Homecoming

Chapter Seven Extraterrestrial Highway

Rodney McKay drove down Extraterrestrial Highway. His cell phone kept cutting in and out, but he thought that had more to do with radiation than with aliens. It made it hard to carry on a coherent conversation.

Testily, he dialed the number back with one hand. “John? Sorry, this phone sucks. What were you saying?”

“I said everything sucks.” John Sheppard sounded more than testy. He sounded angry. “They’ve started transferring people out. Lorne just got assigned to the George Hammond.”

“That’s Sam’s ship, right? That’s not so bad.” Rodney steered with one hand, the nice leased Prius eating up the desert highway just north of Area 51.

“Not for Lorne,” John snapped. “Rodney, it’s turning into a ghost town around here. We’ve had fifty people leave. And ok, yeah, most of them are Marines going to the Hammond, but a bunch of the scientists are finding other jobs.”

“We kind of have to, don’t we?” Rodney thought he sounded a little bitter himself. “If you thought I was going to sit in Atlantis being a glorified repairman while the IOA forbids anything that actually does any good…”

“Rodney, how many times have opening doors around here nearly gotten us all killed? Exploding tumors? Ascension devices? Plagues of nanites? The IOA doesn’t want us experimenting two miles off San Francisco. If anything goes wrong it could affect millions of people.”

“As opposed to just us, who were expendable,” Rodney said sharply. “Well, we signed up to be. We signed up for a one-way mission, and if that’s what we got it was too bad. At least at Area 51 we get to examine the Ancient devices, not just do hvac maintenance. Radek may get his kicks doing that, but I’ve got better things to do.”

The gas light was on. It had been on, but this thing was a hybrid, right? It could wait, which was a good thing since there weren’t exactly a lot of gas stations around here.

“Radek’s got an offer from a university,” John said. “So I don’t think he’ll be here much longer either. Ronon took Sam up on her offer to join her team on the Hammond. At least it gets him back fighting the Wraith. Carson’s going with them, hitching a ride back to the Pegasus Galaxy to go on with his relief work with the plague victims.”

“So why don’t you transfer to the Hammond?” There probably ought to be a gas station. Somewhere.

“I’m only a grade behind Sam. I can’t.” John sounded short tempered. “I rank her first officer. And O’Neill won’t talk to me about anything with the SGC.”

Rodney sighed. “That might have something to do with you pissing off General Landry when you stole a jumper and disobeyed a direct order. Oddly enough, Landry might not want you back!”

“I know that!”

There was some sort of diner or gas station up ahead. Rodney thought he’d better stop. The last thing he needed was to run out of gas in the desert and expire of thirst. “You could resign,” Rodney said.

There was a long silence.

Rodney pulled in beside the gas pump but didn’t get out, just stayed in the air conditioning and waited.

“And do what?” John’s voice was quiet.

“I don’t know. Something.” Rodney cut the engine and let the car subside into silence. He couldn’t imagine John doing anything other than the thing he was doing. What would he be without Atlantis? He had no family, parents dead, a wife long divorced, a brother who he saw once every five years. Yes, Rodney’s family was small but he had his sister and her kid. He had Jennifer, who might be the real thing, the one he’d waited for all his life. John had the team. They were his family, and now they were scattering.

He’d thought once that John and Teyla would probably hook up, but that seemed to have blown up for reasons that didn’t make any sense to him. Whatever there had been between them wasn’t going anywhere. “What’s Teyla doing?” Rodney asked.

“I don’t know,” John said. “She’s working with Woolsey right now. Woolsey’s still trying. I don’t know if it’s any good, but they’re still trying.” John took a deep breath, and Rodney could imagine his expression, casual with false indifference. “I keep thinking… Up in that 302, waiting for the hive ship to get close enough to plant a nuke in her, that was the end of the road. That was the time. My number was up. There wasn’t supposed to be an after that.”

Rodney looked out across the barren Nevada desert, dust devils kicking up in the bright sun. It was hot as hell, but a chill ran down his spine. “Don’t start with me, Sheppard,” he snapped. “You know I don’t believe in all that predestination mumbo-jumbo. You were in a tight spot. We all were. Do you think me and Lorne and Teyla liked the idea of blowing the hive ship up from inside with no way to get out? No. Just no. But we were going to do it.”

He switched the phone to the other ear, looking out the side window. In the window of the Extraterrestrial Diner there was a waving alien bobblehead who looked remarkably like an Asgard. “Look, we all got out of this one by the skin of our teeth. Lucky us.”

“Yeah. Lucky us.” John’s voice was flat.

“Snap out of it,” Rodney said. “If you’d blown yourself to kingdom come with a nuke, taking out me and Teyla and Lorne and Ronon in the process, what do you think would happen to Torren? A little kid like that, all by himself in a different galaxy? When push came to shove and we knew what we had to do, Teyla knew you’d take care of him. If she died, you wouldn’t let anything happen to him. So you snap out of this thing about you’re supposed to be dead. Nobody’s supposed to be anything. Some people are dead, and that sucks. And some of us are alive, and that doesn’t.”

He heard John almost smile. “It’s been a long five years, Rodney.”

“Yes, and five years ago you’d have said this to me.” Rodney glanced over at the window. The attendant was peering around the Asgard, probably wondering if he intended to pump gas or just block the pumps. “Get a grip. It will work out. If you can’t get back to Pegasus on the Hammond, how about the Daedalus?”

“Because Caldwell loves me so much?”

“Point. But you could talk to Mitchell at the SGC. He thinks you’re ok.”

“That’s true.”

“Look, whether or not Atlantis goes back, do you think we’re just going to forget the Pegasus Galaxy exists? Has that ever happened in the history of exploration? That we just decide ‘oops, we’d rather not know about that?’ That’s not how it works. Sooner or later, for better or worse, people from Earth are going back there. You just have to figure out how to be one of them.” Rodney thought that sounded very rational. At least it sounded rational to him.

“Yeah.” John sounded better. He took a deep breath. “That’s true.”

“So snap out of the self pity and start figuring it out,” Rodney said. “You’re one of Earth’s foremost experts on the Pegasus Galaxy. You can probably write your own check. Go schmooze Mitchell. I’ll talk to my boss at Area 51. He’d be happy to have somebody with a naturally expressed ATA gene and a familiarity with Ancient technology. Not to mention that we’ve got the program for the next generation of 302s here. I know it would suck to be a test pilot…”

“I take your point, Rodney,” John said, but he did sound better. Rodney should have known that dangling 302s in front of him would help. “I’ll give you a call later, ok?”

“Sure,” Rodney said. “I’ll talk to Gene this afternoon. Bye.”

He clicked off and sat a moment, looking out over red desert to the faint lavender shade of mountains. “This sucks,” Rodney said to no one in particular.

Then he got out and ran his credit card on the pump twice to no effect before he noticed the sign: cash only. Rolling his eyes, Rodney walked into the station, his wallet in his hand.

“Sorry,” the old guy behind the counter said. “Our credit card thing’s down. Been down for about three months.”

“Yeah.” Rodney fished out two twenties. “I’m going to fill it up.” A t shirt rack by the register proclaimed that he was visiting Area 51, Home of the Extraterrestrials. A smiling Asgard grinned down from bumper stickers on the rack nearby.

“You one of those UFO debunkers?” the guy asked.

Rodney looked down at his black suit and black tie. Ok, his shirt was maroon, but he looked like a more fashionable Man in Black. “No.”

The guy nodded wisely. There was a UFO stitched on his baseball cap. “I figured. You’re one of Them.”

“Um.” Rodney held out the twenties.

“It’s ok.” The guy gave him a broad wink. “We know how to keep our mouths shut around here. This here is the UFO capital of the world! You won’t believe the things I’ve seen!”

“I’m sure it’s all fascinating.” Rodney shoved the bills into the guys hand. “I’m going to go fill up.”

He went and pumped the gas and came back for his change. The guy had apparently thought of some more things to say while laboriously entering the amount into the register, giving Rodney a conspiratorial smile. “A couple of months ago I saw the damndest dogfight. A bunch of little sharp fighter ships diving on something out in Area 51, and smoke going up where they hit something, while a bunch of screaming ships that looked like manta rays went after them. It was the damndest thing I ever saw! One of those manta rays pulled out of a dive about fifteen feet over the desert, smoke trailing from a wing! Hell of a pilot! Course those aliens are fine pilots.”

“Yes.” Rodney grabbed his change as fast as he could.

“I know you can’t say nothing,” the guy said, tipping him a wink. “But I gotta say it, for me and the wife and all. Thanks for saving the Earth. Pass it on.”

Rodney stopped in the doorway. “You’re welcome,” he said. “And I will.”

Teyla wanted the impossible. She knew that, and sitting in Atlantis’ mess hall late at night, alone at a table the four of them used to share, she felt an aching in her breast that was almost a physical pain.

The mess hall was almost deserted. The coffee service stood alone at one corner. Usually, in better days, people were coming in to get coffee all night. There was always a fresh pot hot, steam curling up from mugs scenting the room with a smell that was always Atlantis to her. Atlantis was coffee and summer wind, the light through stained glass, the soft breathing of the city’s ventilation systems that never stopped.

Teyla blinked hard and looked down at the nearly empty cup in her hands.

“Mind if I join you?”

She looked up into the open face of Colonel Sam Carter, who was carrying a cup in her hand.

“Of course not,” Teyla said, straightening up in her chair. Sam was good people. Even John said so, and he was hard on commanding officers. But she had rarely spoken with Sam this past year, since Sam was relieved of command in Atlantis. “Torren is not here,” she blurted. “Colonel Sheppard is watching him for a few hours.” For some definition of watching, she amended. His ideas of suitable activities for Torren did not always coincide with hers.

“Actually, I wasn’t looking for Torren. I was looking for you,” Sam said, sliding into the seat opposite.

“Oh.” Teyla felt the blood rush to her face. “It is just that everyone wants to see the baby…”

Sam shrugged. “Not me.”

“You are not a baby person?”

“Not so much.” Sam laced her fingers around her coffee cup. “Listen, I know this business with the IOA must be frustrating. You’ve been here almost five months, and there’s nothing but this runaround about whether Atlantis is staying or going, and now people are being transferred out and it looks like it’s over…” Her blue eyes were very direct. “If you want to go home, I’ll take you on the George Hammond, you and Torren. The Hammond will be ready in another ten to twelve weeks, and we’re bound for Pegasus. I’d be happy to take you and Torren back to New Athos. It’s going to be one of our first stops.”

Teyla took a deep breath. A way back, yes. But a way back to what? To Kanaan and Halling and all the others who remained, to a world that had never been home to her, to tava beans and the gossip over the fire, to the songs of her people and the same endless arguments played out for years. Back to her people, yes, but could one ever truly go back? Could she step through a mirror and return to Teyla Who Had Been?

“Or,” Sam said carefully, “I’d be very pleased if you would join my team. You’d be a contractor, like Ronon, working for the Air Force. A special liaison in the Pegasus Galaxy, part of the crew of the Hammond. I know what you can do, and I need your expertise as much as I did in Atlantis.”

A different life, a different world. To join Ronon on Sam Carter’s new team was nothing inconsiderable. It would not be Atlantis, but it would not be New Athos either. She would still walk through gates. She would still make a difference, with Ronon and Sam and Lorne. Not a perfect choice, but the best choice she had. After all, what she truly wanted was impossible.

“And Torren?” she asked.

Sam shook her head, her eyes never leaving Teyla’s. “You know he doesn’t belong on a warship.”

“I know,” Teyla said. They would be going into danger, and unlike in Atlantis there would be no space for him. There would be cramped quarters and no one to watch him for her except Ronon, who would have his own duties. And there would be constant danger.

Torren could stay with his father on New Athos. He could grow up in fields and forests as a proper Athosian child should, with his people around him and his father to guide his steps. And he would be lost to her. Of course she would visit. When she could. When the Hammond was nearby. They would come to New Athos occasionally. She would be no different than other crew members, deployed for months or years at a time, save that they might come to New Athos a little more frequently than Earth.

Sam had been watching her face, and took a long drink of her coffee. “You don’t have to decide today,” she said. “I know you’ll want to think it over. But I wanted to put it out on the table for you. If you let me know in the next three or four weeks that will be fine.”

Teyla looked down, at Sam’s hands around her cup. “It is not that I do not appreciate this very much…”

“I know,” Sam said. “But it’s a big decision.”

“It is.” Teyla glanced up, meeting her eyes again. “I do not know how to decide.”

Sam shrugged. “What do you want?”

“So many things. So many things that cannot be.” Teyla put her head back. Above her, the green and bronze ceiling soared. The Ancients built for beauty, even in the most prosaic of rooms. The windows were dark with night, but outside the towers gleamed, the ocean whispering softly against the piers, stars arching over Ronon and Radek and Rodney out in Area 51 and Torren and John, all under one night sky together. Her heart ached with the beauty of them. “I want things that are impossible,” Teyla whispered.

For a moment Sam’s face changed, the first time Teyla had seen it unguarded, seen the tension that lay like a whipcord beneath the surface. Her mouth tugged sideways in an ironic smile. “Sometimes when you want things that are impossible, eventually you get them anyhow. If you know what you want and you’re strong enough.”

“What have you wanted?” Teyla should not ask, but she did anyway.

“Lots of things.” Sam looked down into her coffee cup, then glanced up, her eyes very blue over the rim of the cup. “And all of them are worth it.”

Torren was asleep. That wasn’t unexpected at this time of night. When Teyla opened the door to her quarters she paused for a moment, silent, just inside the door, so that she wouldn’t disturb him.

The TV was on. One of the things John liked about being on Earth was getting television. Two men in coats and ties were very seriously discussing some sort of game, while behind them on a screen tall men in shorts ran up and down bouncing a ball. John was sound asleep on the couch on his back, Torren sprawled across his stomach with his head turned sideways, quietly drooling on John’s shirt, the light from the TV playing over his face. He looked like he’d been entranced by the men bouncing balls right up to the moment his eyes closed.

John’s face was relaxed in sleep, and it came to her how much older he looked than the man who had come to Atlantis, to the soldier who had come to Athos five and a half years ago. His face had been sharp then, attenuated and cut crisp-clean by some knife she could not name. Now there was a heaviness to him. The brightness was gone. There were bruises beneath his eyes that never faded, lines around his mouth even in sleep, and a few strands of silver threaded through his hair. Once he had bounced back from every disaster with a cocky word, but now… The marks of two serious wounds in the past year were on his face, in the faint stiffness in the way he held himself even in sleep.

Years ago, during the siege, she had wondered if he would die young. Now it was no longer a question. He was no longer young.

His arm curved around Torren in sleep, across his legs to keep him from sliding off, and his expression was peaceful. She’d only seen it like that once before, when he flew the city, caught in the rapture of flight. Teyla hardly dared to breathe. She would move, and he would wake.

Behind her, the door slid shut. John opened his eyes and blinked.

Teyla came around the couch with a smile. “Has Torren been asleep long?” she whispered.

John shook his head carefully, trying not to disturb the sleeping toddler. “I don’t know? I think I went to sleep too.”

“I think you did,” she said. “Here, let me get him.” Reaching down, she tenderly scooped Torren up. He made a small noise, burrowing against her neck as though he were once again tiny, not a big boy nearly a year and a half old. There was a puddle of drool on the chest of John’s shirt, and she could not help but smile at his expression.

John shrugged. “I’ll live with the baby spit.”

“I expect you will,” she said. Torren wiggled, a bad sign. Wiggling led to waking. “Let me put him to bed,” she whispered.

She carried Torren into the other room and gently lowered him into his bed. He hunched up, but didn’t wake, settling down with a happy sigh. “Good night, precious,” she whispered, though she thought he wouldn’t hear her with his waking ears. Perhaps it would penetrate into whatever dream world he now walked.

She turned down the light and went back into the main room. John was already standing at the door.

“Good night,” he said.

Teyla opened her mouth. And then closed it again. She did not have words. She never had. “Good night,” she said as the door swished shut behind him.