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: Witching hour.

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

Word comes from Todd in the early morning. Sheppard lies in Nick Rush’s bed, awake before his alarm, eyes open to the dawn-gray ceiling. The earpiece he never takes off crackles softly to life. 

“Colonel Sheppard?” Woolsey says.

Sheppard lifts his hand to his ear. “Yeah.”

“The Wraith delegation will arrive in three days.” Woolsey keeps his voice low, respecting the hour. “Three days of prep, then it’s mission go.”

“This is a bad idea.”

There’s a long silence.

“I believe Teyla can do this,” Woolsey says.

“That’s not the issue.”

Again, silence.

“There will be no help from the Milky Way,” Woolsey says. “Not now. Maybe not ever. A third of the galaxy has fallen to Origen.”

A cold fist closes around Sheppard’s heart.

“The Wraith are our problem,” Woolsey continues. “If Keller’s gene therapy can remove their ability to feed…” he trails off.

The pause is full of shared hope, shared skepticism.

“This is our best shot,” Sheppard understands.

“I’m afraid, colonel,” Woolsey replies, full of sympathy, “it may be our only shot.”

The ceiling, etched with nautiloid curves in brushed silver, coils in on itself.

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

“I’ll be there,” Sheppard replies.

He lies on his back, his mind full of patterned architecture, close quarters combat, sea wind and the dank biology of a Wraith hive. Atlantis reinforces his thoughts, pouring into weak places in his mind like liquid metal into a mold. Solidifying. Cooling.

Across the room, Rush, hyperbolic triangles and fused chord circles beneath his hands, stops coaxing non-Euclidean lines out of the plane of the page.

What a relief it’s been to dream of math. Of the sea. Of the inaccessible echo of crystal chords vibrating through the mind of a mathematician just below the window of human hearing.

Sheppard sits. The bedcovers pool at his waist.

Nick Rush is at a silver desk, looking over the dawn gray sea, framed by the pale green shoots that twine above the shimmering water channels in the wall.

Atlantis is thinking of Rush, thinking with Rush, but when Sheppard tries to eavesdrop on what runs between them—

Maker. The city lays the idea into his mind like paned glass the color of gemstones, with song and secrecy and the smelting of metals, the showering of sparks. It’s a barrier. It’s a dropped mirror between Sheppard and something he’s not meant to see.

“Artificer,” Rush says, soft and speculative, as though he’s picked up on the idea of “maker,” refined it, put his own Oxford spin on the idea.

Sheppard feels a pang.

He wishes he was an artificer, solving puzzles, building intricate instruments that track the motions of the moon, the solar flares from the nearest star. Maybe he lives that way wherever Rod McKay comes from. Maybe there’s a John Sheppard stained with grease, smeared with dust from Ancient consoles rather than blood. Maybe, one day, when the Wraith are gone, he will be an artificer, fixing up and coaxing to life the halls and walkways silver bridges of this city.

A life of architecture. Of repair.

He stands and pulls on his fatigues.

“Where are you off to?” Rush asks.

“Keller’s got a plan to neutralize the Wraith. Gonna go hear about it, I guess.”

“Oh yes?” Rush, dry as silicate, arches a brow. “What’s she going to do? Cherub them to death?”

Sheppard snorts. “She’s got a gene therapy that will, supposedly, remove their need to feed. The only catch is convincing them to take it.”

“Sounds difficult,” Rush says.

“Yeah. It’s gonna get ugly.” The words are out before Sheppard can stop them. He shouldn’t be telling Rush any of this.

But Rush, backed by the eggshell blue of the dawn, has been battle-tested on the proving ground of Altera. 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. Hundreds of times we’ve gone out and every time I’m more afraid I’ll come back without her, he doesn’t say.

“Teyla.” Rush weaves concern into her name, respect, but there’s something more there, something that feels like understanding, like a piece dropping into place.

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

Rush stills. “A Queen?” he repeats, like he feels the menace waiting for Teyla, lightyears away. Stalking nearer in time.

Sheppard nods grimly. “They swarm and feed like insects,” he says. “Like insects, they follow queens.”

Rush swallows. “You’ve faced them before, I take it. What are they like?”

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

This last one throws Rush. “Tall?”

“Taller than Teyla,” Sheppard’s voice gives out halfway through the sentence. He takes a breath. Regroups. “Much taller.”

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

Sheppard buckles his belt, settles his knife at the small of his back, his sidearm at his hip. “I’d never say that.”

They look at one another in the dawn light.

“Get some sleep,” Sheppard advises.

“Right.”

“And take it easy on Teyla today.” Sheppard heads for the door.

Rush scoffs. “Be sure an’ tell her the same.”

Sheppard grins. “Never,” he says, as the doors swish shut behind him.

The early hours of the morning pass too quickly, and before he knows it, he’s in the sunstone briefing room, listening to Woolsey read the list of Todd’s demands: Teyla’s surgical and cosmetic alteration, hours of etiquette training, days-long embedding in Todd’s hive, active negotiations with a hostile, murderous queen.

All for the slender hope of a gene therapy, untested and experimental, meant to eliminate the Wraith’s greatest strength, greatest weakness, all in one fell stroke.

But even if Keller’s therapy works, the Wraith still have their superior firepower—there’s nothing to stop them from enslaving the Pegasus Galaxy without feeding on its inhabitants. It’s what the Goa’uld did; their empire lasted thousands upon thousands of years.

He spends the day as alone as he can make himself, standing at the broken-bridge pier at the tip of Mariner’s Quay, ignoring the pull of the chair, 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.

He imagines Rodney’s face: jaw set, mouth tight, eyes the color of stellar propulsion.

Rodney doesn’t answer.

No solution comes.

That night he dreams of Everett 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

On the morning of the second day, his dreams of Everett stay clear—starlight and seashine and war-weary promise—framed by the delicate song of the new plant life wrapping pale green shoots around silver struts.

It’s rare, these days, to dream his own dreams.

But this one has to be his—it’s so much of everything he lacks: peace and quiet; wisdom and the slow pulse of Morgan Le Fay’s energetic signature, as if the heart pumped river water rather than blood.

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

Sheppard learned early on that the only way to hold life was lightly, so lightly that when it came to set it aside there’d be no drag, no crosswind, nothing holding him back.

It gets harder every year. 

It’s 0400 and Morgan Le Fay’s moon is high over a shimmering sea. Sheppard is up before his alarm, and Rush is a dark silhouette in front of the window.

Sheppard sits, full of premonition.

And when Nick Rush says, “Teach me to fly,” it shackles something he’s kept free his whole life long.

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

Rush smiles, delighted and wicked. There’s relief there, too, in the set of his shoulders, the lines of his face.

In retrospect, Sheppard doesn’t think as hard about that relief as he should.

They take the Jumper out just 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, for a moment, all that’s come before, all that’s coming still: Teyla’s transformation, the infiltration of a Wraith Alliance, the word that the Milky Way can’t commit even one more ship to the defense of Pegasus. There’s only the flowing atmosphere, the pitch, the yaw, the roll of the most versatile craft he’s ever flown.

The inertial dampeners stop and start and turn on the dime of the mind.

There’s a deep 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 arrive back on Atlantis, Young is waiting for them in the Jumper Bay. Arms crossed, he stands at the back wall, no cane in sight.

“Nope,” Young says, and the word grinds like stone.

“Oh give over.” Rush, spirits high, is spoiling 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. It’s exerted real drag on his USAF career. He won’t tell Everett the truth of it—that he’s wanted to take Nick Rush flying since first they met. He won’t go toe-to-toe with the head of SG-68, who doesn’t take Sheppard’s orders, who technically ranks him when it comes to the security of their visiting Planetary Asset.

He stays quiet.

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

Sheppard freezes.

Young, too, stares at Rush in mute astonishment.

“You lack commitment,” Rush tells Young, and the words slide like a hot knife through ice.

“I what?” Young growls.

Sheppard grounds himself like charge in the rubber soles of his combat boots. The bay doors shut, thinning and ending a block of morning light as they close.

“Your goal is nothing less than shifting the power balance of an ongoing war,” Rush points out.

A slice of Nick Rush’s early morning comes back to him, dream-filtered and vague: he’d been playing Astria Porta, Sheppard realizes, in the earliest hours of the morning. Alone. In the massive library midway up the Sidereal Spire, he’d read tome after tome, cut scenes of Promethean Wars playing out over and over the same way, their cycles millennia apart.

There have only ever been two peoples, Mab the Raven says out of the dream-memory, her voice like the voice of Morgan Le Fay, Mariners and monsters. Those who sail the waves and those who lurk beneath. The crests of light and sound, the depths of pressure and taste. And he’d seen battles of fire, like sea foam on breaking waves; and he’d seen predators of the deep, hunting in the vastness of the space between stars, sensors on field lines, waiting for the cut of a hull through spacetime, for struggle, for energy, for blood in the water—

A chill runs down Sheppard’s spine.

Young looks to him, sensing his unease, sharing it, even if the source is different. Sheppard meets his eyes, then drops his gaze. Torn, at sea, sure there are currents running here that he can’t map, troubled by the idea of sailors, or lurking monsters, wondering why the Wraith had surfed the surface of Mab’s metaphor. Who laid in wait in deep galactic waters if not the Wraith? Was there some other species, some other threat—

“There will be no skill acquisition without risk,” Rush continues, pressing beyond the morning flying lesson to win a point larger than the argument itself. “And if the pair of you are 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’s the whole point of everything we’re doing is—”

But Rush is already firing back. “We should be deployed with Teyla. On her diplomatic mission.”

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

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

“Your team is green as hell,” Sheppard says, trying to bank out of Rush’s current trajectory. “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. You get me?”

Rush looks to Sheppard.

Sheppard holds the mathematician’s gaze. “This is a delicate, deep cover mission. Todd has been bluffing his alliance members into thinking he serves a Queen for almost a year now. Teyla’s going to pose as that Queen and negotiate on behalf of his hive. When we have a go, the strike team will be small. Once our cloaked jumper lands on Todd’s hive, we’re in it for the duration. Communication in or out is a risk we can’t take. On this mission,” he pauses for emphasis, “there’s no place for SG-68.”

Rush slices into Sheppard with his gaze like he’s probing a network for vulnerabilities.

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

Rush has a braced, picking-a-fight-with-the-world set to his shoulders. It’s there and gone. He relaxes. Shrugs. Says, “Fine,” and heads in the direction of breakfast.

Young and Sheppard glance at one another, uneasy, then follow.

That night, gathered in the Nautilus Suite, they play Astria Porta as a team. While 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. Nick doesn’t say much either. In a private chat within the game, the message nothing but the flicker of photons, Sheppard types:

Don’t play alone.

Rush doesn’t reply in text. Instead, he shifts subtly on the couch, pressing his knee into Sheppard’s. 

A strip of warmth runs up Sheppard’s thigh, seeping through expedition charcoal and his own black fatigues.

That night, again, 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 says, are a solved problem.

For the span of the dream, Sheppard believes him.

Day 3

The wind in his hair, Sheppard tees up a biodegradable golf ball. He studies the ball. Forms a question. “Why did you want in on Teyla’s mission?” he asks.

Nick Rush leans into the rail, sunglasses on, facing down the setting sun. He shrugs like the question doesn’t interest him.

Sheppard squares himself 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 feels the burn of a decades-old aimless shame, seeded with the water-hungry grass of a four acre Palo Alto estate, 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 the cool from the breeze, delicately adjusts his USAF aviators. The wind is in his hair. “Of all of it, why hang onto golf?”

Sheppard puts another of McKay’s biodegradable balls on a tee. Squares 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.”

“Sure.” Sheppard positions another ball. Lines up a swing. “‘Hotshot’.”

“Don’t start.”

“Y’know Woolsey wears a three piece suit in the evenings,” Sheppard says. “Pours a glass of Athosian red. Puts on an opera. Listens by himself. Every night.”

“I doubt that.”

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

Rather than think of what’s waiting for Teyla tomorrow, Sheppard takes his swing, connects solidly, feels the strength of the shot reverberate up his arm. He loses the ball in the red-gold disc of the setting sun. Listens for the splash.

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

Sheppard smirks. “You could keep Woolsey company. Talk opera and Italian suits all night long. Become a connoisseur of Athosian reds.”

Rush leans into the rail and arches a brow above the rim of his aviators. Cool as the ocean breeze.

“C’mere Scottish guy,” Sheppard says. “You want culture? Learn to hit a golf ball.”

Rush looks into the wind, on the verge of refusing. But he straightens, takes his foot off a low silver rail and saunters toward Sheppard, demon casual in charcoal nerd gear. He steps close, deliberately provocative, enjoying himself.

Sheppard doesn’t back away. “This,” he says, quiet and intimate, “is a driver.”

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

Sheppard shifts, standing behind the mathematician, his hands sliding down Rush’s forearms, guiding his fingers into the Vardon grip. “Lead hand,” he murmurs, his mouth close to Rush’s ear. “Trailing hand.” Their hips flush, delicately he adjusts the man’s grip. “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 says, his hands positioned 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. Follow through.”

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

“Applied ballistics.” Sheppard runs them through the swing again, then steps back.

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

All the back-garden life of Chaya Sar multiplies in his heart, flowers, blooms, dies. He’d been on this pier with her as well, before he knew who and what she was, drunk on the life and luster of her presence, on well-watered flowers that dripped sap under tropical sun streaming through light-filled halls. 

“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.”

“I have the feeling,” Rush steps closer, “that when it comes to metaphysical debate about the rights of my current versus past self, you’re likely to be outclassed.” Rush steps still closer, all charge overflow and bright mist, “So, you could make your best argument for the primacy of theoretical past commitments, but since they all derive from psychological continuity, you will lose.”

“Okay,” Sheppard breathes.

Rush kisses him, and Sheppard’s mind is full of fruit-and-flower summer rain falling on a sundial.

“Everett and I are sleeping together,” Sheppard confesses, blind with shifting energetics, his cortical suppressors burning at his temples.

“Y’think I’ve not figured it out?” Rush breathes, housing Sheppard’s longing, the city’s longing like a depthless stone pool, barely endurable, bleaching color, taking the red of the setting sun, the blue of the sea. Lght of all frequencies, indistinguishable from mist, rises like smoke from the water, the city, the sky. “I don’t care.”

“I—” Sheppard begins, his temples burning.

Rush cups his 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 out of his mouth is, “No.”

“He’s dead,” Rush breathes. “Do you understand that?”

The dead come back, Sheppard tries to say. We’ve all done it; 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, and the little spark of wisdom that made him throw his wealth away to court death and truth among the stars recognizes that Rush is temporary, a running tributary not at all confident it will find its way back to a greater river.

“I see you,” Sheppard says, knowing it’s what he’d need to hear if their positions were reversed, if he’d lost every anchor, been flung to the furthest reaches of a galaxy at war. “You’re the one here and you’re the one I see.”

Rush deepens the kiss and they try to fuse with one another through the energetic wall of their cortical suppressors burning like coals, like hot, white stars.

All we did was die, Sheppard doesn’t say as he lets Nick Rush kiss him like the world is ending. The only thing I did with the one that came before you was open and a door and die behind it. Over and over and over again.

Day 4

Sheppard spends the morning in a last ditch, private 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 make 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 his ear, checking in, taking readings from his cortical suppressors, acting up in the aftermath of the EM storm he’d caused by kissing 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. The city, too, thinks of him, pressing into Sheppard’s mind with  woven vertices, with revolving chains, with thread and mist and choirs of stone.

They’re losing their minds, him and Atlantis.

The only things keeping him sane are his dreams of Everett Young, 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 shines off the gunmetal accents on his armor and glistens on his ichor-sheen skin. His tattered hair hangs down his back.

Wasp, Sheppard thinks. Predator. Vampire neck-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 threaten 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 his 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 and looks at her and says a small, “Good luck,” as the doors close.

Sheppard tries not to let that little 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 the same as 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 it like he’s dying.

“I mean, I guess no one’s really worried about the physical,” McKay goes on. “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. Kolya comes into his mind, standing on a cliff’s edge, cool on the hot end of a gun, calmly explaining John had been the one torturing himself for the better part of a day. His left wrist aches, deep and hot. He flexes his hand. 

“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 turns to face 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 really 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.

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

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—

McKay, again, mouths something at Ronon.

“John,” Ronon says.

“Yeah,” Sheppard breathes, his fingers clamped around the place where he’d imagined Acastus Kolya had cut off his hand. “I’m good,” he breathes. He turns, he smiles, he lets his own arm go. He claps McKay on the shoulder, then turns and walks to the opposite 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” little backhand blade at the end he’ll buck up about it; he’ll be fine.

Atlantis presses into his mind, sinking deep, soaring 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 a relax-about-everything smile.

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

“Uh,” Sheppard says.

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

That’s probably 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. He turns back to Sheppard. “So. Have you?”

“No,” Sheppard says. 

Ronon smirks. Flips a knife. “That’s not what I heard.”

“What?” McKay breathes, looking 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 gives him a knock it off glare, coming 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 figure it out,” Sheppard lies.

“I can’t be all things to all people, okay?” McKay’s working 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.”

Behind McKay, Ronon rolls his eyes.

“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. I CAN GUARANTEE YOU THAT.”

Ronon sighs. “I’m kinda with McKay on this one.”

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

“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 shine with repurposed starlight. It gleams in Woolsey’s glasses, off the dome of his head, shines off the dark wine in his glass.

“Colonel Sheppard,” Woolsey says, more gentle than Sheppard’s ever heard him. “I have qualms about sending you on this mission given the concerns Dr. McKay and now Dr. Keller have raised.”

Sheppard stares at the floor. “It’s friendly territory,” he says for the tenth time.

“And when you accompanied Dr. Becket 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 own behavior tells me it’s likely more than theoretical.”

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

“It is,” Woolsey admits.

Sheppard looks up.

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

Sheppard looks away. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Woolsey studies him for a moment. “I’ve spent my nights reading Elizabeth Weir’s entire body of work,” he says.

Sheppard goes cold. Like the vacuum of space. 2.7 degrees Kelvin. Processor speed slows. “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,” Sheppard replies.

“Sometimes,” Woolsey says, too quiet, too earnest. “But sometimes the job is to send someone else. 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 says, putting down his wine, “is benching.”

“It’s not benching,” Woolsey fires back. “You’re still ranking military officer on this base, you—”

“No. No downtime. 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 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, 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 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 a dark haired woman in pale jeans and 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 replies, soft and encouraging. When Sheppard says nothing more, Woolsey adds, “And like them, we value peace but 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 turns to look at him, her dark eyes watchful, shining.

Woolsey, thrown by the question, 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 through a short receiving hall, through 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 small tug, the pattern splits along geometric lines, carrying its small plants with it as it opens.

“Morgan was known for the art of concealment,” Woolsey smiles. “This opened the same day the water began running down the walls.”

They pass into a dim room lined with mirrors, hung with prisms. Overhead, a shaft runs the length of Sanctuary Tower. Far above, the ceiling opens in a distant circle of scattered stars.

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 in the 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 nestles deep 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.

McKay pulls his hand away before he gets shocked.

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 snarls.

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 makes a low sound, deep in his throat, a threatening buzz, like a nest of angry wasps. He ignores  Sheppard, turns to Teyla and says, “There is death in your genes, little 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 hisses with the many-voiced predatory drone that slides under Sheppard’s skin like a hunting knife.

Todd laughs, low and threatening. “Better. Do you not hate my kind? Have we not killed generations upon generations of your people? Stolen your lives and your progress? Does politeness hold so much sway that you cannot promise me retribution within every passing moment?”

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

“Better still.” Todd circles her. “Carry yourself with dominion!”

“I do,” Teyla breathes, low and manifold. “I am.”

“Who are you?” Todd snarls.

“I am Steelflower. Daughter of Snow.”

“Again,” Todd says, more patient this time. “Listen to me. Drag the l: carrion through a hole. 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,” Teyla snarls, the insect drone of death in her voice.

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 sack.”

“Ew,” McKay mutters.

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

“I gnawed my way free 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, deep in his throat.

“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 wordlessly communicates.

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, McKay’s expression says.

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

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

Once they’re alone, Todd settles himself into the seat beside Sheppard, sighs like a worldweary 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 gnawing at his thoughts like a hanging thread, an unwatched six. Rush had never answered his question on the pier. Had, instead, turned the tide of the conversation not once, but twice. The question remains.

Why would he want to accompany Teyla?

Have they grown so close over a few weeks 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, startled, looks up. A hint of anxiety flickers beneath the cool facade he’s been manufacturing for the better part of a week now.

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

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

“Yeah.” Sheppard stares into Rush’s phase-change eyes. Already, he’s circling around the word he wants, not sure how to lever it into conversation, convinced it’ll land as too obvious for the living presence layered over the city like a glamour. Like a shroud.

Rush says nothing.

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

Athleisure, Sheppard doesn’t say.

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

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 quirks an amused eyebrow at him, then runs a hand over the Jumper, firm and predictable, like Sheppard used to pet the horses in his family’s stable.

The Jumper’s lights go off.

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

Sheppard feels higher planes layer themselves across his shoulders, crushing down like too much atmospheric pressure. Atlantis buzzes in approval, heating his cortical suppressors, pouring molten metal into his thoughts, scattering them like sparks.

Artificer, it says, 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.

“All right,” 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 walks through the doors to the Nautilus Suite. He finds Eli and Ginn on the couch in front of the TV, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Onscreen, Vera Sar crouches in a snowy hollow, her Voltcaster Pistol at the ready, her sights set on a Dimensional Gyrebeast. The Astria Porta theme plays softly over the speakers.

Eli looks over his shoulder at the chime of the doors. 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 chargers for her.

“Steady,” Eli says softly, “aim for the heart.”

Sheppard passes through the dark hall to Everett’s quarters. Before ringing the bell, he stands in the shadows of the hall, listening to the Voltacaster 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.

With a wave of his hand, a chime sounds. After a handful of heartbeats, the doors open.

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

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?”

“Should be good,” Sheppard replies.

Young puts the datapad down and shifts, moving better after a few weeks of Keller’s physical therapy. “Woolsey tells me you’re gonna be unreachable by coms 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 replies.

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 replies.

“I hope you’re right,” Young says. “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, and 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 and leg.

He sits astride Everett’s thighs, most of his weight driving down into his own knees, where they meet the thin Ancient couch cushions, still preserved after thousands of years. Their 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 energetic; 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, soft and speculative and 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. and 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 had an encounter with 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 Wraith Hive draws near.