at the specs for one more minute he might cry, and he hadn’t been on a real mission with his team since, since… Since the Wraith had almost made it to Earth, since John had almost died, since they had all almost died and since Ronon had died.
So.
↘ ↘ ↘
“Are we there yet,” John asked, and Ronon thwacked him in the head. They were laughing.
↘↘
The arrows led them into one of the far too many as-yet unexplored parts of the city. Rodney trod warily, but the structure held, and according to Radek’s and Miko’s voices in their ears likely would continue to hold. He wished they’d triggered whatever it was that was now safely guiding them around the city years ago.
“It could still be a trap,” he cautioned, not quite ready to let go of the apprehension that had been ingrained in him by losing too many people.
He was also wondering how the almost-voice has persuaded them to launch this trip without telling Teldy or Woolsey, especially considering this morning’s conversation and the IOA’s insistence to be apprised of any Atlantis-related anomalies.
“It doesn’t feel like a trap,” John said, grimacing at his own words, but he was right. It didn’t. Not at all.
↘
The journey ended in a rather spacious room filled with tiny cushions. An initial thorough sweep didn’t turn up anything that gave cause to alarm – neither from John and Ronon’s military perspective nor from Rodney and Teyla’s scientific side of things.
“Looks safe,” Ronon asserted.
The door behind them swished shut and locked itself with an audible click. Teyla, alarmed, tried to palm it open and got no response. John crossed the room with a frown and replaced her hand on the sensor with his own. Rodney –
Rodney knew that normally, he’d start searching for a way to re-open it immediately or otherwise spend a few minutes freaking out, but… There was feeling inside him, caused or amplified by the humming of the lights telling him, It’s alright. He held his tongue.
Under normal circumstances, there’d at least have been an argument about whether to start the exploration at once or to recover from their lengthy trek with a snack first. Now, Teyla and John shrugged off the door locking them in and broke out a couple of power bars and a bunch of real bananas without Rodney even having to ask.
What little could be found of chairs was far too small for any of them to sit on comfortably, leaving them to round up the cushions. “I think my radio doesn’t work anymore,” John mused, but he didn’t sound particularly bothered.
It was a kindergarten, Rodney decided as he finished his last banana. He wasn’t sure if he should announce it out loud when Teyla was still a galaxy away from her son, but she was perfectly capable of figuring it out herself. Luckily, she seemed to hear the hum of the almost-voice as well – instead of turning quietly pained like she had taken to do whenever someone mentioned children she was taking in the room with a peaceful look on her face.
She looked beautiful. The sight of her slow motion twirl was the last thing Rodney would later remember clearly.
*
Ronon picked up one of the toys and said “I used to have one of these as a kid.” Rodney squinted at the assemblage of metal and rope and couldn’t quite figure out what it was for, but then Ronon grabbed another one and went, “See, you twist them like this…” and this was how they somehow ended up playing a Satedan game for three-year-olds.
It was the most fun Rodney had had in weeks.
*
Teyla stumbled across some tightly knit mats and burst out laughing. Rodney hadn’t heard her laugh since the day she realized they wouldn’t be able to return to Pegasus soon and might even end up stuck in the Milky Way forever. “You stand on them with your feet close together and sway your body,” she explained. “Whoever remains standing the longest while moving the most wins.”
“My feet are too big to fit on there,” Rodney complained, knowing better than refuse her outright but figuring this was how he’d get out of having to do anything physical. It’d been a long walk, okay, and they were all at least thirty years too old for this.
“That is why anyone who has seen more than fifteen summers is required to stand on one leg,” Teyla grinned. Ronon and Sheppard had already each grabbed a mat.
Rodney sighed. He resolved to never let her forget it if Ronon won.
*
John seemed strangely distracted until Rodney lost his balance and had to give up after what he felt were a respectable five minutes.
Rodney had seen his teammates spar and fight for real countless times, but there was something entirely different about seeing John – about seeing them – move like this.
*
They found a quiche-like cake that looked freshly baked although it must have been sealed more than ten thousand years ago. Safe, safe, safe said the almost-voice and the reassuringly green blinking walls, and Rodney took the first bite and didn’t worry about a thing.
*
“Shouldn't someone be looking for us?” John thought to wonder at one point. Rodney frowned and pretended to think on it, but in truth he didn’t really care. He'd rather stay here for a long, long little bit longer.
*
“There’s a bathroom back there,” Ronon announced, a round contraption and a glass of soapy water in hand. “Melena’s nieces used to do this,” he said and grinned as he blew ping pong ball-sized soap bubbles at them.
*
“Me and Dave had a lot of toys as children, but the best was always when we would get out to visit the horses and just go for rides,” John confessed in a low voice. He’d been sorting through the unfamiliar looking toys for what seemed like hours.
*
“Jeannie and I used to make up our own games,” Rodney told them over a another plate of quiche. “No one else was ever smart enough.” Of course, later on she had preferred to dumb herself down and join other children, but for a few years after she had learned to talk he’d been able to play with someone who was almost as smart as him.
*
He tried and failed to remember how much time had passed since the door shut when Ronon started yawning. Soon, the yawn sprang over to John, who smirked, then to Teyla, who had to laugh. “Bathroom’s mine,” Rodney announced, or would have, if the ball of air in his mouth had let him form the words.
They fell asleep on top of the ancient cushions, curled into one another. It had been such a long time since they’d all slept in the same space. Falling asleep next to Jennifer had been nice, but Rodney had to admit that he didn’t miss it as much as he’d missed this.
↙
When he woke up in the morning, the hum from the almost-voice was gone. John’s arm was slung around him, Ronon’s leg was weighing down his ankle, and Teyla was breathing into his shoulder.
He lay there for a while, unwilling to move and vaguely hoping that any of the others would be the first to admit to being awake. There were worse ways to spend a morning. Rodney knew – he had lived many of them. He found that he would not mind at all to start his days like this.
Judging by the eventual awkward shuffles to the bathroom the rest of the team, too, felt somewhat embarrassed by recent events. But only somewhat. Mostly, Teyla and Ronon seemed looser than they had their entire time on Earth. It was harder to tell with John, but he didn’t go to half the length to avoid their gazes Rodney knew him capable of. Apart from the redness of his pointy ears he seemed fine. Rodney himself felt good – reconnected, grounded in a way he hadn’t in far too long.
↙ ↙
A tiny circle of arrows persuaded them to eat the last of the quiche for breakfast before attempting to leave the room. This time, the door swished open before Teyla had even touched the sensor.
No one was waiting for them on the other side. If Rodney had given it thought, he would have expected Radek or Simpson or Captain Cadman and her merry bomb squad. What if we had been in danger? he almost asked, but they hadn’t been, and he was far too relaxed to get worked up about it. At least the absence of a welcome committee was a sign that the IOA hadn’t been called.
There were still lights whose origins Rodney couldn’t explain on the walls appearing alongside the corridors they had come from. They were dimmer than they had been when the team had set out and were fading as they passed them. What remained was the bone-deep knowledge that the door would not reopen for them – “Does the city often communicate with you this way?” Teyla asked curiously – and that the place they’d found needed to remain private.
“Kinda gives one hope that the Ancients weren’t always soulless bastards,” John muttered. Rodney found himself agreeing reluctantly.
Their radios sprang back to life when they’d been walking for almost ten minutes.
“May I ask what happened?” Woolsey’s unexpectedly calm voice asked once they’d reestablished contact with the labs and had been patched through to the control room. John nudged Rodney’s shoulder and twirled a finger at his forehead, suggesting that the expedition leader had likely been ensnared by a little whisper of almost-voice of his own.
“We apologize for leaving you ‘out of the loop’”, Teyla said with a look at John that would have been a warning if she had given it without the mischievous gleam in her eyes. “I hope our absence did not cause you too much trouble?”
“He didn’t tell the IOA,” Teldy cut in, bemused. “He told them Dr. McKay was doing vital calculations and was not to be disturbed, and Colonel, he rescheduled your video conference.”
“It seemed prudent to debrief you properly before making decisions,” Woolsey said a tad defensively, almost embarrassed.
In their abandoned corridor still half an hour away from the next intact transporter, they looked at each other. Finally Teyla said, “We will try to give you a proper report, but yesterday may prove difficult to explain.”
Rodney opened his mouth to plunge right into things – what, it was a long walk, and if they got the debrief out of the way now he’d be able to return to the labs immediately – but closed it when Ronon summed up the last thirty-six hours better than Rodney could have.
“It was an Atlantis thing.”
Rodney’s ear piece transmitted something that couldn’t possibly have been a snort. “I’ll be expecting you in my office when you get back.”
“Roger that,” John said and snagged Rodney’s radio before he had the chance to protest or call Radek. Rodney huffed, but he knew the others could tell it was mostly for show.
The universe was far from perfect. They were still stuck in the wrong galaxy where the IOA might disperse the expediction any day. Rodney had lost almost two days of work on the star drive. Teyla’s son might still never get his mother back. And yet – John couldn’t seem to stop bumping into him and stepped even closer when Rodney tentatively bumped back. Teyla kept smiling and Ronon was whistling.
They were a team. The Milky Way could not touch them.
↘ ↓ ↙
A few weeks later, Rodney woke up to a page to his radio from a back in Atlantis, more than a little harried Major Lorne. “McKay, any thoughts on why there are suddenly lights following my team around?”
Rodney looked at the back of John’s head peeking out from underneath the covers and smiled.
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Date: 2012-01-01 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-01-02 03:33 pm (UTC)Lovely! Although She is far from home, Atlantis can still affectively care for her favorite group of people. LOL And, the fact that Rodney was cuddled up to John, at the end, was pure icing. :)
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Date: 2012-01-02 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-03 02:27 am (UTC)