Chapter Text
The crimson and gold light of sunset painted Atlantis's towers in a thousand molten jewel-tones when Rodney, walking softly, came to the East Pier to find John.
The whales had let him know that John was out here. Rodney hadn't seen much of them lately, aside from a brief and enthusiastic reunion; in the past three days, he'd been kept busy night and day, trying to get the portal back online and, when he wasn't doing that, going through Atlantis's database and trying to ferret out and repair the damage the Wraith had done.
At least it spared him the grisly duty of cleaning up the corridors. At the last count he'd heard, twenty-three people had been confirmed dead, and a number were still missing. Nearly everyone in the City had been injured, at least in some small way. The infirmary staff had been working until they were ready to drop, and everyone who was healthy enough to help in any way was pitching in wherever they could.
Carson had made Rodney lie down for a healing treatment and drained a bag of glucose into his arm, but other than that, he'd hardly seen a bed in three days. The few times that he'd tried to sleep, he'd bolted awake from nightmares of fire and insects. Everyone else he'd seen around the City had been walking with the same haunted, exhausted look that Rodney had no doubt he himself bore.
With Woolsey and half the other mages completely incapacitated in the infirmary, Bates in a coma and Sumner dead, the next person in the City's hierarchy who was physically capable of running the place was a young lieutenant named Ford. Rodney didn't really know him at all, but he had to grudgingly admit that the kid wasn't doing a bad job. Also, adding another few points in Ford's favor, Rodney had actually managed to convince him that shutting down the portal, trapping the Wraith in the City, had been intentional -- to stop them from getting to Earth. The few people who knew otherwise (Ronon and Jeannie) had had the decency to keep their mouths shut, though he'd caught them exchanging a pointed look. In fact, they'd been exchanging a lot of looks lately, and he thought he'd actually caught Jeannie blushing, though she claimed it was sunburn.
Today, finally, he and Jeannie had certified the portal safe to use, so they'd opened it to Earth and let Ford contact the Earth hierarchy to bring much-needed reinforcements through. Everyone who'd been in the City when the Wraith had besieged it was currently on stand-down to get some rest, and many of them were going back to Earth for psychiatric treatment.
Rodney knew that he ought to head back to his quarters and try to see if he was tired enough yet to sleep too deeply for the nightmares to find him. It might be possible -- his entire body ached, his eyes felt as dried out as two raisins, and the corridor kept undulating around him in a very disturbing way.
But instead, here he was, on the East Pier, looking for John without the foggiest clue what he was going to say to him. A number of things came to mind, like, Are you okay? and That was just the excitement talking when you kissed me, right? and maybe The whales think I'm in love with you -- which was very sad but true; the whales had picked up on most of what had happened in the chair room through their connection to Rodney, and once they'd got the "Oh, little podling, we thought you were dead" stuff out of the way, they'd gone into a fit of matchmaking joy. He was pretty sure they were planning the wedding by now. Yet another reason why he'd managed to successfully avoid both the whales and John for the last three days.
And, joy. There they all were: not just John, not just the whales, but also Ronon and Teyla. Delightful. Rodney wondered if he could sneak back into Atlantis, but then Ronon waved at him, and he sighed, and slouched over.
"Did your sister go back to Earth?" Teyla asked him. She was sitting crosslegged on the end of the pier, backlit by the setting sun.
"Just to wrap up her affairs in Vancouver," Rodney said, and sighed again. His life was so over.
"She's coming here?" Ronon asked. He looked more than just casually interested in that idea.
"Stay away from my sister, Birdman," Rodney snapped. "Besides, she'll be busy. She's got a job in the Atlantis science division. Radek better watch out."
He hadn't quite managed to figure out if he was sitting down or leaving; instead, he just hovered awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot, until Ronon heaved a sigh and moved over, making a space for him next to John. Still reluctant, but having very little choice now, Rodney sat down and let his feet dangle off the edge of the pier.
"Hey," he said, because he didn't know what else to say.
"Hey," John said, with a quick smile. He looked a little better, Rodney thought; his eyes weren't quite so shadowed, but he was still thin and pale.
"So, what about the ... and then there's the, you know ..." Rodney trailed off into silence, flapping his hand around uselessly. He was no good at small talk, never had been. For a few minutes, the only sound was the slapping of waves on the pier, and the rustling of Ronon's wings as he shifted in place. Finally Rodney couldn't take it anymore.
"What was it like? Being all -- glowy with Atlantis, and everyth -- ow!"
Ronon had swatted him in the head. Rodney helplessly batted at him.
"Stop that! Genius! Brain cells!"
Ronon effortlessly breached Rodney's defenses and seized him by the back of the neck, giving him a little shake. "You get any sleep, genius?"
"Yes, yes, lots of sleep," Rodney snapped, looking away from him. Unfortunately, this meant he was now looking at John, who was wearing a little grin, watching the interplay. "Something funny, Sheppard?"
"Oh, just you."
"Ha, ha."
Their eyes held a little too long, before they broke the stare at the same time and looked away from each other. Now Rodney's eyes fell on Ronon and Teyla sharing a pointed look over their heads. "Okay, what is with you people, anyway?!"
"It's a weapon," John said.
Rodney's quick mind had already moved on to plotting revenge against Ronon, so it took him a moment to catch up. "What, who, the -- are you threatening me? Oh, wait, you're talking about Atlantis?"
When John nodded, Rodney stole another quick look at Ronon and Teyla to see if this was news to them, too. Both of them were looking intently at John, so, apparently so. "I am not sure I am following you, John," Teyla said cautiously.
"Atlantis." John looked away, staring out at the water as the sun slipped below the waves. "The Ancestors built it as a weapon against the Wraith. I don't understand exactly how it works. I don't know if it can be understood. Either it outstripped its creators' intentions, or it's kind of evolved on its own, over all those years. Anyway, it was ... happy, I guess, to finally be able to fulfill its purpose."
John spoke in a low monotone, one word at a time. When he fell silent, Rodney stared at him for a long moment before he finally managed, "Are you telling me you wiped them all out with that little stunt?"
"What?" John gave him a startled look. "Oh, no, no. Just the ones here. There are still a lot of them out there, and at least some of them probably know about Atlantis now."
"I do not know how I feel about this." Teyla wrapped her arms around her legs, and joined John in staring off at the distant horizon. "All my life, I have believed this was a sacred City. It is ... disturbing, to think that it might have had a practical purpose."
"Seems like a good thing to me," Ronon said, flashing a quick grin. "We can fight 'em now, like we couldn't before. You saw what it did to 'em."
"You saw what it did to John," Teyla retorted tartly, and Ronon's triumphant grin fell away.
"Guys," John said impatiently. "Quit it. I'm not a ... a fragile hothouse flower. I think I can make my own decisions about this, right?"
"Unless the Magic Division takes it out of your hands," Rodney said, and then, seeing the slight sideways shift of John's eyes, "Uh, I'm getting the distinct impression that you haven't actually told the MD."
"I haven't even told you guys until, well, now." John looked down at the waves rolling beneath his feet. "I don't know what I'm going to do with this. As far as the MD knows, the Wraith all just ... left, on their own, somehow. And that's what's in my report -- that I don't remember anything. Which is kinda true. There's still an awful lot I don't remember ... a lot of holes in my memory." He didn't meet Rodney's eyes.
Teyla slid closer to him, and placed her hand on his shoulder. "I am sure we can find other ways to use this newfound power, John. You do not have to be our savior; no one expects it of you. You are not even of our galaxy."
John hesitated; then he slowly raised a hand and covered hers with it. "I am now," was all he said.
They sat in silence for a little while longer, the four of them, as the sun's last rays traveled slowly up the towers of Atlantis, and the sky darkened to a bruised purple. The whales frisked in the glittering water and occasionally gave Rodney a mental poke. Talk to him!
No one asked you, Rodney retorted. Big matchmakers with flukes, that's all they were. Stupid whales. I'm not speaking to any of you.
You just did, the whales pointed out cheerfully. The fluid dynamics whale swam up to the edge of the pier, and gave Ronon a long, significant look. Ronon stared back at her for a moment, then ruffled his wings and stood up.
"Think I'm gonna go for a flight, maybe do some night fishing. Teyla, you want to come?"
"Not ver -- oh." Teyla stood and brushed herself off. "Actually, I think I will do some swimming."
"Hey," Rodney began helplessly, "wait ..."
But Teyla was shucking her long skirt, revealing one of the body-hugging Athosian bathing suits beneath, and Ronon had spread his wings. "Catch a movie with you guys later tonight?" he asked.
John raised his head; he'd been staring at his feet again. A smile flickered briefly on his face. "Sounds like a plan, big guy. I think the new batch of folks from Earth brought some new flicks; I'll see if I can get my hands on the Dark Phoenix movie."
Ronon nodded, spread his wings and kicked off, while Teyla slipped silently into the water in a ring of spreading light.
"Swimming," Rodney said, a bit desperately, and kicked off his shoes. "Yeah. That sounds wonderful. Very refreshing."
"Hey," John said, "Rodney ..."
But Rodney was already sliding off the pier into the pleasantly cool water. The whales immediately surrounded him with disapproving glares. Teyla, Rodney noticed with annoyance, had found herself a spot to lie on the back of the eigenspace whale, and was giving him a similar look.
"What?" Then he looked back at the pier, at John sitting alone, watching them. "Oh, for pete's sake ..." He paddled back over, and John watched him come. Rodney scooped up a handful of water and splashed it at John's foot. "Oh, get on down here, you idiot. Don't make me send the whales to get you."
The grin that spread across John's face was infectious and boyish. He slipped out of his shirt, revealing that his lean body had become downright skinny, and was still marked with healing cuts and bruises, visible even in the growing dusk. It made Rodney's chest hurt. And then John hit the water with a cannonball splash, sending up a fountain of water that splashed over Rodney and left him blinking it out of his eyes.
"Oh, for -- who taught you to swim, anyway?"
John stroked lazily around him, his motions becoming more smooth and graceful as he stretched out and limbered up. "So I'm doing it wrong? I thought the whole objective was, very simply, not to drown."
"There is such a thing as style, you know," Rodney sniffed, and was hit full force in the face with a scoop of water.
After a vigorous water fight that left them both breathless and laughing, they clambered aboard a whale that obligingly made himself available for the purpose. Teyla had vanished, and Rodney caught a glimpse of a long-winged shape crossing the moon. Above them, the lights of Atlantis glimmered in the deepening darkness.
Stretched out on the back of the whale, Rodney found himself unexpectedly drowsy, the exhaustion and lack of sleep from the last few days catching up to him. His eyes were drifting shut when John said softly, "You okay?"
Rodney blinked his eyes open and propped himself up on one elbow, annoyed for no particular reason. "Am I okay? You're the one who was captured and ... and who knows what they did to you, not that we were any help, being utterly useless at finding you and -- and everything." His voice trailed away, crushed by the memory of the fear and uncertainty of those days, of the loss and desolation when he'd thought John had died.
"Hey," John said softly, and punched him in the shoulder. "I'm here. I'm ... okay."
The slight hesitation on the last word didn't go unnoticed. Rodney glared at him, and John ducked his head and looked away, his hair falling to hide his face. "Well, all right. Getting there."
"Yeah," Rodney said. "Me too."
He sat up, no longer quite so sleepy as before. John, beside him, crossed his arms across his knees.
"You and Jeannie gonna finish the portal thingie?"
"Jeannie has very little to do with it," Rodney retorted. "She merely -- helped. And, yes. I'm writing up a proposal for MD funding." There was no hope of keeping the thing a secret now that half the MD on Atlantis had seen it, even if they'd been under control of Wraith at the time.
"You'll do it," John said.
He sounded perfectly sincere, but Rodney still had to look over at him to make sure John wasn't making fun of him. The green eyes looking back at him were faintly luminescent in the dusk, and suddenly Rodney found that all he could manage to say was a small, soft, "Oh."
"Oh?" John echoed, and now he did sound amused, the bastard. "You sound like you just had one of those patented McKay breakthroughs."
"Yeah," Rodney said, still staring at him. "I did, actually." Strange how the last couple of weeks -- heck, the whole last year had seemed so confusing at the time, and yet, in retrospect, with all the variables slotted into place, made perfect sense.
"Care to share?" John asked, his voice still light and teasing.
This would be an excellent time to kiss him, the whales chorused.
"Shut up, I know," Rodney said, and leaning across to bridge the space between them, he did.
~end~