The Lost

Chapter Sixteen: Tomb

Todd led them along the river, under the shelter of the trees, leaving the other Wraith behind, presumably to explain his absence if he didn’t get back before the other Wraith arrived. Ronon kept his pistol in hand, more than ready to shoot at any sign that they were being led into a trap. At this point, shooting Todd wouldn’t solve their problems, but it would at least make him feel better.

“How much farther?” he demanded.

“Far enough that you will not be heard even if you persist in talking,” Todd said.

“I think we’re that far already.”

Todd ignored him.

“Ronon,” Jennifer said. He pretended he hadn’t heard.

Finally Todd stopped, peering closely at the ground that led up from the river, and then began making his way carefully up the bank.

“Where are we going?” Ronon asked.

“The tombs along this side of the river are rarely visited,” Todd said. “They are too old for the humans here to believe that the dead in them will rise.”

“Oh,” Jennifer said a little faintly. “Well, that’s good to know.”

“They bring their dead here hoping that you’ll revive them,” Ronon said. “Only you don’t.”

“Those who reside here consider themselves dead,” Todd said. “Those who serve us well may be rewarded.”

“I’m guessing whoever’s in this tomb is not going to be doing that,” Jennifer said.

“You are probably correct,” Todd said. He stopped in front of what looked to a casual glance like an undisturbed curve of hillside, but Ronon could see the depression in the grass around the edges of something with sides too straight to be a rock. He bent and dug his fingers in, finding an edge and tugging. A trap door lifted free with some effort, earth showering down into darkness.

“There won’t be enough air in there,” Jennifer said.

“There is an exhaust fan, and light as well,” Todd said. “I told you, I have made arrangements.”

“For us?” Ronon said. “That’s considerate.”

“In case of emergency,” Todd said.

“I thought you said this was neutral ground,” Jennifer said. “According to ancient Wraith tradition.”

“Times change,” Todd said. Now that he looked, Ronon could see wires running across the bottom of the wooden trap door. Todd pressed a button tangled in the wires, and a faint green glow lit what seemed to be a pit dug into the hillside, wide but not more than three or four meters deep. There were shapes in the dim light, but he couldn’t make them out clearly. They could have been anything.

There was also a low whisper of noise that set Ronon’s teeth on edge. It might be a fan. It was probably mechanical. Not at all like the sound of something breathing in the darkness where nothing ought to be breathing. Not at all like the sound of something moving down there, whispering papery-dry against the walls —

“This is not my idea of a great hiding place,” Jennifer said, but she was already clipping a line to her pack and fastening her flashlight to it. She lowered it down, peering down after it. “I don’t suppose there’s a ladder?”

“There are hooks for one on the door,” Ronon said, pointing them out. “You can fasten the rope.”

“My day really needed a little rope-climbing,” Jennifer said. She secured the rope with a better knot than he’d expected her to tie; it looked Athosian in style, so maybe Teyla had been trying to make up for some of the things Jennifer had apparently never learned in school.

“I will return when the others have departed,” Todd said.

Jennifer sat on the edge of the trap door and wrapped her hands inexpertly around the rope. He started to tell her to let him go down first, and then hesitated, because that would mean leaving her up here with a Wraith.

Before he could tell her to do one or the other, she was already descending the short distance to the floor of the pit. She picked up the flashlight and shone it around her, adding its bright beam to the green glow. “It looks clear,” she said.

“If this is a trick, I’ll kill you myself,” Ronon said.

“If this were a trick, you would not get the chance,” Todd said. “Descend now, so that I can close this entrance behind you.”

“I don’t take orders from Wraith,” Ronon said. It was intensely tempting to just pull the trigger. This wasn’t the first time someone had wanted to trust Todd, and it probably wouldn’t be the last time. He could put an end to all that right now. Jennifer couldn’t see him from down in the pit. He could kill the Wraith, see him fall twitching at his feet and watch him finally go still, and then he’d say —

That was where it broke down. Jennifer might believe him if he said that Todd had drawn a weapon on him, but Sheppard would be skeptical enough to ask him outright if it was true. He’d have to lie, which would be wrong, or else have to admit he’d disobeyed orders and live with Sheppard’s disappointment. His hand was clenched on the pistol, his finger shaking with the effort not to squeeze the trigger.

“One of these days I’m going to kill you,” Ronon said.

“Not today,” Todd said. Ronon holstered his pistol in one fast move before he could think better of it and swung himself over the edge of the pit, dropping down to the floor without bothering to use the rope. It was cooler down there, and it smelled dank, although he could feel the air moving in a way that suggested they would be able to breathe.

The trapdoor closed without warning, dirt raining down onto Ronon’s hair. He managed not to flinch, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing out sharply to avoid breathing the stuff.

Jennifer shone the flashlight around, tracing the curve of the walls. Above them, the roof was reinforced by the same bleached tangle that had strengthened the longhouse roof. He thought some of it looked like the antlers of some herd animal, but some of it was clearly old bone, weathered in the open for some years.

The green light was coming from a lantern set into one wall, its wires running up the wall to the trap door in the ceiling. At one end of the long pit, there was a raised platform of earth with a shape lying on it, wrapped in cloth. It didn’t move, no matter how long Jennifer shone her flashlight on it. That was a good thing.

“All right,” Jennifer said, shining the light on a pile of rough wooden boxes at the other end of the pit. “What’s this stuff?”

“Probably stuff he wanted buried with him,” Ronon said. “It sounds like he was planning on getting to use it later.”

“Right,” Jennifer said. “This is creepy.” She climbed up on one of the boxes anyway, crossing her legs and leaning back against the earth wall. “You’re not going to pace like that the whole time we’re down here, are you?”

“I don’t know. Are you going to talk the whole time?”

“I don’t think anybody can hear us down here.”

“I can hear you,” Ronon said.

Jennifer actually looked like that stung. He’d wondered what it would take to get it through to her that he wasn’t happy with her.

“Okay, we don’t have to talk,” Jennifer said. She wrapped her hands around her knees and switched off the flashlight. To conserve the battery, he told himself. Not just to get on his nerves.

The green light threw weird shadows across her face, hollowing her cheeks and the backs of her hands. He didn’t really want to look at that, but there wasn’t much else to look at. Probably the stuff in the tomb said something meaningful about their culture. Teyla would have said they should take pictures for the scientists back in Atlantis, but Teyla was probably sitting in Radim’s office right now being really polite while drinking endless cups of tea.

That was actually starting to sound pretty good.

The silence grew unbearable pretty fast. Staying quiet was made even harder by the fact that for the first time since they’d arrived on the planet, Jennifer felt like it was actually safe for them to talk. For the moment it looked like there wasn’t anyone watching them, at least assuming they weren’t being monitored by some hidden piece of Wraith technology. There wasn’t any way to tell, so she figured there was no point in worrying about that.

This wasn’t how she’d wanted this mission to go. She’d hoped they could make some kind of deal quickly, and get back to Atlantis with a way to find Rodney. She’d also hoped that Ronon would back her up while she tried to make that happen. Instead he seemed determined to argue with her every step of the way.

She couldn’t put off having it out about that any longer, not when they were going to have to work together when Todd returned. She wished she felt like she could. She would have much rather had this talk in her infirmary, surrounded by all the proofs of her own competence, not sitting here in somebody’s tomb.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I think we do have to talk.”

“Fine,” Ronon said, after enough of a pause that she was pretty sure that wasn’t a conventional phrase on Sateda for I’m about to say something you won’t like. He spread his hands. “Talk.”

“You can’t just decide things like ‘we’re going back to the Stargate’ for both of us,” she said. “You can’t tell me we’re giving up on the mission and expect me to accept that without even talking about it first.”

She could just barely see Ronon shrugging in the dim light, his face in shadow. “Sheppard’s not here,” Ronon said. “It’s my call.”

“We’re supposed to be working together,” Jennifer said. “And maybe you don’t like the fact that I’m here, but I am here. It’s my mission, too, and if you aren’t willing to work with me, then you’re the one who shouldn’t be here.”

“You think I want to be here? We’re not getting anything useful, and we never were going to — ”

“Then go!” Jennifer snapped. “If you want to try to get back to the Stargate, or whatever it is you think would be better than what we’re doing right now, then go. I’ll stay here and — ”“And wind up as dead as that guy?” Ronon jerked his head toward the wrapped corpse at the other end of the pit without looking at it. His whole body was tight with anger, his fingers twitching where they rested against the grip of his holstered pistol.

That didn’t seem right. She could see that he was mad at her, but she didn’t think he wanted to shoot her. She flicked her flashlight back on so that she could see him more clearly. He was breathing too fast, and suddenly she wondered if they had adequate ventilation after all. Hypoxia would bring on shallow, rapid breathing, loss of coordination, diminished judgment.

Her own breath was coming easily, though, and she felt fine. He didn’t look fine. If it hadn’t been Ronon, and if he hadn’t seemed fine up until now, she would have said he was terrified.

She wouldn’t have gotten away with ‘seemed fine’ in her clinical training, some critical part of herself pointed out. He hadn’t complained. It was possible that he wouldn’t, no matter how he felt about having to be at close quarters with the Wraith. And after everything they’d done to him, she probably ought to figure that he wasn’t entirely fine about that.

“We’re okay right now,” she said, shifting to the tone she used with her patients. “It’s probably pretty safe down here. There’s only one way in or out, and we’ll certainly notice somebody opening that door.”

“If there’s air circulating, there’s another way out,” Ronon said.

“So, let’s take a look.” She shone the flashlight carefully over the walls. It caught the glimmer of metal in two places, both toward the other end of the pit. “It looks like the fans are set into the wall. There must be ventilation shafts, but…”

“They’re small,” Ronon said. “So, only one way out.”

“Which is a good thing, right? Because that means there’s only one way in.”

Ronon nodded, although he still looked like he was waiting for someone to leap out at him. It occurred to her that it might actually be normal to have a problem sitting around with somebody’s dead body a few meters away. She hadn’t been particularly spooked by cadavers since med school, but a lot of people did find tombs pretty creepy, in more than a ‘haunted house at the amusement park’ kind of way.

“So, sit down and let’s talk about this. We’re both in this together. I just want us to make decisions as a team, not have you tell me what to do.”

Ronon looked reluctant, but he did come to sit down on one of the other boxes, his back to the wall so that he had a clear view of the trap door above. “It’s my call,” he said. “We’re in the field, and you’re a civilian.”

“I’m a civilian, sure, but I think I may be better at handling the Wraith than you are.”

“I can handle the Wraith.”

“Kill them, sure,” Jennifer said. “I’ll be the first to say you’re awfully good at that. But I think right now what we need to do is talk to Todd, and try to get him on our side about this — ”

Ronon shook his head sharply. “He’ll never be on our side. They’re Wraith. We’re food to them.”

“Maybe most of them think that way, but I don’t think Todd thinks of all of us as food,” Jennifer said. “Teyla’s not just food to him, because he still sort of thinks of her as a Wraith queen. And Sheppard… actually, I have no idea what goes on there, but maybe Todd thinks Sheppard is, I don’t know, our version of him.”

“Sheppard’s nothing like a Wraith,” Ronon said.

“We have to find the ways that we are like them,” Jennifer said. “The ways they are like us. Because we need their help right now, and to get them to help us, we have to talk to them. Like we’re all people.”

Ronon let out a breath in the darkness. “They’re not people.”

“Then let me do the talking,” Jennifer said. “I can do this. Just… let’s work together, here. Let’s talk about what to do, and we can decide together. Don’t just tell me what you’ve decided we’re going to do.”

“Like you do?”

Jennifer frowned. “What?”

Ronon shook his head. “We’ve talked enough.” He looked a little calmer, but he still didn’t look very happy with her.

“I don’t think so,” Jennifer said. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s what you do,” Ronon said. “You’re the doctor, so you tell people what’s going to happen. When McKay had that brain parasite — ”

Jennifer remembered those days all too well, how it had felt to watch Rodney slowly deteriorate before her eyes and not be able to stop it, to make anything better for him, no matter how hard she tried. Ronon had wanted to take him to the Shrine of Talus, a folk remedy to give him one more day with his mind intact. She hadn’t believed there was anything more to it than wishful thinking until it was nearly too late. To give up her search for a cure to take him to a magic shrine —

“I was trying to save his life,” Jennifer said.

“We told you what would work, and you wouldn’t listen to us. To me.”

Jennifer felt her cheeks heat, and was suddenly grateful that he couldn’t see her face. She searched for the right words. There were right words, words she’d learned for dealing with difficult patients, difficult people. She’d been told often enough not to let them push her around because she was young and pretty and looked harmless. I’m the doctor, she told herself.

“You didn’t think yourself that there was any chance of saving Rodney’s life,” she said.

“You’re the doctor. It took you, what, fifteen minutes to figure out how the place worked once we got there?”

“I am the doctor,” Jennifer said. “I made the call based on my experience and my judgment.” She was tempted for a moment to add it’s hard enough for me to trust either one.

“If I were a doctor, would it have mattered?”

“Of course it — ”

“If it had been Melena telling you, or any of the doctors from Sateda, would you have believed it then? She didn’t know exactly how it worked either. But she knew it did work. Everybody knew that.”

“Sometimes the things everybody knows are wrong,” Jennifer said. “Folk remedies can be dangerous. At best, they’re usually harmless, and that’s when they don’t involve taking a critically ill patient to a planet full of Wraith. It’s magical thinking, a way for people to feel better when they can’t really do anything to make a situation better. Like sleeping with the lights on when you’re scared.” That was probably not a very useful way to put it, she realized. “Not that I expect you — ”

“When you saw it, you didn’t think it was magic,” Ronon said. “You thought there had to be some reason for it, some scientific thing you didn’t understand.”

“That’s right,” Jennifer agreed, but cautiously. Ronon’s tone suggested there was a catch somewhere in that question, like the questions in med school that sounded simple and ended with congratulations, you’ve just killed your patient.

“But you didn’t believe it when I said I’d seen it.”

That would be the catch, then. Jennifer hunted for words. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she said finally.

“You don’t trust me,” Ronon said. “You’re like McKay that way, at least the way McKay used to be. You won’t do what people tell you because you think they don’t know what they’re talking about. You won’t ask people what they want to do because you think if you do what anyone else wants you to, you’ll get hurt.”

“I am not like Rodney,” Jennifer said.

“You think?”

There was a long silence after that. It was too quiet in the underground space. That was probably good, though. It was probably too soon for the other Wraith to have left, so footsteps above them wouldn’t mean anything good. She wasn’t sure whether they’d even be able to hear footsteps through the thick earth ceiling above them. Ronon would probably know.

“If that’s what you think, then why…” Jennifer began. It took her a minute to figure out how she wanted to finish that sentence, but Ronon waited while she did. She got the feeling he would have waited much longer if he’d needed to. “Why are we still friends? If we, you know, are.”

“I can live with that stuff,” Ronon said. “In a friend.”

“Right,” Jennifer said. She smoothed back her hair, feeling it trying to work its way out of its ponytail. Teyla always managed to come through these kinds of situations looking neatly put together. Jennifer always suspected she looked like anything but a professional.

“The thing is, I’m not Carson,” she said finally. “He has enough experience that if he says he has no idea what to do, people are just going to think it must be a tough problem. If I say that, they’re going to think I’m not ready for this job. If I ask other people what to do — if I act like I’m not in control of a situation that’s gotten scary — then I don’t think anybody’s going to take me seriously.”

She stopped, struck by how well the words applied to more than just herself. She glanced over at Ronon, wishing she could see his face better in the dark. “You get that, right?” she said tentatively. “How maybe it might seem like a good idea to just tell people what to do, so they won’t doubt that you know what you’re doing? And maybe so you won’t look scared.”

“Maybe so,” Ronon said after a while.

“But, you know, maybe I could do a better job of listening to people who might actually have useful ideas about how we could get out of the bad situation,” she said. “You think?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Is that a deal?” Jennifer asked. She held out her hand hesitantly, not sure if it was even the right gesture to make, but after a moment Ronon clasped her arm, squeezing hard before he let go.

“So,” he said. “We’re stuck down here. There’s a bunch of Wraith up there. We don’t know if it’s a trap. What do you think we should do?”

Jennifer took a deep breath. “I think we should wait a while and see if Todd comes back,” she said. “If a bunch of Wraith burst in here trying to eat us, then we can probably move on to plan B.”

“Plan B being ‘shoot the Wraith and fight our way back to the Stargate.’”

“That’s the one,” Jennifer said. “You guys seem to get a lot of use out of that plan, to read your reports.”

“It’s simple,” Ronon said. “I like simple plans.”

“So do I,” Jennifer said. “They just never seem to work out that way for me.”