ONE

Keller kicked them out of Atlantis. It wasn't cruel or perfunctory, but that tight-faced, I'm-Really-Actually-Going-To-Enforce-My-Authority-Now expression that Keller put on was pretty final. It wasn't that Rodney didn't like her - because he did, respected her, even - but sometimes he wondered if she wasn't much scarier than she usually came across. She still hesitated to order anyone to do anything and when she got herself all worked up like that, she seemed so uncomfortable about it that most people went along out of guilt. Even Rodney was susceptible to it. At the time, he blamed the lingering effects of the concussion.

It had been Keller who'd told him to contact Jeannie. More specifically, she'd told him to pick a place on Earth or he'd be spending his "vacation" camped out in the forest outside Cheyenne Mountain, she didn't really care. So feeling much put-upon, he'd obeyed, and afterward he'd still felt so put-upon that he'd harangued John into coming, too.

It wasn't as if John had anywhere else to go on Earth, Rodney had pointed out, which had been a low blow, but Rodney was mostly not above dirty tactics if it got him what he wanted. Rodney wanted not to spend three and a half weeks alone with his sister while she complaining about getting kidnapped, blamed everything on him, and talked at length about what a terrible person he was.

Also, he wanted someone with whom he could sneak out and get burgers, because he'd been under threat of vegetarian food from Jeannie since his last visit to Earth.

At least, these were the reasons he listed for John, and if John had doubted any of them, he hadn't said so. If Rodney had doubted any of them, he'd ignored the doubt.

Sam was worried. Rodney might have found that touching if she hadn't been in the middle of helping Keller banish him. She took him aside as they were dialling the Gate, and crossed her arms, and looked awkward, and said: "It's harder than you think it is," and Rodney had stared at her like she was speaking Chinese.

"What is?"

Sam sighed, and frowned at him like he was being difficult on purpose. Under normal circumstances Rodney would have liked to oblige her, because being difficult for Sam was one of his most treasured hobbies, but just then he honestly had no idea what she was talking about.

"McKay," she said, carefully, like she was treading on very thin ground, "one of the reasons I let Dr. Keller convince me you two needed a break is because we haven't got a replacement for Dr. Heightmeyer yet. You know that, right?"

Rodney felt a flush creep up his neck. "Look, I told Keller, I'm fine. If that's what this is about, you can shut down the Gate right now. Let Sheppard go surfing or something without me."

Though even as he said that, he felt an odd lurch in his chest at the idea of John being somewhere else for a month. So he scowled at her. Scowling was always a good fallback; it tended to make people think you were too mean to bother with.

Unfortunately, Sam knew him better than that, and she met him scowl for scowl, but her face looked a bit strained. "Rodney, this isn't negotiable."

"So I've been told," he groused, hitching his bag higher on his shoulder. "But let's stop treating me like an invalid, okay? I'm not going to freak out."

The next look on Sam's face stopped him cold, because for a second she looked like no Sam Carter he'd ever seen, tired and sad and genuinely worried. "Yeah," she said, quietly, "you are. I just thought you'd prefer it if you didn't do it here, where people can see you."

Rodney's face was hot. The bag felt much heavier than it had a minute ago, and at the bottom of the stairs, John was calling for him. "Come on, McKay, we don't have all day!"

Rodney turned to follow, moving on automatic, but Sam stopped him with a hand on his arm. He looked at it like it was some kind of poisonous spider, but she was unintimidated. "McKay," she said, still quietly, "it's a lot easier in the long run, if you just let it happen."

In the end, it was the careful sincerity in her eyes that made him angry, and he jerked his arm free, stomping down the stairs towards the Gate, where John was waiting.

When they landed in Vancouver, it was raining.

The city was beautiful, though, he'd been honest about that much. Even in the rain, which slacked off as they rode into the city, green everywhere, and warm breezes, and people. Rodney did not, as a rule, like people, but just now there was something comforting about knowing there were people ten feet away wherever he went. He really hoped this would pass, because it could get old, fast.

Jeannie's house was in one of those comfortably crowded neighbourhoods with old houses and mid-size yards and people walking tiny dogs everywhere you looked. It was quiet, relative to downtown, though he could hear the distant hiss of traffic as he made his way up the front walk. John finished paying the driver, and jogged to catch up as the car rumbled away down the street.

Rodney didn't need to knock, because as they were climbing the steps, Jeannie opened the door, and Madison cannoned out onto the porch, stopping just short of Rodney, who took an alarmed step backwards before forcibly stopping himself, heart hammering. Madison looked up at him suspiciously. "Hi, Uncle Mer," she said, and Rodney swallowed, wordlessly reached into his pocket, handed her a badly-wrapped package.

She practically trilled. "Thanks, Uncle Mer!" she shouted, running back into the house. Jeannie tilted her head at him.

"Is that going to explode and burn my house down?" she asked, eyes narrowed.

Rodney huffed. "Yes, because I would give a five-year-old something that explodes. It's a Rubik's Cube, all right?"

Jeannie still looked sceptical. "She's five, Meredith," she said.

"Yeah," Rodney shot back, "and she's your kid."

Jeannie shut her mouth at that, and looked surprised, and Rodney realised, belatedly, that he'd just said something nice. "Can we come in?" he asked, sullenly, and Jeannie laughed, and stepped aside.

***

The planet has a green sky, kind of like pistachio ice cream, and Rodney remembers explaining that to John even though John doesn't ask. He's in a good mood, not even complaining about the heat, talking just to hear himself talk. Teyla is nodding politely and smiling her soft, indulgent smile all the way into the city, past unremarkable near-desert scrub and the unending roll of low hills.

They’re met on the main street by People In Charge and she goes smoothly into negotiation mode - which is how Rodney thinks of it, how she gracefully ingratiates herself with most total strangers - and by nightfall they’re getting a tour of the capitol.

It looks like Ava’s hovering around the 1960s to him; everything is bevel-cornered and chrome-chased, the colours riotous and clashing over an underlying skeleton of tourist-Victorian cobblestones and architecture. It makes him think of Brighton, but with that slightly off sense every alien world has, no matter how familiar it appears.

According to Hergaard, a skinny anthropologist Rodney’s decided not to actively dislike only because he hasn’t done anything stupid yet, the Avans have a directed social development more along the lines of western Europe, egalitarian but not communistic, whatever that means.

All it means to Rodney is that their social development is further ahead than their technological development, which is great, he guesses, but not all that interesting, and not really worth his input. Ronon is listening, but not really listening, one hand as always resting gently on his holster. John doesn’t seem all that much more interested than Rodney, but he’s nodding politely along, perking up every so often when their guide mentions unique cultural points like their breweries, because apparently Ava has a pretty complicated culinary culture, or the fact that Ava has a Guild of Courtesans, along with their Guild of Engineers, their Guild of Healers, their Guild of Scribes and about two dozen others.

Rodney knows he should find that interesting, but he’s actually too bored to think about the myriad possibilities of legalized prostitution. All Rodney gets out of the talk is that Ava? Has a lot of Guilds.

High Minister Sarna herself takes them on a walk down the main street that girdles the entire city, sixty blocks long and with all the major dispensaries and manufactories clustered, which even Rodney can see is pretty smart. It’s not until Sarna’s aide leads them up fifteen thousand eighty-five or something stairs - which leaves Rodney cranky, but if he does say so himself, not in nearly as bad a shape as he would have been a year ago - into the main control room of the main Avan power station that Rodney’s suddenly paying attention, because aesthetically it looks Lantean but functionally it looks like nothing so much as an actual working solar array.

He starts firing off questions at the engineers and after a few seconds of stunned silence, Sarna turns to leave, saying she’ll send someone to collect Rodney and his staff when it’s time for the evening meal - they’ve been invited to eat with the Parliament. John just smiles, shakes his head, and leaves Rodney alone to order people around. Rodney shoots him a grin as he leaves, and bends to inspect the array more closely, mind already providing him with the myriad ways they could use an adaptable solar power generator back home.

He pauses for one second at that, fingers resting gently on the outer casing of the core, because not for one moment did it feel strange to think of Atlantis as home.

***

By evening on the first day, Rodney generally thought he was doing fine, and was well into the second paragraph of his mental letter to Keller, telling her how wrong, wrong, wrong she was. A little insomnia and jumpiness was to be expected, after what had happened, but forcible exile to another planet had seemed way beyond harsh. Just went to show that the woman wasn’t really settled in, yet, or she’d be used to the way things were in the Pegasus Galaxy. You didn’t run home and hide under the bed every time somebody pointed a gun at you. You’d never leave the house.

He was still pretty much furious about Sam going along with it, though. That was the only part that really confused him. Five or six years ago he would have put it down to jealousy, or written it off as revenge like he had for the first four months in Siberia.

He paused in the act of unpacking, a shirt hanging half-folded from his hand. God, he’d hated Russia. For one thing, it was always cold, and regardless of how many times John teased him about hating the cold (“You’re a Canadian, Rodney. Shouldn’t you be used to it?” “Just because you can’t convert Fahrenheit to Celsius without calculator doesn’t mean the temperature actually drops twenty degrees at the 49th Parallel, smartass.”), he’d always been more than willing to remind anyone listening that Victoria was in a moderate climactic zone and in no way prepared one for life on the tundra. Also, Russia had terrible food, utterly unreliable hot water and plenty of people who had absolutely no reason to hide their contempt for him, unlike working for the American military where at least people were occasionally intimidated by him.

He’d been angry the whole time, but he’d been incredibly miserable, too; it had been the first time his personality had gotten him actually punished, instead of put out of earshot. It had stung more than he’d ever be willing to admit, because he’d been more than a little in love with Samantha Carter at the time (well, in something, anyway), and it had not dawned on him yet that antagonism was counterproductive when it came to making people like you. He’d never thought about making people like him. In his mind, either they did, or they didn’t, and if they didn’t, it was their own fault.

But that had been a long time ago, and if asked, now, he’d have said he was a different person than he’d been then. Different enough that sometimes remembering his first visit to the SGC made him just the tiniest bit ashamed of himself. Enough that once in a blue moon he wondered why no one seemed to have noticed the change.

It wasn’t unusual, though. No one had ever noticed him before, unless they had to.

I am not a fourteen-year-old girl, he thought firmly, and took the few strides across Jeannie’s painfully-neat guestroom to open the dresser, deciding to appropriate the top row of drawers for himself. He cast an eye over John’s duffle, still leaning against the wall near the door. That was what he got for dawdling.

He sat down on the bed, staring at the open drawer. No matter how many times he’d insisted to the contrary, Sam wasn’t an idiot. She had to have had some reason for this, even if he could more easily write off Keller’s orders as gross overreaction. And he could no longer bring himself to just write it off as some kind of malice or jealousy. Time had served to make him understand that Samantha Carter was nothing if not soft-hearted. Didn’t mean she couldn’t be wrong.

He was fine.

The knock on the door sent his heart leaping painfully into his throat, and he was half-turned as it opened just enough to admit John’s head and shoulders. He froze, his eyes wide, his right hand clutching at the flowered bedspread and his left hand pressed hard to his chest.

He felt the moment of ridiculous terror pass almost from a distance, cataloguing the speed of his pulse, the flushed, clammy feeling that washed over him and then leached away in the wake of three slow, forced breaths.

“You surprised me!” he accused, more loudly than he’d intended, and John looked abruptly concerned – in the abstract way John did “concerned,” a mere twitch of his eyebrows, eyes running over Rodney up and down in the way that usually had heat suffusing his face for entirely different reasons.

“You okay?” he asked, voice low, and then Rodney was angry again, was up and shoving past him, and stomping towards the sound of voices floating up from downstairs.

“Fine,” he hissed, and left John standing there without even looking back.

***

It’s supposed to be a peaceful mission, a reasonably industrial planet which means no sleeping on the ground and a greatly-reduced likelihood of mortally offending alien priestesses. It means actual beds for two nights while Rodney, Zelenka, Simpson, Miko, Ager and one of the two scrawny Norwegians whose names John hasn't learned yet pore over Ava City's central generator. According to Rodney it’s impossibly efficient and adapted from Ancient technology even Rodney's never heard of, and impressive, even for a planet living in the 1960s or thereabouts.

John likes Ava, likes their beer and their paved, crowded streets and that for once, they're absolutely not the centre of attention, the Avans passing them by on their way to and from work and home and school as if they are of no interest at all. They were given a tour of the city, whereupon Rodney went suddenly dewy-eyed over the Avan power generation systems. After that, Rodney spends two days hunched over the power core with his staff and the Avan scientists while John and Ronon and Teyla and the other scrawny Norwegian - whose name is apparently Hergaard - discuss trade with the High Minister, a greying, round-shouldered woman named Sarna, who treats them with brusque, dismissive warmness and is delightfully rude.

John likes her, even while she's verbally lambasting her political opponent in the upcoming election and talking tiredly of minor civil uprisings on the eastern continent. “Separatists,” she says dismissively. “No accounting for them.” She hurries to assure them that the rebels, a new phenomenon and ineffectual thus far, would find the Lanteans of little interest.

Ava has some kind of supposedly-infallible defence against the Wraith, which Sarna flatly refuses to discuss. John makes a note to find out about anyway, if he can; they detected nothing of the sort from the Stargate, but Ava hasn’t been culled in centuries.

Instead, they talk about packaged food and power cells and a drug the Avans have that sounds like it holds off infection better than penicillin, and John neatly sidesteps questions about where he and Rodney really come from while Teyla and Ronon talk about their battles with the Wraith. Sarna's a smart lady, knows what not to ask, when not to ask it. She knows all about them she needs to know, and anyway, she confides with a wink, she likes them.

When the ground shakes, short, sharp, and sudden, late in the morning of the third day, John is on his feet and running before the people on the street have even started screaming. Smoke is rising from the central power station, a hard-edged black gash in the pale green sky.

***

He’d caught himself obsessively watching Rodney’s behaviour for changes from the moment he’d woken up in the infirmary four weeks ago, but shortly given up feeling guilty about it. It didn’t matter why he was doing it, he told himself, just that he knew where Rodney was, and that he was in one piece.

Rodney had actually been more or less normal on the trip to Earth, though John supposed that he’d been angry, and for Rodney anger was pretty much like good booze, which had to have helped. There were differences, though; Rodney had always been paranoid, but before he’d been proud of it, and now he denied being startled or frightened, even when it showed plainly on his face, because everything did.

Rodney’s moment of panic on the front porch was telling, something that had apparently not gone unnoticed, evident in how careful Jeannie was being. Rodney and Jeannie were actually pretty physical, or at least Jeannie was, which had more than once made John wonder just how different her relationship with their parents had been. Jeannie touched people; grabbed hands, touched shoulders, and before, had habitually given Rodney a cuff on the back of the head or a flick on the ear or a pinch on the arm whenever he said something particularly insensitive.

It was normal, John could always tell, because Jeannie didn’t seem to think about it; Jeannie hugged as easily as she slapped. In Rodney’s case, both always seemed to be affectionate, executed with a certain grimness as if she were making up for lost time, doing something for Rodney’s own good. So it was customary, but Rodney always looked surprised by either kind of contact.

Eventually it dawned on John that Rodney always looked surprised when anyone touched him. When they’d met, Rodney had projected an aura of repulsion obvious to anyone, an unconscious flashing neon sign broadcasting don’t touch me, stay away. But after growing to know him better, John had come to suspect it was largely self-defence. Meeting Rodney’s sister had cemented the observation.

Afterwards John had found himself making excuses to touch Rodney more often; a pat on the shoulder, a clap on the back, a squeeze to the arm, sitting in slightly closer proximity. Teyla and Ronon had seemed to pick up on it and done the same, knowing or unknowing. If Rodney had noticed, he hadn’t let on, but he had become marginally more relaxed over time, at least with them. John tried not to think too hard about how he’d no trouble at all coming up with excuses.

Jeannie hadn’t hit Rodney once since they’d arrived, though, which relaxed John considerably. She did seem to be watching both John and her brother as carefully as John was watching Rodney, and John made a mental note to expect a conversation in the near future, if the sly, worried look she was wearing meant anything. It seemed Rodney didn’t notice her being careful, though, probably because she seemed to have decided to make up for it by picking fights.

Rodney and Jeannie argued constantly, in a friendly, comfortable way that John found weirdly adorable. It wasn’t exactly bickering, which didn’t really go anywhere, because when Rodney and Jeannie argued it was toward an end, usually to fix something or make something or establish something. It could go on for hours, and John found it almost comforting, familiar ambient noise like a television turned on in the background. He sat at the kitchen table with Madison, shelling peas into a big green bowl, because Jeannie was one of those strange people who got everyone involved in the preparation of a meal.

Just now, they were arguing about hockey. John wasn’t paying that much attention until he realised they were comparing statistics. Then the words “New York Rangers,” and “bloody Americans” came up, and John felt honour-bound to say something, even if it was something unintelligent, like:

“I always thought ‘Canuck’ was a weird name for a sports team. What does it even mean?”

The sudden mute horror that descended on the kitchen was funny, but John restrained himself. “You shouldn’t say that, Uncle John,” said Madison solemnly, shaking a finger at him in a way that had to be inherited.

John smirked, and then pointed his own finger at Rodney. “I happen to know you don’t even like hockey.”

Rodney gave him a scornful look. “I’m not convinced anyone actually likes hockey,” he said easily. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the geometric appli—”

Jeannie cut him off, rolling her eyes. “The thing is, insulting the Canucks is sort of like setting books on fire. It’s just not something you do.”

John absolutely did not pout at Rodney’s sister. “You just spent fifteen minutes talking about how much they suck,” he pointed out.

Jeannie shrugged. “Yes,” she said, in the same gentle tones she used with her five-year-old daughter, as though he weren’t quite clever enough to understand, “but that’s us. You’re an American. It’s different.”

Belatedly John picked up on the delicate emphasis: It’s not something you do. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

“I thought you two grew up in…” John pretended to search his memory, and then looked at Madison for help.

“Victoria,” supplied Madison cheerfully, without looking up. “On Vancouver Island. I’ve been there. They have a submarine in the museum and it goes down into the harbour.” She pointed vaguely west with one hand, the other using a pea pod to mimic a descending sub, complete with sound effects.

Rodney made a characteristically dismissive gesture with one hand. “Don’t be ridiculous, Victoria doesn’t have a hockey team. It’s twenty blocks square.”

“And I wouldn’t go around badmouthing the Canucks where people can hear you,” Jeannie added warningly. “People get a bit funny around the season, especially if they know you’re an American.”

John grinned at her. “Is it that obvious?”

“Yes,” said Rodney, deadpan.

Both of them were wearing such identically ominous expressions that John couldn’t help laughing. But Rodney shook his head, sober. “I’m telling you,” he muttered, “rioting in the street.”

***

Rodney is elbows-deep in the power core when the air starts to hum. He doesn’t hear it at first, but feels it in the floor, buzzing up through his knees and into his spine and making his teeth hurt.

“What’s that noise?” he asks of the air, because it’s now starting to be really uncomfortable. On the other side of the room, Miko is making a pained face and covering her ears.

It’s a second before the Avan technician working next to him jerks back out of the machine, jumping to his feet, looking up as if he expects the ceiling to fall. Rodney does likewise, because he’s not an idiot. There’s another noise now, on a lower register, distant shouts and bangs.

Zelenka rises to his feet, looking perplexed, glancing from the ceiling, to Rodney’s face. “Rodney?” he asks, “what is happening? Are you in pain?”

Rodney’s about to snap that no, he makes faces like these for fun, and then suddenly there's gunfire and something scorches his cheek and people are shouting.

And then someone - he thinks Simpson - is pulling him down to the floor as it shakes, hard, beneath them.

Five seconds later someone else entirely is pointing a gun in his face and screaming. He hits his head, or something hits him, and he slips away from the world into the dark.

He’s only out for a few minutes, he’s told, and while waking up to Zelenka’s face is not one of Rodney’s fondest fantasies he’ll take what he can get once he’s awake, because they’re surrounded by crazy people with guns.

The rebels, at a glance, make Rodney think of pictures he's seen of guerrilla soldiers during... god what was the last ridiculous American police action? Rodney's first impression is of a collection of dirt-streaked faces and sweat-stained motley, and they're not wearing uniforms, but there's a certain common concession to simple cuts and heavy boots and body armour even Rodney can tell has been scrounged from a discard bin somewhere. They've got the hollow-eyed look of desperate men, which is the first thing that makes his hands want to shake, but they don't, because you don't show hostage-takers you're afraid, even if you are.

Their leader comes striding into the control room five minutes after the explosion, and the wind is shrieking at irregular intervals through the broken window, raising gooseflesh on Rodney's arms. The Avan scientists are whimpering and huddled together, and one woman screams and then starts to cry when he pulls back his hood.

Rodney doesn't see what's so goddamned special. The rebel leader looks like a filing clerk while he has his thugs point a gun at each of the scientists in turn, pointedly ignoring the Lanteans while he questions them, but none of them say a word, except for the weeping blonde, who really just babbles. The chief technician Orsa, a bland brown-haired man who was previously finding Rodney at least a little amusing, is white-faced and shaking with fury.

“Who the hell are you people?” Rodney demands loudly, wincing as the volume actually hurts his own ears, and he instinctively covers them with his hands until the wave of dizziness subsides. What is that? Why is he dizzy? Is he concussed?

But the leader sees him and looks thoughtful, and then delighted

"My name is Eron Vaal," he says, with chilling courtesy. "Welcome to Ava, Doctor McKay."

It takes Rodney about thirteen minutes, while Vaal and his men secure things and discuss things or whatever terrorists do when they’ve just captured a power station, to work out that only the ATA carriers in their party - himself and Miko - felt the device (whatever it was) powering up. Which means that it’s Ancient. Which means, fuck, that it’s probably going to be hard to find and deactivate.

Assuming there’s any of it left. The north side of the tower is gone, open to the air and the city thirty stories below, and there are little patches of smouldering floor between where they’re kneeling and the drop-off. There’s still a faint, irritating buzz in his ears, though, or not really his ears, he supposes.

Orsa explained it to them before they started working; that the array is automatically made independent of the city during an emergency, and this is an emergency. That the lockdown protocol will keep anyone from going in or out, and is on a timer that can’t be deactivated from the outside or the inside.

That nobody will be coming to rescue them, and he figures that out right before Vaal tells him, smugly, that they are his prisoners. That the tower is under his control. That the city is helpless.

“How do you know who I am?” Rodney asks, approximately eighty thousand horrible, paranoid possibilities racing through his mind, but they’re better than thinking about right now.

“You’re quite well known, Doctor McKay,” Vaal tells him, still smiling that stupid, self-congratulatory smile, and even Rodney, who doesn’t consider himself a particularly violent person, wants to punch him, repeatedly, until he stops moving.

“When one is planning a revolution, one seeks out whatever resources one might, and you might be interested to know that there’s more than one party offering substantial rewards for the delivery of any Lantean.” He pauses to study his nails, and adds: “Dead or alive. But the price is higher for alive.”

“So this was all some big set-up to get me?” And he knows how it sounds, because he’s had it explained, how it sounds, but let’s be honest, it’s not the first time it’s ever happened.

To his right, Zelenka still manages to shoot him a deeply sarcastic look, even with one hand pressed to the cut on his temple and one lens of his glasses cracked down the middle. Shut up, Rodney thinks at him furiously, shut up, shut up, this is not the time, you can make fun of me later. But there’s still something comforting in the way that Radek can still manage to prick holes in him with this many guns aimed in their direction.

To his - he thinks - relief, Vaal laughs. Rodney’s not a - okay, he is an insufferably proud man, but it still makes him flush with embarrassment. “No,” Vaal says, “this was a genuine political uprising, Doctor McKay. Minister Sarna was meant to be touring this station today, but it seems your arrival has caused her to re-arrange her schedule. But our secondary objectives have so far been successful.”

“The power station,” mutters Zelenka.

“The power station,” agrees Vaal, and leers at Rodney again. Rodney doesn’t think he means to be leering, but that’s how it comes out. Rodney doesn’t trust people who can’t control their facial expressions. “And your presence is an unexpected bonus, though I admit I was hoping for Major Sheppard too.”

“He’s a Colonel now,” Rodney corrects automatically.

Vaal ignores him. “The tower will remain in lockdown until it is released from within - which is impossible,” he counts off on his fingers, “until the time limit has passed, or until you, Doctor McKay, aid us in unlocking our treasure.”

“Unlocking your--” Rodney never knows what to say when the bad guys talk like this. The instinct is to laugh, because god, they sound like bad cartoon villains, but they’re in the Pegasus galaxy, where no one has ever heard of Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom. Sometimes sincerity is so tragic, but sometimes it just scares the crap out of him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Vaal nods to one of his thugs, who disappears briefly into the adjoining alcove, and returns a moment later with… well, it looks like a vacuum cleaner, at first glance, matte-silver and vaguely spherical. It’s unquestionably Ancient, though - Rodney’s spent too many years absorbing the Ancient aesthetic sense not to recognise the curving lines, the pale colours of the thing sitting on the circular centre console.

It’s about the size of a breadbox, and that thought skitters with hysterical laughter across the surface of his brain, because somewhere, somehow, something had to be the same size as a breadbox.

“What is it?” he asks, curious despite himself.

“We believe it’s a transportation device, something that would be extremely useful in our campaigns,” Vaal tells him. “This world was once a colony of the Ancestors, Doctor McKay. There’s a great number of their lost devices buried in the ruins along the eastern coast, but only members of the Guilds are allowed to retrieve them.” He spares a nasty look for the huddled Avan technicians.

“The device we uncovered on the coast was much like this one,” he points at the breadbox, “but it was damaged beyond repair, and our intelligence told us another of its kind had been brought to the city.”

Rodney stares at it. “And you want me to what - kiss it better?”

“Your knowledge of the Ancestors’ technology is renowned, Doctor,” Vaal says, raising his eyebrows. “In any case, none of my men - nor almost anyone on Ava - has the power to activate most of the Ancestors’ machines.”

He looks significantly at Rodney, who feels suddenly angry. He’s going to have to have a talk with John about sticking his finger into every Ancient light socket he comes across, if everything they say and do is now being shared on the Pegasus Galaxy supervillain mailing list.

“What makes you think I--” he says, hardly stuttering at all, but gives it up when Vaal inclines his head in a gesture that says, with all the clarity of speech, that Rodney is being both ridiculous and trying, and there’s a flash of something else that sets Rodney’s fingers twitching for the sidearm they took away from him twenty minutes ago.

“Look,” he amends, he thinks remarkably steadily, given the circumstances, “whatever moronic plan you have, you might as well toss it right now, because in about ten minutes our people are going to be busting in here with all sorts of Ancient weapons…” He trails off, because Vaal is looking both stormy and amused.

“Were you not listening, Rodney?” hisses Zelenka. “We are locked in.”

“Correct,” says Vaal, slapping his own knee. “In any case, the Parliament has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.” He spits the words, like they taste foul. “We’re stuck in here, unless you find us a way out.”

“Me?” Rodney sputters, “are you completely insane? Why would I…”

Vaal has gotten easily to his feet. He’s not tall, but he’s got an easy lift to his shoulders, and the half-dozen men with him look to him instinctively. He might look like a filing clerk but Rodney’s been in Pegasus long enough to recognise hero worship, and even when it might be justifiable.

Vaal might be a fucking psychopath but his men believe in him, and god help them all, he’s sincere.

He’s calm-faced as he turns back to the Avans and asks: “Can you disable the lockout?” and the technicians are silent, except for Orsa, who straightens his shoulders and spits on the guy's boot.

Rodney really, truly doesn’t see it coming, though he knows he should have. Vaal goes hard-eyed, and quick as a whisper of air, pulls out a knife and slashes Orsa's throat, ear to ear.

It's one quick movement, no wasted energy, the arm goes up, and left, and down, and Orsa is on the floor bleeding and choking and twitching, but not for very long. The time between the spitting and the gurgling is maybe four seconds.

Rodney jerks back from the body, which falls at his knees, and almost knocks over Simpson, who has both hands pressed tightly to her mouth. Rodney thinks for a moment, with conviction, that he might throw up. Knives are so much untidier than gunfire.

Behind him, Miko makes a tiny noise of dismay, and Rodney thinks the temperature in the room has dropped for a few seconds before he realises that no, it's him that's gone cold.

“You will repair the device,” he eventually hears Vaal saying, and he looks up into cold dark eyes with no hint of patience or mercy in them. “You will transport us out of here. And I will kill one person every hour until you do.”

He feels his team - his team, Zelenka and Simpson and Miko and Ager and even the new guy, what the hell’s his name, Henriksson - frozen behind him, and it feels as if everything has stopped, but he knows it’s only wishful thinking.

A few harsh, constricted breaths later, he’s moving after all, reaching for his tablet and plugging it into the device. His head is still hurting, and hurting worse with the persistent buzz in his ears. He watches as string after string of base eight Ancient code jitters across his screen.

Rodney fucking hates base eight.

***

Madison solved the Rubik’s Cube by suppertime, and came running into the dining room to plunk it proudly down next to Rodney’s plate. “Have you got another one?” she asked expectantly, and Rodney grinned, involuntarily.

“I--” he tried, and then: “not with me.”

“Oh.” Madison looked disappointed, and then turned to her mother for an appeal.

“Mad, be grateful,” Jeannie chided, looking amused. “Go wash your hands.”

Madison went, placidly enough with only a hint of a pout, but Rodney picked up the cube and turned it over in his hands. He caught Jeannie’s eye and grinned at her with his I-told-you-so face, but Jeannie just went on looking amused.

“What?” she asked, smirking as she reached for his plate. “I should feel thwarted? I didn’t say she wasn’t smart.”

“Uh huh,” Rodney said, handing it over. “I’m just remembering that of the two of us who could do secondary algebra at five, it wasn’t you.”

“Uh huh,” Jeannie rolled her eyes. “And of the two of us who could spell, it wasn’t you.”

To his left, John pretended to have a coughing fit into his napkin. Kaleb played along, and pounded John on the back.

TWO

After they lost Elizabeth, there had been a period of almost a month where Rodney thought he saw her everywhere he looked. Kate – before she died too, of course – had thought it had something to do with him blaming himself, which hadn’t exactly been high-end psychology, as he’d pointed out. Of course he blamed himself. It was his job to fix things, and he hadn’t.

He’d stopped seeing her, but after Ava it had been days before he realised that the only dreams he was remembering were ones about Elizabeth.

He’d been annoyed by that. It had seemed so incongruous. Of all the faces he could have seen, Elizabeth’s was the last on his mental list. He’d have expected Simpson’s, or Miko’s, or even Ager. But it was Elizabeth who was there again and again, half-lit in a dark room while Rodney sat in silence. She never said anything, just kept her hand on his arm and smiled at him.

He stopped having the dreams when they came to Earth – had given up on sleeping for more than an hour at a time, for that matter – but he didn’t stop thinking about them. Even began to miss them, because what he saw when he did sleep were not nearly so pleasant. The Elizabeth dreams were weird, disturbing, sure, but they were relatively peaceful. They never made him wake up sweating and terrified.

It might just have been that Elizabeth was gone. He wondered when, in his mind, he’d started equating “most of us are alive” with “everything will be okay.” It wasn’t even all of them; somewhere in his head he’d compiled a list of all the people he considered necessary to the ongoing cohesion of his personal universe. First, always first, was John. Elizabeth; Teyla, Ronon; Radek, Carson. Jeannie, even when they were fighting. Madison. Sam.

When they’d lost Carson and then Elizabeth, so close together, things had been suddenly different. Not impossible, but different. The world had taken on a new edge of constant, low-level urgency. He could no longer delude himself that they were safe, even for a second. But there were things close enough to safe that he could still get up every day and do his work and sleep at night. Things like realising that he suddenly, despite his best efforts to the contrary, had friends, or something close. That some of them even occasionally seemed to like having him around for other than purely practical reasons.

He’d long been highly-thought-of by a lot of people, but despite a certain amount of self-admitted arrogance he was smart enough to realise that that applied to his talents, not his person. This new state of affairs had come as a surprise. Not that he’d ever say that kind of thing out loud. He’d spent too many years being the only person who took care of Rodney McKay to risk such a declaration. He stayed at the table as supper was cleared up around him, with both hands curled possessively around a cup of Kaleb’s very, very good coffee. Little as he liked that his sister had married an English professor (not even a full professor yet), the man had excellent taste in coffee.

Rodney spent twenty minutes communing with his third cup of… well, he’d already forgotten what it was called. It was good, though. That was all that mattered. Rodney was absolutely certain it was fair trade and organic, despite tasting like the kind of coffee that usually had to be carried on foot up the South American coast by indentured orphans.

Kaleb seemed to look upon sharing his extremely rare coffee (“I practically had to have it smuggled in, but I have connections,” he’d confided) as some kind of peace offering. Rodney was still thinking about it.

He could hear Madison making what was sure to be a very cheerful mess in the kitchen, where she, Kaleb and John (at Madison’s insistence) were doing the dishes. He could hear a lot of splashing and girlish giggling and chose to believe that at least some of it was John’s.

Jeannie wiped down the table and started stripping off the tablecloth, which had suffered a significant Madison-related spill, and Rodney watched her out of the corner of his eye. He never would have made up with Jeannie again, either, if it hadn’t been for Atlantis. If it hadn’t been for John.

He didn’t notice that Jeannie had sat down next to him until she touched his arm. He didn’t jump, didn’t spill his coffee – which at that moment was his paramount concern – but he was sure she felt the tensing of muscles under her hand, because she removed the hand after only a second.

“Meredith, are you okay?” she asked, sounding a little shaken. He glanced at her face, and though he was ready for it he still hated the careful, worried look on her face. He was so sick of people looking worried about him he could just throw up.

Instead, he took a scalding gulp of coffee and didn’t even whimper when it burned his tongue. “I really wish everyone would stop asking me that,” he muttered.

Jeannie glanced up as a squeal from the kitchen signalled another minor flood, and sighed. “You’ve been acting weird, Mer. What am I supposed to say?”

“You could say nothing,” he suggested, without much hope. “You could just let me enjoy my vacation.”

“You haven’t been to see me for anything short of a life-threatening situation in three years – not that I don’t appreciate it,” she amended quickly, with a brief bright smile, “but the sudden desire to visit, on top of all the… well, Mer, you’re worrying me.”

He stared down into his cup, and said nothing, until she pressed: “Something happened, didn’t it? Something… worse,” in a quiet, careful voice.

“A lot of things have happened,” he muttered, and pushed the cup away from him.

Jeannie sighed; her tolerant, I-don’t-know-why-I-put-up-with-you sigh. “I know a lot of things happen to you out there that you can’t talk about, Mer, but some things I think I have a right to know about.”

She looked more annoyed than worried, now, but she reached carefully out and touched the scar on his forearm, the one he’d gotten courtesy of Kolya, and had that really been three years ago? She’d asked about with wide eyes the first time she came to Atlantis, and he’d told her firmly to stop asking about it.

He pulled his arm away with a hiss. “Oh, yes? And what makes you think that?”

Jeannie remained unmoved, watching him. “Aside from the fact that some of it got me kidnapped in the recent past, how about the fact that you’re my brother and I worry about you?”

“I can’t—” he began, staring at her in frank astonishment. He wanted to say something, felt he should, because when people said things like that you were supposed to say something back…

But then he was scowling again, down at the table, shaking his head. To his left, Jeannie sighed again, a real sigh, and she rubbed hard at the bridge of her nose for a second before fixing him again with a look Rodney could only qualify as resigned.

“Everything okay in here?”

John’s voice, above all careful, and Rodney looked up to see him standing in the door to the kitchen, drying his hands on a striped dishtowel.

Jeannie just sighed again and got up, moving past him and calling out to Madison: “Time for your bath, Mad.”

The ensuing argument was cover enough for John to follow Rodney out of the dining room, down the corridor, and most of the way up the stairs. “Rodney,” he said warningly, and Rodney stopped halfway up and whirled on him.

“What?” he demanded.

John’s eyebrows rose a little, and he did that thing with his mouth that meant Rodney was being particularly frustrating. John had almost as many ways of implying things with his eyebrows as he did of using Rodney’s name. “You gonna tell me what all that was about?”

“What what was about?” sneered Rodney, with such force that John swayed backwards. For a second it looked like he might fall, and with a sudden breathless vision of John concussed on the hall floor Rodney reached out and seized his arm to pull him back up.

But even as he touched him, John caught his balance with an easy hand on the banister. Rodney was breathing hard, and he couldn’t seem to let go. Couldn’t seem to make his fingers do what he was telling them, or his lungs, or his legs.

He didn’t even realise John was talking until he felt himself being guided to a seat on the middle step, and opened his eyes to see John crouching down in front of him. “Rodney?” he was saying, in a low, soft voice, “can you hear me?”

John had turned his arm in Rodney’s grip, so that he was gripping back, thumb rhythmically stroking the inside of Rodney’s wrist. His other hand was on Rodney’s knee. It felt cold.

“Of course I can hear you,” he whispered irritably, but his chest still felt tight.

“Rodney, you’re having a panic attack,” John explained calmly. “I need you to take slow, deep breaths…”

“I’m not having a—” Rodney protested, but John squeezed his arm, gave him a look like a challenge.

“Then do what I say, and prove me wrong,” he murmured, and Rodney did it out of pure spite. He was annoyed when it helped, when he could breathe again and John was tilting up one corner of his mouth in that not-quite-smile that was John’s version of I-told-you-so. “You okay?”

“I really, sincerely would like people to stop asking me that,” Rodney said weakly, and looked down at where he was still gripping John’s arm, John who had made no move to pull away.

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of why we came,” John pointed out, reasonably.

Rodney stared at John’s hand at his arm for several long seconds, the novelty of being touched warring against the instinct to be angry about being coddled. “I’m very tired,” he said eventually, and even he could hear the pleading note in his voice. But he was tired, too tired to feel embarrassed as John peered closely into his face, sighed, and let go.

Suddenly even bad dreams seemed like small trade-off for a little peace and quiet.

***

John went back downstairs for an hour, to give Rodney time to drop off – assuming he would. He helped Kaleb dry the dishes and put them away, and took the bright blue plastic recycling bin down the curb in front of the house.

Coming back inside, he met Jeannie at the foot of the stairs. She gave him a searching look, but just shook her head and left him with a “good night, John.”

Finally there was nothing for John to do but turn in, and so he did, slipping into the room silently, changing into shorts and a t-shirt, and sliding into the bed where Rodney was curled up on the far side of the mattress with his eyes shut, apparently asleep. John followed him after a minute or two.

He’d already suspected Rodney wasn’t sleeping - had been suspecting it before Keller pulled him aside to lay it out for him, the reasons Rodney had to stop, had to go away for a while. By the second night on Earth, he was sure, because it had taken John that long to adjust to the unfamiliar solar rotation – even if Earth never quite felt right anymore – and Rodney had still not slept through eight hours, not even five, not even two, not once.

They’d spent a night at Cheyenne Mountain when they’d arrived, because “accumulated leave” didn’t qualify them for a quick trip via Asgard beam and they’d had to wait for a commercial flight cross-country. They’d been assigned separate rooms, but John had heard the base personnel complaining that Rodney had been up at all hours pestering the night shift.

He’d been off-world with Rodney enough times to know that when Rodney slept, he slept like the dead. Even, heavy breathing, but the rest of him still, at peace, in sharpest contrast to Rodney while awake, when the only right words invoked motion and energy: Frenzy. Babble. Passion. Delight. Sometimes he had bad dreams, slept uneasily; everyone did. But it rarely manifested as anything more troubling than tiny whimpers, almost childlike, and Rodney always slept with a faint frown of concentration on his face, but he didn’t scream, didn’t thrash, didn’t shudder.

It was the trembling that woke John, Rodney’s shoulder pressed hard between his shoulder blades, his upper body curled desperately into the pillow, his mouth open and a steady stream of incomprehensible not-quite-words spilling out into the dark. He knew it was a nightmare in a second, not just a bad dream, but a nightmare. He could see the guttural horror written into the lines of Rodney’s face, and after a moment he imagined he could almost feel it, because the hair on his own neck rose and he shivered, even in the still summer heat of Jeannie’s guestroom.

Deciding to wake him, even with a gentle touch and a whisper of his name, was dangerous, but John was ready, hands already reaching as Rodney flailed at him with his eyes still screwed shut, because he knew it was coming. He knew the absurd strength terror could give a man, knew that Rodney would wake up breathing hard, fists clenched, ready to fight, as he did.

But John caught his wrists easily, held them for a few terrifying heartbeats as Rodney twitched, heaved, whimpered, and finally came awake gasping. In the dim light of the room, the blue eyes were startling and pale, just a ring of colour around pupils gone huge with panic.

John held on as tightly as he dared until Rodney blinked, blinked again, and then recognised him. He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing, and croaked: “John?”

“Right in one. That’s why you’re a genius,” John murmured, slowly letting go of Rodney’s wrists, sliding his hands up the forearms, stroking gently but firmly. Rodney’s fingers clutched, and closed around John’s arms. “Bad dream?”

For the space of a breath John saw Rodney about to recoil, about to get angry, but in the end he stared nakedly into John’s eyes for a second before bending his head into the space between them. John slid his hands up to Rodney’s shoulders, still stroking, grounding him. Nakedly. It was the only word that fit, sending blood flooding into his face, but he didn’t pull away.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rodney said eventually, in a muffled voice.

John drew breath automatically to say that he should, that he’d have to, eventually, but the pressure of Rodney’s fingers around his arms, the heat of his body, stopped him, made him hesitate just long enough to make it too late to say it.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He pressed a hand to the back of Rodney’s neck, damp with sweat. “Are you…”

The laughter startled him, but not for long. “I’m so tired,” Rodney told him, hoarsely.

“Go to sleep,” John told him, thumb moving slowly at the nape of Rodney’s neck. Rodney was a solid, radiating presence in his arms, and the moment of heated embarrassment had passed. Now he was growing drowsy on his own account, and under his hands he could feel Rodney’s pulse slowing, his breathing even out.

When Rodney spoke again, it was slurred, and John couldn’t see his face. “Thanks.”

“S’nothing,” John told the top of his head, “Do it for anyone.”

That got him the faintest vibration of laughter, but not the sound, and gradually he realised Rodney had dropped off. He firmly ignored the tingle of guilt at the back of his head, because it was true, John would have done it for anyone. Just maybe not with so little hesitation.

***

The Avans, as it turns out, are telepaths, or something close enough that Sarna’s aide can shut his eyes and tell her that most of the scientists are still alive. John grabs his arm and demands to know what “most” means, while wondering how they could spend three days on this planet and nobody told them about all the mind-reading.

“No Avan of any conscience would ever look without asking,” Sarna assures him, carefully prying his fingers from her aide’s collar. The aide slinks away, pale and sweaty.

“What about those guys?” John demands, stabbing his finger up at the tower, and even Sarna jumps. John doesn’t care, his head is buzzing and he’s angry and he wants to do something, because up there maybe Rodney and his team are getting murdered, and he doesn’t think he can handle that.

Sarna makes a show of smoothing her hair, and looks up at the top of the tower, the dark blemish of the explosion on the side where the control room must be open to the elements. “Eron Vaal is a terrorist, Major,” she tells him. “But as far as I know, none of his men have the capability. They would certainly never have been given new reading devices.”

“Reading devices?” John asks blankly.

“These,” she says, brushing the hair from the side of her neck to reveal something small and metallic blinking just behind her ear. “They allow our citizens to access the city’s computer systems, and exchange information via the network. It is not true telepathy, but we can establish the presence of a certain number of signals above, and connecting through their readers, we can establish the presence of nearly a dozen others.”

She lets the hair fall back into place, hiding the reader, and explains: “Vaal’s men have all been detained in the past for criminal offences. Their devices were removed. It is a punishment reserved for only our most dangerous criminals.”

She looks grave, enough that it gives John a bit of a chill. He can practically hear the words “we do not negotiate with terrorists” coming out of her mouth, even though she hasn’t said them yet. Vaal’s not just a terrorist, he can tell. In their eyes, he’s a monster, and nobody negotiates with monsters. You kill them, whatever the cost.

“Then how do you know anybody’s still alive up there?”

“Because all of our scientists have readers,” Sarna tells him. “My aide detected all except Technician Orsa Brenn, and passive readings tell us that there are still several others present who cannot be Vaal or his men.”

John grasps at the offered straw. “Can we use it to communicate with my people?”

But Sarna shakes her head. “I’m afraid not,” she says. “As I said, this is a passive method. We cannot force them to respond. But we will keep trying, while we execute contingency plans.”

Contingency plans, thinks John. It’s hardly ever a stable situation when people start throwing around words like “contingency,” and he recognises the dismissive way the Avans are talking about Vaal. The man is “dangerous,” he’s “a threat,” he “cannot not be reasoned with.” None of the above bodes well for getting their own people out safely, even if Sarna isn’t saying so yet. Better to be paranoid, John thinks.

Though he’s loathe to go out of sight of the tower, he leaves Teyla and Hergaard with Sarna, and he and Ronon tramp back to the gate to dial Atlantis.

“We have a situation,” he tells Chuck Beaton, putting enough urgency in his voice that the Canadian tech goes running for Carter.

Carter, to her credit, sounds cool as the ocean, but then she’s probably been in this situation a dozen times before. With a few notable (positively fluke-like) exceptions, SG-1 was not well-known for making a lot of friends. Elizabeth’s Avoiding Cross-Cultural Misunderstanding handbook, written hastily in the first year of the expedition, was been largely based on SG-1’s mission reports. It’s more a how-not-to guide than a how-to.

She’s a little less cool when he finishes outlining it. “I hate to ask this, but we’re sure McKay had nothing to do with the political uprising?” Strangely, it calms him a little, focuses him, and John chuckles despite himself. “No, it looks like Rodney was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And still is,” he adds, because they’ve gotten off the point. Rodney has gotten a lot better at keeping his mouth shut, but he’s still Rodney.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance the Daedelus is in spitting distance of Ava?” he asks, idly running inventory on his and Ronon’s personal ordinance as he talks.

Carter’s end of the line goes quiet for a minute, and he guesses she’s stepped away from the control room. “At the last check-in, they were still three days out at full burn, Colonel, and we’ve got nothing else in dock with beaming technology, which I assume was your next question. Do you think we’re there yet?”

“Don’t know for sure,” he admits, glad that he doesn’t have to explain his tentative plan. The tower isn’t shielded, as far as he can work out, just at the mercy of a complicated lockdown sequence. “But I’m getting a scorched earth vibe off of the government officials here, and I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

He practically hears her “what, you?” grin, and hears it fade, too. “That’s not encouraging,” she says. “And I guess this counts them out as regular trading partners. I don’t like the idea of allying ourselves with people who are willing to take this kind of loss just to deal with insurgents. Especially if the loss is our people.” She says that with such feeling – our people – that he feels a momentary surge of something both fond and indignant. She’s new, but she’s trying, and this isn’t the time to needle her over territory.

“Well, like I said, it’s just a vibe, not a fact,” he hurries to say. “They might still be useful if we can work this out. I just think we should be careful.”

“I trust your vibes, Colonel,” she says, but adds: “so we’ll see. In the meantime…”

It’s a leading question, and he takes it. “I’d like Lorne to come through with a couple of engineers.” He looks at Ronon, who gives him a thoughtful shrug. “The Minister says there’s no way to bypass the lockdown, but from what I’ve seen these people take a lot of technology for granted without knowing how it works.”

“Ancient?” she asks, unable to disguise her eagerness.

“Rodney thought so,” he agrees. “Or a mix of old and new. Maybe our people can find a way through that lockdown, and if it comes down to rushing the power station, I’d rather not be blasting through barred doors.”

“Understandable,” she says, and there’s the sound of her talking over the citywide, calling for Lorne to form up with a team in the jumper bay. “ETA about ten minutes, Colonel,” she tells him.

He breathes the tiniest sigh of relief, and thanks her.

“You’re welcome. And good luck.”

Lorne arrives bang at the ten-minute mark, and they ride back to the city in the jumper. John lets Lorne fly, sitting in the co-pilot seat and trying not to fidget.

Not for the first time, he wonders how it’s always Rodney who gets himself into these situations. It can’t just be bad luck, because they’re all equally prone to that. It can’t just be Pegasus, because Pegasus and her twisted sense of humour do not play favourites.

That really only leaves Rodney, and though John would never actually say that it’s his fault (though it fairly often sort of is), it does seem to be tied up with Rodney, himself. Rodney, who is, above all, unique. Rodney, with that bizarre quality about him that makes most people hate him and some people like him even against their better judgement. John certainly saw it that way himself, at first, but it remains a fact that the people who care about Rodney, care deeply for him, to the point that he can become a liability sometimes, and John’s certainly no exception to that rule.

He’s a liability anyway, John reminds himself, and savours the self-recrimination over the stupidity of that for a few seconds before it dies away of its own accord. He’s been a liability for a long time, and sometimes John has no idea how he can have avoided noticing. But it seems, as do many things, to go right over Rodney’s brilliant head. For a genius, the guy can be pretty oblivious.

John leans back in his seat and tries to unobtrusively massage his temples. When that doesn’t work, he presses the heel of his right hand into his right eye. One thing’s for certain: he gets a lot more headaches these days than he did before he met Rodney McKay.

***

For two nights, Rodney actually slept mostly through the dark hours. John would have liked to think that had something to do with his presence, but suspected it had rather more to do with the pure exhaustion of not sleeping much for almost a month.

They didn’t discuss the nightmares, though John tried once or twice. All Rodney would say was: “It’s my problem, I’m dealing with it.”

It was a couple of days before it became clear that Rodney wasn’t dealing with anything at all. If anything he was tighter-strung than usual, which was something, and a couple of times John thought he saw him go almost stone-still.

That was unusual, too. Rodney was always in motion, talking or moving his hands or tapping his heel while he thought or ate; even when he was focused and holding still he always seemed to be moving, somehow. Jeannie wasn’t like that, she always seemed easy in herself, but even she seemed bothered by Rodney’s stillness; kept giving him odd looks whenever she thought he wouldn’t see, and then softening her own gestures around him.

It was as if, when not being spoken to, Rodney was going into some kind of sleep mode. He’d stare into space and hold very still, but not like he’d just come to a rest, more like he was frozen.

It was downright eerie, and the second time he was startled out of it John saw real alarm on his face before he covered it. It was Madison, that time, who shook him back into reality, tugging on his arm and saying: “Uncle Mer, can you take me to the park? Mummy says she’s busy.”

Rodney blinked and looked down at her as if surprised to see her, shook his head, and said, uncertainly: “I… I guess so…”

“Do you mind, Mer?” asked Jeannie, halfway into both the living room and her coat. “One of the other lecturers got sick at the last minute and I said I’d fill in. I wouldn’t ask, but…”

Rodney blinked right back into the moment, and stared at her. “Wait, lecture? What? What’s this about?”

Jeannie gave him an elaborate eye-roll. “I’ve been teaching first-year physics classes at Douglas College, Mer. I had to keep my hand in somewhere.”

“Physics – at Douglas of all – why didn’t you tell me about this?” he demanded, still looking confused.

“Lower-division colleges serve an important purpose, and I did tell you, Mer. Honestly, do you ever read my letters?” She moved past him into the foyer. Rodney followed, apparently unable to stop himself.

“I thought you’d given up all the ‘demanding subjective drain’ of academia to glory in the squishy warmth of motherhood or something?” Rodney said nastily, either unaware or uninterested that the product of said squishy warmth was standing not ten feet away. Madison didn’t seem to notice the implication.

John, safe behind his book, hid his enormous grin behind the pages. But he heard Jeannie sigh impatiently. “Mad’s starting school in September,” she pointed out. “Whereupon she’ll be out for most of the day and I can…” She paused, and when she continued there was an almost gentle note under the exasperation: “It was never going to be forever, Mer.”

Rodney sounded confused: “It… wasn’t?”

John actually had to bite the inside of his cheek again to keep from chuckling. Madison was standing in the middle of the living room with her hands on her hips, staring at her mother and her uncle with a vaguely perplexed look on her face, but she was definitely paying attention.

“No, it wasn’t. Which I tried to tell you at the time, but you weren’t really listening, were you? I don’t even— look,” she said, glancing at her watch, “I don’t have time for this right now. Can you take her or not? I was going to take her downtown to the Space Centre, and then to Deer Lake afterwards… I can’t think of anyone more qualified to debunk the student presenters at the Planetarium, but if you don’t want to, I need to know now so I can take her over to Frank and Theresa’s…”

“Frank and who?”

“Kaleb’s parents. Her grandparents? I’ll have just enough time to drop her off before I have to be at the college. Well?”

John wasn’t reading anymore, was watching Rodney’s profile as he shut his mouth, frowned mightily for a second, and finally nodded. “I can—I can take her,” he said, sounding like he couldn’t believe his own ears.

“Great!” exclaimed Jeannie, “the car keys are on the kitchen table,” and flew out of the house before Rodney could say another word.

Rodney stared after his sister for several long beats before Madison asked: “Are we going now, Uncle Mer?” Rodney looked down at her again with a frown creasing between his eyebrows. He looked so adrift that John got to his feet, folding back the page of his book, and crossed the living room in a few paces.

“How ‘bout we all go, hey Mad?”

Madison hugged his legs and ran to get her shoes, Rodney staring wide-eyed after her. Tentative, John reached out to touch his shoulder, and Rodney jerked away. “What?” he asked, blinking. “What?”

“You sure you don’t want to stay here?”

Rodney’s sudden glare was a strange relief. “I’m fine,” he snapped, and then: “Douglas College,” the words positively dripping with scorn. “Of all the places she could have edged her way back into academia…”

John raised an eyebrow. “Not a high-class institution?”

“Oh, please,” Rodney huffed. “It’s everything wrong with public post-secondary education. They don’t call it ‘Dougie Daycare’ for nothing.”

He went on muttering similar imprecations about the declining state of education and the questionable wisdom of pandering to the lowest common denominator as he found his shoes and put them on. John watched him for a minute, listening to Madison run back and forth upstairs, before finally going to find his own shoes, asking with carefully casual tones:

“Are you sure, Rodney? I mean, I can take her, if you don’t want to go.”

It was an easy out, and Rodney knew it – he fixed John with a piercing stare as he double-knotted his laces. Finally, he shook his head. “No,” he muttered, “you’d never find it on your own, and I know you, you’ll get distracted by the lasers and the pretty lights and forget that it’s supposed to be an educational experience.”

John smirked. He couldn’t help it. “Isn’t it a four-story sphere with a giant telescope on top?”

“Yes, well first, there are two of those in Vancouver, and second, you’re not approaching it from space, you’ll have to navigate on the ground like a mere mortal,” Rodney pointed out, and John frowned.

He’d actually forgotten that for a second. Roads. Funny how perspective could change.

***

It had nothing on the real thing, but the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre (and John had never heard such an uninspiring name) was a great way to spend an afternoon. For one thing it was air-conditioned, which was something met with appreciation after the last few days of temperatures in the humid hundreds (“It’s thirty-five degrees, John,” Rodney had sniped when he’d asked for a conversion. “Celsius is more efficient. Play along like you live in the twenty-first century with the rest of us.”). For another, there was a talking robot. Nobody had told him about the talking robot.

Rodney looked around smugly as they stood in line for tickets. “I’d bet that ninety percent of the astronomers here have no idea that their stunning new telescopes were designed with alien technology,” he whispered, and John just shrugged. Rodney had explained that the Space Centre had only had one telescope before the Stargate program, but had installed quite a few new ones in the last decade, the newest two enhanced with hybridized Asgard technology.

John just shrugged and said nothing, but privately thought somebody on their staff knew; somebody had to be there to edit the real alien ships out of the radio telemetry.

The show was obviously geared towards kids, but John leaned back in the reclining chair with Madison on his left and Rodney on his right (Madison had wanted to sit with “Uncle John”) and enjoyed it anyway, the feeling of total immersion in the projected night sky above them. The dome-shaped screen covered the ceiling and most of the walls, so it seemed as though the seats were floating in the black.

Madison made little “oohs” and “aahs” of delight as the Zeiss projector panned, shifted, and sped them through space. Rodney alternately stared with a hidden smile and muttered whenever something particularly inaccurate or over-simplified was explained by the robot (though as far as John could tell, the robot got it right more often than its human “partner” did).

Finally Madison’s seat placement made sense, because halfway through, as the audience was being taken on a tour around the event horizon of a black hole, Madison leaned over John with an annoyed look on her face.

“Do you mind?” she asked, her high piping voice doing an utterly uncanny likeness of Rodney’s you-are-such-a-moron tone, “some of us are trying to watch.”

Rodney looked silently betrayed as Madison settled back into her seat, and John had to stuff two knuckles into his mouth to keep from laughing aloud and ruining the show for everyone. It was the same face Rodney made when John told him not to blow up any more planets.

Madison pleaded for a ride on the simulator afterwards but was flatly refused – it was closed, lied Rodney. Secretly John knew that Rodney just didn’t want to ride on anything without inertial dampeners.

In the gift shop, Rodney bought Madison a two-layered globe showing the constellations, one that could rotate the night sky to show the change of the stars over a year.

John bought her a stuffed astronaut and a model kit of the International Space Station (not entirely accurate, but he doubted that the division of the Canadian Space Agency responsible for designing toys knew about Asgard beaming technology or zero-grav weapons platforms). Rodney paid with a credit card, but John got a dirty look from the cashier when he paid with an American hundred-dollar bill. He got back a handful of colourful Canadian bills that Rodney immediately snatched from his hand when John smirked and said they looked more like play money.

Madison insisted on throwing change into the fountain beneath the main entrance, and John stood with Rodney while she made eighteen wishes (all the coins Rodney had in his pocket, actually stolen from the change jar in Jeannie’s front hall).

Then she counted the number of telescopes at the Space Centre (eight) and the number of years until the time capsule buried in front of the fountain would be opened (too many to be interesting).

She declared the huge Haida crab sculpture in the fountain to be “weird-looking.” John didn’t feel up to explaining modern art to a five-year-old, but just to be contrary, Rodney pulled out John’s pilfered twenty-dollar bill and pointed out the other Bill Reid art on the flipside from Queen Elizabeth. “Don’t mind him,” Rodney told his niece with a condescending grin for John, “he’s just jealous because our money’s prettier.”

John did not remind Rodney of how had been complaining since they got back that hard currency was inefficient, unhygienic, and generally a pain in the ass. Instead he grinned back, because he knew a lot more about art than Rodney did but Rodney was going out of his way to be irritating, and John had long since realised that this was Rodney’s way of showing affection. Whether he knew it or not.

Deer Lake Park was much bigger than it had looked on the road map, grass and gardens and trees angling down from a cluster of theatres and studios near the main road. It was walking distance from the house, but they were already in the car and so they parked it in the lot beside the Shadbolt Centre, bought sandwiches from its tiny cafeteria, and walked down the grassy slope towards the water.

“Mummy said you played here when you were little, but you stopped ‘cause somebody pricked your Eggo,” said Madison as they passed an enormous outdoor amphitheatre on the northern shore.

“I think you mean ‘ego,’ Mad,” John corrected her without thinking, as Rodney stopped abruptly, looking down towards the stage and its majestic sloping roof with something like embarrassment.

Madison seemed to sense she’d said something wrong, because she tilted her head at Rodney and asked: “Did I hurt your feelings, Uncle Mer?”

Rodney rubbed a finger down the bridge of his nose once, twice, and then shook his head. “No,” he said evenly, “You didn’t hurt my feelings.”

“Oh,” said Madison, brightening. “Good.”

John let her get a little ahead, and leaned close to Rodney and asked: “You played here?” He didn’t mean to sound amazed, but it was amazing. He couldn’t help it. “Play what?”

Rodney blushed a deep shade of pink. “Um, yeah. I used to play piano when I was a kid. I wasn’t very good.”

John grinned, because not only did that fit just right with his mental vision of Rodney as a kid, the blush was kind of cute.

“You must have been pretty good, if you were playing in giant public amphitheatres,” John pointed out, still grinning, though he wasn’t sure exactly why.

Rodney shrugged, grimaced – his unhappy grimace, the one he wore when he accidentally let on that he had feelings. “It was my mother’s thing, really; she studied music, and it was this big deal that I was actually doing something she liked. She used to drag me all over the province playing in youth competitions. When it turned out I wasn’t good enough to play professionally, I dropped it.”

There was a note of carefully-hidden resentment in Rodney’s voice, in the slump of his shoulders, as they moved to catch up with Madison. “Your parents just let you… stop? Did you not like doing it?”

“No, it wasn’t…” Rodney trailed off, looking up at the cloudy bright sky as they walked. It wasn’t that, John saw in his face. He didn’t look at John as he went on: “My parents weren’t really all that fond of me. Mum was disappointed, but more that I wasn’t good enough than that I gave it up, so she didn’t push it or anything. I think they were both relieved when they didn’t have to drive me around anymore.”

He shrugged again, and John had a moment of dark, intense dislike for Rodney’s parents for no specific reason at all, though he had a good idea. John would never care to arm-wrestle anyone to prove superiority in parenting skills, but he did know from personal experience that if one of your kids could utter the phrase “they weren’t all that fond of me” and mean it, you were doing something wrong.

“How come you never mentioned it before? That you play piano, I mean.”

“Because I don’t, anymore,” Rodney answered, with a little more snap in his voice. “I don’t… I don’t talk about it, really. Or think about it. There isn’t any point. It was a waste of time I could have spent pursuing more practical things.”

“Right,” said John, trying to put just the right mix of scepticism and if-you-want-to-talk-about-it into the word, but Rodney didn’t bite. John began idly plotting all the ways he could hijack enough cargo allotment on the Daedelus to ship a piano across several galaxies. He suspected it would be tricky.

The playground was on the eastern shore of the lake, out of sight of the parking lot which was lost behind a screen of trees. Being the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, it was practically deserted. John stretched out on the warm grass while Rodney sat watching Madison clamber up the brightly-coloured equipment, his elbows resting on his knees.

John ate his sandwich, and glared at Rodney until he stopped picking at his and ate it. They didn’t talk much, and Rodney seemed to relax a little with no one pushing at him, leaned back on his elbows next to John and stared up at the sky, where there were clouds gathering grey-white above the trees.

John had started to doze off in the warm breeze and the sunshine when suddenly it happened – there was a squeal of abused metal, and then a thud, and then a high-pitched wail from the playground.

Rodney shot to his feet in a second, and was rushing towards the edge of the play area. John was close on his heels as Madison continued to cry, rocking theatrically back and forth, clutching her scraped and bleeding knee. Rodney stopped a few feet away, hands still outstretched, and John outpaced him, kneeling down to give Madison a quick once-over.

“No big deal,” he said soothingly, “just a scrape. Can you stand up?”

Sniffling and whimpering, Madison let him pull her up, and then hopped on one foot back to the grass. John looked up to ask Rodney to grab the first aid kit, but saw it the same second as Madison, who took one look at Rodney and stopped, tear-streaked face puzzled and scared.

Rodney, who was standing ghost-pale and ramrod-straight, his eyes huge and dilated, unmoving like he was glued to the spot.

And John stopped, too, because he knew that look, he’d seen it on the faces of dozens of soldiers, seen it in the mirror, and because Keller had told him to watch for it; part of trauma was remembering what you’d rather not, and Rodney had probably been fighting it for weeks. He watched as Rodney took them in, stumbled a few steps back and sat heavily on the grass, covering his eyes with his fists, pulled in on himself and shaking.

John had an agonizing three seconds of indecision, between Rodney and the weeping child, and decided to compromise. He put Madison on a nearby park bench, dropped a kiss in her hair and promised her ice cream if she could wait “just one second.” Then he went back to where Rodney was sitting, fingers interlaced behind his neck, staring blank and wide-eyed over the lake.

He crouched down on the grass, and reached out for Rodney but didn’t touch him. Even inches away from the skin he could feel the Rodney’s tremors in his own palms, as if it was being communicated by the vibrations of the air. “Rodney,” he said, low and quiet like the night on the stairs, “Rodney, look at me.”

Peripherally, he heard Madison’s whimpers die away, saw her watching them with still-teary fascination, not sure what was wrong, but aware that something was. John felt a rush of gratitude. Most children were too self-centred to care about other people being in need, but most children were not Rodney McKay’s flesh and blood, and Rodney was selfish but not self-centred. She was sitting still, biting her lip, as if trying not to distract him.

The kid was clearly a genius.

Rodney’s eyes were unfocused, but the pupils were back to normal, shrunk against the white glare of the afternoon sky. He was still pale, though, and clammy when John finally dared to reach out and touch him, framing Rodney’s face in his hands. Rodney’s eyes fell closed almost of their own accord, and he shivered, as if he couldn’t decide between leaning into the touch and recoiling.

“Tell me,” John said.

Rodney swallowed before answering, almost too quiet to hear: “They—Simpson.” Another swallow, convulsive, and then: “A lot of blood. And that… that noise.”

The shiver, this time, was mutual, because John remembered the sound as well as Rodney did: the keening, horrible thrum of Ava that had seemed determined to take him apart, piece by piece.

He could feel Rodney’s pulse gradually slowing under his fingertips. “I’m gonna…” he said, and Rodney opened his eyes just enough to nod, once, before John leaned forward to rest his forehead against Rodney’s.

He wondered if this were more for Rodney’s benefit or his own; knew that people had to be staring, the pair of young women and their toddlers on the far side of the playground, but he just didn’t fucking care. All that mattered was that within a few breaths, Rodney’s whole body stopped being a sharp, trembling line, and bowed forward into John’s hands like they were all that was holding him up.

After a while, he lifted his head and searched Rodney’s face. Madison was still huddled on the end of the park bench, chin in her hands, watching them anxiously. “Will you be okay for a minute?” he asked, nodding in Madison’s direction.

Rodney looked, went a little red. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Go.”

Jeannie was at least as paranoid as Rodney when it came to Madison, so John sat her down on the park bench at the edge of the playground and dug in the bag of “Madison supplies” for a band-aid. He misted antiseptic spray over the scraped knee and then blew on it, gently, mimicking the only tender thing he ever remembered his mother doing for him after he turned eleven. Madison’s wobbly lip gradually disappeared, and she stared in fascination at the still-oozing scrape as John neatly covered it with a band-aid.

When he was done, she inspected it solemnly and nodded her approval, then glanced over at where Rodney was sitting with his eyes closed. “Is Uncle Mer okay?” she asked, only a little tremulously, and John ruffled her hair. He wasn’t all that much better at showing affection than Rodney was, but kids were easy.

“He’ll be okay, kiddo.”

Madison, with the casual unconcern of a five-year-old once the moment has passed, went back to the swings, though John saw her shooting suspicious looks over her shoulder every now and then. John returned to where Rodney was sprawled in the grass.

The day had gone still by now, the clouds blotting out the blue of the sky and hanging low over their heads. “It’s going to rain,” Rodney said after they’d sat in silence for a while, close enough that their shoulders touched. He got up, walked a few steps away, hands in his pockets.

“You’ve got to talk about it, Rodney,” John said, watching Rodney’s back. And there it was – his shoulders coming up, the back muscles drawing together. “You’ve got to,” John persisted, quietly, but with a growing feeling of desperation. “There’s a process. If you don’t let it happen, make it happen, you just stay… where you are now,” he finished, feeling like he was reaching even though his hands were plucking at the grass.

The sun came out, disappeared, and brightened again, the park shifting rapidly between afternoon, evening, and full day in the space of a few minutes. Somehow he knew Rodney’s eyes were closed, even though he couldn’t see his face.

“I can’t even think about it,” came Rodney’s voice, somehow high and hoarse at the same time. “I can’t even think about it without wanting to… don’t you understand that?” His voice went softer and softer until John could barely hear him.

“Yeah,” John answered sharply, swallowing hard against the bloom of anxiety in his own throat, “I do.”

Rodney expelled a loud gust of air, almost close to his usual frustrated sigh, but not quite. John sat there, not sure whether to move or wait him out. Rodney stayed where he was, shoulders hunched, still looking at the sky, until the threatened storm began to prickle at the back of John’s neck.

“I don’t know if I can go back.”

He said it so quietly, and the day was so still, that the words took a moment to penetrate. A heartbeat later John was on his feet, grabbing Rodney by the shoulders and spinning him around, not caring if it might jolt him like the last hundred times.

“What?” he demanded. “Are you crazy?” Because it really was insane, even to suggest it, and it set something twisting in John’s chest even to hear him say it.

Rodney let out a sharp, choked laugh, didn’t meet his eyes, rubbed the back of his neck and looked miserable. “I don’t think I should,” he clarified, weakly, and John stared at him, because “can’t” and “shouldn’t” were different things and not both as final.

“Rodney,” he tried, but his voice came out faint, and instead he just pulled Rodney to him, ignoring how Rodney went stiff and uncertain for a moment before relaxing into it, his hands coming up to close around John’s arms. They stayed like that until the sun passed behind another cloud.

Suddenly there was a crack like the sky breaking, and Rodney jerked in John’s arms as it was followed by a flash of lightning. Then the world seeped swiftly to grey and it was raining; Rodney looked up, blinking against the water streaming down his face…

…and started laughing.

Madison shrieked with indignation in the sudden downpour and ran back to them. “Oh my god the sky is falling!” she pronounced, grinning, and John grinned back.

Madison took hold of Rodney’s hand as John gathered up their things, and then they were running up the hill toward the car. By the time they reached it, they were all soaked to the skin, hair and clothing both, Madison with the collar of her t-shirt pulled futilely over her head. They climbed into the car shivering and exhilarated.

Despite the rain (which in John’s experience ruled out frozen desserts), they stopped for ice cream at a Baskin Robbins near the house. John got a scoop of something blue and purple with the improbable name of “Hawaiian Sunrise,” (“I guarantee you, Madison, somewhere in the universe there is a planet with a purple sunrise. As a matter of fact…” “Rodney! Security clearance!”), and Rodney got an ice cream two scoops bigger than Madison’s child-sized portion.

“She’s a native, we’re used to rain,” Rodney argued; John nodded, smiling, remembering that just about the only thing Rodney had (almost) never complained about, off-world, was rain.

“And anyway,” Rodney finished, contentedly licking melted ice cream from his fingers with positively obscene enthusiasm, “you should never go back on a bribe with a five-year-old.”

***

Ava City is built on the foundations of something much older. It isn’t a flying city, like Atlantis, but it’s clearly Ancient, deeply intertwined with the Avans’ systems.

The buzzing that permeates the air wasn’t there until the lights went out, John remembers, and he stands beneath the tower of the power station for several minutes with his eyes closed, reaching out and trying to qualify the sensation with something familiar. Sometimes having the gene is less than convenient. From the moment of the explosion Ava City has been a constant dull throb at the back of his head, like a spoiled child wanting attention.

All he gets is wrongness, and that’s familiar enough, the feeling of something off-kilter, mis-calibrated. The kind of thing that back home, sets off alarms and brings Rodney’s technicians flying from their beds at all hours. But Ava’s not a fully-functioning Ancient city; it doesn’t have the efficient (and sometimes extremely touchy) backups, diagnostics, and fail-safes that Atlantis has.

Ava City is a hodgepodge of Ancient and the patch-job efforts of generations of Avans. All Sarna will tell him is that Ava hasn’t been culled in over two hundred years, and John starts to think she doesn’t really know why. Just that something left by the “Ancestors” has always protected them. John’s sure it’s a machine of some kind. They’ve seen dozens of them in the Pegasus Galaxy; playpens left behind by the Ancients to protect their experiments, their human wildlife refuges. Pity none of them ever came with instruction manuals.

It all leads him to one conclusion: the rebels did something to whatever it was that protects Ava, and now it’s not working right. He doesn’t know if it was on purpose or incidental - the latter, he guesses, given how much these people seem to know about their own defences. He experiences a flash of what Rodney must feel all the time, the frank bafflement that all these idiots aren’t already dead.

Grimly, he leaves Ronon to keep an eye on the assembly of bureaucrats at the Parliaments (Ronon’s remarkably good at understanding bureaucratic jaw-flapping when he wants to be), and goes looking on his own, with Teyla at his side.

Sarna didn’t say so, but John’s already worked out on his own that there aren’t many people with the ATA gene on Ava. The big tip-off was the control chair preserved in museum-piece splendour in the entrance hall of the Parliament building, dusty and untouched for centuries. The Parliament itself is rebuilt around an older structure, and the chair is probably dead, but he can follow the connections, knows enough about the schizophrenic wiring schematics of the Ancients to have a fair idea where weapons and defence systems would be in relation.

Teyla doesn’t say much as they walk, John mostly navigating by feel while the Avans ignore them with a new determination. It’s not until John pauses at the head of a wide main street, casting about for direction, that she presses her lips together and lays a gentle hand on his arm. “He will be all right,” she says, softly.

He barely looks at her, a quick glance at her face to see the suddenly-frustrating calm he knew he would see, the concern for him, and shakes his head as he continues to cast for direction. He’s feeling more keyed up the further they go from the city centre, more frustrated, more tired. It’s been almost six hours and he’s exhausted, he can’t imagine how the hostages are doing. If he’s honest with himself, he’s trying not to imagine anything.

He starts off in a new direction, and Teyla follows him, projecting patient expectation. He says: “Sometimes I wonder if we really are cursed.”

Teyla considers this. “We do seem to be experiencing a run of bad luck.”

She’s quiet for another few minutes, and he can just sense the studying look Teyla uses to gather in things about him he usually doesn’t notice until she mentions them, as they take a sharp turn. Suddenly they’re passing between buildings that lean crazily together like drunks rubbing elbows. “John,” she says, and he’s only half-listening, the pull growing stronger, along with the feeling of wrongness. “Rodney will be all right.”

“He’d better be,” John answers, and then stops, because they’ve found it. The alley has narrowed and flattened down to the stones of the old city, geometric shapes showing between the worn cobbles. And… there, one of them has been prised loose, just resting in its groove, and John can see a sliver of darkness, like a trap door.

A moment’s investigation with a flashlight suggests a network of tunnels, and even as Teyla is tapping her radio to tell Ronon that they know how the rebels got into the tower, that the rebels must have cut through some crucial conduit to reach it, John is swaying with nausea. He knows Teyla can’t hear it, can’t hear the dissonance of the malfunction, but from the dark space beneath the street, the heart of Ava City is screaming like a hive of angry bees.

THREE

John is biting his tongue from the second they leave the Parliament building, making an effort to keep from meeting anyone’s eyes. He’s afraid that if he does, he’ll start shouting about how completely moronic the Ministers’ plan actually is.

Cadman and Whitehall are quiet, too, and he can just sense them giving him expectant, uneasy looks. He’s trying to figure out what to say, how to express his growing dislike of these soft-limbed, soft-mouthed bureaucrats who are at once more insincere and less efficient than the kind he’s used to. At least the idiots in the military are idiotic in a set pattern, with obvious goals. The Avans almost seem to be behaving obliviously for the sake of it.

Sitting silent at the back of the Parliament, in the seats reserved for guests, he had his hands tight on his knees to keep them from shaking, because these people are so completely arrogant about their cluelessness he thought it was a wonder the city had stood for as long as it had.

If he’s honest with himself, they started getting under his skin from the second the window was blown out of the tower, the way Sarna dismissed Vaal like he was nothing. Like people who weren’t a part of the system couldn’t threaten it. That Ava at its greatest was simply too perfect to be beaten. John wanted to shout at her that that was crazy, that you didn’t dismiss hostage-takers, that nobody who moved to lead armed men to capture civilians was soft or unresolved or easily dismissed.

He didn’t, though, and he doesn’t. He’s still a representative of Atlantis, and you don’t say things like that in earshot of alien officials.

And there she comes, too, now flanked by half a dozen aides, all busily muttering and scribbling on the odd clunky input devices that are reminiscent of semi-Victorian data tablets.

“Colonel,” she says, smoothing back her hair and nodding curtly to dismiss all the aides but two; they go scurrying away to parts unknown as she focuses on John. So John has to face her, put the high sharp silhouette of the tower to his back like he’s been avoiding doing for hours.

“I wanted to tell you, we have dispatched security forces to arrest Eron Vaal’s accomplices. We should have acquired them within the hour.”

Acquired, thinks John, bitterly. Accomplices. A tidy way to describe a middle-aged female artisan and two teenaged boys. John has to clench his right hand around his P90, because barbarians take hostages to bargain with hostage-takers, but that’s impolitic, too; the Parliament was sure Vaal’s wife and sons had been helping or at least sheltering him, and on Ava, that’s enough.

At least it’s enough when you storm and capture a civilian power station and a dozen hostages. But fight fire with fire is still messy, and knee-jerk, and the province of tyrants and amateurs and those without finesse.

“Yeah,” he says, instead of all the things he wants to say. He closes his eyes and tries to think of what Elizabeth would say. He never could get that “understanding” voice down. He just doesn’t have the patience. “Minister, I need to say, again, that I think this is a bad idea. I feel strongly that this is just going to exacerbate the situation.”

And Sarna, damn her, smiles at him. “I understand your feelings, Colonel. But we did try your way first.”

John almost laughs. His way. Thirty minutes “graciously” given to his two techs to interface and argue with the power station’s lockdown protocols, all for nothing. John thinks they could maybe have done it with more time, but the techs say no. “In any case, we have been dealing with these terrorists for some time now. We know how to deal with them.”

John’s hand clenches harder of its own accord. We know how to deal with them, in a calm, motherly voice like it’s nothing, and for a split second John was almost screaming in her face, about how maybe killing this guy is worth six lives to her but it isn’t, to him. To them. He comes dangerously close to comparing them, city against city, but he doesn’t, even though a growing part of him is screaming that it’s true. He doesn’t sacrifice people. Atlantis doesn’t sacrifice people. They just… don’t.

He suddenly realises – because Cadman is discreetly elbowing him in the side – that Sarna’s done with him, that she’s turning away with a promise to keep him posted, and those are the words she uses. Like it’s nothing. Like it’s still a trade deal. Like this is just a hiccup.

He waits until she’s out of sight, out of earshot, before he dares to unclench his hands, relax his jaw. To his right, Whitehall looks a little pale, just as angry as John feels, and Cadman’s glaring coldly at the Minister’s retreating back.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

He glances at her, just a glance and a nod. “Yeah.”

“These assholes are going to get our people killed, sir,” she says, face hardly moving.

John lets out the breath he’s been holding. “Yeah,” he says, and then edges past them, back up the main street. “Come on. Let’s see how Plan B is doing.”

They’ve left their two techs under Lorne’s watchful eye, and they’ve set up shop at the end of the blind alley where John found the loose stone. They tried to tell the Avans about it, but five minutes into the Parliament session John changed his mind.

They already knew by then that they can’t follow the same route Vaal and his men took; it’s blocked with unquestionably Ancient bulkheads that won’t open, even to the significant amount of persuasion John can exercise. This city doesn’t know him, and anyway, he’s coming to realise, it’s forgotten a lot of what it was. When he reaches for it, it’s nothing like the easy welcome slide into concert with Atlantis. This city feels old, and tired, and irritable, and doesn’t trust him.

He still set the techs on trying to trick it open, though, and he crouches by the hatch and peers down into the dark. “Any luck?”

Dark little Navneet Bryce looks up, shading her eyes against the daylight. “We’re giving it one more try,” she says, glancing down at the tablet braced against her hip. “Paul’s just finishing up with the re-wiring.”

She says this last into the dark, and John can make out Doctor Donaldson’s tall, gangly shape against the paler metal of the bulkhead door, backlit by the pale blue glow of the crystal tray. “Just about ready to go,” comes his voice, echoing strangely through the underground chamber.

Bryce points at a scorch-mark on the wall nearer the hatch than the tunnel mouth, and says: “We think this is tied in with the city’s defence system. Whatever they did to force open the door the first time – we think some kind of cutting tool—”

“Something much less advanced than what they were cutting,” Donaldson interrupts irritably, not looking up.

“Yes,” agrees Bryce. “It was incidental damage, I expect, but they put a pretty deep score in the control console, and it’s probably the reason for the noise you say you’re hearing. It completely threw off the frequency of the pulse.”

“It’s not a pulse,” Donaldson mutters.

“It’s a pulse,” Bryce says firmly. “An extremely high-frequency pulse. Designed specifically to interfere with biological tech.”

John’s silent for a moment, contemplating the damaged console from above. “You mean Wraith tech.”

John tries not to look offended at the surprised look a lot of the scientists give him when he understands something right away, because he knows they don’t really mean anything by it. Well, Rodney does. But Rodney’s not here and right now John’s too distracted to pay it more than a second’s mind.

“Yes. And that explains why it’s manifesting as an unpleasant sound, at least to someone with the gene. Properly calibrated it should be unnoticeable.”

“Except for the way it probably makes Wraith ships fall out of the sky,” notes Donaldson from the dark.

“So is it damaged, or disabled?” Cadman asks with some – valid – concern, and a wary glance at the pale green sky.

Bryce glances down at her tablet. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I’d guess it’s still effective, but I can’t be certain. I honestly can’t tell how far out of tune it is in relation to where it’s supposed to be, without doing a more thorough diagnostic, and…”

“And we don’t have time for that right now,” John finishes, because “thorough” means “slow.”

“We’ll just have to hope there aren’t any hungry hives in the area.” Because the last thing – just about the last thing, anyway – they need is a culling coming down on their heads with a dozen hostages already at risk.

John stands up and stretches, because frankly he can’t think of anything else to do while Bryce and Donaldson are down there messing around with probably-broken Ancient tech. Lorne, who’s leaning against the smooth alley wall with his weapon hanging easily in his hands, cocks his head at him.

“You doing okay, sir?”

John gives him a studying, slightly suspicious look, and shrugs. “Yeah,” he lies, experimentally, and knows full well the lie’s a bad one when he sees Lorne do that little mouth-tilt thing he uses when he wants to call someone a liar but he thinks it might get him in trouble. It both amuses and irritates John because he’s pretty sure Lorne learned that move from him.

“So I guess that sound isn’t bothering you, then,” asks Lorne, eyes over John’s shoulder on Cadman, who’s still crouching by the hatch, chatting with Bryce.

John looks up, right into Lorne’s face, notices for the first time that Lorne’s usual cheerful calm has the widening crack of a headache in it. “It’s getting worse,” Lorne says, conversationally. “Though I guess it’s worse for you. And it’s worse here than it is out on the street.”

John is almost – almost – relieved, almost says something funny about misery loving company. The buzzing hasn’t faded, has gotten worse, but it’s growing usual, turning into background noise. At least until suddenly it pitches up with a sharp whine, and from below the street he feels it as the interface shorts; he can’t stop himself from clapping hands over his ears, sees Lorne do the same, and he steps up the edge of the hatch to see a tendril of blue smoke rising up into the air.

Below, as the whine dies away and the buzzing goes back to what it was a moment ago, he sees Bryce waving away smoke and hears Donaldson swearing. A moment later, Bryce is looking up at him apologetically. “Sorry, Colonel Sheppard,” she says, looking like she means it, like she’s failed somehow. “No good. If Doctor McKay were here he might be able to… but…” she shrugs, and Cadman reaches down to pull her up to the street as Donaldson starts to gather their equipment.

John steps back, because it might be his imagination but the buzzing is worse near the dark square of the hole, and has to shut his eyes for a minute to work through his frustration, turned toward the blind wall of the dead end. It’s not their fault, he thinks. Even Rodney’s been soundly beaten by Ancient failsafes, if that’s what this is. It’s almost the only thing they ever made that worked the way it was meant to work.

He scrubs his hands through his hair, and stops suddenly when he hears Rodney’s voice in his head, telling him it’s rakishly windswept enough already, and there’s nobody around here to flirt with, anyway. Instead he shuts his eyes again, and doesn’t open them until Lorne calls his name.

He turns to see two people hurrying up the alley, and the figures draw closer he sees it’s Hergaard leading Sarna’s twitchy little aide, the one who looked into the tower for them. Bryce and Donaldson are suddenly standing awkwardly by the open hatch as if they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t be… which, John realises, they probably aren’t. Any of them.

But John’s too angry at the Avan Parliament and too lost for alternatives and too frustrated with their recent failure to care, frankly, and he saunters over to stand with Lorne as the young man reaches them, breathing hard and sweating.

“Colonel Sheppard,” he says quickly between gasps for oxygen, taking in the open hatch and visibly dismissing it, “there is something I believe you should see.”

And there is such bare-faced hope in his eyes that John agrees. Not that they’ve got much choice.

They spare only a second to close up the hatch again, pack away the last tool and coil of wire, and then they follow Kalsan – which is, apparently, his name – back through the thinning crowds of the main streets toward the Parliament. But he veers off the main streets when they’re not quite there, leads them on a wending route through older and older buildings, leaning more and more towards the style of Ancient architecture, until finally they come upon a building fronted by stark white pillars and a gaping, ornate doorway.

It bears all the marks of pompous academics, and John knows he’s right when they step inside and find themselves surrounded by dusty glass cases, filled with artefacts that range from pottery to bits of shrapnel that may or may not be former Ancient devices.

Kalsan leads them right through the room of glass and through another three rooms and intersecting hallways, all cluttered and dim and clearly well-used. Finally they step through a door into a white room, all white and well-lit, with several long tables and walls of shelves and finally John knows where they are, or what this room is. There are jars of brushes and cases of tools scattered with equal neglect, dog-eared notebooks, several of the heavy Avan computers, and little string-and-paper tags on everything.

Kalsan goes directly to the furthest table, which bears signs of being the most recently disturbed. Perched on the end almost negligently is a roundish, silverish… something, and John doesn’t know what it is but he knows at once that it’s Ancient. It doesn’t even have a tag.

“Before the Parliament approved the apprehension of Seyla Vaal and her sons,” he explains breathily, touching the device gingerly, “they raided Eron Vaal’s base on the coast.”

He says “coast” with delicate revulsion. The Avans have only one punishment for crime, and that is exile. On a planet where the only protection is offered by the sanctuary of the city and its defences, it’s tantamount to a death sentence, even if it is a death sentence that hasn’t been carried out for two centuries. ost of Vaal’s rebels are exiles or their families, who moved to the coast, where the land is fertile, following their loved ones.

John stares at the device. “Okay… what is it?”

Kalsan shrugs. “From the notes found with the device – which we must assume they unearthed in the ruins on the coast – it seems Vaal believed it to be a transportation device. I’m not sure what that means, but…”

He trails off, because Donaldson has descended, wide-eyed, on the device, running his hands gently over its curves. “It’s damaged,” he says to John.

“Yes,” agrees Kalsan. “The notes tell us this, as well. But I brought you here because a similar device was brought to the city by an authorised group, less than a month ago.”

“Transportation device?” John looks at Donaldson, who glares down at the disorganised sheaf of yellowish Avan paper that accompanies the device.

“I don’t – this isn’t really my field, sir,” he admits. “Magical insight into Ancient technology is really more…” McKay’s job, he doesn’t say, or: Zelenka’s job. But he bends his head over the device again, anyway. He’s pulled open a side panel that was invisible a moment ago. Even John can see two crystals are cracked and charred.

Bryce looks at it, looks at the diagrams interspersed with the notes, and frowns. “Huh,” she says, half to herself.

“Huh?” John echoes, with some push behind it, and both scientists look up.

Bryce is suddenly fighting a grin, and as he sees it he feels his heart skip a few beats in ridiculous, desperate hope that he doesn’t let show on his face.

“If this is what I think it is, Colonel,” she says, “and we can get it working… we might have a chance.”

***

Jeannie was home when they got there, putting away groceries. Madison bounced in, gave her mother a cursory greeting, and then turned an imperious face on Rodney.

“Help me with my space station?” she asked, and it was clearly meant as an order, delivered with sweet challenge like only a five-year-old girl can muster, and even Rodney was helpless against it. He heaved a huge – fake – sigh, and followed Madison into the living room, where she carried the box to the coffee table and started laying pieces out with precision.

John went upstairs to get his book, came back down, and settled in on the couch, just a few feet behind Rodney. For a while he just watched them, unable to look away from the sight of them both bent over the little plastic pieces laid out in careful order, Madison spreading out the instruction sheet with careful hands, the quiet focus of both faces, the two pairs of narrowed blue eyes. They hardly talked, except when Madison loudly reprimanded her uncle for touching something he shouldn’t, yet, out of order.

John knew this feeling, had years ago learned to take it as a comfort, to seek it out in a crisis; the sharp radiant aura of Rodney’s mind working. It hovered around the pair of them like a bubble, a little circle of fervent concentration, of calm, ignoring everything around them.

Once, early on in the mission, John had seen the change in Rodney’s face when he stopped complaining and doomsaying and started working it out, the shift from the panicked I can’t to the absent shut up now, I’m working. He’d found himself briefly paralysed, abruptly grounded by it. Now, sitting safe and comfortable in Jeannie’s living room, John was practically transfixed by the sheer grace of it, how there were no wasted movements, no unnecessary words.

Affection hit him like a kick to the chest, a wash of realisation, conscious this time, that this was Rodney, this was Rodney. John thought, insanely, that right now he’d really like to touch Rodney just for the sake of touching him, and then he thought: bad idea, for so many reasons, and god, this could get so complicated. And yet it wasn’t an urgent feeling but almost matter-of-fact, and he wondered, with calm bafflement: When did that happen?

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been watching, mostly watching Rodney’s profile and how all the worry and tension and fear of the inevitable had disappeared, temporarily, from his face. But he knew it had to have been a while, because when someone touched his shoulder, and he blinked, they had most of the central section assembled and Madison was turning it critically in her hands while Rodney drummed his fingers impatiently on the edge of the table.

John looked up. Jeannie was there, smiling with a finger to her lips, and she tilted her head towards Madison and Rodney and beckoned John after her. John gave them one last glance and set his book to one side, following Jeannie into the kitchen. Neither Rodney nor Madison looked up. They were too busy arguing about miniature plastic solar panels.

“How long have they been in there?” asked Kaleb, who was stirring something in a bowl on the counter. John hadn’t seen him come home; he guessed he’d been too absorbed watching the progress of the space station and… other things.

“Almost an hour,” Jeannie told him, sounding amused as she handed him two loaded plates. “Here you go.”

John gave the other man an absent wave as he went out onto the patio, closing the doors behind him.

“That was a great present,” Jeannie said, handing him a beer from the fridge before going back to something simmering in a pot on the stove.

“I’m glad she likes it,” John says, taking a seat at the table. Frankly he’d been a little worried Madison would like the model kit better than what Rodney had bought her, but the fact that she’d spent at least the last hour demanding Rodney’s company had more or less erased that concern.

Jeannie seemed to have read his mind, because she looked through the kitchen doorway and smiled, delighted, the warmth fading just a little when she turned back to John. “I’ve been meaning to thank you for that,” she said, tearing open a package of pasta and pouring it into a saucepan of water.

“For what?” John asked, watching her fiddle with knobs on the stove.

When she turned back, she had her arms crossed, and she was wearing an expression John could only define as “determinedly sincere.”

“Don’t give me that,” she scolded. “If you hadn’t shown me that video I might have left Atlantis and never spoken to him again.” She sat down across from him with a bowl of freshly-rinsed potatoes, and leaned forward on her elbows. “If it weren’t for you,” she said, “he wouldn’t be here.”

John swallowed back several different protests against that, both because Jeannie was giving him a kind of warning look and because, in more ways than one, it was sort of true, even if he didn’t like to think about it. He swallowed again, against nothing at all, and Jeannie dumped out the potatoes and started peeling. He wasn’t going to argue, anyway; there were a lot of times he’d saved Rodney and even more Rodney had saved him.

But if Jeannie didn’t know about her brother offering himself up as Wraith food John sure as hell wasn’t going to enlighten her about life-changing experiences with Ascension machines or private conversations about alternate-universe doubles. John was probably the only person – outside of Ronon and Teyla, maybe – who’d seen how much Rod had bothered Rodney, who’d been privy to admissions of fear that his friends, or even his sister, might like Rod better. Rod hadn’t been any smarter, but he’d been braver, and steadier, and cooler. However little Rodney probably liked to admit it, that probably still meant something, meant a lot in some part of his mind he didn’t like to touch too often.

The funny thing was that Rodney pushed a lot of things down, but only for himself. It all still showed clear as day on his face. It had made John a little angry at Jeannie, for a couple of minutes that day in the mess, anyway, because she had to have seen it too, but he’d let it go because, well, siblings tortured each other. Or so he’d heard. It struck him as a natural law. Didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

John remembered, uncomfortably, the hard twist of pity brought on by the look on Rodney’s face that same day, in John’s quarters. He hadn’t meant to say it, even, but it had come to him with such speed and force that he hadn’t been able to stop himself. “You’re scared Jeannie likes him better than you.” And it had twisted harder when he’d seen Rodney’s face slump from outrage into epiphany, see the face fall.

“That is… possibly true.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, nervously peeling the label off his beer bottle, “sometimes Rodney needs… a bit of a push.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” laughed Jeannie, but gradually her expression turned thoughtful, turned sharp. “Can I ask you a question?”

Something about the look on her face, the intensity of the stare, suddenly scared the hell out of him. He covered it by peeling the last of the label from his bottle, and tearing it slowly into tiny pieces. It gave him somewhere to look other than into Jeannie’s face. “A question?”

“That is what I said,” she said, with more than a hint of a let-me-speak-in-small-words-so-that-you-can-understand tone in her voice. John glanced at her; she tilted her head to one side. “You don’t have to answer, but I need to ask.”

He looked down at the table; he’d shredded the label, swept the bits into a tidy pile, which left him with nothing else to do with his hands but pick up the bottle and roll it between his palms. Finally he gave her a slow shrug, a patented easy smile. “Ask away.”

"Are you sleeping with my brother?"

And there went all his alleged charm in a wash of panic. Jeannie Miller was not so unlike her brother, John thought, staring at her open-mouthed. For a few seconds, it was all he could think, as the rest of his brain was occupied with gibbering. That suspicious, triumphant, I'm-so-much-smarter-than-you-are look was so incredibly McKay that for a second he wanted to do a double-take and make sure he wasn't imagining it, that Rodney himself wasn't sitting here wearing a curly wig.

The really weird thing was that she didn't seem all that bothered about it. She just kept on peeling potatoes. The look she'd given him had lasted only a second, after she'd glanced around to make sure the others were out of earshot. Now she was back to peeling potatoes as if what she'd just asked was the most natural thing in the world. This had to be a Canadian thing. The blunt-and-semi-inappropriate-questions thing. Or maybe it was just a McKay thing. Maybe both. Good god.

"Well, John?" she asked, dropping another peeled potato into the bowl of water at her left elbow, shattering any hopes John might have had that the whole thing had been a hallucination. She raised her eyes a little, a little too carefully casual with a hint of shrewd, and god, it was a McKay thing. It had to be. Nobody could be that evil on purpose.

He'd asked her to call him John, because now that Rodney never called him anything else outside of missions, hearing his rank sounded strange. He was starting to wonder if that had been a mistake. He wondered if clicking his heels together would deposit him safely back in his room on Atlantis, far away from all awkward-question-asking Canadians. But he was here, and Jeannie was still looking at him. Eventually, she rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said, "I said you didn't have to answer. If it's an uncomfortable topic..."

"It's – no," he blurted, feeling he needed to say something to block off the hole rapidly opening in the floor under his chair. "No."

She eyed him. That's what she did, she eyed him, sceptically, mouth tilted a little to the left, hands still moving. Then she shrugged. "All right," she said, sounding, for all the world, like she was disappointed. "If you say so."

John glanced over his shoulder. Rodney was leaning against the couch, and Madison was excitedly waving the tiny Canada Arm II that had come with the model kit, making full use of expansive arm gestures. Rodney's face was fluctuating between alarmed and fond, like he couldn't decide which he'd rather be. John almost smiled despite himself, before he pulled himself together and turned back to Jeannie, leaning his elbows on the table.

"Look, I – why do you ask?" he asked, managing to sound amused by the conversation.

Jeannie rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, I'm not going to out you to your oppressive autocracy, don't worry," she said, with cheerful scorn. "Hand me the salt?"

Bemused, John handed her the saltcellar without looking away from her face, and she shook some into the bowl of water, now turning cloudy with potato starch. She sliced the end off of a piece of potato and positioned it near the end of the cutting board, the saltcellar next to it, and went back to peeling. John stared at that in puzzlement for a moment, and then cleared his throat. "What makes you think... I mean..." He frowned at her. She smiled at him, a little pityingly.

"Please. I am a genius," she reminded him, stirring the water a little. "Also, I live in Vancouver. Is it just guys or do you swing both ways?"

John, who had been taking a sip of his beer, had to labour briefly to keep from choking. When he could breathe again, he coughed: "Christ," and set the bottle carefully down. Tact had apparently not been a central tenet of upbringing in the McKay family, which came as very little surprise, though he'd always thought of Jeannie as the nice one.

John stared at her, wanting to say, desperately, that he could have taken his time off somewhere else, anywhere else, but Rodney had wanted to visit his sister; that he was still feeling guilty over getting Jeannie kidnapped, and he'd made such a big deal about it that John had agreed to go along. It wasn't as if John had anyone else to visit, and Jeannie had greeted him warmly enough. The coast was beautiful in early summer, Rodney had told him. Surfing, he'd been promised. Mountain climbing. Hiking. Really great beer.

Of course all of that had been a carefully worded fabrication on both sides; Rodney wasn’t supposed to know that Sam and Keller had asked him to come, to “keep an eye” on Rodney, and John wasn’t supposed to know that Sam and Keller had given Rodney no choice in the matter of leaving. He hadn’t complained, at the time, though he’d had his misgivings. But he couldn’t let Rodney go alone. Aside from knowing Rodney would spend the whole month pretending nothing was wrong, and maybe come back worse than before, he simply couldn’t let him go alone. He just… couldn’t.

There were a lot of things about this vacation better left unexamined. But John knew by now that the Universe really just liked to blindside him, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise that now he was trapped in the kitchen with McKay's sister, who wanted to talk about his apparent big gay crush on Rodney. What weird parallel universe threshold had he crossed today?

He cast another wild glance around the kitchen, but there was no way he could get outside without passing Kaleb, standing out on the deck grilling something made of soy, or even out of the kitchen without disturbing Rodney and his niece, and Rodney would notice something was wrong. Rodney was oblivious about a lot of things, but John was pretty sure that right now even Rodney's five-year-old niece would notice that John was freaked out. As if to underscore the point, Rodney chose that moment to laugh, loudly, and Madison began shrilly correcting him on something Very Important about miniature space station construction.

Jeannie laid a damp hand on his arm, and he turned back to find her face much gentler than a moment ago. "I'm sorry," she apologised. "I didn't mean to freak you out. It just seems a lot closer to the surface the last couple of days than the last time I saw you two together, and you both showed up here kind of wired." The shrewdness was back, but now it was concern rather than amusement. "Mer won't talk about it. I guess you can't, huh?"

And just like that, John felt his backbone bending, as he leaned heavily back into the chair. The anxiety was gone, and somehow thinking about the reason for their leave was less disturbing than thinking about what Jeannie had asked him a minute ago. He rubbed his eyes with one hand. "No," he said. "Sorry."

She looked at him, long and careful, and then stood up, pushing a sixth potato and the potato peeler into his hands. "Here," she said, going into the fridge and coming back with a bundle of leeks. She sat down and started stripping and chopping them. John began uncertainly peeling the potato, glad for something to do with his hands that wasn't clenching them on his knees.

"I guess I knew something happened," she admitted, cutting the leeks into tiny pieces. "Mer doesn't usually ask to visit, usually he waits until I invite him. That way he can pretend I made him come," she said, smiling, and John had to smile back, because he'd figured out that ploy months ago. Rodney loved his sister, and he was maybe even starting to like spending time with Madison, but admitting it out loud would be out of the question.

"I've noticed that," was all John said.

She nodded. "I won't ask, then," she said. "About that, since it's probably classified or something ridiculous like that. But about the other thing..."

John started, almost cutting himself. Jeannie rolled her eyes again. "Don't tell me that's classified too."

"It's..." Damnit, thought John, she'd blindsided him, and he had a feeling she was going to keep asking, too, whatever she said. For a second he was tempted to tell her, just to see the look on her face, tell her it wasn’t really his story to explain, that there was a difference between won’t and can’t. "I told you the truth." He hunched down in his chair, not looking at her, because he had a feeling she'd be looking at him with pity.

"And the rest of it?"

"Does it really matter?" His chest felt tight, out of panic or relief he wasn't sure.

There was a thoughtful silence, filled only with the sound of Jeannie's knife going thunk thunk thunk across the cutting board. "I don't like labels," she said eventually, primly, and then, with a glance over John's shoulder that took in her brother and daughter, and then flicked back, "I'm just asking because... I mean, Mer. He's kind of an idiot."

John frowned, hard, at the potato, as he peeled back the skin and found the dark blot of an eye consuming almost half of it. "Yeah," he agreed.

Jeannie persisted: "He hasn’t had a lot of... I mean he's never been any good at... you're important to him." Her lips were pressed thin, and she was looking at him expectantly.

John picked up one of the little knives near the cutting board and hacked out the dark eye from the white flesh like he was coring an apple. He handed it to her, hole through the middle, and she slipped it into the water, again without looking away from his face. "I know."

"And you... I mean I don't think anybody else knows, if that's what you're worried about."

Good, he didn't say, but he thought it, and it must have made it to his face, because Jeannie sighed, in a defeated sort of way, and got up from the table, picking up the bowl of drowned potatoes. "Fine," she said, going over to the sink and rinsing them off. "You're off the hook. For now," she added warningly, with a shake of the potato peeler, and John felt, honest to god, like he'd gotten a reprieve. She smiled at him with a sudden, terrifying sweetness, and said: "And this conversation stays between us, or I'll kill you in your sleep."

And strangely, John found that endearing, and he laughed, reaching for his bottle of beer - which was, after all, very good beer - and tipped it respectfully in her direction. "Deal," he said, taking a swig.

Rodney, followed closely by a chattering Madison, came into the kitchen then. He picked up Jeannie's lone forgotten potato slice, looking furtive. Then sprinkled it with salt and popped it in his mouth, chewing happily.

"That's disgusting, Meredith," said Jeannie, from the other side of the kitchen, but it was a fond smile she gave Rodney's back.

***

The second person Eron Vaal kills is the weeping blonde woman. Rodney learns her name only in the last seconds of her life, when one of her colleagues shrieks “Cordei!” and catches her body as it falls.

“Did you hear that?” Vaal demands into his radio, or whatever on