"Going to go see Papa," John said, and Torren curled heavily against his shoulder, accepting.
Torren woke up more in the gate room, his eyes lighting at the sight of the bright blue wormhole. John curled his hand around the back of Torren's head for a moment, feeling the soft warmth of his hair, and then stepped through.
On the other side Kanaan was waiting in a soft circle of torchlight. Jinto held the torch, and reached out willingly to shoulder the bag of Torren's belongings. John handed Torren to Kanaan, who settled him in one arm.
"Thanks for meeting me at the gate," John said.
"I know you are a busy man," Kanaan said, not entirely graciously.
John glanced down at Torren. "Jinto, could you take Torren for a minute? Torren, go with Jinto, buddy."
Jinto shrugged and traded torch for child. "Did you have fun in Atlantis, Torren?"
John drew Kanaan aside, far enough away that Jinto and Torren were dark shadows at the edge of the circle of torchlight. "Queen Death's fleet is going to reach Atlantis in less than twelve hours," he said. "We're going to put up a hell of a fight, I can promise you that."
"But not that you will be victorious."
"I wish I could promise me that."
Kanaan nodded. "And Teyla?"
"She's on a mission," John said. "Trying to get us some allies."
"That is what she does best," Kanaan says. "And then I expect she will join you in fighting the Wraith."
"She does a pretty good job of that, too," John said. "When she has to."
"If you see her, tell her not to worry about Torren."
"I will."
Kanaan's eyes searched John's face. "Don't worry about Torren," he said.
John nodded wordlessly. He extended a hand, and Kanaan clasped his arm and then, after a moment's hesitation, drew him into the Athosian bowed-head gesture of farewell. It felt awkward — for both of them, he thought— but John didn't flinch away.
"All right, Torren," Kanaan said, raising his voice as he straightened. "It is long past time you were in bed."
"Not sleepy," Torren protested, but his voice was already blurred by sleep.
"Goodbye, kiddo," John said. "I'll see you back in Atlantis." Teyla had told him once that it always sent a shiver down her spine to say that, that I will see you in the City of the Ancestors were the words of a man who sees his own death coming.
He let himself linger just long enough to see Kanaan and Jinto round the trees out of sight with Torren, and then dialed the gate for Atlantis.
In the dark middle of the night, Ronon sat alone in his quarters, Hyperion's weapon resting on his knees, his fingers tracing its curves. He ought to turn it over to Sheppard, one part of his mind said. He ought to pull the trigger, another part said. Wipe out the Wraith in one blow, like a legendary hero.
Of course, there would be a price. In that kind of story, there always was.
Sheppard would kill him, afterwards. At least, he'd have every reason to try, and Ronon wouldn't have much reason to run. He'd have done what he meant to do, and he'd have nowhere to go. Sateda, maybe, but he couldn't actually imagine going to Sateda and trying to make a life there after he pulled that trigger.
Not any more than he could imagine the rest of his life as the coward who let the Wraith live.
He looked up at Tyre's sword where it hung on the wall. The choice had been simple for Tyre in the end, to trade his life to regain his broken honor. If firing that weapon and killing the Wraith would have meant Ronon's death, he would have done it in a heartbeat.
Instead all he had to do to defeat the Wraith was pull the trigger and kill his friends.
It felt like a choice out of a fable for children, one of the stories his grandfather had told him as a child that started with "Time was…"
Time was, there was a man who lost everything to the Wraith. They killed his friends and his family and the girl he loved; they destroyed his home; they made him a hunted animal instead of a man. And one day he came to the City of the Ancestors, and there he learned that he was still alive.
And then…
He didn't know the ending. He only knew there had to be one, some reason he was still alive. And maybe this was the meaning staring him in the face. He had suffered and thousands of Satedans had died, but no one else would have to die at the hands of the Wraith, or crawl to them as their minions. The Wraith had trained him to kill more ruthlessly than his instructors ever had, and now he would be the one to end them.
All he had to do was kill his friends. But he would have killed Tyre, if he had to, to free him from the Wraith. Tyre would have wanted him to do it, for the sake of his own honor. If McKay were still a Wraith queen's worshipper, her trained animal, and if Teyla were too changed to know it, or maybe too changed to care–
His fingers tightened on the weapon. If he closed his hand, it would all be over.
His hand opened.
They still might defeat Queen Death without either using or destroying the weapon. Todd would have to face facts eventually. He couldn't afford to hold his forces back from the alliance when it was his best chance to get Queen Death out of the way.
If they defeated Queen Death, there would be time to decide what to do with the weapon. Maybe one of the scientists could even find a way to modify the weapon so that it would destroy the Wraith without killing humans who shared Wraith genes. Or a way to cleanse the blood of humans with the Gift so that they were no longer any kin to the Wraith.
And if Todd didn't join the battle, and the only other choice was to let the Wraith take the City of the Ancestors…
Ronon tucked the weapon into his belt under his shirt, feeling it hard and cool against his skin. If it came to that, then at least that would answer the question of how the story ended.
And in time, he made the Wraith pay for what they had done.
He stretched out on his bed, eyes open, and waited for dawn.
The quarters aboard Just Fortune were the same as the last time Steelflower had been aboard, but the queen was not. Now, like Perssen and Thessen, Teyla was merely part of Alabaster's entourage. To be sure, she was taken for a body servant rather than a guardsman, a human handmaiden who tended her queen's clothing and person, but it was very strange to Teyla to see the same blades and clevermen who had fallen at her feet when she was Steelflower completely ignore her. Their eyes passed over her, and her mental voice remained silent.
Only when she was alone with Alabaster in the rooms that had so recently been hers did she dare speak. That, at least, they could not fail to recognize.
Alabaster caught her thought and held it, turning to Teyla with a quizzical expression on her face. “Do you wish you were Steelflower in truth?” she asked.
Teyla looked around the queen's chambers, lush with soft lighting and fine fabrics, cool mist rising from the floor to ease breathing and soothe the skin, each screen and fret designed to give delight, all while Just Fortune moved through the coldness of space, an oasis amid a desert of stars. “No,” she said. “I would not want Osprey's choice. To kill or to starve.”
Alabaster nodded slowly. “So it must seem to you, a choice. But it is not a choice to those who have never known anything else. We are not the First Mothers, and we were born this way.”
“If I were Osprey,” Teyla began. But who knew what she would do if she were Osprey? How could anyone who had not lived her life know?
Alabaster sat down on the edge of a soft chair and held out a hand to her. “Let me show you,” she said. “Let me show you what I remember.”