SGA fic -- City of Fogs
Aug. 4th, 2009 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theladysnarkydameCity of Fogs
Author:theladysnarkydame
Genre: AU
Prompt Arcane Invention
Word Count: about 8000
Rating: PG - PG13
Warnings: none to speak of
Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership of this universe or its characters.
Summary: Sheppard comes home a fugitive, and needs his friends' help to finish a mission he started ten years ago.
* * * * *
Before there was Fog, there was water. Torrential rains, once a year, every year, for weeks. The land, drinking in that water, was lush and green. The rain soaked deep into the soil, far down where the Avanas roots held it in reservoirs, so that all year long the land was green.
But the City, with her stone streets and glass towers, did not welcome the deluge. And every year, when the rains came, the City held its breath and waited, all the people gone indoors. The empty streets became the River, while the water ran.
Eventually, the Old Ones noticed that every year the rains were falling longer. Every year, the River rose higher, ran faster. And when the streets were dry, the Old Ones saw that the foundations of their towers were beginning to wash away.
The Old Ones loved the City. So to keep her from drowning, they designed a Great Engine, and tied its operation to their own heartbeats, so that it would love the City, too.
This mighty Engine, built with all the power and the skill the Old Ones possessed, took hold of the winds that trapped the rain against the High Divide, and sent them blowing higher still. The rain passed by, and the City ceased to drown.
But without the rain, the Avanas roots would dry up, and the land would die of thirst. And since the Old Ones knew this, and the Old Ones loved the land as they loved their City, they had their Engine take hold of the ocean currents, just as it had the wind. The Engine pulled at the cold southern currents, and called up the Fog.
Every morning, before the sun rose high, the Fog rolled over the land, and the land drank it in. The Avanas trees learned to turn their leaves out broad ways, to catch the water, and send it down to their thirsty roots. The land adjusted, and the land thrived.
For many years, the Old Ones celebrated the Engine’s triumph. They sang songs of their City of Fogs in every port, and her fame grew. All knew of her; of her wonder, of her wisdom, of her joy.
Eventually, however, the City of Fogs became known to the hungry Asurian Empire. Their great power rivaled the Old Ones, and their avarice was greater.
The jealous Asurians bred an abomination. A phantom beast which fed on life, which ravaged sanity. They made it at home in clouds, in mist, in Fog. They set it loose on the cold southern current, and they waited.
And one day, when the Fog rolled in off the sea, it brought hidden within it the Wraith.
The phantom beast prowled the City of Fogs, and it fed on the life of the Old Ones, just as the Asurians had designed it to do.
Mad and dying, grieving and enraged, the Old Ones attempted to destroy the Wraith by crippling their own Great Engine, thus ending the Fog that the Wraith haunted.
They failed.
Though the Great Engine slowed and stopped, tied still to the Old Ones’ dying heartbeat, the ocean currents were not reversed. The Fog remained. And everyday when it rolled over the land, the Wraith lurked within it, until all of the Old Ones were either dead or refugees, and the City of Fogs was empty.
---excerpt from the introduction to The Death of Atlantis, City of Fogs
The Lady Charin
* * * * *
In Athos, the Celebration of a Thousand Suns was winding down. The young men laughed, drunk on wine and dancing, as they splashed the floating River Fires with their oars. One by one, the little Suns in the River went out.
The young women gathered around the Great Torches in the Commons -- two great mountain Cedars, tarred and oiled, their blaze now beginning to die down. The girls, their hair half undone, their shoes long ago kicked off and forgotten, sang as they sat on the ground and watched the young men bring the boats ashore.
The songs meandered, verses weaving and unweaving as partners answered or fell asleep. It was a happily disordered sound, Teyla mused. A soothing chaos.
She lifted her hair and pressed the back of her neck to the cool stone wall she leaned against. From where she sat, the Athosian youth were a blur of colour and song. She smiled dreamily, remembering the heat of the Torches soaked into the ground, and the smell of the River lingering in a boy’s wet shirt as he lay down beside her, snoring before the song ended.
"We were younger then," she murmured to the night, and closed her eyes.
"Was it that long ago?" came an answer, and she would have jumped, if she had the energy.
"Ronon," she rebuked, not opening her eyes, "I will tie a bell to your belt, if you do that again."
"You’d have heard me, if you weren’t dreaming," he said, and Teyla could hear the smile in his voice.
He settled beside her, a quiet weight, and she leaned her shoulder against his.
"Did you find Rodney?" she asked. "He promised to come out this year."
"I found him. Asleep in the Workshop. There were too many springs and and gears and levers on the floor for me to get to him without breaking one."
She sighed. "And he’d throw a fit if you damaged something trying to get him to come to a party."
Ronon snorted. "It’s the same thing he did last year. You know he does it on purpose."
"Yes. But someday, we will catch him early, and make him keep his promise."
"Maybe. Not this year. Or next."
And Teyla, letting herself fall asleep against her old friend, knew that she wasn’t surprised. Nor even disappointed, for all a promise had been broken.
Rodney hadn’t come out for the Celebration in almost ten years. She knew he wasn’t likely to, unless John Sheppard came home.
* * * * *
In the dream, they were four.
They sat on the packed dirt, awash in the warmth of the Great Torches. The Commons were covered in dancers, the grounds surrounded by hundreds of floating Fires.
Teyla’s hair, entwined with flowers, fell in straggling curls over John’s arm, and her brown feet rested on Rodney’s lap. He giggled drunkenly, trying to tie a dancer’s pale blue ribbon around her ankle. John was apparently oblivious to the both of them as he argued happily with Ronon, wine sloshing over in his grip, but the arm that Teyla slept on kept rock steady.
Asleep on his Workshop floor, Rodney curled tighter into himself, trying to hold on to John’s bright eyes and Ronon’s sharp smile; Teyla’s warm weight and his own happiness. But this part of the familiar dream was brief.
"Captain!" Rodney heard rising over the crowd. "Captain Sheppard!"
And in the dream, the dancers faded. The Torches died out, though he remembered clearly their light washing over John’s face as it paled.
"It wrapped around the ship," the young soldier was saying, "wrapped around it and pulled it down." He was sobbing for breath, his eyes wide and staring. Rodney stood frozen at John’s back.
"We couldn’t reach them. We could hear them -- Oh Suns! we could hear them screaming . . ." and the soldier broke off, gasping.
"It was only a patrol!" he choked out. "We stuck to the routine. It just reached up and swallowed them all!"
Teyla pushed past John, taking the soldier’s face in her hands. "Easy," she murmured. "Breathe. Do not panic. The Wraith has touched you -- but you made it home. Rest, and the wounds will heal." She held the boy as he shook, his mind and heart savaged by the phantom beast.
Face set, John pulled himself up. "You did what you could, Markham," he said. "Leave the rest to me."
But they didn’t. And again, in the dream, Rodney felt the mingled anger and relief when Commander Caldwell refused to allow a rescue mission.
"They could still be alive!" John protested, his way to this ships blocked blocked by grim faced soldiers. "Ford and Stackhouse and Cadman. Let me bring them home!"
Rodney, wanting Caldwell to be a villain here, was furious to see the struggle in his eyes. "I cannot allow any more missions into Atlantis," he growled. "No patrols, no exploration. No rescue attempt for a ship’s crew that’s certain to be dead already. We can not lead the Wraith back to Athos. I will not allow it."
Rodney, as always, struggled to end the dream there. Surely that was bad enough, with Teyla and Ronon helplessly standing at John’s back. With the strangled pain in John’s posture. With his own guilty relief stealing through his heart.
But, as always, Rodney’s orderly mind followed the dream to its conclusion. Where John, overcome, threw a bitter punch at Caldwell, and was restrained by soldiers in his own command. At the court marshall, John was stripped of his rank, and jailed.
"It’s for his own protection, as well as for the good of Athos," Caldwell yelled over their protests. "He would go after his men. He’d only end up dead himself. Or worse, he’d go mad, and the Wraith would follow him back over the mountains. Athos would go the way of Atlantis!"
And the dream ended, as it always did, with John’s furious shouts muffled behind a heavy barred door, and soldiers pushing the three of them away.
Rodney woke in the dark, and glared at the shadowed forms of half-finished projects that lay strewn around him. He hated this night. Every year, that dream. As if he would forget. As if he’d let himself.
He’d been relieved. When Caldwell had locked John in prison, he’d been relieved. He’d thought his friend would be better off in prison, than risking his life and his sanity to rescue his men. Relieved.
With a snarl, Rodney pushed to his feet. He cracked his back, stretching, and turned to his workbench. He was getting closer, he knew. He almost had it.
* * * * *
Morning came late the day after the Celebration, and was really more about the celebrants straggling back into their homes than coming out of them. Teyla went for a long soak in the Baths, letting the mineral-heavy waters work out the stiffness that came of sleeping against a stone wall with only Ronon for a pillow.
Not that Ronon seemed bothered. She snorted. He’d been up and gone with the sunrise, just as he always was.
She ducked under the water and worked the tangles out of her hair, and deliberately let herself think of how John would have been up with Ronon, challenging him to a race around the square, to work the morning stiffness out. Ronon would win though. He always had.
Teyla smiled, only a little bitterly. "And where were you this morning?" she asked under her breath. "Where did the sun find you today?"
She knew he was alive. It had been more than nine years since she'd seen John Sheppard, but she knew this much. He had promised not to die.
When Rodney had come to her and Ronon, a great guilt darkening his eyes, and told them that John was refusing to eat, locked up in that prison, they had feared for him. Such a terrible fear, that their friend would die.
She had not, she reflected, been shocked. Afraid, yes, but not shocked. John, imprisoned, was not natural. So they got him out.
Ronon distracted the guards. It wasn't hard -- this detail, guarding the former Captain, was wrenching for them. His silence, after the threats and the pleading of the first few days, seemed weighted with censure. So when Ronon offered to teach Sergeant Lorne some Satedan hand-to-hand techniques, they were eager enough to leave their post, just for a few minutes, to wager on the match.
She stood with Rodney while he picked the lock. She noticed, at his side, that his shoulders shook with tension, but his hands were steady. When the door opened, she left him at the door, and went to John.
He was so still, lying on the floor, that she was afraid they were too late. But his eyes were open, and they tracked her as she neared.
"John?" she whispered, afraid he did not know her. "John, please."
But his eyes sharpened, and he recognized her. He bolted to his feet, staring first at her face and then past her, at the door, where Rodney stood still, half hiding behind the door. And when his mouth twisted and he hugged her tight, she was ready for the tremors that shook through him.
They freed him, but too late to save Ford and Stackhouse and Cadman. She didn't think he'd ever quite get over that.
That's why, after they'd gone over the roofs of Athos, and found the packs Ronon had hidden at the edge of the River, she didn't protest when Rodney gripped John's shoulders, and made him promise.
"Don't die," he said, weirdly intense. "Wherever you go, don't you dare die on us."
John had looked at him strangely, but Rodney wouldn't let him go, and Ronon stood, arms crossed, behind him, until he promised.
"I won't die. I promise. I won't."
And then Rodney let him go, and Ronon stepped back, and she touched his forehead to her own. And they sent him away, down the River.
And they were three, where they had, for years, been four.
* * * * *
The gears were stripped. Rodney cursed absently, and threw them behind him. They clattered on the floor. The model was nearly finished, but if he didn't find the right gears, he'd never make it work. He had to see if it would work, even on such a small scale.
"Damn it!" he growled, and threw another stripped gear over his shoulder. If Radek had been in here again, "borrowing" his stuff . . . and then he frowned. He hadn't heard the gear hit the ground.
He turned on the stool, and froze.
John Sheppard stood in the middle of his Workshop, curiously studying the gear he'd just caught.
And as Rodney sat gaping like a fish thrown out of the River, John looked up and caught his eyes, smiling that crooked, boyish smile that he hadn't seen in years.
Rodney, instinctively, threw his pliers at his head.
"Ow! What the hell, McKay?" John's hair stood up even higher as he rubbed at his head over his ear, where the pliers had hit a glancing blow. He glared at Rodney, sulking.
"You! You come in here, like . . . like . . . like you aren't still a wanted fugitive, like you haven't been gone for ten years! Like you just walked in to look over my shoulder and bother me like you used to! Like you don't hate me at all!" And Rodney clamped his mouth shut, feeling the tension crawling up his spine as he heard what was spilling out of his mouth.
"Hate you?" John asked, staring. "Rodney, you got me out of jail. You're one of my oldest friends! Why the hell should I hate you?"
"No, of course you shouldn't. I didn't mean to say that. But what . . . what are you doing here?"
And John pursed his lips, looking up at the ceiling. "I couldn't just be saying hello?"
"No," Rodney said, flatly, crossing his arms to hide the shaking in his hands.
Still not looking at him, John said, "I found something. Something big. I'll need your help with it."
"You . . . found something. Something that would make you come back to Athos and risk getting thrown in prison again just to get my help. Are you really that much of an idiot!?" And Rodney found himself, to his shock, on his feet, yelling in John's face. At this realization, he froze. He was yelling at John Sheppard. In his Workshop. John was here.
"You're here," he whispered. "You came back."
John swallowed, scratching his head. "Yeah, well. I got a little lonely?"
Rodney could only stare.
* * * * *
Teyla knocked on Rodney's Workshop door, Ronon standing impatiently behind her. She held Rodney's note in her free hand.
"Do you know what this is about?" she asked Ronon. The notes he'd sent to the two of them were cryptic at best, nearly unreadable. But the urgency was clear enough.
"No idea. Sounds important."
She had just raised her hand to knock again when the door cracked open. She could see Rodney's blue eyes, narrowed with suspicion, before he let out an explosive sigh of relief and opened the door wide.
"Come in, come in, don't just stand there." Rodney shut the door on Ronon's heel and spun the lock, turning to rest his back against it.
"Is everything all right? You seem very nervous," she said, trying to discern what was bothering her friend. Ronon studied the room behind her. She could see him stiffen at her side, coming to attention like a hound on a scent, but she kept her eyes on Rodney. Ronon would protect them all, if there was a threat behind her.
"Every thing's fine! Well, not fine, exactly, but it's all right. It's a good thing! Very good." Rodney's babbling trailed off. "Would you just . . . turn around?"
As she did so, still eyeing Rodney over her shoulder, Ronon barked a startled laugh, and bounded away from her, into the room. She blinked.
Ronon had someone in a bear hug -- lifting dark boots off the floor. Dark hair, crushed against Ronon's shoulder, was all she could see of the man.
Slowly, she covered her mouth with her hand, and opened her eyes wide to keep tears from falling. And as John Sheppard struggled to breathe in Ronon's tight grip, she turned back to Rodney. He nodded, and shrugged.
"Apparently, he got lonely." He frowned. "Oh, and he needs our help."
* * * * *
They sat on Rodney's bed, in the back room, all the curtains drawn tight. Teyla couldn't help but keep touching him -- a hand on his shoulder, a pat on his leg. She noticed, absently, that Rodney and Ronon both were doing the same thing, and that, while he looked distinctly uncomfortable with the attention, John wasn't moving away.
He looked older, she decided, but there was still a boyishness to him. His eyes were harder, and he was leaner, almost too skinny to be healthy. But he sat cross legged on the bed, and his hands moved in easy arcs as he described his travels.
"The stars shine in over the canyon mouth like they're meant to be framed by the rock. It's a perfect size for the Pegasus Constellation -- at midnight, it fills the whole sky. So when that bear's head blocked half the constellation, I turned and I ran back to camp so fast I nearly met myself coming back."
They all laughed. Not so much at the story, Teyla realized, as at the chance to hear his voice again. The lazy drawl laced through with sly sarcasm. She'd missed it dearly.
They sat quiet for awhile, just comfortable, until something essential slipped back into place, and they were whole.
"What," she asked, slowly, "did you need our help with, John?"
He looked at his hands, and cleared his throat. But before he could speak, Ronon cuffed him on the back of the head.
"Whatever it is," he said, "we're in. We're not letting you go alone, this time."
And John, eyes bright, laughed. "What is it with you guys hitting my head? I'm going to end up with brain damage."
"You're already brain damaged." Rodney growled, and Teyla smiled. That was it. They were four, again.
* * * * *
John was fidgeting. Not really a new thing, Rodney decided. He'd always done that. But he seemed almost ashamed of something. And he frowned. John Sheppard had nothing to be ashamed of.
"I know. . ." John started. "I know you didn't want me going anywhere near Atlantis." And Rodney stiffened. But he forced himself to relax, one muscle at a time. John obviously hadn't gotten himself killed. And his sanity was obviously still intact. Or as much as it ever was. So. That was all right then.
"And did you find something there?" he asked. "Is that was you need our help with?"
"I found . . . I think I found it. The Engine. In Atlantis."
"But how do you know what it looked like?" Ronon asked, incurious.
"And didn't the Old Ones destroy it?" asked Teyla.
"Not . . . exactly," Rodney offered, and the other three turned to him. John looked, he thought, thankful. He shrugged. "I've been looking into it, these last few years. Kind of a hobby."
"A hobby," John drawled. "Right."
He cleared his throat. "Well. I found some records, in the vaults."
"The vaults where Lord Halling put all the works the Old Ones took with them when they fled Atlantis? The ones Caldwell forbade you to enter after John 'escaped?'" Teyla scolded gently.
"The vaults you sneak into every week or so?" Ronon's voice was very dry.
"You . . . knew about that. Obviously. Ok then, yes, those vaults. Anyway. I found these blueprints . . ."
"Wait," John interrupted, "they left blueprints? I thought they tried to destroy all traces of it."
"They were incomplete! And sort of smooched at the bottom of a folder, like someone hid them in a hurry. So I studied them. And the notes whoever it was left with them. The point is, they didn't actually destroy it. When the Wraith came, most of the city went crazy. They thought they destroyed it. But they didn't, not really. The way it was built, they couldn't have destroyed it."
"What do you mean?" Teyla asked intently. Rodney looked at John.
"When you found it, did it light up?"
And John nodded. "Just like the Star Maps in the Athosian Tower. And the oldest air ships."
"The ones the Old Ones built. Because your ancestors were Old Ones."
"Apparently."
"Obviously. We've all known it for years. The point is, when the records talk about the Engine being tied to the Old Ones' heartbeats, that's what they mean. You have to be an Old One to make it work. When they tried to destroy it, they were mad, and they couldn't think straight. They didn't do it right. The notes I found, they were written by one of the last reasonably sane Old Ones to make it out of Atlantis. She wrote that the Engineers destroyed some connections, and it stopped responding to their commands. But she didn't think they'd actually destroyed it, or even shut it off completely.
"Explorers, over the years, they never found any trace of it. But none of them were Old Ones. The survivors all refused to go back to the city. If the blueprints are accurate, then this Engine doesn't look like anything special. Not unless an Old One is standing near enough to turn it on. So no one found it, until you got close, and it . . . lit up."
They were all staring at him now. John, a particularly intent look in his eyes, asked what they were all thinking.
"And what, exactly, were you planning on doing with all this research?"
Rodney bit his lip, and got up off of the bed. "Stay here," he said. "I'll be right back."
He left the room and went to his bench, where the scale model he'd been building sat in the open, surrounded by spare springs and gears and tools. It was just slightly too big to carry in one hand, a delicately balanced bit of engineering. Almost finished. He picked up a gear that lay beside it, inspecting the teeth carefully.
This one, at least, Radek hadn't gotten to. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and gently put the gear in place.
* * * * *
They were waiting for him when he came back in.
"I was testing a theory," he said, putting the little machine down on his bedside table. "Watch this."
He took a stick of the incense Teyla had given him out of the drawer, and lit it, sending a thin stream of smoke winding towards the ceiling.
"The Engine," he said, "was designed to alter air flow. They adapted it, to change the ocean currents, which brought in the Fog. But originally, it was meant to deal with air. Turn that gear, there, on the outside, then let go. And watch the smoke."
Ronon, being closest, turned the tiny gear with one finger. Once it started, it moved another gear, which moved another, and another, which kept the first gear turning. The tiny clicks and whirrs were loud in the silent room. The smoke, rising from the incense stick Rodney held across the room, began to bend. It moved towards the little machine in a straight and steady stream.
"Now, turn the gear there, on the back."
And when Ronon did, the smoke began to wind around the machine, condensing into a nearly solid arc.
John's eyes widened. "How much modification did you have to do, to make it do that?"
Rodney answered, "Not much. The real Engine would be harder. I'm not descended from the Old Ones, after all."
"But you could do it, if I was there to help."
"Yes. I think so."
Teyla turned away from the spinning arc of smoke. "I'm not entirely certain I understand."
"They want to trap the Wraith in the Fog, keep it from moving back to sea until the sun can burn it all away." They all three looked at Ronon, who shrugged. "What? Isn't that what you want to do?"
"Yeah, but . . ." Rodney shook himself. "Never mind."
"Nice one, buddy. He's speechless." John slapped Ronon on the back.
* * * * *
It seemed, Teyla thought, that they were all four caught up in some strange urgency. There was not, so far as she knew, any immediate threat from the Wraith. It had lurked around Atlantis for centuries, never venturing beyond the limits of the Fog bank. But they were heading towards this extremely dangerous ruin, the site of the downfall of an entire powerful civilization. Where, for much of every day, a phantom beast, hungry and treacherous, lurked in a pool of madness and decay. And they were leaving their home, with its warmth and safety, on a mission that would most likely see them all dead and lost. But she felt happy.
And Ronon and Rodney, she could see, felt the same. Ronon packed up what they'd need for the trip with a lighthearted flair she hadn't seen in a decade, gleefully stealing what he wanted from the Tower kitchens and the barrack storage facilities.
Rodney packed nearly his whole Workshop -- every tool he thought he might need. He chattered away at John while he worked, and John just kept smiling, watching them.
Teyla felt, strangely, as though they were not going on an illegal and possibly suicidal mission, but were instead going home, after a long and stressful absence.
And then she felt, of course they were. They were together. Therefore, wherever they were going, they were going home. And she smiled, too embarrassed to express such a thought out loud.
Instead, she asked, "How do you propose we steal a ship?" The other three looked up from their packing. "You did not think we should walk over the passes to get there, did you?"
And Rodney, holding his very heavy pack, looked for a moment like he might kiss her. "Of course! We're going to need a ship. You stay here!" This last addressed to John, who had moved as though to volunteer. "Fugitive, remember?"
Ronon and Teyla looked at each other, and grinned.
* * * * *
Captain Lorne, on guard duty, frowned at Teyla. "You want me to what now?"
"Captain, I merely mentioned that some of the younger guards did not believe me when I described Ronon's Satedan techniques. You, having some experience with them, would be helpful in demonstrating their effectiveness."
"So you want me to let Ronon use me as a punching bag. Again."
"I'm sorry?" She had hoped that Lorne wouldn't remember the nine year old ruse.
Lorne studied her, and slowly, a tiny smile curved through his mouth. "You'll be sure to watch over the shipyard while I'm away?" he asked. "There's been some teenagers playing pranks lately."
"Certainly!" She said, as reassuringly as she knew how. "The shipyard will be free of pranks when you return."
"I'm sure it will." And Lorne, walking towards the training grounds, tossed a last word over his shoulder. "Good luck."
* * * * *
She picked a newer ship, which would not require the Old Ones' blood to operate, and one berthed far enough back in the yard not to be immediately noticeable from the gate. She was not a skilled pilot, but it was simple enough to take the little ship just south of the shipyard, where the forest branches arched over the River and the ship could be hidden for a short time.
After landing, she ran back to Lorne's post, arriving just in time see Ronon returning, a wincing Lorne supporting himself on his arm.
"It'll be fine in an hour or so," Ronon was saying. "You just sprained it."
"I just sprained it? You're nuts." Lorne looked past Teyla, and swept his gaze right over the empty berth. "Looks all right," he said, face carefully blank. "No visible pranks, anyway."
"Thank you." And though she made sure to keep her voice dryly offended, she let her eyes meet the Captain's with gratitude.
* * * * *
"He let you steal a ship? But how did he know?" Rodney honestly wanted to know.
But John shook his head. "I don't suppose it matters. But I always liked that kid. He was sharp. Still, I don't think he'll be able to hide it for long. We should get going."
"So," Rodney muttered. "Are we all ready to go to our nearly certain deaths?"
"What was that, Rodney?"
"Nothing, really. Never mind."
They left at dusk -- not so late that a group of people leaving the city would be suspicious, but late enough that it would be difficult to recognize John Sheppard, fugitive. Ronon had already taken their packs, one by one, to the ship, where he waited now.
As they left the last wall behind, but before they ducked into the shadow of the trees, Rodney looked back. The setting sun glowed from the River, and Athos looked built from rose tinted gold. It was beautiful.
"You know, if this doesn't work, we can't risk coming back," he said, and John and Teyla paused beside him. "Caldwell was right, about letting the Wraith follow us home. It's trapped in the Fog, but it could move in the clouds, too. If it knew there was a food supply out here to find."
"Yeah. I'd thought of that." John clapped him on the shoulder. "It'll work."
"Of course it will." Teyla moved off ahead of them, leading the way to the ship.
* * * * *
The flight was uneventful. What might have taken weeks as a hike took hours in the little ship. John flew with abandon, racing birds and swooping over canyons.
Normally, such a flight would have Rodney complaining of cocky pilots and irresponsible behavior, but John looked so happy, he couldn't bring himself to do it.
"You missed this," he said. "Flying."
John looked back at them, and smiled widely. "Like you wouldn't believe."
Rodney thought then, that this alone might be worth it. Even if it didn't work, and he couldn't get the Engine to work the way they needed it to, letting John Sheppard fly again might be worth banishment and danger.
From the indulgent looks on Ronon and Teyla's faces, they felt much the same.
* * * * *
They came over the High Divide in midmorning, and found beneath them a shifting mass of Fog. It covered the Atlantean Basin and the lower slopes of the mountains in an opalescent cloud. Not even the barest outlines of the ruins could be seen.
"When the sun burns back the Fog," John said, voice tight, "we can enter the city. But we'll have to be watchful. The Fog can linger, in some shadowed areas. And we'll have to hurry. We'll only have a few hours before the Fog comes back in."
Rodney clutched his blueprints tighter in his grip, pointedly looking away from the treacherously beautiful Fog. With only a few hours, he'd better know the plans inside and out.
* * * * *
With the Fog burned back to the sea, Atlantis rose into view. In the ship, the four were silent, watching her emerge from her gray prison.
The towers, broken though they were, were tall, and their former grace showed still in heartbreaking traces. Teyla found she could not turn her eyes away. The City of Fogs, famed of song and story, caught the light in every broken shard of glass and worn stone pathway. It glowed, the burning bones of a legend.
"It's a beautiful grave," John said, grim in the pilot's seat. "The bones of the Old Ones lie where they fell."
Teyla shuddered, and heard Rodney swallow back a curse.
"So we'll bury them, when we're done." Ronon's matter of fact statement rang oddly in the ship. Teyla found it strengthening.
"Yes," she said. "We will."
Rodney and John exchanged a startled glance.
"All right then," John said. "Let's get started."
* * * * *
They parked the ship as close to the ruins where John had found the Engine as he could fly -- it was near the center of the city, surrounded by toppled buildings and pile of rubble.
"Be careful," John said again. "Watch the shadows for signs of Fog."
As Ronon passed out their packs, Rodney couldn't help but ask. "Did you find it? Ford's ship."
John paused, pulling his pack over his shoulder. "It fell in a sort of canyon, between two towers. The sun never reaches there to burn the Fog away." He started off, towards the ruins around the Engine. "I couldn't reach it safely."
As they followed, Teyla murmured in Rodney's ear. "Thank you, for making him promise. He would have gone after them, if you had not."
But Rodney couldn't help but think of the three soldiers left trapped in that ship, all alone in a sanity shredding graveyard, until they were nothing but bones themselves. He shuddered, knowing that that was what had brought John here in the first place.
The ruins were eerily quiet. No birds, no wildlife came within the city. Even the few plants that managed to grow here were stunted and pale. The Wraith had leached their life away.
They followed John through the rubble, until he stopped in front of what seemed to be another fallen building -- until he put a hand on it.
Bright blue light sprang up under his touch, and spread in ribbons of symbols and runes until the Engine was wreathed. It was stunning.
Almost literally blinding, Rodney thought sourly.
"Must be glad to have someone it recognizes around," Ronon said, impressed.
"It's humming." Teyla sounded pleased.
"Look, it's not alive," Rodney growled. "It's an Engine, not a pet."
But John, a distant look in his eyes, said, "It's not not alive. It's a very strange thing."
"What?" Rodney felt a surge of apprehension. "I won't hurt it, will I? When I'm adjusting it?"
"Hmmm? Oh, sorry, no. Not like that. It's just very strange."
"That's not a very exact term." But reassuring, all the same. Rodney set his pack down and paced around the Engine. It was easily the size of the Commons in Athos -- an immense machine. But, except in scale, just like the little model he'd made in Athos.
"Good," he said. "It looks like the blueprints were accurate."
John paced around the other way, calling across the Engine. "It doesn't look like there's more than surface damage. Whatever the Old Ones did, they didn't take axes to it."
"No," Rodney answered. "I found what they did." And John came around to see what he'd found when he'd opened the control panel -- a mass of broken wires and bent gears. He took in a hissing breath.
"Can you fix that before the Fog comes in?"
"We'll see, won't we? Let me get to work."
"Right." John turned and called to Ronon and Teyla. "Can you two help me clear a path for the ship? I'd like to be able to get closer, if we have to do this in shifts."
"Wait!" Rodney reached back blindly and grabbed his arm. "You stay here. I might need you to make the Engine do something."
"No worries," Ronon grunted. "We can handle it." And he and Teyla moved back toward the ship, pointing out rubble they could move as they went.
* * * * *
Rodney shook out cramping hands. "Almost got it started up again, I think," he said, studying the neat patches he'd wrapped around the wires, and the way the new gears matched up with the old ones. "Can you feel anything different?"
John frowned. "It feels . . . breathless. Like it's waiting."
"Breathless. It doesn't breathe. Of course it feels breathless."
John pinched him. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah, yeah." Rodney gently pressed the final replacement gear into place.
"There!" John exclaimed. "I can feel it! It wants to know what I want it to do!"
Rodney slowly sat back, watching as the blue lights on the Engine strobed and flashed. "Okay," he breathed. "Okay." This was the tricky part.
"John," he asked, "how long do we have until the Fog comes in again?"
"It'll start rising as soon as the sun falls behind the Divide. So, about two more hours?"
"And how long until it reaches the center of the city?"
"There'll be traces of it almost immediately, from the pockets that lurk in the shadows. But it won't be completely covered for another couple of hours."
"Right then. You'd better get back to the ship."
"What?" John gripped his shoulder, hard. "What are you talking about? You need me here, to tell the Engine what to do."
Rodney closed his eyes. "You already did what you needed to do. The Engine is waiting for commands. All I have to do is adjust these last few wires, and the new directive will take affect."
"So do it now, and we'll all wait it out in the ship."
"I can't." Rodney took a deep breath. "I have to wait to set it in action, and . . . I have to be here to stop it when it's done."
For a long moment, John was still. Then he grabbed Rodney by the arms and spun him back against the Engine's wall. "You what? You'll be right in the middle of the Fog!"
"I'll be fine!" Rodney yelled. "If it works the way it's supposed to, it'll be something like the eye of a storm, with me and the Engine in the center. And I'll have to stop it, or the winds will just keep spinning, faster and faster once the Fog is burned off, until it's moving with enough force to fling itself free. And that, " he exclaimed, pushing John away from him, "could be enough force to seriously damage the Engine. If this thing blows up, it'll take the whole Atlantean basin with it."
John stared at him, jaw set. "So I'll do it. Let me do it."
"No," Rodney said, in a brittle voice. "I'm the one who has to." He shook his head, turning back to the Engine. "You don't know how."
"So tell me!" John shouted, grabbing his arm again.
Rodney didn't look at him. "I won't. Now leave. You have just enough time to get back to the ship before the Fog starts coming in. I'll need you all ready to pick me up, as soon as this is done." He laughed, breathless. "I might not be in any shape to hike!"
"Why are you doing this, Rodney? You're not suicidal."
"And you'd better not be either!" Rodney's raw shout echoed over the Engine's hum. "You promised, remember?"
He remembered the relief he'd felt when John went to prison. Remembered thinking he'd be safe there, until he calmed down enough to see reason.
He could remember waiting outside of John's prison cell, pleading with him to eat the damned food before he starved to death. Remembered getting nothing back but untouched plates and silence.
Remembered the shame and the rising guilt, when he realized that letting John go to prison was killing him, just a little more slowly than the Wraith would.
"I have to do this, John," he said. "Please let me do this." He raised his chin. "I promise, I won't die."
And John, closing his eyes, let go of his arm. "I'll hold you to that, you bastard," he whispered. And he was gone.
* * * * *
Teyla, eyeing the clear path back to the center where the Engine lay, saw John coming back at a stiff-backed walk. Instinctively, she looked past him, but couldn't see Rodney. She frowned.
"Get in the ship," John barked. "The first traces of Fog will be rising any minute."
"Where . . ."
"He's safe." John's grip on the ship's hatch tightened. "He's safe. He knows what he's doing."
And he pulled her into the ship, yelling at Ronon to take her up, out of reach. Teyla, feeling him shake, couldn't bring herself to protest. But her heart beat faster.
* * * * *
Rodney saw the first fingers of Fog some minutes after John finally left. Just a wisp of cloud, barely there in the shadows at the edge of what used to be a street.
He imagined that the Engine's hum changed subtly, that a note of defiance crept in. He approved of the sentiment, though he suspected it was the first touch of Wraith induced madness.
"Now then," he breathed. "Here we go." And he tied the last wires in place, and set the last gear turning.
The massive Engine's hum grew louder. The tiny gears in the control panel, connected by shafts and springs -- so delicate Rodney had been afraid to touch them -- to the hidden workings deep in the machine, began to turn faster.
A breeze touched Rodney's face, cooling the nervous sweat that beaded there.
And the Fog, aided by the rising wind, came closer.
* * * * *
From the ship, the Fog bank seemed to seethe. The wind, rising faster and faster, pushed and pulled and shaped it, drawing it in off from the sea and trapping it in an air current that set it spinning in a great ring, as wide as the City, centered around the glowing blue mass that was the Engine.
She couldn't see Rodney in the glow, not from this distance. "Oh Suns, " she breathed, "protect him." Ronon and John sat stone faced and silent, watching from the controls.
* * * * *
At the center of the maelstrom, Rodney knew that he was screaming. Pressed close against the Engine, he could feel it humming all through his body, reverberating through his bones. Just beyond arm's reach, the wall of fog surged by, faster and faster. It didn't touch him, but he found, to his horror, that he could hear the Wraith.
Many voices, insubstantial as the Fog, spoke in a chorus that wound through the hum of the Engine. Ridicule and scorn wove through promises of splendor and fame. The words shivered through him, just this side of understandable, with a poisonous sweetness laced through them.
He'd long ago lost track of the time. He only knew it was passing by the increasing rawness of his throat.
* * * * *
Teyla sat on her hands to keep from wringing them together. The Fog now was bound in a single ring, so thick it blocked the view of the Engine. Only its blue glow was visible, channeled through the center of the ring. The outskirts of the city were clear. There was no Fog, beyond the ring.
Now, please, she thought. Let the sun rise. Beside her, Ronon held his hands fisted in his lap, and John, standing now, was speaking quietly, one word again and again.
She thought it might be 'please.'
* * * * *
Rodney, huddled against the Engine, thought at first he'd finally lost the last bit of his sanity. The voices were lessening, growing thin and desperate. But then, as the ruins began to show through the cloaking Fog, he realized that, at last, the sun was burning through the ring.
It was working.
He stared as the sun burnished the bones of Atlantis. The Fog, what was left of it, spun faster and faster around the engine, the voices lost now in the roar of wind.
He reached for the controls, to turn it off before the wind broke free and destroyed it all, but stopped himself. If even a trace of the Wraith lingered, in some last shred of Fog, this would all be in vain. It would survive, and grow, and soon the Fog would again be haunted by monsters.
He waited. The wind screamed around him, a deafening wall of air.
And then, the Engine's hum began to sound pleased. Accomplished. And, uncaring of the illogic of it, Rodney knew it was finished.
He turned it off. And as the lights of the Engine faded, the wind whipped away; strong enough to shift rubble and knock him back against the Engine, but not strong enough to damage the machine.
He slid to the ground, in the sudden abrupt absence of noise. As he did, Rodney saw the ship touching down in the clear path that Ronon and Teyla had leveled.
He smiled, losing consciousness, to see his friends.
* * * * *
They waited a day, to see the cleansed Fog come in safely. As it closed around the ship, John's hands tensed on the controls. And Rodney covered his eyes, refusing to look.
They sat in an eerie gray silence, but there was no beast lurking there.
When the Fog ebbed away again, they buried the bones of Ford, Stackhouse and Cadman themselves.
"I'm sorry it took me so long," was all John said over their graves.
The bodies of the Old Ones they left undisturbed. The bones were clean and dry and quiet. It seemed somehow wrong to move them.
"Let the anthropologists deal with it," Rodney groused, nursing his headache in the back of the ship. "I'm sure they'll want to see them as they fell, anyhow. Ghouls."
"And the Engine?" Ronon asked. "You going to let them have that too?"
"Ha." Rodney smirked. "They wouldn't know what to do with it." He raised the edge of the cloth resting over his eyes and looked to John. "Besides, they'll need you along if they want to see it work at all."
Teyla, watching them, wondered again how John had come to be in the ship with them while Rodney handled the Engine alone. But Rodney's eyes seemed clearer than they had in a decade, and John, though obviously confused and a little angry, seemed to see it too.
"And if Caldwell throws me in jail again?" John asked, looking intently at his hands.
"Are you kidding?" Ronon asked. "We'll just get you out again."
John smiled at his clasped hands, until Rodney threw his cloth at him.
"Idiot," Rodney mumbled as he rolled onto his side. "Of course we would."
"And should it come to that," Teyla added quietly, "we'll be coming with you." They were four, she thought, feeling it deeply. They would not be less again.
fin
Author:
theladysnarkydame Genre: AU
Prompt Arcane Invention
Word Count: about 8000
Rating: PG - PG13
Warnings: none to speak of
Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership of this universe or its characters.
Summary: Sheppard comes home a fugitive, and needs his friends' help to finish a mission he started ten years ago.
* * * * *
Before there was Fog, there was water. Torrential rains, once a year, every year, for weeks. The land, drinking in that water, was lush and green. The rain soaked deep into the soil, far down where the Avanas roots held it in reservoirs, so that all year long the land was green.
But the City, with her stone streets and glass towers, did not welcome the deluge. And every year, when the rains came, the City held its breath and waited, all the people gone indoors. The empty streets became the River, while the water ran.
Eventually, the Old Ones noticed that every year the rains were falling longer. Every year, the River rose higher, ran faster. And when the streets were dry, the Old Ones saw that the foundations of their towers were beginning to wash away.
The Old Ones loved the City. So to keep her from drowning, they designed a Great Engine, and tied its operation to their own heartbeats, so that it would love the City, too.
This mighty Engine, built with all the power and the skill the Old Ones possessed, took hold of the winds that trapped the rain against the High Divide, and sent them blowing higher still. The rain passed by, and the City ceased to drown.
But without the rain, the Avanas roots would dry up, and the land would die of thirst. And since the Old Ones knew this, and the Old Ones loved the land as they loved their City, they had their Engine take hold of the ocean currents, just as it had the wind. The Engine pulled at the cold southern currents, and called up the Fog.
Every morning, before the sun rose high, the Fog rolled over the land, and the land drank it in. The Avanas trees learned to turn their leaves out broad ways, to catch the water, and send it down to their thirsty roots. The land adjusted, and the land thrived.
For many years, the Old Ones celebrated the Engine’s triumph. They sang songs of their City of Fogs in every port, and her fame grew. All knew of her; of her wonder, of her wisdom, of her joy.
Eventually, however, the City of Fogs became known to the hungry Asurian Empire. Their great power rivaled the Old Ones, and their avarice was greater.
The jealous Asurians bred an abomination. A phantom beast which fed on life, which ravaged sanity. They made it at home in clouds, in mist, in Fog. They set it loose on the cold southern current, and they waited.
And one day, when the Fog rolled in off the sea, it brought hidden within it the Wraith.
The phantom beast prowled the City of Fogs, and it fed on the life of the Old Ones, just as the Asurians had designed it to do.
Mad and dying, grieving and enraged, the Old Ones attempted to destroy the Wraith by crippling their own Great Engine, thus ending the Fog that the Wraith haunted.
They failed.
Though the Great Engine slowed and stopped, tied still to the Old Ones’ dying heartbeat, the ocean currents were not reversed. The Fog remained. And everyday when it rolled over the land, the Wraith lurked within it, until all of the Old Ones were either dead or refugees, and the City of Fogs was empty.
---excerpt from the introduction to The Death of Atlantis, City of Fogs
The Lady Charin
* * * * *
In Athos, the Celebration of a Thousand Suns was winding down. The young men laughed, drunk on wine and dancing, as they splashed the floating River Fires with their oars. One by one, the little Suns in the River went out.
The young women gathered around the Great Torches in the Commons -- two great mountain Cedars, tarred and oiled, their blaze now beginning to die down. The girls, their hair half undone, their shoes long ago kicked off and forgotten, sang as they sat on the ground and watched the young men bring the boats ashore.
The songs meandered, verses weaving and unweaving as partners answered or fell asleep. It was a happily disordered sound, Teyla mused. A soothing chaos.
She lifted her hair and pressed the back of her neck to the cool stone wall she leaned against. From where she sat, the Athosian youth were a blur of colour and song. She smiled dreamily, remembering the heat of the Torches soaked into the ground, and the smell of the River lingering in a boy’s wet shirt as he lay down beside her, snoring before the song ended.
"We were younger then," she murmured to the night, and closed her eyes.
"Was it that long ago?" came an answer, and she would have jumped, if she had the energy.
"Ronon," she rebuked, not opening her eyes, "I will tie a bell to your belt, if you do that again."
"You’d have heard me, if you weren’t dreaming," he said, and Teyla could hear the smile in his voice.
He settled beside her, a quiet weight, and she leaned her shoulder against his.
"Did you find Rodney?" she asked. "He promised to come out this year."
"I found him. Asleep in the Workshop. There were too many springs and and gears and levers on the floor for me to get to him without breaking one."
She sighed. "And he’d throw a fit if you damaged something trying to get him to come to a party."
Ronon snorted. "It’s the same thing he did last year. You know he does it on purpose."
"Yes. But someday, we will catch him early, and make him keep his promise."
"Maybe. Not this year. Or next."
And Teyla, letting herself fall asleep against her old friend, knew that she wasn’t surprised. Nor even disappointed, for all a promise had been broken.
Rodney hadn’t come out for the Celebration in almost ten years. She knew he wasn’t likely to, unless John Sheppard came home.
* * * * *
In the dream, they were four.
They sat on the packed dirt, awash in the warmth of the Great Torches. The Commons were covered in dancers, the grounds surrounded by hundreds of floating Fires.
Teyla’s hair, entwined with flowers, fell in straggling curls over John’s arm, and her brown feet rested on Rodney’s lap. He giggled drunkenly, trying to tie a dancer’s pale blue ribbon around her ankle. John was apparently oblivious to the both of them as he argued happily with Ronon, wine sloshing over in his grip, but the arm that Teyla slept on kept rock steady.
Asleep on his Workshop floor, Rodney curled tighter into himself, trying to hold on to John’s bright eyes and Ronon’s sharp smile; Teyla’s warm weight and his own happiness. But this part of the familiar dream was brief.
"Captain!" Rodney heard rising over the crowd. "Captain Sheppard!"
And in the dream, the dancers faded. The Torches died out, though he remembered clearly their light washing over John’s face as it paled.
"It wrapped around the ship," the young soldier was saying, "wrapped around it and pulled it down." He was sobbing for breath, his eyes wide and staring. Rodney stood frozen at John’s back.
"We couldn’t reach them. We could hear them -- Oh Suns! we could hear them screaming . . ." and the soldier broke off, gasping.
"It was only a patrol!" he choked out. "We stuck to the routine. It just reached up and swallowed them all!"
Teyla pushed past John, taking the soldier’s face in her hands. "Easy," she murmured. "Breathe. Do not panic. The Wraith has touched you -- but you made it home. Rest, and the wounds will heal." She held the boy as he shook, his mind and heart savaged by the phantom beast.
Face set, John pulled himself up. "You did what you could, Markham," he said. "Leave the rest to me."
But they didn’t. And again, in the dream, Rodney felt the mingled anger and relief when Commander Caldwell refused to allow a rescue mission.
"They could still be alive!" John protested, his way to this ships blocked blocked by grim faced soldiers. "Ford and Stackhouse and Cadman. Let me bring them home!"
Rodney, wanting Caldwell to be a villain here, was furious to see the struggle in his eyes. "I cannot allow any more missions into Atlantis," he growled. "No patrols, no exploration. No rescue attempt for a ship’s crew that’s certain to be dead already. We can not lead the Wraith back to Athos. I will not allow it."
Rodney, as always, struggled to end the dream there. Surely that was bad enough, with Teyla and Ronon helplessly standing at John’s back. With the strangled pain in John’s posture. With his own guilty relief stealing through his heart.
But, as always, Rodney’s orderly mind followed the dream to its conclusion. Where John, overcome, threw a bitter punch at Caldwell, and was restrained by soldiers in his own command. At the court marshall, John was stripped of his rank, and jailed.
"It’s for his own protection, as well as for the good of Athos," Caldwell yelled over their protests. "He would go after his men. He’d only end up dead himself. Or worse, he’d go mad, and the Wraith would follow him back over the mountains. Athos would go the way of Atlantis!"
And the dream ended, as it always did, with John’s furious shouts muffled behind a heavy barred door, and soldiers pushing the three of them away.
Rodney woke in the dark, and glared at the shadowed forms of half-finished projects that lay strewn around him. He hated this night. Every year, that dream. As if he would forget. As if he’d let himself.
He’d been relieved. When Caldwell had locked John in prison, he’d been relieved. He’d thought his friend would be better off in prison, than risking his life and his sanity to rescue his men. Relieved.
With a snarl, Rodney pushed to his feet. He cracked his back, stretching, and turned to his workbench. He was getting closer, he knew. He almost had it.
* * * * *
Morning came late the day after the Celebration, and was really more about the celebrants straggling back into their homes than coming out of them. Teyla went for a long soak in the Baths, letting the mineral-heavy waters work out the stiffness that came of sleeping against a stone wall with only Ronon for a pillow.
Not that Ronon seemed bothered. She snorted. He’d been up and gone with the sunrise, just as he always was.
She ducked under the water and worked the tangles out of her hair, and deliberately let herself think of how John would have been up with Ronon, challenging him to a race around the square, to work the morning stiffness out. Ronon would win though. He always had.
Teyla smiled, only a little bitterly. "And where were you this morning?" she asked under her breath. "Where did the sun find you today?"
She knew he was alive. It had been more than nine years since she'd seen John Sheppard, but she knew this much. He had promised not to die.
When Rodney had come to her and Ronon, a great guilt darkening his eyes, and told them that John was refusing to eat, locked up in that prison, they had feared for him. Such a terrible fear, that their friend would die.
She had not, she reflected, been shocked. Afraid, yes, but not shocked. John, imprisoned, was not natural. So they got him out.
Ronon distracted the guards. It wasn't hard -- this detail, guarding the former Captain, was wrenching for them. His silence, after the threats and the pleading of the first few days, seemed weighted with censure. So when Ronon offered to teach Sergeant Lorne some Satedan hand-to-hand techniques, they were eager enough to leave their post, just for a few minutes, to wager on the match.
She stood with Rodney while he picked the lock. She noticed, at his side, that his shoulders shook with tension, but his hands were steady. When the door opened, she left him at the door, and went to John.
He was so still, lying on the floor, that she was afraid they were too late. But his eyes were open, and they tracked her as she neared.
"John?" she whispered, afraid he did not know her. "John, please."
But his eyes sharpened, and he recognized her. He bolted to his feet, staring first at her face and then past her, at the door, where Rodney stood still, half hiding behind the door. And when his mouth twisted and he hugged her tight, she was ready for the tremors that shook through him.
They freed him, but too late to save Ford and Stackhouse and Cadman. She didn't think he'd ever quite get over that.
That's why, after they'd gone over the roofs of Athos, and found the packs Ronon had hidden at the edge of the River, she didn't protest when Rodney gripped John's shoulders, and made him promise.
"Don't die," he said, weirdly intense. "Wherever you go, don't you dare die on us."
John had looked at him strangely, but Rodney wouldn't let him go, and Ronon stood, arms crossed, behind him, until he promised.
"I won't die. I promise. I won't."
And then Rodney let him go, and Ronon stepped back, and she touched his forehead to her own. And they sent him away, down the River.
And they were three, where they had, for years, been four.
* * * * *
The gears were stripped. Rodney cursed absently, and threw them behind him. They clattered on the floor. The model was nearly finished, but if he didn't find the right gears, he'd never make it work. He had to see if it would work, even on such a small scale.
"Damn it!" he growled, and threw another stripped gear over his shoulder. If Radek had been in here again, "borrowing" his stuff . . . and then he frowned. He hadn't heard the gear hit the ground.
He turned on the stool, and froze.
John Sheppard stood in the middle of his Workshop, curiously studying the gear he'd just caught.
And as Rodney sat gaping like a fish thrown out of the River, John looked up and caught his eyes, smiling that crooked, boyish smile that he hadn't seen in years.
Rodney, instinctively, threw his pliers at his head.
"Ow! What the hell, McKay?" John's hair stood up even higher as he rubbed at his head over his ear, where the pliers had hit a glancing blow. He glared at Rodney, sulking.
"You! You come in here, like . . . like . . . like you aren't still a wanted fugitive, like you haven't been gone for ten years! Like you just walked in to look over my shoulder and bother me like you used to! Like you don't hate me at all!" And Rodney clamped his mouth shut, feeling the tension crawling up his spine as he heard what was spilling out of his mouth.
"Hate you?" John asked, staring. "Rodney, you got me out of jail. You're one of my oldest friends! Why the hell should I hate you?"
"No, of course you shouldn't. I didn't mean to say that. But what . . . what are you doing here?"
And John pursed his lips, looking up at the ceiling. "I couldn't just be saying hello?"
"No," Rodney said, flatly, crossing his arms to hide the shaking in his hands.
Still not looking at him, John said, "I found something. Something big. I'll need your help with it."
"You . . . found something. Something that would make you come back to Athos and risk getting thrown in prison again just to get my help. Are you really that much of an idiot!?" And Rodney found himself, to his shock, on his feet, yelling in John's face. At this realization, he froze. He was yelling at John Sheppard. In his Workshop. John was here.
"You're here," he whispered. "You came back."
John swallowed, scratching his head. "Yeah, well. I got a little lonely?"
Rodney could only stare.
* * * * *
Teyla knocked on Rodney's Workshop door, Ronon standing impatiently behind her. She held Rodney's note in her free hand.
"Do you know what this is about?" she asked Ronon. The notes he'd sent to the two of them were cryptic at best, nearly unreadable. But the urgency was clear enough.
"No idea. Sounds important."
She had just raised her hand to knock again when the door cracked open. She could see Rodney's blue eyes, narrowed with suspicion, before he let out an explosive sigh of relief and opened the door wide.
"Come in, come in, don't just stand there." Rodney shut the door on Ronon's heel and spun the lock, turning to rest his back against it.
"Is everything all right? You seem very nervous," she said, trying to discern what was bothering her friend. Ronon studied the room behind her. She could see him stiffen at her side, coming to attention like a hound on a scent, but she kept her eyes on Rodney. Ronon would protect them all, if there was a threat behind her.
"Every thing's fine! Well, not fine, exactly, but it's all right. It's a good thing! Very good." Rodney's babbling trailed off. "Would you just . . . turn around?"
As she did so, still eyeing Rodney over her shoulder, Ronon barked a startled laugh, and bounded away from her, into the room. She blinked.
Ronon had someone in a bear hug -- lifting dark boots off the floor. Dark hair, crushed against Ronon's shoulder, was all she could see of the man.
Slowly, she covered her mouth with her hand, and opened her eyes wide to keep tears from falling. And as John Sheppard struggled to breathe in Ronon's tight grip, she turned back to Rodney. He nodded, and shrugged.
"Apparently, he got lonely." He frowned. "Oh, and he needs our help."
* * * * *
They sat on Rodney's bed, in the back room, all the curtains drawn tight. Teyla couldn't help but keep touching him -- a hand on his shoulder, a pat on his leg. She noticed, absently, that Rodney and Ronon both were doing the same thing, and that, while he looked distinctly uncomfortable with the attention, John wasn't moving away.
He looked older, she decided, but there was still a boyishness to him. His eyes were harder, and he was leaner, almost too skinny to be healthy. But he sat cross legged on the bed, and his hands moved in easy arcs as he described his travels.
"The stars shine in over the canyon mouth like they're meant to be framed by the rock. It's a perfect size for the Pegasus Constellation -- at midnight, it fills the whole sky. So when that bear's head blocked half the constellation, I turned and I ran back to camp so fast I nearly met myself coming back."
They all laughed. Not so much at the story, Teyla realized, as at the chance to hear his voice again. The lazy drawl laced through with sly sarcasm. She'd missed it dearly.
They sat quiet for awhile, just comfortable, until something essential slipped back into place, and they were whole.
"What," she asked, slowly, "did you need our help with, John?"
He looked at his hands, and cleared his throat. But before he could speak, Ronon cuffed him on the back of the head.
"Whatever it is," he said, "we're in. We're not letting you go alone, this time."
And John, eyes bright, laughed. "What is it with you guys hitting my head? I'm going to end up with brain damage."
"You're already brain damaged." Rodney growled, and Teyla smiled. That was it. They were four, again.
* * * * *
John was fidgeting. Not really a new thing, Rodney decided. He'd always done that. But he seemed almost ashamed of something. And he frowned. John Sheppard had nothing to be ashamed of.
"I know. . ." John started. "I know you didn't want me going anywhere near Atlantis." And Rodney stiffened. But he forced himself to relax, one muscle at a time. John obviously hadn't gotten himself killed. And his sanity was obviously still intact. Or as much as it ever was. So. That was all right then.
"And did you find something there?" he asked. "Is that was you need our help with?"
"I found . . . I think I found it. The Engine. In Atlantis."
"But how do you know what it looked like?" Ronon asked, incurious.
"And didn't the Old Ones destroy it?" asked Teyla.
"Not . . . exactly," Rodney offered, and the other three turned to him. John looked, he thought, thankful. He shrugged. "I've been looking into it, these last few years. Kind of a hobby."
"A hobby," John drawled. "Right."
He cleared his throat. "Well. I found some records, in the vaults."
"The vaults where Lord Halling put all the works the Old Ones took with them when they fled Atlantis? The ones Caldwell forbade you to enter after John 'escaped?'" Teyla scolded gently.
"The vaults you sneak into every week or so?" Ronon's voice was very dry.
"You . . . knew about that. Obviously. Ok then, yes, those vaults. Anyway. I found these blueprints . . ."
"Wait," John interrupted, "they left blueprints? I thought they tried to destroy all traces of it."
"They were incomplete! And sort of smooched at the bottom of a folder, like someone hid them in a hurry. So I studied them. And the notes whoever it was left with them. The point is, they didn't actually destroy it. When the Wraith came, most of the city went crazy. They thought they destroyed it. But they didn't, not really. The way it was built, they couldn't have destroyed it."
"What do you mean?" Teyla asked intently. Rodney looked at John.
"When you found it, did it light up?"
And John nodded. "Just like the Star Maps in the Athosian Tower. And the oldest air ships."
"The ones the Old Ones built. Because your ancestors were Old Ones."
"Apparently."
"Obviously. We've all known it for years. The point is, when the records talk about the Engine being tied to the Old Ones' heartbeats, that's what they mean. You have to be an Old One to make it work. When they tried to destroy it, they were mad, and they couldn't think straight. They didn't do it right. The notes I found, they were written by one of the last reasonably sane Old Ones to make it out of Atlantis. She wrote that the Engineers destroyed some connections, and it stopped responding to their commands. But she didn't think they'd actually destroyed it, or even shut it off completely.
"Explorers, over the years, they never found any trace of it. But none of them were Old Ones. The survivors all refused to go back to the city. If the blueprints are accurate, then this Engine doesn't look like anything special. Not unless an Old One is standing near enough to turn it on. So no one found it, until you got close, and it . . . lit up."
They were all staring at him now. John, a particularly intent look in his eyes, asked what they were all thinking.
"And what, exactly, were you planning on doing with all this research?"
Rodney bit his lip, and got up off of the bed. "Stay here," he said. "I'll be right back."
He left the room and went to his bench, where the scale model he'd been building sat in the open, surrounded by spare springs and gears and tools. It was just slightly too big to carry in one hand, a delicately balanced bit of engineering. Almost finished. He picked up a gear that lay beside it, inspecting the teeth carefully.
This one, at least, Radek hadn't gotten to. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and gently put the gear in place.
* * * * *
They were waiting for him when he came back in.
"I was testing a theory," he said, putting the little machine down on his bedside table. "Watch this."
He took a stick of the incense Teyla had given him out of the drawer, and lit it, sending a thin stream of smoke winding towards the ceiling.
"The Engine," he said, "was designed to alter air flow. They adapted it, to change the ocean currents, which brought in the Fog. But originally, it was meant to deal with air. Turn that gear, there, on the outside, then let go. And watch the smoke."
Ronon, being closest, turned the tiny gear with one finger. Once it started, it moved another gear, which moved another, and another, which kept the first gear turning. The tiny clicks and whirrs were loud in the silent room. The smoke, rising from the incense stick Rodney held across the room, began to bend. It moved towards the little machine in a straight and steady stream.
"Now, turn the gear there, on the back."
And when Ronon did, the smoke began to wind around the machine, condensing into a nearly solid arc.
John's eyes widened. "How much modification did you have to do, to make it do that?"
Rodney answered, "Not much. The real Engine would be harder. I'm not descended from the Old Ones, after all."
"But you could do it, if I was there to help."
"Yes. I think so."
Teyla turned away from the spinning arc of smoke. "I'm not entirely certain I understand."
"They want to trap the Wraith in the Fog, keep it from moving back to sea until the sun can burn it all away." They all three looked at Ronon, who shrugged. "What? Isn't that what you want to do?"
"Yeah, but . . ." Rodney shook himself. "Never mind."
"Nice one, buddy. He's speechless." John slapped Ronon on the back.
* * * * *
It seemed, Teyla thought, that they were all four caught up in some strange urgency. There was not, so far as she knew, any immediate threat from the Wraith. It had lurked around Atlantis for centuries, never venturing beyond the limits of the Fog bank. But they were heading towards this extremely dangerous ruin, the site of the downfall of an entire powerful civilization. Where, for much of every day, a phantom beast, hungry and treacherous, lurked in a pool of madness and decay. And they were leaving their home, with its warmth and safety, on a mission that would most likely see them all dead and lost. But she felt happy.
And Ronon and Rodney, she could see, felt the same. Ronon packed up what they'd need for the trip with a lighthearted flair she hadn't seen in a decade, gleefully stealing what he wanted from the Tower kitchens and the barrack storage facilities.
Rodney packed nearly his whole Workshop -- every tool he thought he might need. He chattered away at John while he worked, and John just kept smiling, watching them.
Teyla felt, strangely, as though they were not going on an illegal and possibly suicidal mission, but were instead going home, after a long and stressful absence.
And then she felt, of course they were. They were together. Therefore, wherever they were going, they were going home. And she smiled, too embarrassed to express such a thought out loud.
Instead, she asked, "How do you propose we steal a ship?" The other three looked up from their packing. "You did not think we should walk over the passes to get there, did you?"
And Rodney, holding his very heavy pack, looked for a moment like he might kiss her. "Of course! We're going to need a ship. You stay here!" This last addressed to John, who had moved as though to volunteer. "Fugitive, remember?"
Ronon and Teyla looked at each other, and grinned.
* * * * *
Captain Lorne, on guard duty, frowned at Teyla. "You want me to what now?"
"Captain, I merely mentioned that some of the younger guards did not believe me when I described Ronon's Satedan techniques. You, having some experience with them, would be helpful in demonstrating their effectiveness."
"So you want me to let Ronon use me as a punching bag. Again."
"I'm sorry?" She had hoped that Lorne wouldn't remember the nine year old ruse.
Lorne studied her, and slowly, a tiny smile curved through his mouth. "You'll be sure to watch over the shipyard while I'm away?" he asked. "There's been some teenagers playing pranks lately."
"Certainly!" She said, as reassuringly as she knew how. "The shipyard will be free of pranks when you return."
"I'm sure it will." And Lorne, walking towards the training grounds, tossed a last word over his shoulder. "Good luck."
* * * * *
She picked a newer ship, which would not require the Old Ones' blood to operate, and one berthed far enough back in the yard not to be immediately noticeable from the gate. She was not a skilled pilot, but it was simple enough to take the little ship just south of the shipyard, where the forest branches arched over the River and the ship could be hidden for a short time.
After landing, she ran back to Lorne's post, arriving just in time see Ronon returning, a wincing Lorne supporting himself on his arm.
"It'll be fine in an hour or so," Ronon was saying. "You just sprained it."
"I just sprained it? You're nuts." Lorne looked past Teyla, and swept his gaze right over the empty berth. "Looks all right," he said, face carefully blank. "No visible pranks, anyway."
"Thank you." And though she made sure to keep her voice dryly offended, she let her eyes meet the Captain's with gratitude.
* * * * *
"He let you steal a ship? But how did he know?" Rodney honestly wanted to know.
But John shook his head. "I don't suppose it matters. But I always liked that kid. He was sharp. Still, I don't think he'll be able to hide it for long. We should get going."
"So," Rodney muttered. "Are we all ready to go to our nearly certain deaths?"
"What was that, Rodney?"
"Nothing, really. Never mind."
They left at dusk -- not so late that a group of people leaving the city would be suspicious, but late enough that it would be difficult to recognize John Sheppard, fugitive. Ronon had already taken their packs, one by one, to the ship, where he waited now.
As they left the last wall behind, but before they ducked into the shadow of the trees, Rodney looked back. The setting sun glowed from the River, and Athos looked built from rose tinted gold. It was beautiful.
"You know, if this doesn't work, we can't risk coming back," he said, and John and Teyla paused beside him. "Caldwell was right, about letting the Wraith follow us home. It's trapped in the Fog, but it could move in the clouds, too. If it knew there was a food supply out here to find."
"Yeah. I'd thought of that." John clapped him on the shoulder. "It'll work."
"Of course it will." Teyla moved off ahead of them, leading the way to the ship.
* * * * *
The flight was uneventful. What might have taken weeks as a hike took hours in the little ship. John flew with abandon, racing birds and swooping over canyons.
Normally, such a flight would have Rodney complaining of cocky pilots and irresponsible behavior, but John looked so happy, he couldn't bring himself to do it.
"You missed this," he said. "Flying."
John looked back at them, and smiled widely. "Like you wouldn't believe."
Rodney thought then, that this alone might be worth it. Even if it didn't work, and he couldn't get the Engine to work the way they needed it to, letting John Sheppard fly again might be worth banishment and danger.
From the indulgent looks on Ronon and Teyla's faces, they felt much the same.
* * * * *
They came over the High Divide in midmorning, and found beneath them a shifting mass of Fog. It covered the Atlantean Basin and the lower slopes of the mountains in an opalescent cloud. Not even the barest outlines of the ruins could be seen.
"When the sun burns back the Fog," John said, voice tight, "we can enter the city. But we'll have to be watchful. The Fog can linger, in some shadowed areas. And we'll have to hurry. We'll only have a few hours before the Fog comes back in."
Rodney clutched his blueprints tighter in his grip, pointedly looking away from the treacherously beautiful Fog. With only a few hours, he'd better know the plans inside and out.
* * * * *
With the Fog burned back to the sea, Atlantis rose into view. In the ship, the four were silent, watching her emerge from her gray prison.
The towers, broken though they were, were tall, and their former grace showed still in heartbreaking traces. Teyla found she could not turn her eyes away. The City of Fogs, famed of song and story, caught the light in every broken shard of glass and worn stone pathway. It glowed, the burning bones of a legend.
"It's a beautiful grave," John said, grim in the pilot's seat. "The bones of the Old Ones lie where they fell."
Teyla shuddered, and heard Rodney swallow back a curse.
"So we'll bury them, when we're done." Ronon's matter of fact statement rang oddly in the ship. Teyla found it strengthening.
"Yes," she said. "We will."
Rodney and John exchanged a startled glance.
"All right then," John said. "Let's get started."
* * * * *
They parked the ship as close to the ruins where John had found the Engine as he could fly -- it was near the center of the city, surrounded by toppled buildings and pile of rubble.
"Be careful," John said again. "Watch the shadows for signs of Fog."
As Ronon passed out their packs, Rodney couldn't help but ask. "Did you find it? Ford's ship."
John paused, pulling his pack over his shoulder. "It fell in a sort of canyon, between two towers. The sun never reaches there to burn the Fog away." He started off, towards the ruins around the Engine. "I couldn't reach it safely."
As they followed, Teyla murmured in Rodney's ear. "Thank you, for making him promise. He would have gone after them, if you had not."
But Rodney couldn't help but think of the three soldiers left trapped in that ship, all alone in a sanity shredding graveyard, until they were nothing but bones themselves. He shuddered, knowing that that was what had brought John here in the first place.
The ruins were eerily quiet. No birds, no wildlife came within the city. Even the few plants that managed to grow here were stunted and pale. The Wraith had leached their life away.
They followed John through the rubble, until he stopped in front of what seemed to be another fallen building -- until he put a hand on it.
Bright blue light sprang up under his touch, and spread in ribbons of symbols and runes until the Engine was wreathed. It was stunning.
Almost literally blinding, Rodney thought sourly.
"Must be glad to have someone it recognizes around," Ronon said, impressed.
"It's humming." Teyla sounded pleased.
"Look, it's not alive," Rodney growled. "It's an Engine, not a pet."
But John, a distant look in his eyes, said, "It's not not alive. It's a very strange thing."
"What?" Rodney felt a surge of apprehension. "I won't hurt it, will I? When I'm adjusting it?"
"Hmmm? Oh, sorry, no. Not like that. It's just very strange."
"That's not a very exact term." But reassuring, all the same. Rodney set his pack down and paced around the Engine. It was easily the size of the Commons in Athos -- an immense machine. But, except in scale, just like the little model he'd made in Athos.
"Good," he said. "It looks like the blueprints were accurate."
John paced around the other way, calling across the Engine. "It doesn't look like there's more than surface damage. Whatever the Old Ones did, they didn't take axes to it."
"No," Rodney answered. "I found what they did." And John came around to see what he'd found when he'd opened the control panel -- a mass of broken wires and bent gears. He took in a hissing breath.
"Can you fix that before the Fog comes in?"
"We'll see, won't we? Let me get to work."
"Right." John turned and called to Ronon and Teyla. "Can you two help me clear a path for the ship? I'd like to be able to get closer, if we have to do this in shifts."
"Wait!" Rodney reached back blindly and grabbed his arm. "You stay here. I might need you to make the Engine do something."
"No worries," Ronon grunted. "We can handle it." And he and Teyla moved back toward the ship, pointing out rubble they could move as they went.
* * * * *
Rodney shook out cramping hands. "Almost got it started up again, I think," he said, studying the neat patches he'd wrapped around the wires, and the way the new gears matched up with the old ones. "Can you feel anything different?"
John frowned. "It feels . . . breathless. Like it's waiting."
"Breathless. It doesn't breathe. Of course it feels breathless."
John pinched him. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah, yeah." Rodney gently pressed the final replacement gear into place.
"There!" John exclaimed. "I can feel it! It wants to know what I want it to do!"
Rodney slowly sat back, watching as the blue lights on the Engine strobed and flashed. "Okay," he breathed. "Okay." This was the tricky part.
"John," he asked, "how long do we have until the Fog comes in again?"
"It'll start rising as soon as the sun falls behind the Divide. So, about two more hours?"
"And how long until it reaches the center of the city?"
"There'll be traces of it almost immediately, from the pockets that lurk in the shadows. But it won't be completely covered for another couple of hours."
"Right then. You'd better get back to the ship."
"What?" John gripped his shoulder, hard. "What are you talking about? You need me here, to tell the Engine what to do."
Rodney closed his eyes. "You already did what you needed to do. The Engine is waiting for commands. All I have to do is adjust these last few wires, and the new directive will take affect."
"So do it now, and we'll all wait it out in the ship."
"I can't." Rodney took a deep breath. "I have to wait to set it in action, and . . . I have to be here to stop it when it's done."
For a long moment, John was still. Then he grabbed Rodney by the arms and spun him back against the Engine's wall. "You what? You'll be right in the middle of the Fog!"
"I'll be fine!" Rodney yelled. "If it works the way it's supposed to, it'll be something like the eye of a storm, with me and the Engine in the center. And I'll have to stop it, or the winds will just keep spinning, faster and faster once the Fog is burned off, until it's moving with enough force to fling itself free. And that, " he exclaimed, pushing John away from him, "could be enough force to seriously damage the Engine. If this thing blows up, it'll take the whole Atlantean basin with it."
John stared at him, jaw set. "So I'll do it. Let me do it."
"No," Rodney said, in a brittle voice. "I'm the one who has to." He shook his head, turning back to the Engine. "You don't know how."
"So tell me!" John shouted, grabbing his arm again.
Rodney didn't look at him. "I won't. Now leave. You have just enough time to get back to the ship before the Fog starts coming in. I'll need you all ready to pick me up, as soon as this is done." He laughed, breathless. "I might not be in any shape to hike!"
"Why are you doing this, Rodney? You're not suicidal."
"And you'd better not be either!" Rodney's raw shout echoed over the Engine's hum. "You promised, remember?"
He remembered the relief he'd felt when John went to prison. Remembered thinking he'd be safe there, until he calmed down enough to see reason.
He could remember waiting outside of John's prison cell, pleading with him to eat the damned food before he starved to death. Remembered getting nothing back but untouched plates and silence.
Remembered the shame and the rising guilt, when he realized that letting John go to prison was killing him, just a little more slowly than the Wraith would.
"I have to do this, John," he said. "Please let me do this." He raised his chin. "I promise, I won't die."
And John, closing his eyes, let go of his arm. "I'll hold you to that, you bastard," he whispered. And he was gone.
* * * * *
Teyla, eyeing the clear path back to the center where the Engine lay, saw John coming back at a stiff-backed walk. Instinctively, she looked past him, but couldn't see Rodney. She frowned.
"Get in the ship," John barked. "The first traces of Fog will be rising any minute."
"Where . . ."
"He's safe." John's grip on the ship's hatch tightened. "He's safe. He knows what he's doing."
And he pulled her into the ship, yelling at Ronon to take her up, out of reach. Teyla, feeling him shake, couldn't bring herself to protest. But her heart beat faster.
* * * * *
Rodney saw the first fingers of Fog some minutes after John finally left. Just a wisp of cloud, barely there in the shadows at the edge of what used to be a street.
He imagined that the Engine's hum changed subtly, that a note of defiance crept in. He approved of the sentiment, though he suspected it was the first touch of Wraith induced madness.
"Now then," he breathed. "Here we go." And he tied the last wires in place, and set the last gear turning.
The massive Engine's hum grew louder. The tiny gears in the control panel, connected by shafts and springs -- so delicate Rodney had been afraid to touch them -- to the hidden workings deep in the machine, began to turn faster.
A breeze touched Rodney's face, cooling the nervous sweat that beaded there.
And the Fog, aided by the rising wind, came closer.
* * * * *
From the ship, the Fog bank seemed to seethe. The wind, rising faster and faster, pushed and pulled and shaped it, drawing it in off from the sea and trapping it in an air current that set it spinning in a great ring, as wide as the City, centered around the glowing blue mass that was the Engine.
She couldn't see Rodney in the glow, not from this distance. "Oh Suns, " she breathed, "protect him." Ronon and John sat stone faced and silent, watching from the controls.
* * * * *
At the center of the maelstrom, Rodney knew that he was screaming. Pressed close against the Engine, he could feel it humming all through his body, reverberating through his bones. Just beyond arm's reach, the wall of fog surged by, faster and faster. It didn't touch him, but he found, to his horror, that he could hear the Wraith.
Many voices, insubstantial as the Fog, spoke in a chorus that wound through the hum of the Engine. Ridicule and scorn wove through promises of splendor and fame. The words shivered through him, just this side of understandable, with a poisonous sweetness laced through them.
He'd long ago lost track of the time. He only knew it was passing by the increasing rawness of his throat.
* * * * *
Teyla sat on her hands to keep from wringing them together. The Fog now was bound in a single ring, so thick it blocked the view of the Engine. Only its blue glow was visible, channeled through the center of the ring. The outskirts of the city were clear. There was no Fog, beyond the ring.
Now, please, she thought. Let the sun rise. Beside her, Ronon held his hands fisted in his lap, and John, standing now, was speaking quietly, one word again and again.
She thought it might be 'please.'
* * * * *
Rodney, huddled against the Engine, thought at first he'd finally lost the last bit of his sanity. The voices were lessening, growing thin and desperate. But then, as the ruins began to show through the cloaking Fog, he realized that, at last, the sun was burning through the ring.
It was working.
He stared as the sun burnished the bones of Atlantis. The Fog, what was left of it, spun faster and faster around the engine, the voices lost now in the roar of wind.
He reached for the controls, to turn it off before the wind broke free and destroyed it all, but stopped himself. If even a trace of the Wraith lingered, in some last shred of Fog, this would all be in vain. It would survive, and grow, and soon the Fog would again be haunted by monsters.
He waited. The wind screamed around him, a deafening wall of air.
And then, the Engine's hum began to sound pleased. Accomplished. And, uncaring of the illogic of it, Rodney knew it was finished.
He turned it off. And as the lights of the Engine faded, the wind whipped away; strong enough to shift rubble and knock him back against the Engine, but not strong enough to damage the machine.
He slid to the ground, in the sudden abrupt absence of noise. As he did, Rodney saw the ship touching down in the clear path that Ronon and Teyla had leveled.
He smiled, losing consciousness, to see his friends.
* * * * *
They waited a day, to see the cleansed Fog come in safely. As it closed around the ship, John's hands tensed on the controls. And Rodney covered his eyes, refusing to look.
They sat in an eerie gray silence, but there was no beast lurking there.
When the Fog ebbed away again, they buried the bones of Ford, Stackhouse and Cadman themselves.
"I'm sorry it took me so long," was all John said over their graves.
The bodies of the Old Ones they left undisturbed. The bones were clean and dry and quiet. It seemed somehow wrong to move them.
"Let the anthropologists deal with it," Rodney groused, nursing his headache in the back of the ship. "I'm sure they'll want to see them as they fell, anyhow. Ghouls."
"And the Engine?" Ronon asked. "You going to let them have that too?"
"Ha." Rodney smirked. "They wouldn't know what to do with it." He raised the edge of the cloth resting over his eyes and looked to John. "Besides, they'll need you along if they want to see it work at all."
Teyla, watching them, wondered again how John had come to be in the ship with them while Rodney handled the Engine alone. But Rodney's eyes seemed clearer than they had in a decade, and John, though obviously confused and a little angry, seemed to see it too.
"And if Caldwell throws me in jail again?" John asked, looking intently at his hands.
"Are you kidding?" Ronon asked. "We'll just get you out again."
John smiled at his clasped hands, until Rodney threw his cloth at him.
"Idiot," Rodney mumbled as he rolled onto his side. "Of course we would."
"And should it come to that," Teyla added quietly, "we'll be coming with you." They were four, she thought, feeling it deeply. They would not be less again.
fin
