The room she found herself in was by far the most technological room she’d seen in any ancient building. The screens in the room were touch activated and there were only a few other panels. She studied the one directly in front of her for a moment trying to work out where in the city it was keyed to when someone cleared their throat to her right. She turned to find a woman standing next to another of the screens.
“It’s this one,” the woman said. Though Elizabeth didn’t completely take the words in, she was too busy studying the shallow face of what could have been her mother at a slightly younger age or even here at her current. “Hello, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth; there should have been a reply on the tip of her tongue. A hello, or a ‘you’re Bethan’, but instead she just stared at the woman trying to work out if she was more afraid or angry. The emotions were mixing horribly together, this woman was her, she could surface the dreams again, control her actions, just as Josiah had done, yet at the same time, she’d abandoned the man she loved, the man she was destined to be with and their twin boys.
“If you like,” Bethan said. “You can lecture me about leaving people behind later. You need to turn that gate over and get your supplies. Or you’re going to know how it feels to see your lover die.” She indicated the console behind her and stepped further to the side.
A pang of guilt shuddered over her for a second before she finally moved towards the screen and studied it. It barely took a second to figure out where the panels were and she reached up to move one just under the side of the Stargate. She heard the shuddering and a cry from one of the women out of the pier and moved over to the window to look down. Everyone had scattered across the pier, moving away from the gate. She caught sight of Hadly who looked up at just that moment and she gave a small wave before turning back to the control.
“Right then,” she breathed and chanced a look at Bethan. “How do I raise the platform?”
“I recommend you get a few of them on the platform, so they can push the gate over to another – which you could put on the other side so you can lower the gate carefully.”
Elizabeth just looked at her for a moment before she quirked a brow and reached up to her ear. She sighed, forgetting she didn’t have a radio and turned back to the hatch. She climbed down the ladder and approached Ronon; he looked as though he’d fallen asleep.
“Ronon,” she said carefully. He hummed in response and she crouched down next to him. “I need your radio,” she said carefully unhooking the base unit from the side of his pants and reaching for the ear piece.
“What?” Ronon said moving his hand up to stop her and finally opening his eyes.
“I just need your radio,” she repeated. “You can sleep, I’ll wake you when I’m done up here.”
“Okay,” he said easily and she took the ear piece before moving back to the ladder. She hooked the pack onto her pyjama bottoms at the top of the ladder, cleared off the ear piece and popped it into place before switching on the receiver.
“Major,” she said, testing to see if she had the right frequency. She’d have to have words with Ronon if he didn’t.
“Doctor Weir,” he said as she moved back over to the window where Bethan now stood. “Woah,” he said as she stopped in front of the glass. “Am I the only one seeing double?”
“She’s Bethan, Major. I need you to get the ropes, hook them through the gate so you can stand on the platform further down the pier.” She watched Lorne turn to look for the platform. “Hang on,” she said and moved to the screen. She quickly calculated the distance she would need to lower the gate back down and shifted a platform into the place before lifting just slightly off the pier’s level. It was then that a thought occurred to her and she turned back to Bethan. “Are there ladders on the sides of the platforms?”
“Yes,” Bethan said. “Sometimes they need repairing when they are locked at the top.”
“Major,” she said moving back to the window. Lorne looked back up at her. “Hook the ropes over the gate so you can pull it to lean against that platform when it’s raised. Get as many people on there as you safely can. We might be able to keep the gate standing.”
“What about the quakes?”
“It will roll to the side if the pier shakes,” Bethan added.
“If I raise two more platforms on either side of the gate once it’s against that platform, it won’t be able to move,” she explained.
“Doctor Weir,” Lorne said before she could turn back to the screen. She looked down to a thumbs-up from him. “I’m really starting to understand why you got picked for this expedition.”
“Just now?” she asked coyly. Lorne laughed and she smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it before she turned back to the screen. Bethan followed and reached across the screen to a button. Before Elizabeth could protest a set of five dots appeared on the pier layout. She watched two of them move across to the side of the pier before heading for the platform and she turned with a grin as she realised Bethan had activated a life sign detector to show her were everyone was.
“Now you can make sure you don’t hurt anyone.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re ready,” Lorne said. Elizabeth turned back to the screen and took in the four dots on the platform and the other heading back to the door. She waited until the other person was out of the way before she started to raise the platforms up. “You know,” Lorne said as she set a steady pace and moved back to the window. “Now would be really crappy time for a quake.”
“Thank you very much for the heart attack,” Allison said.
“Erm, Doctor Weir, I don’t suppose you can move the platforms closer together while they rise up?” Lorne said. “The gate’s starting to slip sideways, and not in a good direction.”
Elizabeth moved back quickly and started to raise the panel between the gate and the ocean.
“Much better,” Lorne said. She waited a little while before she stopped the platform and then activated the one on the other side. She couldn’t trap it in place just yet, but she needed to keep the gate from rolling away.
“Can I move the platforms closer?” she asked Bethan.
“You have to stop them, move them closer and raise them again.”
Nodding, Elizabeth paused the one Stargate side and carefully moved it towards the other platform before setting it back in motion. She moved back over to the window and looked down, the gate was almost vertical enough that they could pull and had she been a few levels lower, she would have had a clear view of the four people gathered on the distant platform. As it was, she had enough of a view to know Allison had taken off her containment suit – but she’d have to work out the reasoning behind that later on. She moved back to the control panel, counted silently to ten then stopped the platforms.
“Ready to pull,” Lorne said. “And it’s times like this I wish we had seven Ronon’s.”
Elizabeth smiled and watched as all four of them stepped to the far side of the platform and started to pull. She smiled when she realised he’d used only two ropes to set the pulley system, giving each person one end of a rope meant the weight was shared between them. When Lorne almost tripped off the edge of the platform she knew the idea wasn’t as good as she’d hoped.
“Another platform?” Lorne asked.
Elizabeth didn’t reply, she just moved back to the screen and set another platform rising up behind them.
“You know they can be tilted too,” Bethan said. “We had a problem with a ship a few years before I was married, the men couldn’t walk themselves off the deck and we could only get two men up there. So we adjusted the panels to tilt and lined up a few to create a slide down to the pier.”
“That sounds like fun,” Elizabeth said with a smile.
“I was never permitted to try it,” Bethan said. “I was advised that it would be unladylike and very unmajesty of me.”
“Unmajesty?” Elizabeth questioned.
“Yeah, I’m sure my advisors liked making up words to confuse me or sound more important.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Josiah,” Elizabeth said thinking unmajesty sounded like something John would say. She turned before Bethan could answer and stopped the panel level with her men. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if tilting the platform away from them could help them at all or put them at more risk. Deciding she didn’t want to take the chance, she moved back to the window.
“Could have been,” Bethan said slightly perplexed. “Josiah’s brother used to make up words like that,” she added on a side note. Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at the woman just as the group below managed to get the leverage on the gate and she turned back sharply as it clanked against the side of the platform.
“Good work,” she said into the radio. “There should be a ladder on there somewhere, get down and to the infirmary for some well deserved rest.” She didn’t wait until they were off the platform, opting to raise the other two into place and trap the gate as they moved.
“Yes ma’am,” Lorne said sounding a little too relieved. “Just as soon as we test the dialling console.”
~~**~~
Ronon could have sworn he heard voices as he pulled out of his semi-sleep state, he couldn’t make out what was being said, or even who was talking, but there was a conversation going on somewhere. Curious, he pried his eyes open and looked either way down the corridor to see if anyone was in the area. There was no one and silence seemed to have settled in as though they’d watched him. Shifting forward he tried to remember where he was and why he had fallen asleep in the corridor. He had been exhausted, lifting Weir up to open the hatch in the ceiling and had dropped down to the ground and pretty much passed out.
Ronon looked up, his eyes finding the hatch instantly and he quirked a brow at the possibility that Weir was up there talking to herself. Stretching himself carefully, he climbed to his feet and made his way up the ladder to see what was going on. When his head peeked above the floor level he could see Weir standing by the window looking down at something and the screen to his right had movement on it, beyond that, there was nothing else going on in the room.
“Weir?” he said sounding just as groggy as he felt. Though he had to admit he felt better than when he’d almost starved to death, there was a level of weakness that came with this particular illness that seemed to make his muscles twitch restlessly. Ahead of him, she turned and for the first time he noticed the black radio pack against her green and white pants. Automatically he reached up for his radio and found it had vanished and for a moment he was completely confused before the memory surfaced, giving him enough insight into the fact that she had taken it.
“Did you have a good nap?”
“What’s going on?” he asked ignoring her question and climbing up the rest of the way so he could stand in the room and take a proper look around.
“We’ve got the gate up,” she said pointing down to the pier just as the loud clanking sound came and the monitor to his right flashed green once. Ronon moved forward and looked down at the gate, he expected to see it lying on its back, but instead he found it leaning against a high platform with two others raised on either side. “It’s not going anywhere now.”
“Unless the pier falls into the ocean.”
“Optimist.” Her sarcastic tone made him turn and smile at her.
“Does the dialling device work?”
“Major Lorne is about to test it, he should be in the gate room about now.”
Ronon turned back to the window and watched the gate, it was a couple of minutes later, just as Ronon was about to quirk a brow at her that the gate started to dial. He watched the chevrons light up and took a deep breath of hope that it would get a lock. He let the breath out just as the event horizon burst out and a small cheer broke out on the ground below.
“I, erm, I need to stay here,” she said a moment later. “You don’t have to stay with me, the only things here are us, the virus and Bethan and she’s not likely to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that, she brought you here.”
“Josiah brought me here. Bethan’s offered to help now that we have no choice but to stay here.”
She paused for a moment and he had to wonder if she just wanted to send him away without actually telling him to go. She had a connection to this woman, he knew that much, but he didn’t really want to leave her alone here. Not just because Sheppard would come after him with the biggest gun he could get his hands on, but because she was important to them – all of them. For him, Elizabeth Weir was salvation, the woman who let him stay in the city and he would never forget how intimidated she had been around him.
“If you don’t want me around then say so,” he said and gave a sniff. “But I don’t think you should be alone, pregnant on a planet infested with a virus – if we’re wrong and it’s just taking its time on you, you could drop like stone and there wouldn’t be anyone around to help you.”
She looked at him and he could pick out the thanks in her expression for his honesty and even the look that told him she knew he was right. At the same time though he could see she was uncomfortable with the idea that he’d be there when Bethan returned and he wondered what the woman had promised to tell her.
“Okay,” he said turning his back to the window. “But I’m coming back for you in one hour.” He held up one finger to make sure she knew the number and that there was absolutely no leeway on it.
She smiled at him and he hesitated for a beat trying to find a way out of it. There was none, he’d made the promise now and he had to follow it through. He’d do the rounds, check in on everyone and everything that she’d need updating on and then come back in an hour under the pretence of giving her that update.
~~**~~
“Let me get this straight,” Rodney’s voice, although constantly annoying to Lorne when he was calm or excited about something, took on an edge of aggravated disbelief as he tried to completely comprehend their situation. Though at this moment in time, Lorne couldn’t really blame him, he was having a hard time figuring out what was going on himself. “Some old guy from something like 20,000 years ago took over Elizabeth and walked her through the gate to...”
“Thule,” Lorne put in.
“Whatever. In the time you were there and Carson decided you couldn’t come home, the virus was contained, and then some earthquake shattered the containment area and infected all of you except Elizabeth.”
“Doctor Weir and the containment team were, for a while, the only healthy people here, yes.”
“Okay,” Rodney said and Lorne could practically hear the sarcastic comment prickling the scientist’s brain. “Now though, Carson’s infected, all of the nurses have given up on their suits and Elizabeth is the only person still completely healthy.”
“Makes you wish you could get pregnant, doesn’t it,” Ashley’s sarcasm on the situation was more welcome and friendly to his ears. “Is Doctor Keller there yet?”
“No,” Rodney said tersely and Lorne had to wonder which question that was an answer to.
“Look, we could really use some equipment to let us know if these quakes are gonna get worse or not and if so, warning might be nice. Not to mention containment suits in case we have to leave.”
“And or the address of an empty world we can go to,” Ashley offered.
“You’re in the control room,” Rodney said more than asked.
“Yes,” Lorne said.
“And the gate is on the pier below.” Again, not a question.
“Yes, your point Doctor McKay?”
“How do you plan to get the supplies out of the gate flat out on the pier?”
“Doctor Weir discovered that the pier was designed to lift heavy objects, she’s trapped the gate upright between the transport platforms.”
Rodney muttered the word ‘discovered’ as though it wasn’t possible anyone other than him could do such a thing. It stung the edges of his already frayed and tired mind, picking on the fact that Doctor Weir was a woman and Rodney was by no means a gentleman. The thought was ridiculous though, he knew McKay well enough to know he wouldn’t think women completely stupid, he thought everyone was equally stupid.
“What’s going on?” Keller’s voice interjected and Lorne had to bite back the ‘thank god’ that came with the redirection of the conversation.
“We have new developments over here, doc,” Lorne said instead.
“Such as?” Keller asked and Lorne just turned to Ashley.
“Well,” the nurse started. “Doctor Beckett is now showing signs of the illness,” she paused as Keller swore. “And he believes Colonel Sheppard has been shown how to get the cure.”
“Shown?” Keller asked, picking up on the titbit of information.
“Well he was unconscious at the time. But he believes that Doctor Weir’s baby has DNA that’s immune to this virus. We need to take a sample of the baby’s DNA and send it your way for confirmation.”
“Is Carson well enough to do that?”
“I honestly don’t know, but I do know we don’t have a whole lot of time and it will be much easier to do without a containment suit.”
Silence on the other end told him the doctor was considering the idea of joining them on the planet. He also knew she liked that idea about as much as Zelenka liked flying.
“I’ll get the things together to send ASAP,” Keller said at last. “If Carson can’t do it, one of you will need to do it completely under my instruction and I want to be able to see what you do.”
“Will Doctor Weir agree to that?” Lorne asked thinking that was an extremely risky thing to propose of a pregnant woman who currently stood to lose her baby’s father.
“There’s not going to be much choice, Major. I can’t do the sample with the containment suit. Like it or not, there’s a better chance nothing will go wrong if I instruct someone instead of doing it in that horrible thing.”
Lorne nodded unnecessarily, three nurses and a sick doctor. He couldn’t work out what was worse, the fact that his commander was sick to the point of death or the fact that their survival lay unborn and completely innocent in the leader of the expedition.
“We’ll send stuff through in one hour,” Rodney said harshly and almost instantly the connection was cut.
~~**~~
Elizabeth found a comfortable place to sit shortly after Ronon had left. For a moment she’d thought he’d return, had turned and looked at the stairs several times to make sure he hadn’t snuck back to check on her, but it seemed he was keeping his word. She couldn’t really blame him, the protocols John had put in place for civilians off world had been specific, she remembered smiling at the big bold letters that stated in no uncertain terms “DO NOT LEAVE THEM ALONE”. Every military officer on the base had signed the declaration to say they understood the rules of travel with civilians and when Teyla and Ronon had joined John’s team he’d asked them to sign it too.
That and everyone knew how much John valued certain people. Walking away from her would probably cost him sometime later on, but for now, what John didn’t know couldn’t hurt him and she’d be damned if she was going to let Ronon take the fall for her wanting to have this conversation alone.
Bethan had been there long enough to help her set the gate in place then she’d left with the promise to return in only a few minutes. She’d used the time to put her thoughts in order, or at least attempt to. She had too many questions and picking a place to start was easier said than done.
“You have questions.”
“Just a few,” Elizabeth said with a grin. It was an understatement of epic proportions.
“Where would you like to start?” Bethan asked taking a seat next to Elizabeth and looked out over the ocean in the distance.
For a moment, Elizabeth couldn’t answer, too many ideas, too many possibilities to pick just one question to ask first. If she didn’t stop the flow soon her head would explode. She turned and looked at the woman next to her and all the thoughts vanished, all except one simple and desperate question that niggled calmly at the back of her mind.
“Who am I?”
Bethan sighed. “You’re you,” she said simply. “You’re Doctor Elizabeth Olivia Weir, named after your grandparents. You’re a diplomat and the leader of the Atlantis Expedition.” It wasn’t the answer she wanted, not even close. “You’re you, Elizabeth and nothing can change that. The only thing that’s changed is your perspective. The fact that you should have been born here, or in Atlantis and that you should have been named Queen elect before you were five just as I was is permissible now. You’re personality mirrors mine, through nothing you’ve done, you’re diplomatic, strong minded, completely capable of making the right choice and putting your foot down and you have the feeling sometimes that you should be somewhere else.”
“I watched you once, sitting at your desk, working away and then suddenly you were up and walking, found yourself outside one of the labs and asking for a progress update from a scientist who was about to call you down there.” Bethan smiled. That wasn’t the first time Elizabeth had done that, she’d ended up in the gym once just before one of the men broke his arm, it had cut out the need to explain why one of the men was out for three weeks on injury sustained while training.
“What if I’d never met John?”
“It’s happened before,” Bethan said calmly and Elizabeth turned to look at her sharply. “This isn’t the first time we’ve placed you both and tried to create a connection. We got lucky this time, didn’t even need to interfere. I was practically crying from joy when they assigned you to the same area he was in. Then stubbornly, like me, you refused to let your feelings push past your professional mask.”
“We’re the only ones,” she said, almost as an afterthought. Bethan waited to see if she’d explain herself and as Elizabeth turned the idea of what she’d just thought seemed to hit home as completely true. “Of all the times you’d placed your own soul, this is the only time John and I have come together and created a child.”
Bethan smiled and nodded. Thousands of years of trying to recreate the relationship and the cure for these people and now, after it was too late, they had succeeded. That meant there was more to the reasoning behind placing them again.
“So why...”
“Because this planet is unstable,” Bethan cut her off. “Without you here and now, this virus will spread. The planet is expanding, the earthquakes are a by-product of that, but any day now the expansion can hit a critical stage and it will start to break apart. If that happens, the virus will spread through the galaxy, picking off every life it comes across and eventually moving onto the next galaxy and then the next.”
Her chest tightened at the thought of billions of people being eaten alive by this virus, suffering like John currently was until this thing finally reached Earth. That’s when she realised why she’s been led here by Josiah at this moment. Her baby was mature enough to survive the virus and the sampling of its DNA, barely four months old and it was about to save the universe. For just a moment she could have laughed at the fact that it was definitely John’s baby, if only the situation wasn’t so horrific.
Things were starting to make sense, Josiah must have known that planet’s structure was failing; he must have been desperate when he’d drawn the dreams out in her mind, forcing her into the dangerous sleep state that came very close to killing her almost six months ago.
“Why didn’t you just talk to me?” It wasn’t the first question that came to mind, but this could have been avoided. These two ancients have put their lives at risk. “You could have told us what we had to do. We could have had the cure in hand before we came here.”
Bethan looked pained, as though the thought had already been shared and denied. They’d done this on purpose, put her and John to the test.
“We had to be sure,” she said, refusing to meet Elizabeth’s eyes and eerily sounding just as Elizabeth had done trying to tell John he’d be all right a year ago when he’d been infected with Carson’s retrovirus. “We needed to make sure you were immune, that the baby was immune. Without that, there would be no cure. We had no choice to put you at risk, choosing to do so in the middle of the night in the hopes we’d get our answer and send you back before they noticed. I didn’t realise John would go after you so quickly and take so many with him.”
“If anyone dies here...” she couldn’t finish the sentence and for a moment silence fell before Bethan shifted. Elizabeth turned to look at her and she could pick the unease off the woman’s face. Someone had died and she didn’t know about it.
“Your doctor avoided telling you the truth,” Bethan said.
The name of the solider refused to come to mind, refused to pop into her head and scream the name and Elizabeth pushed up from the floor, hyper aware of the ring on her finger – his ring. ‘I borrowed it’ John had told her, he’d borrowed the ring purposely to propose to her and she hadn’t even thanked the man for it. She moved down the stairs and turned towards the control room without really thinking about her destination, she needed proof, needed to see for herself that Carson hadn’t told her someone was dead.
“It’s this one,” the woman said. Though Elizabeth didn’t completely take the words in, she was too busy studying the shallow face of what could have been her mother at a slightly younger age or even here at her current. “Hello, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth; there should have been a reply on the tip of her tongue. A hello, or a ‘you’re Bethan’, but instead she just stared at the woman trying to work out if she was more afraid or angry. The emotions were mixing horribly together, this woman was her, she could surface the dreams again, control her actions, just as Josiah had done, yet at the same time, she’d abandoned the man she loved, the man she was destined to be with and their twin boys.
“If you like,” Bethan said. “You can lecture me about leaving people behind later. You need to turn that gate over and get your supplies. Or you’re going to know how it feels to see your lover die.” She indicated the console behind her and stepped further to the side.
A pang of guilt shuddered over her for a second before she finally moved towards the screen and studied it. It barely took a second to figure out where the panels were and she reached up to move one just under the side of the Stargate. She heard the shuddering and a cry from one of the women out of the pier and moved over to the window to look down. Everyone had scattered across the pier, moving away from the gate. She caught sight of Hadly who looked up at just that moment and she gave a small wave before turning back to the control.
“Right then,” she breathed and chanced a look at Bethan. “How do I raise the platform?”
“I recommend you get a few of them on the platform, so they can push the gate over to another – which you could put on the other side so you can lower the gate carefully.”
Elizabeth just looked at her for a moment before she quirked a brow and reached up to her ear. She sighed, forgetting she didn’t have a radio and turned back to the hatch. She climbed down the ladder and approached Ronon; he looked as though he’d fallen asleep.
“Ronon,” she said carefully. He hummed in response and she crouched down next to him. “I need your radio,” she said carefully unhooking the base unit from the side of his pants and reaching for the ear piece.
“What?” Ronon said moving his hand up to stop her and finally opening his eyes.
“I just need your radio,” she repeated. “You can sleep, I’ll wake you when I’m done up here.”
“Okay,” he said easily and she took the ear piece before moving back to the ladder. She hooked the pack onto her pyjama bottoms at the top of the ladder, cleared off the ear piece and popped it into place before switching on the receiver.
“Major,” she said, testing to see if she had the right frequency. She’d have to have words with Ronon if he didn’t.
“Doctor Weir,” he said as she moved back over to the window where Bethan now stood. “Woah,” he said as she stopped in front of the glass. “Am I the only one seeing double?”
“She’s Bethan, Major. I need you to get the ropes, hook them through the gate so you can stand on the platform further down the pier.” She watched Lorne turn to look for the platform. “Hang on,” she said and moved to the screen. She quickly calculated the distance she would need to lower the gate back down and shifted a platform into the place before lifting just slightly off the pier’s level. It was then that a thought occurred to her and she turned back to Bethan. “Are there ladders on the sides of the platforms?”
“Yes,” Bethan said. “Sometimes they need repairing when they are locked at the top.”
“Major,” she said moving back to the window. Lorne looked back up at her. “Hook the ropes over the gate so you can pull it to lean against that platform when it’s raised. Get as many people on there as you safely can. We might be able to keep the gate standing.”
“What about the quakes?”
“It will roll to the side if the pier shakes,” Bethan added.
“If I raise two more platforms on either side of the gate once it’s against that platform, it won’t be able to move,” she explained.
“Doctor Weir,” Lorne said before she could turn back to the screen. She looked down to a thumbs-up from him. “I’m really starting to understand why you got picked for this expedition.”
“Just now?” she asked coyly. Lorne laughed and she smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it before she turned back to the screen. Bethan followed and reached across the screen to a button. Before Elizabeth could protest a set of five dots appeared on the pier layout. She watched two of them move across to the side of the pier before heading for the platform and she turned with a grin as she realised Bethan had activated a life sign detector to show her were everyone was.
“Now you can make sure you don’t hurt anyone.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re ready,” Lorne said. Elizabeth turned back to the screen and took in the four dots on the platform and the other heading back to the door. She waited until the other person was out of the way before she started to raise the platforms up. “You know,” Lorne said as she set a steady pace and moved back to the window. “Now would be really crappy time for a quake.”
“Thank you very much for the heart attack,” Allison said.
“Erm, Doctor Weir, I don’t suppose you can move the platforms closer together while they rise up?” Lorne said. “The gate’s starting to slip sideways, and not in a good direction.”
Elizabeth moved back quickly and started to raise the panel between the gate and the ocean.
“Much better,” Lorne said. She waited a little while before she stopped the platform and then activated the one on the other side. She couldn’t trap it in place just yet, but she needed to keep the gate from rolling away.
“Can I move the platforms closer?” she asked Bethan.
“You have to stop them, move them closer and raise them again.”
Nodding, Elizabeth paused the one Stargate side and carefully moved it towards the other platform before setting it back in motion. She moved back over to the window and looked down, the gate was almost vertical enough that they could pull and had she been a few levels lower, she would have had a clear view of the four people gathered on the distant platform. As it was, she had enough of a view to know Allison had taken off her containment suit – but she’d have to work out the reasoning behind that later on. She moved back to the control panel, counted silently to ten then stopped the platforms.
“Ready to pull,” Lorne said. “And it’s times like this I wish we had seven Ronon’s.”
Elizabeth smiled and watched as all four of them stepped to the far side of the platform and started to pull. She smiled when she realised he’d used only two ropes to set the pulley system, giving each person one end of a rope meant the weight was shared between them. When Lorne almost tripped off the edge of the platform she knew the idea wasn’t as good as she’d hoped.
“Another platform?” Lorne asked.
Elizabeth didn’t reply, she just moved back to the screen and set another platform rising up behind them.
“You know they can be tilted too,” Bethan said. “We had a problem with a ship a few years before I was married, the men couldn’t walk themselves off the deck and we could only get two men up there. So we adjusted the panels to tilt and lined up a few to create a slide down to the pier.”
“That sounds like fun,” Elizabeth said with a smile.
“I was never permitted to try it,” Bethan said. “I was advised that it would be unladylike and very unmajesty of me.”
“Unmajesty?” Elizabeth questioned.
“Yeah, I’m sure my advisors liked making up words to confuse me or sound more important.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Josiah,” Elizabeth said thinking unmajesty sounded like something John would say. She turned before Bethan could answer and stopped the panel level with her men. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if tilting the platform away from them could help them at all or put them at more risk. Deciding she didn’t want to take the chance, she moved back to the window.
“Could have been,” Bethan said slightly perplexed. “Josiah’s brother used to make up words like that,” she added on a side note. Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at the woman just as the group below managed to get the leverage on the gate and she turned back sharply as it clanked against the side of the platform.
“Good work,” she said into the radio. “There should be a ladder on there somewhere, get down and to the infirmary for some well deserved rest.” She didn’t wait until they were off the platform, opting to raise the other two into place and trap the gate as they moved.
“Yes ma’am,” Lorne said sounding a little too relieved. “Just as soon as we test the dialling console.”
~~**~~
Ronon could have sworn he heard voices as he pulled out of his semi-sleep state, he couldn’t make out what was being said, or even who was talking, but there was a conversation going on somewhere. Curious, he pried his eyes open and looked either way down the corridor to see if anyone was in the area. There was no one and silence seemed to have settled in as though they’d watched him. Shifting forward he tried to remember where he was and why he had fallen asleep in the corridor. He had been exhausted, lifting Weir up to open the hatch in the ceiling and had dropped down to the ground and pretty much passed out.
Ronon looked up, his eyes finding the hatch instantly and he quirked a brow at the possibility that Weir was up there talking to herself. Stretching himself carefully, he climbed to his feet and made his way up the ladder to see what was going on. When his head peeked above the floor level he could see Weir standing by the window looking down at something and the screen to his right had movement on it, beyond that, there was nothing else going on in the room.
“Weir?” he said sounding just as groggy as he felt. Though he had to admit he felt better than when he’d almost starved to death, there was a level of weakness that came with this particular illness that seemed to make his muscles twitch restlessly. Ahead of him, she turned and for the first time he noticed the black radio pack against her green and white pants. Automatically he reached up for his radio and found it had vanished and for a moment he was completely confused before the memory surfaced, giving him enough insight into the fact that she had taken it.
“Did you have a good nap?”
“What’s going on?” he asked ignoring her question and climbing up the rest of the way so he could stand in the room and take a proper look around.
“We’ve got the gate up,” she said pointing down to the pier just as the loud clanking sound came and the monitor to his right flashed green once. Ronon moved forward and looked down at the gate, he expected to see it lying on its back, but instead he found it leaning against a high platform with two others raised on either side. “It’s not going anywhere now.”
“Unless the pier falls into the ocean.”
“Optimist.” Her sarcastic tone made him turn and smile at her.
“Does the dialling device work?”
“Major Lorne is about to test it, he should be in the gate room about now.”
Ronon turned back to the window and watched the gate, it was a couple of minutes later, just as Ronon was about to quirk a brow at her that the gate started to dial. He watched the chevrons light up and took a deep breath of hope that it would get a lock. He let the breath out just as the event horizon burst out and a small cheer broke out on the ground below.
“I, erm, I need to stay here,” she said a moment later. “You don’t have to stay with me, the only things here are us, the virus and Bethan and she’s not likely to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that, she brought you here.”
“Josiah brought me here. Bethan’s offered to help now that we have no choice but to stay here.”
She paused for a moment and he had to wonder if she just wanted to send him away without actually telling him to go. She had a connection to this woman, he knew that much, but he didn’t really want to leave her alone here. Not just because Sheppard would come after him with the biggest gun he could get his hands on, but because she was important to them – all of them. For him, Elizabeth Weir was salvation, the woman who let him stay in the city and he would never forget how intimidated she had been around him.
“If you don’t want me around then say so,” he said and gave a sniff. “But I don’t think you should be alone, pregnant on a planet infested with a virus – if we’re wrong and it’s just taking its time on you, you could drop like stone and there wouldn’t be anyone around to help you.”
She looked at him and he could pick out the thanks in her expression for his honesty and even the look that told him she knew he was right. At the same time though he could see she was uncomfortable with the idea that he’d be there when Bethan returned and he wondered what the woman had promised to tell her.
“Okay,” he said turning his back to the window. “But I’m coming back for you in one hour.” He held up one finger to make sure she knew the number and that there was absolutely no leeway on it.
She smiled at him and he hesitated for a beat trying to find a way out of it. There was none, he’d made the promise now and he had to follow it through. He’d do the rounds, check in on everyone and everything that she’d need updating on and then come back in an hour under the pretence of giving her that update.
~~**~~
“Let me get this straight,” Rodney’s voice, although constantly annoying to Lorne when he was calm or excited about something, took on an edge of aggravated disbelief as he tried to completely comprehend their situation. Though at this moment in time, Lorne couldn’t really blame him, he was having a hard time figuring out what was going on himself. “Some old guy from something like 20,000 years ago took over Elizabeth and walked her through the gate to...”
“Thule,” Lorne put in.
“Whatever. In the time you were there and Carson decided you couldn’t come home, the virus was contained, and then some earthquake shattered the containment area and infected all of you except Elizabeth.”
“Doctor Weir and the containment team were, for a while, the only healthy people here, yes.”
“Okay,” Rodney said and Lorne could practically hear the sarcastic comment prickling the scientist’s brain. “Now though, Carson’s infected, all of the nurses have given up on their suits and Elizabeth is the only person still completely healthy.”
“Makes you wish you could get pregnant, doesn’t it,” Ashley’s sarcasm on the situation was more welcome and friendly to his ears. “Is Doctor Keller there yet?”
“No,” Rodney said tersely and Lorne had to wonder which question that was an answer to.
“Look, we could really use some equipment to let us know if these quakes are gonna get worse or not and if so, warning might be nice. Not to mention containment suits in case we have to leave.”
“And or the address of an empty world we can go to,” Ashley offered.
“You’re in the control room,” Rodney said more than asked.
“Yes,” Lorne said.
“And the gate is on the pier below.” Again, not a question.
“Yes, your point Doctor McKay?”
“How do you plan to get the supplies out of the gate flat out on the pier?”
“Doctor Weir discovered that the pier was designed to lift heavy objects, she’s trapped the gate upright between the transport platforms.”
Rodney muttered the word ‘discovered’ as though it wasn’t possible anyone other than him could do such a thing. It stung the edges of his already frayed and tired mind, picking on the fact that Doctor Weir was a woman and Rodney was by no means a gentleman. The thought was ridiculous though, he knew McKay well enough to know he wouldn’t think women completely stupid, he thought everyone was equally stupid.
“What’s going on?” Keller’s voice interjected and Lorne had to bite back the ‘thank god’ that came with the redirection of the conversation.
“We have new developments over here, doc,” Lorne said instead.
“Such as?” Keller asked and Lorne just turned to Ashley.
“Well,” the nurse started. “Doctor Beckett is now showing signs of the illness,” she paused as Keller swore. “And he believes Colonel Sheppard has been shown how to get the cure.”
“Shown?” Keller asked, picking up on the titbit of information.
“Well he was unconscious at the time. But he believes that Doctor Weir’s baby has DNA that’s immune to this virus. We need to take a sample of the baby’s DNA and send it your way for confirmation.”
“Is Carson well enough to do that?”
“I honestly don’t know, but I do know we don’t have a whole lot of time and it will be much easier to do without a containment suit.”
Silence on the other end told him the doctor was considering the idea of joining them on the planet. He also knew she liked that idea about as much as Zelenka liked flying.
“I’ll get the things together to send ASAP,” Keller said at last. “If Carson can’t do it, one of you will need to do it completely under my instruction and I want to be able to see what you do.”
“Will Doctor Weir agree to that?” Lorne asked thinking that was an extremely risky thing to propose of a pregnant woman who currently stood to lose her baby’s father.
“There’s not going to be much choice, Major. I can’t do the sample with the containment suit. Like it or not, there’s a better chance nothing will go wrong if I instruct someone instead of doing it in that horrible thing.”
Lorne nodded unnecessarily, three nurses and a sick doctor. He couldn’t work out what was worse, the fact that his commander was sick to the point of death or the fact that their survival lay unborn and completely innocent in the leader of the expedition.
“We’ll send stuff through in one hour,” Rodney said harshly and almost instantly the connection was cut.
~~**~~
Elizabeth found a comfortable place to sit shortly after Ronon had left. For a moment she’d thought he’d return, had turned and looked at the stairs several times to make sure he hadn’t snuck back to check on her, but it seemed he was keeping his word. She couldn’t really blame him, the protocols John had put in place for civilians off world had been specific, she remembered smiling at the big bold letters that stated in no uncertain terms “DO NOT LEAVE THEM ALONE”. Every military officer on the base had signed the declaration to say they understood the rules of travel with civilians and when Teyla and Ronon had joined John’s team he’d asked them to sign it too.
That and everyone knew how much John valued certain people. Walking away from her would probably cost him sometime later on, but for now, what John didn’t know couldn’t hurt him and she’d be damned if she was going to let Ronon take the fall for her wanting to have this conversation alone.
Bethan had been there long enough to help her set the gate in place then she’d left with the promise to return in only a few minutes. She’d used the time to put her thoughts in order, or at least attempt to. She had too many questions and picking a place to start was easier said than done.
“You have questions.”
“Just a few,” Elizabeth said with a grin. It was an understatement of epic proportions.
“Where would you like to start?” Bethan asked taking a seat next to Elizabeth and looked out over the ocean in the distance.
For a moment, Elizabeth couldn’t answer, too many ideas, too many possibilities to pick just one question to ask first. If she didn’t stop the flow soon her head would explode. She turned and looked at the woman next to her and all the thoughts vanished, all except one simple and desperate question that niggled calmly at the back of her mind.
“Who am I?”
Bethan sighed. “You’re you,” she said simply. “You’re Doctor Elizabeth Olivia Weir, named after your grandparents. You’re a diplomat and the leader of the Atlantis Expedition.” It wasn’t the answer she wanted, not even close. “You’re you, Elizabeth and nothing can change that. The only thing that’s changed is your perspective. The fact that you should have been born here, or in Atlantis and that you should have been named Queen elect before you were five just as I was is permissible now. You’re personality mirrors mine, through nothing you’ve done, you’re diplomatic, strong minded, completely capable of making the right choice and putting your foot down and you have the feeling sometimes that you should be somewhere else.”
“I watched you once, sitting at your desk, working away and then suddenly you were up and walking, found yourself outside one of the labs and asking for a progress update from a scientist who was about to call you down there.” Bethan smiled. That wasn’t the first time Elizabeth had done that, she’d ended up in the gym once just before one of the men broke his arm, it had cut out the need to explain why one of the men was out for three weeks on injury sustained while training.
“What if I’d never met John?”
“It’s happened before,” Bethan said calmly and Elizabeth turned to look at her sharply. “This isn’t the first time we’ve placed you both and tried to create a connection. We got lucky this time, didn’t even need to interfere. I was practically crying from joy when they assigned you to the same area he was in. Then stubbornly, like me, you refused to let your feelings push past your professional mask.”
“We’re the only ones,” she said, almost as an afterthought. Bethan waited to see if she’d explain herself and as Elizabeth turned the idea of what she’d just thought seemed to hit home as completely true. “Of all the times you’d placed your own soul, this is the only time John and I have come together and created a child.”
Bethan smiled and nodded. Thousands of years of trying to recreate the relationship and the cure for these people and now, after it was too late, they had succeeded. That meant there was more to the reasoning behind placing them again.
“So why...”
“Because this planet is unstable,” Bethan cut her off. “Without you here and now, this virus will spread. The planet is expanding, the earthquakes are a by-product of that, but any day now the expansion can hit a critical stage and it will start to break apart. If that happens, the virus will spread through the galaxy, picking off every life it comes across and eventually moving onto the next galaxy and then the next.”
Her chest tightened at the thought of billions of people being eaten alive by this virus, suffering like John currently was until this thing finally reached Earth. That’s when she realised why she’s been led here by Josiah at this moment. Her baby was mature enough to survive the virus and the sampling of its DNA, barely four months old and it was about to save the universe. For just a moment she could have laughed at the fact that it was definitely John’s baby, if only the situation wasn’t so horrific.
Things were starting to make sense, Josiah must have known that planet’s structure was failing; he must have been desperate when he’d drawn the dreams out in her mind, forcing her into the dangerous sleep state that came very close to killing her almost six months ago.
“Why didn’t you just talk to me?” It wasn’t the first question that came to mind, but this could have been avoided. These two ancients have put their lives at risk. “You could have told us what we had to do. We could have had the cure in hand before we came here.”
Bethan looked pained, as though the thought had already been shared and denied. They’d done this on purpose, put her and John to the test.
“We had to be sure,” she said, refusing to meet Elizabeth’s eyes and eerily sounding just as Elizabeth had done trying to tell John he’d be all right a year ago when he’d been infected with Carson’s retrovirus. “We needed to make sure you were immune, that the baby was immune. Without that, there would be no cure. We had no choice to put you at risk, choosing to do so in the middle of the night in the hopes we’d get our answer and send you back before they noticed. I didn’t realise John would go after you so quickly and take so many with him.”
“If anyone dies here...” she couldn’t finish the sentence and for a moment silence fell before Bethan shifted. Elizabeth turned to look at her and she could pick the unease off the woman’s face. Someone had died and she didn’t know about it.
“Your doctor avoided telling you the truth,” Bethan said.
The name of the solider refused to come to mind, refused to pop into her head and scream the name and Elizabeth pushed up from the floor, hyper aware of the ring on her finger – his ring. ‘I borrowed it’ John had told her, he’d borrowed the ring purposely to propose to her and she hadn’t even thanked the man for it. She moved down the stairs and turned towards the control room without really thinking about her destination, she needed proof, needed to see for herself that Carson hadn’t told her someone was dead.