Mathématique: Lantean Dream Team: Part 3

For a week, John Sheppard is almost happy.

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

Text iteration: Noon.

Additional notes: This chapter references the Stargate Atlantis episode The Queen. 

Lantean Dream Team: Part 3

For a week, John Sheppard is almost happy.

Day 1

Cocooned in Nick Rush's bed, Sheppard smashes his face into the soft give of pillow. His neck aches with all the underskin blood his body hasn’t yet consumed. He curls around guts full of ice slurry and waits for his alarm.

He’s not worried he’ll die. He’s worried everyone will die. Team by team. Piece by piece. He’s bad at defense. He’s better when he’s leading a charge.

His earpiece crackles. 

“Colonel Sheppard?” Woolsey says.

Sheppard lifts a hand to his ear and stares into the dark of a wizard-hollowed cave. “Yeah.”

“The Wraith delegation sent us a message.” Woolsey’s low tone respects the hour. “Todd arrives in three days.”

Sheppard unwraps himself from the blankets. Amber lights sense the movement and illuminate walls that Merlin carved one chisel-blow at a time, over eons. “This is a bad idea.”

There’s a long silence.

Woolsey’s voice, when it comes, is strong and measured. “I believe Teyla can do this.”

Teyla shouldn’t have to, Sheppard doesn’t say. 

“We’ll get no help from the Milky Way.” Woolsey debates Sheppard’s silence. “Not with the Wraith. Not now. Maybe not ever. A third of our home galaxy has fallen to Origen.”

Sheppard wraps a hand around his throat, aligns fingers with bruises, presses down. This is the first time he’s heard Woolsey talk about the Milky Way like it’s a place they might leave forever. 

“The Wraith are our problem.” Woolsey hesitates, then adds, “If Dr. Keller’s gene therapy can remove their ability to feed, Pegasus becomes a refuge. For…many peoples. Including our own.”

The idea of a smile tugs on the small muscles of Sheppard’s face. He pictures Keller’s round-cheeked, wide-eyed, Midwest-accented proposal to commit biological war crimes. Pictures Woolsey’s Harvard Law brain, puzzling out whether the Geneva Convention applies to immortal Space Vampires that graze on worlds like a blood and protein buffet.

“You think this is our best shot.” Sheppard’s voice is a rasp, so he lets up on his neck.

“I’m afraid, Colonel, it’s the only shot I see. We neutralize the Wraith, then evacuate the Milky Way to Pegasus ahead of the armies of the Ori.”

Sheppard grimaces.

Milky Way gates can’t dial Pegasus without a ZPM. Even if Atlantis gave all it had, that would be enough for maybe five gates, each open for a few hours. Ships take weeks to make the transit, and only a handful are available. They’d save a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of Earth’s population.

When Sheppard says nothing more, Woolsey says, “Briefing at 0800.”

“I’ll be there.” Sheppard climbs out of bed and steps into his fatigues. Pulls his unwashed T-shirt over his head. Grabs his jacket.

The hatch door of the bedroom is already open. Every night, he leaves it that way. This isn’t really his room.

Nick Rush sits at the counter in the kitchenette beyond the door. The sun isn’t high enough to filter through the ribbon curl of the long skylight that runs the top of Merlin’s private chambers. Rush’s work surface is underlit. Hyperbolic triangles and fused chord circles slash dark and curve bold over transilluminated paper.

The city is interested.

Sheppard yearns to eavesdrop on the ideas running between Atlantis and Nick Rush, but when he tries, all he wins is a wall of the city’s mechanical love, inlaid gemstone panes, set with song and secrecy and smelted metals, showered sparks.

It’s a barrier. A dropped mirror between Sheppard and what he’s not meant to see.

“Artificer,” Rush says, soft and speculative, as though he’s done what Sheppard couldn’t, thieved a Lantean thought, pulled the word “maker” from a locked chest and put an Oxford spin on his stolen goods.

Envy caves to want. Sheppard longs to be an artificer, solving puzzles, building instruments to track the motions of the moon, the solar flares from the nearest star. In all the infinite multiverse there must be a John Sheppard smeared with dust from Ancient consoles rather than the blood of his enemies. Maybe, one day, when the Wraith are gone, he’ll fix up and coax to life Atlantis’s halls and silver bridges.

He’s always been sure the best version of himself shares a D-brane with Rod McKay.

“Keller’s got a plan to neutralize the Wraith.” Sheppard slides into the shell of his black jacket. “Gonna go hear about it, I guess.”

Rush, silicate-dry, arches a brow. “Keller’s taking on the Wraith? An’ what does she propose? Cherubing them to death?”

Sheppard snort-laughs at the mean-girl delivery. “She’s got a gene therapy that’ll remove their need to feed. The only catch is convincing them to take it.”

“Sounds difficult.”

“It’ll get ugly.” He didn’t mean to say as much aloud, but Rush has been battle-tested on Altera’s proving-ground. So Sheppard continues, “It’ll fall on Teyla.” She’s been through so much, he doesn’t say. She has a son, he doesn’t say.

“Teyla,” Rush repeats.

“She’ll go in undercover. Make a direct case to a Wraith Queen that it’s worth it to them to try Keller’s therapy.”

Rush stills in the eggshell gray of a filterdown dawn. “A queen?”

“Wraith swarm and feed like insects,” Sheppard says. “And, like insects, they follow queens.”

“And Teyla will—she’ll be in the same room with one? Negotiating?”

“She’s done it before,” Sheppard says. “She’ll be okay.”

“What are they like?” Rush asks, like he can feel the Queen across light-years of space and days of time.

“Smart,” Sheppard says. “Deadly. Tall.”

This last one throws Rush. “Tall?”

“Taller than—” The words stick in a bruised throat. “Taller than Teyla.”

“Y’don’t think she can pull it off?” Rush asks.

Sheppard buckles his belt, settles his knife at the small of his back and his sidearm at his hip. “Didn’t say that.”

The ribbon-curl skylight borrows the blue of the morning sea. 

“Get some sleep,” Sheppard advises, then descends the nautiloid coil toward the oculus door.

Before the briefing, Sheppard stands at the broken-bridge pier at the tip of Breakwater Quay, ignoring the pull of the chair, ignoring the way the city would take his hand if it could, draw him to its heart.

“John,” McKay’s voice crackles in his ear. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking,” Sheppard replies.

McKay doesn’t answer, and Sheppard imagines him frowning at a console: jaw set, lips pursed, eyes the color of interstellar engines.

~~~

That evening, Commander John SM Effect joins Nyck the Galactic Sprite in a private session of Astria Porta.

The dove-gray raven leads them into the Temporal Shrine, up a winding stair, and into a small library. She dives at a cramped hollow between the spines of books and the underside of the shelf. She shimmies and rearranges herself atop a thick violet book titled Bioenergetics in Health and Disease. 

Commander Effect slips the book from beneath the raven and scans it with his ocular implant, but before any specs register, the rest of the team bursts through the door.

“Idiots!” Camantha’s cobalt armor coruscates with captured charge. “Leave us behind again, and we report EVERYTHING TO WOOLSEY.”

“Not cool,” Elias adds.

The book dusts in Commander Effect’s hands and he snatches at the ashfall. “We were onto something here!”

Teyla’s poisoned-gold glare dings Commander Effect’s HP.

“We made an agreement. You set the terms.” Camantha shouts the world to safety, hurt, maybe, that Commander Effect left her behind.

Wishful thinking.

“Where did the book come from?” Elias scans the shelves for its missing slot.

Nyck points at the gap in the bookshelf. Mab is nowhere to be seen.

Elias clicks on a handheld light. He shines it into the gap between volumes, but the beam is swallowed by void. “Here goes nothing,” he says, and reaches into the light-eating gap. When he pulls his hand back, the ornate puck of a Promethean memory disk nestles in his palm. “Mathematical Anathema,” Elias translates from the ebony case.

Too easy, Commander Effect thinks. With gifts and visitations raining hard and fast from higher planes, it’s hard to imagine anything in the wind but coming storms.

“Great,” Camantha says.

“This is what we’ve been tasked to discover, correct?” Teyla asks.

“Sure,” Camantha mutters with stone-scouring sarcasm, “because ‘progress’ is never bad.”

Elias sets the memory disk on an open patch of floor in the center of the room, activates it, and—

A cut scene begins.

Wind ripples a sea of grass. Dark naquadah struts jut hundreds of feet above the pale stalks. Around the girders, thin sheets of pink granite siding give shape to a half-built obelisk. The game’s camera focuses on a slab of stone rising into place. It hovers in the air, supported by a blue force field. It’s guided by a narrow-shouldered woman (man?) who looks like Camantha’s younger sister (or brother) standing in thigh-high grass. The perspective slides down and away, framing the small figure and towering obelisk.

John Sheppard recognizes the white light, the bleached-sage palette of the rolling hills.

This is Altera.

There’s a snap in his ears, his vision fizzes, his fingertips burn.

It’s only as he shakes out stinging fingers that he understands he tried to remove a cortical suppressor.

He balls his hand into a fist and refocuses on the screen.

The camera pulls away from the obelisk builder, backing away, away, away, sliding between two people, foregrounding their observation of the rising stone-lined structure.

“All souls return to their origin,” says a man with dark hair and pale eyes, watching the slim blonde figure in the distance.

“Adamantius,” sighs a woman. Her mane of gray-streaked hair reaches to the tips of the long grass.

“The Quantum Pylons are a violence, Oma. We break the bones of the world to suck its marrow.”

Oma compresses her lips. “Energy is needed.”

Adamantius gives her a knowing look. “Like you, I care for the Lower Forms. I would teach them. Guide them along the path. It’s kinder than this.” He gestures at the obelisk.

“You harvest the small energies of synchronized cognition at scale,” Oma says. “The Council has already declared your ideas—”

Adamantius, amused and languid, finishes for her. “Anathema. I’m honored to be the first of the proscribed. More will follow. As disgusting and profane as I find the pylons, at least Fabrice is a free thinker. A rare quality these days.”

Oma calmly regards the tower of blush-colored granite. “I thought you were leaving.”

“I am. But first, a parting gift.” Adamantius reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and removes a red book. It has no title.

Oma bends to study the book, but doesn’t touch it.

“No crystal, no circuits, no energetic components of any kind. No genetic gates.” He smiles at her. “It’s physical. Accessible. Just a book. Full of words.”

“I’ve seen these,” Oma says. “In cafes. On public transit. Waiting rooms in medical clinics.”

“Yes,” Adamantius says, “but this one is for you.”

Oma shakes her head.

“Do you truly believe there’s a difference between power acquired by leaching chance splits in the quantum foam and power acquired from the synchronized electrical discharges of lower cognitions?”

“The acquisition of power for its own sake is always an evil,” Oma says. “It disrupts the alignment of existence.”

Adamantius is statue-still in a sea of rippling grass. “Your values and mine are similar. I, too, care for the birds. For the flowers of the field. For the grass and for the insects. For the fish and for the small animals of the land. I especially care for those who yearn to ascend but who can’t. You are the same.”

Oma hesitates.

Full of grief, full of care, Adamantius plucks a windblown leaf from the waves of Oma Desala’s hair. “They will kill you for it, one day.” He tucks the broken blade of grass into the book he holds.

“Your path is no better,” Oma tells him. “It’s almost certainly worse.”

“All that wisdom of yours,” Adamantius says, “will be consumed by greater powers.”

Oma opens a hand in acknowledgment. “Probably.” The tattered hem of her sleeve mingles with the blown grass.

“Take the book.” Adamantius offers it again. “Read the words. What harm can they do?”

Plenty, Oma’s frown says, but she takes the book.

The cut scene ends.

The screen displays Commander Effect’s POV from within the Temporal Shrine’s library.

“Okay, well, that was weird and useless,” Camantha informs the air. “Origen is ‘anathema’? Thanks so much. If anything, I’m thinking we’re meant to focus on that obelisk. And why the builder looked like Sam Carter. That’s weird, right? Everyone thinks that’s weird?”

While McKay free-associates in glowing irritation, Sheppard looks up from his hunch over his laptop. Rush is across a low coffee table in the upper coil of Merlin’s private quarters. They look at one another without speaking. 

There’s no way for Sheppard to communicate his own theory—that the cut scene came from memory. Someone witnessed the conversation, preserved it, and reproduced it for Atlantis to weave into the game. The possibilities are narrow: Alteran technology in the form of a drone or listening device, Morgan le Fay, or a third person.

“Did you understand that?” Rush asks softly.

“I’m not sure,” Sheppard admits. “If there was more there beyond Origen being the first declared ‘anathema,’ I don’t know I got it.”

“An odd moment to choose if the only purpose was to highlight the anathematized quality of Origen as a religion,” Rush says. “But the conversation itself—” He hesitates. “Did y’catch what it was about?”

Sheppard rubs his neck. “Power corrupts?”

A corner of Rush’s mouth tugs upward. “Does it?”

~~~

That night, Sheppard worries he’ll dream of his body on Altera. Of the physical draw of the planet, of a set of deaths stacked high and deep. How it felt when a triple-bladed knife bit into his throat or electrostatics shorted out his heart.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he dreams of Everett Young in faded fatigues, starlight tangled in his hair. They stand together on a balcony and Everett talks about flying. About propulsion through vacuum. About Wraith Darts and Asgard hyperdrives, Ancient warships and Lantean Puddle Jumpers. He spends the most time on the Puddle Jumpers—how their engines work, their shields, the way they respond to a strong mind and a light touch, the hidden storage compartments beneath the benches in the back.

Day 2

At 0400 Sheppard, again, wakes before his alarm. There’s a clear image of Everett in his mind: night-sea shine and war-weary promise framed by green shoots wrapping silver struts. Dreaming his own dreams has been rare since Altera, but this one must be his because it’s packed with all he lacks: peace and quiet and rock-like wisdom, a heart pumping river water rather than blood.

It’s unexpected, the way Everett works his way in from the edges.

The way to hold life is lightly. So lightly that when it comes time to set it aside there will be no drag or crosswind.

Beyond the open hatch door, Morgan le Fay’s moon rides high enough for its light to shower down into the upper coil of Merlin’s tower.

Sheppard steps out of the bedroom.

Rush sits at the kitchen counter, illuminated by the underglow of light through translucent stone. There’s no math in sight. “Teach me to fly,” Rush says.

The idea closes on Sheppard like a shackle. Feet bare, he crosses the dark room. The hems of his pajama pants drag over a warm floor. “Let’s go now,” Sheppard says, he wants it so much. “Before anyone tells us no.”

Rush smiles, but there’s relief there, too, in the set of his shoulders, the lines of his face.

Everett sleeps through the petaling open oculus door. Maybe his sleeping mind fails to register Sheppard and Rush as threats. Maybe there’s an element of supernatural assistance. Best not to think too hard about it, just take the luck.

The gate room clears them to fly a little before dawn.

Like the universe can read the secret desires of John Sheppard’s heart, Rush is a natural. Deft of hand and mind, with enough genetic juice to drive their little ship wild with joy. They fly low and fast, skimming above the swells, buffeted as the trade winds give way to alien westerlies. The sea is pale in the early morning. Tattered alabaster clouds blanket the northern horizon.

Sheppard forgets all that’s come before, all that’s coming still. There’s only the flowing atmosphere, the pitch, the yaw, the roll of the most versatile craft he’s ever flown.

The inertial dampeners engage and disengage on the dime of the mind.

There’s a seriousness to Nick Rush’s handling of the controls that appeals to Sheppard’s pilot heart. The Jumper is a boat without a sail, a plane without wings, an engine fit for water, for air, for vacuum. It tastes the salt spray with chemical sensors, drives into the wind.

When they dock in the Jumper Bay, Young waits at the back of the hangar. Arms crossed, no cane in sight, he leans into the wall near the door. 

“Nope.” Young grinds the word like stone.

“Oh give over.” Rush, spirits high, spoils for a fight. “You’re the one always on about ‘floor competencies’.”

But Young is looking at Sheppard. “Don’t do that again.”

Sheppard’s own resistance rises; more than anything he hates being told what to do.

Rush, sensing momentum on his side, steps in front of Sheppard. “Do you or do y’not have the explicitly mutinous objective of undercutting the mathematical pursuit of the nine-chevron address?”

That’s a hard, line-breaking drive. Rush is taking Young on with Sheppard at his literal back. 

Young stares at Rush in mute astonishment.

Sheppard has no idea what’s on his own face.

“You lack commitment.” Rush presses the words like a hot knife through sheet ice.

Where is this coming from? As soon as Sheppard has the thought, he remembers Altera. This is Rush’s mid-stack death mode, aggressive and goal-driven.

“I what?” Young growls.

The Jumper Bay doors thin and end a block of morning as they close.

“Your goal is nothing less than shifting the power balance of an ongoing war,” Rush says. “There will be no skill acquisition without risk. And if you’re truly committed to steering humanity’s strategy away from what lies beyond cypher nine, you’d recognize the importance of increasing SG-68’s material value to Lantean operations.”

Young breaks in. “The whole point of everything we’re doing is—”

Rush fires back with, “We should be deployed with Teyla. On her diplomatic mission.”

“NO.” Sheppard and Young are a unified wall of reflexive opposition.

“Are you crazy?” Young adds for good measure. 

“Your team is green.” Sheppard steps laterally, breaking ranks with Rush. “We don’t cut anyone’s teeth in Wraith territory.”

Young bites back whatever he’d been tempted to shout. Takes a breath. Says, “Hotshot, be reasonable. You don’t get deployed for the sake of experience.”

Rush slices into Sheppard with his gaze like he’s probing a network for vulnerabilities. There are exploits to choose from. Sheppard would find a way to back him—if it weren’t for Teyla.

He tries to make Rush see. “This is a deep cover mission,” he says. “Small strike team, high risk, huge pressure on Teyla. There’s no place for SG-68 on this mission.”

“I suggest,” Young says, patient now he’s sure of Sheppard’s backing, “you take your flying lesson and call it a win. I’m in talks with Major Lorne about opportunities for Greer and James to shadow teams likely to see Wraith action. We’ll get where we need to be. But we do it my way.”

Rush sheds the picking-a-fight-with-the-world set to his shoulders. He relaxes. Shrugs. Says, “Fine,” and heads in the direction of breakfast.

Young and Sheppard glance at one another, uneasy. Then, they follow.

Gathered in the Nautilus Suite after the evening meal, the A-team plays Astria Porta as a group. Elias Falkor and Camantha Sarter bicker about properties of armor and whether it’s necessary to equip the whole team in Galvanic Gear before facing the Liminal Demon waiting beyond the stream cypher. Mab the Raven never speaks. Nyck doesn’t say much either.

Sheppard sends Rush a private message within the game. Just a flicker of photons.

Why do you want in on Teyla’s mission?

Rush shifts on the couch and presses his knee into Sheppard’s. 

As an answer, it’s unparsable, but the strip of contact heats Sheppard’s thigh through expedition charcoal and his own black fatigues.

All through the night, Sheppard dreams of an Everett Young with the wisdom of countless worlds in his eyes, uninjured, in weatherbeaten fatigues, a born celestial navigator, backed by the sea. The Wraith, Young promises, are a solved problem.

And, for the span of the dream, Sheppard believes him.

Day 3

Sheppard tees up a biodegradable golf ball. Considers the wind.

Nick Rush leans into the rail, sunglasses on, facing down the setting sun.

Sheppard squares up, readies his swing.

“You grew up with money,” Rush says in the middle of Sheppard’s backswing. “Didn’t you.”

The ball sails into the sunset.

Sheppard burns with a decades-old aimless shame, seeded with the water-hungry grass of a four-acre estate in the foothills of Palo Alto, diffused into the oil of dozens of fast cars, stitched into the collars of polo shirts, grouted around Spanish tile.

Nah, he tries to lie, but can’t get the word to come. He shades his eyes against the sun and doesn’t speak.

Rush, stealing cool from the breeze, delicately adjusts his USAF aviators. The wind is in his hair. “Of all of it, why hang onto golf?”

Sheppard tees up. “I like ballistic trajectories.” He swings, and the ball sails up and out over the waves.

“Just arcs,” Rush says, dubious, “made by gravity. Can I recommend wine instead? Fine dining. Music.”

“Y’know,” Sheppard begins, lining up a swing, “I hear Woolsey wears a three-piece suit in the evenings. Pours a glass of Athosian red. Puts on an opera. Listens by himself.”

“I doubt that.”

“Teyla told me,” Sheppard says, “and Teyla never lies.”

Sheppard swings, connects, feels the strength of the shot reverberate up his arm. He loses the ball in the red-gold disc of the sun. Listens for the splash.

“Think y’sent that one into orbit,” Rush observes.

Sheppard smirks. “You could keep Woolsey company. Talk opera and Italian suits all night long.”

Rush arches a brow above the rim of his aviators.

“C’mere, Scottish guy.” Sheppard looks away as he makes his invite. “Learn to hit a golf ball.”

Rush straightens, takes his foot off a low silver rail and saunters toward Sheppard, demon-casual in charcoal nerd gear.

“This,” Sheppard says, as Rush steps into his personal space, “is a driver.”

“Mmm hmm.” Rush closes his fingers around the shaft.

Sheppard stands behind the mathematician, their hips flush. He slides his hands down Rush’s forearms to guide him into the Vardon grip. “Lead hand,” he murmurs, his lips close to Rush’s ear. “Trailing hand. Thumbs point right of center.” He touches a fingertip to the base of the “v” formed by Rush’s thumb and index finger. “Think of an arrow,” he says, “vectored at your trailing shoulder.”

Rush makes a soft sound of assent.

“Wider stance.” Sheppard nudges Rush’s heel with the toe of his boot. “Okay.” He settles his hands over Rush’s own. “Backswing.” He guides Rush through a slow-motion lift of the club, the gradual wrist hinge, the full shoulder turn. “Lead heel can come up,” he says into Rush’s ear. “Transition.” Slowly, he rotates his hips toward the sea. “Downswing. Hold that wrist hinge. Lower body leads, upper body follows.” He takes them through it again. “Backswing. Downswing. Impact.” They flow through the motions. “Backswing. Downswing. Impact. Angle up for optimal launch, then follow through.”

“Optimal launch,” Rush repeats, warm and dry.

“Applied ballistics.” Sheppard steps back.

Rush swings, connects, and follows through with an animal grace that dries Sheppard’s mouth.

The back-garden love of Chaya Sar fills his heart, multiplies, blooms, goes to seed. Sheppard had brought her to this pier, before he knew who and what she was, drunk on the life-luster of her well-watered flowers that dripped sap under tropical sun. 

“Not bad,” Sheppard manages.

Nick Rush looks over his shoulder. Takes Sheppard in. Smiles faintly. Slots the driver back into the bag. “It seems t’not have occurred to you lot,” he says, “that my past self isn’t here to disrespect.”

“Uh.” Sheppard isn’t ready for wherever this is going. “He is, though.”

“When it comes to metaphysical debate about the rights of my current versus past self, you’re likely to be outclassed.” Rush steps closer. “So, y’could make your best argument for the primacy of theoretical past commitments, but since they all derive from psychological continuity, you’ll lose.”

“Okay,” Sheppard says, not sure he’s following.

Rush kisses him, and Sheppard’s mind fills with fruit-and-flower rain falling on a summer sundial.

“Everett and I are sleeping together.” Sheppard’s cortical suppressors heat his temples.

“Y’think I’ve not figured it out?” Rush houses Sheppard’s longing, the city’s longing, like a depthless stone pool. “I don’t care.”

“I—”

Rush cups Sheppard’s face, fierce and implacable. “I’ve no recourse. No way to access anything of what I was. I’m supposed to—what? Live forever in the shadow of someone you spent a single day with?”

It was a notable day, Sheppard tries to say, but all that comes is, “No.”

“He’s dead,” Rush says.

The dead come back, Sheppard tries to say. We’ve all done it, and you will too. But his mind splits with cruelties of continuity, the way the idea of an eternal current of the self makes no difference to a river bend. The little spark of wisdom that made John Sheppard throw his wealth away to court death and truth among the stars recognizes that this version of Rush is temporary, a running tributary not at all confident it will find its way back to a greater river.

“You’re the one here.” Sheppard knows it’s what he’d need to hear if their positions were reversed. “You’re the one I see.”

Rush deepens the kiss and their cortical suppressors burn and glow like rock descending through atmosphere.

All we did was die, Sheppard thinks. The only thing I did with you was open a door and die behind it. Again and again.

Day 4

Sheppard spends the morning in a last-ditch effort to sway Teyla away from what she’s agreed to do. He comes as a friend, following her after the morning briefing, pressing his case with the limited words at his disposal. It doesn’t come out right. It never comes out right. He can’t say what he means, the words stick in his throat.

Teyla, he thinks, understands anyway.

She’s kind to him.

But she banishes him in the late morning when she leaves to meet Rush for their daily training.

He goes for a run. A long one. The kind that makes McKay nervous—looping out from the chair, circling back, cornering around it like he can use it as a gravitational slingshot.

Rodney spends the day in Sheppard’s ear, checking in, taking readings from his cortical suppressors, which are acting up in the aftermath of the EM storm Sheppard had caused when he’d kissed Nick Rush in the bright sun of a fading day. McKay pounds coffee after coffee, understanding just how much charge is building in the capacitor of the coming days and weeks.

Sheppard doesn’t see Rush.

‘Avoid’ is a strong word.

There’s nothing of avoidance in his thoughts—they’re on Rush constantly, the live wire of his presence, the difficulty of his metaphysical position, the cut of his morning silhouette and the dynamism of his beginner golf swing. Young’s in his dreams, holding a starlit line with quiet confidence, standing under a moon strong enough to fade black fatigues to charcoal. 

Todd arrives in the evening.

He comes through the stargate, striding into the city like he owns the place. Night-spectrum light glints off his gunmetal-accented armor and glistens on his ichor-sheen skin. His tangled hair hangs down his back.

Wasp, Sheppard thinks. Predator. Vampire chest-leech. Would kill you in a heartbeat. Would feast on your life force.

“John Sheparrrd,” Todd says, with the hint of a smile.

Sheppard feels an answering smirk beneath his expression.

“Todd.” He needles the name.

Todd needles right back. “Where’s my patient?”

Sheppard thinks of the Iratus bug, pincers buried in his carotid, and turns, leading the way.

Teyla, already in the infirmary, dressed in a hospital gown, waits for their arrival. For her own transformation. Sheppard can’t look at her as they close the door, even though he knows she’s looking to him.

I would do anything for you, he thinks, fierce and fond and staring at the inlaid patterns in the floor. Anything for your son.

But it’s Rodney who lifts a hand and looks at her and says a small, “Good luck,” as the doors close.

Sheppard tries not to let the gesture pry up any nails in the coffin of all he’s decided should be dead in his heart.

Ronon threatens Todd all the way to the OR.

For hours the three of them pace a too-small room off Keller’s operating theater.

“Jennifer’s the best.” McKay paces back and forth, on his eighth coffee of the day. “I mean really. The BEST. No one’s better. She said it’ll be fine. She worries, y’know? But like, her ‘worried’ is me at—” he makes an equivocal hand gesture, “—moderate arrogance? It’s just a matter of calibrating.”

Ronon grabs the coffee out of McKay’s hand as he passes and throws it in the garbage. Brown liquid spatters the sunstone.

McKay, astonished, stares at Ronon for a beat, then says, “Yeah, okay. Fair. My point is, Teyla will be fine. She couldn’t be in better hands.”

“Yeah,” Sheppard rasps like he’s dying.

“I mean, I guess, no one’s really worried about the physical,” McKay goes on. “I get that. It’s, like, the emotional trauma of going undercover as the Genocidal Insect Queen that’s hunted your people and experimented on your ancestors?”

Sheppard stares at the floor, thinking of Kolya on a cliff’s edge, cool on the hot end of a gun. His left wrist aches, deep and hot. He flexes his hand. 

Atlantis shores up Sheppard’s mind with braces and buttresses of naquadah.

“Are you tryin’ to kill Sheppard?” Ronon asks.

“Oh, uh. No?” McKay looks at him.

“I’m fine.” Sheppard waves away McKay’s concern and faces the wall, clutching his left forearm.

“Are you having a heart attack?” McKay asks.

“No,” Sheppard breathes.

“This is gonna be fine,” McKay says, closer now. “Teyla’s faced queens before. She’s coming to terms with her Wraith heritage. I mean, in Astria Porta at least. She’s up on Ghoul lore. That can only help. Y’know?”

“I know,” Sheppard says.

Rodney mouths something to Ronon, just behind Sheppard’s left shoulder.

“John,” Ronon says.

Sheppard shakes his head, thinking of Kolya, of Teyla, of Elizabeth, who’d managed to die twice on his watch, both of them horrible, slow deaths, surrounded by enemies, by the void of space—

“Is your arm hurting?” McKay asks, soft and concerned.

“No.” Sheppard clamps his fingers around the place where he’d imagined Acastus Kolya had cut off his hand. “I’m good.” He lets his own arm go, claps McKay on the shoulder, then heads for the far wall.

It won’t be so bad once he sees her in Wraith Queen form. Once he knows she’s okay with it. After she looks at him with her corpse skin and her yellow eyes and her bleached white hair and she says, “I am fine,” with that little “and screw you for worrying anyway” backhand blade at the end, he’ll buck up about it. He’ll be okay.

Atlantis sinks deep and soars high, like pylons he can lay the cable of his whole self between.

He takes one breath. 

Another.

He turns. Gives McKay the hint of his relax-about-everything smile.

Ronon tosses a knife in the air by its tip. It revolves twice and he catches it at the handle. “You seal the deal with your man yet?”

“Uh,” Sheppard says.

“His man?” McKay repeats, scandalized. Maybe a little hurt.

Again, that wishful thinking.

“Yeah. The little math guy,” Ronon says. “Teyla says he has the heart of a fighter.”

McKay huffs. “He can join the club.”

“Right,” Ronon says.

“Hey!” McKay blusters. “I have the heart of a fighter! I’m in fights every week. Everyone here has the heart of a fighter.”

“Sure,” Ronon says, then asks Sheppard, “So, have you?”

“No,” Sheppard says. 

Ronon shrugs. “Not what I heard.”

“What?” McKay looks at Sheppard. “You and Nick Rush—you—”

“No.” Sheppard, annoyed and uncomfortable, angles his body away from the pair of them. “Nothing happened.”

Nothing ever happens.

“What did you hear?” McKay asks Ronon.

Ronon shrugs. “Eli says they share a room.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Sheppard says. “We share a bed, but, like, sequentially.”

Ronon gives him a disappointed look, stuffed with pity and second-hand embarrassment.

Sheppard’s knock-it-off glare comes down like shell casings backed by rotating chopper blades, hopefully.

McKay, brows furrowed, says, “Why.”

Sheppard opens his hands. “Lantean Dream Team, remember? Not sure we should be asleep at the same time?”

“Oh god,” McKay says, slow-mo horrified. “That’s why you stayed on Atlantis time? What is wrong with you? Why didn’t you MENTION ANYTHING????”

“Figured you’d figured it out,” Sheppard lies.

“I can’t be all things to all people, okay?” McKay works himself up into full form. “I’m only a savant when it comes to energetics, circuitry, atomic fusion, power flow workarounds, and crystal harmonics, okay? I don’t have infinite bandwidth and BIOLOGY ISN’T MY THING.”

Ronon rolls his eyes.

McKay isn’t done. “How are you supposed to go on this mission? We’re gonna be embedded with Todd’s hive for the duration! You’re gonna—what? Stick to a pre-determined Lantean sleep schedule? Does Jennifer know about this?”

“It’s probably fine.”

“IT IS ZERO PERCENT FINE WITH NO ERROR BARS. WHATSOEVER.”

Ronon sighs. “Hate to say it, but I’m with McKay on this one.”

“We have a system,” Sheppard says. “It’s been in place for weeks now.”

“Oh. OH. WEEKS. Well! Why didn’t you say so.” McKay turns to Ronon. “Can I reprimand my own commanding officer?”

“Pretty sure if you could, you’d’ve done it by now.” Ronon flips his knife by its blade.

Day 5

Woolsey, dressed in an Italian suit, swirls a glass of Athosian red and studies Sheppard. The administrator’s quarters glow with repurposed starlight. It glints in Woolsey’s glasses, gleams off the dome of his head, glistens in his dark wine.

“Colonel Sheppard.” This is Woolsey at his most gentle. “I have qualms about sending you on this mission given the concerns Dr. McKay and now Dr. Keller have raised.”

“It’s friendly territory,” Sheppard explains for the tenth time.

“And when you accompanied Dr. Beckett to a planet overrun with Wraith experiments that hunted humans by sound, was that friendly territory?”

“That mission was short. I didn’t sleep. Didn’t need to. It’s a theoretical concern.”

“Your behavior tells me it’s more than theoretical.”

“You can’t pull me.” Sheppard pours steel into his own tone. Atlantis backs him, vibrating like struck metal in solidarity. “It’s a military call.”

“There’s something wrong,” Woolsey says, implacably kind. “I wish you’d tell me what it is.”

Sheppard looks away. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Woolsey says, “I’ve spent my nights reading Elizabeth Weir’s entire body of work.” And he says it so casually. Like it’s nothing. Like it isn’t an honor or a warning or a difficult thing to do. Spending his nights reading Elizabeth’s thoughts.

Sheppard goes cold like the vacuum of space. 2.7 kelvin. “Her ‘body of work’?” he manages.

“Her reports. Her dispatches. The treaties she brokered on behalf of Atlantis. I even read the book Dr. McKay wrote about her life when he was on the threshold of ascension.”

“Oh.” His throat is tight. “Learn anything interesting?”

“Many things,” Woolsey says softly. “John, whatever’s wrong now—was it always this way?”

Sheppard shakes his head. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s ever been wrong.”

“Countless times,” Woolsey says delicately, “you’ve sent yourself on suicide missions. It drove Elizabeth to distraction.”

“That’s the job.”

“Sometimes.” Woolsey is so quiet. So earnest. “But sometimes the job is to send someone else. You—you know that, right?”

Sheppard wants to get up, pace away. Instead he says, just as quiet, “Even though we’ll be out of radio communication, Todd’s hive is allied territory. Nick and I are on a schedule out of an abundance of caution. There’s no reason to bench me. McKay’s overreacting.”

“I’m not benching you,” Woolsey says.

“Good.” Sheppard, for the first time, sips his wine. He tastes what he always tastes. Fruit and alcohol. Nothing more. “So why am I here?”

“I thought we might talk.”

He looks out the window, over dark water. Thinks of Teyla, looking at the world through yellow contacts, missing her son. Trying not to show it. Wonders if Elizabeth would have talked her out of this crazy plan. Wonders what kind of arguments she’d have made. They’d have been better than his. That’s for sure.

“Okay,” he says. “What do you want to talk about?”

“After this mission,” Woolsey says, “I’d like to give your team some downtime. Give Dr. Keller a chance to make some headway on whatever process your cortical suppressors are inhibiting.”

“That—” Sheppard sets his wine on the table, “—is benching.”

“It’s not benching. You’re still ranking military officer on this base.”

“No. We’re gaining ground against the Wraith. If this mission succeeds, Todd’s multi-hive alliance will—”

“If you are captured,” Woolsey breaks in, each word cracking like a snapped pencil, “they will take your suppressors off. You must see that.”

“I won’t get captured.” Even as Sheppard says it, he knows how weak the argument is.

“You get captured once a season, Colonel. Your team is extraordinary. Superlative. Loyal to a fault. I know they’ll protect you to the best of their considerable ability. But this,” Woolsey points at his own temple, “is a problem that needs to be solved. You’re not the only one affected.”

Sheppard pauses, hating the argument, hating the thought, hating the cortical suppressors, hating everything that cuts him off from Atlantis herself. He reaches for her through the EM wall at his temples.

She reaches back. He feels it.

But there’s only the ghost of contact at the edges of his awareness. Unheard song. The lines of light glowing at the edges of a shut door.

Whatever’d happened on Altera—he doesn’t want it reversed.

That’s the hard, spare truth of it.

In the end, at a moment’s notice, he wants the wild card of pulling off the devices at his temple. He wants the Hail Mary, trick-sleeve ace option. He wants to see what’s on the other side of the narrow passage his cognition is being forced through.

Like Woolsey can see it, like he’s answering something written on Sheppard’s face, he says, “We’ve inherited much from the Ancients. It can be tempting to consider ourselves their rightful heirs. An argument could be made that we are. They’ve given us our genes, we’ve made ourselves stewards of their intellectual achievements.”

Woolsey leaves the statement there. There’s no hedge, there’s no but, there’s no moral lesson.

Sheppard angles his head. Grimaces. Wishes there were words to come. His mind is full of welcoming empty halls. Full of echo and concealed crystal.

“It’s an open question in my mind,” Woolsey says. “I wish you’d tell me what you think.”

Sheppard nods, but, “I don’t know about any of that,” he says.

“The complexity of the relationship between the Ancients and humanity,” Woolsey says, “the mantle of war we’ve assumed on behalf of their memory, their cities—there’s an ideological and genetic connection. That’s—I’m beginning to think it’s enough. I’m beginning to wonder if they consider it enough.”

Sheppard looks up.

Standing in the window, her palm pressed to transparent crystal, is Morgan le Fay in a white track jacket. Her gaze is toward the open sea, her face devastated by grief.

“We’re explorers. Like they were.” Sheppard looks at the window. Looks at the woman looking at the sea.

“True,” Woolsey says. When Sheppard says nothing more, Woolsey adds, “Like them, we value peace. Like them, we engage in war when it’s required of us.”

“I wonder if they’ve reached the end of all their exploring.” Still, Sheppard looks at the woman in white. “Whose rooms were these?”

At the question, Morgan’s gray gaze settles on him.

Woolsey takes a beat. “The Sea Mist Suite has a long and storied history. But, among other claims to fame, these were the rooms of Ganos Lal, also known as Morgan le Fay, member of the Council of Ten.”

“Welcome home,” Sheppard murmurs.

“What?” Woolsey asks.

The city fills his mind with yearning. His bones ache with it. Morgan gives him a small smile, full of acknowledgment, full of warning.

“Nothing,” Sheppard says.

“Come.” Woolsey stands. “I want to show you something.” He leads the way out of the sitting room. They pass into a bedroom with a view to the sea, and into a bathroom.

Like most Lantean washrooms, it’s expansive, lined with warm stone and now with growing plants, thriving in grates lined with water and repurposed starlight. Woolsey leads him to the back wall, where green tendrils curl around a decorative wrought naquadah pattern that suggests a moon and stars. The administrator hooks two careful fingers beneath a curving metal bar, mindful of the plants. With a tug, the pattern splits along geometric lines, carrying its plants with it as it opens.

“Morgan was known for the art of concealment.” Woolsey strokes the door jamb appreciatively. “This opened the same day the water began running down the walls.”

Sheppard steps into a dim room lined with mirrors and hung with prisms. Overhead, a shaft runs the length of Sanctuary Tower. Far above, the ceiling opens in a distant circle of scattered stars. It’s an ostentation reversed in character but identical in status to Merlin’s coil around a tower girder.

Woolsey closes the door to the bathroom. As their eyes adjust to the darkness, the floors and walls seem to fall away. Angled mirrors siphon starlight to prisms, to each other. They stand in a void dotted with panes of reflected light. In some mirrors, Sheppard sees only starlight. In others, he sees himself, sees Woolsey, sees Morgan le Fay, her chin tipped up, caught starlight glimmering in the silver laces of her sneakers, the silver zipper of her white track jacket.

Day 6

Sheppard sits in a conference room, thinking of Rush in the setting sun, Everett under starlight.

Atlantis feels layered beneath Morgan’s presence: when he’d woken this morning his mind had been full of rain and the memory of rain, the scent of pine and moss he only imagines he catches. In his dreams Everett had worn her ghostly mantle like a borrowed cloak, half-perceived. Faded.

The tropical sun blurs to mist at the edges of Sheppard’s vision, the city burrows in his thoughts, and the water running down the walls in bright grooves draws his attention.

Morgan has taken up residence.

McKay, at his shoulder, keeps his eyes on the blue slice of Atlantis he cradles in his palm. There’s a feeling of contentment at that hand/device interface. A feel to the air, a feel to the way Sheppard’s thoughts host the world. With the devices off his temples he’d see it clearer, perceive it sharper. He wants to know how the city thinks of McKay: spectral, barely present, his ghostlike hands diverting charge currents, powering the shield, powering weapons?

Sheppard’s fingertips drift to his temple, but McKay grabs his hand, yanks it down, lets it go.

Across the room, Teyla sits in a chair like a throne, Lantean sun gleaming off Wraith-white hair.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” Todd asks.

Pale skin, insectoid eyes, Teyla flinches.

“RESPOND TO THREAT WITH AGGRESSION,” Todd roars.

“NO,” Teyla snarls, multitonal, multivoiced. “I am NOT trying to get us killed.”

Todd makes a sound of inarticulate rage and stalks away from the conference table.

Teyla looks at Sheppard, gold eyes wet and full of frustrated anger.

“Let’s take a break,” Sheppard suggests.

“No,” Teyla says.

Todd buzzes like his chest is full of wasps. “There is death in your genes, tiny queen. There must be death in your bearing, death in your words, death in your eyes.”

“Insult my height again, and I’ll kill you.” Teyla’s many-voiced predatory drone slides under Sheppard’s skin like a hunting knife.

Todd laughs. “Better. But do you not truly hate my kind? Have we not killed generations upon generations of your people? Stolen your lives and your progress? Are you so meek you cannot promise me retribution in each passing moment?”

Real death seeps into Teyla’s eyes, glittering and cold.

Todd circles her. “Carry yourself with dominion!”

“I do.” Teyla’s tone is menacing and manifold. “I am.”

“Who are you?” Todd asks.

“I am Steelflower. Daughter of Snow.”

“Again,” Todd says, more patient this time. “Listen to me. Drag the ‘l.’ Carrion through a holllle. Vibrate the r: warrrn with it. Steellllflowerrr. Daughterrr of Snow.”

Teyla takes a breath. Repeats, “I am Steelllflowerr. Daughterr of Snow.”

Todd grunts. “Passable. Why are you stunted?”

“How darre you.” Something in Teyla’s voice box rattles its wings.

Sheppard’s hand wraps around his own neck, as though to shield it from deep-digging pincers.

Todd gives a mock bow. “I will rephrase, my Queen. Daughters of Snow are known to be tall.”

“My mother died with me inside her and I gnawed my way free of my egg sac.”

“Ew,” McKay mutters.

Todd snorts, smirks. Both mannerisms he’s stolen from Sheppard. “No need to be so clinical. Just say corpse.”

“I gnawed out of her corrpse,” Teyla amends.

“Guys,” McKay complains, “c’mon. Don’t put me off my lunch.”

“Speaking of lunch,” Sheppard calls across the conference room, “we’re gonna break.”

Todd growls.

“Humans need to eat,” Sheppard says, unmoved. “Go on, Teyla. Ronon’s next door with food.”

Regally, Teyla stands, glares at Todd, and strides for the exit. McKay follows on her heels, but hesitates when he realizes Sheppard isn’t following.

But…lunch!!! McKay’s blue eyes say.

Go ahead, Sheppard nods back.

“But,” McKay says aloud.

“Go,” Sheppard says, also aloud.

“But!” McKay says again.

“I’ll be right there,” Sheppard hisses.

I doubt that, says the set of McKay’s jaw.

Get outta here, McKay! Sheppard’s glare replies. I want a word with Todd.

Ugh, your funeral, McKay’s eye roll says, but fine, I’ll save you a sandwich.

Once they’re alone, Todd settles himself into the seat beside Sheppard, sighs like a world-weary human, and asks, “Where’s Ronon?” not bothering to roll any death into his “r”s this time.

“He sees you talk to Teyla like that, and we got a real problem,” Sheppard says, casual and dangerous.

“She’s doing well.” There’s a pleased rumble in Todd’s voice. “Surpassing expectations at every turn. Her hatred for the Wraith is an asset.”

“Great.” Sheppard tries to feel relieved.

Because Teyla is doing well. Better than he’d hoped, better than he has any right to expect. She’s come a long way from the nightmares of years past. He wonders if he can explain her achievement to Todd. Wonders if a culture of predation can conceptualize what it takes for their prey to don their clothing, walk among them, hunt them, hunt with them, even.

He wants to extract guarantees from Todd.

All that will do is show desperation.

“Just so we’re clear,” Sheppard says, drawing death and mist and borrowed light from the city’s deep well. “This Queen is on loan. She’s ours. We expect her back. In perfect condition.”

Todd inclines his head.

After lunch, Sheppard leaves McKay with Teyla and goes in search of Rush. He can’t say why, just knows the man is catching at his thoughts like a hanging thread, an unwatched six.

Why does he want to accompany Teyla?

Have they grown so close over a few sessions of martial arts training?

It’s possible, but doesn’t feel right.

The question sticks in his mind. Burns in the cortical suppressors at his temple.

He finds Rush alone in the Jumper Bay, standing next to the ship they’d taken out, the ship Sheppard himself favors for her high spirit, her tight corners, the joy running in her little circuit mind. Rush has both hands to the side paneling, as though sensing current within. The Jumper’s lights are on: blue tinted with amber.

“You’re gonna run down the battery,” Sheppard says.

Rush startles. Tries to hide it. Mostly succeeds.

Sheppard puts his shoulder into the Jumper and leans against its familiar curve. “Tell me,” he says, backed and topped by city blocks of soaring architectures that feel like part of his body, “what you’re up to.”

“‘Up to’,” Rush repeats, disdainful and cool and so much like the man Sheppard had died with on Altera that his palms wet with past and present want.

“Yeah.” Sheppard prowls the perimeter of the word he wants, not sure how to lever it into conversation, convinced it’ll land as too obvious for the living presence glamoured over the city like a shroud of mist.

Rush says nothing.

“When you told Young,” Sheppard begins, “that he ‘lacked commitment,’ seemed you had more on deck.” He hooks his fingertips at the cuff of Rush’s Expedition jacket sleeve and tugs, drawing attention to the material itself.

Athleisure, Sheppard doesn’t say.

Rush stares at his own caught jacket cuff. “Yes,” he confirms.

Sheppard lets him go. “I don’t like it.”

Rush gives him a faint smile. “Neither do I. But y’can’t play three-dimensional chess on a two-dimensional board.”

Sheppard glares at him. “Around here, chess is a team sport.”

Rush runs a hand over the Jumper, predictable and proprietary, like he’s been given a horse from the Sheppard family stable.

The Jumper’s lights go out.

Rush holds Sheppard’s gaze. “I’ll need your help, when the time comes.”

Sheppard feels higher planes yoked across his shoulders, crushing down like too much atmospheric pressure. Atlantis buzzes in approval, scattering thoughts like sparks.

Artificer, it calls him, and shows him bridges, roads, stargates, stellar maps.

Ways. Learned and built.

He remembers the spin of the coin he tossed up into the California sun. Heads I go. Tails I stay.

“Okay,” he says, and the coin lands. 

Day 7

The night before mission launch, Sheppard, exhausted, finishes his final check of the Puddle Jumper. Teyla’s wardrobe, jackets and gowns and carapaces of customized leather, has been folded into repurposed munitions cases. His eyes rove over rifles, guns, blocks of C4. They have enough weaponry for a four-man war, should it come to that. McKay’s Wraith interfaces are stowed in an overhead rack. Extra rations fill the hollow benches that run the back of the craft. The test batch of Keller’s gene therapy is refrigerated in the infirmary; that’ll be the last thing they pack in the morning.

At 2000 hours, Sheppard returns to the Nautilus Suite. He looks in on Eli and Ginn in the common room, sitting shoulder to shoulder and playing Astria Porta. On the wall-mounted display, Vera Sar crouches in a snowy hollow, her Voltcaster Pistol at the ready, her sights set on a Dimensional Gyrebeast. The game’s Battle Theme plays on the speakers.

Eli looks over his shoulder. When he sees Sheppard, he holds up a hand, fingers split in a silent Vulcan salute.

Wordlessly, Sheppard returns it.

Vera Sar makes her sneak attack. The Gyrebeast howls and charges.

“Steady,” Eli says. “Steady. Aim for the heart.”

Before Sheppard passes through the door to the security station, he stands in the shadows of the sunken-well vestibule and hears Ginn’s Voltcaster fire once. Twice. Three times. There’s a pause. A silence. And then comes the yearning musical passage that plays at the death of a Promethean Technomage.

He shivers and tries not to think of Rodney.

He enters the security station, waves at James, then follows the hall toward Young’s rooms.

He finds Young on his couch, his bad leg elevated, a Lantean datapad in hand. “There’s barley wine in the fridge.” He doesn’t look up. “Tastes like beer, hits like whisky.”

Sheppard pulls an Athosian bottle from a Lantean fridge, snags two glasses, and drops onto the couch next to Young. The day burns in his feet, his quads, his shoulders. He sets the glasses on the coffee table. Uncorks the small bottle. Halves it between them. An earthy, sweet aroma fills the air.

“How we doin’?” Young takes the glass Sheppard offers. “You get your Jumper outfitted?”

“We’re good,” Sheppard confirms.

Young shifts, moving better after a few rounds of Keller’s physical therapy. “Woolsey tells me you’re gonna be unreachable by comms for a few days.”

Sheppard nods. “The Wraith are pretty sharp when it comes to scraping incoming and outbound data. Todd’s ship is technically ‘friendly territory,’ but it’ll be in close proximity to other hives. Can’t risk getting detected.”

“What if you have issues with your—” Young gestures at his own temple.

“No one’s better at troubleshooting than McKay,” Sheppard says.

Young sighs.

Sheppard smirks.

“Yeah yeah,” Young grumbles. “You just keep in mind there’s gonna be hell to pay if you and our planetary asset get locked in a dream prison while you’re on a Wraith hive.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Sheppard says.

Young studies Sheppard from beneath the line of his brow. “I vouched for you with Woolsey. He’s trying to decide, and I quote, whether you ‘have the soul of a poet’, whether your ‘mind is being assimilated into the city itself,’ or whether you’re ‘just not that talkative’.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him if he’s looking for talking, he should let your track record speak for itself.”

“Thanks,” Sheppard says, because he can’t say, I dream of you. Uninjured. The stars are in your hair. You know so much—how to fly a ship, how to end the war.

Something passes between them. Atlantis is liquid metal in his mind, filling out architectures of desire. Everett is so solid, so reassuring, so of the ground, of support beams buried deep, of pillars sunk and corbels cantilevered that Sheppard has to remind himself to be gentle with the man’s hip and back.

Sheppard eases a leg over Everett’s thighs, most of his weight driving down into his own knees where they meet the thin Ancient couch cushions.

The kiss tastes of barley wine. Chaya Sar’s lush, back-garden magic flows like sap in Sheppard’s veins and flowers under the mist and moonlight mantle Everett doesn’t know he carries.

But when Sheppard pulls the datapad from Everett’s hand, he feels a ghost rain fall on his fingertips, smells moss and wet stone.

Breaking the kiss, he looks down.

On the screen are schematics. A box of a dark naquadah alloy. Amber glyphs. Interlocking wave functions he doesn’t recognize: truth as a ground state; an opening subspace field; neuronal energetics; neuronal manipulation. All around the borders of the image a single word repeats itself over and over and over. As if he doesn’t already know what kind of violence this box contains. What it’s meant to do.

He looks away. Turns the datapad face down on the small end table next to the couch.

“What?” Young asks.

Sheppard places his cold hands on Young’s warm shoulders, tries to summon a whisper of Chaya Sar’s life energy to combat the chill in his blood, tries to sort out whether what he’s feeling comes from him, from the city, or from something else, somewhere else, some external influence. He tries to think of things in bloom but can’t get any hidden garden energy to flower in his thoughts.

That thing on the datapad—it’s a warning. A harbinger, a clue, something the superpositioned aspect of Morgan le Fay wishes him to see.

“What?” Young demands, an edge of fear in his voice this time, as though he too can sense the transdimensional rain falling at the borders of their minds.

Sheppard feels for Morgan. He does. She’s a beautiful, ascended schemer, one foot in the light, one foot in darkness, maybe the only Ancient left who has enough heart to care what happens to life on the brane she left. All her allies imprisoned by rules or blasted into nothingness, or dead.

“Nothing,” Sheppard says.

“Shep,” Young growls, all barley wine and threat.

There’s no fighting Young when he’s like this, so Sheppard picks up the datapad. Points to the word forming the borders of the image. “We tend to steer clear of things labeled like this.”

Young frowns at the word.

“Anathema,” Sheppard says. “A false path to enlightenment.” And then, with words that seem to come from Atlantis itself, “A thing that stands apart, worthy of divine destruction.”

“Anathema,” Young repeats, with something in his voice that makes Sheppard worry he’s done the work of Morgan le Fay.

Sheppard tosses the datapad aside, ignoring the rain at the back of his mind and in the edges of his vision, telling himself the damage isn’t already done, kissing Everett like it’s his last chance. Maybe it is.

Tomorrow he leaves for a Wraith hive, the first play in a desperate campaign to end a years-long war and an ongoing cull of the Pegasus Galaxy, rising and falling like a centuries-long tide.

Day 8

They leave with the dawn.

Atlantis wails with his going. The cortical suppressors turn heavier with increasing distance from the city as they dump electrostatic pressure into a less resistant system. McKay, beside him, eases the dampening functions so expertly that Todd doesn’t notice anything amiss and Sheppard’s piloting skills barely take a hit.

The city fades from his mind. He remembers the arid heat of Afghanistan, the feel of chopper controls above endless plains of ice, the way his mind had felt, restive and frustrated and all his own before he’d encountered a bright drone on a bright day, before he sat in a silver chair in a hall of ice, before he mounted a glowing staircase in a city under water.

Space is dark. The stars are few and far between.

Glittering like a blue-green insect on a backdrop of velvet, the hive draws near.