Archive of Our Own ^beta

Rodney struggled to make it up the stairs without drenching himself.

Cradled in his arms was a wide, shallow earthen pot. It would have been much easier to carry if it was deep instead of broad, but that was tradition for you. The rain-collecting pots scattered around Haven were always made the exact same way. The things didn't even have handles! It drove Rodney mad every time he had to trudge out after a storm to get one before they were snatched up by the older students and professors.

The staircase was lit only by a few candles at this time of night (practically early morning) -- the same ones Rodney had lit himself on the way downstairs. He'd known he wouldn't be able to keep carrying the now-extinguished candle in his pocket, not with no help to bring the rain-collector back upstairs to his room.

Jeannie had thrown a pillow at him the last time he'd tried to wake her up to help after a storm. Hmmph. She'd regret it when there wasn't any rain water left in the morning for her to practice with. Rodney already had plans for every drop of rain he was bringing up.

Everyone who had even heard of scrying knew that rainwater was best for it.

The rules of magic irked Rodney sometimes -- it seemed stupid that regular water wouldn't be as good as rain. Or that, since rain water had traveled and was therefore supposed to be a superior medium, river water wasn't as good either. But Rodney had tried with water from the well and the river and while he'd gotten both of them to work, kind of, they hadn't been as good. The well water was downright murky and the river water's results, well. They couldn't hold a candle to rain water.

When he made it to the landing of the fourth floor, a door at the end of the hallway open. Another student came out, looking disheveled, and Rodney smirked to himself. The student's eyes shot to Rodney's rain-collector and they groaned before running down the hallway.

"Hey! Watch it!" Rodney snapped, stepping to the side to avoid getting plowed down. The rain water sloshed inside the collector and he pressed the lid down tight, holding very still until the water had settled back down.

When he got to his door he had to set the pot on the ground to get his key from his pocket. It took a moment in the mostly-dark hallway, but he got his door open and managed to get the pot inside and on his desk without spilling anything. Then he locked the door behind him and fell down onto his bed.

He'd been in this room for the past ten years. He'd lived in the children's wing until he'd been old enough to join the adults, and then he'd moved onto the experts' floor when it'd become clear he was here to study in the long term. Unlike most of the other students, who married into villages nearby or disappeared through the Ancestor's Ring either for field study or for good, Rodney was here to stay. The rest of the galaxy didn't hold too much appeal for him.

He liked his room just fine. It wasn't the top floor of the academy's housing, but it did well. Plus, though Rodney didn't like to admit this, he would never want to go up and down an extra three flights of stairs every time he had to fetch something from his room. Especially since he was going to be here for the foreseeable future -- which, of course, for him was much, much longer than it was for anyone else.

The professors at the academy said he was the best scrying student they had ever taught. Rodney privately thought that he was better than most of the professors at this point. But Jeannie always got mad at him when she'd heard he'd said that again, so he kept that quiet now.

Jeannie, too, was a close second at the art of scrying, but she had done so much less studying than him. Because of course, she was always insisting on going on field trips. Years-long studies and teaching jobs on other worlds that meant she only came back to the academy on holidays.

She was here now, but mostly because her husband -- another student, one who didn't touch magic and had focused on the arts of all things -- had insisted. Well. Rodney understood the logic that a pregnant woman shouldn't be gallivanting around planets, but still. If he'd said that to Jeannie, she would have slapped him.

He rubbed both his hands over his face and rolled onto his back. The rain had stopped barely half an hour ago. He'd kept himself up all night waiting for it to cease, and debating whether he should just go out in the downpour to grab a rain-collector while the getting was good.

It would be nice to settle down and look into a cupful of the water now, but he was tired. He couldn't stay up as long as he used to. The kitchens kept such a tight watch now on that bitter tea that helped him fight off sleep.

He cast one last look over at the rain-collector and shut his eyes. He'd definitely scry in the morning.

Maybe this batch of rain would help him finally look deeper into the ruins that no one else at the academy could see themselves.

---

John felt visions coming on a moment before they started, usually. His skin prickled and in an instant every bit of him was on fire, itching like crazy, and then a coolness would seize his body from head to toe and he would be gone. Into the vision and unable to get out until it was done with him.

This time he was unfortunate enough to be swimming when it happened.

For the first moment in the vision he knew that there was a chance he was drowning, back in his body. But there was no way for him to tell how long the vision lasted in the physical world. Magic didn't always correlate. Sometimes he was out for hours, sometimes seconds.

While he could still concentrate on the rush of water over his face and the taste of salt on his lips, John hoped that this vision would only last a heartbeat.

It started the same as always.

Oh, rarely he had a vision that seemed to connect to his life in some actual way. But most of the time they were useless. He was a seer who never saw anything of worth.

The landscape was blue and green, and the taste of salt only got stronger as John's vision soared up above a foreign sea. It was always disorienting to be here. The pale blue sky was the same color as his home ocean and it felt like he was never looking at the planet the right way. The sea in this strange place was a rippling, clear water that picked up blues from the deepest to the greenest edge of the color spectrum. John had never seen its like in real life.

The vision swung over the curve of the planet. It barreled past a small landmass that John only got a glimpse of, this time around. Deep green trees and brown dirt. His visions rarely focused there. It was nothing more than a blur in this one.

Once again he curved over the spire of an Ancestral city and twisted around it until he was dizzy.

His vision abruptly went black.

Then tilted toward the sun. The wing filling his sight was a burnt green and so translucent the sunlight turned it yellow before the dragon banked sharply and dove straight down to the sea. John heard the echo of a splash as it fished for its dinner.

It wasn't a bird, or a bat. John had once seen a bat the size of a man, but it had been furred, and these creatures were scaled. No feathers to be seen. John had seen full clans of these creatures and could still scarcely believe it. No one else believed it, either. It didn't help that John's hand couldn't sketch even a passable version of these things.

Spirits.

No one in living memory had seen a Spirit in person. The closest John had ever gotten, physically, were carvings in the old Athosian ruins Teyla Emmagan had let him tour once. In the Athosian tongue they were called dragons.

He liked that word. It was less … worshipful … than many of the words used to refer to the Ancestor's creations.

There were four of them in this vision, all fishing for their dinner. They used the towers and spires of the Ancestral city as perches. They launched themselves off the highest parts to get the best angles on the water, their wings stretched wide. It was hard to tell without anything to compare them to, but John had the feeling these dragons were four times the size of a human.

When the dragons skimmed along the sea's surface they opened their mouths wide and bared overlapping rows of teeth that caught the sunlight reflecting off the water.

He wondered whether they could rip a Wraith apart.

If the dragons -- Spirits -- really were as large as he thought, they'd be three times the size of a Wraith. In comparison the Wraith looked so unlike the Spirits that it was hard to believe they'd both been created by the Ancients. Incredibly hard to believe that the Wraith had supposedly branched off from a 'fallen' clutch of Spirits.

John had heard the legends, like everyone else. Having seen these dragons -- and what else could they be? -- he just … didn't see the comparison. They both had wings and flew. But a Wraith was closer to a bat or a bug than these magnificent dragons that shone in the sun.

Suddenly his vision went black again, and for a second he thought that another group of dragons was closing in. But it stayed black, and then his entire body was burning, and he felt something in his chest give.

When he opened his eyes he was coughing up salt water and ached from head to toe.

"You should not take such risks, John Sheppard," someone said, touching a hand to the side of his face. Their fingers were cool against his skin, and he coughed, and coughed, and coughed.

It took forever until his body seemed rid of the water in his lungs. When he could finally take a breath that didn't bring water back down his throat, he stared up at the person whose hand was still resting against his face.

"You have excellent timing," he said. He hesitated, then added, "Thank you."

Teyla shook her head at him. She wasn't smiling, which meant that she was mad at him even without a glare on his face. She held her hand out and he reluctantly let her pull him into a sitting position.

He looked down at himself. They were just far enough up the beach that the waves breaking against the sand didn't hit their feet. Not that it mattered so much. They were both soaked to the bone. John could feel salt left over on his skin, crusting up around his joints and under his nails. Teyla's clothes were so wet he had to bet that they'd change color when they finally dried. It was going to take forever to wash the salt out of their hair and John suspected that he would be smelling it for days.

"What happened?" she asked. "Your watchman on the road told me to head in this direction to find you. When I arrived, I saw you pitch into the water."

John rubbed at his wrists. "I…" he mumbled.

Teyla raised her eyebrows. "What was that?"

"I… had a vision," John admitted. He tensed up for a moment and squeezed his eyes shut when Teyla leaned down to touch their foreheads together. "Thanks," he said again, fidgeting in the sand. It was soaking its way through his clothes, from the feel of things.

Sighing, Teyla leaned back and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "I know you cannot control these things," she told him. She helped pull him to his feet. John was wobblier when he started to walk than he would've liked. "But it is reckless to swim alone when you know that you may be struck by a vision without warning."

A flush crept up the back of John's neck. He cleared his throat and tried to concentrate on steadying himself as they got closer to the road. Teyla stopped at the edge of the beach to pick up a bag she'd dropped when she ran down to get him. John could tell that she'd run, too, from the blur of her footprints in the sand. It made him feel vaguely uneasy. Swimming had really been a stupid thing to do on his own.

His father was going to be furious when he found out.

"I'll be more careful in the future," he said, when he noticed Teyla was still staring at him. She tilted her head and seemed to be considering saying more, so he cut in first. "Are you here to see my parents again?"

Teyla paused and then half-smiled. As they neared his riding mount, she whistled at the creature. The derk, Petra, whinnied in response and whipped her long tail against the dirt. John rolled his eyes. So soon after a vision, Petra's sleek tail and bony neck reminded him more than a bit of the dragons. Though, sadly, no wings. And she was colored brown like the rest of her herd, not green like the dragons in his visions.

Teyla came through the Ancestor's Ring, of course, so there was only his derk waiting for them. Stretching to test the strength in his arms, John estimated he was in good enough shape to take all of them back to the manor.

"Yes," Teyla told him. She waited for him to get on the horse before swinging up in the saddle behind him. "I'm here to extend an invitation on behalf of my people to your cousin. Do you recall Marin?"

John adjusted Petra's reins. "The little one who puts, ah… red stuff in her hair?"

He could feel Teyla casting her eyes up at the sky behind him. "She's only a year younger than me, and those are red beads," she said. Petra stepped onto the path and Teyla braced herself with a hand against his shoulder. "She is pregnant and having a gathering to anticipate the birth. Marin and your cousin have spent enough time together that Marin wished to invite her, even if she cannot make it."

"Sounds good," John said. He flicked the reins a bit so Petra would stop meandering down the path and speed up some. Honestly, as long as he wasn't being asked to get wrapped up in any of this ceremonial stuff, he was fine.

They made it most of the way there without saying anything else. For John, it had been a comfortable silence, but as soon as they were in view of the manor gate he tensed up a bit.

The house had supposedly been built by the Ancestors. John doubted it. It was all looming stone, with narrow windows and a thick iron gate keeping people out. From what he had seen in his visions and of visiting Athos and other planets with abandoned cities, it didn't match the Ancestor's aesthetics. He didn't deny that there were some technological remnants that were definitely Ancestral, he just didn't think that meant the entire manor had once been a city.

But anything for the Sheppard family to brag about and lord over others.

"You should rest," Teyla said. "I can simply follow a servant to your cousin."

"Sounds good," John murmured.

He waved at the people guarding the gate and hoped they wouldn't send someone to his father as soon as he passed through.

---

Rodney woke up just past dawn. He stared out the window for several moments before the echo of the academy bell fully settled into his brain, and then he jerked up and started fumbling for a pair of shoes. He'd miss breakfast if he didn't jog down now.

When he got to the dining hall he bumbled into the serving line behind a group of under-fives. A few of them were sniffling and Rodney had to resist the urge to wrinkle his nose. He remembered what it was like to be herded around with the other children and barely let out of an adult's sight.

The academy took in orphans and plain old abandoned children from anyone who knew the Ring address. Some children had difficulty adjusting.

From unsealing his own records, he knew that he and Jeannie had been left here at the same time. They guessed that he had been six or seven, but his rapid advancement through the children's classes muddled the exact estimate. Jeannie had been much easier. She'd been a newborn, barely a few months old.

He inched through the line behind the little kids and scooped up extra biscuits, bypassing the porridge and eggs for once. It wouldn't keep well and he was supposed to prevent too many bowls and plates from piling up in his room. Biscuits and some fruit -- the safe kind that didn't make his throat hurt -- would get him through the morning all right.

"You not eating with us this morning, Rodney?" Radek called.

Rodney turned his head while balancing his plate in the crook of one arm. "I have work. You should, too, if you want to get your best scrying done," he said, sniffing.

"Ah, but then I get distracted, come back down for early lunch," Radek said. He grinned when Rodney rolled his eyes. "We will meet up for dinner and compare results?"

"Yeah, yeah," Rodney said, waving as he left the dining hall.

Radek remembered more than Rodney did. Even about Rodney himself. Radek had been Rodney's roommate as soon as he was deemed safe enough to have one, and remembered a lot about the extra attention Rodney had needed when they'd first arrived. What Rodney had himself were snatches of memory, nearly patchwork.

He remembered the whoosh of the Ring and had the feeling it'd been the first time he was ever allowed through it. He remembered telling the professors Jeannie's name. He remembered screaming and biting and kicking when they'd taken her away to the nursery wing. And mostly, he remembered being kept in the infirmary for months on end after eating a tangy fruit that he never wanted to get near again.

It kind of sucked that the infirmary was his most vivid memory. Radek didn't have to remind him that he'd technically been dead for several minutes before being revived by one of the magic professors.

Although Rodney didn't remember what it had been like between being swallowed up by the dark and waking up in the infirmary, and he was just fine with that, thank you.

He was also perfectly fine with not remembering his parents. Jeannie insisted that he must have blacked it out. That irritated him. Personally he imagined that the people who abandoned them might not have been worth remembering. Either that, or they were eaten by an infestation of flying Wraith lizards, in which case, he was glad he didn't remember.

And he would never, ever scry to find out what was true.

Back in his room he put his biscuits down on the corner of his table and lifted the lid on his rain-collector. The water inside was still chilled. Something about the inscriptions made on the collectors helped keep the water close to the state it'd been in when falling from the sky.

Rodney ate with one hand and prepped with another. First, he needed to get a cloth-bound notebook out, and then an inkwell and pen. He pushed the collector to the very back of his desk and put the lid upside down just in front of it.

Scrying was a delicate art. Precise directions had to be followed. Countryside magic practitioners -- Rodney sniffed to himself at the thought -- would be able to make due and get murky predictions from other methods, but as long as he stayed at the academy he knew he'd have the resources available to do it the right way.

Carefully he poured water into the curved lid of the rain-collector until he had enough for a reflecting surface to look into. The design of these pots made it so his viewing surface was two hand-spans wide.

When that was done, he set the pot back on the desk and rolled up the sleeves of his simple shirt. He started taking the deep, even breaths it would require to channel enough magic through him to start the ritual. Once that began, the water would provide its own magic to provide a vision.

Half vision? One day Rodney was going to have to figure it out, because technically there was a difference between scrying and having visions, and although the latter were considered more powerful he knew for a fact that scrying gave you actual control over what you saw and--

--Deep breath. Focus.

He knew the effort had worked when the water rippled from the edge into the center.

There was a certain vision he wanted to call up. He'd seen it several times before, and he wanted to record new detail. Hopefully enough detail so that someone other than himself could actually focus on this point in time and find it in their own scrying. Otherwise, he couldn't present the material without looking like he was dreaming it all.

The image flashed several times before settling into place, and Rodney realized why after a moment of confusion.

The vision had focused on an image of the city from an angle that showed the sun at the top of the water. Any time something blocked the sun and rapidly moved away from it, the result was a 'flashing' of the entire vision briefly going into shadow. Rodney rapidly scribbled on his scroll, careful not to bump his arm against the rain-collector lid.

Everything in this vision was tinted with the same red clay look of the rain-collector itself. But from enough experimentation Rodney was absolutely certain that the scrying medium wasn't affecting the vision.

No, it was just that wherever he was looking was so desolate that there was barely another color to be found.

It was definitely an Ancestral city. It had taken a lot of day trips through the Ring to be sure of it, but Rodney had seen several abandoned and some slightly-still-in-use Ancestral cities at this point. The technology was easy to distinguish even when the local culture hadn't built up a cult around the thing.

It was amazing to see a city that was in such good repair despite being half-buried in sand. The exposed towers and spires shone in the sun with enough glimmer that Rodney suspected not much of the metal had worn away. If it wasn't for the, well, the mounds of sand so big they were probably taller than the academy itself, he would guess that the city might have some kind of protective shield.

That was definitely blown away by all the sand. But also, of course, the dragons.

He absolutely refused to call them Spirits even though they were addressed as such in nearly all of the academy's literature. The only place he'd found another, less ridiculous word to describe the magnificent flying creatures was during the one brief trip he'd taken to Athos. Teyla Emmagan had informed him that the paintings the academy had acquired at some point from the Athosians -- which looked so much like the Spirits in Rodney's visions -- were called dragons in her tongue. And Rodney had used it ever since.

Today he was looking at what seemed to be a pair of them. Mates, perhaps. They circled around each other in the sky and soared without beating their great semi-translucent wings. It was the same kind of heat-seeking Rodney had witnessed in birds, which he assumed meant they were related, or that the Ancestors had merely studied birds when they created the dragons.

The tips of his fingers itched whenever he thought about these creatures. There had to be some kind of original research on them still existing. How had the Ancestors done it? What had the purpose been? What was their biology like?

If Rodney could answer even one of those questions he knew he'd be far on the path of finding something that would work against the Wraith, the shriveled cousins of the dragons. It infuriated him that any of the Ancestors had made that experiment.

But he couldn't imagine how it would happen accidentally. The legends were that a group of Spirits 'fell,' and became the Wraith, and that was stupid. It just seemed impossible that a natural mutation would produce an offspring less than half a dragon's size and so aggressive as to destroy entire human cities when their infestations were allowed to grow too large.

No, someone had created these horrific things on purpose.

The only way to kill a Wraith was with a blade -- and close combat was not recommended, unless you wanted your face to be eaten -- or fire. (The latter of which left usually behind no corpse to study.) Rodney was sure there had to be a way to synthesize a spell or poison for it, though.

The problem was that by the time anyone ever found a Wraith nest, the eggs were empty and the Wraith themselves were on the hunt. The eggs stayed underground until the infants broke out of them. There was no way to detect a new nest unless you got there in time to see the mother burying it, in which case, goodbye face!

Rodney absently realized that he was tapping his foot against the floor as he wrote down as many details about the dragons' physiology as possible. At least, he was doing something to make a repetitive knocking sound. He shooed his thoughts away from that so he wouldn't get distracted and break the spell sustaining the vision.

The dragons flew in and out of the city spires, seeming to make a game of it. They opened their mouths and were clearly making sounds as well. It was so damn frustrating that Rodney had never managed to get sound to come through a scrying session.

It was rumored that only a handful in a generation were able to scry for sound at all, but he couldn't figure out why he hadn't determined how yet.

Finally the flashing got to be too much. The dragons were twirled and nipped at each other in the air, flying in a spiral that just so happened to place them directly between Rodney and the sun.

He wasn't able to see clearly enough to get any more notes, so he ended the vision. There was sweat dripping from his forehead. He let out a breath and looked into the rain-collector lid.

"You used up nearly all of that water. What in the Ancestor's name were you looking at?"

Rodney yelped and jumped, bumping the desk hard enough to make the lid wobble. Except the spell had eaten over half the rain water as soon as it ended, so nothing sloshed over the edges. Heart pounding, he put a hand against his chest and turned around.

Jeannie's curls were tied up behind her head and her shirt showed just the hint of a round belly. "I waited until you were done!" she protested at his glare. Then she grinned. "I would never interrupt the great Rodney in the middle of his work."

"You came in my room without knocking," Rodney muttered. He wiggled out from between his chair and the desk. "Again! How many times have I told you not to--"

"I came to deliver a message, big brother," Jeannie interrupted.

He faltered and narrowed his eyes when she didn't continue. The only people who would need to talk to him outside of classes or projects were Radek and maybe Miko, or that woman Katie who studied ways to magically enhance plants, but Miko was off somewhere and Radek wasn't expecting him until dinner. Also… Katie had maybe never actually come to his room. Okay, they'd only talked in the library. Whatever.

Rodney grabbed a biscuit and took a bite. "So?" he mumbled.

Jeannie reached out and batted at his hand. "Manners. Don't talk with your mouth full," she said.

Rodney glared and ducked out of her reach, stepping until he could lean against his far wall. And he determinedly stuck the rest of the biscuit into his mouth, too.

"Ugh." Jeannie sighed. Then she withdrew a sealed letter from the pocket of her skirt. "The provost approved your request for a short field study at Athos," she said.

Rodney nearly choked on his food, but darted forward to yank the letter out of her hand. He didn't even care that she reached out and whacked his hands again. Besides, she didn't do it hard enough for it to actually hurt or anything.

The seal had a symbol stamped into it. The symbol that the academy used for all its official correspondence: A triangle missing its bottom length with a small, empty circle above the point.

As far as Rodney knew, it meant nothing. Oh, blah something blah about the Ancestors. Everything was 'about the Ancestors' here. But Rodney knew it was a school and didn't try to make it something about fulfilling the Ancestors' dreams of glory.

Jeannie kept talking over him as he looked around for a blade to cut the seal with. "They asked me to deliver it when I was there checking up on Kaleb's funds for the rest of the season. He needs to replace some things destroyed in a summer storm when…" she said. Or something like that, he wasn't really listening. "…bring some back when the study's over and hopefully things for the baby, too."

"Mmm, that'd be good." He found a carving knife used for making magic inscriptions in wood and slit the wax seal open.

"Thank you, Jeannie," Jeannie said. She gave a mock curtsey. "Oh, you're so welcome, big brother."

Rodney's eyes quickly ran over the tiny script the provost used. There wasn't much to read, after all. Of course the signature at the bottom was grand and looping so that it nearly went off the page. He snorted to himself and went back up to the bulleted list marking what he was allowed to take from the academy's stores when he went to visit Athos.

Jeannie gave up. "So how long are you going to be gone this time?" she asked. "Normally your field studies only last a day, so I was surprised when they told me you'd be doing an overnighter."

"Yep." Rodney folded the letter back up. "Three nights. I'm sure the Athosians won't mind."

His mind was already halfway out the door. If he was going to leave before the beginning of the week, he'd have to do several scrying sessions a day not to let any of his rain water go to waste. Which meant that he wouldn't have a lot of time to find the texts that he wanted to bring with him. Hopefully they wouldn't be checked out from the library.

Jeannie groaned. "You didn't ask them first?"

"Of course I asked!" Rodney said, brought back to the moment. He still felt a little drained from the scrying session and sat down. "That person -- Teyla -- she said that it'd be fine if I returned, they keep a tent up for visitors."

His sister shook her head slowly. "Maybe you should send her a letter before you actually go, huh?"

"Yeah, yeah." He caught himself about to yawn and shook it off. Maybe he should go back down to the dining hall to get some of that bitter tea. He realized Jeannie wasn't excusing herself and cast around for something to ask. "Did you get any rain water from the storm?"

"Of course I did," she said, smiling.

He tilted his head to one side. "You did?" That was a surprise. Her door had been firmly shut when he'd run out last night and he'd been the first one out, since he'd had to light the candles. And she hadn't been in the dining hall when he went.

"You think I didn't manage to keep a rain-collector of my own after doing so many years of field study?" Jeannie asked. She laughed at the look that crossed his face. "Nobody takes it if your name is engraved in the top, Rodney."

Rodney sputtered and then grumbled to himself. Well, no wonder she never wanted to run out into the storms with him. He opened his mouth and she held up her hand, palm out.

"No, they're not going to approve your own personal collector for a three-night trip to Athos. Maybe if you want to get more involved in the community, though," Jeannie said.

"If I find a community with an Ancestral repository then maybe I will," Rodney said, sourly.

Jeannie waved at him and took her leave. She was smirking as she shut the door. He was sure she was smirking.

---

John finally got all the salt out of his hair after the third time he washed it. But the salt taste was still on the back of his throat, and he couldn't get that to go away, no matter how many gulps of juice he took. He kept eyeing the wine skins in a rack at the back of the kitchen, but Cook glared at him whenever he did, so he stuck to plain juice.

It sucked. Any minute now he was sure a servant was going to check the kitchen and tell him his father was impatiently waiting to see him in his study, or the drawing room, or wherever he'd installed himself for the evening. John had the urge to go hide in the gardens even though he knew that was childish.

Really what stopped him, though, was that he hadn't hidden in the gardens since his mother's funeral. And the beating he'd gotten from his brother David when he returned was more than enough to sour the memory of staring at his mother's plants. That, and the cold, empty look Patrick Sheppard had given him when he'd pulled David off him.

There had been nothing in that look. John hadn't needed to confirm, even though he'd barely been twelve summers at that point. His father had been done with him from that moment on.

He tipped back his glass and wondered if he could get a kitchen maid to sneak him some wine.

"John?"

He swallowed noisily and set the glass down, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. When he turned around in his seat, Teyla was standing in the kitchen doorway. She smiled gently at him. She was all cleaned up.

"Hey," he said. He awkwardly slipped off the stool. His ass had gone numb. He tried not to mention how weird Teyla looked in an outfit that bore his family's colors, deep navy and gold. "Already met with cousin Cecily?"

Teyla nodded. "She is thrilled to come see Marin. We'll be leaving tomorrow," she said. She opened the door and stepped into the hallway, not even looking over her shoulder.

John shuffled after her. It was better than sitting here and waiting.

"You are welcome to join us," Teyla said when they were halfway down the hall. John rubbed at his wrists. The manor was always drafty. She looked up at him without actually turning her head. "The celebration with Marin is for women only, but if you visited, we could practice your hand-to-hand combat."

He half-smiled. Yeah, he knew what that meant. "I look forward to the bruises," he drawled. Teyla didn't laugh but she did smile back.

They swerved through the halls and exited out the back. Not anywhere near the gardens. John made sure they hadn't gone to that corner of the manor. Instead they were heading vaguely in the direction of the stables.

Teyla would have a guest room if Cecily was hosting her overnight, but he didn't like the idea of going and sitting in that tiny chamber. There was already enough gossip whenever he spent time alone with a woman. (Or a man, to be honest, but that gossip was probably kept away from the rest of his immediate family. Especially since Cecily was the instigator of most of it.)

So instead they walked. John relaxed a bit as he thought about making a serious trip to Athos. He could leave for the rest of the season, if he wanted. He'd done that before. It was the benefit of his family having so much to trade with. People were willing to put up with him a lot longer than they probably would be otherwise.

Though Teyla might actually like him, he thought, briefly. "Do you think you could teach me how to use one of your fire blasters?" he asked.

Teyla raised one eyebrow at him. "We call them wands, John," she reminded him. He gave her a bare smile and nodded. She looked out in front of them and considered it as they walked. "I think a practice lesson might be arranged."

"Thanks."

The Athosians' fire blasters -- excuse him, wands -- were about five times the size of their handheld lighters. Those small things were used for lighting fires and torches. The wands, well. They were used for killing Wraith in the air. Or, very rarely, a runt hatchling that hadn't been able to make it far from a nest discovered after an attack.

The Wraith were like bugs. No one knew how they managed to travel through the Ancestor's Rings, but John hadn't heard of a planet that hadn't suffered an infestation at one point or other. They could range from tiny attacks to full-sized broods, in which case hundreds would hatch at once.

Fire could kill off a dozen Wraith in the right hands, those with the tech or the spells. But an entire brood hatching at once? That was a call for retreat that even John would heed.

"Are you interested in trading for wands?" Teyla asked, when they circled around the back of the stables and started heading toward the house again. She had a firm look on her face. It wasn't as his friend, but as an Athosian leader. "Because our production capabilities have been limited recently. Sateda cut off contact several months ago and that is where we traded for a crucial metal. It takes much longer to mine on Athos itself."

John frowned and stopped for a second. The image of an empty, inactive Ring appeared in his mind. "You haven't heard from Sateda in months?" he asked.

Teyla turned slightly on her heel so she could look back at him. "No one has. We would have tried dialing in, but you recall how stringent the Satedans were about outside contact."

"Yeah." John felt something twist in his chest. He shook his head.

The government on Sateda was the most sprawling one he'd ever encountered. And they controlled the Ancestor's Ring there with an iron fist. It was extremely discouraged to dial in unless you happened to be part Satedan yourself, and he'd heard that even then you were given a schedule of when you were allowed to call back. People on Sateda weren't free to leave as they pleased, either, that's how big the government was.

Even Patrick Sheppard didn't exercise that much control over the farmers, craftsmen, and merchants on Cambridge, their planet.

John had been allowed to visit once, when he was a lot younger. His mother had still been alive.

"I'm sure that we'll hear from them at some point," Teyla said, breaking his concentration. "My caretaker, Charin, says that she remembers a period of an entire year when they cut off contact."

John reluctantly resumed walking. He'd liked the normal, everyday people he'd met on Sateda. Not so much the rich traders and politicians his father had been talking with. "An entire year?"

"It was to smooth a transition in their governing bodies…" Teyla murmured, her voice trailing off.

She was sprinting before John even raised his head.

His heart seized and for a horrible second salt surged in his mouth again. He thought he might collapse. But instead of falling backward, his feet began to move in the direction Teyla had run in. John started at a job and quickly broke into a run as shouting sprang up in the grounds and the stable doors were thrown open, workers rushing out, brandishing weapons.

A clan of Wraith was beating a path through the sky to the tallest chimney of the manor.

"Hey, give me that!" John shouted, when a servant ran out and passed him.

The servant glanced back and threw him the second rudimentary fire gun his family had. Not quite as impressive as the Athosians' wands, but they were relatively new acquaintances and the Sheppard family would acquire some soon. They had never convinced Sateda to give them any of their guns.

A wraith screeched and started tearing at the roof of the manor. John really, really wished that he had a Satedan gun now.

Teyla didn't have a wand on her, but he saw her disappear into a huddle of people desperately trying to set flame to heavy-tipped arrows. A hoarse laugh escaped his throat. They'd set the roof on fire and the manor might burn half down before these Wraith were dead.

The rest of the clan screamed and John stumbled. The sound physically hurt. Okay. Burn the manor down.

There was no way for him to join in the first shots. The guns didn't reach three stories high. He had to stalk the Wraith's shadows on the ground, moving backwards half the time to keep his eyes on the creatures. He had stumbled into the gardens before he realized it, but he didn't have time to block out the scent of all the flowers in bloom. John bumped into another gunman and they split apart, startled.

A Wraith soared down toward them in the moment they had their eyes off the sky.

John whipped his gun up and shot, the recoil sending him steps back in the dirt. The Wraith screamed and screamed, darting between the two sets of fire blasts heading its way. They were as big as a fist when they hit the air, and not impossible to avoid when isolated. But the Wraith couldn't maneuver quickly enough to avoid blasts in numbers.

John clipped its wing and it spun onto its back in the air, so close that its shadow was covering John's face. He hissed between his teeth and shot again, and again, and again, stepping backward deliberately each time as the Wraith's path in the air jerked back and forth.

Its mouth was as big as John's head and every time he saw its teeth he felt a physical pain. He actually felt a wing graze his shoulder once, just before he fell to the dirt to get away, and he had no idea how close the mouth had been but his heart was hammering out of his chest at the thought. He liked having a face.

"Come on! Aim for the wings, not the head!" he snapped at the servant, quickly rolling onto his back and jumping to his feet again. He couldn't glance over to see how the man was faring but the shots the guy was sending off were anything but consistent.

The world narrowed as the Wraith lost control of one wing and flew straight into a hedge. John sucked in a sharp breath and leapt onto a stone bench, aiming his gun at an untouched patch of wing.

The pale green flesh turned black and fell to ashes. The Wraith screamed so loud that John's heart skipped a beat, but he fired, and fired, and he wasn't sure who it was, him or the servant, but they destroyed the Wraith's wings before it could disentangle itself and get into the air again.

He was panting and started to turn to see how much of the clan was left. But the servant, a man twice his age, was standing there shaking and unable to put the gun down. "It's just a babe and so big," he whispered.

John grimaced and took a step toward him.

The man let off another shot, and John bit his tongue so hard it drew blood when the fireball clipped his arm. He fell to the ground immediately, landing on that arm. The dirt smothered the flame but he could still feel a burn just below his shoulder.

"Oh, Ancestors! I'm so sorry! Mister Sheppard, please, are you all--"

"I'm fine," John snapped. He pushed himself to his feet and winced at the look on the man's face. "I'm fine," he repeated, more gently. "Now go see if people need reinforcements. Go!"

The man hesitated but turned to run back toward the house as John got to his feet. He awkwardly switched his gun to his opposite hand and tried to estimate how many shots he had left as he started jogging to rejoin the others, too.

The first thing he saw was a Wraith on the roof surrounded by burning tile. It was hissing and screaming and rolling around, spreading the flame, but it was dying, its pale green scales turning ashen the longer the fire burned.

He passed a group already dragging water buckets in from the well and wet his lips, trying not to remember which rooms were underneath that section of roof. But it flashed into his head anyway, of course, and he had to physically shake off the urge to run and run until he found Cecily to make sure she'd had the warning to get the hell out of the manor.

"What's going on?" he asked, grabbing the first person who looked like they knew what they were doing.

The woman gave him a double-take and pointed at a path leading to the front of the manor. "One's on the ground," she said, grimly.

It took a second after she moved off for John to realize that she had been carrying a large brown bag with her. The only reason that anyone would have one of those in the middle of a Wraith attack was if there'd been a serious injury.

He ran so fast he beat her around to the front of the manor.

There was a Wraith on the ground, all right. It was the size of Petra and it had all four legs digging into the dirt as it reared its head back and screamed. When it opened its mouth, the teeth didn't flash white. They dripped red.

John fired at its head without thinking.

---

It was really hot on Athos.

Rodney grunted as the Ancestor's Ring whooshed empty behind him. No one from the academy had been available, not even a grunt student trying to work their way into the professor's ranks, apparently. So he was stuck lugging a bag full of clothes and food and a gift for Teyla, and another bag full of his notebooks and a few tomes borrowed from the library, all by himself.

Of course it had to be hot. He was visiting during their summer. The walk to the village was on a steady slope uphill and he couldn't help but wonder if he should've postponed this visit a few months until their weather cooled off.

But as soon as the village came into sight, so did the Ancient ruins by the lake, and he changed his mind. It would be cool and shadowy in the old city. He'd be fine as long as he stayed out of the sun for most of the day.

"Hey," he called to a couple of kids running around the entrance to the village, snapping his fingers. They stopped and goggled at him. "Is Teyla Emmagan here?"

The little one pointed at him. "Why are you wearing such a floppy hat?"

Rodney groaned under his breath. "To keep my face from burning," he said. "Teyla Emmagan? Here?"

The kids exchanged a glance and one of them shrugged. "Be right back," the little one said, then walked up and actually grabbed Rodney's hand. And his fingers were all… sticky. Rodney jerked his hand free and wiped it on his shirt as they meandered through the village to the biggest tent there.

Teyla was inside, along with a bunch of other Athosians Rodney vaguely recognized. It was pretty easy to tell their clothing apart from the stranger's though. A tall man with ridiculous dark brown hair that closely resembled a bird's nest, dressed in all black. Rodney looked away as soon as the man glanced at him.

The guy had a big black eye to go along with his clothes.

Both hands on the table everyone was sitting around, Teyla stood up. "Rodney," she said, nodding her head at him. He returned the gesture. "I got your message last night when I returned. It's good to see you."

A long, strange look passed between her and the guy in black before Teyla slipped out from behind the table and joined Rodney in the doorway. She put a hand on his arm and gently guided him outside.

"I brought something for you," he said.

The tent had been cool inside -- someone here must know enough magic to cast a room-temperature spell -- but the air had been so tense Rodney was actually glad to be back in the sun. He dropped his bags to his feet and rooted through them until he found the wrapped package Jeannie had helped him pick out.

"It's a voice amplifying crystal," he said, cutting the thread tying the cloth around the square gem. It was clear and cut roughly around the edges. "We -- I mean, I thought that, you know, you might find it useful."

Teyla took it from him and smiled. "Thank you, Rodney. I can think of a few uses already." She paused, glancing back toward the tent, and then at him. "Come, let's get you settled."

The only room they had for him was at the far end of the village. Rodney didn't mind since it actually put him closer to the ruins of the Ancestral city, but he cringed inwardly when he saw a huge group of kids running around the tent next to his. It was going to be hard to sleep here, he could already tell.

"We held a meeting about whether it would be safe to allow you back into the old city," Teyla told him, quietly. She stood just inside the tent door while he put his things down. "You recall that we are not sure if it is safe?"

"Yeah," Rodney said. He stood back up. "But you also said that the last Wraith nest found there was before even your grandparents were born."

Teyla looked over his face and nodded slowly. "As long as you progress slowly and try not to go deep into the ruins if you do not need to," she said, "we have decided to allow your exploration." She pressed her lips into a fine line for a moment. "If you do learn anything about the Wraith, we need you to share it with us."

He blinked, confused. "Of course I would," he said. "The whole point of my study is to try to figure out a better way to kill them."

Sighing, Teyla gestured for him to sit down. She perched on the very edge of his cot and he awkwardly sat on the other end, hoping that his comparative weight wouldn't tip it up in the air. "An attack occurred the day before yesterday."

Now that made his jaw drop. "But the village was untouched! I would've seen scorch marks and I know you keep extra hide around but you couldn't have repaired your buildings that quickly--"

Teyla held a hand up, palm out. "Rodney, listen," she said. He fumbled to a halt. "The attack was not here. It was on a planet called Cambridge. But it has unsettled everyone here." She lowered her hand to her lap.

Cambridge. Rodney was pretty sure he had never heard of it. It was a weird name.

"The other man visiting us now is from there," she said, and it clicked in Rodney's head. Ah, of course. People only wore all black when they were in mourning. Then he winced. Teyla nodded again. "There was a death during the attack. I was present but didn't witness it."

"So now everybody's worried the guy--"

"John Sheppard."

"--that John Sheppard is going to bring another attack on here?" Rodney asked.

It was a stupid superstition but a prevalent one. Rodney was actually surprised that the Athosians had allowed John Sheppard to stay with them so soon after an attack. If it had only been two days, there might not have even been a funeral yet for the poor soul who died. He realized that people were creeped out by anyone who'd seen a Wraith so recently, but he couldn't imagine that tiny specks of the Wraith clung to someone and traveled through the Ring that way, so it was stupid to worry about.

Although, well. "Nobody is worried about it?"

"Some are," Teyla allowed. Her face was blank. Rodney hadn't known her long enough to read her expression. "But John has been a friend to us for many years, and encouraged his family to trade openly with us," she said. "So we are hosting him until he… thinks of a place to go."

Rodney's eyes widened and his pulse picked up. "All of Cambridge was destroyed?" he blurted. Okay, so maybe there was something to the Athosians' fear in that case.

Teyla shook her head. "No." She paused. "I do not feel that it is my place to explain. If John wants to talk about it, he will. Suffice it to say that he will not be returning to Cambridge before the week is out."

Which would be when Rodney left, of course. He nodded and considered for a moment. "So… be careful around the mourning guy, don't ask too many questions, and don't talk about the Wraith over dinner?"

The smile Teyla gave him was thin. "Perceptive as always, Rodney."

She gave him a lighter and a torch -- which he was to return before he left -- and told him that he could go to the ruins whenever he wanted. But to make sure that none of the children followed him, even if he had to get their parents involved.

Rodney spent a while unpacking. (Also, maybe he cast a room-cooling spell, and, well. It would be a shame to let that go to waste by rushing out.) He wouldn't need all his books in the old city, just his notebook and pen and a reference book for symbols. There was also a sheet with the Athosian alphabet on there but he was pretty sure Teyla would have to translate for him over dinner.

Or, um. After dinner.

He shuffled around the tent and glared at the couple of kids who looked around his way, and then he made a break for the old city. Every few feet he'd glance over his shoulder but none of the kids broke from their group to follow him.

There was someone following him, though. Rodney kept looking back, expecting the figure to turn and go into the woods, but they kept following. And Rodney only knew Teyla among the Athosians, so he stopped and gripped the lighter and wondered if he'd already offended someone.

But the figure passed out from underneath the shadows of the trees and it was the man in black. John Sheppard. The guy stared at him as he walked closer, and then he glanced behind Rodney at the city. Rodney tensed up.

"Hello," he said, hesitantly.

John came to a halt. "Are you really going in there?" he asked.

Rodney was surprised. The guy's voice was so flat that it sounded fake. His accent was also pretty close to the accent anyone who grew up completely in the Academy had, too. The vowels were different though. "I'm a scholar," Rodney said, feeling the need to defend himself. "And I got permission. From Teyla."

John stared at him for a long minute. "You know there might be a nest in there, right?"

This time Rodney winced. That hadn't been spoken in a flat voice. No, that was the voice the professors used to scream at him when he'd been a kid and unwilling not to argue with them in the middle of class.

"You're going in with just a lighter?" John asked, when Rodney didn't respond quickly enough.

"Um--"

"Teyla said I should follow you." John paused. "If I wanted."

Rodney mentally flailed around. Follow him? Teyla said? Maybe everyone else was also creeped out by John and -- wait, that probably wasn't fair. The guy was in mourning. "I think I'll be fine on my own. I'm going to be looking at things that'll be really, really boring," he said, swallowing. "And, uh, you'd probably be happier--"

"I'll go with you," John said, walking past him. He brushed against Rodney's shoulder and in that instant Rodney realized the man was so tense it felt like he was about to snap in half.

Rodney looked up at the sky and folded the brim of his hat over his eyes. What exactly had he done to deserve this? But it was not a good idea to keep the furious mourning guy waiting, so he jogged to catch up with him.

"It's going to be really boring," he said again, glancing over at John after they got their torches lit. Teyla really must have sent him, since John had a torch of his own. Though no lighter, Rodney noticed. "You can still head out."

"It's cooler in here," John said, giving him a wry smile.

Rodney found himself staring at John's mouth for too long, and he jerked himself back. "Just -- make sure you don't get in my way," he said, awkwardly, rushing along the entry path to the city.

It was a small city when compared to the one in his visions. But since the Athosians had lived here long enough to have their own carvings and paintings in it, Rodney theorized that it hadn't been in use by the Ancestors in a very long time. Either that, or it was barely used while the Athosians were still living here. In the little bit of exploring he'd done so far, there was no mix between Ancestral and Athosian remnants.

He looked down at the map from one of his books and took a sharp left at the end of the entry pathway. Then he kept walking until he found the room he'd been in the last time Teyla had taken him on a tour here.

It was eerie to have John here. Not that Rodney actually believed the man's presence would summon more Wraith. That would be absurd. But the guy was definitely on edge. He wasn't carrying anything but his torch, at least. If he'd had anything else on him Rodney wouldn't have felt comfortable turning his back on the guy. People in mourning did strange things. Pissed off people in mourning.

There was no need to cast a cooling spell in here. Rodney put his things down and only had to cast a spell to keep his torch in a certain place a few inches from the wall. Far enough not to scorch anything and high enough up to cast light over everything he needed to read. Then he got his notebook out and started studying.

He'd seen most of these markings before. Teyla had explained that they were the story of the intermittent Wraith infestations. But the carvings here seemed to indicate full broods hatching on Athos, which was one of the reasons Rodney wanted to come back and study this in more detail.

If the Ancestors had experimented with Wraith broods here, there might be some evidence left behind deeper in the city ruins.

He didn't know how much time passed before John spoke up. But it was enough for him to have gotten so absorbed in his work that he jumped when the man's voice reminded him that someone else was present. His heart pulsed in his chest and he tried not to look afraid when he turned around.

"So what're you trying to do here?"

Rodney looked down at the notebook in his hands. No one had yet accepted his theory that the Ancestors had possibly created the Wraith on purpose, so he couldn't say that out loud. "I want to learn more about the Wraith," he said, slowly. John didn't scream or run away, so apparently that word was safe. "I'm trying to figure out how to kill them more effectively."

John stared at him for a moment and then raised his eyebrows. "You can't do a fire spell?"

Rodney sputtered. "Of course I can do a fire spell!" What kind of scholar did John think he was? "But there must be a way that's better than fire! By the time you shoot a Wraith out of the sky half a village could be burned down!" he snapped.

That wiped the expression off John's face, and Rodney cringed. "Or half a large house," he said, flatly.

They stared at each other for long enough that Rodney's mouth went dry.

John broke the silence. "So you think you can kill them better, huh?"

"Yes," Rodney said, latching onto the thread of conversation for dear life. "There must be a way to target their physiology better. But I've never been able to study a corpse, so I'm stuck with going back to Ancestral cities where there's some visibly leftover information about the Wraith." He turned back to the wall and realized he had reached the end of it, and had just been staring at his notebook. "If I get everything I need, maybe we could even figure out how to locate their nests."

John grunted as Rodney gathered up his things and snatched his torch from the air. They moved deeper into the city, Rodney consciously making himself walk half as fast as he normally would, just in case Teyla had some way to sense if he speed-walked through the hallways.

He spotted another alcove that looked like it might have some flaking paintings in it when he realized John wasn't behind him anymore. When he looked back, the guy was crouched on the ground, his own torch still in one hand.

For a split second Rodney thought he'd fallen to his knees to cry. Then he saw that John was fingering something metallic and shining in the dirt.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Some necklace." John picked it up and wrapped the chain around his wrist. "A kid must have dropped it in here."

Rodney tried to imagine children wandering these dark, claustrophobic halls and made a face. He could just picture the kids at the academy trying to do that. His initial time at the academy would've been too fraught to do it, probably. Maybe when he hit twelve.

He realized John was staring at him. "Sorry."

John tilted his head to one side. "I've heard that accent before…"

Oh, great. Rodney flushed a little and hoped it was too dark even by torchlight for John to be able to see. "I mostly grew up in an academy for orphans," he said, shortly.

"Oh." John hesitated, then stuffed the necklace in his pocket, and stepped forward. "Sorry."

They both just stood there awkwardly until Rodney cleared his throat and wandered back into the room he'd been looking at a moment before. He studied the paintings for a while before John spoke up. They were confusing but he thought he saw a Wraith -- or maybe it was just a plain dragon, he realized, when he spotted that the flaking line painted next to it might actually be a city spire.

"I'm kind of an orphan too," John said, interrupting him.

Rodney blinked and turned around. It took him a second to process that John was apologizing. Then he frowned. "Oh, uh. Is that why…" He gestured vaguely at John's black clothes.

The corner of John's mouth quirked up. "Half," he said. "Mother died years ago. Father died days ago."

Oh. Rodney winced. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said. The Wraith attack… wow. No wonder John didn't want to go back to Cambridge anytime soon. Rodney privately hoped that the man hadn't had to see his father die, although no way was he going to ask. He wasn't that socially inept.

John looked past him at the painting. "Thanks," he said. "What other magic do you do?"

It was a weird question but maybe he didn't want to talk about death anymore. "Um, scrying."

John glanced back down at him. Rodney realized he had clear eyes. Tinted blue, like Rodney's and Jeannie's own. Then he realized he was actually staring at John's eyes, and looked away. "You have visions?" John asked.

Rodney shook his head. "Not technically. I just call them up in a reflective surface."

"Oh." John gingerly sat down on the floor, his legs crossed underneath him. He balanced the torch awkwardly in one hand. Rodney belatedly realized the guy had had to carry it this whole time, and cast a spell so it would float above their heads. "Thanks," John drawled, smiling in a way that wasn't taut for the first time.

Rodney nodded and went back to studying the painting.

John interrupted him again. He might've been annoyed, except for the fact that the man said, "I have visions."

Now that was interesting.

---

John felt like he'd spent the last two and a half days standing several inches beside himself, prodding his body to go along with even the simplest things. It took enormous effort to decide on an action, let alone to actually carry it out. When Teyla had told him about Rodney's study and pushed him to take some time for himself, he'd slid into the easiest course of action.

After hearing that Rodney could perform magic and summon visions to him, John had to wonder if Teyla had known that little detail and planted a suggestion in his head. He couldn't decide whether that was too devious for Teyla or not.

It was a lot better to talk about visions than the death of his father. Or the funeral that he couldn't bring himself to attend.

He was reluctant to share the content of his usual visions, though. People who weren't largely indifferent to the idea either fell over themselves at the idea of Spirits or thought John was out of his mind.

Rodney was definitely different than other people, though so John didn't rule out the possibility of telling him about it some day. Just not right now. Rodney was brash enough that John knew he'd get an immediate, slicing opinion, and he might not like the way it cut.

"Do they come to you any time?" Rodney asked. They sat down across from each other, each of their backs against a wall. The torches lit them from above, which was still weird, for a guy who'd grown up with sconces on every wall. "Can you sense them coming? Are they triggered by touch or proximity to specific people or places? Do you only get sight, or are other senses involved too?"

It made his head spin to be asked so much so quickly. "Yes. Yes, I get a warning about a second before. It's just a sharp feeling," he said, not wanting to get into the details of flashing hot and itching and suddenly turning to ice. ''I don't think they are, no. All senses."

Rodney stared at him for a second and then scribbled frantically in his journal. John shifted. He was used to being watched, but out of personal interest. He'd thought he'd caught a couple of flashes of that from Rodney until this conversation sucked them both in. Now it was too hard for him to tell whether any of that was still there… or had really been there in the first place.

"I want to talk about this more later," Rodney said, still writing. "I'm a scrying expert but there are still things I need to learn about it, and I've only met a few people who came by visions naturally before."

John's first instinct was to question whether he would still be around later. He pushed it down immediately, and was surprised at how quickly he was able to do that. But he would be around later. He had absolutely no urge to go back to Cambridge anytime soon. And if not Cambridge or Athos, then where?

Realizing he had nowhere else to go squashed whatever lift the past several minutes had given him.

It didn't much matter, though, since Rodney had to go back to studying the ruins while he had the time available. John leaned his head against the wall and half-shut his eyes, watching Rodney work without being too obvious about it.

After a while he took the necklace out of his pocket and fingered it absently. It looked Athosian in design, which made sense. It'd be a bit much to think he'd discovered an Ancestral artifact. Teyla would know what to do with it.

He shifted on the hard floor and dozed off before it was time to leave.

The sense of separation from himself wasn't quite as bad when Rodney woke him up. He didn't completely dread returning to the village and everyone's questioning and fearful faces, at least. He pushed himself up while Rodney put his things away in his pack. Then they were off.

"I'll go deeper into the ruins tomorrow, of course," Rodney told him. "I think I found a map of the layout in that room. Or something vaguely like it. I copied it down, but it doesn't match up with the parts of the city I've been in, so I don't know what it's referring to."

"Maybe they added on later."

Rodney grunted. "It's possible. There were some Ring symbols scattered along the edge too but that could be insignificant. Some of the thing was so faded I couldn't make it out," he said. He sighed. "For all I know it was just a doodle -- the Ancestors were much worse at recording things physically than the Athosians."

John nodded. He had that impression from what little Ancestral technology he'd encountered in person. Though he privately thought it would be nice not to have to store all information on paper that would rot or fade or -- he steeled himself briefly, sucking in a sharp breath that Rodney thankfully didn't notice -- burn.

The roof had collapsed on his father's study and destroyed half of the collection. If his father had survived the attack he would've been livid.

"What are you going to do with that?" Rodney asked.

It took a second to draw himself out of his thoughts and realize he still had the necklace in his hand. "Give it to Teyla," John said, shrugging with one shoulder.

There was a cooking fire set up at the back of the village, so they had to swing around close to the tree line. Some people spotted them. Fewer nodded at John, but he nodded back when they did. No one seemed to recognize Rodney but John wasn't entirely surprised at that. He didn't feel like the general calm on Athos would sit well with Rodney. John had enough trouble, himself, with all the meditation.

…Well, that, and the lack of sunshine. The nights lasted so long here that getting up before sunrise wasn't really a problem.

They spotted Teyla heading out to hunt and John crossed to give her the necklace. Her face lit up and she fairly beamed at him. "This is mine! I lost it years ago," she said, taking it from him and fastening it around her neck. "Thank you, John. I'm surprised you found it."

"It was just on the ground," he said, absently. "No problem."

When he walked back to Rodney, the man was frowning. "I need some tea. Do you have a kettle?"

John blinked. "Yeah, I think so," he said.

"Great. Where's your place?"

John realized he was smiling a moment after turning to the direction his guest place was in. It surprised him enough that he didn't even stop on their way there. Rodney ducked behind him when some kids passed, though, and that helped. John felt like a piece of himself had reconnected with his body. Maybe Teyla had been right, he really had needed to get away from his bed for a few hours.

Guilt hurt worse than grief. John had lost any real connection with his father when they'd lost his mother. But that didn't erase the fury on his brother David's face when John hadn't been able to be anything but angry at their father's death.

And angry at the Wraith.

The thought placed an uncomfortable twitch in his chest and he pushed it down as hard as he could, concentrating on making a strong, bitter tea for Rodney. Apparently it was 'even better' than what they had at the academy where Rodney spent most of his time.

"The only place I've been with big schools is Sateda," John said, absently. "Is yours like that?"

Rodney frowned. "I don't know Sateda."

"Not surprising. They're not big on outside contact." John poured Rodney a cup of tea, which the man drank so quickly he had to pour another one just after he sat down. "How many people does your planet have, to support such a big school?"

There was an awkward moment as Rodney abruptly switched to sipping his tea instead of downing it in gulps. Then he cleared his throat. "A few hundred," he said. "The academy is nearly the only settlement. There's just two small villages for students who've started families."

John chewed that thought over. "A whole planet dedicated to studying?"

Rodney fidgeted. "It's a place for foundlings," he explained, awkwardly. Then he gulped down the rest of his tea.

"Oh." John caught himself a second later. "I mean, well, at least there's a place for people to study."

"It's a good school," Rodney said. He sat up straighter. "There are top-notch magic scholars there. We've done a lot of work into researching magic theory and figuring out how to design new spells." He paused and refilled his own cup of tea. "My sister Jeannie concentrates on field work. She went to places where there were no elder magicians available to train younger ones."

John tilted his head to one side, thinking of the few spells that the household servants knew and how often he'd seen them performed. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder that it might be unusual for so many people to have found a way to study magic. "A traveling bunch of teachers. Do you do that too?"

Rodney made a face, his nose scrunching up. "No. I stay home and work on my research."

John raised an eyebrow and glanced around the tent.

"Except when the best resources to study are on another world," Rodney explained, rolling his eyes. "I came here because it's one of the few places that has Ancestral city ruins left. They're not that easy to find." He winced. "At least, without the requisite cults that some places have."

"Cults?"

And that's how John learned about the world where Rodney nearly got shot full of arrows because the people had assumed he was an Ancestor returned, and got angry when he sputtered and asked if they'd really never seen someone performing simple magic before.

John actually managed a laugh, which was nice, even though it meant Rodney glared at him.

He got up and poked his head out of the tent when there was a rush of noise and shouting. His heart sank when he saw people carrying Athosian wands and rushing out to the forest. Without turning around to tell Rodney what was going off, he numbly started jogging after them.

It wasn't until he reached a gathering in the woods that he realized this wasn't a repeat of the attack on Cambridge, or a flashback.

Someone had fired a wand. He could smell the char of it in the air. But when he nudged people aside to be able to get to the front of the group there was no battle taking place. No one was trapped underneath a Wraith and fighting for their life. There wasn't even a corpse.

Well, okay. There was. But it was a Wraith, and a hatchling at that, so it didn't count in John's eyes.

He stared dumbly at the sight before him and didn't snap out of his shock until Rodney started protesting loudly that no one was letting him through to see anything. "None of you are even doing anything but gawking! Let me through!" he shouted.

John looked over his shoulder as the Athosians parted, either without comment or rubbing at their faces. Rodney's face was a bit pink as he walked through the new path in the crowd, and his mouth opened to make some comment. His jaw just hung there, though, when he looked down at what was in front of them.

"We were scouting for a hunt," Teyla explained. She was on the other edge of the circle. "When we heard the sounds of the eggs breaking, we did not know what to make of it…" Her voice drifted off. "I still do not know what to make of it."

At their feet was a patch of churned dirt. Much of the grass had been pushed feebly to the side by a few inches, and soil was exposed in a vague oval patch. Any grass that had been left in the dirt had been burned away by the wands.

And in the spot were four Wraith eggs. The shells were ivory and blotted with a sickly looking green that John had never seen on the few preserved shells he'd seen in his life. Of course they were tinged with soot too. All of the eggs were broken open. Three had Wraith hatchlings dead inside, still mostly curled up with only their necks extended. The fourth egg was empty with the new Wraith a foot to the side. It was the smallest one John had ever seen -- barely the length of his shin.

"They're premature," Rodney blurted, when he got his thoughts together. He snapped his fingers several times and shook his head. "I can't believe it. I've never, never heard of Wraith hatching prematurely. But these are definitely not old enough to be doing this."

"How can you tell?" Teyla asked.

Rodney pointed at the shells. "The academy has a collection of preserved shells. They're all spotless and smooth. These are discolored and rough -- either there's something wrong with them, or they're not matured yet." He frowned. "But what could have possibly made the Wraith try to break out of their shells at this point?"

No one said anything until Teyla looked up at the sky. "There is nothing different about today," she said, firmly.

John felt a prickle along his spine and a few glances shot his way. He wanted to protest that Rodney wasn't part of the usual Athos scenery, either, but bit his tongue.

"Except that necklace," Rodney said, snapping his fingers again.

Everyone turned to stare at him then, even John. Rodney sighed. "J -- Teyla's necklace was found in the old city," he explained, gesturing at the jewelry around Teyla's neck. The pendant shone in the sun when she pulled it out from underneath her shirt. "I haven't done anything but the simplest spells. Nothing that would mess with the general energy of the planet and make these Wraith think it was hatching time," he added. His jaw was set.

Teyla looked down at her necklace. "I do not practice magic," she said. "How could a piece of metal do magic on its own?"

Rodney frowned and stared at it for a long minute, during which John heard a couple of murmurs rise at the back of the crowd. He wished he could shut his ears down to block it out but that didn't seem possible, so instead he crossed his arms over his chest and waited. If he cast his mind around he might be able to help figure this out, but he was just too tired.

"Ancestral artifacts have been known to produce pulses of energy -- magic or otherwise -- either on their own or after activation," Rodney finally said, moving slowly through the idea. "The necklace was lost in the Ancestral city, so it may have been activated by its time there."

Teyla considered that for a moment. Then she pulled on the necklace until the chain snapped, and dropped it in the dirt at her feet. She aimed her wand and fired until the chain and pendant were a pile of ash.

"No one is to enter the city again," she said.

Rodney sputtered and ran after her when she shook her head and turned away from the crowd. The rest of the Athosians followed them after a minute. The only ones who stuck around were kids wanting to see the Wraith, and they were even called off after a minute.

John stood there staring at the corpses until someone tapped his shoulder and said that the bodies were going to be buried somewhere far away.

He went with the group to make sure the graves were deep.

---

Rodney couldn't sleep.

Not just because he'd had two kettles of tea at this point, either. He just couldn't get himself to lay down and stay still, or to even shut his eyes for more than a moment. He was fuming and there was nowhere comfortable to go sulk or distract himself. Instead he was stuck in this tent until morning, every part of him absolutely furious.

Not only had he and the entire populace of Athos been permanently banned from the city to prevent any more artifacts from being found that might wake more Wraith, despite Rodney protesting that he wouldn't touch any technology or bring it out with him, he hadn't even been allowed to keep one of the Wraith corpses. By the time he finished arguing with Teyla they'd all been carted away and buried. He'd only managed to get his hands on a few of the shells, which he'd quickly cast a preservation spell on and painted with a wash of herbs. They were drying in the corner over the fire he'd been using for his borrowed kettle earlier in the night.

That and what notes he'd taken today were going to be the only thing he'd be taking back to the academy tomorrow. What a damn waste! All that time spent trying to get a trip approved and it hadn't even lasted half of the time he'd planned for it.

"This is so unfair," he muttered, rubbing at his eyes. He could feel exhaustion starting to tug him at the edges but getting off this chair and flopping down in bed just wasn't possible.

It was nearly light when he decided to grab a vial of rainwater out of his bag and try to scry in the tiny clay pot he'd been allowed to bring. It had some inscriptions in it to help carry magic, but it wasn't nearly as good as a rain-collector. Still, Rodney was the best of the best, and he could make due. It would at least keep him distracted.

He sat down on the ground and folded his legs, setting the clay pot down on the bed. It was about eye-height from that level. He poured in the vial of rainwater, concentrated, and opened his eyes, expecting to see the calming and reassuring sight of dragons at an Ancestral city he could explore without limit.

Instead, he saw John leaving through the Ancestor's Ring.

The man had one bag on his back and didn't even glance behind him as he stepped through. Rodney leaned forward, confused. He hadn't been thinking about John. Had he? Well, it was kind of John's fault that he'd been banned from the city, so maybe in the back of his mind -- but surely not enough to call up a vision?

He had the presence of mind to at least look at the symbols on the Ring before it went dark. And it was then that he realized the background of the scene was dark, too. There was no hint of sun.

The Athosian night was long, but Rodney had the sudden feeling that his vision had been real-time. He'd seen John leaving just as he was actually leaving the planet.

When he jumped up and checked outside, sure enough, the sky was still fully dark. Dawn hadn't begun yet. It gave Rodney the time he needed to quickly pack up his things, scribble something down, and dump out his kettle and set it in front of the tent he'd borrowed it from. The egg shells weren't dry yet, but he bundled them up anyway. If there were a few bumps in the preserves nobody would notice.

Then he set out across the village as light appeared in the corner of the sky. Reaching Teyla's tent he could smell the tea they brewed in the morning. He stuck his head in without asking for permission to enter.

Teyla didn't even look up. "No, you cannot go to the city, Rodney," she said, hands cupped around her tea. "It is for everyone's sake that we avoid it."

"That's not what I'm here about. Is this the Ring address to Cambridge?" He stuck a piece of paper out toward her.

Teyla narrowed her eyes. "No. That is the address to Sateda. What are you doing with it?"

Sateda! "Thank you," Rodney said, wheeling around. The tent door fell shut behind him as Teyla shouted that no one was supposed to make contact with Sateda unless their government gave them permission.

He noticed that no one came after him, though.

Punching in an unfamiliar address was always an unsettling experience. Rodney had heard of Rings that lead to the deadness of space just like everyone else, though he wasn't sure they were real. He'd also heard of Rings leading to wholly inhospitable worlds, which he could believe given the absurdity the Ancestors sometimes displayed.

But he was confident about Sateda. John may be messed up in the head but the man didn't have a death wish. Rodney would just explain to anyone who tried to stop him that he'd had a vision and been called to the planet by a force he could not ignore.

Nobody would question whether that force was his own gut and he wouldn't share that it'd been a vision from scrying and not one that seized him in the moment, like the kind John experienced. It was mostly the truth, or at least a truth that Rodney could make sound unsuspicious.

He shouldn't have worried.

On the other side of the Ring, when Rodney stepped through with the chill he always got while passing through the strange water that appeared, there was no one waiting for him. No guards and certainly no government.

There was scorched earth and buildings just about as far as he could see. Jaw gaping, Rodney called up a small fireball and cupped it in his palm as he started to move into the city before him.

It was ten times the size of anything he'd seen before. The only thing he could compare it to was the Ancestral city in his visions. That one was definitely larger than this, but they were both ruined. The latter buried in sand, and the one before his eyes half-destroyed by fire.

When his feet began crunching on Wraith eggs he increased the size of his fireball and locked his eyes on the sky. He didn't see a single moving shape, though, and no one was screaming anywhere nearby. The third time he came on a group of broken eggs scattered in the dirt he stopped dead in his tracks.

A brood had hatched here.

From the looks of it, Rodney would guess that there had been dozens if not scores of nests.

He nearly -- very, very nearly -- turned around and beat a path back to the Ring. If he had been able to make up his mind faster he might have had the chance to do it, too. But he dithered over whether he should find John in this mess and he ended up feeling people step out behind him before he heard their footsteps.

Somehow he knew to raise his hands and extinguish his fireball when he turned around.

A large, scary man was brandishing the biggest knife Rodney had ever seen. He wasn't sure whether it might actually be a sword. Whatever it was, it could certainly rip him open, and overshadowed the two much smaller people the man was with.

Rodney swallowed. "I -- I just -- I must have gotten, um…"

"You're not Satedan," the man said. He had brown skin and his hair was tied back. There was a small black tattoo on his neck.

"No, but, um…" Okay, Teyla had said people here didn't like visitors who came without permission. It was probably best not to admit that he'd known that, though. "I came looking for someone," he blurted. "I--" Oh, right! "I had a vision and I came looking for a man!"

The man with the knife glanced behind at the woman who was with him. Whatever they shared was silent. "You're a magician?" he asked, looking back at Rodney.

"Yes," Rodney said.

People liked magicians, right? Magicians help fight battles. (He had to assume there'd been mechanical devices involved in this one, though. Either that or every single person on Sateda was a magician capable of producing fireballs the size of a full-grown Wraith.)

The scary man exchanged another look with his female companion before gesturing at Rodney with the knife. Rodney flinched, bracing himself for the feeling of metal against his skin, but it didn't come. "Head that way. Now."

Rodney nodded several times and walked wherever they told him to walk. He spent the first five minutes assembling the thoughts needed to enact an invisibility spell, but he figured that wouldn't hide him for too long. He'd have to drop it if he wanted to get back through the Ring.

And maybe John was here, and Rodney couldn't bring himself to think that it would be a good idea to leave him with people who walked around holding giant knives and waving them at innocent strangers. After all, he must have had that vision for a reason. Scrying didn't just seize on random stuff.

It took forever before they seemed to get anywhere.

"John!" he blurted when they rounded a corner. The man behind him said "Sheppard" at the same moment, and they both turned to look at each other.

John pushed himself off the bench he'd been sitting on. They'd walked so far that Rodney thought they must be at the edge of city. There was a mostly-untouched building off to the right. Next to it was a completely charred structure, worn down to metal bones, but the worst thing about the one the people were camped out in front of was a wall of scorch marks.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, eyeing Rodney uneasily.

Rodney huffed. "I should ask you that!" he snapped, hands still in the air. "Teyla said that no one was allowed on Sateda without government permission!"

…Whoops.

No one made a big deal out of that, though. John's face went grim and he looked at the man behind Rodney. The man rumbled, and when Rodney glanced behind him, he'd tucked his knife away… somewhere. "Brood hatched. Most of the government tried to flee. Rest of us actually cared to fight," he muttered.

Rodney glanced around and thought about all the walking they'd done. "This must be the biggest brood in living memory," he said, calculating as quick as he could. "If there were full-grown parents tending the nests at the edges of the city then--"

"There weren't," the man said. "Some damn stupid scientist decided it'd be smart to experiment on some Wraith eggs."

Gaping, Rodney turned completely around, dropping his hands to his sides. "What kind of idiot would run an experiment that could end with so many nests being laid? How does that even work? Did they go around planting eggs and hoping that nobody would notice?"

"Rodney," John said, warningly.

"It was one nest," the stranger said, tightly. He looked like he was about to whip his knife back out and Rodney decided it'd be a good moment to scurry over next to John. "It was one nest, and it spread before we could get even ten percent of Sateda to the countryside."

"Ten percent of…" Rodney's stomach twisted. "This whole city is the only settlement on the planet?" Was, he thought.

"Rodney," John said, reaching up to grip his shoulder. Rodney flushed red and glanced away, just barely holding himself back from flicking the invisibility spell into place. "How about you hold off with the questions for a while?" he asked. He forced some conviviality into his voice. "Ronon Dex, this is Rodney. Rodney, this is Ronon Dex."

"Specialist," Ronon grunted.

Rodney had no idea what that meant but decided not to ask.

---

In the camp Ronon had made with what was left of the military squads in the area, there were only thirty people -- including himself and Rodney. If there were other pockets of people still in the city they hadn't made contact with them yet.

Ronon said that the people who'd made it to green space far from the city were mostly from the hospitals. When the first nest had hatched, an emergency broadcast had warned doctors and nurses to evacuate with the patients that could be moved. Some of the government had fled through the Ring before things had gotten totally out of hand, but Ronon said that they weren't coming back.

At least not without being shot the moment they stepped through the Ring.

One nest. John kept thinking that, over and over. It had made him sick to his stomach when Ronon had explained. One nest, and almost all of Sateda was gone.

The broadcast had been short on details and there wasn't a living scientist to be found. All Ronon knew was that experiments to accelerate the development of a clutch of Wraith eggs, discovered in a mine, had gotten out of hand.

The other people in the camp speculated that the scientists had been trying to find a virus that would induce rapid old aging in the Wraith. Some thought that they'd needed adults to experiment on and hadn't wanted to wait for the Wraith to mature naturally, or hadn't had the time.

Ronon thought that they were careless, worthless fools who didn't consider the Wraith parents who might have come back to check on the buried eggs and found them gone.

Whatever happened, there'd definitely been a containment breach. The Wraith had escaped -- weeks ago, apparently. They seemed to have only laid their eggs at night, in alleys and groups of trees where people didn't frequent. But they laid eggs quickly, and those eggs hatched new Wraith. Which inherited the quick aging of their parents.

And on and on and on and on.

"I hate to ask this, but are you sure they're gone?" John asked.

Yesterday he'd finally gotten Rodney to settle down and understand not to ask any more questions of anybody, and it was early afternoon now. The morning had been spent assessing resources and doing local scouting missions, which Rodney hadn't been invited to join.

Ronon shook his head. "I know they're not gone." He gestured around them. "Burn every building to ashes and some would still be there. Fled to the hills or growing in nests in the ground." He grit his teeth. "We're going to find as much construction equipment as we can and tear the dirt apart."

John nodded slowly. He hoped that whatever Wraith had escaped hadn't headed in the direction of the spots the hospitals had emptied out to. He couldn't figure out how to ask Ronon if he was worried about that too, though. He did watch Ronon send out five people armed with blasters to find and guard anyone from the hospitals who'd found safety.

What he remembered of Sateda had always reminded him of the Ancestral city from his visions. Now it was just … rubble. And every single breath of air smelled of fire: burnt grass, stone and metal destroyed and warped, Wraith flesh turned to ash.

So he accepted without hesitation when Ronon asked him if he wanted to look for construction equipment with them. Maybe it would help him get his mind off the stench.

"Hey, Rodney, come with us," he said, ducking into the building where the group had made camp.

Rodney looked up from a notebook he was staring at. They'd put him in a room away from everyone else. The Satedans were sticking close together and didn't seem to want an outsider too near -- John had been given his own room, as well, but he had the feeling Ronon regarded him as useful (or potentially so) and that's why he'd been allowed to stay.

Rodney, he had no idea about. Maybe Ronon thought magic might be useful at some point. Maybe he'd just forgotten about the guy. It'd been a whole day now and Ronon hadn't spoken of him until John had asked if he should bring the man along.

"Why? Where are you going?"

"We're going to find some equipment. A little of their stuff is from Ancestral design and we need somebody who knows the Ancestors," John explained. That, and he was starting to feel an itch of guilt leaving Rodney alone all day.

Rodney frowned but put his things away and came to join them.

He thankfully didn't complain on the hike around the city, although John could see the discomfort and irritation in the man's face and clear blue eyes. John encouraged short breaks half in the disguise of scouting the way ahead without making movement that might alert any Wraith nearby.

They managed not to encounter any, but they had also looped around the outer edge of the city. It took twice as long as it would've taken otherwise, Ronon said, but it was safer, and the longer any Wraith in the city slept the better. He wanted to at least have replacements for broken weapons before they got into any more fights with the mutated Wraith.

Someone had been filling Rodney in quietly back at camp, it seemed. "There's a possibility that they did inject them with an aging serum," he said, once they were inside a building. He and John were standing to the side while the Satedans got through the security measures still left intact. "It may not have worked correctly, but if they've really gone through so many generations in such a short time, it could mutate." He paused. "Which means that the ones being born now might grow old before they can do much damage. Maybe."

John nodded. He had the feeling Rodney was trying to reassure himself. If Rodney had been confident in that theory, John thought he'd be telling it to Ronon, not whispering off in a corner out of the Satdeans' earshot.

"I wish I had a corpse," Rodney muttered.

John turned to stare at him.

"A Wraith corpse!" Rodney protested. "Obviously!" He huffed. "I'm seriously beginning to believe that it's the only way I'm ever going to get ahead in my studies. All I have is a third of the information I wanted from the Athosian ruins, without the possibility of ever going back and getting more." He glanced at John. "If you find a body left, even if it's just part of it, could you--"

"I'll let you know," John said, feeling decidedly queasy.

He'd cringed at Rodney's protests on Athos insisting that he should be allowed to dig up one of the buried Wraith and the idea of finding one left to rot on the streets of Sateda made him sick to his stomach.

They finally moved forward when Ronon said it was all clear. "You two can look around for whatever," he said. "You won't know how to work the Satedan equipment. Just yell if you find something that looks Ancestral." He scowled. "And don't touch."

"Why did he say that to me?" Rodney asked, as Ronon turned and walked off through the aisles of machines.

John shrugged diplomatically. They went down a path that none of the Satedans had taken, John nudging the scholar on. If they weren't looking for things of more Ancestral design, then the places they avoided would be where Rodney might actually find something useful.

He guessed finding a bottle marked MAGIC ANTI-WRAITH POTION would be too much to hope for.

They found a glass case at the end of one aisle that had a fine layer of dust on it.

John wiped a circle of it off with his sleeve and peered inside. "It's just decorations," he said, disappointed.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Let me be the judge of that."

He didn't have to break a lock to get into the case. It wasn't sealed. That only reinforced John's idea that this was something randomly stored here, a bunch of useless stuff. He started glancing around hoping to see a more interesting direction to follow while Rodney turned a pendant over in his hands.

"I don't think it's anything, Rodney," he said, after Rodney had muttered a couple of spells.

"Hmm." Rodney thrust his hand out. "You try it."

John raised an eyebrow. "Try what?"

"You have magic -- Don't look at me like that! Visions are a type of magic -- and it might do something for you." Rodney held out the pendant again.

Sighing, John took it in his hand. The pendant was a couple of inches across and made of thick, opaque blue glass. It had the image of a dragon stamped into the face. Or blown, or however that worked with glass.

Looking at it made John flash hot all over, the burning turning into a fierce itch before fading into a chill.

He didn't have the chance to tell Rodney before the vision swallowed him up.

This one rushed over the planet from his usual visions so quickly that John could barely recognize it. Everything turned into a blur: the ocean, the mainland, the dragons circling the city spires. It flew by enough to make him dizzy within the vision itself, and it swept through city halls John wasn't sure he'd ever seen before. There were machines there that looked utterly alien to his eye.

The vision slowed only when it began to reach its destination. John caught the image of a dragon's face in a window just before the vision turned and entered a huge room with an arched ceiling. And a Ring at the bottom of a grand set of stairs. Sun streamed in everywhere through clear glass.

John barely had time to take it in before the Ring began to light up.

Not the way it would if he was watching someone dialing into it. The symbols glowed a dark brown-green, like dragon's skin.

John recognized all the symbols except one, which he knew by sight but not by history. This wasn't a symbol in any of the addresses to planets he visited or that his family visited. It was simple, though. John felt like he could have traced it in the air if he'd been able to move.

A triangle missing its bottom length with a small, empty circle above the point.

Then the Ring water flared into place and John disappeared as it rushed out to meet him.

---

Rodney shouted for help when John suddenly collapsed. He barely managed to catch John and make sure he didn't hit his head on the ground, and it was under a minute before Ronon appeared at his side. He kneeled down beside John and felt his pulse.

"What's wrong? Is it heat stroke? Smoke inhalation?" Rodney asked, wringing his hands.

"He fainted," Ronon said, removing his hand from John's neck.

"Fainted?" Rodney blinked as Ronon sat back and frowned at John's prone figure. "He fainted. That's your answer. Is there an actual medic around here we could ask for a more educated guess?" Rodney didn't entirely trust doctors but they probably still knew more about the body than this guy did.

"Yeah. Fainted." Ronon leaned down and pried the glass pendant out of John's grip. The man's fingers had curled into a fist around it. "What's this thing?"

Rodney hesitated. "We were investigating that," he said as smoothly as possible. The look Ronon shot him said he didn't buy it. "It's a potential Ancestral magic artifact and--" Oh, shit. He snapped his fingers. "He's having a vision."

"A vision?"

"Yeah. He has visions. This must have triggered it." Rodney frowned. "But he didn't say that he fainted when they happened…"

Just then, John's eyes flickered open.

Rodney jumped and Ronon bent down to check his pupils. "You fainted," Ronon said. "Can you understand me?"

"Passed out," John groaned. He pressed a hand to his eyes and cringed, rolling onto his side to face the two of them better. The way he was curled made Rodney think he was in pain. "That one wiped me out," he said, coughing some.

"What did you see?" Rodney asked, while Ronon asked, "You okay?"

They shared a look that made Rodney scuttle around to John's other side. He crouched down, too, awkwardly trying not to crush the guy or lean too heavily into the rack of miscellaneous things behind him. It would be just his luck to shove over the shelf and have a domino effect ripple through the rest of the warehouse.

"I'm fine. Just… feel like somebody stabbed me."

"Oh, that's fine," Rodney snorted.

Ronon held out his hand and hauled John into a sitting position. "Sorry, buddy," John muttered, staring at the ground. He saw that Ronon was holding the pendant. "You might want to put that back up. Or better yet, break the damn thing."

"What did you see?" Rodney repeated, anxiously.

John told them, fumbling on the word dragons when Ronon looked baffled, and changing it to Spirits. Which just made Ronon look thoughtful, an expression Rodney hadn't expected to see on the Specialist's face.

It didn't matter, though. Because: "Dragons? You see dragons too? Why the hell didn't you tell me? I thought I was the only person who had locked onto visions of them, everybody acts like I'm making it up because they can't get the same images to pop up--" he started to rush, the words connected when he took too long to inhale again.

John held up a hand to stop him. "Hold up, Rodney," he said. He paused, then pushed himself gingerly to his feet. Ronon stuck to his side but John didn't seem like he was about to fall over. "All I know is that it once was -- or will be -- an Ancestral city, with, yes, Spirits," he said, glancing sideways at Ronon. "It doesn't necessarily mean anything."

Rodney threw his hands up in the air. "Of course it means something!" he shouted.

"I agree," Ronon said. They both blinked and Ronon shifted his weight, crossing his arms over his chest. "Sheppard, if you saw a real Ancestral city, it might have defenses my people could use."

"Wait a minute, you can't just go in and--" Rodney started.

Ronon shot him a withering glare and Rodney actually shuffled back an inch, brushing against the shelf. "The Ancestors used to live on Sateda," Ronon said, firmly. "We inherited a lot. If this city exists, it could help me fix this place." His lips twisted. "The Ancestors were supposed to get rid of the Wraith."

"Yes, and they didn't, which means we need to study what they have -- study, not take and possibly break forever -- so we can figure out what they weren't able to!" Rodney blurted, angling himself slightly behind John to avoid the worst of Ronon's next look.

John stared at both of them. "Are you telling me you seriously want to step through the Ring based on nothing but a hallucination in my head that may or may not lead us straight into space?" he asked, flatly.

"I'd cast a sensing spell first!" Rodney said.

---

John insisted on having two of the Satedan blaster guns before he was willing to give the others the coordinates. Ronon found two in the warehouse and shoved them into his hands.

"Are you serious?" Rodney asked. "This symbol, really?"

"What about it?" John asked, uneasily. He was sure that he'd drawn the symbol correctly. "Are you starting to doubt my possibly highly unreliable visions?" he asked.

The visions he'd had over his life had mostly been the Ancestral city and its dragons. The few times he'd had visions of anything else, sure, they'd come true or proved to have happened in the past, but that didn't mean anything. For all John knew he had a lump growing in his brain that was slowly killing him and causing messed up visions along the way. He couldn't get over how seriously Ronon and Rodney were prepping for this trip.

He really, really hoped that they weren't doomed.

They were standing in front of the Ancestor's Ring with supplies for an overnight stay and a bunch of Satedans looking at them like they might be crazy. Ha, no, but that was what John wished. They were looking at them with hope and something like wonder.

If they didn't get their faces eaten in this city maybe they would actually find something to help Sateda defend itself against the monsters its scientists had created. John hoped so, because he thought he might not ever step through the Ring again if this all turned out to be a waste.

The feeling of heat in his bones was still there even though he wasn't about to have a vision -- nothing stopped or followed up the sensation. John recognized it as a kind of shock, but he didn't know what to do about it.

"This symbol," Rodney said, pointing at the unfinished triangle with the empty dot above it, "is the seal of my academy." He shook his head. "I can't believe it."

"Could you dial?" John asked, fidgeting. "I'd like to get this over with as quickly as possible."

Rodney sighed, muttering about going unappreciated, and started dialing the coordinates.

John raised his blaster in case a swarm of Wraith burst out along with the whoosh that came with a successful dialing. He half hoped that the address wouldn't click into place at all.

Of course, it did.

Rodney stepped out in front of them all and moved his hands in the air some. To John it looked like he was swatting at a bug, but apparently that was what some magic looked like. The heat in his bones started fading, though.

Maybe that pendant had been carrying magic. Maybe Rodney's magic was cancelling it out. Who knew?

"It's safe," Rodney proclaimed, a minute later. "There's breathable air on the other side."

"Are you sure?" John asked, even as Ronon started walking toward the Ring.

"Yes I'm sure!" Rodney said. He turned around to scoop up his bags and trotted after Ronon. He stopped at the top of the ramp leading up to the Satedan Ring and looked over his shoulder, while John tried to remember to breathe. "Are you coming?"

John stared at the Ring and failed to come up with another address he would feel more comfortable dialing.

In answer, he started walking up to it, and Rodney nodded once before walking through the rippling water. John exhaled on the edge before passing through. The cold shocked him, and when he stepped out of the Ring on the other end, the aching heat had gone from his bones entirely.

Instead he had a sense of hyper-awareness and safety that he'd never felt simultaneously before. His throat also went completely dry, so his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, leaving him speechless.

Ronon was already at the top of the staircase. The grand set of stairs from John's vision. They looked exactly the same, with the symbols carved into them and everything. Rodney rushed up the steps too and started looking around at some strange equipment, babbling on. The sound of his voice reached John's ears in a muffled way, so that John couldn't actually make out the words that Rodney was saying. It didn't matter. That's not what he wanted.

He slowly turned around to face the windows he knew would be there -- and they were. But that was also the moment he first realized how dark it was in the city.

"Any maps in there?" he heard Ronon asking.

John walked slowly up the stairs, blaster gripped in both hands, as he swept the area even though the other two had already declared it safe. The doors in view were all closed, but as John progressed up the stairs, the lights started turning on. So did the console under Rodney's hands.

"Hey!" Rodney said. "I didn't do that. Who did that?" he asked, his head whipping around.

John let out a breath. "It's just picking up that we're here," he said. He felt it as sure as the awareness that was settling into him with every second he spent in this place. It almost felt like the city was… speaking to him.

"Automated response?" Rodney said. John could hear a note of hesitation in his voice that must be there after the incident on Athos.

Ronon walked up to a door that opened as John came up behind him. Ronon glanced back and nodded through the doorway. "Looks like we need to stick together."

"Stick together? Of course we should -- Wait, where are you going?"

They were already down the hallway when Rodney came running to catch up with them, without any of the bags he'd brought. John insisted on stopping at every corner and having Rodney cast a sensing spell. There seemed to be no one at all in the entire city, let alone any Wraith, but John didn't care how much it slowed them down -- he had to know for sure. At least the hallways had enough lights to see by.

"Hey, wait," Rodney suddenly said.

John turned around to see the man staring out a window. "What's… Oh."

He walked up to the glass Rodney was staring out of. For the longest moment, he had absolutely no idea what to say about what he was seeing. It was the strangest thing he had ever seen in his life. And so dark as to be almost unrecognizable.

"How are we underwater?" Ronon asked.

Rodney started to open his mouth when suddenly the world around them shook. John grabbed hold of the nearest thing he could -- the frame of a doorway. Rodney braced himself on the window and Ronon just stood there staring at the window, with apparently a catlike ability to balance.

The water around them -- and John could recognize it as water, now, albeit deep water, after being baffled about why the stuff around them was such a deep, dark color -- began to change tone. A deep green-blue at first, it slowly became a shade John was familiar with.

It was a shock to see the water start to fall away -- but not immediately outside the window. John had to let go of the doorway and walk up to press his hand against the glass, nudging Rodney out of the way, before he understood what was going on in the outer city. There was some kind of dome -- invisible, but there, maybe magical -- protecting the city from the water. And it stayed there until they had crested through the surface.

John saw it flash right before disappearing. The sunlight was so bright that for a moment he had to turn his back to the window. His heart was pounding so rapidly he felt like he was losing his breath, and he pressed his back against the wall to keep from falling over.

Ronon looked over at him. "If you faint," he said, the corner of his mouth turning up just slightly, "we'll catch you."

"Ha, ha."

---

They walked for a while. The outside of the city wasn't wet, which confirmed Rodney's theory that the Ancestors must have extended a dome shield over the entire city to keep the water at bay. It took a while to puzzle out, but he imagined that besides water damage, the pressure of the water however deep they had been would have destroyed the city for good.

Why the city had been underwater was another question entirely.

"No soil," Ronon said, as they exited onto a long outer walkway.

Rodney had wanted to keep looking at the Ancestors' information devices, especially because once John got near them and they turned on, he was able to use them without John even being in the room. Though his Ancestral translation skills were very slim, he knew someone at the Academy would have a spell for it. Sure, it was normally used on speech and printed word, but there must be a way to tweak the spell to use on the machines.

If it came down to it, Rodney was willing to copy everything out by hand. This was it. This was his key to solving the problem of the Wraith, he just knew it. The certainty hummed in his chest.

"What about soil?" John asked, turning around. He was ahead of them. He hadn't been able to stand still since the city had broken the water line.

Ronon gestured at the floors, which had alternately been made of either tile or metal. "No soil. No place for Wraith to lay eggs."

They all paused and looked down at their feet. Rodney walked over to a railing and looked over the side, then quickly leaned back when it appeared to be a metal drop off of hundreds of feet, straight down to the ocean itself.

"If it were me," Ronon said, glaring out at the sea like it was a personal enemy, "I'd build where the Wraith couldn't breed."

"So why sink the city?" John asked. He was running his hands over the railing, staring down at the water Rodney didn't want to look at again just yet. "Why would that be better than just sitting up here?"

"Corrosion?" Rodney guessed, thinking of rust and salt damage.

Ronon shrugged. "There might be islands. Wraith can fly."

It seemed, unfortunately, like a logical explanation. Rodney noticed that both of the other men kept a check on their blaster guns for the rest of the walk. Inside himself, he prepped a fireball spell for launch. Just in case. It would take a split second to call it up but he thought he might look paranoid if he manifested the fire in his hand now.

"This feels like a big walkway to nowhere," he prompted, after they'd been walking for a few minutes and only seen more metal pathway stretching out before them. "Let's head back inside, huh? I have things I want to look at."

"Cool it, Rodney," John said, absently. "I just want another few minutes."

Ronon grinned when Rodney muttered to himself. They kept walking, but Rodney didn't see anything except more city. It was huge and it did look just like his visions. Except taller. Without the sand covering most of it, the city was even more enormous than he had ever imagined it to be.

He stopped dead in his tracks. Ronon and John ignored it, continuing on their walk without him. Rodney had to put his hands on his knees and let go of his fireball spell to breathe until his heart slowed down. It took a while.

"Rodney!"

The city from his visions was this city. He knew that as surely as he knew his own name. But this city was surrounded by an ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see, and his had been buried up to its neck in the desert.

What the hell was going to happen here?

"Hey, magician!"

In ancient times, sure, there had been lakes where there was now plain, dead landscape. Rodney knew that from various geography classes he'd been stuffed into at the Academy as a child. But this was an ocean. An ocean could take up nearly half of a planet's mass. For that to turn to desert?

"Rodney! Look up, right now!"

He shut his eyes and tried to shake off a feeling of impending doom. There was no way that an ocean could dry up to sand overnight. There was no force, natural or magical, that could accomplish that kind of feat. So he shouldn't worry about it. He shouldn't be panicking, his heart rate rising, the confidence he'd been feeling starting to drain away so fear and the urge to run back to the Ring was flooding him--

A shadow covered his vision and he screamed, backpedaling so quickly that he fell on his ass hard enough to bruise it.

The only sound around him when he looked up was the quiet breathing of a dragon.

"Oh," he squeaked.

The dragon was easily four or five times his size. It had landed in the middle of the walkway, its wings outstretched to catch the light of the setting sun. The wings really were translucent in the sunlight, just like they had been in his visions. And the skin and scales were the same green-brown, and the eyes, which were as big as his head, were gold with a slit of black pupil down the middle, and Rodney wanted to scream again but couldn't find his voice.

The dragon lowered its head so its face was inches away from Rodney's.

And Rodney had his first full vision ever.

He wondered if John's were filled with terror, too. He tried jerking himself out of it but couldn't. A moment ago he had been staring down a dragon's nose and now his eyes were filled corner to corner with an image of the city as scene from above, brown sand filling it from edge to edge and stretching off miles away where ocean was now.

And still, dragons circling the city spires.

We are forever. But you are not, a voice said, as all-encompassing as the vision itself. It sounded inhuman and lyrical and hissing all at once. Stop focusing on an impossible future and contemplate your present.

Without warning Rodney's eyes were seeing the dragon before him again, instead of a city apparently forever in the future. His jaw dropped as the dragon lifted its head, flapped its wings once, and turned around slowly enough that Rodney had time to crawl backward and avoid getting hit by her -- he suddenly felt like it was a her -- tail.

It shocked him when he heard the voice again, once more like it had been planted inside his head: Hello, John Sheppard.

---

John's first thought, was, bizarrely, that the dragon hadn't addressed Rodney by name. Maybe he should have had other things on his mind, since the creature had flown from somewhere in the distance so quickly that neither he nor Ronon had been prepared.

They could have shot it when it landed on the pier with them, but she was so different from a Wraith John hadn't even been able to raise his gun.

The color of her skin and scales looked like a real creature would, not the pasty green of the Wraith. Her wings were as stunning when raised to the light as they were in his visions. And he had been just about right at the size estimate. That didn't mean that he wasn't about to drop his gun from his hand when the dragon turned around and looked at him, though.

Hello, John Sheppard.

John absently put his hand to his ear and glanced over at Ronon, who was doing the same. The voice wasn't … in the air. It just … sort of settled into his brain, and a moment after the words faded it felt like he had always known that voice. It was enthralling and threatening all wrapped up together and John had no idea what to do.

We have been waiting for you, the dragon said. It started to move forward.

John thought of the thud of Rodney's body hitting the ground and how frozen he had looked in the midst of what had obviously been a vision. He remembered the fear that crossed Rodney's face, too, and wondering whether that's what he looked like when he was in the middle of a vision.

He backed a few steps away from the dragon and begged, "Please, no more visions."

She tilted her head to one side, blinking clear eyelids over her golden eyes. Ronon edged over so he was standing right beside John, but the dragon didn't move her attention to him. She slowly beat her wings once, stirring the air, and John's stomach dropped, wondering if he had offended her so badly that she was just going to leave.

She was tarrying but magnificent and the proof that he hadn't been born crazy and John was not ready for her to leave.

You were born seeing us, the dragon said, gently. She lifted her head back so she could get a better look at him. She'd been standing, but rested now on her hind legs. You have a strong thread of the Ancestors inside you.

John swallowed. "All right," he said, his voice dry. He had to force the words out. This was the strangest experience he had ever had in his entire life.

I will give you a gift, if you will consent to a vision, the dragon said. She made a shrill kind of a purr in the back of her throat. If you do not, I will wait for another.

John hesitated. He looked over at Ronon, who inhaled before reaching out and touching his shoulder. That made him realize that Ronon could hear the dragon's voice, too, despite not having practiced magic or experiencing visions before. The dragon wasn't what he had expected.

"Do what you want," Ronon said, quietly.

John swallowed again and looked back at the dragon, then down, so he could see Rodney standing behind it. Rodney had his arms wrapped around himself and was gaping at the dragon's back, except… It wasn't shock and fear, it was giddiness. John had to stare at the man for a moment before realizing it. That was the happiest he had ever seen Rodney. Even happier than a few minutes ago in the lab.

He looked at the dragon, uneasily meeting her eyes. "Can you give it to all of us that want it?" he asked. It would be easier if he didn't have to bear the vision alone.

No. Only you.

He sighed. "It was worth a try," he murmured. He rubbed at his face and stepped forward. "Okay."

The dragon didn't respond before he flashed hot and an itch sprung up in his bones and it was all swept away in a swirl of cold that reached down so far inside him John was numb when he fell into Ronon's arms, Rodney shouting in the background and edging around the dragon.

Rodney's face was the last thing he saw before the vision went into full force.

---

It was the city, again.

It was always the city.

Except now, it was filled with people. People who looked like him and Ronon and Rodney and Teyla (except maybe taller, in her case) and who were wearing all white. They walked with purpose through the city while dragons lazily napped on balconies and floated on waves of heat in the air and dove into the water next to the piers for fish.

The vision gently guided him into a room that made his stomach churn. He tried to back out, an effort he'd given up as useless years ago. But the vision didn't end and he had to keep watching as it settled into a spot where he could see the thing on the table and the people surrounding it at the same time.

It was a Wraith.

It was bigger than a Wraith, but it was more sickly looking, its eyes shut with some kind of film around the lids that made John think they had never opened. There was no eggshell scattered around this thing. It was full-grown, or just born, he couldn't tell. It was definitely a Wraith, but it was a different kind of Wraith. Its skin was darker and it wheezed when it breathed and it was bigger than a usual Wraith but its wings looked too small to sustain it in the air.

Then a scientist reached out and the Wraith's head snapped up, its jaws closing around the man's hand.

John had to listen to every moment of his screaming before the others separated them and got the man away, rushed to an infirmary. John had to stand there and watch the Wraith spit the mangled remains of the man's hand onto the ground, and let out a strangled cry while feebly beating its wings. The force wasn't enough to even lift it off the table they had it spread out on. It wasn't even tied down.

"I told you this was a horrible decision!" someone screamed, physically shoving another scientist down to the ground. The shouter was grabbed and hauled out to the hallway, too, but not before letting loose a set of curses that burned John's ears.

A man knelt to help the woman who'd been shoved back to her feet. She brushed dust off her clothes and smoothed the fabric out with hands that didn't shake a bit. The man watched her before turning to the Wraith-not-Wraith tied on the table.

"We'll make it smaller," he said. "And improve its metabolism. The wings need work, too. But we shouldn't cancel it yet."

The woman let out a breath and nodded. "We need more original DNA. Send someone to collect another Spirit egg."

The man walked out of John's line of sight, and he watched the woman circle around the table so he could see her face while she stared down at the Wraith. It whined, and thrashed its tail, and bared its teeth, and its wings drooped. John felt knotted up.

The woman clicked a few buttons on a device and held it up beside her head. She began speaking into it, so John assumed it was either a radio of some sort or a recording machine. "Percit has been attacked. It seems that his hand will not be able to be salvaged. Institute new shield protocols to prevent the Wraith from making physical contact. Instruct the others that tactile tests will only take place with the Wraith under heavy sedation."

These were the Ancestors?

"The Spirits have taught us much about the nature of sentience and how we should evolve if we are to close our society's doors to progress Ascension. But the project is inherently contaminated by their undue ability to influence others and to practice magic. We must cut both of these things out of the genetic line."

This was the reason so many people feared so much?

"I strongly believe," the woman said, "that the project can still become a success. The Spirits are outliving their usefulness and we will find a way to revitalize their species so that they cannot communicate directly with other sentient beings. The Spirits' interference will not be allowed to--"

The Wraith lifted its head and shrieked over the last of the woman's words, and she left the room calling for the other scientists to leave with her.

This was the reason his father had died?

John's vision closed as new people rushed into the room and stunned the Wraith into unconsciousness.

---

So you see, the dragon said. She leaned down and briefly pressed the crown of her head to John's face. Her scales were hard but they didn't hurt, and he blinked his eyes open, laying a hand on top of her head. She made another purring sound and pulled back, raising her wing for a moment. Please, join them.

John was confused until Rodney darted past her to join the group and he realized the dragon had been talking to him at that moment.

Rodney crouched down next to John and together with Ronon helped him back to his feet. Ronon put a hand on his shoulder to steady him, and John grabbed Rodney's wrist before the other man could pull away. He still felt as shaken as he had been after being half-drowned. He didn't want Rodney to move away from him now.

John Sheppard will tell you what I have shown him. You will trust in him, the dragon said.

She shut her eyes for a moment before standing back up, stretching so that her legs lengthened and her back arched. It made her wings stand up at either side and catch the fading sunrise. They seemed to glow.

We have much more to discuss. She looked at Ronon for the first time, and the big man stiffened, raising his chin slightly. Son of Sateda. The Ancestors left the worst ambitions available for your people to find.

Ronon's mouth was a hard line. "They did."

The dragon bowed her head. Then it is only fitting you inherit their best, she said. As long as you allow those with the need to share in it.

None of them had time to ask what that meant. The dragon began to beat her wings, slowly enough at first that John could count seconds with each movement, then progressively faster until she had lifted her great body a few feet off the ground and was hovering before them.

We live on the land. Find us when you have all who you need.

A pair of faces flashed in John's vision, searing into his memory with almost physical force.

And with that, she raised herself into the sky.

As three they turned around and watched her go. She flew in the direction of the setting sun, the sliver of light blinding them before her shape had begun to shrink in the distance. John shielded his eyes while Rodney ducked his head, and Ronon just turned around. He couldn't even peer through gaps in his fingers, though. Not without spots appearing before his eyes.

And by the time the sun set, there was no way to see the dragon's shape any longer anyway.

"What did she give you?" John asked, still staring in the direction anyway. A breeze was picking up and rustling their clothes and hair.

Ronon grunted and Rodney leapt in. "She gave him the city," he said. John stared at him, and he shrugged. "It's the only intact thing -- besides her, and, well, the rest of her clan -- the Ancestors have left behind. What else could bet their 'best'?"

"No wonder they wanted to get rid of them," John said.

"What?"

He wet his lips and rubbed at his forehead and sat down, because this wasn't a story he could relive while standing.

The other two slowly sank to their feet over the course of it.

The Ancestors created the Spirits (previously known fact). The Ancestors had created the Spirits in order to study the nature of intelligence and the self-containment of a community (previously unknown). The Ancestors created the Wraith from the Spirits (whispered theory that most people would hate if they heard it).

And the kicker: The Ancestors created the Wraith from the Spirits for the sole purpose of removing their ability to communicate and practice magic in order to make for a more pure experiment (…).

The last point was when Rodney joined them on the ground.

He looked like he'd aged five years in the last five minutes, and John wondered how haggard he looked himself. It would be nice to sleep, except he wasn't sure what his dreams would end up doing to him.

They all sat there in the cool night air until it seemed worse to keep the silence than not.

"What next?" Ronon asked.

John looked at him and knew he was thinking of the twenty-seven people left back on Sateda, plus the huddled groups from the hospitals. People who had died and what this city might mean for their legacy. What it would mean for the continued survival of his people.

"You have to do what you think is best," he said, noting that Rodney just nodded. "Do you want to bring your people here?"

Ronon inhaled and looked out at the ocean. Then he looked back to them, and gave a grin that split his face from ear to ear. "Oh, yeah."

After some discussion about bringing a small group in to scout out the city, Ronon loped back toward the Ring on his own. John wasn't quite ready to get up yet even though the wind and the chill was starting to bite at his skin. He kept looking in the direction the dragon had flown, and imagining more coming back.

"She said we had to find more people," Rodney said, after a moment. He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh, his shoulders sagging. "All I can think is how many people a place like this can hold. How many is enough?"

John remembered the two faces and chewed them over for a moment.

Before he could speak, Rodney made his thoughts change track. "I mean, the academy is nearly crammed full in every room right now." He chewed his lower lip. His face was drawn at the edges. "She said I'm supposed to live in the present."

"What do you think that means?" John asked.

Rodney thought for another moment and exhaled. "I think it means I'm supposed to bring people here." He looked exhausted. "And not just for researching… for… I think it means I'm supposed to make another academy." He looked up. "Another place for… foundlings."

That surprised John and settled heavily on his shoulders when he realized what it would mean. More orphans or abandoned children. Sure, there were plenty of ordinary ways for that kind of thing to happen. And then there were parents killed by the Wraith or so afraid of them that they might think their kid would have a better chance… somewhere the Wraith couldn't lay their eggs. This city fit the bill.

"That's not my area," Rodney said, his voice hushed. "I don't… I don't know how those things work. Telling people where they can bring their kids. Kids! I don't know a thing about taking care of kids," he said, grimacing. He ran his hands over his head and groaned softly.

"You must know people who do, though," John said. He scooted over until he was sitting next to Rodney, legs folded underneath himself, and touched their knees together. "The academy isn't run by one person alone, is it?"

Rodney considered this. "No," he said. "No, it's not."

"So ask for help," John said, softly.

Rodney nodded. Then he bumped his knee against John's. John smiled with one corner of his mouth and bumped Rodney back. "Do you think that's what she meant? We're all supposed to bring people here?"

"Yes," John said. "I'm pretty sure it was."

"But…" He glanced at John. "Who are you bringing?"

"Teyla," John said, the first face the dragon gave him in his mind. Rodney raised his eyebrows and John shrugged. "I know you don't know her, really, but… we've been friends for a while. And she's always helped me."

He exhaled and, inching away from Rodney to make it comfortable, decided to lay down flat on the pier. It did feel nice to stretch out.

He looked up at the stars in the now-darkened night sky. "I don't know what she'll say. But I think she'll be interested," he said.

Rodney, still sitting up, nodded. He held up a hand and began to count off. "The Satedans. A new academy. Teyla." He paused. "Is that all?"

"No," John murmured.

The second face, another woman, appeared his mind. She was pale with dark eyes and dark curls that framed her face. John had never seen her before and he had no idea where she might be from. He didn't even know her name. He just had her face in his head, and the certainty that she could help them.

"Who else?"

John grinned. "I have no idea. You'll have to scry for her when I can get you a picture."

The baffled look Rodney gave him made him laugh with his whole body.

---

They found a place to sleep and decided to stay the night.

"What do we call this place?" Rodney asked.

The name came to John unbidden: "Atlantis."