dreaming of space and speed, by adannu (amnesty 2008, missing persons challenge)
TITLE: dreaming of space and speed
AUTHOR: adannu
LENGTH: 3300+ words.
SUMMARY: John is gone. But Rodney isn't.
A/N: I picked this up and rewrote the ending, since this fits the Missing Persons challenge. The title is borrowed from a Frank O'Hara poem. This may be the first part of two.
The relationship between Rodney and physics is an uncomplicated one. He remembers reading a short story called 'The Cold Equations' in English class. Even if it was a badly written piece of tripe, it stayed with him. It's an extra piece of evidence, daily newspapers aside, that there are many, many very, very stupid people out there.
At the time, he shivered at the unbearable purity of physics. Force equals mass times acceleration; velocity equals distance divided by time. e to the power of i times pi plus one equals zero.
But now he knows, knows that the equations can be bent until everyone else thinks they're broken, sometimes. He should know about that-he thinks they've redefined at least eight minor laws of normal physics by now from just living in the Pegasus galaxy, relearning what the Ancients knew like breathing.
And in Atlantis, it's an astrophysicist's dream. Being able to explore, to test and rewrite their understanding of the laws of physics in hands-on experiments and in desperate last-ditch attempts. Who needs a supercollider (and it's an anti-terrorist training range now) when you have an entire galaxy of Ancient technology? And then the world spins, turns dark with pearlescent teeth and slick hands, and then Rodney is too busy whipping the entire science department into shape to breathe, to take it all in.
Then it's about the physics of learning to shoot, how his hands can curl around the butt of a P-90, around the grip of a sidearm, and put holes into a paper target, a Wraith, a soldier. How he can learn to run, keep running, and run until he can keep up with his team and still have enough breath to complain about it.
It's a different kind of physics, but one just as vital to him.
* * *
These days John lets conversations fall around him, thudding, as he turns his face to the sky (blue and perfect), fading out. Already dreaming of flight, of slipping the surly bonds of gravity. He's not here, people say. They pass him in the hall, careful not to touch (even scientists have superstitions).
He already walks (walks in beauty) like he's already gone, every bone and line and curve straining toward the jumper bay; the thought swirled behind every press of his fingers as he grins at the Marine in the lunch line over the mystery stew.
"Colonel," Rodney says, as he flings himself down across from John, "where have you been? I couldn't find you," he says again, quieter, fork stilled in the lump of near-potato. His chin tilts as he studies the man across the table.
Lifting his eyebrows, John nods sideways as he smiles. "Where I've always been."
(John doesn't need to ascend, people say. He's already gone.)
Rodney shouts when he hears that, but somehow, the heart is gone out of it. No one (even Kavanagh) tells him that they can see it. Instead, they shiver and go back to work. Simpson doesn't steal his pens any more. He hasn't noticed.
John doesn't hit the mat as often as he used to when he practices with Teyla and the sticks (coming off his toes, whistling of the sticks like the air past a homesick jumper). He can keep up now, and he grins as he pulls Teyla upright. She bows her head to him with a small smile (pale sky behind her) and touches their foreheads together.
Watching, Rodney pushes himself away from the wall and John turns, loosing his hand from Teyla's shoulder (eyes sliding from the walls of glass). "Now that you two're done hitting each other with big sticks," he starts, uncrossing his arms, and John smiles.
"Sure. Unless Teyla wants my lunch money too."
These days, John doesn't even notice when Rodney takes the dessert from his tray. "Somehow, Colonel, I think there might be enough seared beast that even Ronon won't need to take your lunch money."
John is last as they head out, and he keeps a hand on the doors as they slide shut (not even a click). He has to blink against the relative dimness of the hall, even if the air is still sharp and clear. "Think I might take a jumper up after lunch," he says to their backs, into the silence, heedless.
* * *
John is talking to some of the military at the firing range, feet spread and hands in his pockets as he chuckles, the sound echoing. As Rodney pushes into the room, he smirks at how the Colonel gives the impression of sprawling upright in the center of the large semicircle. Then John reaches up to scratch at his hair, the pale on pale skin at his wrist a too-rare sight these days.
These days, he's always buttoned right up. Rodney thinks he might have had a minor breakdown if the hair had gone, but one small mercy is that it hasn't. So he can still look.
But that skin reminds Rodney of the glimpse that he had (between breath and breath) of that wrist buried in arcing bluevioletwhite. There's a roaring in his ears, and he shakes his head, waving off the Russian sergeant next to him with something that he forgets before the last word is out.
Two transporters away, Rodney finally lifts a hand to his ear and clears his throat. "Colonel. I am a busy man, so why aren't you on your way for the two o'clock already?"
In the meeting, John claps him on the shoulder and says something about target practice as he slides into his seat. He smiles at Elizabeth and Teyla, including them in the oblique apology. But Rodney watches him.
It's only in moments like these that Rodney slows long enough. Because it's true. John is still alive, but he's not here in Atlantis (in the world) in the ways that matter. He's left them behind for the roll and sway of the bowl of the sky and the slow swing of the stars. Rodney clenches his teeth and makes a rude noise, dragging himself back to the meeting where they are all talking about the next mission.
Teyla gives him a tolerant look from her seat opposite him, but says nothing.
This is one of the first missions that they've had in a while, and they slowly relax as the briefing goes on. Even Elizabeth's smile isn't quite as tense when she leans back and gives them the official go-ahead before rising. "Gentlemen, you have a go for the mission."
* * *
When they step through the Gate to P3X-502, there are people waiting in their world of pastures and pear-tree orchards. The first man in the group lifts his head as he steps forward with a smile of greeting, yellowgold shirt bright against tanned skin. John returns it with one of his own, P-90 cradled in his arms.
Expression dimming slightly, the leader nods at John. Rodney exchanges glances with Ronon as the leader dips one shoulder away from the team, turning toward Teyla. He smiles more fully at her, and their words are easy, practiced as they talk. There is warm laughter on both sides, and John tilts his head at the sound, light splashing across opaque lenses.
The team settles in for the walk to the trading center where they will sit and talk and drink, and talk some more. John walks ahead of them and behind Teyla and the elders, and he moves lightly, easily, like gravity itself is struggling to hold onto him. Rodney doesn't catch up to John, going over the readings on his scanner instead. It's Ronon who prods Rodney along when they start to fall behind the rest of the group.
Coiled in his seat, Ronon listens to the negotiations as he sips at the dark, fruity drink they had been served. The negotiations have nothing to do with any technology that they could give this world, but rather with medicine, and Rodney is free to look about. To his right, John is smiling faintly as he watches the rustling branches outside, leaves alternately dark purple and silvery pink.
Chaos theory, Rodney thinks, isn't all about butterflies. Sometimes it's about leaves on the wind. The lines and notes of the equations flicker through his mind, gleaming palely. When he blinks back to earth, Teyla is nodding at some comment about the crop vegetables up for trade, and nobody is watching the line of John's throat except Ronon, and he looks vaguely bored.
Finally, the leader smiles at them, seated all along the side of the table, and turns back to Teyla. Her answering smile is grave as ever, and they nod. She puts out her hands, and he puts out his, and their hands meet in the middle of the table, palm against palm, fingers sliding past each other. When they sit back, Teyla's smile grows as she inclines her head. "It is done," she says, "and we agree to these terms."
* * *
John has pale feathery scars snaking up his hands and wrists, faint forked tracery. They're all a little thinner, a little harder, and the Daedalus crew and newcomers to Atlantis take a while to adjust to the facts of life. It's a base out in nowhere, like Afghanistan and like Iraq, but with a host of fierce threats unlike insurgents and IEDs.
John isn't the only one who has changed, but he's the military commanding officer. He meets with all the new arrivals, military and not, he and Elizabeth both.
But Lorne is the one who greets the arrivals with a quick smile before ticking them off on his rosters and handing them off to the duty sergeant or the department head for orientation. What is he? the questions come, and quieter, Is he safe? And the answers come back with a shrug. He's a good officer, a hell of a leader. The eyes tell a different tale, one of uncertainty, a warning.
The tracery on John's hands and wrists are as if he had been electrocuted-or as if he had once tried to catch lightning-and Carson clears his throat at his own fancifulness. Every test that Carson's run, every scan that he's had done-they all speak to the fact that John is as normal and healthy as the commanding officer of a base in a war zone can be. The results and printouts don't talk about the fact that John shows up for the weekly physical and neurological scans like clockwork, settling onto the gurney like it's time for his nap.
But that has to be good enough for Caldwell, who nods brusquely at the end of Elizabeth's and Carson's talks. "Fine. With your leaves, I'll take these reports back to the SGC." But before he departs the conference room, though, he does add a lower-voiced, "And good luck."
Rodney doesn't hear him because he's giving Dr. Heightmeyer another point-blank refusal as he pushes back from the table. Rodney has no time for Heightmeyer.
So Elizabeth has coffee with him, instead, and they talk of Atlantis. They don't talk about John, not after Rodney rolled his eyes for the last time and said, "What part of martyr complexes don't you understand? This is John Sheppard we're talking about. And he's, I don't know, still alive here."
It's become their little tradition-coffee in the mess on occasion, by the windows.
* * *
John doesn't come to Zelenka any more with reports that Jumper Two is pulling to the left, or that Jumper Five feels hinky (and the discussion that they'd had with Zelenka, explaining what that word meant). Instead, the jumpers all rise under John's hands like air and sweetness, even Jumper One.
The artifacts under his hands respond too (dreaming of lives past), while John shifts on his seat in the labs. He shrugs and smiles as he offers guesses for the ones that he does not touch. That, and nothing more as he reaches for the next artifact that Rodney and Zelenka bring him, eyes sliding away from theirs. The scientists turn to pass his table and do not bump him at all.
Rodney talks to him, arguing about the purpose of the artifact under his hands. John smiles (thumb running across the curved edge of metal) and shakes his head, and they go on to the next theory, the next test.
When Rodney's stomach rumbles one too many times to ignore, Zelenka lifts his head with a glare condensing into being as he says acidly to Rodney, "Perhaps the purpose of the artifact is for you to forget the way to the mess?"
John laughs into the silence and sets the thing in his hands down (hollow tink fading). "Let's go, Rodney." And then they are gone, John's hand brushing the doorframe, palm sliding along the metal as it closes with a rush.
* * *
That night, they stand on the balcony shared between their given rooms for the night, John and Rodney, and look up at the stars. "That's Atlantis," Rodney says, nodding at the pinprick in the sky, so bright and near that it's almost a moon.
John shifts a little on his feet, hands wrapped around the railing, a faint outline of his head tipped back in the half-light from their rooms. Frost rimes his breath-without the sun, P3X-502 is a colder place. His fingers drift aimlessly against the metal, eyes fixed on the sky. "And we're here," John says, "in the Pegasus galaxy."
Rodney smiles a little, involuntarily reminded of the first time that they had met in Antarctica. "Think of where you are," he says softly, slanting a sideways glance at John. As John tilts his head to return the smile, in the half-light his eyes are holes without any color at all. Rodney hesitates. "I'm tired," he abruptly says. "I'm going to bed or my back will kill me tomorrow. Well, it probably will since these people are about three hundred years too early for orthopedic mattresses."
After a moment, John nods, eyebrows faintly furrowed. "All right, then. If it'll save you some breath." His smile is still there, hard to read. And Rodney knows that John'll stay there long after Rodney is in bed, a lone shape against the stars. He shivers, disguising it in his turn toward the smaller, human spaces of their rooms.
In the morning, John is still there, slouched next to the fire. He's eating a bowl of slick yellow fruit slices with his fingers as he listens to Ronon teaching Teyla some phrases from one of the trade tongues of lost Sateda. Each slice is sucked off his fingers, soft flesh disappearing into his mouth.
Rodney can't quite look away from the sight, and covers it with a jerk of the hand holding his mug of coffee to his mouth. Brown liquid spills over his fingers, and he curses. He waves off Ronon's and Teyla's concern, and wipes his fingers on a rag that he gets from an outside pocket on his pack.
"Sheppard-" Rodney looks at the messy dark hair, the fingers slick with sweet liquid. "Hand me the coffee pot," he says abruptly. "That is, if your overwhelming oral fixation left you any free brain cells for remembering how."
After a moment, John reaches for the pot. Rodney studiously avoids the sticky fingers, jerking his head in a nod as he refills his mug to the brim.
They wander back to the Gate in the early afternoon, shoulders laden with wide, wide baskets of pale green and red fruit. Ronon carries his easily, and John and Teyla also. Rodney juggles his pack in his arms as he leans into the weight of his fruit basket. He leans against the DHD with a groan as Teyla enters the address for Atlantis. Against shimmering blue, Teyla turns to say farewell to the leader, and they touch foreheads above palms pressed together.
The welcome back to Atlantis is quiet, the fruit greeted with enthusiasm by the botanists who flock around the baskets. They swirl around John and his team, and they swirl around Elizabeth. In the Gate room, a dimmer place than the bright planet that they left behind, John takes off his sunglasses. He smiles at Elizabeth when she greets them, and Teyla steps up to his shoulder. "The mission went well indeed. These are the first of-I hope-many future trades with the Hespereans."
John nods, glancing behind him to Ronon and Rodney, and then back again.
"It was a cakewalk," Ronon offers when John says nothing, shifting his basket into Parrish's arms with a curt nod.
"Excellent. I'll see you in the briefing room in a few hours, gentlemen." Elizabeth smiles as she releases them, turning away with Teyla to murmur in soft voices of the mission and its success, and the future successes to be had.
Freed of her too-clear gaze, John gives his remaining teammates a smile as he turns to leave, sunglasses slipped up onto his head and the zip of his tac vest purring open. Shaking off the trappings of a leader, Rodney can't help but think, and he turns to follow. But he ends up delayed by conversation with one of the botanists, until he tells her to go away in so many words.
He's in time to see John hand off his P-90 and vest with a smile to one of the soldiers heading in the direction of the armory. John is already turning away as Rodney catches the fleeting unease on the soldier's face as he hefts the vest onto his arm, the extra P-90 slung over his shoulder. Without asking, Rodney hurries past on his way to wherever John is (wherever he's going).
When Rodney catches up to John, footfalls loud in the spiraling space of the stairs, John is outside. One hand falling from the railing, he turns to watch Rodney take the last few steps (nothing but night sky behind), and smiles at him.
"What are you doing?" Rodney asks, the sound of his words falling into the wind that always blows around the city.
"Looking around," John murmurs, already turning back to the railing, looking out over the sea and leaning into the railing as his hair tangles ever-wilder and something indefinable seeps out of the set of his shoulders.
Standing behind him, under the metal overhang, Rodney watches Atlantis. After a moment, he steps forward to lean on the railing next to John, shoulders bumping. He half-closes his eyes and leans into the wind. "You realize I'll never forgive you if my hair gets blown off my head," he mutters. "Caldwell is going to laugh himself sick if I have to order Rogaine from Earth." There is a motion of the shoulder against his own, shifting in a low amused breath.
When Rodney turns his head, he can see John's profile. Eyes closed, palms wrapped around the railing, John's face is composed. "John," Rodney says sharply, throat clenching.
One eyebrow lifts in response, but John doesn't open his eyes.
"I-" And then Rodney falls silent, watching the lines of John's face. After a moment, he sighs, the sound faintly unsteady, nearly lost in the wind. And then the words burst out of him. "John. I spent weeks, weeks looking for anything, something. Medical and Biology run like dogs when they see me. Even Carson can't find anything, and neither can Nagakawa." He watches his big hands join John's on the railing, twisting. "I. I'm supposed to be this genius. And I can't do anything. Not-not this." A hand half-raised, flickering between them as the last words drop to silence.
Finally, John turns to Rodney (a thousand-star gaze) as he leans forward against the railing in a lazy motion, arms going taut with his weight. "It's all good."
Forgetting his agonized words, Rodney's eyes narrow as he opens his mouth to protest. And just as quickly, he closes it, the tension pouring out of him (water from a broken cup). He knocks on the railing once, twice, and goes inside, leaving John to the night again.
He doesn't notice the fleeting gaze that follows him, there for an instant before John turns back to the sky, leaning into the (salt-laden) wind.
fini.
AUTHOR: adannu
LENGTH: 3300+ words.
SUMMARY: John is gone. But Rodney isn't.
A/N: I picked this up and rewrote the ending, since this fits the Missing Persons challenge. The title is borrowed from a Frank O'Hara poem. This may be the first part of two.
The relationship between Rodney and physics is an uncomplicated one. He remembers reading a short story called 'The Cold Equations' in English class. Even if it was a badly written piece of tripe, it stayed with him. It's an extra piece of evidence, daily newspapers aside, that there are many, many very, very stupid people out there.
At the time, he shivered at the unbearable purity of physics. Force equals mass times acceleration; velocity equals distance divided by time. e to the power of i times pi plus one equals zero.
But now he knows, knows that the equations can be bent until everyone else thinks they're broken, sometimes. He should know about that-he thinks they've redefined at least eight minor laws of normal physics by now from just living in the Pegasus galaxy, relearning what the Ancients knew like breathing.
And in Atlantis, it's an astrophysicist's dream. Being able to explore, to test and rewrite their understanding of the laws of physics in hands-on experiments and in desperate last-ditch attempts. Who needs a supercollider (and it's an anti-terrorist training range now) when you have an entire galaxy of Ancient technology? And then the world spins, turns dark with pearlescent teeth and slick hands, and then Rodney is too busy whipping the entire science department into shape to breathe, to take it all in.
Then it's about the physics of learning to shoot, how his hands can curl around the butt of a P-90, around the grip of a sidearm, and put holes into a paper target, a Wraith, a soldier. How he can learn to run, keep running, and run until he can keep up with his team and still have enough breath to complain about it.
It's a different kind of physics, but one just as vital to him.
* * *
These days John lets conversations fall around him, thudding, as he turns his face to the sky (blue and perfect), fading out. Already dreaming of flight, of slipping the surly bonds of gravity. He's not here, people say. They pass him in the hall, careful not to touch (even scientists have superstitions).
He already walks (walks in beauty) like he's already gone, every bone and line and curve straining toward the jumper bay; the thought swirled behind every press of his fingers as he grins at the Marine in the lunch line over the mystery stew.
"Colonel," Rodney says, as he flings himself down across from John, "where have you been? I couldn't find you," he says again, quieter, fork stilled in the lump of near-potato. His chin tilts as he studies the man across the table.
Lifting his eyebrows, John nods sideways as he smiles. "Where I've always been."
(John doesn't need to ascend, people say. He's already gone.)
Rodney shouts when he hears that, but somehow, the heart is gone out of it. No one (even Kavanagh) tells him that they can see it. Instead, they shiver and go back to work. Simpson doesn't steal his pens any more. He hasn't noticed.
John doesn't hit the mat as often as he used to when he practices with Teyla and the sticks (coming off his toes, whistling of the sticks like the air past a homesick jumper). He can keep up now, and he grins as he pulls Teyla upright. She bows her head to him with a small smile (pale sky behind her) and touches their foreheads together.
Watching, Rodney pushes himself away from the wall and John turns, loosing his hand from Teyla's shoulder (eyes sliding from the walls of glass). "Now that you two're done hitting each other with big sticks," he starts, uncrossing his arms, and John smiles.
"Sure. Unless Teyla wants my lunch money too."
These days, John doesn't even notice when Rodney takes the dessert from his tray. "Somehow, Colonel, I think there might be enough seared beast that even Ronon won't need to take your lunch money."
John is last as they head out, and he keeps a hand on the doors as they slide shut (not even a click). He has to blink against the relative dimness of the hall, even if the air is still sharp and clear. "Think I might take a jumper up after lunch," he says to their backs, into the silence, heedless.
* * *
John is talking to some of the military at the firing range, feet spread and hands in his pockets as he chuckles, the sound echoing. As Rodney pushes into the room, he smirks at how the Colonel gives the impression of sprawling upright in the center of the large semicircle. Then John reaches up to scratch at his hair, the pale on pale skin at his wrist a too-rare sight these days.
These days, he's always buttoned right up. Rodney thinks he might have had a minor breakdown if the hair had gone, but one small mercy is that it hasn't. So he can still look.
But that skin reminds Rodney of the glimpse that he had (between breath and breath) of that wrist buried in arcing bluevioletwhite. There's a roaring in his ears, and he shakes his head, waving off the Russian sergeant next to him with something that he forgets before the last word is out.
Two transporters away, Rodney finally lifts a hand to his ear and clears his throat. "Colonel. I am a busy man, so why aren't you on your way for the two o'clock already?"
In the meeting, John claps him on the shoulder and says something about target practice as he slides into his seat. He smiles at Elizabeth and Teyla, including them in the oblique apology. But Rodney watches him.
It's only in moments like these that Rodney slows long enough. Because it's true. John is still alive, but he's not here in Atlantis (in the world) in the ways that matter. He's left them behind for the roll and sway of the bowl of the sky and the slow swing of the stars. Rodney clenches his teeth and makes a rude noise, dragging himself back to the meeting where they are all talking about the next mission.
Teyla gives him a tolerant look from her seat opposite him, but says nothing.
This is one of the first missions that they've had in a while, and they slowly relax as the briefing goes on. Even Elizabeth's smile isn't quite as tense when she leans back and gives them the official go-ahead before rising. "Gentlemen, you have a go for the mission."
* * *
When they step through the Gate to P3X-502, there are people waiting in their world of pastures and pear-tree orchards. The first man in the group lifts his head as he steps forward with a smile of greeting, yellowgold shirt bright against tanned skin. John returns it with one of his own, P-90 cradled in his arms.
Expression dimming slightly, the leader nods at John. Rodney exchanges glances with Ronon as the leader dips one shoulder away from the team, turning toward Teyla. He smiles more fully at her, and their words are easy, practiced as they talk. There is warm laughter on both sides, and John tilts his head at the sound, light splashing across opaque lenses.
The team settles in for the walk to the trading center where they will sit and talk and drink, and talk some more. John walks ahead of them and behind Teyla and the elders, and he moves lightly, easily, like gravity itself is struggling to hold onto him. Rodney doesn't catch up to John, going over the readings on his scanner instead. It's Ronon who prods Rodney along when they start to fall behind the rest of the group.
Coiled in his seat, Ronon listens to the negotiations as he sips at the dark, fruity drink they had been served. The negotiations have nothing to do with any technology that they could give this world, but rather with medicine, and Rodney is free to look about. To his right, John is smiling faintly as he watches the rustling branches outside, leaves alternately dark purple and silvery pink.
Chaos theory, Rodney thinks, isn't all about butterflies. Sometimes it's about leaves on the wind. The lines and notes of the equations flicker through his mind, gleaming palely. When he blinks back to earth, Teyla is nodding at some comment about the crop vegetables up for trade, and nobody is watching the line of John's throat except Ronon, and he looks vaguely bored.
Finally, the leader smiles at them, seated all along the side of the table, and turns back to Teyla. Her answering smile is grave as ever, and they nod. She puts out her hands, and he puts out his, and their hands meet in the middle of the table, palm against palm, fingers sliding past each other. When they sit back, Teyla's smile grows as she inclines her head. "It is done," she says, "and we agree to these terms."
* * *
John has pale feathery scars snaking up his hands and wrists, faint forked tracery. They're all a little thinner, a little harder, and the Daedalus crew and newcomers to Atlantis take a while to adjust to the facts of life. It's a base out in nowhere, like Afghanistan and like Iraq, but with a host of fierce threats unlike insurgents and IEDs.
John isn't the only one who has changed, but he's the military commanding officer. He meets with all the new arrivals, military and not, he and Elizabeth both.
But Lorne is the one who greets the arrivals with a quick smile before ticking them off on his rosters and handing them off to the duty sergeant or the department head for orientation. What is he? the questions come, and quieter, Is he safe? And the answers come back with a shrug. He's a good officer, a hell of a leader. The eyes tell a different tale, one of uncertainty, a warning.
The tracery on John's hands and wrists are as if he had been electrocuted-or as if he had once tried to catch lightning-and Carson clears his throat at his own fancifulness. Every test that Carson's run, every scan that he's had done-they all speak to the fact that John is as normal and healthy as the commanding officer of a base in a war zone can be. The results and printouts don't talk about the fact that John shows up for the weekly physical and neurological scans like clockwork, settling onto the gurney like it's time for his nap.
But that has to be good enough for Caldwell, who nods brusquely at the end of Elizabeth's and Carson's talks. "Fine. With your leaves, I'll take these reports back to the SGC." But before he departs the conference room, though, he does add a lower-voiced, "And good luck."
Rodney doesn't hear him because he's giving Dr. Heightmeyer another point-blank refusal as he pushes back from the table. Rodney has no time for Heightmeyer.
So Elizabeth has coffee with him, instead, and they talk of Atlantis. They don't talk about John, not after Rodney rolled his eyes for the last time and said, "What part of martyr complexes don't you understand? This is John Sheppard we're talking about. And he's, I don't know, still alive here."
It's become their little tradition-coffee in the mess on occasion, by the windows.
* * *
John doesn't come to Zelenka any more with reports that Jumper Two is pulling to the left, or that Jumper Five feels hinky (and the discussion that they'd had with Zelenka, explaining what that word meant). Instead, the jumpers all rise under John's hands like air and sweetness, even Jumper One.
The artifacts under his hands respond too (dreaming of lives past), while John shifts on his seat in the labs. He shrugs and smiles as he offers guesses for the ones that he does not touch. That, and nothing more as he reaches for the next artifact that Rodney and Zelenka bring him, eyes sliding away from theirs. The scientists turn to pass his table and do not bump him at all.
Rodney talks to him, arguing about the purpose of the artifact under his hands. John smiles (thumb running across the curved edge of metal) and shakes his head, and they go on to the next theory, the next test.
When Rodney's stomach rumbles one too many times to ignore, Zelenka lifts his head with a glare condensing into being as he says acidly to Rodney, "Perhaps the purpose of the artifact is for you to forget the way to the mess?"
John laughs into the silence and sets the thing in his hands down (hollow tink fading). "Let's go, Rodney." And then they are gone, John's hand brushing the doorframe, palm sliding along the metal as it closes with a rush.
* * *
That night, they stand on the balcony shared between their given rooms for the night, John and Rodney, and look up at the stars. "That's Atlantis," Rodney says, nodding at the pinprick in the sky, so bright and near that it's almost a moon.
John shifts a little on his feet, hands wrapped around the railing, a faint outline of his head tipped back in the half-light from their rooms. Frost rimes his breath-without the sun, P3X-502 is a colder place. His fingers drift aimlessly against the metal, eyes fixed on the sky. "And we're here," John says, "in the Pegasus galaxy."
Rodney smiles a little, involuntarily reminded of the first time that they had met in Antarctica. "Think of where you are," he says softly, slanting a sideways glance at John. As John tilts his head to return the smile, in the half-light his eyes are holes without any color at all. Rodney hesitates. "I'm tired," he abruptly says. "I'm going to bed or my back will kill me tomorrow. Well, it probably will since these people are about three hundred years too early for orthopedic mattresses."
After a moment, John nods, eyebrows faintly furrowed. "All right, then. If it'll save you some breath." His smile is still there, hard to read. And Rodney knows that John'll stay there long after Rodney is in bed, a lone shape against the stars. He shivers, disguising it in his turn toward the smaller, human spaces of their rooms.
In the morning, John is still there, slouched next to the fire. He's eating a bowl of slick yellow fruit slices with his fingers as he listens to Ronon teaching Teyla some phrases from one of the trade tongues of lost Sateda. Each slice is sucked off his fingers, soft flesh disappearing into his mouth.
Rodney can't quite look away from the sight, and covers it with a jerk of the hand holding his mug of coffee to his mouth. Brown liquid spills over his fingers, and he curses. He waves off Ronon's and Teyla's concern, and wipes his fingers on a rag that he gets from an outside pocket on his pack.
"Sheppard-" Rodney looks at the messy dark hair, the fingers slick with sweet liquid. "Hand me the coffee pot," he says abruptly. "That is, if your overwhelming oral fixation left you any free brain cells for remembering how."
After a moment, John reaches for the pot. Rodney studiously avoids the sticky fingers, jerking his head in a nod as he refills his mug to the brim.
They wander back to the Gate in the early afternoon, shoulders laden with wide, wide baskets of pale green and red fruit. Ronon carries his easily, and John and Teyla also. Rodney juggles his pack in his arms as he leans into the weight of his fruit basket. He leans against the DHD with a groan as Teyla enters the address for Atlantis. Against shimmering blue, Teyla turns to say farewell to the leader, and they touch foreheads above palms pressed together.
The welcome back to Atlantis is quiet, the fruit greeted with enthusiasm by the botanists who flock around the baskets. They swirl around John and his team, and they swirl around Elizabeth. In the Gate room, a dimmer place than the bright planet that they left behind, John takes off his sunglasses. He smiles at Elizabeth when she greets them, and Teyla steps up to his shoulder. "The mission went well indeed. These are the first of-I hope-many future trades with the Hespereans."
John nods, glancing behind him to Ronon and Rodney, and then back again.
"It was a cakewalk," Ronon offers when John says nothing, shifting his basket into Parrish's arms with a curt nod.
"Excellent. I'll see you in the briefing room in a few hours, gentlemen." Elizabeth smiles as she releases them, turning away with Teyla to murmur in soft voices of the mission and its success, and the future successes to be had.
Freed of her too-clear gaze, John gives his remaining teammates a smile as he turns to leave, sunglasses slipped up onto his head and the zip of his tac vest purring open. Shaking off the trappings of a leader, Rodney can't help but think, and he turns to follow. But he ends up delayed by conversation with one of the botanists, until he tells her to go away in so many words.
He's in time to see John hand off his P-90 and vest with a smile to one of the soldiers heading in the direction of the armory. John is already turning away as Rodney catches the fleeting unease on the soldier's face as he hefts the vest onto his arm, the extra P-90 slung over his shoulder. Without asking, Rodney hurries past on his way to wherever John is (wherever he's going).
When Rodney catches up to John, footfalls loud in the spiraling space of the stairs, John is outside. One hand falling from the railing, he turns to watch Rodney take the last few steps (nothing but night sky behind), and smiles at him.
"What are you doing?" Rodney asks, the sound of his words falling into the wind that always blows around the city.
"Looking around," John murmurs, already turning back to the railing, looking out over the sea and leaning into the railing as his hair tangles ever-wilder and something indefinable seeps out of the set of his shoulders.
Standing behind him, under the metal overhang, Rodney watches Atlantis. After a moment, he steps forward to lean on the railing next to John, shoulders bumping. He half-closes his eyes and leans into the wind. "You realize I'll never forgive you if my hair gets blown off my head," he mutters. "Caldwell is going to laugh himself sick if I have to order Rogaine from Earth." There is a motion of the shoulder against his own, shifting in a low amused breath.
When Rodney turns his head, he can see John's profile. Eyes closed, palms wrapped around the railing, John's face is composed. "John," Rodney says sharply, throat clenching.
One eyebrow lifts in response, but John doesn't open his eyes.
"I-" And then Rodney falls silent, watching the lines of John's face. After a moment, he sighs, the sound faintly unsteady, nearly lost in the wind. And then the words burst out of him. "John. I spent weeks, weeks looking for anything, something. Medical and Biology run like dogs when they see me. Even Carson can't find anything, and neither can Nagakawa." He watches his big hands join John's on the railing, twisting. "I. I'm supposed to be this genius. And I can't do anything. Not-not this." A hand half-raised, flickering between them as the last words drop to silence.
Finally, John turns to Rodney (a thousand-star gaze) as he leans forward against the railing in a lazy motion, arms going taut with his weight. "It's all good."
Forgetting his agonized words, Rodney's eyes narrow as he opens his mouth to protest. And just as quickly, he closes it, the tension pouring out of him (water from a broken cup). He knocks on the railing once, twice, and goes inside, leaving John to the night again.
He doesn't notice the fleeting gaze that follows him, there for an instant before John turns back to the sky, leaning into the (salt-laden) wind.
fini.