Mathématique: Chapter 86

“Is Colonel Sheppard wearing your sleepwear?” Rush asked Young.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges.

Text iteration: Witchingest hour.

Additional notes: This chapter was originally posted on October 13, 2024. Its posting date was updated because a new back half was added.

Chapter 86

Rush paced the length of his luminous room. The stone and metal paneling beneath his bare feet warmed along the line he walked. Starlight and moonlight turned the space into a silvery, prismatic grotto. He had only to wave a hand to open glass doors to the maritime air.

The city itself seemed to watch him, from the tiny green shoots that twined around the grating at the perimeter of the floor, to the walls that vibrated with melodies he couldn’t quite hear, to the crystal windows overhead that let in light like they were doing him a favor.

He’d spent hours trying to conjure the superpositioned version of Everett Young from the undercurrents of the world and met with no success.

Only Atlantis kept him company, a shimmering weight against his thoughts, like the sea itself.

Together, they’d turned to working his current problem.

“Right so,” he said, soliloquizing to the city, “there’s a distinction between ‘incomplete knowledge’ and ‘intrinsic quantum indeterminacy.’ Wave functions oscillate over space and time. Per Copenhagen, observation collapses the wave function, pinning down reality. Irreversibly.”

He paused, distracted, studying his right hand.

It felt empty.

Perhaps, when organizing his thoughts aloud, he was in the habit of holding something. (A pen? A cigarette? A marker? Chalk?)

“But,” he continued, “we’re likely not dealing with Copenhagen. We’re dealing with Many Worlds. We’re playing the Grand Monte Carlo.”

Atlantis thrust a spectacular image into his consciousness. His cortical suppressors warmed, and he lost the room to current running in crystal, to an explosion of particle trajectories. The image repeated itself. Repeated itself. Repeated itself. Subtly different every time.

“Yes,” he murmured. “Well done. That’s the idea. Whole realities iterating through endless fates on cosmic scales.”

Excited, the city showed him particle trajectories in crystal. This time, it compressed each particle tree into a two-dimensional image, layering them in a stack. Like book pages.

“Yes,” he agreed, blind to the room. “Superposition.”

And the city fanned the pages of the book as though it were thumbing through them. Jewel-colored, crystal-embedded particle paths blurred into one another.

“Yes.” Possessed of sudden inspiration, he asked, “Can you detect the touch of quantum privilege?”

Again, the book of crystal fanned itself, but it was restive. Confused.

He projected the image of Morgan Le Fay, her hair swept up, her track jacket of white glow, the gray of her eyes, the silver of her shoelaces. //Could you sense her presence?//

The city cut into his mind with knife-sharp longing. It was impossible to tell if it was reacting to the image of Morgan or to his question. The book pages turned to images of her: grey eyes reflecting the flash of lightning over water; her silhouette on a windswept pier, her white dress blown back, its crystal dragging over a silver quay; surrounded by light, by transparent representations of aperiodic crystal—

A quiet knock sounded on the door that led to the colonel’s room. The city gently slid him back into the gates of his perception.

He staggered on the flat, warm floor.

Rush raised a hand to his temple and looked at the walls, as though they might explain themselves.

Nothing was forthcoming except the knock, which sounded again, louder this time.

He strode to the door, leaving the line of warmed paneling he’d been pacing. The floor turned cool under his feet. He waved a hand and misted glass slid open to reveal Young and Sheppard.

“Hi,” Young offered.

Rush, still disoriented from navigating semi-verbal conversation with a semi-sentient machine intelligence, said, “What?”

“We woke you.” Sheppard tried to retreat.

Young clamped a hand around Sheppard’s elbow and hauled him back into formation. It was an odd visual, as they were both in a notable state of undress. 

“What?” Rush said again.

“I dunno.” Young eyed Rush skeptically. “Maybe he sleeps first.”

“What?” Rush brought a little more verve to bear and went on the offensive. “Make fuckin’ sense. Immediately.”

Sheppard snorted.

Young shut his eyes, scraping patience like paint. “Can we come in?”

Rush studied them. Their late-night, half-dressed interruption at precisely the moment he’d been querying the city itself about superposition was hard to interpret. His cortical suppressors felt warm against his skin.

//,,,,// Atlantis purred, clarifying nothing.

“He’s just—” Young gestured at Rush, addressing Sheppard, “—alarming, sometimes.”

“I’m getting that,” Sheppard agreed.

Rush studied the pair of them, all masculine angles and dark hair in a room full of starlight. Sheppard looked self-conscious and bruised. Young looked torn between worry and amusement. No cane in sight, but he was favoring his injured leg.

“Fuck off,” he suggested politely. Turning in the direction of his en suite kitchenette, he added, “Can I offer you some tea?”

“Hotshot, what we really need is your bed.”

“Forward of you.” Rush pointed at a pair of wrought metal stools tucked beneath a counter of pale stone. “Sit, and we’ll negotiate.”

Young snorted.

“What’s happening?” Sheppard rasped.

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Rush opened and shut empty cupboards. “This en suite kitchenette isn’t remotely equipped.”

“Hotshot,” Young began, leaning into the counter and ignoring the stool, likely because it’d be hard on his injured hip and back, “we don’t need a 0200 culinary masterwork.”

“And it’s a good thing too,” Rush said, lining up three tins of Athosian tea on the counter in front of Sheppard, “because it’s a categorical impossibility.”

“You’re a categorical impossibility,” Young muttered.

“What are these?” Rush asked Sheppard, indicating the three tins.

“Uh.” The light in the room had a frosted quality, and Sheppard’s bruising stood out against the pale skin of his throat. “Tea?”

“I gathered as much,” Rush said patiently. “What kind of tea?”

“Uh, Athosian tea?” Sheppard hazarded.

“Helpful. Thanks.” Rush glanced at Young, his eyebrow quirked.

Young, amused, gave him a one-shouldered shrug and a subtle shake of the head. He leaned into the counter. “You gonna construct a 0200 experiment that blows away our preconceptions about the limits of tea?”

“That’s quite—” he began, then stopped himself. He shot Young a sharp look. “Flattery doesn’t count if it was lifted from things I’ve said and can’t recall.”

Young fought down a smile. “You sure?”

(Right, so he quite liked Young.)

He turned away from the pair of them, stared at stone trimmed counters with inlaid crystal and tentatively said to Atlantis, //Mind showing me how to boil water without co-opting my consciousness?//

//!// Atlantis replied, and into his mind the city projected the image of a sunstone panel, small and rectangular, set into the wall in the place Earth-based cabinetry would be.

Rush looked above the crystal-inlaid counter, located the correct expanse of stone, and lifted his hand. He hadn’t touched it, wasn’t even close, when it slid open, revealing a shallowly built set of shelves. Glassware glinted in the moonlight.

There were delicate cylinders of cut crystal arrayed on the lowest shelf. The middle shelf held small bowl-shaped vessels, reminiscent of Japanese teacups with inlaid strainers that contained irregular, biologic imperfections, as though grown from coral. The top shelf held complex, coiled glassware, vaguely reminiscent of Klein Bottles.

He pulled out three alien teacups and waved the panel shut.

//Am I meant t’prepare these individually?// He asked. //I was envisioning—// he sent the city an image of a tea kettle heating on a stove.

In response, Atlantis provided a pair of images: a stone panel near the floor, and a wide, two-handled glass vessel with a lip meant for pouring.

Rush knelt, waved a hand, and pulled out his alien tea kettle.

He stood to find his guests staring at him with very different expressions. Young: eyebrows up, mouth quirked, telegraphing so-this-is-how-it’s-gonna-be USAF patience. Sheppard: brow knitted, eyes watchful, telegraphing braced-for-bad-news USAF anxiety.

The alien tap was clear enough, and Rush filled the kettle with water.

He tried to ignore the rising conversational pressure in the room.

Atlantis, too, seemed to pick up on the rising undercurrent of tension. The image it sent of resonance induction via crystal lattice flowed into his mind smoothly and subtly, like the water running in the grooves of the walls. He positioned the kettle on a naquadah counter panel and swept a finger over a faintly glowing touchpad labeled AUGERE CALORUM in etched Ancient characters.

Young, hands braced against the counter, his gaze direct and confrontational, said, “You’ve got a direct line with Atlantis. And it goes both ways.”

It wasn’t a question.

Rush glanced at Sheppard.

“Don’t look at him,” Young growled.

“Fuck right off,” Rush fired back, all cool-burning fire.

Sheppard stared at his hands, as emotive as a brick under moonlight.

Young took a breath, reined himself in, and said, “The pair of you, somehow, already have more bullshit in the mix than I’d have believed possible. Some of it, I’ll allow. But not this.” He fixed Rush with a direct, demanding gaze. “Do you, or do you not, have a direct line to Atlantis?”

Not in the mood to fuckin’ fall in line, Rush gestured wordlessly at the heating kettle. “Doesn’t take a genius IQ to boil water, does it?”

Young tightened his grip on unyielding stone. “Rush,” he growled.

But it was Sheppard who answered. “Yeah. He does. I do.”

Rush quirked an eyebrow at Sheppard, then opened a tin of tea.

The leaves smelled of lavender and vervain, crushed violet and spearmint. Of afternoon clarity and the open air.

“I told you,” Young growled, looking at Rush, “don’t cover for him.”

“I’ll do what I like,” Rush replied, and moved to the second tin of tea. It smelled rich and dark, with notes of malt and citrus. A morning tea, certainly, with maritime hints of brine and wet flint.

Sheppard ran a thumb along the bruise at his neck.

Young sighed. “I get that. But you’re already on the home team, hotshot. It’d be nice if you’d consistently bat for us.”

“The ‘home team’?” Rush lifted the lid on the third tin of tea, smelling rose and toasted barley, moss and mist and cocoa. An evening tea. Or maybe a tea for clouded days, pre-dawn mornings, times without sun. “Can’t be sure, but I doubt I tow an institutional line all that gracefully.”

“The home team,” Young said, like slipping an ace out of his sleeve, “isn’t the Air Force. This is the home team.” He spiraled a finger to include the three of them. “SG-68. SG-1. Shep and his flagship unit.” He glanced at Sheppard. “You guys need a designation.”

Sheppard shrugged. “Usually people call us McShep and Teynon.”

“Sounds like a budget legal firm,” Young said.

Rush considered this while he turned off the induction plate and shook a generous amount of Athosian evening tea into the water to steep. As affiliations went, Young’s proposal one seemed as unobjectionable as they came. But—

The dynamic between the two colonels had shifted. Even within the few hours since he’d last seen them. Sheppard looked like he’d been cracked open and was astonished to’ve been glued back together. Young had a bit more confident dynamism in his bearing, seemed a bit more sure of himself, a bit more—

Hang on.

Rush turned and scanned Sheppard, who was dressed in a T-shirt and USAF sweatpants that didn’t quite fit. They were identical to the ones Young was wearing.

“Is Colonel Sheppard wearing your sleepwear?” Rush asked Young.

“Maybe,” Young said, equal parts amused and forbidding.

Sheppard, eyes shut, didn’t reply. He looked like he was praying for his own death.

“Are ya all right?” Rush asked him.

Given Sheppard’s eyes were closed, he didn’t notice Rush was directly addressing him, and so didn’t answer.

“Is he all right?” Rush asked Young.

“I think so?” Young side-eyed Sheppard with a mix of amusement and concern. “Take it easy on ‘im, though, just in case.”

Rush removed the tea tins from the counter and set three glasses along the sunstone surface. “So,” he began delicately, “I’m torn on whether the ‘home team’ refers to a secretive, informal operation within the SGC dedicated to high-risk innovative approaches to transgalactic threats, or—” he paused dramatically, skewering Young with directed poise, “—a threesome.”

Young, delighted, took some pains to school his expression into authoritative neutrality. “I don’t know that the two are mutually exclusive,” he said, with the understated satisfaction of an early-game checkmate.

And rightly so.

“Well reasoned,” Rush said, dry and mild.

Sheppard cracked an eyelid.

Rush poured fragrant tea through skeletonized chunks of coral.

Young leaned into the counter.

“It’s an interesting proposal either way,” Rush said. “The former incarnation being vaguely mutinous, the latter being highly incongruous with the reputation of the American military establishment.”

“Hotshot, until you get your memories back this is only gonna go so far,” Young replied.

“Agreed,” Sheppard rasped.

Young clapped the man bracingly on the shoulder.

Rush lifted the coral strainers out of each cup, trying to decide whether he felt disappointed or relieved. Bit of both, certainly. Young’s wall-of-stone reliability layered over mostly concealed passion and Sheppard’s blend of ease and intensity were attractive in isolation. Together, they made an intriguing blend.

And—

He was lonely.

But, while he was certain he was attracted to men (and women), he had absolutely no idea, none, about what instincts and proclivities might emerge during a sexual encounter.

Had he been with anyone other than (presumably) his late wife?

It was possible he’d never find out. It was possible he’d have only best guesses from urges, from habits, from inferences into half-conscious motor patterns.

Like he could see into the conflict in Rush’s head, Young, mercifully businesslike, said, “First thing we need to negotiate is a system where the pair of you can sleep without getting pulled into a mutual  nightmare. At least until Keller can make some real headway with your cortical suppressors. Or whatever the hell is going on.”

Steam wafted from the teacups, floral and earthy. It coated the inside of each glass with attractive condensation. “Why is everyone so certain it’d be a nightmare?”

“Experience,” Sheppard said dully.

Rush nudged the man’s tea a little closer. “You’ve a proposal, I assume?” He directed the question at Young.

“Yeah,” Young replied. “The pair of you use one bed. Sequentially. If you sleep nowhere but the bed, you’ll know if the other person’s in it.”

“A mutex,” Rush said, considering.

“Knew he’d have a name for it,” Young muttered to Sheppard. “‘Mutex?’ Seriously? That’s a real thing?”

“Comes from ‘mutual exclusion.’ It’s a computer science term that ensures only one process can access a shared resource at a time.” Experimentally, Rush picked up the glass cup of tea. To his surprise, it was cooler than expected. The pleasant warmth beneath his fingertips suggested a heat dispersal mechanism that went beyond the qualities of simple glass.

“Cryptography.” Sheppard looked at Young like he thought the word was a complete explanation.

“Sure,” Young replied. “All I care is that it reliably works.”

“It should,” Sheppard replied, “as long as I don’t sleep offworld.”

Rush sighed, glancing at the palatial bed visible through the open door to the bedroom. “Am I really meant to sleep in that thing?”

“Shep can go first,” Young said. “Show you how its done.”

Rush nodded. He sipped his tea, studying Colonel Sheppard’s hunted demeanor. As Rush iterated on possible explanations, accounting for the high probability that the pair on the other side of the stone counter had very recently slept together—it occurred to him that perhaps Sheppard’s altered body language was less indicative of something wrong than it was an unusually accurate representation of the man’s true feelings. No artfully casual front. Less effort expended on blocking external manifestations of emotions.

Sheppard, maybe, was feeling vulnerable and hating the experience.

Rush could relate.

Almost certainly, though, he could’ve related better at some point in the past.

Sheppard likely knew as much, might miss the person Rush had been, the person better equipped to understand the depth of his connection with alien tech, the person better equipped to understand the interplay between such secrets and how the United States Air Force might respond to them.

Or maybe it was something else. Those bruises had come from somewhere.

“I’m fine until tomorrow night,” Sheppard rasped.

“Yeah,” Young said bracingly. “We know.” Over Sheppard’s shoulder, he shot Rush a get-a-load-of-this-guy look.

“The bed would be wasted on me,” Rush said, brusque and final and directing his words to Sheppard. “I’m still on Earth time. Per our initial agreement.”

Young rolled his eyes. “Don’t plot without me.”

Rush made an insultingly sympathetic sound. “D’you feel left out?”

Sheppard smiled faintly and sipped his tea.

“You’re damn right I feel left out. Knock it off.”

“I made one schedule with you,” Rush fired back. “It doesn’t entitle you t’conspiracy rights in perpetuity.”

“It was in the fine print,” Young said.

The bickering went on, full of ease, as they drank their Athosian tea. The moon disappeared, moving beyond the highest skylight, leaving only stars and bright water to illuminate the room. When Sheppard slid between the shell-colored sheets of Rush’s bed, he left the bedroom door open; whether in invitation or to stave off solitude, it was impossible to say.

Rush and Young, another round of tea in hand, retired to the sea glass and silver table in front of the balcony doors.

“Is he all right?” Rush asked quietly, indicating the open bedroom doorframe with his eyes alone.

Young followed his gaze, turning as much as his injured back would allow. “I doubt it.”

“What happened?” Rush asked.

Young hesitated.

“You want t’be cut in on the ‘Lantean Dream Team?’ You’ll need to offer something in return,” Rush said.

Young snorted. “I’m not ‘Dream Team’ material.”

Rush tutted disapprovingly.

“Best as I can tell,” Young began, “he spent the day securing an abandoned Wraith genetics lab, full of—” the colonel trailed off.

“Wraith?” Rush prompted.

“Mutated Wraith experiments?” Young winced. Likely at the ridiculous way the words landed when spoken aloud.

“Lovely.” He grounded himself in the floral notes of his tea. The wholesome curl of the pale green shoots at the base of the walls. “And the Wraith are what, exactly? No one’s laid it out.”

Young traced the rim of his teacup. “A predatory species,” he admitted reluctantly. “One I’m planning to keep you well clear of.”

“Surely a few details wouldn’t go amiss,” Rush said, “if your goal is really to build a team versatile enough to handle civilization-ending threats.”

Shadow tangled itself in Young’s curls. His expression was difficult to read.

“The Wraith evolved, we think, from an insect. They operate in hives, under the direction of a queen. They feed on the life energy of other organisms, drawing it directly, biochemically, through slits in their palms.” He traced a line on his own hand. “Here.”

“What do they look like?” Rush asked.

“They look a lot like the Ghouls in Astria Porta,” Young said. “Long white hair worn in decorative braids. Yellow eyes.”

Rush frowned. “So—humanoid in appearance then?”

Young nodded.

“Odd.”

“Why odd?”

“Well,” he traced the rim of his teacup, “it’s not obvious t’me why a species evolved from an insect would look so human.”

Young eyed him uneasily. “Might be worth looking into,” he said softly.

“No connection t’the Ancients?” Rush directed the question at Young and Atlantis simultaneously.

“Not to my knowledge,” Young said, “but—”

Atlantis blew through his mind like the icy tail of a dark comet. 

Rush shivered. His cortical suppressors pulsed warm against his skin.

“Don’t worry, hotshot,” Young said, “we’re gonna keep lightyears between you and the nearest Wraith colony. Everyone’s clear on that. Woolsey, Shep, Jackson, McKay. Everyone.”

Rush nodded.

Shards of blocked thought, like splintered ice, showered through the narrow gate the tech at his temples allowed. Broken images buried themselves in his mind: sunlight lancing through ocean water like a spear beyond a glass wall; a pale blue flower in the hand of a child; the face of Morgan Le Fay, contorted with grief, wailing without sound, like something out of legend.

“You don’t look reassured,” Young said.

“Don’t I?” Rush smiled weakly.

In the late morning, Rush woke to streaming sun. He watched blearily as Atlantis dialed down a heavy tint on the overhead skylights. Water ran silent and sparkling along grooves in the floor and down a recessed sunstone panel on the wall. The pale green shoots of young plants curled around polished silver grating.

The shell and stone floor of the bathroom’s linen storage alcove was strangely warm.

//***??// Atlantis greeted him.

“You’re so fuckin’ wholesome,” Rush muttered.

He sat.

And hit his head on the shelf overhead.

There’d been no way to sleep in a massive bed, under the light of millions of stars, on a pillow that smelled of stone and crushed sage, of petrichor and blood. In short, of John Sheppard.

//.// The city telegraphed disapproval.

“Yes yes.” Rush dragged himself from the bottom of the storage alcove and into the bathroom proper, its sea glass and shell aesthetic aglow in the light of late morning. 

He pulled on a new set of charcoal expedition gear, brushed his teeth, tamed his hair, donned his glasses and hit the door controls. His suite was ablaze with the glory of daylight falling on reflected surfaces.

(It was too fuckin’ bright here. But that’s what one got when one built a city atop a watery mirror on a world with a strong sun.)

Squinting, he crossed the suite, hit the door controls, and found himself in Colonel Young’s quarters, empty and spotless, the bed crisply made. Rush crossed the room and let himself into the hall, which was, mercifully, a little less exposed to the glittery brightness of the endless sea.

The common room was dimmer still. The windows had been transformed to resemble thick stained glass, colored burnt amber, dusty gold, dark lilac, copper, and the blue of deep water. Eli sat on the couch, a controller in hand.

A sepulchral musical theme suffused the air.

Rush made a wounded sound as he surveyed the ice-encrusted Promethean organ on the screen.

“Hey boss.” Eli paused the game. “The resident Hardass In Chief left you an updated schedule. It’s on the counter next to the alien fruit bowl.”

“How’d y’fix the windows?” Rush asked.

“I didn’t. It was J’Shep. He dropped me back here after Ronon finished deboning my skeleton.”

“What?”

“Two. Hours.” Eli said. “Strength training. Running. Learning the names of guns. Learning the parts of guns. Satedan power jumps. Then? HE MADE ME RUN DOWN 30 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS SO HE COULD PUSH ME INTO THE OCEAN TO SEE IF I COULD SWIM.”

“Could you?” Rush approached the counter and spun Colonel Young’s blocky and muscular handwritten schedule to face him. 

“Sort of,” Eli muttered. “Do you even care? I’m your intern! Show some indignation!”

1100-1300: Physical Training with Teyla (she’ll come to you)

1300-1400: Lunch

1400-1600: City Orientation with Dr. Zelenka (he’ll find you)

1600-1800: Unstructured time

1830-2030: Dinner in the Mist Suite

Beneath the list, John Sheppard had added: Hi.

Rush smirked at the paper, eyed the fruit basket on the counter, and went looking for a knife.

“Dave. Hello? Are you not going to lodge a formal protest about this? I could have died.”

“Y’look fine to me.” Near his hip, a shallow drawer slid open, offering him an array of beautifully gleaming cutlery.

With a wave of gratitude in the city’s direction, he chose a paring knife. He pulled a roughly spherical purple fruit with a thick rind from the bowl on the counter, eased the blade beneath its skin, and began a helical peel.

Eli padded over in his charcoal socks, hair still damp from his dip in the ocean or, more likely, from a subsequent shower. Rush smelled the clean herbal note of Athosian soap. “Goin’ for the purpinorange?”

“No,” Rush said. “Unacceptable.”

“What? The name? C’mon. It’s purple and has skin sorta like a pineapple but it’s shaped like an orange. Purpinorange.”

“Absolutely not,” Rush countered.

“You are rockin’ that knife, Dave,” Eli said, impressed. “Why the heck did it take you, like, nine weeks and a tip from Our Hardass Leader to figure out you’re good in the kitchen?"

“I confess, it strikes me as odd.” Rush finished his peel of the fruit and deposited the rind in a coiled pile on the counter. “You’d think, with the breadth of the skillset I seem to have, I’d attend to food more. But I don’t. Not natively.” He cut a slice from the fruit and offered it to Eli.

The lad took the lilac sliver, inspected it, then popped it into his mouth. “Tastes like blue raspberry. Maybe a little cherry in there? Hint of Diet Coke.”

Cautiously encouraged by this (pathetic) description, Rush bit into the fruit. It had a flavor profile that overlapped with Lambrusco—earthy, sweet, red-fruit forward, and with notes of minerality. “Diet coke?” he echoed, full of disapproval. “Blue raspberry?”

“We don’t all have the palate of professional chef, okay?”

Rush shrugged and took another bite. “Where is everyone?”

“Greer is taking Promethean, AKA Ancient lessons in one of the libraries. I’ve applied to clear my ‘Floor Competency’ in Ancient today by having an hour long conversation, in Ancient, with Dr. Jackson, which I’m trying to block from my mind, so thanks for reminding me. The Colonel and Ginn are doing their Lantean History Team Orientation, and Lieutenant Vanessa Needsabell James trailed you in here and is standing in the shadows like a creeper.” The lad pointed across the room. 

Rush looked up to see Lieutenant James leaning against the far wall, next to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. She’d put her back to the wrought naquadah wall, near an inlaid waterfall that glowed a faint amber at its edges. Her eyes were watchful. Beneath one arm was a book.

“Hello,” she said, the picture of awkwardness.

“Hello.” Rush took another bite of purple fruit. A trickle of juice ran down the back of his hand.

“I don’t know about this ‘team’ idea, Dave,” Eli said. “I’m feeling like we’d be better off trying to thaw and play the Promethean Ice Organ twenty-three hours a day.”

Rush ignored this. Before he could decide on what to say to Lieutenant James, a chime rippled through the air, startling all three of them.

Rush flinched.

James’s book slid from beneath her arm to hit the floor as she reached for her weapon.

“Whaaat the hell.” Eli stared at the ceiling.

Atlantis forced the image of Teyla Emmagen standing on a sun-drenched stretch of silver walkway, dressed in leggings, a sleeveless purple corset, and facing the door to—

“Come in?” Rush said experimentally.

“Doc!” James hissed. “Don’t just invite people in!”

“Hello?” A low female voice sounded from inside the coil of their entryway.

“Who’s there?” James demanded, sidearm trained on the shadowed doorframe.

“Teyla Emmagen.” The woman stepped into view, her hands raised, her brow furrowed. Her gaze swept the room, took in Rush and Eli, the knife, the fruit, the freeze-frame of the ice-covered Promethean Organ, and Lieutenant James, the book at her feet, the gun in her hand.

Teyla angled her head and said, “Why is it so dark in here?”

“These cyphers aren’t gonna solve themselves, and you can’t see a screen to save your life with this kind of morning sun.” Eli said. “James, you wanna stop pointing your gun at the most epic badass on Atlantis before she splinters every bone in your body and drinks her morning coffee out of your skull?”

Teyla’s smile turned bright. She glanced at Eli. “You have been talking to Ronon.”

“He talked ‘at’ me plenty,” Eli grumbled. “Not sure about the me talking ‘to’ him part of things.”

In a smooth, controlled motion, James lowered her gun. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“No need to apologize,” Teyla said. “Your dedication is admirable, Lieutenant.” She took a few more steps into the room. “I see you’re sampling fruit from the Athosian Mainland,” she said, addressing Rush and Eli. “How are you finding it?”

“Quite good.” Rush took another bite. “We were speculating on what this one might be called.”

“Bacca,” Teyla picked up one end of the spiral rind Rush had deposited on the counter and examined its structural integrity. “Grated, and dried, the rind imparts an aromatic note to stews and tarts. The fruit itself is used in cakes and fermented into wine.”

“Interesting,” Rush said.

Teyla gave him a curious look from beneath a wave of her hair. “Your culinary reputation precedes you. Dr. McKay cannot stop raving about the small delicacies you prepared in the Milky Way before your departure to Atlantis. Tiny soups? Nuts wrapped in cheese wrapped in fruit wrapped in meat?”

Eli sighed longingly. “Bacon wrapped dates. Incredible.”

Teyla smiled. Gently, she worked the shed coil of bacca rind around the handle of a cabinet, presumably leaving it to dry. “Come,” she said to Rush. “Let us begin your training.”

She led him to a spare room, full of indirect light and sunstone panels. The floor was patterned like stone and inlaid metal, but it was made of an unfamiliar material. He felt a slight give beneath his boots. There was a rack of slender wooden rods beneath an amber frosted window.

At the door, Teyla removed her sandals.

Rush knelt to unlace his boots. The bare floor was warm beneath his feet.

Teyla led him to the center of the room, then dropped into a cross-legged position on the floor, motioning for him to sit across from her.

Rush did so.

They regarded one another in the liturgical light.

“An’ here I was, braced for calisthenics,” he said softly.

The light burnished Teyla’s hair and brought out flecks of gold in her eyes. “Those will come. I thought we might get to know one another first.”

“I’m not opposed.”

“May I call you Nick?” Her gold-flecked eyes captured his gaze and held it.

He nodded.

“And please,” she said, “call me Teyla.”

“All right.”

Her eyes drew him in. Faceted and complex, they seemed to draw in the walls of the room itself, stealing space and air.

Deeply unsettled, Rush tried to drop his eyes. Found he couldn’t.

“Colonel Young provided me with a list of physical requirements he’d like you to master,” Teyla continued. “Colonel Sheppard wishes you trained in a form of traditional Athosian combat. We call it Tabeo. The Thaw.”

“Ah,” the word was no more than a breath.

As though she could tell she was making him uncomfortable, Teyla shook herself, broke the carved mold of her own stillness, dropped her eyes, and looked back up, a human woman once more.

(What the bloody hell had that been?)

“You have no memory of your combat history?” Teyla asked. “When or where you might have needed to fight?”

He shook his head.

Again, she caught his gaze like she’d gone spear fishing for it. She stared into his eyes, searching for lost memory, searching for truth, searching out the drape and the fall of the mnemonic veil that cut him off from himself. “So unusual,” she murmured.

He couldn’t help himself. His body, no longer under his conscious control and unable to tolerate the gold intensity of her gaze, was scrambling away from her, on its feet, backing away, panting for air, ready to run.

“I—” he breathed, unable to explain himself.

“Walk once around the room,” she said kindly, “then return.”

He hesitated, confused.

“This is not uncommon,” Teyla said gently. “Walk.” She made a friendly, normal, human-scaled and calibrated shooing gesture.

Rush shook himself. He headed for the wall and reached for the city, projecting a confused wave of an interrogative in its direction that best translated as //What was that?//

//Teyla,// the city seemed to say, flooding his mind with images of her: scaling towers, slipping through shadows, her eyes magnetic and gold, defending life and architecture, defending data cores and power sources, defending towers and filigree bridges, defending John Sheppard, defending singing crystal.

He took a breath and lapped the room, trailing his fingers along the wall and through the silent runner of water sliding down a recessed strip of wall.

What was wrong with him?

His body had acted of his own accord.

He lapped the room, then, cautiously, came to sit again in front of Teyla,

He found nothing but kindness in her gaze. In her bearing.

“I’m sorry,” he began, “I’m not sure why I—” he trailed off.

“Shall I tell you?” She smiled, small and self-deprecating.

“Please,” he replied, his heart fluttering.

“Radical honesty of being is difficult to tolerate,” she said. “I am attempting to establish a Scindarin Flow between us.”

“A what?”

“Nick,” she said, “my familial lineage contains the DNA of this galaxy’s most fearsome predator. It was artificially introduced into our genes. It’s what I am unmasking. It’s what your body is physically responding to.”

“Why?” He battled to stay seated as the demonic gold leaked back into her gaze.

“Because I have been asked to train you.” There was a strange warm/cold blend to her voice, her gaze, her bearing. “And because I cannot train someone with no past in Tabeo.”

“Why not?” He struggled to stay seated as her gaze drew the world into itself, strip by paper strip.

“Tabeo plucks awareness from memory. It aims to narrow the gap between our construction of the world and the world itself. We cannot access your construction. When your memories return, perhaps, then, I will train you in Tabeo, if you wish.”

Unable to tolerate the weight of her gaze, desperate to break through the wasp nest world she created with her unveiled presence, he flinched to his feet, backing away.

“Take a lap,” she said, and all the cold was gone from her voice. “Faster this time.”

He took a breath, settled himself, walked briskly over the warm floor, already forming an experiential understanding of what ‘Scindarin Flow’ must be. When he dropped back in front of Teyla, there was a little more strength in his mind and spine.

“What is ‘this galaxy’s most fearsome predator’?” Rush asked.

“Wraith.” There was a grind in Teyla’s voice, as though it was trying to operate in two pitch ranges at once. “The scourge of my people. The great enemy of my life. Sown forever into my own genes.”

Rush held his ground under that terrifying gold gaze.

“The Athosians believe ourselves and the other inhabitants of this galaxy to be the children of the Ancestors,” Teyla continued, “while the Wraith view us nothing more than food. Livestock for slaughter. It was Wraith experimentation that created individuals such as myself. Physically skilled. Mentally gifted. My true nature was hidden for most of my life.”

The warmth in the floor bolstered him against the cold weight of her gaze. “How did you discover it?”

“Dreams,” she said, soft and predatory. “Exploration of Ancestral ruins and Wraith labs. Meditation. Combat. Infiltration of hive ships. Hive minds.”

He couldn’t hold his seat any longer. He flinched off the floor, scrambling away from her, tearing free of the way she could turn crystal filtered sun to sap and silence, the way her gaze and words and presence called forth the riddled nests of swarming insects.

“Run,” she told him. “Three laps.”

He ran the perimeter of the room, running off the edge of his fear, converting his adrenaline to forward motion, already digging into defenses, steeling himself to try again.

Out of breath, he dropped back into place opposite her.

She veiled her insectoid magnetism. “Scindarin Flow is the Athosian name for a practice I have encountered on many worlds in this galaxy, meant to explore the attachment between body and spirit. Between spirit and body. Not all such attachments are things of light and beauty.” Teyla let all her dark magnetism fade. “Much as we might wish them to be,” she finished, her tone wistful.

Rush took a breath. “You seem to’ve mastered the practice.”

“To practice is all that can ever be mastered,” Teyla replied. “Scindarin is demanding. It revolves around two core truths.”

“Which are?” Rush replied.

“The first truth is that the second truth must be believed.”

“And the second truth?” Rush asked.

“The second truth,” Teyla said, her eyes turning cold, “is that the first truth must be rejected.”

Rush dug in against the insectoid glow of her gaze. “Such self-referential paradoxical engines are known on Earth. They’ve powered insights into the nature of reality.”

“The ability to contain and contemplate such self-devouring serpents is a step along the path to wisdom,” Teyla said.

“Probably,” Rush breathed, and staggered to his feet.

This time, Teyla followed him up, stalking a small circle that followed his progress around the periphery of the room.

“More control in your cornering. Speed provides stability, to a point. Find that point.”

He steadied into a sustainable sprint as she shadowed him, forcing him to the wall, to corner tightly.

“Cross the room,” she called.

He veered from the wall, sprinting through the center of the floorspace. She altered the arc of her trajectory to intersect with his, stepping in, her hand on his hip, on his shoulder, her calf to his shin. Before he’d understood what had happened, he was on the floor, one arm outstretched.

“The more of your body takes the impact of a fall,” she said, “the less likely you are to be hurt.” She rose and extended her hand, none of her predatory intensity on display.

He took her hand.

She pulled him up. “We will practice.”

After an hour of oscillating between panic and its mastery, practicing falls and body-weight exercises, and the constant discipline of returning over and over to something nakedly terrifying, Teyla called a halt. She stepped close and gripped his upper arms, nothing but kindness in her stance, her voice.

“Well done,” she said, and pressed her forehead to his.

“This can’t be a standard practice,” he breathed, spent. “It’d require Wraith genetics in all it’s practitioners, for one.”

She nodded. “The practice, like its core truths, is cyclical. It differs for every two practitioners. We each approach and retreat from what we fear.”

He frowned, considering. “What was there for you to fear?”

“Perhaps, in time, you will understand.” Teyla stepped back, heading for the door. “Come. Now, we recover.” Gracefully, she caught up her Athosian sandals in one hand.

Rush followed her example, carrying his boots into the hall as they walked barefoot through a sunlit corridor in the central spire, its windows etched with stylized depictions of coral. Sections of colored glass tinted the sun.

Beneath his bare feet, the floor paneling was warm, reassuring, friendly.

Even now, even having seen it repeatedly, he couldn’t understand how the small woman leading him through filigreed halls of glass and light had turned so terrifying, had drawn and stripped his awareness of Lantean beauty into something cramped and hive-like. 

He followed Teyla beyond the light of the windows to sunstone-hued door. Delicately she pressed her hand to the door controls, and it swished open to reveal a small living space, about the size of a studio apartment. There were candles on the nightstands. The walls were hung with bundles of drying herbs and flowers. Perhaps most surprising was a small bassinet sitting next to the bed.

“It belongs to my son,” Teyla said, as she saw him looking. “Torren.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Teyla pulled an earthenware tea set off a shelf. “I am still adjusting to the demands he places upon me. Fortunately, Mr. Woolsey is a great proponent of what he calls ‘work/life balance’.” She gave Rush a smile with a mischievous edge. “He also enjoys ‘babysitting’.” She set water to boil. “Please,” she said, indicating a small table. “Take a seat.”

Rush lowered himself into a chair, his muscles already protesting at the fear-fueled training he’d put them through. It was no use trying to square the visceral horror he remembered from the training room with the young mother preparing herbal tea.

What a profound practice she’d created, grounded in incompleteness, in Hofstaderian Strange Loops, forcing the mind and the body into oscillating, recursive stability, driving toward endurance, powered by awareness. Had she planned this approach? Had she let it emerge naturally? And what had her experience been like, flexing and veiling what had to be, at best, a deeply conflicted part of herself. At worst—

He lacked the framework to even conceptualize such a thing.

Nothing in her quarters or her demeanor now, nothing in the bassinet or her earthenware tea set even remotely hinted at what she’d allowed him to see in that practice room.

But into his mind came their recent game night. They way her character had sprinted up an invisible stair. Gold eyes flashing. Falling snow invisible in that long, white hair.

What an odd and painful choice, to bring what could only be described as generational trauma into work, into training, into, even, recreation.

“Your character in Astria Porta,” he began delicately, “she seems, perhaps, inspired, by your genetics?”

Teyla placed a pair of clay cups on the table. “It took many years to confront and accept the darker parts of my self. My heritage. I seek new ways to make peace with it. For my own sake, but also for the sake of my son, who will, one day, walk the same road.”

Rush nodded.

Quietly, Teyla filled a strainer with Athosian tea. When the water reached a roiling boil, she poured it into the earthenware teapot and submerged the strainer in the warm water. With the soft scuff of clay on clay, she fitted the lid over the pot and joined him at the table.

“Does this tea have a name?” he asked, recognizing the maritime notes of malt and citrus he’d identified in his own quarters.

“Matutina,” Teyla said, “Tea of the Dawn. My people gather to drink it in the mornings as the sun rises.”

“Are there many of your people on Atlantis?” Rush asked.

“No,” she said, a wistful note in her voice. “My people live on the mainland, an hour’s flight away. I visit as often as I can.”

Rush picked up his cup, studying the reddish cast of the tea. The grounded, lived-in quality of Teyla’s quarters and the notes of citrus and sea wafting from the cup in his hand drove the last shreds of fear from his thoughts. “It smells like the ocean,” he offered.

“It was not always so,” Teyla replied. “I grew up in a community that lived deep in an Ancient forest, on the outskirts of a ruined Ancestral City. But the Wraith came, and my people fled to Atlantis, and then settled on the mainland. Our tea leaves have always been crushed between flat stones. And now such stones come from the shores of the sea.”

Rush took a sip from his earthenware cup, tasting notes of malt and kelp and citrus. “I—it occurs—” He stopped himself. “You’ve offered so much of yourself in this training,” he said finally. “I’m incapable of reciprocating. Quite literally, I—” he trailed off, unable to land the thought.

“I am aware,” Teyla said softly, “but John asked me to train you. And he has never asked me to train anyone before. I wish to honor the spirit of his request.”

“Ah. Did you train him this way? With Scindarin Flow?”

“No,” Teyla said. “Together, he and I practice Tabeo. He has become quite skilled.”

“How long does Scindarin Flow training last?”

Teyla lifted her tea in both hands, almost as though presenting it to him. “Scindarin Flow,” she began, as if making a toast, or perhaps a blessing, “is an apprenticeship that endures as long as the Flow itself. I begin. You return. I begin anew. A single session or a lifetime, the structure is the same.”

Cautiously, he mirrored her gesture. “What you’ve offered,” he said, “seems a good deal more than what was requested.”

With a smile of acknowledgement, Teyla lifted her tea and drank from the rim of her cup.

As if sealing a bargain, Rush followed her example.