Scifibigbangfic: Bright City on Dark Waters

[theladysnarkydame]

Title: Bright City on Dark Waters


Author name: snarkydame
Beta name: L (no LJ name)
Word Count: 25024
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: PG-13
Main Characters: Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, John Sheppard, Ronon Dex, Evan Lorne
Genre: AU action-adventure gen
Summary: Sequel to the story Bright Wings (you might want to read that first. No worries, it's much shorter)
Politics in the City throw the crew into danger. New friends, and new enemies, and promises kept.
Warnings: mild language, implied torture (nothing too drastic)
Disclaimers: I don't own the characters of Stargate Atlantis and no infringement is intended, nor profit being made.
Author's Notes: I want to thank my beta L, who painstakingly printed out this story and attacked it with red pens. One day, I will convince you that the internet mostly does not bite. Also, my artist Aurora has been AMAZINGLY patient with me and my disorganized self. Thank you SO MUCH. I'll add the links to the art just as soon as I get them.
And yappichick , who so graciously let me change my posting date, thank you!
This story is for friendshipper , who wanted a sequel.

It never really rained in Atlantis. Oh, they got their summer storms – black clouds that boiled in over the water, shedding stinging drops of rain across the towers in fits of wind and violence – but they didn't last long. The shredded clouds, spent, would fade into sunlight made brighter by the reflections shining from every freshly scoured surface of the city. And then the birds would take wing, and the people would emerge from under the bridges and awnings where they'd taken refuge (and the canal men, who'd never stopped their work at all, would laugh at them), and the city would again be full of voices, and song, and humming life. With the momentary addition of elated children, splashing through shallow, scattered puddles.

No. It never really rained here.

Teyla could remember seasons in Athos when the clouds seemed to settle over the city like brooding crows. When the rising sun was just a vaguely paler patch of cloud, and the most prominent noise in the city was the heavy, mind-numbing drum of water, falling on stone. When she was a girl, she used to stand at the corner of the street outside her family's home, soaked and heedless of it, to watch the curling streams of water run like newborn rivers down the pavement. Her eyelashes trapped the rain drops before her eyes, and the whole city had seemed made of water; soft edged, strangely warped. She felt like she could dip her hands into those rushing streams, and be water herself, part of everything.

But if Athos, built on solid ground, was made of water; then Atlantis, half-sunken city in the sea, was born of flame.

Breathing hard, Teyla opened her eyes to a wash of light and heat. Silk screened lanterns lit the night with red and gold, and bare torches sputtered and danced in a ring around her stage. She curled her toes into the thick textured silk, and bowed low to the cheering audience. Coins lay thickly scattered all along the rich colors of the carpet – they caught the light and glowed like embers at her feet.

She stood straight and stretched, pleased with the comfortable burn in her muscles. Jinto scurried around her, collecting the take, and she smiled past him at the crowd. More coins fell.

She missed the rains of Athos. But oh, she mused, pulling sweat-stuck strands of hair away from her neck, this whole city was on fire! A beacon, burning on dark waters.

* * *

"Have a drink?" Ronon's rough voice sounded over her shoulder, and Teyla twisted around to smile back at him. She pulled the carpet into a tighter roll and knotted the tasseled ties, adding it to the pile at the edge of the canal. Halling frowned over at it from his barge. The canal man's vessel was already crowded with baskets and bales, and the musicians' instruments in oiled cases. The musicians themselves unrepentantly added their own packages – the results of a lucrative performance and a Market loaded by merchant ships with full holds at dock. Trade was good this year.

"You're buying," Ronon added, looking over the heap of goods.

"Don't I always?" Teyla smirked at him, and bumped a shoulder to his ribs. "Come then. Tell me over wine."

"Couldn't I just have come to see you dance?" he asked, looking at her sideways.

"You come to watch the crowds that watch me. You come to tell me news or hear it. But you never come just to see me dance." She smiled, to show she did not mind.

Ronon gave her back a bare tilt of his lips. "Over wine, then."

"Keller's?"

"She has the best wine." And Ronon's smile widened to a grin, quick and very white against his beard.

* * *

Keller's tavern was just off the docks, catching the spillover from the Market without being washed away by the tides of reveling sailors. It was loud, and cheerfully drunken, but Keller didn't have to replace her tables every other week, and she didn't have to water down her drinks to keep her patrons from spilling blood. Her bouncers were the best in the city. Not even the Genii agents that had chased Ronon and Teyla through the city a few years ago had made it past Keller's doors.

Ronon nodded to Keller over the press at the bar and held up two fingers as he walked to their table – his height gave him ridiculous advantages, Teyla thought. She couldn't even see the bar, herself.

Their table was in the far corner, away from the windows. In the crowded tavern, it was the only empty space. In the middle of the table, carved deep in the varnished wood, a Satedan warvin bared its crooked fangs. On one side of its snarling face, there were equations drawn in straight, aggressive lines, and diagrams painstakingly etched in careful ink. On the other, in less careful ink, a blobby square that may have been their Jumper was surrounded by four stick figures with broad grins on their round faces.

Teyla smiled down at them, and ran her fingers gently over a new addition – wings arched now over the Jumper. The wings were smudged, like someone had tried to wash them away, but the original lines had been redrawn, with a hand so heavy the wood was scored.

"They were arguing again?" She asked, and Ronon snorted.

"Stubborn, both of them."

They sat at their table in a comfortable silence, watching the crowd. Occasionally, Keller's voice rose over the noise, and tonight's bouncer, Jones, raised his head from the well-thumbed copy of his book, but whatever scuffle had been about to break out dissipated harmlessly. Keller's regular patrons knew better than to get on her bad side, and they kept the newcomers from spoiling their night.

Eventually, the owner herself made her way through the crowd towards their table, two glasses and a bottle in her hands. Teyla smiled, and hid her amusement politely behind her hand. Keller was just as small as she was, in this crowd. All she saw of her were the wineglasses, waving overhead.

"Here you go!" Keller said, cheerfully blowing a strand of blond hair out of her face as she pushed through the last layer of the crowd. "It's an Abydonian red. You'll like it," she said, cutting her eyes to Ronon, "it's spicy, like that Hoffan blend you had last time, but it's got a smoother kick." She set the glasses down on the warvin's whiskers and fished a corkscrew out of her apron pocket. "Captain Lorne brought it over when the Brava docked. He asked me to make sure you got a bottle."

At this, Teyla raised an eyebrow. "I do not believe I know this captain. Ronon, do you?" He shrugged, and shook his head.

Keller grinned at them, and poured the wine. It was a deep, almost purple red, vivid against the warm wood of the table. "He doesn't know you either, not yet. He walked in with the wine and stood right up on the bar. I was going to have Jones throw him out, but he looked so happy I couldn't do it. And besides, he's really cute. And a Captain." Her grin was briefly wicked. "He'd been celebrating already – he was totally sloshed – and anyway, he had a Captain's voice, really cut right through the noise, so everybody goes quiet and looks at him, and he's asking, 'Who was it that found that cache of drones? Who do I thank for saving my ship from the Wraith?' And some ass in the crowd yells, 'Professor Kavanagh!' but everybody else shouts him down and sets him right. 'Sheppard's crew,' they say. 'It was Sheppard's crew.' And Captain Lorne turns around and hands me this bottle.

"'Please,' he says, all manners, 'make sure they get this. I owe them my life, and my crew's lives, and my ship. Tell them the Brava sends them thanks.'"

Keller paused and took a breath. "He didn't say, but I know this wine – it's really expensive. High Councilmen drink it on special occasions."

Ronon picked up his glass and drank. "Not bad," he said.

Teyla swirled hers, watching the color coating the glass. "I am glad that the Brava escaped the Wraith. But that they went after a ship in Atlantis' territory is troubling."

Keller's good cheer dimmed. "The sailors say they're getting bolder again. Only the most reckless captains are taking the wider routes."

Teyla saw Ronon's shoulders tense, but he stayed slouched in his seat, face blank.

"They will not get far in these waters," Teyla said, intentionally calm. "Though I must pity the Genii Alliance."

Ronon's shoulders loosened. "Must you?" he asked, and took another drink.

Keller laughed and shook her head. The noise at the bar was growing louder. "Gotta get back to work," she said, looking over her shoulder. "I'll have Luce bring you some dinner to go with that wine." And she eeled her way back through the crowd.

Teyla's stomach growled, and Ronon smirked at her.

She gave him a pointed look, which he ignored, and shook her head.

"What did you wish to discuss, when you came out tonight?"

Ronon's smirk went strangely bitter, and her attention sharpened.

"Had some visitors at the shop today. Couple of guys." He set his glass down. "I'm pretty sure Sheppard knew them. From before."

From John's old life. Before the falling out with his father. Teyla considered the hard line of Ronon's mouth. "They were not friends? Before."

"If they were they parted badly. Rodney looked like he wanted to throw them out. Or toss them over the pier with scrap iron tied to their back.

"Sheppard . . . He just looked tired."

* * * * *

The Western Bridge cut like a black bar across the Heights – the towers rising from the Old City, the Central Spire reaching highest. The Heights glowed at night, gleaming cool and silver against the sky, washed by the warmer lights of the New City at their base.

There was too much light, always, for any but the very brightest stars to shine overhead – the scatter of tiny stars that formed the Pegasus' outspread wings was just rising over the city. And even those stars would only be bright enough to see for another few weeks.

Then, for the month or so before the Teeth rose high enough to crest the horizon, the moons would have the sky to themselves.

Strange. He'd grown up with so very many more stars than this. Countless stars.

He'd known so many of their names.

He wondered, sometimes, if his sister had taught them to her daughter yet. If she would, even. No, of course she would. She'd wrap them in stories and tie them to legends and . . . Melissa? Maggie? His niece would know the names of the stars. Whether or not she'd be able to pick them out in the sky was a whole other question.

One he wasn't likely to have answered. He hadn't had a letter from Jeannie since her kid was just starting to pull herself upright.

She was a long way away, his sister. She had a good life there. Stable. Quiet. Or it should be, now that the fuss of his unofficial exile had died down. Probably nothing exciting to write to him about.

Or maybe it was just that she was tired of not getting any letters back.

Rodney leaned his head back against Jumper II and took a deep breath. The courtyard was almost quiet – the neighborhood bars were in full swing, sending shouts and songs (and the occasional screams) into the streets, but the warehouses that hemmed him in muffled the noise. The heat prickled at his back and sent sweat sliding down his sides, made it hard to think. For once, Rodney didn't mind that part.

He huffed, and took another drink from the bottle in his hand. The beer wasn't even cold anymore.

Past his feet, bare and pale in the moonlight, the pool lay flat and dark. Shadowed by the bridge, it didn't even reflect the city lights. Almost, he wanted to throw his bottle at its still surface, break its silence, make a splash.

"Would be a waste, I guess," he muttered, peering at the half-full bottle. "Even if it isn't cold."

"Want a new one, then?"

He didn't even turn his head. Just set his warm beer on the ground and raised a hand. Sheppard dropped a fresh bottle into it, condensation still sliding down its neck, as he flopped to a seat beside Rodney.

For a while, they sat in silence, drinking their beer. But Rodney had had enough of silence.

"Do you realize these might be the only cold beers in the city?" he asked. "Well. I'm pretty sure Zelenka copied my design last time he was here. So he might have cold beer. But I doubt anybody else does."

It took a moment for Sheppard to respond, and when he did, he sounded tired, his drawl even more drawn out that usual. "That's sort of cruel of us. Maybe we should put your chiller into production."

"We'd make a killing."

"We could retire. Drink cold beer all day."

Rodney felt half a smile tugging at his face. "You'd be bored stiff."

"Yeah. Maybe."

Rodney upended his beer, swallowed the last cold drops. Grimaced at the bitter taste of the dregs. He slanted a glance sideways.

Sheppard was an indistinct form in the Jumper's shadow. He couldn't see his expression, but he could read the slope of his shoulders. The way his hands hung over his knees.

Rodney sighed. He forced a bland cheer into his voice. "You could take up knitting."

Sheppard swallowed his beer wrong, and sputtered. Rodney gave him a pat on the back as he doubled over, coughing.

"Really, think about it. I need some new socks."

Sheppard was glaring at him. Not that he could see him, but he knew he was.

"You," he said, between coughs, "are an ass."

"So I've been told." Many many times. By many people. He didn't mind. He pretty much was.

Once Sheppard could breathe again, he leaned back against Jumper II and straightened his legs. "So," he said. "This thing today."

"Sucks. You should have said no."

"I didn't say yes."

"You didn't say no." Rodney tightened a hand on his empty bottle. "It's stupid, what they want you to do."

"They seem to think it's civic minded."

"Tell them we're retiring. Selling beer chillers to sailors in the Night Market. Knitting socks."

"I'm not knitting you socks."

"You might as well be, if you do what they want. " Rodney stared intently at the featureless pond. "You'd be stuck."

"Might be nice, not having anything to do." The words were thin in the warm night air. False. Rodney made himself set his bottle down on the ground, instead of throwing it at the dark shape at his side.

"Don't do it," he heard himself say. "I'm so close, John. Don't quit."

Sheppard didn't say anything for a long time, and Rodney almost wanted to take it back. Almost.

But then he noticed that Sheppard had raised a hand, resting the back of his knuckles against the curved side of the Jumper. His left hand. Rodney held very still, afraid to . . . spook him, maybe. Something.

"Okay, Rodney." Sheppard's voice sounded rusty in the dark. "I won't quit. I haven't quit."

Something loosened in Rodney's chest. He smiled to himself, looking out at the Heights. "That's good to know."

* * * * *

Teyla kept very organized records for the salvage shop. Not ledgers (which were Ronon's job), or client lists (too many of their clients preferred to keep their patronage a secret), but rather detailed lists of possible Ancient artifacts and their rumored locations in the sunken city. Also carefully preserved maps and diagrams and blueprints, scraps of journals, pages torn from histories. And more recent records of shipwrecks, lost cargo. She carefully collected any and all information that made its way through her hands with even a slight connection to the Old Ones or their city.

It was how they made a living, after all. It had found them the Jumpers, asleep in their underwater bay. It had gotten them their reputation – the only salvage crew with a better than seventy-percent chance of coming back with the goods, when those goods were deeper, older, more coveted than the average find.

And it interested her, besides. This city had more history than any of the others in the Pegasus Territories. Not even the Wraith Empire was as old as Atlantis. Even Athos, where the Congress Hall was built around a tree three thousand years old, had been nothing but a collection of huts and a sapling when Atlantis was already half submerged beneath the waves.

Teyla found it all fascinating.

She tried to picture it sometimes, the original city. Before the waters rose. When the silent streets that she saw through the view screen of the Jumper, sliding beneath them empty of anything but fish, were bustling instead with people and noise and color. What had the city sounded like? What songs did the Old Ones sing? Who traded with them, before the Pegasus Territories were born? What sorts of goods would be in their Markets?

They found hints of those other cultures, in some of the artifacts they brought to the surface. The style of a decorative plate, that matched none of the Old Ones' common motifs. A line of a poem engraved on a pedestal, written in a rounded, foreign script.

But they were hints only. Atlantis had fallen at the end of the Wraith War, too damaged and too empty to stand, though the Empire was pushed back, diminished for long enough that the Pegasus Territories could then come together against them.

Atlantis had fallen, but her trading partners fell first, and they fell hard. Even their names were lost.

The University, where the most complete records were held, taught that the custom of greeting dusk and dawn with sound – be it horns or drums or bells or song – came about as a tribute to those peoples.

The Priests of the Old Ones said it was a hymn to the fallen.

Teyla, after looking at the histories, at the journals written at the end of the War, thought that, perhaps, there was some truth to the theory.

She thought it beautiful.

That didn't mean she found all expressions of that custom agreeable.

The Horns of the First Hour were sounding as Ronon and Teyla left Keller's. Teyla felt the immense sound shivering at the back of her jaw as she yawned, and winced.

"How they can wake every morning to that, I'll never know," she said crossly. In Athos, dawn brought the discreet, graceful chime of bells. That one could muffle with no more than a curtain drawn across the window, if one chose. These horns though – they could wake the dead underwater, shake their bones free from the sea bed.

Ronon laid a companionable arm across her shoulders. "I've seen Rodney snore straight through it. You get used to it."

"I have been in this city for ten years," she said. "I am not yet 'used to it'."

"He's been here fifteen. Give it five more years."

Another yawn broke her scowl. With all the dignity she could gather after a night drinking (a very nice) wine she said, "Five years, or another ten. I do not think it would make much difference."

"Maybe if you didn't stay out drinking all the night before?"

She glared at him. And Ronon, entirely too clear eyed, laughed out loud, a quick gust of sound, startling in its rarity.

She shook herself, feeling the glow from his laughter settle into a sort of resigned contentment. It was a new day. Whether she was ready for it or not.

"I am going home," she said. "I'll see you at the shop in a few hours?"

"Sure. Don't worry. I'm pretty sure they'll be at least as hungover as you are."

"Excellent," she muttered as they parted ways. "This will be a very productive day."

* * *

The Night Market was packed away already – it folded itself away so quickly every morning. Like a brilliantly colored mist, burnt away by the sun. She missed its fire, the edge of shadow and risk that danced through every breath of it.

But the day lit city had its own magic, she decided, as she made her way home. She could hear people stirring in their shops and houses. The canals were already busy with barges, and she smiled tiredly, thinking of Halling's face as the pile of luggage she and the musicians brought out to him grew, and grew. Jinto, in contrast, had been delighted, surveying all the strange new goods brought in by the merchant fleets.

She crossed a bridge, one of the Minor Six that fanned away from the Western Bridge itself. Smaller, shallow arches, almost fragile, their sides were intricately carved with birds in flight – their wings made a sort of lace out of the thin stone. In the early morning light, the shadows the stone birds threw seemed to flit across her eyes like the real thing.

Real birds woke in song and motion, their shadows drifting in clouds over the surface of the canals. Real flight. And Winged flight, as well. In the street in front of her, a young woman came to a running stop, outstretched Wing nearly clipping the awning a baker was raising in front of his shop. He yelled at her, arms flapping, and she made flustered, apologetic noises, struggling with the straps and ties that secured the crystal feathers to her arms. She was still breathing hard, face white with lingering fright.

"If you can't control your flight better than that, you've got no business using that thing over the streets!" the baker yelled, face reddening. "You'll kill yourself, if you don't flatten somebody else first."

"Sorry, sorry!" the girl said, finally slipping free of the Wing. Its solar charged feathers flickered as she folded it, cradled it in her arms like a child. "I've almost got it, really. Very nearly. I just jumped too early – didn't have enough light yet."

The baker rolled his eyes. "Kids and their toys, I swear . . ."

"Um . . ." the girl interrupted, leaning closer. "Are those braided sweet breads? Are you . . . could I buy one?"

Teyla realized she had come to a stop, watching them, and she shook her head sharply.

It was difficult, she thought, moving on. So difficult to catch the first light of day on a Wing. It was much safer to wait, just a moment, until the light was more than a promise on the horizon.

Her eyes stung, and she saw again the smudged wings drawn on their table in Keller's tavern.

It was ridiculous, she realized, to hope so fiercely that no one else would race the dawn sun like he had. Ridiculous, and unfair.

And she was incapable of stopping herself.

* * * * *

Rodney missed the Horns. By the time he woke, slumped awkwardly against the Jumper, the sun was already inching over the sides of the warehouses. He scrubbed at his eyes and stood, stiff as an old man. Joints cracked as he stretched, they popped and creaked, and he rolled his eyes at himself, for falling asleep in the open, in his clothes, on the ground.

"Brilliant," he muttered, and ran his hand through his hair. The day would be hot again, he could already tell. The air felt thick, and smelled faintly of tar.

Sheppard wasn't there. Rodney frowned at the patch of ground where he'd been, and then shrugged. He didn't need him today anyway. He turned, kicking over an empty beer bottle.

"Gah!" he choked out, flinching as the glass spiked a shaft of reflected light into his eyes. He glared at the bottle as well as he could with his eyes watering. Hunching his shoulders, he escaped into Jumper II's interior.

"Sheppard," he barked back towards the shop. "Why haven't you set up that canopy I made? You want me to go blind here?" He crouched over a heap of cable coiled in front of an open panel, unwinding it with hands far more patient than his tone.

He could hear Sheppard's voice, but he couldn't catch the words. He sounded more mocking than conciliatory, anyway, and Rodney decided to ignore him.

"Bring me some breakfast, would you?" he yelled. "Thinking this much uses a lot of energy!"

The crystals in the open panel were unbroken, but dark. So. Either the solar cells weren't kicking enough energy through the conduits to charge them, or they still weren't configured properly to convert the power into a useable form. He scowled at the contrary lot of them.

This was the right bank of crystals. The diagrams weren't overly technical, but the lines were clearly drawn. And they were in remarkably good condition, considering Teyla had found them wrapped around a matched set of thinly carved Belkan vases and stuffed in the sea chest of a long-retired Admiral.

The creases had been easy enough to ignore. The salt stains were a bit more troubling, but he didn't think they'd obscured anything he hadn't already figured out when he adapted Jumper I for their salvaging work.

Still. He tugged his fingers impatiently through his hair again. He was sure – or, fine, mostly sure – that this particular bank of crystals held the secret to giving this great big metal box enough lift to rise into the air. But how exactly they did that, or how much power they needed to do that, he just didn't know. Hadn't figured out, not since he'd first started toying with the idea years ago, when they'd found the ships in their sunken docking bay. And not since Ambassador Kolya had come along and inspired him to make it his priority, in a sumptuously appointed suite in a tower deep in the Old City, two years ago.

He noticed then that he'd wrapped his fingers around his arm, pressing against the faint scar that ran white across his forearm. "Cut it out," he snapped at himself, and made himself let go.

Really, he'd made so much progress it was amazing – those idiots at the University would still be dithering over the diagrams themselves, and even Zelenka would still be trying to discipher the plans for the propulsion units, and he'd figured that out a year ago. And the steering – that had been simple, very nearly the same adjustments that he'd made to Jumper I, though of course he'd had to take into account the different stresses that would arise from moving through air rather than water.

Hell, it was actually simpler to get the Jumper ready to move through the skies – it was what it was meant to do, after all. He'd had to cannibalize far fewer systems, jury rig much less of the wiring.

So, theoretically, he could already get this thing to move. He just couldn't get it in the sky.

And everyday, when dawn trailed its golden fingers into the courtyard and caught the Jumper still on the ground, Sheppard's shoulders hunched a little more.

Rodney's lips tightened. The guy thought he didn't notice. Idiot. He just had to wait a little bit longer.

"Sheppard! Breakfast won't make itself!" Rodney bellowed, and went to work.

* * * * *

Teyla sat cross legged on the roof of her building, letting the heat of the sun soak away the last remnants of the hangover. Behind her, pigeons cooed and strutted in their coop; a restless presence, full of feathery self-importance. She listened with half an ear, waiting for the sound of approaching wings.

Color fluttered through the air above her head – the ribbon maker who owned this building tied his wares to every available surface, even the piping that kept the infrequent downpours from flooding the pigeon coop. Rodney had once likened the effect to a rainbow falling from the Central Spire and splattering itself all over the street, awed horror in his voice. Teyla rather enjoyed the ribbons though. The building felt happy. She slept well here.

Every morning, Teyla's birds brought her reports from her eyes in the city. Small things, mostly. Rumors and whispers. Gossip. Queries from those who knew her business, and sought her aid. Answers to queries of her own.

Sometimes warnings.

Today, as the birds came singly and in pairs to her roof, she made a pile of their messages. Tiny scraps of paper, carefully shielded from the breeze. Teyla would sort them properly later, inside. But for now, she checked each one for urgent business, for something that would demand closer attention.

A suspicion was lurking at the back of her mind – quietly nudging at her focus. It was unformed as yet, nebulous.

But, troubled by its presence, she ignored the way the light burned through the drifting downy feathers that the pigeons shed. Didn't notice the shifting hues of their wings, which she normally took pleasure in. She frowned instead at the pile of paper, at the messages scribbled down in many different hands.

There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing.

But there were some pigeons that had not come. And some messages that were oddly hesitant, as though her contact was toying with some unvoiced suspicion of their own.

The last message, tied more loosely than was this contact's habit to the leg of a plump-breasted bird with nondescript feathers, was only a few words.

something's happening, it said. keep an eye out.

Teyla smoothed the paper over her knee, and her frown deepened.

* * * * *

"Look, just tell them you thought about it, and you decided that no, you won't be coming back into the fold." Rodney didn't even try to keep the exasperation out of his voice. He bit fiercely into his bacon, tearing off a bite as he glared at John.

Sheppard leaned even further back in his chair. If he shifted another inch, Rodney figured, he'd come crashing down. He wondered, absently, if he'd kick the table over with him when he fell, and he lifted his plate protectively at the thought. Sheppard rolled his eyes, and pointedly kept his chair tilted at that same angle.

"I don't think they're going to take no for an answer," he said. "If they came all the way out to find me in this part of town, then they must really want me back."

Rodney snorted. "They want your blood," he insisted. "They want you where they can use you."

"Don't be so dramatic. 'They want your blood,' come on, Rodney." Sheppard sounded disgusted.

"I mean it!" He chewed quickly through his (slightly burnt) toast so that he could be properly forceful as he argued. "They have a big supply of drones for the Chair now, but there's, what, half a dozen people in the city with direct blood ties to the Old Ones? Maybe a few more – were Admiral O'Neill cousins adopted? Anyway, now they're all just worried about running out of people who can use the Chair instead of being worried about running out of ammunition."

"It's a legitimate worry, McKay. That Chair's our only real defense, and you know it." Sheppard's face hardened, and Rodney knew he was thinking about the Genii as much as the Wraith. "They just want to cover their bases."

"Bullshit." Rodney let the word fall flat. He was angry, he thought, a little amazed. Honestly angry at the way John's face was going blank. At the resignation threading through his voice.

"If they really wanted to cover their bases, they'd convert the damn technology. They'd stop relying on the Old One's techniques. You know that. You left them in the first place because you know that, John!"

Sheppard's chair thudded back on all four legs as he slapped his hands on the table. "Yes, I know that, Rodney. They know it, too! But they won't do it. They won't ever do it, and you of all people should just damn well come to terms with that already!" He got to his feet then, glaring down at Rodney, who tossed his empty plate back on the table and stood too, matching him glare for glare.

"What is that supposed to mean, then?" He could feel the angry flush spreading down his neck. Damn it, they didn't ever talk about this. They weren't supposed to talk about this!

"Don't give me that, Rodney. You hit your head against that wall for so long you're lucky your brains didn't come dribbling out your ears! They almost kicked you out of Atlantis all together! And if you keep bringing it up they still might. Then where are you gonna go, huh? I hear they might be looking for repairmen in Sateda."

He might as well have kicked him, he felt so shocked. Seriously, how had the conversation turned around to this?"

"What the hell, Sheppard. Don't take things out on me! Your old school mates come calling and suddenly you're a total asshole?" He was getting really tired of John's shortening fuse. "No, you know what? You go ahead and tell them you'll come crawling home. You go ahead and make nice with your father, play the game with the damn High Council. We'll keep the shop running until you realize how stifling it is over there and you come back to your senses."

He resolutely didn't see the way John's hand reached for his arm as he pushed past him. "Thanks for the breakfast," he spat over his shoulder, and went out the back door. He needed to calm down. He needed to get Jumper II in the air. Or something was going to snap.

* * * * *

Teyla made her way to Sheppard's Salvage shop by way of the Engineers Quarter. The district straddled the Main Canal, University housing on one side, warehouses and factories on the other.

Buildings here were pieced together from a dizzying array of material: metal struts and plating scavenged from the Old City showed silver and smooth next to wooden decking off of scuttled ships, worn and bleached from years at sea. Walls made of the same pale gold as the bridges in the New City stood next to those of deep blue Belkan bricks, where gates of finely worked Satedan iron cast shadows full of horns and teeth. Pulleys and cables threaded across the streets, like a canopy woven of industrial lace.

Water wheels splashed in the canal on either side, cables running from the generators they powered. Wind turbines sprouted from the taller buildings, like strange, spiky flowers. Here and there delicate crystals fanned out in intricate arrays to catch the light and bring more power to the generators. Or to whatever invention their owner had designed. Or just to flash in eye catching colors over the entrances to bars.

Engineers, in general, did not hold the Old Ones' technology sacrosanct.

And for all the eclectic mix of building material, the lines of every building on every street in the Quarter were drawn with mathematical precision.

Zelenka's shop was a squat, square thing. It hunkered down between the airily spiraling tower that housed Carter's School of Astronomy, where a telescope sat on the highest floor and aimed past the lights of the city to see the stars, and the equally tall, elegantly spare building where Grodin's shipwrights drew up plans for the fastest ships in the Merchant Fleet. The main sail of the Daedalus, the most famous ship in Atlantean history, hung from the fourth story windows.

For all its homeliness, Zelenka's shop, between those two towers, felt solid. It seemed to anchor the more daring creations beside it.

When Teyla pushed the door open, a string of tiny bells rang out overhead, and she smiled, as she always did. There had always been bells around, in Athos.

At the sound, Zelenka squinted up from behind the counter, where he sat polishing his glasses. "Teyla!" he said. "Hello. I was not expected you until tomorrow. Rodney's calipers are not ready just yet."

"That's fine, Radek. I came on other business today."

"Oh?" As he resettled his glasses, a carefully neutral expression dropped over his face. Zelenka had at least as many ties to the city's underground as Teyla did, but his contacts were far more skittish. And, she suspected, far less legal.

She leaned casually on the counter across from him, pretending to peruse the delicate tools that he displayed there.

"There is something . . ." she trailed off, not sure what she was asking. It danced unformed at the edges of her messages, as yet no more than uneasy speculation. "Something's happening," she settled on. "I think it touches only peripherally upon my network at this time. But it is growing, and some of my contacts are beginning to see it." She paused, glancing up to catch Zelenka's sober regard. "I think perhaps yours would already know its shape."

The Engineer considered for a moment. "Our networks," he began, his words coming slowly, "do not often touch on the same territory. Your "something" may not be related to the shape my contacts have seen."

"That is possible," she acknowledged. "Even likely. This is a very large city. But things intersect, do they not? And you and I, we find those intersections."

Zelenka smiled very slightly and pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Is that what we do?" he asked. "It seems unexciting."

She merely nodded, waiting.

"You'd better come in back," he said, after a moment. "I have something to show you."

* * * *

Rodney met John Sheppard for the first time while he was yelling at the Dean of Atlantis University. To be fair, the Dean was actually yelling back, which most of the other professors didn't bother to do. Rodney was the youngest member of the staff – he had the best lungs.

He didn't know whether it was the noise of the yelling, the sound of Rodney's easel crashing to the ground when the Dean shoved it over, or the subject they were yelling about (converting the Ancient heating system in the Main Hall because only three of the two dozen professors and one of the students could get it to work properly, and Rodney was tired of doing his research in a sauna), but something made Sheppard wander off from the tour he and his graduating class were taking of the new History Wing to check out Rodney's office.

Rodney had rolled his eyes away from the Dean's livid face (he looked rather like he was about to bite the finger that Rodney was jabbing towards him) to see a well dressed man slouching against the door frame, smirking.

Rodney, of course, immediately transferred his rage to the interloper, pushed him out into the corridor, and slammed the door before spinning back to his original argument before the Dean could shove all his papers off of his desk. There were priorities to consider.

* * *

The second time Rodney met John Sheppard, it was the night of the University's Founding Gala and he had been banished to his workroom for the evening. He reminded himself that he hadn't wanted to take time away from his projects to shake hands and smile at the University's High Council patrons in the first place, but the fact that the Dean had forbidden him to go for fear of offending the High Council was giving him an uneasy feeling. The University was growing more and more resistant to his research.

He was hunched over his prototype, adjusting the delicate mechanism with hands that didn't shake despite the (rather prodigious) amount of wine he'd been drinking, when he noticed a vaguely familiar presence in his doorway.

"What?" he snapped, barely glancing at him. "Are you stalking me? Because, yeah, it's flattering and all, and totally understandable considering my infamous genius, but I've got enough groupies. Go away. Unless you brought wine. I'm out."

"What is that?" the figure in the doorway drawled, completely ignoring him. He actually came further into the room, empty handed, and peered curiously over Rodney's shoulder.

Rodney hunched over his work and scowled up at him. When the guy didn't back off he huffed and kept working.

"You're one of them, right? With your fancy suit and shiny shoes. I'm supposed to keep away and not offend you. Though, really, I wouldn't expect a Councilman to go out in public with his tie that crooked. Or his hair looking . . ." Rodney waved a hand to indicate the proper amount of dishevelment. He felt it knock against the stranger's jaw.

"Ow," the guy said. "I'm not a Councilman. Just the son of one. And what does that have to do with what that is?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's not like I need Council permission to convert Ancient tech into something useful." He stroked a crystalline feather with a gentle finger.

"Is that something useful?"

"It could be. It could be very useful!" He found himself peering earnestly back around at the stranger, and it annoyed him, how much he wanted this guy to understand. It's not like he needed to defend his work from this interloper. But he couldn't seem to stop talking. It was probably the wine.

"The Old Ones were genius at power storage techniques, I'll give 'em that. These crystals are thousands of years old, and they'll still hold a charge. And these crystals, these ones here," he said, deftly flipping the prototype over, "if they receive that charge, they create lift. Or, actually, they amplify it. It's too complicated for you to understand, I'm sure, so I'll make it simple. They – "

"They'll fly." The stranger's voice was flat. But Rodney, looking over in surprise, saw wonder in the man's eyes.

* * *

The fifth time Rodney met John Sheppard, he learned his name. It almost made him spit out his coffee. "Sheppard? You're a Sheppard? That's just great!" But at this point, John knew him well enough to tune out the yelling. He barely looked up from the completed prototype that he was studying. "Your father's going to have fits when he finds out what you're doing here."

"Probably," he agreed absently. "This is heavier than it looks," he said, hefting the crystalline Wing. And then, "He'll probably get you kicked out of the University."

Rodney paused. He had thought of that, actually. In his less confident moments. "You don't seem terribly upset about that."

"Rodney," John drawled, looking him straight in the eye, "this thing can fly. If you get kicked out I'm coming with you."

* * *

Rodney knelt frozen inside of Jumper II, staring at the crystal bank in front of him. The Wings . . .
The crystals were exactly the same as the ones in the Jumper. The materials were the same, the capabilities were identical. Only the configuration was different. That and the power conversion hardware he'd wired into them.

And the Wings could fly. As good as fly. They'd catch the slightest bit of wind and sail all across the city.

The Jumper was designed to create independent lift. But the crystals were exactly the same.

He sat there, thinking, for a long time.

Then, "Sheppard!" he yelled, surging to his feet. "You'd better still be here!"

When he ducked out of the Jumper, squinting against the light, he nearly ran straight into John. He stood, arms crossed, and raised an eyebrow at the way Rodney's jaw dropped.

"It's my shop, McKay. Stop bossing me around."

Relief curled through Rodney, and he felt himself grinning. "Obviously," he said, "you need someone to keep you on track. Might as well be the genius."

John shook his head at him. "What did you want?"

"Oh, don't act like you weren't waiting outside the Jumper all on your own. I know you." Rodney snorted, bouncing a little on his toes. "I need to go get a few things. You should come along, carry them for me."

"Rent a barge, McKay! I'm not a porter."

"What else were you going to do today? You've used up your brooding allowance for the week." Rodney grabbed his arm on his way to the door and tugged him along. The feeling of relief grew warmer when John didn't pull away.

* * * * *

In the back of Zelenka's shop, behind a simple curtain of thick red cloth, there was a stairway. A simple railing ran around the entrance but there was no door, and in the dim light behind the curtain the stairwell looked very deep, and very dark. Teyla heard the sound of pumps, and wondered at it, until she realized that the shop sat very close to the canal, and that this stairway, in all possibility, led beneath it.

"Please," Zelenka asked her, "watch your step. The cellar stairs are very damp, of course, and steep."

Teyla wanted to ask questions, to know what he used this passage for, to know what waited at its end – but she trusted him. He was something of a friend, and she resolved to wait. It would come clear.

It was quite warm on the stairs, the air folding around her like heavy wool. It was even warmer in the narrow corridor at their foot, and the floor squished damply beneath her feet. She could feel the prickle of sweat between her shoulder blades.

Zelenka carried a small metal disk that glowed in his hand. It gave off a pale, steady light, scarcely bright enough to illuminate the ceiling, close overhead.

"It is not so far," he said. The light flashed off of his glasses, obscuring his face, but his voice was brisk, and kind. "It is only that this is safer."

And, "Yes," she said, when they reached the cellar on the other side of the canal, and she saw the plans that draped and curled over the sides of the table there. "I do understand."

She was quite proud of the way her voice barely shook at all.

* * *

It was not illegal, what was drawn on those diagrams. Weir had even encouraged such endeavors, in the years since she took office.

But it was dangerous. Teyla could follow enough to know that, though the equations scribbled in the margins were beyond her expertise.

The hard liners at the University would do their best to bury such an idea. And some members of the High Council, who held their positions by right of blood and ancestry, would do their best to bury the minds that had giving that idea form.

Because the diagrams, white lines drawn on paper stained blue with a mixture of brick dust and ink, laid out clearly a possible way to convert an operating system for the Chair of Atlantis.

If this got out, if this worked, the power dynamics of Atlantis would shift, and drastically. Irrevocably.

Teyla ran a hand very gently along the edge of the plans, testing. A shiver ran along her spine when the paper crackled quietly.

It was real. She took a breath.

"Has Rodney seen these?"

Zelenka was a quiet shape in the dim light, watching her. "Not yet," he said. "However, we were to run the plans by him before we went forward." She could hear the smile that colored his voice.

"He is the best, is he not?"

She closed her eyes, seeing again the smudged ink on the surface of their table in Keller's tavern. The two words written in a shaky hand, affixed to the leg of a bird.

something's happening

"Radek. Who else knows that you were showing these to Rodney?"

For a moment, there was only puzzled silence.

Then, the light dimmed even further, as Zelenka's fingers tightened over the glowing disk, and soft curses filled the little room.

* * * * *

The sun was edging into afternoon, kissing the top of the Central Spire. For a moment – egged on by some flurry of breezes, or perhaps the swooping glide of a messenger passing by on a sun-drenched Wing – the flock of white feathered carrier pigeons kept by the Council took to the sky.

They drum of their wings reached down to the canals, and even the canal men looked up to see the shifting, shining cloud of them against the sun.

Rodney noticed John staring, even after the birds had come to rest.

"Expecting a message?" he asked, going for casual and missing, as usual, by a wide margin. He knew very well that wasn't why John was staring at the sky.

Sheppard looked sidelong at him. "Not particularly," he said. "But Dex might send word."

Rodney bristled. "That moron. I'm surprised he knows how to write his name."

"Why the hostility, McKay? You barely know the guy."

Rodney took a few steps along the side of the canal before speaking. The water sloshed gently over the edge of the walk, leaving wet marks on the stone. He scrubbed at them with the sole of his boot.

"He was your friend," he said finally. This was embarrassing, he thought, and it made his voice sharp. "He was your friend and he dropped you like a Wraith-touched bomb when you broke with your father. Don't tell me you've forgotten."

Sheppard blinked.

Rodney kept talking, just to fill the awkward moment. "It's gotta bother you, knowing that your old friends cut ties with you. That people you must have expected to back you up let you fall like that. Doesn't it bother you?" He trailed off, uncomfortably aware of how close he had come to talking about his own situation. He didn't do that. It was old news. Uninteresting.

But John just bumped his shoulder against Rodney's, and walked on.

"Of course it bothers me, Rodney. But I'm not a wilting flower like certain Engineers I know. I can still talk to him. Work with him, if it comes to that."

Rodney growled and hurried after him. "You don't need to 'work with him.' You work with us!" And didn't that sound like a jealous kid in a school yard. He rolled his eyes at himself.

* * *

There was always music on the docks. Beneath the creak of rigging and the shouts and swears of sailors, backed by the percussion thump of cargo coming off the ramps, it hung in the air like aural incense, all smokey swirls and competing notes. It gave Rodney a headache.

High C here, where the flutist, a blind young woman (who hid her perfectly good eyes behind a romantic swath of linen), drew a crowd of adoring sailors who couldn't wait to fill her basket full of coin.

Two crews of dock men, unloading rival Merchant ships – the crews on board egged them on with cheers and whoops while the dock men belted out shanties and flung bales of goods along the line.

There, a hectic swirl of brash notes, thrown into the street like a challenge by the dueling violinists in front of Caldwell's pub. The retired Captain himself stood between them, face blank, foot tapping, while two of the men flocking into his well-known common room broke into a wild Taranin jig.

He raised his chin just slightly as Sheppard walked by, and ignored Rodney completely, as usual.

Rodney liked it that way. The man made him nervous. Far too upstanding.

"I don't know why you're leading the way," he called ahead to John, over the violins. "You don't know where we're going."

Sheppard paused then, and waited a beat for Rodney to catch up, keeping just a step ahead. Rodney scowled, feeling like a child tagging along behind his bored older brother. Rodney had done exactly that to Jeannie, when they were young. It wasn't nearly as entertaining from this end.

"Where are we going then, Rodney? I thought you'd already picked up that order of cable."

"Yeah, no, the cable's already coiled up in the Jumper. I need some of that naquadrian wire we used for the Wing prototype."

Sheppard frowned. "I thought you stopped using that because it was too fragile? And the copper alloy you invented worked better anyway."

"Sure, for the Wing. I'm not building a Wing, Sheppard." He needed something more precisely attuned to the crystals' requirements. And the fragile wire would be protected by panels in the Jumper, while it had been too exposed in the Wing.

Pure gold wiring was far too pliable. Copper would burn out, corrode.

The alloy Todd perfected should do the trick, though. He could see what he needed now – how to configure the crystals, how to convert the power source. How to get the Jumper airborne.

The excitement made it easier to consider working again with Todd.

* * *

The smith specialized in nautical work – ships' cannons, anchor chains, the like. So his shop was just off the dock itself. Rodney, stepping inside, could still hear traces of the violins at Caldwell's.

But Todd tinkered. Rodney admitted, in his more honest moments, that the man could have made a very successful Engineer. His alloys were stronger, more durable, than the common run. The gears and levers he made worked with an artful precision.

However, the man was creepy.

There were rumors that he had been born in the Wraith Empire. That he'd been a Wraith pirate himself, once.

Some said that he still was one, and had set up shop on Atlantis' docks in order to spy on the Merchant Fleet. That half the work he did went to benefit pirate crews. There were always patrolmen lurking in plain sight near his smithy, waiting to catch him out.

He'd been here ten years or more. He hadn't been caught yet. Rodney figured that just meant he was smarter than he looked.

Despite all that, Todd was useful. He'd been invaluable when they had converted Jumper I into their salvage ship, though the money they'd owed him had taken years to repay.

And if Rodney was right, Todd's alloy was just what he needed to finish Jumper II.

Sheppard kept close to him in the shop – he didn't trust Todd any further than he could throw him, and Todd was a big guy. Bigger, maybe, than Ronon even, which Rodney kept forgetting until he came face to face with the guy. Or face to chest, whatever.

He tried not to yelp when Todd materialized next to him and slapped him on the back with just a touch too much force to be friendly.

"McKay, to what do I owe this pleasure? I never see you here anymore."

His big hand lingered possessively on Rodney's back, and he stepped away with an involuntary shiver.

He cut straight to business. He didn't like it here, and he didn't want Sheppard and Todd to stay too long in one another's company – they were already eying each other like tearing an arm off was a personal ambition of theirs.

"I need twelve meters of that naquadrian wiring, Todd. Do you have it?"

The smith rubbed his chin. "I have eight, in the back. I was planning on using most of it for a few jobs this month. If you can wait, I can make more."

"I can make do with eight. But I need it now." Rodney kept his voice flat with an effort.

Todd's grin was sharp, like a shark's. "I can figure something out for my projects, but it'll cost you to cover the replacements. I'm backed up on work for the Fleet."

Rodney bit his tongue before he could ask which Fleet Todd was taking orders from. "I'll take the eight meters you have, and we can talk price."

Todd ducked his head, considering. "So," he asked, "how much did you get from the council for turning over those drones? I imagine you got a nice little windfall from Weir."

Rodney felt his shoulders hunching. They had, of course, been rewarded for that find. But since Kavanagh had hired them, he'd gotten the bulk of it. They'd been paid enough to cover medical bills, and to set a bit aside for the slow seasons. And they'd received several gifts of appreciation from Merchant captains who'd felt the increased security in Atlantean waters. And of course, there'd been other salvage jobs since then, some nearly as lucrative, if not as high profile. But they weren't flush with funds. Keeping the Jumper running and their equipment in good order made for a lot of overhead.

He felt Sheppard's hand on his back as he stepped up. "We've got enough," was all John said, though the tight drawl was more challenging than agreeable.

"Then you can have the wire. Let's say ten gold per meter for a deposit, with the remainder to be decided later. I'll have to factor in the the effort to finish my other jobs with substitute materials, or the time it'll take to make new naquadrian wire." Todd spread his arms cheerfully. "Please, make yourself at home! I'll go get those eight meters of wiring from the back."

They watched him go, and then Sheppard flicked a finger at Rodney's ear.

"Hey!" he squawked, rubbing at the burn.

"Really, McKay? We're working with Todd again? How long did it take us to get out his debt the last time?"

"It'll be fine," he spit back. "I know what I'm doing."

Sheppard growled, and Rodney stared, fascinated. He could swear the man's hair was actually bristling.

"Look, ten golds a meter is a lot, but I'll pay it myself," he said, trying to be the reasonable one for once. "I've got enough put back from my time at the University, if I take up a few projects on the side. We don't need to use the shop's funds."

Sheppard's face tightened. "That's not the point, McKay. The guy's dangerous."

"I know that! Of course I know that. But he supplies a product, and I want that product. It's just commerce, Sheppard! It's not like we're going into partnership!"

"Now that is a shame," Todd remarked from the doorway, and John and Rodney broke apart to stare at him, Rodney with a hand to his suddenly pounding heart. The man moved like a cat.

"I'm sure a partnership would be very lucrative for both of us. We should talk it over." There was an acquisitive not in his voice that bothered Rodney. It bothered him a lot.

John moved a step in front of him. "He's got partners already, sorry."

Rodney nodded jerkily, automatically. He felt bizarrely threatened by the look in Todd's eyes.

"You're quite sure? Oh, well. Keep it in mind, McKay." Todd smiled toothily some more, and unloaded the bundle of wire from over his shoulder. Even in the dim light of the shop, the alloy gleamed.

"Let me make a few calculations. I'll send you a message, let you know what the final cost with be."

John's lip curled as he took the wire. "Sure."

Rodney made himself walk normally at John's side as they left the shop, instead of running out into the street like he wanted to.

"I'm coming with you when you come back with the payment." John didn't make it an option. "And we're bringing Ronon."

"Sure," Rodney said, trying not to sound as relieved as he was. "Absolutely."

* * * * *

Teyla found Ronon alone at the salvage shop, sitting in the kitchen. He looked up as she entered, and went back to the ledger he was working on.

"They're out," he said simply, and scratched a line through an entry. Payment made.

"Did they tell you where they went?" she asked. There must have been something in her voice. A tightness. An urgency. He raised his head.

"No. They were already gone when I got here." He looked at her, waiting.

She looked past him. The dishes left over from their breakfast were on the counter. John then. Rodney never cleared the table. They hadn't left in a hurry. The chipped plates were neatly stacked.

There was no reason to suspect they were in trouble. Yet. No reason to suspect they were in trouble yet.

"I think," she said, catching Ronon's eye, "that we should find them."

He didn't ask why. Didn't hesitate either. Just laid his pen in the ledger's spine and closed it. He stood, rolling his shoulders, and picked his gun up from the chair beside him, holstering it as he walked past her to the door.

"Come on then. We'll try the docks."

They locked the door as they left.

* * *

Ronon's long legs were an annoyance, but Teyla kept pace easily enough. She'd had years to practice.

"There will be trouble with some faction in the Council, I think," she told him as they walked under the Western Bridge.

"Trouble for Sheppard?" Ronon's question made her pause. They usually assumed it would be trouble for Sheppard, when the Council was involved.

"Possibly," she said finally. "But I am more worried about Rodney at this point. Zelenka's plans will upset some very powerful people, and they know that there are only a few Engineers that could bring them to fruition. Rodney's name will be at the top of that list."

She shook her head, stepping around a coil of rope. Part of its length trailed down into the canal, where a barge had been docked.

"Nothing may have been decided yet. I simply do not wish to take the chance."

Ronon looked down at her. "Your instincts are usually right."

That didn't precisely ease her mind. The last time these particular instincts had made themselves known, she'd spent several days keeping just out of reach of Genii agents, while trying to rescue John and Rodney from Ambassador Kolya's very secure grip.

It still bothered her, that she hadn't been paying enough attention to prevent their being taken in the first place.

She looked up at Ronon. By the tightness to his eyes, and the set of his jaw, he was thinking very similar thoughts.

* * * * *

"Do I get to know why you needed this particular wire so desperately?" John nearly had to shout to be heard over the noise on the docks, even though he was still walking very close to him.

"Just trust me!" Rodney yelled back, dodging a porter with a trunk bigger than she was hitched up on her back. "It'll be worth it."

"And if Todd kidnaps you and sells you to the Wraith, will it still be worth it?" The exasperation in John's voice was edging towards actual anger.

Rodney missed a step.

The Wraith tended to kit their ships out with bits of Ancient tech scavenged from Atlantean prizes, and filled out with bits and pieces of equipment found all over the Pegasus Territories. Sometimes it made a pirate's ship a lethal work of art, and sometimes it blew up in their faces. So Engineers, particularly Northern Engineers, who were used to integrating foreign tech, came in high demand.

Any Engineer who took passage out of Atlantean waters was warned of the danger. Many Captains wouldn't take them on board at all.

But.

Rodney remembered the long months after John's injury, when he'd stand by the Jumper pool and try to get his arm to move the way he needed it to, the way it would have to if he was ever going to use a Wing again.

He thought of how John would deliberately sleep late in the mornings now. How he wouldn't open the curtains until the day was well and truly begun. And he remembered, with a pang, how he used to sneak out of the shop so early the stars were still shining, Wing tucked under his arm, so that he could beat the dawn to the top of the West Tower.

He remembered his promise.

"Yeah," he said, and saw John's eyes sharpen at the hitch in his voice. He shook it off, said firmly. "It'll still be worth it."

John cuffed the side of his head. "Idiot," he said, voice suspiciously rough.

* * *

In the middle of the docks, where the loading and unloading of the ships merged with the loading and unloading of barges lined up in the Main Canal, and dock workers and canal men existed in a constant state of near-warfare, someone grabbed Rodney's arm.

He yelped as it spun him around, and heard John echo him with an oath. The man with the grip on his arm was unfamiliar – shorter than he was, dark eyed. His smile was nearly as toothy as Todd's.

"We need you to come with us, Dr. McKay," he said.

"We?" was all he thought to blurt out, before realizing that John's oath hadn't been an echoing of him, after all. He risked a glance over his shoulder, and saw that John was glaring at another man, blond and broad, who stood in his way.

Smiley tugged Rodney's attention back to him. "Now, sir. Or we'll have to take measures."

Instinct made him dig in his heels. Panic made him open his mouth. "What kind of measures? That's a ridiculous threat. Measures usually imply some sort of calculations. And you just don't look like you do a lot of advanced math. And what are you going to do out in the open like this? There's hundreds of people here! You don't think they'd notice if you start breaking legs?"

"Shut up, Rodney," he heard John snap behind him.

"No, sorry, I won't shut up. Seriously! These thugs can't go accosting people in broad daylight. It's insane!" Also, Smiley's grip was hurting his arm. That was never a good sign.

"Fine." And Rodney heard the meaty thunk as John clocked the blond guy in the head with the bundle of naquadrian wire.

Smiley stopped smiling. His face was downright threatening when he pulled again on Rodney's arm, much more forcefully this time, and spun him around until he had him back to front, his other hand holding a single-barreled sleeve gun under his chin.

Eyes so wide they hurt, Rodney stared as John carefully laid the bundle of wire on Blondie's chest and straightened slowly. "Don't do that," he said. His voice somehow managed to be soothing, and really really not, at the same time. "Really, you don't want to do that."

"No?" Smiley asked. "Then perhaps you'll back away, and I won't have to."

"We're attracting attention," John said. "Is that what you want?" And yes, the activity on the docks was starting to ebb around them, as people caught sight of the gun, and the guy unconscious on the street, one hand hanging down into the canal. A canal man shoved it back up with his barge pole.

"Need a hand, Sheppard?" he called out. Smiley twitched, and John started to smile.

"Not yet, thanks," he said. The smile didn't warm his eyes at all.

"Back away," Smiley barked, gun digging into the flesh under Rodney's jaw. He ground his teeth, and kept his eyes on John.

"Don't know what good that'll do you," someone said from behind them, an unfamiliar voice, polite, but very very firm. "I think you need to drop that gun, sir, and be on your way."

Smiley's grip on his arm would leave a bruise, Rodney was sure. But it loosened, slowly, as Smiley took in the gathering crowd. Most of them were just watching the scene, uninterested in the particulars. But several were eying Smiley with disdain, even anger.

Sheppard's salvage crew had made a lot of friends here, over the years. Rodney felt himself beginning to relax, as much as he could with a gun on him.

But then he saw men shoving through the crowd, Council troops, in their red-gold uniforms. And instead of letting go, Smiley huffed a laugh, and tightened his grip.

"Oh no," he said. "I don't think so."

The polite voice let out an impressive string of curses as the troops started to disperse the unhappy crowd. And then there was chaos.

Something jolted Smiley, hard, and as the gun came away from Rodney's throat, John was there, pulling him towards him. The Council troops were yelling, but the canal man had flung his barge pole into their midst, and it tangled up in several sets of legs, spilling red-gold uniforms over the street. One of them splashed into the canal, where the man splashed around in a rage, trying to get past the canal man and back over the side. Hands were tugging at Rodney and John both, urging them into the thick of the crowd, and Rodney, somehow, found presence of mind enough to yell at John.

"Don't leave the wire! Don't leave the wire!" And John yelled something, incredulous, but he ducked back and picked it up, leaving Blondie on the street, before the crowd surged forward, and Rodney lost sight of him.

* * *

The helping hands ushered Rodney further onto the docks. For a while he twisted against them, looking for John, but eventually, the exasperated reassurances registered.

"He's fine. My first mate has him, he'll meet you at the ship." It was the polite voice again, somewhat less polite now.

"At what ship? And who the hell are you?"

He finally caught sight of his rescuer. He was dressed like a sailor, though the clothes were finer than the usual, and he wore boots, instead of running the docks barefoot. So, an officer then. His tanned face was scowling now, looking over Rodney's shoulder at the commotion by the Canal. But something he saw eased the scowl, and he met Rodney's glare with a quickly blooming grin.

"Stackhouse has it under control now, looks like." The grin flashed even wider, and they came to a stop at the foot of a loading ramp. "Hello, Dr. McKay, I don't think we've met. I'm Captain Lorne. And this," he added, giving Rodney a push up the ramp, "is the Brava."

* * *

The Brava was a sleek ship, built for speed. Her sails, heavy canvas dyed a vivid green, would be canted back and angled sharply to catch the wind when they weren't furled tight at dock. Her rigging was immaculate, lovingly and attentively cared for, and her deck was polished till it shone. Rodney blinked at the sight as Lorne ushered him into his cabin.

"Come on, before they see where you went."

"Is it always so clean?" he blurted out. "I mean, it can't be, right?" Ships at sea just couldn't be kept in such pristine condition, it wasn't possible. And he was probably babbling a bit, if the bemused expression on Lorne's face was anything to go by.

"We're putting a shine on her while we're at dock." The captain's smile was decidedly fond. "We almost lost her on the way in, and the crew's feeling a little possessive."

"Right." So his rescuer was maybe a little too attached to his ship. He'd heard it took some men like that, out at sea.

He looked around the cabin to distract himself while they waited for Sheppard. It was spare, for a wealthy merchant's, simply appointed, though the fittings were of high quality, and the blankets on the bunk were thickly woven Athosian wool, dyed the same rich green as the sails.

An intricately crafted starmap sat on the desk, Ancient crystals glowing softly blue through the cut-out constellations. Northern workmanship showed in the delicacy of the globe's navigational arms, and Rodney wandered over to check it out.

A name, faintly etched on the latitudinal arm, caught his eye.

"Oh," he said, a soft puff of air, surprised.

"Dr. McKay?" Lorne asked.

"Jeannie made this," he answered. "I thought . . ."

"Jeannie?"

"Jeannie McKay. My sister." He swallowed. "She always did like the stars."

"She's very skilled." Lorne's voice was politely interested, but he didn't push for details. Rodney appreciated that.

He didn't have to respond, anyway, because the cabin door opened, and Sheppard came inside, ruffled and irritated, with the bundle of wire slung over one shoulder.

The irritation faded when he saw Rodney, and a bit of the tension left his frame.

"So," he said, dropping the wire with a thud at his feet and folding his arms. "What the hell was that about, Rodney?"

* * * * *

Teyla surveyed the dock with growing alarm. There were Council troops everywhere, bright uniforms flashing through the crowd. Many of the canal men and dock workers seemed to be going out of their way to impede their progress, but the troops were shoving through regardless, hands on their weapons. They were looking for someone, and she had a horrible feeling that she knew who it was.

Behind her, Ronon was leaning nonchalantly on a mooring post, talking quietly to a porter. He glanced over at her and lifted his chin, beckoning.

The porter bobbed his head at her, shifting the straps on his overloaded pack. "Miss Emmagan," he said, voice whiskey burnt and respectful. "I've seen you dance, at Market."

She smiled at him. "I've seen you there," she said. "You gave Jinto a little wooden bird."

He flushed, pleased. "The boy? I've a kid myself, back in Taranis. 'bout his age."

Ronon interrupted. "Go ahead and tell her what you saw," he said.

"Sorry, yeah. Sheppard and the doc, the Engineer, they were stopped by these two guys, didn't recognize them. The skinny one, he put a gun on the doc, and Sheppard went real still. Well, the dock weren't real pleased, seeing as how Sheppard and you guys have been good to us here, and Captain Lorne came over from the Brava with his crew to sort it out.

"But these Council thugs," the porter jerked his chin at the red-gold uniforms, lip curling. "They waded in to help the idiot with the gun. So Lorne took your boys and ran for it."

Teyla, still cold from mention of the gun, let out a breath. "So they are safe?"

"Oh yeah," the porter nodded firmly. "Lorne'll take care of them. But it won't be safe for them on the dock, not while these guys are nosing around."

Teyla exchanged a glance with Ronon, who asked, "You know what these guys wanted with Sheppard?"

The porter shrugged, hitching his pack back up. "Didn't really hear. Seemed more like they were after the Engineer though."

Teyla set her jaw. So it had started. She had hoped they had more time. "Thank you," she told the porter. "Come to us, if you need anything."

He shook his head. "You guys don't owe me nothin' at all," he said. "Not after what you did with those drones. My wife's brother's in the Fleet. Those drones have kept the Wraith off of his ship more than once."

"Still," Ronon said, a gruff smile in his voice. "If you do." He straightened, and the porter bobbed his head again at Teyla and walked away, leaning forward under the weight of his pack.

"The Brava's docked this way," Ronon said, tilting his chin down the dock. "Want to thank the good captain for that bottle of wine?"

"I think we should," she said, glancing sideways at the Council troops, who, frustrated, were beginning to retreat from the dock.

* * *

There was a satisfied edge to the dock's normal din as they moved through it. There was always tension between those on the dock, who considered this part of Atlantis their own territory, and the city guards, especially the Council troops, who were considered little more than personal guards for rich politicians. The politicians who taxed the Fleet, and set tariffs on canal traffic. For many of the workers here, the appearance of those red-gold uniforms was a personal affront.

That someone on the Council had risked sending a whole troop down here, risked a riot, was troubling.

Teyla's unease would not disperse, even though the bustle was returning to normal around them. And Ronon, beside her, was settling into that calm, watchful poise that meant he was ready to tear something apart.

They relaxed, slightly, when they reached the Brava and the first mate waved them aboard without hesitation.

"They're in the captain's cabin," he said, pointing the way. "Go on in."

Teyla thanked him automatically, but they were already on their way.

They opened the door to an argument.

John was leaning forward, jabbing at Rodney's chest with a finger that he swatted away with flailing hands.

"Cut it out!" Rodney snapped, face red with anger. "I told you I don't know what they wanted. I'm not the one the crazy people with weapons usually go after, Sheppard! Not in the last eight years or so."

"Well, you've managed to catch somebody's attention. You're sure you haven't had any other little business deals with Todd, right?"

"No! Hell, Sheppard, do I look like an idiot? Because hello, genius here."

Teyla looked past her friends to see the man she assumed was Captain Lorne, one hip resting on his desk, eyes amused as they met hers.

"Captain," she said calmly. "We came to thank you for the wine you left with Keller."

Lorne smiled as John and Rodney both whipped their heads around to stare at her. "You're welcome!" he chirped. "It was my pleasure."

"Teyla!" Rodney exclaimed. "When did you get here?"

"Just in time for the show, looks like," Ronon said, leaning back against the door.

"Don't be flippant," Rodney growled, "I almost died."

"You didn't almost die! He obviously wasn't going to shoot you."

"No, he was just going to drag me to who knows where!"

Teyla interjected before it could come to wild hand waving again.

"I believe I may have some idea as to what they wanted."

"What?" John and Rodney looked at each other, startled by the simultaneous outburst.

"Zelenka's gotten you in trouble," Ronon drawled, and Teyla smacked him in the arm.

"It was not Radek's intention," she said, "And it was not his fault."

Rodney just looked bewildered.

Teyla sighed. "He has some plans he means to show you, Rodney. Have you not heard?"

"No. What plans? No, I haven't heard. I've been busy."

John's lips tightened, and Teyla knew it was about Rodney's Jumper project, again.

"I believe someone Radek trusted has let slip some information that has put you in danger," she said. "They will try to keep you from working with him on his current project."

"Who's they?" John's question was deceptively calm. But Teyla could see the muscles in his forearms tighten as his kept his hands from forming fists.

"Someone on the High Council, most likely. Considering what the plans are for."

"Yes, just what are these mysterious plans?" Rodney asked, impatience clear in every line of his body.

She hesitated. Rodney would certainly want to be involved, if he knew what Radek was planning. Then she sighed. As far as the opposition was concerned, he was already involved. Ignorance would not safeguard him now.

"The plans are not yet complete," she said. "But from what I could discipher, they are viable diagrams. Radek has developed a plan to integrate the Chair's control crystals with Northern technology."

It was silent in the captain's cabin. Even the dock noise outside seemed muted.

Teyla felt a perverse need to spell it out. "The Chair would no longer require the blood of the Old Ones to operate. If that happens, many members of the High Council will have lost much of their power."

Rodney looked dumbstruck, mouth open, one hand half raised. His eyes glazed over as he considered the work involved to make such a conversion.

John's jaw set, and he stared down at his feet, fists clenching despite his efforts.

Then Rodney snapped his fingers, a sudden flurry of motion as he rounded on John. "This is what you meant!" he yelled, and Teyla was startled to realize it was more excitement than anger in his voice. "You knew this would happen sometime. That's why you were considering Dex's offer!"

"Sure, Rodney. Yes, okay, I was considering it! If I went back to the Council I could prevent this sort of thing!"

So. That's what the visitors had wanted. Teyla glanced at Ronon, and saw the same decision in his face. They wouldn't let that happen.

Rodney took a more direct approach, and punched John in the arm. "Idiot!" he exclaimed. "As if you had that sort of influence."

"I . . . What?"

Rodney rolled on. "I suppose the only way to stop them would be to go over Radek's plans and put them into effect. Weir would go along with it if the plans are good. She's reasonable. She knows its the only long term solution. And then those assholes who want to keep it all to themselves wouldn't have any reason to come after me. Damage done." He paused, gaze catching on the roll of wire at John's feet.

"That'll take a lot of time, though." His voice was suddenly much softer, and Teyla took a step towards him, concerned. "I'm pretty busy right now."

"Rodney, don't . . ."

But Rodney shook himself, and glared him into silence. "I keep my promises, John." And he reached down, lifted the wire, and stalked out of Lorne's cabin. Ronon threw him a startled look, and went after him, but John just stared at where he had been.

To Teyla, who knew him well, he looked lost.

* * * * *

Heroic determination could only keep you going for so long. He'd made it down the gangplank in style, ignoring Ronon's exasperated questions until the big guy had sighed and swung into step at his side. But the bundle of wire was heavy, and every time he saw a flash of red or gold he flinched.

"Here," he said finally, and thrust the wire at Ronon. "You carry it."

"If I do, will you tell me what you're up to?" Ronon sounded annoyed, but he took the bundle.

"I'm finishing Jumper II." Out loud, it sounded so final. Definite. Something fluttered in his ribcage.

Ronon missed a step. "Really?"

"Yes. Probably. If the wire is as well made as it should be." He shook his head. "Either way, I'll make it work. I know what I need to do now."

"And that's more important than getting the Council off your back?"

"Yes." No qualifiers there.

Ronon didn't argue. Didn't try to convince him otherwise, or steer him into the Engineers Quarter to talk to Zelenka.

"Okay," he said, and walked with him, long strides slowing to keep him at his side.

Rodney looked straight ahead, and ignored the way his eyes stung.

* * *

The door to the shop had been kicked in.

Ronon shoved Rodney back, and stepped through first. He took in the mess of the kitchen and the ruin of Rodney's workshop at a glance, and bounded up the stairs to the loft while Rodney was still gaping in the doorway.

A horrible thought reached through the haze in his brain, and he sprinted to the back door – which was still locked.

He let out a shaky breath. There were thick grooves around the keyhole, and scuff marks where someone had tried very hard to kick the door down.

But this door, the door that led to the hidden little courtyard where the pool was, where Jumper II was; this door had always been more secure than the front door. And after Kolya and his goons had introduced themselves, they'd reinforced it even more.

The shop was home, and that invasion had scarred them all. But the pool, and the Jumpers, that was their livelihood. That was the reason there was a shop at all.

And right now, what was behind that door was everything.

Ronon came down the steps two at a time. "All clear," he said. "Anything missing?"

"What? No. I don't know. I need to check on the Jumper."

And before Ronon could stop him, he pulled the key from his pocket and opened the door.

Rather anti-climatically, the courtyard was untouched. Even the beer bottles were right where he'd left them this morning.

He walked to the Jumper and rested his head on the hull. The strange metal felt cool and smooth against his skin.

He knew Ronon was scanning the roofs of the warehouses that ringed the courtyard. Knew that a really determined force could get past the security systems he'd placed in the alleys between those warehouses, narrow and uninviting as they were. Knew that whoever had tried so hard to open that back door wouldn't stop at a few scuff marks and a scratched lock.

But for now, this was the safest place he knew, under the shadow of the Western Bridge, by the cool, still pool that led to the depths of Atlantis.

This was theirs.

He took a deep breath, straightened his bowed back.

"Hey, Ronon. Could you bring that wire out here? I've got work to do."

There was no response for a long moment. And then Ronon walked out, dropping the wire at Rodney's side.

"I'm going to go through the mess," he said simply. "If I think something's missing I'll ask about it."

"Good. Great." He was already running configurations through his mind, deciding on panel placement and options for optimal power distribution. He'd deal with the possible damage to his workshop later.

A thought wormed its way through the diagrams, and he jerked his head up. "Oh, hey. If they come back, yell. I'll back you up."

"Sure, McKay." Ronon was already inside, shutting the door. "I'm locking this. You'll have to knock."

"I mean it!" Rodney yelled. "Don't try to take them on all by yourself!"

* * * * *

"What did he promise?" Teyla asked. John blinked, like he'd forgotten she was there.

"Something that's going to get him killed," he said, after collecting his thoughts.

And Teyla thought of the wings drawn arched over the drawing of the Jumper on their table, scored deeply into the wood.

Oh. That promise.

"Ronon is with him," she said, calmly stepping between John and the door. "Rodney will be fine."

"Yeah," he said, jaw firming. "He will."

Teyla's eyes narrowed as John turned to Lorne and held out his hand.

"Thank you, Captain. I owe you a dept."

Lorne clasped his forearm and all but saluted. "No, sir," he said. "If anything, we're even now."

"Okay?" John shook off his confusion and turned to go, but Teyla held her ground.

"You are not doing what I think you mean to do, John."

"Teyla . . ."

"We have an agreement," she said. "Ronon and Rodney and I. You do not get to sacrifice yourself for us anymore."

John stared at her, mouth open. "You . . . have an agreement?" He shook himself, all over, like a bird shaking water from its back. "We're talking about this later. And I'm not 'sacrificing myself.' I'm just going to talk to my father."

Teyla considered this. It was perhaps reasonable, since Rodney was too caught up in his current project to take on Zelenka's. And even if he did, he would be in danger until it was finished, which could take some time. But.

"I am going with you," she decided. When he opened his mouth she continued, voice serene. "Do not argue."

Lorne, watching by his desk, looked delighted.

* * *

They said little on the barge they hired to take them to the Old City. John leaned back against a barrel of spices in a show of relaxation, though his right hand clenched and unclenched on his knee. The shadows of the bridges crossed his upturned face, and he blinked against the brilliance of the midday sun each time they passed. Teyla watched the play of light and shadow, and sat quietly, hands in her lap.

After a while, as the sound of the water lapping on the sides of the barge and swirling around the canal man's barge pole seemed to push all the other sounds of the city into the background, Teyla began to hum.

It was a child's song, from Athos. A simple melody, almost a lullaby. She had known it all her life.

Here, away from the gray stone and dark green trees of her native city, the song seemed far more complicated.

It gathered something from the interweavings of bridge and tower and canal. It carried along the sound of water, and of wind, and of the countless birds that flew through the city and crossed its streets with flocks of shadows.

It was the same song though. Only the accompaniment was different. It was still a child's song. Almost, a lullaby.

And as she hummed, John closed his eyes. His hand relaxed on his knee.

* * *

The canal man brought the barge to a halt at a dock where the golden streets of the New City met the silver avenues of the Old. This was the last ring of canals. There were no waterways in the Old City.

She reached over and touched John's arm. He came awake at once, and quietly, and blinked up at the towering structures that suddenly loomed in his view.

"We're here," she said.

He stood up, stiff from his sprawl. But he stepped out of the barge without trouble, and offered her a hand up.

"Thank you," she said to the canal man as she paid their fare, and he nodded to her. The glance he sent past her to the streets that wound around the Central Spire was less welcoming.

Canal men were rarely comfortable around dry streets.

"It's not too far from here," John said, stretching. "But we could hail a street skif, if you want."

She was tempted. The skifs were rare in the New City, as the streets there were not, in most places, smooth enough for them to run. They were old Tech, purely Ancient, though they did not require Old Blood to run. Just to set them on their paths. Once initialized, the skifs would run for as long they were powered, and answer the commands of any hand at their helm.

Also, the weather was hotter than she'd like, and she was still weary, not having slept the night before.

But she'd never walked through the Old City. She'd like to see the ancient architecture from ground level.

"Let us walk," she said, half a question, and John smiled. He knew her well.

He led the way, and as she followed, she was struck by the differences. There were nearly as many people in the streets as there were in the New City, but there wasn't at all as much noise. The people moved more slowly, and with more space between them. They smiled often, which was the same, but the smiles were not as sharp, and though they were obviously genuine, they weren't as wide.

There was a reserve in the air. A cloak of dignity, almost solemnity. She thought it was the influence of the Heights – the Central Spire, which shadowed all of Atlantis, and its five sisters, which rose almost as high into the sky.

They were massive, up close. Overwhelming. Graceful, as all Ancient architecture seemed to be, but there was a weight to them that could not be ignored.

The shops were fewer, and spread out further. Clerks kept offices here. Bookkeepers. Factors. Minor officials. This was where the paperwork was done, that kept the vibrant trade of the New City flowing.

And in the Towers, the High Council. And in the lower levels, their families.

She tried to imagine John growing up here, in the hush of the Old City. So far from the bustle and clang of the docks and canals. In a place where the sky seemed very far away, held back by buildings that dwarfed the people at their feet. That made you feel small.

She couldn't do it.

John glanced back at her. Saw her frown.

"It's not so . . . heavy. In the upper levels. There are these enormous windows, where light comes streaming in. And balconies, that I used to play on. Up there, you almost touch the sky. If you train yourself to ignore the railings."

He looked up, and she followed his glance. Very high overhead, tiny glints of light flashed between the Towers, and she blinked, realizing that those were Wings. Messengers, and young daredevils, like that girl that morning, catching the midday light and the powerful thermals that rose around the Towers.

"I think those balconies might be why I was drawn so quickly to Rodney's invention," he said, so quietly she almost missed it. "I wanted to touch that sky."

There was a hunger in his eyes that hurt. "John," she started, but she did not know what to say.

He shook it off. "I know," he said, layering a blank cheerfulness over his voice. "Rodney promised."

That . . . had not been what she was going to say. But it would do, for now. She nodded, and they walked on.

* * * * *

Rodney felt the sun like a weight on his ribs. He lay on his back, a crystal held between his teeth, as he wrestled a panel off of the underside of the Jumper. He needed to make a few adjustments before he connected the last of the wire.

He was so close now, he could nearly taste it. His toes curled in his boots, and he hummed against the crystal in his mouth.

Ronon's voice, raised inside the shop, impinged on his consciousness. He froze, up to his elbows in the Jumper's circuits.

No. Nononono. Not now.

Carefully, as quickly as he could without damaging something, he untangled himself. Laid the crystal gently on the panel he'd removed and set on the sparse grass of the courtyard.

If it was the intruders, back again, Ronon would not let them through that back door. He stood, turning to the shop.

But if they brought enough people to overwhelm Ronon . . . sure, it would take a lot of people, but it wasn't impossible. He looked over at the closest booby-trapped alley. He couldn't let them find the Jumper. Who knows what they'd do to it. And it was so close to being done!

There was a crash inside, muffled by the heavy door.

Rodney bit his lip.

If they were after him, and they found him, they'd probably not bother kicking in the door.

Probably.

Teyla could get Zelenka to finish wiring the Jumper. There really wasn't that much left to do.

"Damn!" He gulped for air, and took off running for the alley.

* * *

When he came skidding around the warehouse to the front of the shop, slightly singed (he'd forgotten about a few of the booby-traps, in the time since they'd been set), he saw Smiley, guarding the door.

He was peering interestedly into the shop, from which crashing sounds were spilling with abandon.

Rodney leaned forward with his hands on his shaking knees, trying to catch his breath.

Smiley didn't notice him.

"What. The hell," he panted, and filled his lungs to shout.

"Hey!" he yelled, as loud as could. "What do you think you're doing?"

Smiley whipped around with a gratifying start, and the sounds inside the shop went silent long enough for Rodney to hear Ronon's enraged response. He winced, apologizing in his head.

He pretended to be surprised when Smiley pulled that damn gun again.

"Dr. McKay," he said, voice forced through gritted teeth, "Really. You are coming with me."

"Fine. Fine. You win. I'll come with you. If you leave Ronon alone."

Even he was surprised at the level of threatening he managed there. Brusk, a little rude even. He thought of Ronon, pinned down with a pile of smiling Council agents. And yes. It wasn't hard to add a threat to the look he gave Smiley.

Smiley, smiled. "Steve," he called over his shoulder. "Kenny. Bob. We've got what we came for. Knock that guy out already."

Rodney almost protested, but Ronon would only try to stop them. They'd shoot him. With guns. That they carried. He swallowed. He was staring so hard at Smiley's gun that he felt like he was going cross-eyed.

It was quiet in the shop now. Smiley's minions came out one by one, and ringed him in. Blondie was one of them, a purpling bruise already on his face. The other two made Blondie look small.

Well. At least they were predictable.

* * * * *

John led her to a gated street just off the main avenue. A guard stopped them there, politely. When John gave his name he started, and whispered something to his partner in the booth.

"Code wires," she murmured, watching the guard's partner using the old apparatus. She hadn't expected such an antique device here.

"They're the most reliable form of quick communication under the Towers," John said, just as quietly. "Line of sight is too short for signal flags. Birds are common enough, but what kind of guard's going to have the time to send one off and wait for a reply? And the wires don't get broken as often as they would in the New City. More shelter from the wind and rain, at least on this level. Not so many vandals."

She nodded thoughtfully.

It only took a moment. The guard read the reply his partner handed him, and opened the gate.

"They're waiting for you in the Hall," he said, stepping back. "Do you remember the way?" The guard flushed a little after he asked. Teyla thought it made him look disarmingly young.

"It hasn't been that long," John replied. There was more humor than irritation in his voice, and Teyla knew he'd seen the red cheeks too.

They took the first turn of the street past the gate. The broad way wound its way in a gradual curve, and sloped slightly upwards. Teyla didn't really notice until the street turned into a tunnel, that she was walking a spiral path that curled up one of the Towers.

"The Hall is about twenty floors up. Still in the bottom third of the Tower. Still happy to be walking?"

"I enjoy walking, John," she answered, unperturbed. "But if you prefer the skif, do hail one."

John looked around at the empty path and sighed.

* * *

The Hall, when they reached it, seemed little more than a break in the spiraling path. There was an unassuming door, flanked by simple lamps that glowed blue when John came near.

Teyla smiled, delighted. It wasn't often she got to see John's effect on Ancient tech. The Jumper responded in much the same way, of course, but that was familiar. This was new.

John placed his hand flat on the door, and it swung into two halves, one swinging upward into the ceiling, the other down into the floor.

There was a cool, directionless light inside.

John paused. "You can wait here, if you want to. No one would bother you."

"Would you like to be alone?"

He started to say yes, she thought, but a muscle in his jaw twitched, and he said instead, sheepishly, "No."

So she went in with him.

* * *

Inside, the Hall was huge. The floor was polished metal, inlaid with delicate geometric designs. Some of the designs were lit from beneath the floor with Ancient crystals, and they lit up when John walked over them.

His boots rang jarringly in the quiet space.

Teyla thought that maybe he was striking his heel a little harder than necessary on the metal floor.

On the other hand, she felt rather insignificant, nearly silent in her soft shoes. It was like the space was swallowing every sound. Including the sound of her heartbeat. She even felt a phantom pressure against her eardrums.

At the far end of the Hall, a small assembly looked on with interest. By the set of John's back, he had expected that, but wasn't pleased.

With the way the assembly was seated, there was obviously a place for a petitioner to stand. John came to a stop a deliberate step to the left of that place, and Teyla saw the closer faces frown.

At the center of the assembly, in a seat that would have been directly in front of John had he stood where they expected him to, there was an older man, with a lined, careworn face, and proud posture.

John spoke first, with a lazy drawl that Teyla knew meant he was furious.

"I asked for a private audience, Dad. Somewhere we could talk. In private." He flicked a glance around the Hall.

Patrick Sheppard considered his son, his face expressionless. "You did not desire a private audience with me the last time we had anything to say to each other. If I recall, you preferred to yell across the High Council Chambers."

John smiled tightly. "I suppose it got the point across."

"If your point was that you wished to cut all ties with your obligations, with your family, to join a heretical Engineer in his disgrace, then yes. It did."

Teyla winced. The bitterness in the old man's voice was painful.

John raised an eyebrow. "Aren't those Wings flying outside the Central Spire right now?"

Sheppard's face hardened further. "An unfortunate blight on the Council's record, I'm afraid. They cater too much to the mob."

John was so still Teyla wasn't sure he wasn't holding his breath.

"You still refer to them like that then. The mob. As if the city is something dirty and dangerous."

"Is it not? You live in its midst now. Can't you see it?"

"Yes. More clearly than you."

Sheppard pinched the bridge of his nose with a tired sigh. "What is it you want?" he asked.

"Who is it, on the council, who wants McKay taken out before he starts his next project?" He looked directly at his father as he asked, and Teyla shivered, knowing that John suspected him.

But Sheppard only blinked, clearly not expecting quite this response.

"McKay?"

"The Engineer. The one I followed into 'disgrace.'"

"I don't keep track of your pets, John."

There were whispers in the assembly now, as its members tried to parse the reason for this meeting. Teyla could have told them. They were a show of force. An intimidation tactic, nothing more. And they weren't working. Neither Sheppard even seemed to know they were still there.

Something in John's stance had relaxed, and Teyla felt like smiling. He no longer suspected that his father was behind this. That was good.

"I'm sure you know all the Council's secrets, Dad, even now that you're retired. That kind of information gathering, it's a hard habit to break."

"And what makes you think that anyone on the Council would have an interest in your Engineer?"

John's smile was suddenly no longer the strained fiction it had been since he entered the Hall. It was blinding, as bright as the crystals in the floor. As the sun in the sky, shining on Wings.

"Because he's about to change the world."

* * * * *

Rodney twisted his hands in his bonds again, wincing as the ties cut into the skin. Again. He should have learned by now. But he couldn't make himself stop.

Blondie (Kenny, he'd learned) grabbed his bound wrists and shook them. "Stop," he said. "Just sit still." It was irritation, not concern.

They sat on the deck of a barge, one of the larger ones, with a wheelhouse closed off with a thick, oiled canvas. Crates and boxes blocked the entrance, and the canal man had been well bribed.

He made a derogatory remark about the livid bruise that was causing Kenny's left eye to swell shut, but he'd stuffed a gag in his mouth the last time he'd done that, and all he heard was a muffled mumble.

Kenny shifted uncomfortably, and Rodney felt a small and vicious pleasure. He'd been limping heavily when he came out of the shop. Ronon got some good hits in before they took him out.

How did they manage that, he wondered. Kenny had already been unconscious once today, and the other two were big, but they didn't look smart. And Ronon was both.

They'd cheated. He just didn't know how.

He could only hope that whatever they'd used hadn't had lethal results.

The barge was moving now past the Engineers Quarter. He could hear the water wheels. He hoped Zelenka didn't get in to much trouble. A little bit of trouble, that was only fair. A chase through the Market tonight maybe, in the dark and the fire. But nothing like this.

He wasn't the genius, after all. Wasn't a real threat.

Besides, he'd be needed to finish the Jumper. Since Rodney probably wouldn't be able to now.

The water wheels were receding – which meant Zelenka was probably still safe. It also meant that he was moving towards the docks, and an uncomfortable suspicion coiled in his gut.

And again, unconsciously, he twisted his hands in their ties. He felt blood start to trickle down the inside of his left wrist, and hissed into the gag.

Kenny moved to stop him again, and he growled at him, startling himself and earning a retaliatory cuff to the side of the head.

"We could knock you out as easily as we did your friend," he said. "Only reason we haven't was we didn't want to have to carry you. But if you keep this shit up . . ." He let his voice trail away in what he probably thought was a threatening manner.

But Rodney had been threatened by the best. This guy, compared to Ambassador Kolya or the Dean of Atlantis University, was an amateur.

They glared at each other for a few more minutes, while the sounds of the dock grew louder. Then the barge swung round into a shallow offshoot of the canal, and Rodney's glare was abandoned for a renewed effort with the ties.

Shallow bits of canal like this, like private waterways, were used mostly by shop owners who dealt with heavy freight, so that the cargo barges they hired could pull up right at their doors.

Shop owners, and smiths.

When Todd's smiling face appeared in the curtain's cap, Rodney couldn't even pretend to be surprised.

* * * * *

Sheppard frowned at his son. "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "The world doesn't need changing."

One of the assembly men stood up before John could snap back at his father. He was a smaller man, built like a clerk, with dark, thinning hair and worried eyes. But his voice was firm as he spoke up.

"This assembly is not meant to preside over family spats, Sheppard. If you know of a crime being plotted by a Councilman, than tell us all, and let us get back to business. And you," he said, narrowing his eyes at John, "What makes you think a Council member would have any interest in 'taking out' your friend the brilliant Engineer?"

Sheppard glared over at the assembly man. "Woolsey," he started, but John spoke over him.

He looked straight at the man, and spoke simply. "There is a group of Engineers who intend to integrate the Chair's operating system with a Northern power source, so that Atlantis' safety would no longer be dependent on the dwindling reserves of the Old Bloodlines. They need my friend, the 'brilliant Engineer,' to look over their plans, and put them in motion. He's the best at what he does, and what he does is convert Ancient tech . . . into something useful." His voice hitched in the middle of his last sentence, but there was no other sign of distress in his bearing. Teyla moved a step closer, quiet in her soft shoes.

Woolsey stared down at him, expressionless. The assembly behind him had erupted into strangled whispers. They might as well as been yelling, for the way the hissed words bounced around the empty metal room. Sheppard, on his dais, just shook his head, disgusted.

As Woolsey failed to respond, John's back stiffened. Teyla's chest hurt, and she realized she was holding her breath. Had been, for a while.

But he moved, suddenly enough to make Sheppard start as he turned towards him. "Patrick," he snapped. "Tell us what you know of this."

Sheppard actually looked cowed, and at that moment, old. John actually rocked back on his heels.

When Sheppard spoke, it was to Woolsey, not to John.

"Councilman Makepeace," he began, and had to clear his throat. "Makepeace came to me with some concerns about the stability of the High Council. I advised him as to the dangerous scheming of some Engineers my contacts had revealed to me. What he did with that information, I do not know."

Woolsey turned to the assembly. "Brendan, Miko . . . oh, stop dithering, Brendan! The two of you go to tell the guards to bring Councilman Makepeace to this assembly."

Teyla stepped up to stand at John's shoulder, astonished at this sudden decisive action. John looked over at her, and she saw the giddy disbelief there.

"No one ever talks to him like that," he muttered. Knowing he meant his father, and that a lot of the hurt of still there, Teyla unobtrusively reached for his hand.

Awkwardly, he let his fingers slide between hers. She held tight, as Woolsey attempted to put the assembly back in order.

* * *

Makepeace came in frowning like he had no idea what was going on.

By this time Woolsey had well and truly taken charge. The assembly sat quietly around him, and he'd found chairs for John and Teyla. They sat now to the left of the dais. John's father sat there still, but the dais was no longer the center of attention, and he looked at his hands in his lap, ignoring them all.

Woolsey stood on the floor. But no one would mistake him for a petitioner. Not, at least, once he opened his mouth.

"What is the meaning of this, Woolsey?" Makepeace asked, eyes flicking to John and Teyla. John leaned his chair back on its hind legs, and smirked at him. It was a particularly predatory expression.

Woolsey stood with his hands behind his back, shoulders straight, chin up. His answer, when it came, was respectful, but firm.

"There are some troubling rumors we must clear up, Councilman Makepeace. Thank you for joining us."

"You hardly gave me much choice. What 'rumors' are you referring to? There are always attempts to discredit Councilmen, as you well know."

Woolsey turned away from him, and nodded at Teyla. "Miss Emmagan, if you'd please."

She had never stood before a City Assembly before. Certainly had never accused a Councilman of conspiracy to harm. And that Councilman was looking at her like a piece of canal refuse unexpectedly washed up on his dock.

But she performed, every night, in fire and darkness as the Market burned. She had fought off Genii agents and rescued her friends from their grasp. She sparred with Ronon, on a regular basis.

And John was at her side.

She stood gracefully, without hesitation. She walked to the center of the floor, and nodded briefly, as an equal, to the assembly.

"I run a system of messengers," she started, with her performance voice. "This morning I received a notice."

* * * * *

Rodney shivered in the dark, and tried not to move. In the back of Todd's cellar was a hole, damp and hot and heavy. He had scratched and clawed and kicked when Todd shoved him down there, but he wasn't the kind of guy who could fight off a guy like Todd even when he wasn't tied and bruised and frightened.

He shut his eyes tight against the darkness and followed the Jumper's diagrams in his head. Gleaming naquadrian wire winding through systems so complex they were works of art, and so streamlined they were simple. Once you knew how to read them. And Rodney could. Like his native tongue.

"It's almost finished," he said aloud, and flinched when the sound bounced back from a wall that was far too close.

"Zelenka," he muttered, softer now. "Radek. You've got to finish it for me. You owe me, after this." He giggled, a tense, unhappy sound, and curled into a tighter ball. "Promise," he said, glad, even if no one else could hear him, that the broken plea was muffled against his knees.

Pathetic, McKay, he thought. It's just a cellar. A hole in a cellar. Totally part of a cellar. They're not going to leave you in the cellar. Oh gods, would they leave him in the cellar?

No, they'd sell him to the Wraith. Right. That was so much better.

Sadly, it really was.

A pirate ship, on the open sea. He could totally take that over. Screw the systems so completely the pirates would never find Atlantean waters.

Which wouldn't really help him, he supposed.

But it wouldn't be so bad, lost on the open seas. All that sky, no land in sight. No walls. No tiny little holes in the dirt.

Unless the pirates figured out he'd messed up their ship. And they threw him in the hold, as punishment. The narrow, curving hold of a ship build for speed and stuffed with stolen cargo.

No. He'd have to make sure he was still valuable. And that he was needed out on deck.

He could navigate! He could read the stars. He could build a starmap, like Jeannie's. He'd taught her how to do it in the first place. He could remember how.

But he wouldn't teach any of the pirates how to read it, not even if they threatened.

If they knew how to read it they wouldn't need him. If they didn't need him they'd either throw him overboard or lock him in the hold.

It scared him that he didn't know which fate would be worse.

But either, he knew, would be better than being here.

He rocked, pressing his face tighter still against his legs. If he made himself as small as possible, there would be more space between him and the walls.

* * * * *

Teyla's throat was dry when she'd finished. One of Woolsey's assemblymen – Miko, she thought, a dark haired, diffident young women – brought her a glass of water.

No one said anything. Not even Makepeace.

Finally Woolsey stepped up to her. "Miss Emmagan," he asked, looking her straight in the eye. "From your knowledge of the skills of both these Engineers, do you believe that they could pull this off? Do they have the skill to integrate the Chair with Northern technology?"

In front of her, Makepeace's face was thunderous. A few of the assemblymen looked troubled, but the majority of them waited for her answer with wide eyes.

"Yes," she said. "They are the only ones I know who could."

"And you could point out the members of the Council troop who came to the docks today?"

John was there then, and Teyla blinked. She hadn't heard him get up. "I could," he said. "I saw them clearly."

Woolsey nodded. Once.

Turning to Makepeace, he gestured to the guards, who still stood at the door. They came up behind the Councilman, who started to object, and stopped, looking at the assembly's reaction. His gaze lingered on Sheppard, but the old man hadn't looked up at all through Teyla's account.

"Councilman," Woolsey began. "You are being held on suspicion of working against the best interest of the City of Atlantis. You may argue your case before Chairman Weir. We shall also consider any and all testimony brought forth by the troops who entered the docks today, as to what their orders were, and who gave them. Do you have anything to say to the Assembly at this time?"

Makepeace's mouth thinned. He looked over Woolsey's head, and said nothing.

"I see." Woolsey nodded to the guards, and they led the Councilman away.

The Assembly dispersed, muttering amongst themselves. Teyla caught some excited speculation as to what the change in the Chair's functionality would mean for the structure of Atlantean government, and shivered.

This really was such a big thing.

"It won't actually change that much," John said beside her. "Not at first. The traditions are pretty entrenched."

"It did not take long for the Wings to change things," she noted.

John paused, considering. "No, it didn't. But the Wings are little more than toys to most of the people in the city. The Chair . . . that's something else. They'll keep things pretty much the same until they're comfortable with the idea."

"Rodney and Zelenka have yet to even start working on it." A worry was nagging at her. something's happening the note had said. Something was already in play.

"While we were here, before Makepeace was brought in, he could have made any number of orders." From John's sudden stillness, the thought had struck him as well.

"Woolsey," he called, striding over to the smaller man. "We need to go and check on our friends. Do you know where to find us, when you need us?"

Woolsey nodded, distracted. "Yes, go, we'll make arrangements for the trial."

And they left. John never once looked back at his father, who sat still on the dais. Looking at his hands.

* * *

They took a skif, on the way back. Teyla suspected she would have normally enjoyed watching the City flow by in silver and light. But today, there was an urgency building in her.

When they reached the canal, John pressed a whole gold piece into a canal man's hand, and asked for speed.

The canal man, or woman rather, a wizened little grandmother who showed three teeth when she grinned at them, took to that request with gusto. Her barge pole splashed fiercely, and banged against slower barges with abandon. Curses and jeers followed in their wake – most invoking the little canal woman by name.

She brought them straight through to the Engineers Quarter before she ran out of canal large enough for her barge.

John smacked a kiss on the grandmother's forehead, and she smacked his ass as he hopped out of the barge.

"Do we take a smaller barge down the secondary canals?" Teyla asked him, smiling at the look on his face.

He looked at the sky. The sun was beginning to sink. "No," he decided. "The Market barges will be coming in soon. It'll be faster to walk."

Teyla looked to the sun with a frown. "I think I will not dance tonight." Her eyes burned with tiredness already. "I should let the musicians know that they are on their own."

"You wanna stop by your place, find a pigeon?"

She was already walking. "Later," she answered him. "Later will be soon enough."

John's legs were not so long as Ronon's, she decided. But his steps were quicker. He was just as difficult to keep up with. She did, as she always did, but her hips ached with the stretch of it.

She would sleep late tomorrow, she was sure. Sleep even through the massive quaking of the Horns.

* * *

The shop door was open when it came into sight. They broke into a sprint, and now, Teyla was the faster. She reached the shop first, and saw the wreckage.

"Rodney!" she called, stepping lightly over an overturned and broken chair. Behind her, John was lighting the lamps.

Something moved in the retreating shadows, and Teyla dropped to her knees beside Ronon. He lay half under the counter in Rodney's workroom, blearily blinking at the light.

On the floor, not far from him, a drying rag smelled so strongly of Hoffan poppy that it was making her lightheaded. John kicked it away from them.

Ronon's eyes were glazed, unfocused. But he tried to get his arms under himself, lever himself up. "Stop. Easy, big guy," John murmured. He shoved at his shoulder until he got Ronon on his back, and Teyla straightened his legs. She frowned anxiously at the bruises she could see, but there did not appear to be any broken bones.

"Any sign of Rodney?" he asked her, and she shook her head.

"Idiot," Ronon slurred, and tried to sit up. John pushed him back flat.

"What happened? What did he do?"

Ronon growled, a much less threatening sound than usual. "Was out back, when . . . then he wasn't. Went out front. Called . . . called them out. Idiot." That last came out clearly, expelled on a frustrated breath.

John and Teyla looked at each other. A curl of helpless anger was wrapping itself around her spine. But they couldn't leave Ronon, not like this. He'd wonder out, looking for Rodney. If he didn't fall in a canal and drown the men who attacked him could finish him off. If a random mugger didn't first.

But they couldn't stay here, either. Who knew where they'd taken Rodney?

* * * * *

He was getting used to the hole. Sure. He could breathe almost normally now. He only choked a little on the damp, heavy air.

That was good, right? Breathing was good.

He risked letting go of his legs and tried to raise his bound arms. He felt torn skin crack, and new blood wet his wrists.

"Damn," he whispered, out of more inventive curses. His throat was raw with them all.

He was probably going to lose his arms. The lacerations on his wrists would get infected in this dark, dirty little hole. He'd get gangrene. His arms would turn green and fall off.

Hey, there was an upside to being in the dark. He wouldn't see his arms start to rot.

He'd probably smell it though. He heard the smell was pretty much unmistakable.

He heard himself giggling, and cut it off short. Only mad men giggled like that in dark little holes in the ground.

He tried yelling again. Pleading with Todd this time – he had no dignity left anyway. Even the anger was gone. Buried. In the dirt.

But his voice was a pathetic rasp. He could barely hear it himself. There was no way Todd was going to hear him offering all his worldly possessions and almost anything he thought he could steal if he'd just let him out.

He'd been in here for days. It must have been years.

Odd, that his arms hadn't rotted away yet.

* * * * *

Teyla looked up sharply as running feet sounded outside the shop. John turned with her glance, and stood, pulling a piece of piping off of the mess that used to be Rodney's workbench. He stood, ready, between the door and his friends.

But when the young man came to a skidding stop in front of the open door, he relaxed, and went forward.

"Stackhouse! What's going on?"

One of Lorne's crew, Teyla remembered. He was gasping for breath, and staring wide eyed at the mess in the shop.

"Captain . . . " he managed, at last. "Captain Lorne says to bring you at once. The guy from before, the one you knocked out with the coil of wire, he's drinking at Caldwell's." Stackhouse took one long, deep breath and stood straight. "He's saying something you're gonna want to hear."

"Go." Teyla looked down, startled. Ronon looked past her to John. "Go," he said again. "We'll follow you." He looked much more lucid now. But the arm under her hand still trembled.

John hesitated, but Teyla lifted her chin. "We will not be far behind," she said. And he went, running with Stackhouse. He took the piece of piping.

Teyla listened as the sound of their steps bled into the night.

"You too," Ronon said, giving her a halting shove. "He'll need back up."

"He will have Lorne and his crew. They are more than capable."

"Go."

Quite calmly, she sat back on her heels. "I will not leave you here alone."

Ronon drew breath to argue, and coughed instead, holding his ribs.

"Fine," he choked out, and pushed himself up.

"What are you doing?" she exclaimed. "You should not."

"You won't leave without me? Fine," he said again, more firmly. He grabbed Rodney's workbench and pulled. The muscles in his arms shook, but he managed to get to his feet. He swayed there, but when he let go of the bench, he did not fall.

"See?" he asked, smiling crookedly at her. "If you didn't really want to leave, you'd have stopped me."

She closed her mouth and glared at him.

"Come on," he said. "I'm going to need a hand."

* * *

The sun was well on its way down now. The dying light fell like molten gold over the streets and burned on the canals. The lights of pubs and taverns were just starting to come to life – reds and greens and blues and hot, vivid whites.

In the distance, she could hear the first swirls of music from the Night Market, as musicians tuned their instruments. The roar of the docks was paused. A breathless sort of waiting fell on the city.

And then, as Teyla came onto the docks proper, Ronon's hand heavy on her shoulder, the last light sank into the sea.

As the first, lonely Horn of the Last Hour raised its voice, the silk lanterns of the Market were swung up on their poles. Silk banners brushed against Teyla's arms, her face. Strangely colorless in the dark, they went up in silence – only the sound of the Horn shivered in the air.

And then the secondary Horns broke out in a crescendo of achingly pure notes. The torches all were lit with a rush of flame, and the lanterns blazed with color. The docks shook with the sound of thousands of voices raised in cheers, and the Horns rose over them all.

It was a dizzying, impossible thing to witness from its heart. Even though she was familiar with it, Teyla stumbled, and nearly went down under Ronon's suddenly unbalanced weight.

"Shit," Ronon breathed next to her ear. "That's . . ."

"Yes," she said.

They went on, pushing now through a gaily teeming crowd of Market-goers.

The docks looked impossibly different. They almost missed Caldwell's pub, ringed as it was in silk and fire.

But Lorne grabbed Ronon's other arm as they went by. His face was grim as he took his weight from Teyla's shoulder. She nodded to him, and stepped free, standing on her toes to look into the common room.

Lorne touched her arm, pointed.

In the back of the pub, Caldwell stood with his back to a door. His arms were crossed and his face was grim. Teyla blinked. He was guarding it. He never let people use his pub for less than honest reasons – if he'd let John back there with an enemy, with John in the mood he was in . . . What had this man been saying, to get him to agree to this?

She looked at Lorne, incredulous. But even his ready grin was gone, wiped off his face. Without further hesitation, she pushed her way into the pub.

The crowd was raucous, and so much taller than her. But eventually she made it back to Caldwell. He looked at her, jaw set.

"Go in then," he said. "Try to keep him from killing the guy in my pub," and stepped aside.

The room was full of wine barrels. Great, heavy things, they threw massive shadows through the space. In the darkest of them, a battered blond man was tied to a chair. John stood beside him, slowly wrapping his bleeding knuckles with a strip of cloth. One of Lorne's men sat nearby, watching the blond man with steady eyes.

The piece of piping that John had taken from the shop lay against a barrel on the far side of the room. As if it had been flung away.

When Teyla got close enough, she saw that John was shaking.

He looked up at her approach, and she nearly shied back at the look in his eyes. It was a feral thing. A thing with teeth bared and snarl rising. But it faded, as he recognized her. It faded, and left emptiness. And a touch of shame.

She steadied herself. Took his hand, and wrapped the cloth more securely around his knuckles.

"He admitted to taking him. There were three others." John murmured. His voice was distant, cold. Some other time, she might have been alarmed at that.

"He said he was tied. Bleeding. Gagged." He flexed his fingers under the wrapping.

"I may have hit him too hard. He lost consciousness. Markham had to pull me off."

At his name, Lorne's man looked up and met her eyes. She nodded, and he went back to watching for signs of consciousness.

"I shouldn't have . . ." The distance was less, suddenly. John's voice trembled. "We still don't know where he is."

"Ronon is outside, with Lorne," she said, as calmly as she could into the gap. "Caldwell is just beyond that door. As soon as he wakes. As soon as we know. We'll go get him."

But he wasn't finished. "He said . . . they buried him. They put him in a hole, and buried him alive."

* * * * *

If he didn't move, it wasn't so bad. He didn't bump into the damp, muddy sides of the hole. Didn't see it falling in on him in his head.

If he didn't move. It was fine.

But his muscles screamed at the tight ball he had curled himself into.

He had to move.

* * * * *

The blond man moved, after an eternity of smothering silence. They all three froze, watching him. He groaned, and gave his head a tiny, cautious shake.

John walked over to him with a step so controlled Teyla couldn't swear she saw him move. He sat on his heels and lifted the man's chin with a gentle, steady hand.

He met his eyes. The man stiffened. Didn't move.

Like a mouse, Teyla thought suddenly. Like the mouse she saw when she was child. Still as stone as the snake stared it down.

John's bandaged hand made a fist at his side. Teyla saw the dark spread of blood seeping through the cloth, though there was no color in these shadows.

But he kept it at his side. He asked, quietly. Calmly.

"Where did you take him?"

* * *

They opened the door and Caldwell jumped. He looked over their heads at the indistinct figure by the wine barrels.

"He's alive," John said, voice cold again. With impatience this time. And a tightly throttled rage. "Markham will get take him out of here."

"Where's the Engineer?" Caldwell's voice was just as cold, and Teyla knew he'd heard what the blond man had said.

It was bad enough, thinking of Rodney trapped underground. They all knew about Rodney and small spaces, and that alone made it hard for her not to hit something. To stay calm.

But, for a Lantean. For John, and Caldwell. Lorne and his men. Someone who grew up in this city, where even the buildings reached for the sky . . .

Not even the dead were buried here, not the worst of traitors. That was a horror relegated to nightmares alone.

John swallowed, looking already past Caldwell, to Ronon at the door. By his stance, nearly vibrating with rage even though he was still listing sideways, Lorne had already told him what they did to Rodney.

"Thank you," he said. "For this. But we'll take care of it. There'd be a mob, otherwise. And in a riot, they might escape."

Caldwell grimaced. Nodded. Stepped back.

And John was pushing through the crowd. Teyla followed, as close as she could. She looked back once. Caldwell was staring into the open room. From here, she could see only shadows.

* * *

It was just the four of them. Her and John and Ronon. And Lorne, who'd insisted. They could use him, anyway, as Ronon was still unsteady on his feet.

They crouched at the edge of the canal, in the bend where Todd's private docking canal broke away. The docking ramp cast a shadow there, deepened by the blaze of light from the Market.

In the shop, they could see movement.

"There should be three of them. Two of the three that jumped Ronon in the shop, and Todd." John's voice was still calm.

"Where's the last guy from the shop?" Ronon asked. He could carry his own weight now. Mostly.

"He said they sent the last guy to report to Makepeace."

Teyla let the satisfaction from that thought rise a bit before she pushed it down. Woolsey's men would collect him as neatly as a gift wrapped and posted.

"At least one of them has a gun."

"Which one is he?" Ronon held his gun up. "I'll take him."

Teyla frowned and pushed his arm down. "Keep that set to stun, please. You can't see straight."

"Besides," Lorne added. "I've got a gun too."

"Wonderful," John said. "Are we ready now?"

* * *

Teyla saw the fight in flashes. Someone, in the chaos of the first rush, had knocked out the lamp. She thought perhaps it had been Ronon, falling over.

The red light of the market came through the window, blocked whenever someone passed in front of it. At some level, she found the effect disturbing.

But mostly, she was concentrating very hard on staying out of Todd's much longer reach.

She wasn't actually sure how she'd been the one to corner the smith. She was pretty sure, in fact, that John had tried to. But the dark haired, wiry one. The one with the gun. He'd gotten in the way. Now he was holed up behind the the counter, taking potshots at anyone who got too close.

The gun fired energy pulses. They were red too, which didn't help the lurid coloring of the fight. It only fired one at a time, and the pulses didn't have much of a range.

Still. It kept the others over there, while Teyla and Todd found themselves alone.

She swept a leg out from under him, and he fell, heavy. But fast – he was up again before she could kick at his throat.

She wished for her bantos rods. These chair legs were useful, but didn't have much reach.

She spun closer as he was off balance, striking hard with the chair legs to his ribs and upper thigh. Then away again, before he could clench with her.

Get him on the ground, she repeated to himself. Get him on the ground.

It was a dance of sorts.

She let the red light flare into torches, sputtering around her stage, and she danced.

* * *

After a moment, Teyla realized that she had stopped moving. Alarmed, she raised her weapons, but Todd was unmoving on the floor, and she realized that she'd won. The smith had a goose egg rising on his forehead.

Not knowing how long he'd be down, she tore strips from the hem of her tunic, and used the chair legs to twist them tight around his wrists and ankles. Then she made for the main room, where the others were.

But as she stepped through the door, she saw Ronon and Lorne tying the gunman, and John, standing up from the bundled figure of the third man.

They were done.

Lorne looked up and blinked at her bared midriff. Teyla barely noticed.

"The cellar," she said, and spun away.

* * * * *

Something was happening. Rodney felt the dirt on the trap door over his head flaking down.

Oh.

The hole was finally caving in for real. It had already done so so many times in his head it didn't even make him flinch.

But no. That wasn't it. Something heavy was moving in the cellar above the hole.

How strange.

He thought, briefly, that he should care more about that.

But he didn't.

* * * * *

There was a pallet full of steel ingots over the trap door in the cellar. John and Ronon swore every oath they could remember as they hauled on it. Lorne and Teyla saved their breath for pushing.

Eventually, they'd freed it.

"It's locked," Lorne announced, staring a the padlock from his slump against the pallet. He looked offended. As though a locked door, under that heavy pallet, was somehow bad form.

"Should we find the key?" Teyla asked. She felt slow. Wrapped in wool.

"No. Move." John, too, was out of breath. But he swung the ax over his shoulder without hesitation.

"Wait! Be careful." Lorne nodded at the trap door. "It's not deep," he said, tiredness lapping at his words. "Don't hit him."

John paled, and nodded jerkily. Teyla swayed on her feet. Ronon steadied her.

He let the ax fall onto the lock. Once. Twice. Metal shrieked, but in the dim light Teyla wasn't sure whether that was the lock or the ax.

Never once did she consider that Rodney might not be in there.

* * * * *

It was really falling now. He ducked his head into his curled arms and waited. For rescue. For slavery. For the end of the world. He wasn't really sure anymore.

Whatever it was, it would be over soon.

* * * * *

The lock finally snapped. Metal ricocheted through the air, whistling past Teyla. She ignored it. The door was unlocked.

They paused, all four of them.

"Come on then," John said, and reached for the ring.

The door came up easily. Lightly. John almost overbalanced and fell into the hole, but Ronon grabbed his shirt and pulled him back.

"Gods." John's voice was broken.

He reached for him, for the curled figure that Teyla could barely see. Covered in mud and so still it was frightening.

John reached for him, but Ronon got there first. He pulled his friend out of the hole with violent urgency. A cursory check revealed no major injuries, and Ronon pulled him over his shoulder.

"Getting him out," he said, not waiting. Teyla and the others followed.

They left Todd and the others tied up in the shop. They didn't matter now.

Ronon lay Rodney at the edge of the canal, and sat behind him, pulling him up into this chest. John shrugged out of his shirt. He soaked it in the water, and gently wiped the mud away from his friend's face.

Teyla took his wrists. She undid the ties with a soft touch, careful of the torn and dirty flesh. She heard fabric ripping behind her, and knew it was Lorne.

"Here," he said, handing her the cloth. She could see new bruises on his pale skin, but he grinned at her. "He'll be all right," he said. "You got there in time."

"Yes," she said, quietly dabbing at the lacerations with the dampened strip of Lorne's shirt. "I think so."

* * * * *

There was a trial, of course. He didn't have to testify, for which he was grateful. He didn't even have to be there. Sheppard did, and Teyla. Lorne, too, with testimony about how they found out about Todd. And his cellar. And the hole in his cellar.

He shivered. Frowned at his shaking hands until they weren't shaking anymore.

But Ronon sat out back and stretched in the sun by the pool.

"You could hand me those pliers, if you're going to hang around."

"Or I could just hang around. Make sure you don't run off and do something stupid."

Rodney sputtered, flailing a handful of wire in Ronon's general direction. He couldn't actually see him, with his head stuck in the open panel.

"It wasn't stupid! It was heroic! Self-sacrificing!"

"Stupid. They weren't going to get through that door, McKay."

"I know that," Rodney muttered. "But they might have killed you, trying."

"What was that?"

"That's not the point," he yelled.

And oh look! There. Way back behind the cables and the secondary crystal bank, in the third row of the first column of the tertiary crystal bank, the crystal had gone black. He stretched – his finger tips just barely brushed it.

"Damn it. Can't you please hand me those pliers?" he could use them for a little extra reach.

"No need to yell."

Rodney yelped, and nearly pulled loose some very important wiring, when Ronon replied so close to him.

"Don't do that."

"No? All right, I'll just hang on to these then."

"Wait, no. You brought me my pliers? Give 'em here."

He felt the cool slap of the metal in his hand.

"You're welcome, McKay."

"Yeah, whatever." If he could maneuver them past that set of crystals and wire netting there . . . "Ha!" Now he just had to draw it out – carefully, carefully. He didn't want a loose crystal lost in the Jumper's guts, rattling around and doing who knows what damage.

Steady. Steady. "Got it!" he yelled, and thrust the pliers holding the dead crystal into the air. "Oops." He pinched the pliers shut just a bit too far.

He could hear Ronon applauding, a slow, formal clap, while he brushed powdered crystal off of his ribs.

"You're an ass!" he yelled, and Ronon laughed.

He hummed to himself as he fished a spare crystal out of his tool bag. Something he'd heard Teyla singing, now and then. A child's song. He liked the way it seemed to resonate with the wiring. Complementary frequencies, or something.

Gently, even more gently, he took the new crystal in the pliers' grip and maneuvered it into the empty slot. He pushed, so slowly, until he felt it click into place. It lit up, properly, that soft, white blue. He grinned back at it, head nearly upside down so he could see it.

There. All done.

It took him a minute to muster the energy to try to pull himself out of the Jumper. It felt like all the nervous energy that had kept him working the last few days had drained away. Finally, he sighed, and called for help.

"Hey. Ronon. Pull me out?"

A moment later he felt Ronon's hands on his ankles, and he was pulled out into the courtyard.

"Something wrong?" Ronon's upside down face considered him.

"No." He looked up, straight up, into a blue that went forever, and felt a small, crooked smile settle on his face. "I'm done."

Ronon stared. "You're done?"

"All done." He waved a hand expansively, spare wires flashing in the sun. "Finished."

Ronon looked at the open panel. "Are you sure?"

"Yep."

"Panel's open."

"It shuts."

"Tools and beer cans scattered all over."

"I'll pick 'em up." Rodney waved a hand again, encompassing all the . . . clutter.

"I'm gonna take a nap first though," he told Ronon. "Just here, in the sun. Wake me up before they get back, and I'll clean it all up."

Ronon said something in reply, but Rodney was already sliding into sleep.

For the first time in days, he dreamed of wide open skies.

* * * * *

She yawned as they left the Tower, and it startled her. Something so ordinary, after all that.

She heard a soft laugh, and turned to see Lorne and John looking innocently back at her.

"Tired?" John asked. Birds would have landed in his hair. "Want to take a skif?"

Lorne caught her eyes and raised an eyebrow.

"No, thank you," she said. "I want to walk."

They flanked her as they walked off the spiraling path, and the three of them chatted about nothing. Lorne was quickly proving to be good company, even when there was not a crisis in the works. He was leaving in the next few days, going back to sea. But he'd promised to bring them anything interesting he found out there when he came back.

She had already found a present for his leave taking (a thank you, really, but he had already refused gratitude).

She walked on, between her friends, and wondered how Ronon and Rodney were doing at the shop. For the first time in days, the thought did not bring panic in its wake. She reveled in its absence.

* * *

They walked the whole way, crossing canals on the bridges. They stopped at shops along the way – Teyla took her time choosing a new scarf, a fragile, rose colored wisp of knobby Belkan silk, embroidered with a single pale bird taking wing. Lorne picked up a crate full of books for his voyage – he'd leave them in port as he finished them, he explained, one book in each port, left somewhere someone would find it. By the time he came back to Atlantis, he said, he'd be leaving his last book.

John tried to urge them on as the shadows drew longer. But Teyla caught Lorne's eye, and mimed winding a watch – just a little more time.

So Lorne pulled them all into an artists studio, and made them pick out colors for his next painting. He and Teyla argued cheerfully over which shade of blue best matched the deep waters around the city.

After that though, John's impatience was making him frown. Teyla looked at the sky, and nodded to Lorne. It was time.

* * *

Lorne left them at the docks, crate of books in hand. Teyla hugged him, and he blushed, though his grin never faltered.

John teased her about that all the way home.

They found the shop empty when they got back. Teyla saw the sudden tension in John's face, and quickly reminded him that Rodney had been working in the back all day.

"Come on," she said. "Ronon will be watching him."

The shop was neater than it was the last time, at least. The new chairs looked too bright against the worn cabinets.

They came through the back door to find the late afternoon sun shining from the pool. Liquid light splashed as Rodney kicked his feet through the water.

"Quit it, Ronon!" he yelled, as another rock plopped into the pool, sending a splash straight at Rodney's face.

"If you hit the Jumper I'm making you hammer out the dents!"

"The Jumper's fifteen feet beneath the surface. That little rock won't leave a mark."

"That was a boulder," Rodney groused. "It could crush it."

"You'd crush it. Should I push you in?"

"HaHa. See how much I'm laughing here?"

John slowly relaxed, listening to them bicker, and Teyla smiled broadly at them all.

Days like this . . . she eyed Jumper II, sitting pristine and quiet in the courtyard. Days like this were perfect.

"Boys," John finally interjected. "Did either of you think we might be hungry when we got back?"

"Why?" Rodney asked, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. "Did you expect us to feed you?" But he couldn't hold the expression long enough for John to toss him a rebuttal. A wide grin kept twitching across his face.

He looked manic. Teyla laughed.

As if it were a signal, Rodney hopped to his bare feet and walked over to John. He left wet footprints across the packed dirt of the courtyard. He got a grip on a fold in John's shirt and tugged him over to the Jumper.

"I need you to do something." Rodney's tone was brisk, like all the other times he had John turn a set of controls on or off as he tested connections.

"Aw, come on McKay. Right now? I'm hungry."

"Yes. Now," she heard, as he marched Sheppard into the Jumper. "Sit."

The Jumper quivered.

There was silence in the courtyard. She thought even the birds over head might be holding their breath.

And then she heard John shout, amazement thick in his voice, and the Jumper rose smoothly into the air.

As the Jumper rose higher she felt a little apprehension tighten her muscles. What if it fell?

Ronon bumped her shoulder. "It's not going to fall. We tested it."

"What?"

"Not a real flight. But we steered it around the courtyard long enough for McKay to be sure it was doing what it was supposed to do. It's safe."

"Oh." They stood there, side by side, until the sun set, and the Horns blew, and later. Every now and then, they could see the long, boxy shape of the Jumper cross in front of one of the moons.

Neither of them made a move to go inside.

* * * * *

"Rodney!" It was as close to speechless as he'd ever seen John Sheppard, really. Not the normal, laconic sort of speechless. But the real, mouth open, nothing coming out shock sort of speechless. It was astonishingly rewarding.

"So," he said, hands behind his back as he rocked on his toes. "Wanna take it for a spin?"

John whooped like a little boy, and Rodney's grin threatened to split his face.

The Jumper handled like an extension of John's thoughts. Even with all the adjustments Rodney had made, the Jumper was designed to respond to those with the Old Blood in their veins.

It was John's, completely.

And he was fiercely happy with it. John stared out the window like a child at his first Market, eyes wide and delighted. They chased the sunset at incredible speeds, and soared over even the Central Spire.

When they went that high – so high there was nothing at all between John and the sky, and the city itself looked small below them, Rodney looked over, and thought he saw tears in his friend's eyes.

He settled back in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head. He hadn't stopped smiling since they'd left the ground.

There were more stars in the window than he'd ever seen in Atlantis before. He fumbled for their names at first, but then he found one. And that one released others. Until he was pointing them out to John, named star by named star.

John steered the Jumper in wider and wider circles until Rodney had named all the stars he knew.

But there were more stars, spread in an impossible spray of light through the sky.

So they named more of them, picking out the brightest of them.

Their own constellations. Birds and pliers and a big, broad box with wings.

They fell silent eventually, drifted through the sky. Neither of them made noises about returning. Not yet.

Far below them, there was light on the dark sea, warmer than the stars. There was fire – hundreds of sparks setting sail in all directions. And at their heart, a city made of flame. John flew the Jumper in wide arcs, and they watched it burn till dawn.

fin

Comments

[issaro.livejournal.com]

This was a wonderful read. You've created an absolutely engaging AU, lovingly detailed. Thank you very much for sharing your world.

[theladysnarkydame]

Thank you very much! I had such fun writing it, so I'm glad you enjoyed reading it.