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: Noon.

Additional notes: This chapter was originally posted on October 13, 2024. Its posting date was updated because a new back half was added. Then, later, in August of 2026, I added a new opening scene but didn’t adjust the posting date. 

Chapter 86

In his windowless cave of a bedroom spoon-scooped out of a naquadah girder, Rush sat on a wide bed with rounded edges. Beneath his crossed legs was a time-proof coverlet of hair-thin thread in metallic colors: copper, gunmetal, and a mother-of-pearl hue that suggested iridium more than shell. Amber sconces burned on either side of a headboard inscribed with a couplet of Ancient verse, half-consumed by the etched image of a flaming wave.

Rush braced his elbows on his knees and assessed his own stupidity.

It seemed low? But fuck if he knew.

What he did know was that Morgan le Fay was on Atlantis, exploiting a loophole in the agency of abandoned Ancient tech. He was fair certain he could reach her.

Atlantis lay heavy in his mind, a shimmering and shifting mass, like the sea itself. 

Rush stood, and the rough-hewn naquadah cooled his bare feet. He’d left his suitcase open against the wall. He pulled out his NORAD track jacket, zipped it over his Expedition T-shirt, then dug through clothes and a collection of skin and hair products Vala deemed “essential” to find Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach. A little more excavation through a strata of folded shirts yielded the mousepad and high-end gaming mouse Eli had insisted the Air Force provide.

Rush returned to bed, opened his laptop, set the mousepad atop his quantum mechanics textbook, and bent over his laptop screen in an ergonomically inadvisable crouch.

Of all the stupid ideas available to him, this one seemed orders of magnitude less risky than prying off his cortical suppressors.

And, technically, he was meant to be practicing his “mystical spinning.”

He opened Astria Porta.

Of his list of friends, only Elias Falkor and Vera Sar had green circles beside their names, and their location was listed as “The Bridge of Infinity.” Rush frowned, hoping the allusion to calculus wasn’t lost on the pair of them, but it probably was.

His options for entering the game included New Start, Join (Elias Falkor, presumably), Promethea, and Temporal Shrine.

Rush sat before his laptop, elbows braced on knees, fingers steepled in front of him, considering the surface-level question: was he genuinely hoping for a bit more one-on-one time with Morgan le Fay? (Yes.) And the subterranean question: was he taking a risk because the Greeting had made him more agreeable and prosocial? (Maybe.)

Sacrificing his own interests for the group seemed like an effective quality for a brainwashing drug to confer.

Then again, independent of pharmacological altruism that might or might not exist, he’d fuckin’ love to understand the nature of reality, thanks. Prying apart the difference between ascension and superposition sounded like a good time. So did matching wits with a fairy queen. 

In the healing garden, she’d explicitly named her workaround, she’d reached for common ground between them, then shown him the superpositioned version of Everett and implied he was trapped—the carrot and the stick in a handful of seconds.

She’d wanted him to try exactly this.

Rush chose the Temporal Shrine.

Nyck, the risibly attired Galactic Sprite, manifested beside the corpse of the Prismatic Drake. It showed no signs of decay other than a milky film over its open eyes. Rush turned his avatar, scanning the snowfield for movement. There was nothing. Dr. Levant’s body still slumped against the doors to the Temporal Shrine.

Mab, the dove-gray raven, lifted from his feathered epaulettes and launched into the air. The beat of her wings spiraled into a gleaming vortex, its edges lost to the pale sky. The energy sank toward the earth, and, as it touched the snow, a woman with dark hair, dark eyes, and a white track jacket stepped from its center. 

Snow crunched beneath her silver-laced trainers.

Rush’s shoulders burned with tension.

On screen, they faced one another beside a monstrous corpse.

The game showed him a close up of Morgan’s face. Her eyes, deep-set like his own, were lovingly rendered by all the computational power Atlantis cared to bring to bear. Two slender, matching locks of hair escaped their tie to frame her heart-shaped face. Breathy notes from wooden pipes wafted from his laptop’s speakers. A traditional Mixolydian mode, sounding of the major and lying about it.

“As workarounds go,” Rush opened, “this seems rather brazen?”

“You’ve forgotten your headset,” Morgan countered.

“Ah fuck.” He dived for his suitcase, pulled out his headset, put it on, and connected. “Better?”

“I can hear you regardless,” she admitted, “but it’s less work for Atlantis this way.”

Rush nodded.

There was a long silence.

“The fuck are y’doing?” Rush asked politely.

Morgan’s lips quirked in an almost-smile. “Working around barriers.”

“Can we talk like this?” he demanded. “Exchange actual information?”

“Atlantis hosts me of its own volition. There are watchers who might force a dispersal if I go too far, but there’s a level of safety that you, personally, confer on any interaction you’re a part of.”

In-game wind whistled through his laptop speakers.

“What?” Rush asked.

“Rules aren’t as stringent for humans who rate on the ascension spectrum. Speaking to Daniel Jackson, by contrast, risks far more.”

“Is that why the superpositioned version of Everett Young was able to tell me so much?” Rush asked.

Morgan nodded.

“Seems a bit much, after fucking off this plane, to split hairs over genetic status.”

Morgan angled her head, her gaze bold and inquisitive. “Does it please you to stand in judgment of higher reality, facetlette?”

Rush scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“I’m constrained when it comes to material help for the war,” she said. “My local aspect will toss Daniel Jackson a handful of table scraps when it occurs to him to interface with city machinery, rather than importuning the night sky. Well, she’ll try. I’m here for another purpose.”

A poisoned snow began to fall.

Rush watched his avatar’s hit points tick away. “An’ what purpose is that?”

Morgan’s on-screen eyes met and held Rush’s true gaze. “I won’t discuss this in the open. Create a portal. I’ll redirect the destination beneath a mantle of my private design.”

“I’m not a servant,” he said.

Bitterness and grief played over her sharp, fairy-queen features. She searched his face. “No?”

“No.” Rush turned from Morgan and used a combination of clicks and keystrokes to craft the frame of a loom that would split the world.

Morgan stayed silent as the frame of the portal anchored itself to the lines of the Prismatic Drake’s open maw. Threads of spritely energy curled around mirror-shard teeth and blossomed into five-petaled cups blushed with rose. Within the floral frame, the mouth of the drake turned to mist.

Morgan stepped delicately over bloodstained snow.

Rush followed her through the mouth of the drake and into a modern bedroom, where moonlight and starlight poured from a skylight and from open windows and reflected from broad bowls of clear water and hanging mirrors. A white meditation mat lay on a floor of dark wood. A closed silver laptop shone on a small desk.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Morgan said, and led the way.

When Rush had first seen Morgan’s bedroom in the split sphere of the Lantean chair room, he’d imagined it was a constructed space, a sanctum connected to nothing, violating all laws of physics, tucked into the coil of a hidden dimension. But the bedroom was connected to a dark hall, then a narrow stair that creaked beneath Morgan’s feet. They passed a dark sitting room and headed toward a kitchen radiating the warm light that came from candles floating in bowls of water. The window panes reflected the kitchen, but beyond one, he saw small candles burning on a stone path, flickering in the outdoor wind.

Morgan went to the window. As she looked at the garden path, the candles went out. She shook her head, and said, “Sparks shower. That’s their nature.”

“Don’t light candles outdoors, then?” Rush suggested.

“I don’t,” Morgan replied. “It’s the kids.”

“What ‘kids’?”

Morgan pulled two glasses from a kitchen cupboard and waved him toward the small, round table centered in the cottage’s bay window. “The local kids. Making wishes. They write them on slips of paper and pin them beneath a stone, or candle, or apple.”

Rush marshaled all his defenses to avoid being charmed. He clicked on the on-screen chair, located the option to sit, and selected it. His avatar took a seat at the table.

Morgan pulled a bottle of Edradour from a shelf, then joined him. The cut-scene camera framed her graceful pour of amber liquid into two glasses. She slid one in front of Rush.

Rush clicked on his cup of untasteable whisky and drank. His hit points returned to maximum with a soft chime.

Morgan smiled like the meaningless restoration was a small joy.

“This is a fair sight more polite than whatever your ‘facet’ conferred in the chair room,” Rush said.

Morgan took a sip of single malt. “I’ve loads of manners, facetlette. And, by the way, you were given a gift. Stem shores up native mental defenses like green wood. Your mind will bend, rather than break. No other ascended will claim you. No Wraith Queen will put you in thrall. You’re safe from interference.” She made a self-deprecating face. “Safer.”

“Are you planning to explain what you want with me?” Rush asked.

“What I want?” Morgan shifted in her chair and a melancholy came into her expression, old and powerful as water-worn stone. “I want to ask you about your life.”

Rush hunched over his laptop. “Well, I’ve some terrible fuckin’ news for you—”

“I know your memories are gone.” The warm light of the small kitchen gleamed in Morgan’s glass of whisky. “I’m beginning to suspect it’s why they chose you.”

“They?” Rush asked.

Morgan’s eyes flashed. “Your superpositioned aspect and his keeper.”

Rush paused before speaking, certain he was on informative ground if he could only ask the right bloody question. Chose me for what? was low-hanging fruit and on the tip of his tongue. But it had a competitor. 

Matching her dig into danger and intimacy as best he could through the interface of a game, Rush asked, “Is my superpositioned aspect your enemy?” 

Morgan sipped her whisky. “I haven’t decided.”

Fascinating. 

“And he’s—what.” Rush spoke slowly, slotting ideas into place. “He’s triggered something on this brane in particular—something I’m meant to do, or something that’s drawn you in. Both, maybe?”

“He’s maneuvering me into an alliance.” Morgan smiled faintly. “He’s trying.”

They considered each other through the screen of his laptop.

“Do you keep your promises, Nick?” Morgan curled her hand around her whisky and pressed it to her breastbone. “Are you trustworthy?”

“I’ve no idea.” Hopelessly, Rush opened a hand, his mind full of his own manipulative charm, his willingness to leave his past self for dead, the blood and genetics that linked him to the trickster queen who studied him now. “But I fuckin’ doubt it.”

Morgan’s smile warmed. “Me too.”

A quiet knock sounded on the closed door of Rush’s bedroom.

Morgan misted at her edges, the wisps of her hair turning silver-bright in a dim kitchen.

“Wait,” he hissed. “What did you mean when you said I’d imprisoned my greatest rival? How did a version of me end up in superposition and why is he trying to outmaneuver you? How did Everett end up in superposition? Are you going to help Daniel?”

“Oh,” Morgan said, sweet and wise and wicked. “Did you think I was here to tell you things? You’re a window, facetlette, into the biggest disruption my people have faced since the cosmos split during our days of plague and ruin. We’ll speak again.”

With that, the screen misted to white. His avatar rematerialized on the snowfield of the Temporal Shrine. His portal was gone from the maw of the drake, but between its teeth, small apple blossoms twined.

The knock came again, more insistent this time.

Deeply annoyed at the interruption, Rush logged out of Astria Porta, shut his laptop, and stalked to the hatch. He turned the crank and shoved the round door open.

“What,” Rush snarled.

Young and Sheppard stood beyond the hatch, clad in USAF sweatpants and Expedition T-shirts. Young’s fit perfectly. Sheppard’s looked suspiciously Young-sized.

“Hi,” Young said, amused.

“We’re bothering you.” Sheppard backed up a step. “We’ll go.”

Young clamped a hand around Sheppard’s elbow and hauled him back into formation.

Rush took a breath, tried to banish his irritation at being interrupted in the midst of the most consequential conversation he’d had in the short span of life he could remember, and (again) said, “What.” It didn’t land much differently.

“I dunno.” Young eyed Rush skeptically. “Maybe you sleep first.”

Rush glared at Young over the rims of his glasses. “Make fuckin’ sense. Immediately.”

Sheppard snorted.

Young shut his eyes and scraped patience like paint. “Can we come in? Or—” he frowned at Rush’s spartan bedroom. “Can you come out?”

This late-night, half-dressed interruption at precisely the moment he’d made real and material progress with Morgan le Fay was extremely irritating. Was it coincidental? Had she engineered it somehow? If she had, it’d have to be via Sheppard. Wouldn’t it? Maybe not. Everett’s quantum mechanical status was worryingly undefined.

Rush studied the pair of them, all masculine angles and dark hair under filter-down starlight. Young was amused, maybe faintly worried, no cane in sight, and he was favoring his injured leg. A ring of bruises circled the base of Sheppard’s throat. He held himself with self-conscious uncertainty that shifted to disapproval and concern when he caught sight of Rush’s open laptop and discarded headset.

Rush shut the door behind him, shouldered past Sheppard with an athleisurely side-eye he hoped conveyed equal parts warning and promise, then led the way a quarter turn through Merlin’s spiraling quarters to his en-suite kitchen. Or chemistry lab. Or both.

“Can I offer you some tea?” he asked.

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

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

Young snorted.

Rush opened and shut empty cupboards, looking for the Athosian tea Vala had told him she’d put in his kitchen.

And, ah ha. There it was—in three small tins his terrestrial BFF had no doubt found irresistibly winsome. 

“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 lined the 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 moonlight that filtered in from windows far above had a frosted quality, and Sheppard’s bruising stood out against the pale skin of his throat. “Tea?”

“Yes,” Rush said, lethally patient. “I gathered as much. What kind of tea?”

“Uh, Athosian tea?” Sheppard hazarded.

“Helpful. Thanks.” Rush quirked an eyebrow at Young.

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

“That’s quite—” he began, then stopped himself. “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 did quite like Young.)

Rush studied stone-trimmed counters with inlaid crystal. //Mind showing me how to boil water without co-opting my consciousness?// he asked the city.

Matching his delicacy, Atlantis projected the image of a sunstone panel, small and rectangular, set into the wall where Earth-based cabinetry would be.

Rush located the correct stone panel and lifted his hand. Before he could touch it, it slid open revealing a shallow set of shelves.

Cylinders of cut crystal lined the lowest shelf. The middle shelf held vessels reminiscent of Japanese teacups with inset strainers that looked to be grown from coral. The top shelf held complex, coiled glassware, reminiscent of Klein Bottles.

He selected three alien teacups, and the panel shut itself.

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

Atlantis responded with paired images: a panel near the floor and a two-handled glass vessel with a lip meant for pouring.

Outstanding.

He retrieved his alien tea-kettle and set it on the counter.

Young tucked his chin, quirked his mouth, and telegraphed so-this-is-how-it’s-gonna-be USAF patience.

Sheppard knitted his brow, ran a thumb over his bruised throat, and telegraphed braced-for-bad-news USAF anxiety.

The alien tap was clear enough, so Rush filled the kettle with water, then set it on a counter panel wired for resonance induction via crystal lattice and swept a finger over a touchpad labeled CALOR.

“Your technoswag is glowing,” Young said mildly. “You think having the city teach you to make tea is worth risking a trip to the infirmary?”

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 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.” He fixed Rush with a direct gaze. “But you are way too attuned to the city, hotshot.”

Rush gestured wordlessly at the heating kettle. “I’m boiling fuckin’ water, here. Calm down about it.”

“You’re covering for Shep,” Young growled. “Cut it out.”

“I’m not.” Rush cracked open a tin of tea. The leaves smelled of lavender and vervain, crushed violet and spearmint. Afternoon clarity and open air.

“You are,” Sheppard rasped. “And I appreciate it. But Everett’s right. It’s best if you don’t.”

Rush quirked an eyebrow at Sheppard, then 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. “I’ll do what I like,” he said.

Young sighed. “You’re on the home team, hotshot. You ever consider batting for it?”

“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 toe an institutional line all that gracefully.”

“The home team,” Young continued like Rush hadn’t spoken, “isn’t the Air Force. Or the IOA. Or any other institution. 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 have a designation?”

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

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

Sheppard snorted a laugh.

The water boiled, and Rush turned off the induction plate. He shook a generous amount of Athosian evening tea into the water to steep. As affiliations went, Young’s proposal seemed as unobjectionable as they came, but there was something more in the air. The dynamic between the colonels had shifted. Sheppard looked to’ve been cracked open and was astonished to find himself glued back together. Young had a bit more confident dynamism in his bearing, seemed more sure of himself, more—

Hmm.

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

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

Sheppard, eyes shut, didn’t reply. He looked to be 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 him, though, just in case.”

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

Young, delighted, said, “I don’t know that the two are mutually exclusive,” with the understated satisfaction of an early-game checkmate.

“Well reasoned,” Rush replied.

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 said.

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. A bit of both, certainly. Young’s wall-of-stone reliability layered over 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 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 the conflict in Rush’s head, Young, mercifully businesslike, said, “We need to create 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 in fixing whatever the hell Altera did to you guys.”

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?” Rush asked.

“Experience,” Sheppard said dully.

Rush nudged Sheppard’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?’ That’s a real word?”

“Comes from ‘mutual exclusion’,” Rush explained. “It’s a computer science term that ensures only one process accesses a shared resource at a time.” He touched a fingertip to the side of his glass teacup. To his surprise, it was cooler than expected, and he picked it up. The pleasant warmth beneath his fingertips suggested a heat dispersal mechanism inherent to the glass.

“Cryptography,” Sheppard told Young, like he considered the single word a complete explanation of mutex’s provenance.

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

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

Rush sipped his tea in the dark of Merlin’s quarters, studying Sheppard’s hunted demeanor. 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 emotional tells.

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

Rush could relate.

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

Sheppard likely knew as much, likely missed 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 said.

“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. “I’m on Earth time. Per our agreement.”

Young rolled his eyes. “Guys, don’t plot without me.”

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

Sheppard smiled wanly 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 moved beyond the highest skylight, leaving only filtered starlight to catch in glass surfaces and indirectly illuminate the room. When Sheppard slid beneath the metallic-hued coverlet on Rush’s bed, he left the bedroom door open; whether in invitation or to collect the starlight, it was impossible to say.

Rush and Young, another round of tea in hand, retired to a set of paired couches beside an empty, wall-mounted bookshelf. As they sat, underlights in the frames of couches glowed with stone-filtered light, warm and dim.

“Is he all right?” Rush indicated the open bedroom door with his eyes.

Young followed his gaze, turning as much as his injured back would allow. “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 and curled a foot beneath him on the couch.

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

“Wraith?” Rush prompted.

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

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

Young scowled at his teacup. “A predatory species,” he admitted reluctantly. “One I plan 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 and biochemically through slits in their hands.” He set his teacup on the table and traced a line on his own palm. “Here.”

“What do they look like?” Rush asked.

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

Rush frowned. “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 human.”

Young eyed him uneasily.

//“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’ll be keeping lightyears between you and the nearest Wraith colony. Everyone’s clear on that. Woolsey, Shep, Jackson, McKay. Everyone.”

Shards of blocked thought, like splintered ice, showered through the narrow gate the tech at his temples allowed. Images buried themselves in his mind: sunlight lancing through air and ocean water like a broken spear; a pale blue flower in the hand of a child; the heart-shaped face of Morgan le Fay, contorted with despair, wailing without sound, like something out of legend.

It was difficult to hold his composure, and he wasn’t sure if that was due to his own mind recently hosting a terrible grief of its own, or, perhaps, a developing sympathy for Morgan le Fay. He didn’t particularly care for either possibility.

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

“Don’t I?” Rush smiled weakly.

~~~

In the late morning, after a six-hour sleep in a bed that smelled of blood and petrichor (in short, of John Sheppard), Rush wandered into the common room, where the gaming console had been set up. The windows had been transformed to resemble thick stained glass in burnt amber, dusty gold, dark lilac, tarnished 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 and turned on the couch. “The resident Hardass In Chief left you an updated schedule. It’s on the counter next to the alien fruit bowl.” He pointed to the kitchenette tucked into a back corner of the room.

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

“I didn’t. J’Shep showed me how to church it up in here to cut the glare. 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 located Young’s schedule, and spun it to face him. The colonel’s handwriting was blocky and muscular. 

“Sort of,” Eli muttered. “Do you 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 with Woolsey 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 started searching out a knife.

“Dave. Hello? I’m thinking you lodge a formal protest about this? I could have died.”

“Y’look fine to me.” Near Rush’s hip, a shallow drawer slid open and offered up an array of gleaming cutlery.

With an absent wave of gratitude aimed at the city, he chose a paring knife. He pulled a 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 socks, hair still damp from his dip in the ocean or his subsequent shower. “Goin’ for the purpinorange, I see.”

“No,” Rush replied. “Unacceptable.”

“What? The name? C’mon. It’s purple, has skin sorta like a pineapple, and is 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 depth of the skillset I have, I’d attend t’food more. But I don’t.” He cut a slice from the fruit and offered it to Eli.

Eli accepted 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.”

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. “Blue raspberry?”

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

Rush 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 I don’t dissolve into a puddle of anxiety; thanks soooo much for bringing it up. The Colonel and Ginn are doing a Lantean History Team Orientation? And, last but not least, Lieutenant Vanessa Needsabell James trailed you in here and is standing in the shadows like a creeper.” The lad pointed across the room. 

Lieutenant James leaned against the far wall, next to the hallway leading to the bedrooms. She’d put her back to the wrought naquadah near an inlaid waterfall that glowed a faint amber at its edges. Her eyes were watchful. A sidearm was strapped to her thigh, and a book was tucked beneath one arm.

“Hello,” she said awkwardly.

“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 you and I are 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.

Rush flinched.

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

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

Atlantis inserted the image of Teyla Emmagan on a sun-drenched stretch of silver walkway, dressed in leggings and a sleeveless purple corset, and facing the door to the Nautilus Suite.

“Ah,” Rush said. “A door chime.” He stared up at the ceiling. “Come in?” he tried.

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

“Not sure if that worked,” Rush said.

“There’s probably a way to let people in via the security station?” Eli guessed.

“Come on.” James motioned them toward the doorway. “Both of you. Fall back to the security station.”

Rush sighed. “‘Fall back?’ It’s Teyla.”

Eli huffed. “Oh, so you’re psychic now?”

“Do you know that, or are you assuming from the schedule?” James asked.

“Are y’really planning to respond to door chimes with drawn guns?” Rush took another bite of fruit. “I don’t approve.”

“Hello?” A low female voice echoed from the open door to the alcove.

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

Rush rolled his eyes at Eli.

Eli rolled his eyes back.

Teyla Emmagan 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. “Good morning,” she said, addressing James, “I’m Teyla Emmagan.”

Eli sighed. “James, you wanna stop pointing your gun at the most epic badass on Atlantis before she splinters every bone in your body and sips her morning coffee from the bowl of your skull?”

A feral gleam came into Teyla’s smile as she took in 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. Hi. I’m Eli.”

Teyla inclined her head. “I am aware.”

James lowered her gun, smooth and controlled. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m Vanessa James.”

“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. “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 the spiral rind Rush had deposited on the counter and examined its structural integrity. “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. Tiny soups? Nuts wrapped in cheese wrapped in fruit wrapped in meat?”

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

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

~~~

Rush followed Teyla to a cell of a room in Atlantis’s central spire, suffused with indirect light. The floor was patterned like stone, but he felt a give beneath his boots, a near-biological softness. Polished wooden rods were racked beneath an amber-glazed window.

Just inside the door, Teyla shed her sandals.

Rush knelt to unlace his boots and remove his socks. The earth-toned floor gripped the soles of his feet as though coated with resin.

Teyla led him to the center of the room, then dropped into a cross-legged seat on the floor.

Rush mirrored her. “An’ here I was, braced for calisthenics.”

Teyla smiled. “Those will come. I thought we might get to know one another first.”

“I’m not opposed.”

“May I call you Nick?” In the liturgical light, the gold flecks in Teyla’s irises coalesced like pooling wax.

He nodded and tried to shake a burgeoning unease.

“Please,” she added, “call me Teyla.” Her honeycomb eyes drew on him and the world alike, siphoning space and air.

“Colonel Young provided me with a list of physical requirements he’d like you to master,” Teyla said. “In addition, Colonel Sheppard wishes you trained in traditional Athosian combat. It’s a martial art known as Tabeo, which means ‘thaw.’ I have been teaching him for years now.”

“Ah.” The word was no more than a breath. Rush could not release his own trapped attention. 

Teyla dropped her eyes, broke her own spell, then angled her head, warm and analytical as she considered him. “You have no memory of your combat history? When or where you might have needed to fight?”

Rush shook his head.

Again, she pinned his gaze like she’d gone spear fishing for lost memory, for truth, for the drape and the fall of the mnemonic shroud that veiled him from himself. “Unusual,” she murmured.

His cortical suppressors warmed as her gaze seeped into him, tried to seal and set and crystallize. But there was water in him that resisted, bending his mind like green wood, evading her hold. It sent him scrambling back, ready to bolt for the sea. 

He returned to himself halfway across the room.

Teyla watched him with an expression both concerned and pleased. The amber light in the room burnished her hair. 

“I—” Rush opened his hands, unable to explain himself.

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

He hesitated, confused. Rhythms of unheard music beat like a warm pulse in his cortical suppressors and his mind was full of rain.

“This is not uncommon,” Teyla said. “Walk.” She made a friendly shooing gesture.

Rush shook himself. He headed for the wall and reached for the city, projecting an interrogative wave in its direction.

The city rolled in with fantastical images of Teyla—golden-eyed, scaling towers, creeping through shadows, defending life and architecture, defending data cores and power sources, defending John Sheppard (beloved), guarding singing crystal.

Rush lapped the room, trailing his fingers through the silent runner of water sliding down a recessed wall strip as he passed.

What was wrong with him?

He returned to sit again in front of Teyla and found nothing but kindness in her gaze and bearing.

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

“My familial lineage contains the DNA of this galaxy’s most fearsome predator. It was artificially introduced into our genes. It’s what I’m unmasking. It’s what your body is responding to.” She allowed a little insectoid gold to trickle into her gaze.

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been asked to train you.” A warm/cold thrum ran below her words. “And I cannot train someone with no memory of his past in Tabeo.”

“Why not?” Rush struggled to stay seated as her gaze harvested the world, strip after strip.

“Tabeo plucks awareness from memory. It narrows the gap between the constructed world and the world itself. We cannot easily access your construction. When your memories return, I will train you in Tabeo if you wish. For now, we train in Scindarin Flow.”

The words burrowed in, nested, turned colony.

Again, Rush came back to himself meters away from her.

“Take a lap,” she said. “Faster. This is the flow; the return is the practice. Ground in the body and its motion.”

Rush walked briskly over the warm floor. “I assume ‘this galaxy’s most fearsome predator’ would be the Wraith?”

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

Rush mastered his flight reflex and returned to the floor before Teyla.

“The Athosians believe ourselves to be the children of the Ancestors,” she continued, “but the Wraith view us as food. As 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.”

Rush used the warmth in the floor as a brace against the vespine buzz of her voice. “How did you discover it?”

“Dreams,” she said, soft and predatory, “exploration of Ancestral ruins and Wraith labs. Meditation. Combat. Infiltration of hive ships. Infiltration of hive minds. Cognitive battle with Wraith Queens.”

He couldn’t hold it. He flexed free of the sap and silence of her gaze, the way her presence oozed riddled nests and swarming insects. (Fuck!) He stopped half a meter from her nearest knee.

“Run,” she told him. “Three laps.”

He sprinted the perimeter of the room, burning off the edge of his fear, converting his adrenaline to forward motion, already shoring up his own defenses, preparing to try again.

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

The weight of Teyla’s attention crawled through his hair and beneath his clothes. “You have a talent for this,” she said.

“Do I?” Rush dug his fingernails into his palms in the battle to keep his seat. “I strike myself as pure dead miserable.”

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I am already confident that, were you to encounter a Wraith, you would run.”

“Seems a low bar,” Rush breathed hopelessly.

“It is not. Most die frozen in fear.” Teyla let all her dark magnetism fly away. “Scindarin Flow is the Athosian name for a survival practice I have encountered on many worlds in this galaxy. It is a study of the attachment between body and spirit. Between spirit and body. Not all such attachments are things of light and beauty.” She smiled, small and sad. “Much though we wish them to be.”

“You seem to’ve mastered the practice.”

“To practice is all that can ever be mastered,” Teyla replied. “Scindarin is demanding. At its heart are two core truths.”

“Which are?”

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

“And the second truth?” Rush asked.

“The second truth,” Teyla said, displacing air with dripping sap, “is that the first truth must be rejected.”

His instinctive fear flowed into and through alien Incompleteness Theorems. He had enough history with the idea to anchor himself against the current of reflex. “Such paradoxical engines are known on Earth,” he said. “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.

“Ugh, probably,” Rush breathed as he found himself staggering to his feet. “Fuck, this is hard.”

This time, Teyla pursued, stalking a 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.

“Cross the room,” she said.

With a grimace, he veered from the wall and powered toward the center of the practice cell. She altered the arc of her trajectory to intersect with his. He felt her hand on his hip, on his shoulder, her calf at his shin. The lightest of touches.

He landed on the floor, one arm outstretched.

Teyla looked down at him. “The more of your body takes the impact of a fall,” she said, “the less likely you are to be hurt.” She offered him a hand, none of her predatory intensity on display.

He took it, and she pulled him up.

“We will practice,” she said.

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 the contemplation of primitive biological terror, Teyla called a halt. She stepped close and gripped his upper arms, nothing but kindness in her stance, her voice.

“Very well done.” She pressed her forehead to his.

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

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

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

“In time, you may understand.” Teyla stepped back and turned for the door. “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 a perception that was cramped and hive-like. 

Rush followed Teyla beyond the light of the windows to a sunstone door. She pressed her hand to the door controls, and a silver panel slid aside to reveal a modest living space, about the size of a studio apartment. There were candles on the nightstands, and the walls were hung with bundles of drying herbs and flowers. Perhaps most surprising was the small bassinet 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 indicated a small table. “Sit.”

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 Hofstadterian 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? 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.

Into his mind came their recent game night. The 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 her generational trauma into her work, into her training, into, even, her recreation.

“Your character in Astria Porta,” Rush began, full of caution, “she seems, perhaps, inspired by your genetics?”

Teyla placed a pair of clay cups on the table. “It has taken many years to confront and accept the darker parts of my self and 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, face the same difficulties.”

Rush nodded.

Teyla filled a strainer with Athosian tea. When the water reached a 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. “Not anymore. My people live on the mainland, an hour’s flight away by Puddle Jumper. 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 mind. “It smells like the ocean,” he offered.

“It was not always so,” Teyla replied. “I grew up in a forest on the outskirts of a ruined Ancestral City. There, this tea tasted of citrus with notes of green wood and mint. But the Wraith came, and my people fled to Atlantis, and then settled on the mainland. We grow our tea leaves in different soil and crush them between flat stones, which now come from the shore 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. “I’m incapable of reciprocating. Quite literally, I—” he trailed off.

“I am aware,” Teyla said. “It creates difficulties. 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.”

Rush nodded. “How long does Scindarin Flow training last? How does it progress?”

Teyla lifted her tea in both hands, almost as though presenting it to him. “Scindarin Flow,” she said, as if making a toast or granting 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, Rush 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 did the same.