“How mad are they?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m not the best judge of that, obviously, or I’d have seen what happened to me coming. I think it’ll blow over if he can do some things out here that they actually like. I hear some of the cooler heads have been pointing out that if General O’Neill and the president hadn’t made a grab for Atlantis, someone else would have at some point. It was an open invitation for somebody to start a war.”
“With whoever jumped first having a big advantage,” John said. “Fun times.”
“Oh, yeah.” Sam hesitated for a moment. “Listen, John, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what we were planning.”
“I’m sure you had good reason,” John said, although it was a little scary how close he’d come to walking away from Atlantis for good.
“Well, to start with, we weren’t sure it was going to work. I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep. Beyond that, we both know about gate teams. If I’d told you, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t have told Ronon and Teyla and McKay.”
“You could have ordered me not to.”
“Come on.”
“All right, I might have been tempted to slip them the word.”
“And then they would have each wanted to tell somebody else, and in twelve hours the whole city would have known,” Sam said. “I know what the rumor mill is like in a place like this.”
“Tell me about it,” John said. He drained the last of his beer and opened the fridge again. “You want another beer?”
“Sure, hit me again,” Sam said. “Let me tell you about our hull modifications. You don’t let your eyes visibly glaze over like some people I know.”
“She’s a really sweet ship,” John said.
Sam looked immensely proud, whether of herself or of the ship John wasn’t sure. He figured she deserved both. “I know.”
The hull modifications carried them through that beer and halfway through the next.
“You ready to tell me about it?” Sam said finally. “Because if I drink any more of these, I’m going to fall over before I get back to my ship, and that’s not really the reputation I want.”
“Sam Carter, intergalactic drunk,” John said.
“Yeah, no.” She was watching him, her eyes kind.
John leaned back in his chair so that he could look at the ceiling instead of her. “I screwed up,” he said, forcing the words out and taking a bitter pleasure in how much each one stung. “We should have come back to Atlantis and gotten Zelenka instead of going out there without a scientist. Only I didn’t want — it would have been like — ”
“Like admitting that Rodney’s really gone,” Sam said.
“He’s not dead,” John said.
“I know, and that’s good. But it’s still hard to replace somebody when you know that, in a lot of ways, you can never replace them.”
“It almost blew the mission,” John said. “And then Teyla and Carson got hurt, and it was starting to look like we wouldn’t make it out — ”
“But you did.”
“I got lucky,” John said. “It would have been my fault if they’d died.”
“You screwed up,” Sam said. “I’m not going to beat you up about it. I think you’re doing enough of that yourself.”
“I can’t afford to screw up,” John said. It was possible that a martini, two different wines with dinner, and the better part of three beers were making him excessively honest. “It’s my job to get it right.”
“Everybody screws up,” Sam said. “You can’t win them all, and if you think we ever won them all, you haven’t read our old reports closely enough. We came up with some pretty astonishingly bad ideas sometimes.”
“Yeah, but you’re…” John gestured inarticulately with the bottle. “You don’t let this stuff get to you.”
“The only people it never gets to are the people who don’t give a damn, and we try not to keep them around,” Sam said, with enough heat in her voice that he thought she meant it. “Rodney used to be one of those himself, although he did get better.”
“He was pretty frantic when Teyla was missing,” John said.
Sam gave John a look that felt like she was seeing through him way too much. “You mean compared to the way you were when Teyla was missing?”
“When Teyla was… I let it get to me,” John said. “I was off my game.” And that wasn’t the way you were supposed to do it. You were supposed to be able to let it go, to say it was an honor serving with you and get up and walk away —
“You did what you needed to do,” Sam said. She smiled as though the joke were on her. “It’s not actually an Air Force regulation that you’re not allowed to have any feelings.”
“I was pretty sure about that one,” John said.
“A lot of people seem to think that,” Sam said. “We ought to send out some kind of memo.” She smiled crookedly. “Did I ever tell you about the time General O’Neill smashed in General Hammond’s car windows with a hockey stick?”
“General O’Neill did that.”
“It was Colonel O’Neill then, but, yeah,” Sam said. “That was when we thought Daniel was dead. Well, one of the times.”
“What happened?” John said. He was having a little trouble visualizing that.
“General Hammond told him he had to pay to get his windows fixed,” Sam said. She smiled at him as if amused by his expression. “I’ll tell you now, if you break my windows, it’s not going to be cheap to get them fixed.”
“I think I’d need more than a hockey stick to break your windows,” John said.
“Try a tactical nuke,” Sam said. “Which is to say, don’t. I don’t want to mess up the paint job. You could try giving yourself a break, here,” she added more gently. “It’s not actually supposed to be easy.”
John tried a smile. “I thought it said that in the regulations, too.”
“Not even close,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-six: Origins
Teyla was awake quite early in the morning. Not an unusual thing with Torren, but it was unusual to see him to the Stargate. She had promised Kanaan these next few days with Torren, and Kanaan had offered kindly to come and get him, sparing her the walk to the settlement from the Stargate on her injured hip. And so there was an awkward scene in the gateroom, before the sun had even risen, in which they were gravely courteous with the care of people who are afraid that any gesture may be misinterpreted, who are trying so very hard.
Once they had been easy together. Once their friendship had been unstrained. Perhaps it would be again, when they were not learning how to be people who shared a child but not a life.
After he and Torren had departed, Teyla made her way to the mess hall. In days past she could always count on Rodney to be there at this time of day, drinking his endless cups of coffee and catching up on his email before he went to the lab or wherever else they needed to go.
He was not there, of course.
Nor was John or Ronon or Radek. John had been up late the night before talking to Sam Carter, Ronon was probably beating up Marines, and Radek was doubtless out in the snow repairing hull breaches on the Ancient warship. It was a thankless task, and he would be utterly foul when he was finished. Climbing around on the ice covered hull with a blowtorch was not his idea of fun.
Carson was in the mess hall though, his right arm in a sling, looking distinctly sporty despite having not shaved since their mission began. Presumably he hadn’t essayed it with his left hand. “Good morning, Teyla!”
She got her coffee and sat down with him. “You’re looking well, Carson. The beard is different.”
“A bit of the Sean Connery look, I thought,” he said. “Do I look like a dashing adventurer?”
“Exactly like one,” Teyla assured him, and they laughed. The coffee was hot, and there was real milk for it. Jinto had come with Kanaan, to bring the milk in trade.