Unexpected by Oparu
Author's Chapter Notes: Ninety-three days after Earth Even the ascended make mistakes.
John twisted in bed beside her and Elizabeth wondered if he was sleeping. Dawn was still a few hours away and the long autumn night clung to the planet like a cloak. Exhaustion whispered in her ears and she could feel her heart running wild in her chest. The forest scent was gone from his skin and he smelled of blood and smoke, just like she did.
No blankets could cover up the smell and it turned her stomach into strange knots. No matter how many times she'd washed her hands she didn't feel clean. John turned again, reaching out as he moved. His grasping hand caught her arm and she let his fingers dig into her skin. She would be real for him, be the calm through his nightmares. Elizabeth couldn't say what he was dreaming and as his fingers grew more insistent she was almost glad she couldn't share it.
She had the beginning of a eulogy typed out on her laptop, but she'd risk waking John to reach it. She'd lost count of how many she'd written; how many coffins she'd stood over. There were too many dead today and she'd had to sign the order for a mass grave. Was that where they were going? All of them spinning wildly down towards oblivion in a darkness no one would survive to see. Who would bury them if they failed?
For a moment she saw Atlantis being discovered ten thousand years in the future. New humans making their way through deserted corridors and wondering how the beautiful city had ended up stuck in a nebula and lost in space. Would they know what they had found? Would they know how many people had died for that city? How many lives had ended for the dream she stubbornly clung to. John moaned and released her arm, turning over again and taking most of the blankets with him.
Sighing, Elizabeth pulled on the quilt for a moment before realizing she couldn't move him. Slipping over to his side, she snuck her arms around his shoulders and pressed herself against him. It was harder than it had been and sometimes it seemed like every time she saw herself she was different. John's baby was growing within her, taking her over and remaking what she was. Tightening her grip on his shoulders she buried her face in the back of his head and let his neck be all she saw.
John was running. His legs ached and his chest felt like he'd slammed it into a wall, but he kept running. The grass fell away beneath his feet, giving way to dirt and a ridge of rock, but he kept running. Elizabeth was in front of him and her hand was back towards him. No matter how fast he ran and how much he reached, he couldn't take her hand.
So he kept running. Elizabeth's hair bounced on her back and he wondered why she wasn't tired. He hadn't trained with her before, but she was always ahead, always just out of reach. Her red t-shirt wasn't even dark with sweat and she continued. The air was getting thinner. He was having trouble breathing; the ache in his chest was a burning agony he couldn't run through anymore. He heard the gate dialing, and the steady whoosh of the connection. It was just over the ridge, just a little further.
He tripped. Falling down the incline, he tumbled and rolled against the gravel and landed just in front of the gate. The blue light filled his vision as he lifted his head. A hand came down, lifting him up to his feet. As he panted to catch his breath he looked up and into Teyla's eyes. Her eyes had gone black and cold. Her skin was white and her face had been changed.
"You're not Elizabeth," he accused her as he looked around for the woman he'd been following.
"Come with me," the Wraith who was Teyla asked.
"I can't," John replied sadly as he shook his head. "You're not you anymore."
"Maybe this is what I was meant to be," she purred as she circled him. "I lead my people...the Wraith are my people."
"John?" that voice wasn't Teyla's. He turned away from the gate, turning his back on her. "John?" someone asked again and it cut through his dream. As it started to fade he turned back to Teyla.
"I could still save you," he insisted stubbornly looking through the Wraith features for the woman he knew.
"John..." the voice came with a hand on his shoulder and his dream faded into in the quiet reality of Elizabeth's face in the darkness. He forced himself to sit up even though his body loathed moving. He blinked and tried to get his eyes to focus, but there wasn't much light.
"I'm awake," he murmured sleepily as he tried to decide if he had enough energy to do whatever he had to do. "Get dressed?" he asked softly as he started to stagger out of bed.
"No..." she didn't bother to finish and grabbed his hand instead. Too tired to care what was going on, he sank back into bed and let her keep his fingers. To his surprise she pressed them to her skin, sliding his hand up beneath her shirt. Elizabeth pushed his hand hard against her skin, somewhere beneath the muscles of her stomach something twitched.
He forced his eyes open and tried to keep himself from going back to sleep until he knew what she wanted. "Elizabeth..." he murmured in confusion.
"Can you feel that?" she asked breathlessly.
"What?" he grunted as he lifted his head a centimeter from the pillow.
"That," she insisted. "There, feel it?"
"What is that?" John mumbled as he tried to keep his head up away from his beckoning pillow.
"John--" she cried before choking up.
He dragged himself up to sit against the wall next to her. Elizabeth still had an iron grip on his left hand but he used his right to rub sleep from his eyes. "Are you okay?"
Elizabeth kissed him suddenly, startling him further away from sleep. Her lips were hurried and slipped off his to kiss his cheek and his chin. When her face was touching hers, he felt the damp tears on her skin. His right hand cupped her face. "Hey--"
"I didn't think..." she started barely loud enough for him to hear her. "I didn't know it was going to move. I thought..." Elizabeth stopped and stared into his eyes. Hers were brimming with tears and her chin trembled beneath his hand. "...I thought it might not be real. I thought something was wrong."
Bringing his second hand down to her stomach, John felt for his child. Elizabeth found a spot and pushed his hand in harder than he would have dared. Somewhere beneath the flesh something tiny and foreign pushed back. He tried to pull his hand away but she held it tight against her skin.
"Feel that," she insisted fervently.
John couldn't think of anything to say. He opened his mouth without making an intelligible sound. When he tried again, he ended up strangling a yawn. Elizabeth's head rested against his and she kissed him again. John sleepily returned it, but he wasn't sure he could keep his eyes open much longer. "I'm glad, Elizabeth," he managed finally to mumble.
"Oh John," she murmured rubbing his head. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him to her chest. Feebly kissing her arm in response, he kept his hand on her belly as his eyes closed. "It's okay if you sleep," she finished softly. "You sleep--"
It wasn't until the redness of Ronon's wounds had started to recede that Carson noticed the rash. Some of the tiny blood vessels in his skin had died, leaving a web of tiny blue and red lines just below the skin. He didn't think much of it the first time he saw it. Ronon had been burned badly and the muscles of his shoulder had taken nearly four hours to rebuild. Some problems were to be expected after major surgery.
Then the rash had shown up on others. It ran across Ladon Radim's face and down his neck onto his chest. Chuck showed up during breakfast with a nasty headache and the same intricate webbing of dead blood vessels across his hands. Halfway through his examination the rash was up to his wrists and he had trouble keeping his eyes open.
Doctor Jackson came in with it on his shoulder and his hands. His temperature was up to forty degrees and he couldn't focus. He couldn't remember where the rash had come from or when it had appeared but he was slipping into a stupor in front of Carson's eyes. Vala Mal Doran had it on her back and the more he looked at it the more the pattern made sense.
"I hate to ask such a delicate question," Carson began as she pulled her shirt back on and lay back down on the infirmary bed next to Daniel's.
Vala moved her head slightly and pulled dark hair out of her face as she stared at him. She squinted as if she needed to make out his face. "I don't know if anyone's told you," she murmured as she pulled the blanket up tighter to her chest. "But I'm not known as a delicate person."
"Are you sleeping with Doctor Jackson?"
She laughed slightly and tossed her head weakly in Daniel's direction. "He's attractive, brilliant and favors the kinkier side in bed. Wouldn't you?"
Carson grinned and patted her shoulder. "Thank you, Dear," he answered as he started to put the pieces together. He slid his hands into his pockets as he headed back to the laboratory. Mab was leaning her head on her hands and staring into her computer screen. He was still smiling when she looked up.
"You've figured it out," Mab demanded as she snapped the stiffness out of her neck. "Tell me."
"Stand up," he asked taking his hands from the pockets of his coat. "Come here."
Complying without question, Mab turned to him and let Carson wrap his hands around her back. Immediately, all he could smell was the strange scent that clung to her hair at all times, sulfur and smoke, like the remnants of a bonfire.
"Put your hands around me," Carson requested softly nervous now that he realized she was touching his shoulders. "Where are you touching and what would the marks look like if you had the contaminant on your hands?"
"Mal Doran," Mab realized as she slipped out of his embrace. Carson got half a smile, one of the cryptic ones she only had when she was human. "Mitchell?"
"No," Carson said, tapping the touch screen on her computer and bringing up his file on Daniel. "Doctor Jackson."
She paused, her black eyes moving quickly over the screen. "Mitchell fits better with your infection model," Mab pointed out as she lost concentration. Her hand suddenly started to flame, becoming insubstantial and passing into the computer screen.
Carson grabbed her wrist, pulling it back out and waiting for it to resume flesh. "Be careful," he warned gently. "You're not much use to me when you're ascended, Love."
"So what's the common thread?" Mab asked as she rubbed her hand thoughtfully.
"Something they all touched," Carson thought as he paced behind her chair.
"Have you tested their blood?"
John yawned again as he reached for the clay jug filled with coffee on the crude wooden table. He dumped steaming coffee into his metal cup and clung to it like a lifeline as he sat down next to Colonel Mitchell.
Cameron looked up from his own breakfast and buried a smirk with a forkful of eggs. "You look like hell," he advised around the food in his mouth.
"Didn't get much sleep," John mumbled as he clung to his cup.
"I don't think any of us did," Cameron agreed as he poked at his eggs with a piece of dry toast. "You weren't in the infirmary. Where'd you end up?"
"In bed," John said drinking deeply as he tried to shake the sleep out of his mind.
"Wanna talk about it?" Cameron joked lightly putting down his toast and giving John his full attention. "It's been awhile, but I think I remember what being naked with a beautiful woman is like."
Cameron's face was so serious that John couldn't decide if he was joking or not. His mind was running too slowly to make a decision and the other man eventually took pity on him.
Looking across his breakfast at the other colonel, Cameron sighed heavily. "Guess it wasn't sex?"
"No--" John replied quickly surprised as he realized what he'd missed. "No, we haven't in awhile..."
"...so what?" Cameron saved him again by interrupting. "She okay?" He scratched the stubble on his chin and John wondered if he looked as bad.
"The baby moved," John blurted out dumbly. Setting down his coffee quickly he looked past Cameron before meeting his gaze. It still felt strange. He'd been okay when Elizabeth wasn't feeling well. That was easy to fix.
"That's great," Cameron insisted cheerfully getting up for more coffee. Refilling John's cup, he touched his shoulder in support.
"It was weird," John admitted as he lowered his eyes to the surface of his coffee. He started to say something else, but he couldn't think of the right thing. Part of him just wanted to crawl back into bed.
"Hungry?" Cameron offered as he dropped a plate of food in front of John. "The eggs are good."
The eggs in question waited steaming on one side of the simple metal plate. Toast was stuffed in next to the eggs. A pile of sausage and vegetables of unknown origin made up the rest of the breakfast. John stared at it for a moment before he jammed his fork into the eggs. He chewed for a moment before he realized Cameron was watching him.
"How'd you get so lucky?" Cameron asked thoughtfully as he sat back down on the bench across from John. John was too tired to notice the taste of his food, but he reminded himself to chew and swallow it. "Elizabeth's smart, in charge, dedicated, and it sounds like she's really getting warm to the baby."
John jumped, coughing as he reached for his coffee to clear his throat. "Didn't know my life was so popular in the food line," he muttered poking at his eggs.
"We need something to do," Cameron shrugged and leaned on his elbows. "There's no football." He tapped his fingers lazily on the table. "She's a catch."
"Heard anything from the infirmary?" John asked quickly enough to change the subject. Elizabeth wasn't someone he was used to being connected with. Elizabeth wasn't his. He hadn't caught her. Finishing his second cup of coffee and waiting for the caffeine to lift the fog in his mind, he kept eating. Lifting his fork to his mouth without thinking about it, he saw the other man look down before he looked up.
"Ronon's alright," Cameron began with his hands around his cup. "Doctor Wallace pulled him through first. We lost Lieutenant Bohr, Corporal Rowanski, and Corporal Idsen in surgery. Jeannie and I sat up in triage for awhile. You forget what it's like when you haven't done that before."
John swallowed and looked down the table at the rest of the military personnel. They had training to deal with death and overcrowded living conditions. None of the civilians had that luxury. "But she's okay?"
"Crawled into bed with Maddie," Cameron replied with a quiet grin. "She's going to be alright."
"You said last night we didn't need to send a team back to the Genii home world?" John reminded him as his head started to clear. His legs still felt heavy as he sat at the table, and he was starting to sweat from the coffee, but he was starting to wake up.
"There's nothing left," Cameron sighed shaking his head and dropping his voice. "I hadn't seen these Wraith in action up close and personal before and I can't say that I want to see them again."
"I get that feeling a lot," John agreed scraping his fork across his plate as he finished his breakfast. "Doesn't really get easier."
"Never does," Cameron added looking past John and bursting into a smile when someone came into the canvas tent behind him. "Hey," he waved someone over to their end of the table.
"Morning," Jeannie said grinning cheerfully as Cameron got up from the bench for her. "Maddie's in training with the other kids this morning. I thought you might have some time to help me with my marksmanship?" She had her hands in her pockets, but she had a brilliant smile on her face. Sometimes she was so different from McKay it was hard to believe they were related.
"Yeah," Cameron started before he saw the amusement on John's face. "John and I were just..."
"...done," John finished for him. "I have to get over to Control." Neither of them were paying any attention to him so he shrugged, quietly amused as he left the tent. The air was still cold even in the late morning and he wondered where he was going to get a jacket.
"Guess I can't just write Earth for one anymore," he muttered to himself as he dragged his feet through the dirt towards the control tent. The smell of dried leaves and straw reminded him of football on the empty field in front of his school. Would he get to teach his kids to play? Daydreaming, he pictured himself overwhelmed by kids, knocked to the ground while they giggled and squealed around him.
That was how it was supposed to be. At least, as far as he thought. John didn't have many memories of swarming his father and playing football with a group of neighborhood children. His childhood had been quiet; many afternoons were spent building model planes in his room. His children wouldn't have that retreat. They'd probably have to build ZPMs or AK-47s as soon as their hands were big enough.
John stretched his sore shoulders and kept walking through the city. It was getting harder to tell the Earth refugees as they adapted more local clothing. The members of the expedition and the military still clung to their uniforms. He let time pass in his imagination and pictured the military in threadbare, old uniforms and the civilians dressed like villagers walking the streets of Atlantis. He pushed aside the rogue thought that they'd never get the city back and forced himself to smile at the people he passed.
Their control tent was just around the edge of the city, behind the piles of supplies covered in tarps. Elizabeth would already be there, surrounded by mission reports and buried in her computer. He was strangely jealous that she had something to do. With the city gone, he felt strangely superfluous, as if he'd been relegated to moral support. The idleness that had settled into his skin felt itchy, like a thick layer of dried mud.
What was he doing? Would he really be that useful as advisor or a military leader for an entire city? John hated waiting. He hated the cold, prickly feeling of doubt even more. He was usually comfortable with life or death situations because the margin for error was so small and the consequences were so dire. If he'd failed they would all die, but Earth would have gone on. Society as he knew it and everything he was fighting for then would have continued. Now it was all here around him. The last of what he considered best in the universe was struggling to scratch out an existence until Atlantis returned for her people.
Atlantis would be their salvation and they would step into the legacy of their ancestors. That was what Elizabeth so fiercely believed. It was written in her eyes when they shone with determination. She believed they were going to build a world that would be strong enough to heal the wounds of two galaxies. John wasn't sure he could have that kind of faith.
Putting his thoughts aside as he made his way through the tent to the back, John wondered why it was empty. Usually Chuck would have met him at the front and he'd have been fending off Zelenka and Doctor Jackson just to get a chance to talk to her.
Elizabeth was at the crude wooden table she was using as a desk. Her hair was falling over her shoulder towards the table in lazy curls, but she hadn't pushed it aside yet. Her computer was in front of her and the computer Chuck used to keep track of what she should be doing was next to hers. She was going between them both, with her eyes fixed and her forehead lined with concentration.
"You're all alone?" John wondered gently as his hands jumped forward to save someone's research from tumbling off the edge of her table as she jumped.
"Hey," Elizabeth started smiling in surprise. She pulled a tablet computer out of the way and gave him a corner of the table. "Yeah," she started to answer his question. "Chuck went to get breakfast; he'll probably be back soon."
John settled onto the corner of the table and watched her smile creep up into her eyes. "No Zelenka with a million theories this morning?"
"No, I haven't seen him," she replied with a tilt of her head. "I guess it's pretty quiet today." When she looked back to her computer, John left her and crossed to the technical table. He nearly tripped on the cords flowing out from the ZPM in the center of the room. Chuck's make-shift communications console had four flashing lights that she hadn't noticed. John couldn't really blame her. It was half Ancient technology, part spare parts from the Daedalus and part whatever Rodney had been able to find.
Two little boys, barely tall enough to come up to round of Elizabeth's belly, burst in through the canvas and startled John away from the malfunctioning radio.
"There's a problem..." one of them started as he tried to catch his breath.
"...your doctor," the second one finished. "He said to get Doctor Weir."
"You have me," Elizabeth replied as she patted one of their shoulders. "It's all right, thank you for running so fast." She put her hands on her hips and turned expectantly to John. "What is it?"
John fell into step at her side. She'd started to walk differently. It was a subtle change, something in her hips, but when he paid attention it was there. "Something technical," John shrugged. "The radios aren't one hundred percent. You alright?" he asked shyly as his hand found its way to her wrist. Her black jacket was starting to wear from everyday use, just like his and there was already a tiny hole in the fabric by the cuff.
Elizabeth stopped his worry as she slid his hand from wrist to her palm and squeezed it. "If I'm really quiet, and I haven't been moving around I can feel it," she replied in a nervous whisper that sent a flutter through his chest. "It's strange," Elizabeth admitted as she tightened her grip. "I wish I could share it with you. I've never had someone else living inside of me."
"Well, if you put it that way," John quipped dryly. "Who wouldn't be thrilled? It sounds like a parasite." Torn between his relief that Elizabeth was in a beautiful mood and the cold dread in his stomach that something else had gone wrong, he let himself get lost in thought.
"--shares your acquaintance with parasites," she finished with a grin that led him to believe what he'd missed had been a witty remark of some kind.
John let himself pull her close enough to wrap an arm around her lower back. To his slight surprise, she allowed the gesture and even slipped a hand up onto his shoulder in response.
"You look tired," she murmured as they hurried through the crowded streets of the inner city.
"Someone wouldn't let me sleep."
"That's your fault," Elizabeth retorted as he started to smile.
"Between the two of us, who sleeps and who doesn't?"
Stopping him in the stone hall just outside the space they were using as an infirmary, Elizabeth held his chin in her cool fingers a moment before she kissed his cheek. "You have a point."
"It's wreaking havoc on their entire metabolic processes," Carson ranted as he shook his head in frustration. "Their vital signs are all over the charts and they're all regenerating tissue at an incredible rate. Ronon and Laden's wounds have already healed, but their bodies continue to produce new cells. Bone marrow, liver cells, heart tissues, and even nerve cells that should never be able to regenerate are spontaneously remaking themselves."
"It's truly extraordinary," Simon agreed softly as he looked down at his hands. The tell-tale roadmap of dying blood vessels left red and blue marks beneath the skin of his hands. His condition was starting to creep up his arms and Elizabeth noticed he was having trouble focusing his eyes when he looked at them. "There are wounds on Ronon's body that I stitched last night that have already healed around the stitches," he tightened his coat and tried to keep himself warm as the fever started to chill his body.
"What is it?" Elizabeth asked when they finally gave her the chance. John had his chin in his hand behind her for a moment before he crossed his arms over his chest. He'd never liked the infirmary. In fact, she was willing to wager he would never have entered the room if it wasn't for the dangerous nature of his position. He stayed close to her and was careful to keep her from touching anything. "What are we dealing with?" she repeated when neither doctor started an explanation.
"It's a highly contagious viral infection," Carson replied simply while the queen looked on from behind his shoulder. Mab's face was softer than usual and Elizabeth felt like she could almost read something in the queen's eyes. "It's not airborne, yet, but it does seem to be spread by a minute level of physical contact. Even contact with things a carrier has touched allows it to spread," he finished with a sigh.
"Why aren't we looking a bigger epidemic?" John wondered as he fidgeted with a stray thread from his uniform. "If it's that contagious..."
"...the original carrier no longer seems to be spreading the virus." Mab interrupted as she took a step closer to John and Elizabeth. "In fact, I believe the virus has returned to dormancy for the present."
"All right," Elizabeth organized her thoughts as she chewed on the inside of her lip. The infection was slowly down and neither Carson or Simon seemed terribly worried. Simon was having trouble keeping his eyes open, but he seemed determined to finish the conversation before the virus took him. "How many cases are there?"
"Thirty-eight," Carson answered as indicated the ward behind him. "They're confined almost completely to the scientific and military personnel as well as a few of the Genii refugees."
"So an officer, a scientist and a refugee all got it from this original carrier?" John realized as his mind put the puzzle together. His hand had returned to her back and he seemed determined to keep it there. Elizabeth kept her eyes on Carson and waited for him to finish. John being at her side was bracing, even though his public need for tactile contact made her curious.
"One good thing about the rapid spread of the virus is that it's been easy to track," Carson moved to stand in front of the glowing computer screen in the wall.
Elizabeth still couldn't get over the fact that the city below the castle still drew water from a well and used wood to heat many of their buildings but still had as advanced of a medical facility as Atlantis herself. "Where did it start?"
"That's the peculiar part," Simon replied as he watched in fascination as the rash grew more pronounced on his hands. "Ladon and Ronon are the most advanced cases, but it seems likely Zelenka was exposed not too long afterwards."
"Is it something they picked up from the Genii planet?" John wondered as he watched Carson's hands call up his diagram on the computer. The infection pattern looked like a web, radiating outwards from a central point and increasing in complexity as it went.
"No," Mab's lips trembled for a moment as she spoke. "They were both exposed last night when they returned. Zelenka was exposed when he explained the extent of the damage the Wraith's new weaponry had done. Chuck was exposed this morning."
"You're ground zero," John discerned as Elizabeth's eyebrows tightened in thought.
"Patient zero," Simon corrected.
"Typhoid Mary is more accurate," Carson finished as he manipulated the computer. "I couldn't figure out how John remained uninfected, considering he had the most close contact with you..."
"...or why I was infected and Carson wasn't," Simon continued as he forced himself to stay sitting up. "We touched the same patients."
Elizabeth looked from the first doctor to the second and couldn't come up with an answer. She still couldn't wrap her mind around the idea that she was somehow spreading a potentially lethal virus all over the city without either of them wanting to quarantine her for the rest of her life.
"ATA," John snapped his fingers and Mab met his eyes. Something dark passed between them and Elizabeth felt John shift his feet even closer to her.
"In my haste to protect my planet from the Wraith threat I'm afraid I have temporarily activated the nearly dormant virus in your blood Doctor Weir," Mab apologized with remorse that surprised Elizabeth. The strange alien's face portrayed a very human level of guilt. "My presence here is no longer safe."
"You can't just abandon your people," Elizabeth surprised herself when she surpassed her better judgment. The queen was unstable, but she was also the one thing that had kept her people from the Wraith for thousands of years.
"If this gets worse--" Mab didn't bother to finish. Her black eyes locked with Elizabeth's and for a moment Elizabeth understood how intense thousands of years of loneliness could be. "If this virus mutates or spreads beyond control my people will be just as dead as if the Wraith had killed them."
"What about now?" John demanded as moved around her shoulder to put himself between Elizabeth and the queen. "What about the people sick now?"
"They should recover," Mab promised dryly as she started to fade from flesh to flame. Elizabeth could feel the now-familiar sensation of heat lancing through her body.
John saw something she missed and tapped Elizabeth's shoulder. "Look at that--"
The red and blue lines of rash visibly overtook Simon's face and neck before their gaze. His eyes rolled up in his head and he fell unconscious as the rash darkened every part of his exposed skin. Heat blasted around them like an explosion and Mab disappeared.
Carson rushed to Simon and started taking his vitals even before the fact that the architect of this disaster had vanished into whatever abyss held the ascended.
"Now what?" John muttered darkly pleased that the baffling queen had disappeared.
"What can we do?" Elizabeth asked more proactively as she crossed to Carson. She knew enough about equipment to know that the soft sounds of the monitoring equipment meant he was stable.
"The virus doesn't seem to be life threatening," Carson promised with an optimism that wasn't in his eyes. "If she's right, without Mab spurring it on it'll probably run its course and heal."
Elizabeth nodded her head slowly and tried not to jump when her child twitched inside of her belly. She'd been trying to make sense of the feeling for most of the morning, and now with the knot in her stomach for comparison Elizabeth was becoming certain she preferred the baby. It was undeniably better to feel that than feeling the entire population of the planet they'd turned to for refuge was know going to be looking to them for protection settle like a lump of ice in her stomach.
No blankets could cover up the smell and it turned her stomach into strange knots. No matter how many times she'd washed her hands she didn't feel clean. John turned again, reaching out as he moved. His grasping hand caught her arm and she let his fingers dig into her skin. She would be real for him, be the calm through his nightmares. Elizabeth couldn't say what he was dreaming and as his fingers grew more insistent she was almost glad she couldn't share it.
She had the beginning of a eulogy typed out on her laptop, but she'd risk waking John to reach it. She'd lost count of how many she'd written; how many coffins she'd stood over. There were too many dead today and she'd had to sign the order for a mass grave. Was that where they were going? All of them spinning wildly down towards oblivion in a darkness no one would survive to see. Who would bury them if they failed?
For a moment she saw Atlantis being discovered ten thousand years in the future. New humans making their way through deserted corridors and wondering how the beautiful city had ended up stuck in a nebula and lost in space. Would they know what they had found? Would they know how many people had died for that city? How many lives had ended for the dream she stubbornly clung to. John moaned and released her arm, turning over again and taking most of the blankets with him.
Sighing, Elizabeth pulled on the quilt for a moment before realizing she couldn't move him. Slipping over to his side, she snuck her arms around his shoulders and pressed herself against him. It was harder than it had been and sometimes it seemed like every time she saw herself she was different. John's baby was growing within her, taking her over and remaking what she was. Tightening her grip on his shoulders she buried her face in the back of his head and let his neck be all she saw.
John was running. His legs ached and his chest felt like he'd slammed it into a wall, but he kept running. The grass fell away beneath his feet, giving way to dirt and a ridge of rock, but he kept running. Elizabeth was in front of him and her hand was back towards him. No matter how fast he ran and how much he reached, he couldn't take her hand.
So he kept running. Elizabeth's hair bounced on her back and he wondered why she wasn't tired. He hadn't trained with her before, but she was always ahead, always just out of reach. Her red t-shirt wasn't even dark with sweat and she continued. The air was getting thinner. He was having trouble breathing; the ache in his chest was a burning agony he couldn't run through anymore. He heard the gate dialing, and the steady whoosh of the connection. It was just over the ridge, just a little further.
He tripped. Falling down the incline, he tumbled and rolled against the gravel and landed just in front of the gate. The blue light filled his vision as he lifted his head. A hand came down, lifting him up to his feet. As he panted to catch his breath he looked up and into Teyla's eyes. Her eyes had gone black and cold. Her skin was white and her face had been changed.
"You're not Elizabeth," he accused her as he looked around for the woman he'd been following.
"Come with me," the Wraith who was Teyla asked.
"I can't," John replied sadly as he shook his head. "You're not you anymore."
"Maybe this is what I was meant to be," she purred as she circled him. "I lead my people...the Wraith are my people."
"John?" that voice wasn't Teyla's. He turned away from the gate, turning his back on her. "John?" someone asked again and it cut through his dream. As it started to fade he turned back to Teyla.
"I could still save you," he insisted stubbornly looking through the Wraith features for the woman he knew.
"John..." the voice came with a hand on his shoulder and his dream faded into in the quiet reality of Elizabeth's face in the darkness. He forced himself to sit up even though his body loathed moving. He blinked and tried to get his eyes to focus, but there wasn't much light.
"I'm awake," he murmured sleepily as he tried to decide if he had enough energy to do whatever he had to do. "Get dressed?" he asked softly as he started to stagger out of bed.
"No..." she didn't bother to finish and grabbed his hand instead. Too tired to care what was going on, he sank back into bed and let her keep his fingers. To his surprise she pressed them to her skin, sliding his hand up beneath her shirt. Elizabeth pushed his hand hard against her skin, somewhere beneath the muscles of her stomach something twitched.
He forced his eyes open and tried to keep himself from going back to sleep until he knew what she wanted. "Elizabeth..." he murmured in confusion.
"Can you feel that?" she asked breathlessly.
"What?" he grunted as he lifted his head a centimeter from the pillow.
"That," she insisted. "There, feel it?"
"What is that?" John mumbled as he tried to keep his head up away from his beckoning pillow.
"John--" she cried before choking up.
He dragged himself up to sit against the wall next to her. Elizabeth still had an iron grip on his left hand but he used his right to rub sleep from his eyes. "Are you okay?"
Elizabeth kissed him suddenly, startling him further away from sleep. Her lips were hurried and slipped off his to kiss his cheek and his chin. When her face was touching hers, he felt the damp tears on her skin. His right hand cupped her face. "Hey--"
"I didn't think..." she started barely loud enough for him to hear her. "I didn't know it was going to move. I thought..." Elizabeth stopped and stared into his eyes. Hers were brimming with tears and her chin trembled beneath his hand. "...I thought it might not be real. I thought something was wrong."
Bringing his second hand down to her stomach, John felt for his child. Elizabeth found a spot and pushed his hand in harder than he would have dared. Somewhere beneath the flesh something tiny and foreign pushed back. He tried to pull his hand away but she held it tight against her skin.
"Feel that," she insisted fervently.
John couldn't think of anything to say. He opened his mouth without making an intelligible sound. When he tried again, he ended up strangling a yawn. Elizabeth's head rested against his and she kissed him again. John sleepily returned it, but he wasn't sure he could keep his eyes open much longer. "I'm glad, Elizabeth," he managed finally to mumble.
"Oh John," she murmured rubbing his head. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him to her chest. Feebly kissing her arm in response, he kept his hand on her belly as his eyes closed. "It's okay if you sleep," she finished softly. "You sleep--"
It wasn't until the redness of Ronon's wounds had started to recede that Carson noticed the rash. Some of the tiny blood vessels in his skin had died, leaving a web of tiny blue and red lines just below the skin. He didn't think much of it the first time he saw it. Ronon had been burned badly and the muscles of his shoulder had taken nearly four hours to rebuild. Some problems were to be expected after major surgery.
Then the rash had shown up on others. It ran across Ladon Radim's face and down his neck onto his chest. Chuck showed up during breakfast with a nasty headache and the same intricate webbing of dead blood vessels across his hands. Halfway through his examination the rash was up to his wrists and he had trouble keeping his eyes open.
Doctor Jackson came in with it on his shoulder and his hands. His temperature was up to forty degrees and he couldn't focus. He couldn't remember where the rash had come from or when it had appeared but he was slipping into a stupor in front of Carson's eyes. Vala Mal Doran had it on her back and the more he looked at it the more the pattern made sense.
"I hate to ask such a delicate question," Carson began as she pulled her shirt back on and lay back down on the infirmary bed next to Daniel's.
Vala moved her head slightly and pulled dark hair out of her face as she stared at him. She squinted as if she needed to make out his face. "I don't know if anyone's told you," she murmured as she pulled the blanket up tighter to her chest. "But I'm not known as a delicate person."
"Are you sleeping with Doctor Jackson?"
She laughed slightly and tossed her head weakly in Daniel's direction. "He's attractive, brilliant and favors the kinkier side in bed. Wouldn't you?"
Carson grinned and patted her shoulder. "Thank you, Dear," he answered as he started to put the pieces together. He slid his hands into his pockets as he headed back to the laboratory. Mab was leaning her head on her hands and staring into her computer screen. He was still smiling when she looked up.
"You've figured it out," Mab demanded as she snapped the stiffness out of her neck. "Tell me."
"Stand up," he asked taking his hands from the pockets of his coat. "Come here."
Complying without question, Mab turned to him and let Carson wrap his hands around her back. Immediately, all he could smell was the strange scent that clung to her hair at all times, sulfur and smoke, like the remnants of a bonfire.
"Put your hands around me," Carson requested softly nervous now that he realized she was touching his shoulders. "Where are you touching and what would the marks look like if you had the contaminant on your hands?"
"Mal Doran," Mab realized as she slipped out of his embrace. Carson got half a smile, one of the cryptic ones she only had when she was human. "Mitchell?"
"No," Carson said, tapping the touch screen on her computer and bringing up his file on Daniel. "Doctor Jackson."
She paused, her black eyes moving quickly over the screen. "Mitchell fits better with your infection model," Mab pointed out as she lost concentration. Her hand suddenly started to flame, becoming insubstantial and passing into the computer screen.
Carson grabbed her wrist, pulling it back out and waiting for it to resume flesh. "Be careful," he warned gently. "You're not much use to me when you're ascended, Love."
"So what's the common thread?" Mab asked as she rubbed her hand thoughtfully.
"Something they all touched," Carson thought as he paced behind her chair.
"Have you tested their blood?"
John yawned again as he reached for the clay jug filled with coffee on the crude wooden table. He dumped steaming coffee into his metal cup and clung to it like a lifeline as he sat down next to Colonel Mitchell.
Cameron looked up from his own breakfast and buried a smirk with a forkful of eggs. "You look like hell," he advised around the food in his mouth.
"Didn't get much sleep," John mumbled as he clung to his cup.
"I don't think any of us did," Cameron agreed as he poked at his eggs with a piece of dry toast. "You weren't in the infirmary. Where'd you end up?"
"In bed," John said drinking deeply as he tried to shake the sleep out of his mind.
"Wanna talk about it?" Cameron joked lightly putting down his toast and giving John his full attention. "It's been awhile, but I think I remember what being naked with a beautiful woman is like."
Cameron's face was so serious that John couldn't decide if he was joking or not. His mind was running too slowly to make a decision and the other man eventually took pity on him.
Looking across his breakfast at the other colonel, Cameron sighed heavily. "Guess it wasn't sex?"
"No--" John replied quickly surprised as he realized what he'd missed. "No, we haven't in awhile..."
"...so what?" Cameron saved him again by interrupting. "She okay?" He scratched the stubble on his chin and John wondered if he looked as bad.
"The baby moved," John blurted out dumbly. Setting down his coffee quickly he looked past Cameron before meeting his gaze. It still felt strange. He'd been okay when Elizabeth wasn't feeling well. That was easy to fix.
"That's great," Cameron insisted cheerfully getting up for more coffee. Refilling John's cup, he touched his shoulder in support.
"It was weird," John admitted as he lowered his eyes to the surface of his coffee. He started to say something else, but he couldn't think of the right thing. Part of him just wanted to crawl back into bed.
"Hungry?" Cameron offered as he dropped a plate of food in front of John. "The eggs are good."
The eggs in question waited steaming on one side of the simple metal plate. Toast was stuffed in next to the eggs. A pile of sausage and vegetables of unknown origin made up the rest of the breakfast. John stared at it for a moment before he jammed his fork into the eggs. He chewed for a moment before he realized Cameron was watching him.
"How'd you get so lucky?" Cameron asked thoughtfully as he sat back down on the bench across from John. John was too tired to notice the taste of his food, but he reminded himself to chew and swallow it. "Elizabeth's smart, in charge, dedicated, and it sounds like she's really getting warm to the baby."
John jumped, coughing as he reached for his coffee to clear his throat. "Didn't know my life was so popular in the food line," he muttered poking at his eggs.
"We need something to do," Cameron shrugged and leaned on his elbows. "There's no football." He tapped his fingers lazily on the table. "She's a catch."
"Heard anything from the infirmary?" John asked quickly enough to change the subject. Elizabeth wasn't someone he was used to being connected with. Elizabeth wasn't his. He hadn't caught her. Finishing his second cup of coffee and waiting for the caffeine to lift the fog in his mind, he kept eating. Lifting his fork to his mouth without thinking about it, he saw the other man look down before he looked up.
"Ronon's alright," Cameron began with his hands around his cup. "Doctor Wallace pulled him through first. We lost Lieutenant Bohr, Corporal Rowanski, and Corporal Idsen in surgery. Jeannie and I sat up in triage for awhile. You forget what it's like when you haven't done that before."
John swallowed and looked down the table at the rest of the military personnel. They had training to deal with death and overcrowded living conditions. None of the civilians had that luxury. "But she's okay?"
"Crawled into bed with Maddie," Cameron replied with a quiet grin. "She's going to be alright."
"You said last night we didn't need to send a team back to the Genii home world?" John reminded him as his head started to clear. His legs still felt heavy as he sat at the table, and he was starting to sweat from the coffee, but he was starting to wake up.
"There's nothing left," Cameron sighed shaking his head and dropping his voice. "I hadn't seen these Wraith in action up close and personal before and I can't say that I want to see them again."
"I get that feeling a lot," John agreed scraping his fork across his plate as he finished his breakfast. "Doesn't really get easier."
"Never does," Cameron added looking past John and bursting into a smile when someone came into the canvas tent behind him. "Hey," he waved someone over to their end of the table.
"Morning," Jeannie said grinning cheerfully as Cameron got up from the bench for her. "Maddie's in training with the other kids this morning. I thought you might have some time to help me with my marksmanship?" She had her hands in her pockets, but she had a brilliant smile on her face. Sometimes she was so different from McKay it was hard to believe they were related.
"Yeah," Cameron started before he saw the amusement on John's face. "John and I were just..."
"...done," John finished for him. "I have to get over to Control." Neither of them were paying any attention to him so he shrugged, quietly amused as he left the tent. The air was still cold even in the late morning and he wondered where he was going to get a jacket.
"Guess I can't just write Earth for one anymore," he muttered to himself as he dragged his feet through the dirt towards the control tent. The smell of dried leaves and straw reminded him of football on the empty field in front of his school. Would he get to teach his kids to play? Daydreaming, he pictured himself overwhelmed by kids, knocked to the ground while they giggled and squealed around him.
That was how it was supposed to be. At least, as far as he thought. John didn't have many memories of swarming his father and playing football with a group of neighborhood children. His childhood had been quiet; many afternoons were spent building model planes in his room. His children wouldn't have that retreat. They'd probably have to build ZPMs or AK-47s as soon as their hands were big enough.
John stretched his sore shoulders and kept walking through the city. It was getting harder to tell the Earth refugees as they adapted more local clothing. The members of the expedition and the military still clung to their uniforms. He let time pass in his imagination and pictured the military in threadbare, old uniforms and the civilians dressed like villagers walking the streets of Atlantis. He pushed aside the rogue thought that they'd never get the city back and forced himself to smile at the people he passed.
Their control tent was just around the edge of the city, behind the piles of supplies covered in tarps. Elizabeth would already be there, surrounded by mission reports and buried in her computer. He was strangely jealous that she had something to do. With the city gone, he felt strangely superfluous, as if he'd been relegated to moral support. The idleness that had settled into his skin felt itchy, like a thick layer of dried mud.
What was he doing? Would he really be that useful as advisor or a military leader for an entire city? John hated waiting. He hated the cold, prickly feeling of doubt even more. He was usually comfortable with life or death situations because the margin for error was so small and the consequences were so dire. If he'd failed they would all die, but Earth would have gone on. Society as he knew it and everything he was fighting for then would have continued. Now it was all here around him. The last of what he considered best in the universe was struggling to scratch out an existence until Atlantis returned for her people.
Atlantis would be their salvation and they would step into the legacy of their ancestors. That was what Elizabeth so fiercely believed. It was written in her eyes when they shone with determination. She believed they were going to build a world that would be strong enough to heal the wounds of two galaxies. John wasn't sure he could have that kind of faith.
Putting his thoughts aside as he made his way through the tent to the back, John wondered why it was empty. Usually Chuck would have met him at the front and he'd have been fending off Zelenka and Doctor Jackson just to get a chance to talk to her.
Elizabeth was at the crude wooden table she was using as a desk. Her hair was falling over her shoulder towards the table in lazy curls, but she hadn't pushed it aside yet. Her computer was in front of her and the computer Chuck used to keep track of what she should be doing was next to hers. She was going between them both, with her eyes fixed and her forehead lined with concentration.
"You're all alone?" John wondered gently as his hands jumped forward to save someone's research from tumbling off the edge of her table as she jumped.
"Hey," Elizabeth started smiling in surprise. She pulled a tablet computer out of the way and gave him a corner of the table. "Yeah," she started to answer his question. "Chuck went to get breakfast; he'll probably be back soon."
John settled onto the corner of the table and watched her smile creep up into her eyes. "No Zelenka with a million theories this morning?"
"No, I haven't seen him," she replied with a tilt of her head. "I guess it's pretty quiet today." When she looked back to her computer, John left her and crossed to the technical table. He nearly tripped on the cords flowing out from the ZPM in the center of the room. Chuck's make-shift communications console had four flashing lights that she hadn't noticed. John couldn't really blame her. It was half Ancient technology, part spare parts from the Daedalus and part whatever Rodney had been able to find.
Two little boys, barely tall enough to come up to round of Elizabeth's belly, burst in through the canvas and startled John away from the malfunctioning radio.
"There's a problem..." one of them started as he tried to catch his breath.
"...your doctor," the second one finished. "He said to get Doctor Weir."
"You have me," Elizabeth replied as she patted one of their shoulders. "It's all right, thank you for running so fast." She put her hands on her hips and turned expectantly to John. "What is it?"
John fell into step at her side. She'd started to walk differently. It was a subtle change, something in her hips, but when he paid attention it was there. "Something technical," John shrugged. "The radios aren't one hundred percent. You alright?" he asked shyly as his hand found its way to her wrist. Her black jacket was starting to wear from everyday use, just like his and there was already a tiny hole in the fabric by the cuff.
Elizabeth stopped his worry as she slid his hand from wrist to her palm and squeezed it. "If I'm really quiet, and I haven't been moving around I can feel it," she replied in a nervous whisper that sent a flutter through his chest. "It's strange," Elizabeth admitted as she tightened her grip. "I wish I could share it with you. I've never had someone else living inside of me."
"Well, if you put it that way," John quipped dryly. "Who wouldn't be thrilled? It sounds like a parasite." Torn between his relief that Elizabeth was in a beautiful mood and the cold dread in his stomach that something else had gone wrong, he let himself get lost in thought.
"--shares your acquaintance with parasites," she finished with a grin that led him to believe what he'd missed had been a witty remark of some kind.
John let himself pull her close enough to wrap an arm around her lower back. To his slight surprise, she allowed the gesture and even slipped a hand up onto his shoulder in response.
"You look tired," she murmured as they hurried through the crowded streets of the inner city.
"Someone wouldn't let me sleep."
"That's your fault," Elizabeth retorted as he started to smile.
"Between the two of us, who sleeps and who doesn't?"
Stopping him in the stone hall just outside the space they were using as an infirmary, Elizabeth held his chin in her cool fingers a moment before she kissed his cheek. "You have a point."
"It's wreaking havoc on their entire metabolic processes," Carson ranted as he shook his head in frustration. "Their vital signs are all over the charts and they're all regenerating tissue at an incredible rate. Ronon and Laden's wounds have already healed, but their bodies continue to produce new cells. Bone marrow, liver cells, heart tissues, and even nerve cells that should never be able to regenerate are spontaneously remaking themselves."
"It's truly extraordinary," Simon agreed softly as he looked down at his hands. The tell-tale roadmap of dying blood vessels left red and blue marks beneath the skin of his hands. His condition was starting to creep up his arms and Elizabeth noticed he was having trouble focusing his eyes when he looked at them. "There are wounds on Ronon's body that I stitched last night that have already healed around the stitches," he tightened his coat and tried to keep himself warm as the fever started to chill his body.
"What is it?" Elizabeth asked when they finally gave her the chance. John had his chin in his hand behind her for a moment before he crossed his arms over his chest. He'd never liked the infirmary. In fact, she was willing to wager he would never have entered the room if it wasn't for the dangerous nature of his position. He stayed close to her and was careful to keep her from touching anything. "What are we dealing with?" she repeated when neither doctor started an explanation.
"It's a highly contagious viral infection," Carson replied simply while the queen looked on from behind his shoulder. Mab's face was softer than usual and Elizabeth felt like she could almost read something in the queen's eyes. "It's not airborne, yet, but it does seem to be spread by a minute level of physical contact. Even contact with things a carrier has touched allows it to spread," he finished with a sigh.
"Why aren't we looking a bigger epidemic?" John wondered as he fidgeted with a stray thread from his uniform. "If it's that contagious..."
"...the original carrier no longer seems to be spreading the virus." Mab interrupted as she took a step closer to John and Elizabeth. "In fact, I believe the virus has returned to dormancy for the present."
"All right," Elizabeth organized her thoughts as she chewed on the inside of her lip. The infection was slowly down and neither Carson or Simon seemed terribly worried. Simon was having trouble keeping his eyes open, but he seemed determined to finish the conversation before the virus took him. "How many cases are there?"
"Thirty-eight," Carson answered as indicated the ward behind him. "They're confined almost completely to the scientific and military personnel as well as a few of the Genii refugees."
"So an officer, a scientist and a refugee all got it from this original carrier?" John realized as his mind put the puzzle together. His hand had returned to her back and he seemed determined to keep it there. Elizabeth kept her eyes on Carson and waited for him to finish. John being at her side was bracing, even though his public need for tactile contact made her curious.
"One good thing about the rapid spread of the virus is that it's been easy to track," Carson moved to stand in front of the glowing computer screen in the wall.
Elizabeth still couldn't get over the fact that the city below the castle still drew water from a well and used wood to heat many of their buildings but still had as advanced of a medical facility as Atlantis herself. "Where did it start?"
"That's the peculiar part," Simon replied as he watched in fascination as the rash grew more pronounced on his hands. "Ladon and Ronon are the most advanced cases, but it seems likely Zelenka was exposed not too long afterwards."
"Is it something they picked up from the Genii planet?" John wondered as he watched Carson's hands call up his diagram on the computer. The infection pattern looked like a web, radiating outwards from a central point and increasing in complexity as it went.
"No," Mab's lips trembled for a moment as she spoke. "They were both exposed last night when they returned. Zelenka was exposed when he explained the extent of the damage the Wraith's new weaponry had done. Chuck was exposed this morning."
"You're ground zero," John discerned as Elizabeth's eyebrows tightened in thought.
"Patient zero," Simon corrected.
"Typhoid Mary is more accurate," Carson finished as he manipulated the computer. "I couldn't figure out how John remained uninfected, considering he had the most close contact with you..."
"...or why I was infected and Carson wasn't," Simon continued as he forced himself to stay sitting up. "We touched the same patients."
Elizabeth looked from the first doctor to the second and couldn't come up with an answer. She still couldn't wrap her mind around the idea that she was somehow spreading a potentially lethal virus all over the city without either of them wanting to quarantine her for the rest of her life.
"ATA," John snapped his fingers and Mab met his eyes. Something dark passed between them and Elizabeth felt John shift his feet even closer to her.
"In my haste to protect my planet from the Wraith threat I'm afraid I have temporarily activated the nearly dormant virus in your blood Doctor Weir," Mab apologized with remorse that surprised Elizabeth. The strange alien's face portrayed a very human level of guilt. "My presence here is no longer safe."
"You can't just abandon your people," Elizabeth surprised herself when she surpassed her better judgment. The queen was unstable, but she was also the one thing that had kept her people from the Wraith for thousands of years.
"If this gets worse--" Mab didn't bother to finish. Her black eyes locked with Elizabeth's and for a moment Elizabeth understood how intense thousands of years of loneliness could be. "If this virus mutates or spreads beyond control my people will be just as dead as if the Wraith had killed them."
"What about now?" John demanded as moved around her shoulder to put himself between Elizabeth and the queen. "What about the people sick now?"
"They should recover," Mab promised dryly as she started to fade from flesh to flame. Elizabeth could feel the now-familiar sensation of heat lancing through her body.
John saw something she missed and tapped Elizabeth's shoulder. "Look at that--"
The red and blue lines of rash visibly overtook Simon's face and neck before their gaze. His eyes rolled up in his head and he fell unconscious as the rash darkened every part of his exposed skin. Heat blasted around them like an explosion and Mab disappeared.
Carson rushed to Simon and started taking his vitals even before the fact that the architect of this disaster had vanished into whatever abyss held the ascended.
"Now what?" John muttered darkly pleased that the baffling queen had disappeared.
"What can we do?" Elizabeth asked more proactively as she crossed to Carson. She knew enough about equipment to know that the soft sounds of the monitoring equipment meant he was stable.
"The virus doesn't seem to be life threatening," Carson promised with an optimism that wasn't in his eyes. "If she's right, without Mab spurring it on it'll probably run its course and heal."
Elizabeth nodded her head slowly and tried not to jump when her child twitched inside of her belly. She'd been trying to make sense of the feeling for most of the morning, and now with the knot in her stomach for comparison Elizabeth was becoming certain she preferred the baby. It was undeniably better to feel that than feeling the entire population of the planet they'd turned to for refuge was know going to be looking to them for protection settle like a lump of ice in her stomach.