“We must do this, John,” she said quietly, her tones too low for another human to hear at this distance.
“You really think this is the best shot of getting to Rodney?”
“I do not think we will ever have a better. And what do we lose by talking? Let us take the opportunity we have. It may not come again.”
There was a long pause. “Ok.” Guide did not turn, but he heard Sheppard’s voice change. “I didn’t expect you to come.”
“Did you think that I would ever leave you?”
Guide closed his eyes.
*Did you think that I would ever leave you?* She had said it softly, mind to mind, her fingers where the pulse jumped in his wrist, half turning her head to look at him sideways, red hair rendered dawn colored in the shiplight.
*You should have*, he had said, and the smoke wreathed them, smoke and the scent of burned shipflesh. *It would have been wiser.*
Snow said nothing, but in her eyes he saw her demurral. *Never.*
Guide spun around. “I will meet you,” he said sharply. “But know that if this is a trap I will never treat with you again under any circumstances.”
“It is not a trap,” Teyla Emmagan said.
He turned and strode off to the airlock where his shuttle waited. At the door he turned and glanced back to see them standing apart, silhouetted against the light behind them, her dark skirts and tight laced boots, Sheppard’s tall, lanky shape as he bent his forehead to hers.
Hyperspace cradled the cruiser Eternal, blue streaks shifting in endless patterns past its windowless hull. John finished every last morsel of the cheese and crackers from his MRE and opened the brownie. “You know, I’d forgotten these were good,” he said.
Teyla looked amused. Or at least he thought she did. The curves of her face were different. “You sound like Rodney,” she said.
“I’ve been eating nothing but fruit for days. Cold beef ravioli started looking pretty good.” John looked up at her. “You’re not eating.”
“I cannot,” she said and shrugged. “Just the protein shakes and energy drinks. There is too much plastic surgery in my mouth for me to eat anything solid.” Teyla reached for the thermos beside her. “Jennifer has tried to make it palatable. But it is terrible all the same. I will be fine for a few days,” she assured him. “It is just that I think the beef ravioli has begun to look good too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She took a drink and grimaced. “We will hear what Todd has to say. I think it is important, from the shade of his mind.”
“That’s kind of creepy.” John looked down at his brownie. “You reading his mind.”
“John?” Her voice was low, and he glanced up, meeting narrowed yellow reptilian eyes. “You know that I cannot really touch your mind. Not yours, nor any other human’s. It does not work that way.”
“I know,” he said, seeing the way she turned her hand over on her skirts, hiding the feeding slit in the folds of cloth. “Hell of an act.”
“You made it work,” she said. “I could only hope that you would have presence of mind to play along. I did not realize you would do so quite so thoroughly.” There was a mischievous note in her voice.
“Yeah.” John carefully flattened out the brownie wrapper, like it was important. “That was…disturbing.”
“Yes,” she said, and he didn’t think he imagined the tremor in her voice. As disturbed as he was, she must be ten times more so. He didn’t look away from her yellow eyes, from the night dark fall of hair, pale greenish skin against the dark lines of bodice and coat, from the way she twisted her hand in her skirt as though to hide it.
He reached down and took it, turning it very deliberately palm uppermost. It was a good job from Keller, he thought. Her small fingers were elongated, rendered more so in illusion by the long dark green claws shining with emerald lacquer, the lips of the feeding slit open and slightly moist, a little purpled at the edges. Very deliberately he bent over her hand, kissed the base of her palm and watched her shiver.
“John,” she said, and her eyes were shadowed. Strange, yes, but the expression in them wasn’t.
He was no good with words, never had been. “Teyla,” he said. “It’s you.”
“It is all me,” she said sadly. “This is not entirely an act. This is part of me. It is part of who I am.”
“I know.”
She lifted her head to the ceiling, blinking, her hair falling back. “I wish I could say that I am pretending. That I am very clever. But it is not all pretense. I am this person. She is part of me. And I do not know if I can live with that.”
“I can,” he said, closing her hand in his, small and strong in his fingers.
“I am kin to the Wraith. There is nothing that can be said of someone worse than they are like the Wraith. Than that they are Wraith.” She blinked again as though she did not want to cry. “And yet this is me. This will always be part of me. I am not pretending, John. I am being something I have always been.”
“You’re a lot of things,” he said, and shifted closer to get his other arm behind her back. “You’ve always been a lot of things. You’re a good trader and you make impossible deals. Remember when you told me that? You’re a good fighter, a reliable soldier. You’re always good backup. You’re a diplomat, and God help us we need one. You’re a mom. You’re a friend. You’re smart and you’re tough and maybe the bravest person I’ve ever seen.” He shrugged and gathered her in against his shoulder, his face against the top of her head. “This is just one more thing you are. Really scary.”
She gave a strangled little laugh, her hair falling forward so he couldn’t see if she was crying or not.
“Hey, you know. Steelflower is kind of hot. In a wrong kind of way,” he said to the top of her head.
At that she did laugh, though he thought there were tears in it. “John. You are crazy.”
“I know,” he said. “But I’m good with that.” It sounded starker than he’d expected, truer.
Teyla lifted her face, her eyes searching his.
“I told you that a long time ago. Seriously got a screw loose. That’s me. Nancy…” He took a deep breath. “I blew that up pretty badly.”
“I am not afraid of you,” she said. “And I can live with that.” She dropped her head, the side of her face against his shoulder. “I have seen you crazy, when you did not know where you were or who I was. And I did not fear you then.”
“Teyla.” He shut his eyes against the memory of that day on the planet with the Wraith experiment gone awry. “I shot Rodney. It was just luck that I didn’t kill him.”
“You did not shoot me. You thought that I was Holland.”
“And there’s another kettle of fish,” John said, his eyes squeezed tight. “Nancy…”
“I am not Nancy,” she said, and the urgent sound in her voice made him open his eyes. The corners of her mouth twitched over fanged teeth, an ironic and monstrous smile. “Nancy was not Wraith.”
“No,” he said. “She sure wasn’t.” He swallowed. So many words, and so hard to say. His words had died that cold spring in Washington, frozen before summer came into Antarctic ice. “She wasn’t anything like you.” So many words, poured out on a marriage counselor’s silence, words to condemn him, words to cut him to the bone, and no words he could make in return, nothing that would thaw him, frozen in desert night, scoured by raw winds. Antarctica had almost felt good. The icy winds were real.
Golden eyes and a monster’s face, her hand in his and her head against his shoulder, her heart beating against his arm, beautiful and deadly, strange and familiar at once.