The Day the World
Changed
an unfinished Stargate Atlantis story by Setcheti
It started out as just a
normal day on Atlantis. No one was
attacking them, they had plenty of food, no one was sick or hurt, and all the
missions they’d sent out in the past week had come back successful or at least
unharmed.
Dr. Weir should have known it
was too good to last – and she did know, the minute the ‘Gate activation alarm
went off.
“Incoming wormhole,” the tech
on duty called out, and then his eyes widened.
“This can’t be right…”
McKay hurried over. “What do you mean…” His blue eyes widened, and he started tapping
frantically on the control panel. “No, this
can’t be right…”
Now Weir was starting to get
alarmed. “What’s going on? Where’s it coming from, the Genii homeworld?”
“No, but I almost wish it
was.” McKay turned a shocked face to
her. “It’s coming from…it’s coming from
Earth. And from the looks of it,
whoever’s coming through all but shut it down on their heels after they stepped
into the event horizon.”
“Get the shield open
now!” Weir circled around the control
station so she could watch the shimmer that was their shield disengaging. “Any idea how many guests
we’re expecting?”
“I can’t tell exactly, but
the readings I’m getting from the wormhole would suggest only one or two.” His attention had gone back to the displays
in front of him. “Possibly it could be
three or four, but only if they stepped into the event horizon at exactly the
same time – which isn’t as likely as it sounds.
But whoever it is, they’ll be here in about two minutes.”
The incoming traveler alarm
started to sound a minute later, and military personnel came running in and
deployed themselves in front of the ‘Gate with weapons at the ready. At first the event horizon just rippled
placidly, and then the surface ruptured and a figure in military issue clothing
emerged and stumbled to its knees in the middle of the gateroom
floor.
Weir didn’t even realize
McKay had left the control room until she saw him burst through the wall of
soldiers and run right up to the sagging man yelling, “Daniel!”
The man lifted his head and
squinted from behind frost-rimmed glasses, and to her shock she recognized Dr.
Daniel Jackson, the man who hadn’t been allowed to come on the Atlantis mission
because the SGC on Earth couldn’t afford to lose him.
McKay dropped to his own
knees, clasping broad shoulders in his hands, almost shaking the other
man. “What happened? How did you get here?”
Daniel just shook his head,
swiping away frozen tears from his face.
“Am I…I couldn’t ask before I came…am I welcome here?”
“Oh God,
always.” McKay used the hold he already had to pull
the shaking archaeologist into a tight embrace.
“Always, Daniel, always.”
Weir had made her own way
down toward the gateroom floor, meeting Sheppard
halfway down the stairs. “That’s Dr.
Jackson, from the SGC,” she said in a low voice, waving a hand at the scene
still playing out on the floor. “He
wanted to come with us but the general wouldn’t hear of it. What do you think could have happened?”
Sheppard waved himself, but
to let the soldiers know they could stand down.
He shrugged and whispered back, “Why don’t we just ask him?” before
walking right up to the two men and going down on one knee. “Dr. Jackson?”
The man lifted his head from
McKay’s shoulder, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Major…Sheppard, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Sheppard gave him a searching look, not
liking what he saw. “Are you okay?”
Blue eyes blinked at
him. “Are you going to send me back?”
Sheppard shook his head, and
McKay tightened his grip. “You can’t go
back, Daniel, remember? It’s a one way
trip.” He looked to Sheppard. “I think we need
“I think I don’t want to wait
for him to get here. Let’s get him
up.” He shifted and helped McKay pull
the archaeologist to his feet, scooping up the worn rucksack that had fallen
off the man’s shoulder. “Just come with
us, Dr. Jackson, it’s all right.”
“We’re going to go see
Daniel was still
blinking. “Is someone hurt?”
“Are you hurt?” When Daniel shook
his head, Sheppard made a face. “I think
we’ll just have Dr. Beckett check anyway, okay?
You’re not exactly firing on all thrusters right now.”
“I’m not?” Daniel shook his head, and then again. “Oh, I guess…maybe I’m not, yeah. They gave me some kind of pain
medication…before…”
Sheppard swore. “Go tell Dr. Beckett he’s got a patient
coming!” he ordered the nearest soldier.
He made a face at Weir, who was still standing on the stairs with a look
that said she wanted answers. “I think
you remember Dr. Jackson,” he told her.
“But he’s not quite himself right now, so you’re going to have to wait
to get reacquainted until Beckett has had a look at him.”
She ignored him, focusing
instead on the man he and McKay were holding on his feet. “Dr. Jackson, why are you here?”
“Dr. Weir.” More blinking. “Are you going to send me back?”
Her smile faltered in the
face of his obvious confusion. “No, we can’t
do that. But can you tell me…is anyone
else coming?”
“He won’t follow you,
Daniel,” McKay assured him gently. He
shifted his hold so he could turn the worried blue eyes in his direction. “He can’t follow you. So now we need to go see
“Oh, okay. I wouldn’t want to make him wait.”
“No, we wouldn’t want to do
that.” Sheppard scowled at Weir and after
a bare moment’s hesitation she got out of their way. “Come on, let’s get moving.”
He showed back up in the
control room half an hour later looking grim, and she
was there waiting for him. “Well?” she
wanted to know.
“He’s drugged all the way up
to his eyeballs,” Sheppard all but spat out.
“I’m amazed he made it up the ramp to the ‘Gate, much less through
it. Beckett thinks he must have snuck
out of the SGC infirmary,” he explained.
“Bruises, cracked ribs and a wrenched back, probably from a fall or from
being thrown into something, no way to be sure until he can tell us. And right now he’s down for the count, it’ll probably be tomorrow before he wakes up again.”
Weir accepted that with a
tight little nod, then gestured for him to follow her
into her office and shut the door behind them.
Turning to face him, she folded her arms across her chest. “So what do you think is going on?”
“I think he ran away from
home.” Sheppard sat down on a corner of the
desk and mimicked her stance. “And from
what I could get out of Rodney as far as the technical end of it goes,
“What?”
“I think I know.” He scowled.
“But I’m not going to speculate on that until I can talk to him when
he’s making sense. About the only
thought he could hold in his head until he fell asleep was whether or not we
were going to send him back.”
She didn’t give up. “Do you think he came here because of Dr.
McKay?”
“I’m pretty sure he
did.” His scowl deepened into something
angrier and more focused on her. “You
knew?”
Weir shrugged. “There aren’t many secrets in
Sheppard stood up so fast she
took a step back. “No, I don’t,” he
snapped. He looked disgusted. “But I do think General O’Neill might have
had reasons of his own for not letting
She could guess what he was
alluding to, but she wasn’t going to be the one to say it. “What do you mean by that?”
All right, she’d only thought
he looked disgusted before. “I mean that
I’ve been reading over the files the SGC sent with us, and O’Neill has screwed
the guy over on the personal level one too many times for it to be
accidental.” He snorted when an
automatic denial rose to her lips.
“Don’t even defend the bastard to me, Doctor,” he cut her off. “He may have threatened to end my career if I
didn’t come with you, but that was nothing compared to what he’s done to Dr.
Jackson – who happens to be a civilian,
in case you’ve forgotten.” He moved in
closer, almost into her personal space, and lowered his voice. “And so is Rodney, just in case you start to
forget that too. We may need the hell
out of the guy…but we don’t own him, mission or no mission. What he does with his personal life is none
of our business, he’s a free agent.”
Weir thought she might have
him there. “He has a contract, just like
Dr. Jackson…”
“Contracts…can be
broken.” Now Sheppard was in her personal space, leaning
toward her, and anyone looking in from outside might have thought he was about
to kiss her. Weir only wished the intent
she was reading in the hard brown eyes glaring down at her was that
benign. “You’ve played this game before,
from both sides,” he said slowly. “And
you know that if any of these guys ever went to a lawyer and made a stink about
what they’ve been ordered to do over and above what their ‘contract’ implies
they were hired for, it would be settlement city and the
It took her a moment to find
her voice. “Are you…are you threatening
me, Major?”
“Now would I do something
like that?” He smiled, and it was all
she could do not to lean away from him; he backed off before she could,
anyway. “I was just making sure we were
on the same page, that’s all. As a
matter of fact, this was a lot like the conversation Beckett had with me outside the infirmary – he wanted to
be sure we were all on the same page too, and I assured him that we were. All of us who are in charge here, I
mean.” His entire manner suddenly
changed, veiled aggression smoothing out into his normal easygoing persona. “Now if we’re done with our little briefing
here, I’m going to go round up my team and we’re gonna
go find larger quarters for Rodney. I
seem to remember that he was whining about wanting a balcony, this would
probably be a good time to give him one – no one will be able to cry favoritism
since we’re shifting him to make room so another scientist can bunk with him. What do you think?”
Weir swallowed. “I…I think you’re right,” she answered. He was, of course, but even if she hadn’t
thought so she would have agreed just to get him out of her office. And she knew that he knew it, too, from the
smile that he gave her and the hard little flicker in those brown eyes that
took the warmth out of it. She waited
until he was gone before sinking down into her chair, doing her best not to
shake. This wasn’t nearly as much about
supposed military abuse of civilian personnel as it was about Sheppard’s claim
on the city and everyone in it, she knew; she just hadn’t realized how double-edged
that possessiveness could be.
But then, she’d never really
gotten in its way before, either. And
she wasn’t sure she’d ever dare to again.
She had forgotten, and she shouldn’t have; she’d forgotten that she was
dealing with a man who’d avenge a single death of one of ‘his’ people by killing
everyone who wasn’t his that he could get his hands on.
The Genii had found that out,
the hard way. A lot
like she just had.
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