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Nucleation Point

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-

As with most Ancient devices, it was something related to ascension. Something to do with phase states, he would assume later, based on the categorical, first-hand evidence of dying.

-

It was a small village. Not quite minuscule, but about average for a Pegasus planet. While he had already listened in on - and debated with others - the logistics of human civilizations further from the gate in conjunction with Wraith attacks, Elizabeth had not, yet, authorized some drones to scan multiple planets for habitation. He sighed, already seeing her frown in his mind's eye.

Ronon grunted beside him, and he grunted back dismissively, waving his LSD. So far they had yet to tramp through this week's planetary forest to this week's planetary village, and he was at most hoping whatever cultural détente a patient Teyla and smiling Sheppard smoothed over was small enough to get them back home for a late lunch.

He glanced back at his screen. Maybe a snack pile between lunch and dinner.

Restraining yet another sigh, he glanced up at his other team mates walking in front of them. It was long practice to only check that Teyla was in eyesight and doing well, but Ronon was a pal - and anyway, not paying nearly enough attention to him - so he let his eyes slide over Sheppard for a beat longer than usual. There were some benefits to taking up the team's six, buddy system or no.

Sheppard was, as usual, picturesque. He wore his uniform like he was made for it, or perhaps the clothes obligingly moulded themselves to what was probably a magazine-worthy frame. Frankly, he wouldn't know, too determined not to look in those infrequent opportunities in the group shower by the gear room, lest he reveal an expression that was, otherwise, carefully secreted away.

The life signs detector is only just starting to detect, and he switches his attention back to it, listening to the faint beeps as Teyla smoothly navigates them onto the correct deer path. With his attention thus re-occupied, he was better able to hear Teyla, her conversational, lecturing tone dropping his shoulders the longer he listened.

"We have not had many trades with the people on this planet," She was saying, gesturing casually, in what was probably the direction of the village, "Their representative comes to the surface irregularly, and most of their trade is knowledge of the Ancients."

Ronon made a grumbling noise next to him when Sheppard audibly raised a brow at Teyla, "They've got some good mushrooms, too."

What a curious thing to offer people, but then, if Teyla's information was correct - and it usually was, there could be some interesting things afoot. He blinked a couple times at his LSD, wondering how much attention to pay to the conversation before bald curiosity won out, "Medicinal or recreational?"

Edible was not a word he was going to use, not after the lengthy lecture he received from one of his newest scientists on vernacular. And it wasn't like he didn't already know what that particular iteration of slang meant - attending college in the eighties was reasonable enough exposure to the trends of the time, he thinks - but shrooms and mushrooms and marijuana were only vaguely overlapping Venn diagrams of drugs to him. Nevertheless, he glances up in time to see Teyla's grin, catching the lilt to it in time to roll his eyes.

Sheppard rolled his eyes back at him, despite not even being part of this bit, and he habitually tamped down on the urge to decide between sticking his tongue out and sighing fondly. Those were some definitively conflicting ideas, though, so happily for him they both canceled each other out and left him with looking back to Teyla with an expression of, 'Do you see what I put up with?'

Given that Teyla was Teyla, and not only also puts up with Sheppard, but also him and sometimes Ronon, he figured she had more weight to throw behind her laugh. He could almost see it in those fancy neon red letters Elizabeth swore to him one time really was visible to all women: Ah, men.

Teyla, being Athosian, probably didn't think in neon lighting, but he figured she's watched enough movies to pick it up. Leaving his thoughts to meander down the path of cultural transposition of Earth-based linguistics quirks and Wraithkin telepathy, he almost missed Teyla laughing and responding to him, "Food, mostly. I hear they have some delicacies which fetch a high price."

He knew before Sheppard even inhaled what the next sentence was going to be, so he quickly interrupted before they all devolved into an extremely funny, if headache-inducing, set of jokes, "I can't imagine they can farm truffles underground." "I'm not sure," Teyla said, in that tone that he figured out meant 'I have no idea what you just said, but sure, let's go with that', but in that impeccably cordial way, "But they are often preserved in oil or salt. They are prone to spoilage, due to the moisture in the cave systems." A beat of contemplative silence followed that, filled with the noise of their collective steps through the forest. He took in a breath to speak, and then Sheppard pounced on Teyla's statement with a marvellously charming grin that only warned of mischief, "So, like, pickled shrooms, right?" His inhale devolved into an exasperated exhale, Sheppard laughing at his reaction, and he waved his arm around, momentarily forgetting he was holding the LSD until Ronon grabbed his wrist to keep it from flying out of his grip, "That is not-!" He wiggled his arm, Ronon amiably letting it go so he could gesture with it at Sheppard's smug face, "We are not bringing recreational drugs back to Atlantis! Do you have any idea how pissed Elizabeth would be?!" "Oh, chill out," Sheppard said, confidently ignoring his extremely reasonable protests and plodding along despite Teyla's polite snickering and Ronon's amused aura, "I'm sure Carson can figure out something." "I- I-," How on earth did Sheppard possibly even think that- "I am not signing off on that, thank you very much! Those voodoo practitioners get up to enough with their- their bacterial broths and retroviral studies! I am not adding hallucinogens to the mix!" "Would calm you guys down some," Ronon muttered under his breath, raising an eyebrow when he gave him an affronted look, "What? It's not like any of you get laid." He would have reflexively rebutted that plenty of his staff were, indeed, getting up to some astoundingly minky crap when they thought the security cameras wouldn't record them, but then that would mean divulging 1) how he knew that, and 2) that he wasn't getting any. Grumbling, he wagged his finger at Sheppard, anyway, not wanting to provoke any sort of discussions in that direction, thank you very much. Nevertheless, Sheppard's ears were just the faintest tinge of pink. You know, if someone were paying attention to that sort of thing, which he wasn't. What he was paying attention to was Teyla's sublime smile, which instantly made him pause the multiple train tracks of his thoughts out of a sheer, basic hindbrain reaction to Teyla's 'I am displeased' sort of expression. Her smile got a little nicer when she noticed that he noticed, and she raised a polite eyebrow at him, "Rodney, would you switch places with me? Just for the moment." Bobbing his head and already shuffling around to do exactly that, he breathed a sigh of relief when Teyla patted his shoulder commiseratingly. He and Sheppard diligently took point in silence, both of them refusing to look backwards for the indeterminable amount of time it took Teyla to say something quieter than what he could hear.

Whatever it was, there was a quick whoomp of a bantos rod hitting Ronon's leather coat, and Ronon making a quietly aggrieved noise. Paying studious attention to the trees in front of them, he hid a grimace and raised an eyebrow at seeing Sheppard doing the same out of the corner of his eye. He didn't think either one of them really understood the nuances of Pegasus inter-planetary cultural… stuff, but thankfully in this instance neither Teyla nor Ronon required them to.

All of them then quietly - relatively - walked in silence. Whatever it was, Teyla seemed satisfied, and they had all learned to let her bask in the glow of it for a little bit. Sheppard made a face beside him, and he bit his tongue, completely unwilling to start laughing at it. They made faces at each other for a bit, neither one of them quite looking at each other, and it passed the time until the outlying border of the town rather well.

Teyla tapped him on the shoulder again, and both he and Sheppard parted to let her take point, watching as her posture shifted to that of "we come in peace" rather than "my friends are amusing but occasionally tiresome" that always managed to impress him. This was habit, too, for Sheppard to come second and he himself sandwiched between Sheppard and Ronon as they queued themselves up for what would ideally be a routine visit to introduce themselves.

He managed to hold his rifle in a somewhat friendlier manner when he noticed Sheppard's shoulders shifting to that relaxed slope that often distracted him. Ronon made a quiet noise behind him, but he was too busy following everyone else's lead to try and futilely kick Ronon in the shin, because that was a rude joke waiting for the right opportunity and Teyla was already making polite greetings to the people they were passing.

Sheppard cast a quick eyebrow over his shoulder and Ronon subsided, becoming a non-talking, looming shadow of dubious welcome in a blink. Well, it was a team member's worth of looming shadow, so he told his hackles to shut up and tried to look like he was paying attention between that and Sheppard smiling at strangers.

Luckily enough for him, he only needed to play point and shoot when Teyla or Sheppard wanted him to, and it was usually only contained to chattering about science on cue - easy enough, and easier still when they were here to trade food instead of technology. They broke for some guided wandering around soon after, and Ronon went with him and the local assigned to him because the other two members of their team were responsible for all the delicate maneuvering of trading. Sheppard couldn't possibly screw this up, or at the very least any screw-up involving Teyla was likely to be amusing rather than dangerous.

"I think I see why Teyla does meditation," Ronon leaned in to murmur, both of them able to hear her voice despite their guide also chattering on about local monuments that were made to venerate the Ancients. He gave a low hum in return, easily seeing his point; Teyla was really only quiet when eating or meditating, and all the meals here were likely going to be weighted with more cultural expectations.

Finally, their team mates were out of eye sight, and their guide - some teenager probably either trying to suck up to the leader of the villager or else was a jumping on a level of desperate opportunity that latched onto the first foreigners that looked truly novel - wandered off in his own conversation to go into detail about the statue in front of them. He blinked a few times, ignoring the way Ronon elbowed him, to drag his mind back to the present situation.

"As you can see," The kid said, pointing at the folded hands on the statue that reminded him vaguely of those Easter Island recreations Jackson's department emailed to them, "These are meant to guide meditation. This statue in particular represents Dorma, she who guides you through dreams." He paused, swallowing his instinctive witticism and pulling out his LSD, instead, based on some currently-unknown niggling hunch. The statue had that deep blue, almost black hue to it that sucked the light in despite the polish, and Ronon grunted beside him, startling the teenager into talking further.

"Uh-um, Dorma is on the edge of the town because this is the start of the path we walk for our adulthood initiation," The kid was saying, and he made a puzzled 'go on' noise, approaching the statue as the LSD developed a faint heat signature in front of him. Maybe it was just because it was nearing afternoon, residual sunshine soaking up in the stone that would leave it feeling warm long after sunset, but maybe… he walked around the statue, making an interested murmur as he adjusted the sensor parameters.

"Find anything, McKay?" Ronon asked, unmoved from his current position. "Maybe," He said distractedly, looking at their guide, "Tell me, where is this path, exactly?" The kid perked up, eager to have a task assigned to him. He glanced at his LSD and then back up in time to see where the kid was pointing - to, of course, some lightly wooded part bordering the town. Of course. Sighing he raised an eyebrow at Ronon, "Feel like taking a walk?"

Ronon raised an eyebrow back at him, "Sure."

That settled, they both looked expectantly at their guide, who startled and brushed ahead of him with a confidence that spoke of having travelled this path before. Hmm. "And what's this, uh- Dorma person supposed to do? In your dreams?" The kid grinned at him over one shoulder before continuing down the path, "Oh, easy! Dorma helps you find your heart's desire." "Which I suppose means ascension," He sighed, listening to Ronon shuffle his coat in that manner he typically interpreted as exasperation. It was either that or reaching for his pistol. Same thing, really.

"It could be," The kid nodded, pushing back some branches and being nice enough not to let him get whacked in the stomach with them. Just beyond, the start of a trail was becoming visible, if only by the slight decrease in grass in a vaguely straight line, "But the last person to have ascended was generations ago. We have only the tale left to us, and that, too, is fading with time." Ronon made a disapproving sound, "Trail's still being used, though." Another nod, and they took a wide turn around a particularly old tree, "Most of us often travel here on the third full moon past the winter solstice, in order to discover if we'll marry the upcoming year. It is quite cold, then!" The kid laughed, shaking his head, "Only the bravest go, and often we carry a bag of hashka liquor with us." "Does it taste good?" He asked, curious despite himself.

"Hah," The kid shook his head, "No. But no elder has passed judgment if we also bring with us honey and spices. Much of the bitterness goes away when it is thus seasoned over a fire."

The detail about the bitterness stuck out to him, and he was remembering some of his high school classmates that indulged in some Jägermeister. A lot of those classmates also ended up dropping out, and he wondered to himself if some nonsense was just what most teenagers got up to outside of supervision galaxies over. Behind him, Ronon was finding ways to walk past all the brush without making a sound, only the faint sound of his dreads hitting the man's leather coat acting as a clue that something other than a looming shadow was behind him.

He glanced again at his LSD when it beeped at him, the tone that of his newly-inputted parameters. Useful, if only so he can add multiple programs with their own, individual tones on top of the base program for general life signs. Resisting the urge to put up a hand to call for a stop, he simply stopped instead, making Ronon run into him and the kid look back to see the commotion.

Pointing in the closest approximation of forty-three degrees left of center, he said, "There's something matching the statue's signature that way."

Both Ronon and the kid looked where he pointed, the latter looking mystified, "So there is a shorter path to the cave."

"Wh-" His brain caught up with the implications of that statement, "Were you really going to make us walk in circles?!"

"No?"

Ronon growled, and he quickly shot a hand out to keep his team mate from advancing, feeling Ronon shift in distemper and hoping the other would keep his distance for the moment, "Look, let's just- is there anything stopping us from walking in a straight line? And don't say tradition."

The kid paused, glancing between the both of them, "I don't think anyone has ever done so."

He sighed, looking at a scowling Ronon, "So. Tradition."

"Yep," Ronon peered over his shoulder to get the heading, then proceeded to lead them in a straight line, "You said it was a cave?"

The kid was now behind them, sputtering and catching up to Ronon's ground-eating strides - only practice had him able to keep some sort of pace, even if he was dragging in his breaths to accomplish that. Ronon was mostly ignoring the both of them, lingering at dips in the new, self-chosen path, as well as any rocks that he kicked to the side. It gave them enough time to get back into Ronon's orbit, at least until the man had set off again.

In hindsight, this was at least much more entertaining than walking around in circles just because teenagers think it's a good idea. And for marriage on top of that. He swallowed a disgusted scoff, focusing on avoiding the branches that Ronon was pushing to the side. Probably all that alcohol the kids brought along did more to persuade someone to be a sweetheart than camping out in the woods overnight.

Ronon was on the verge of leaving both of them behind again, so he threw those meandering thoughts to the side to scramble over a nurse log - which looked interesting enough that he'd have to bring that mycologist he'd hired here later, even if he did accidentally scrape some hopefully non-lethal mushrooms off - before he lost sight of his team mate. Who was, in the end, waiting patiently by what was indubitably a cave entrance.

"Found it," Ronon smirked at them, leaning against the moss-covered stone and looking like he'd been waiting there a hell of a lot longer than a few minutes.

When the kid stumbled to a stop, arms out as if to push open the doors, they both lunged forward to stop him. "Uh-uh," He said firmly, yanking the kid back and shoving him at Ronon, "No. Experts only - and I don't care how many of your swooning, wine-addled friends have already been here."

Ronon snorted above the kid's protests, but he was done wagging his finger at the kid and already taking out his LSD. Sure enough, it had the same dispersion of energy as the statue, which was incredibly strange, given how many trees were shadowing the surrounding area. So, not the sunlight.

That meant a power source, and something associated with the Ancients was usually powered by some form of ZPM. Ordinarily that would excite him, but something about the promise of going through one's dreams sounded ominous, especially with what the anthropologists regularly sent him reports on just for findings in Atlantis. Pursing his lips, he picked his way in a careful circle around the lump of earth that looked too similar to grave sites he'd seen on other planets, carefully recording a map of energy fluctuations.

Sure enough, the readings were the strongest at the door, and curiously a close second was directly overhead. Ronon and the kid followed him when he walked back to the top of the mound, watching nearby as he took out another scanner for more mundane technology readings.

Whatever was going on in this place, it didn't make a lot of sense to him. The hertz readings were low, something he remembered from the few brain scans taken of him when he was shocked by that ascension device in Atlantis. Not quite, but… close.

"Are we gonna go in?" Ronon asked, eyes tracking him warily. The kid nearby was fidgeting, and oddly it brought up some fond reminiscing of some of his younger scientists, too awed by the grand disposition of Atlantis to really dig in and study it. Ronon caught the way he suppressed a smile, shaking his head at him despite the way he let the kid discretely huddle closer.

Thoughts like that preoccupying him, he compared the two scanners' outputs, trying to puzzle out the ambient noise from the ZPM readings. Was the ZPM inside hooked up to a machine that could imitate signals that easily mimicked neurological life-signs? Or something else, similar to the biological labs he and Carson had found in the beginning of the expedition's stay on Atlantis? Either way, it was discomfiting, and he wasn't inclined to poke the hornet's nest.

But those suppositions were dashed when the team radio buzzed in his ear, "McKay, Ronon, what's up?"

He exchanged a glance with Ronon, who shrugged and started walking off the small-ish hill, making both of them follow him back to the entrance. "Found a thing," Ronon said succinctly, "McKay's checking it out."

Sheppard's response was prompt, "Need any back-up?"

Which meant Sheppard and Teyla were already on their way there, and he rolled his eyes along with Ronon as he answered Sheppard's question, "Apparently the local courtship ritual involves getting drunk and walking in circles. There's something with ZPM signatures here, but we haven't entered the cave yet."

Ronon shushed the kid's protests so they could hear Sheppard respond, voice not as crisp as it would have been on Atlantis, boosted by the city's internal communications systems, "Stay by the entrance and get what readings you can. Me and Teyla are gonna be there in a minute."

He nodded along instinctively, remembering at the last minute to verbalize that, "Yes, yes, hurry up, this looks interesting."

Looking back at Ronon to see the suppressed snicker was pointless, so he focused instead on trying to read two screens at once. There didn't seem - yet - to be any pattern to the various signals, and he frowned to himself, slowly beginning to walk in circles around the mound again.

Whatever was there, the background radiation levels barely fluctuated, which meant that whatever was inside this, likely, Ancient-created cave was in incredibly good shape. He'd gotten worse readings on Atlantis itself, especially in the previously-damaged areas. There wasn't even any signs of the concerning radiation, or anything that would indicate cracked or otherwise broken circuitry or crystals.

Hm. At least not from out here. He looked up, scanning the trees and brush around them. Still no Sheppard.

"Do you think he got lost again?" He muttered, mostly to himself, even if he was gratified by Ronon's amused snort.

"Teyla's with him," Which, well, was accurate. And they also had a local guide - and Ronon deliberately cracking a few branches on the way here. Teyla would find them in a jiffy.

Fiddling with the sensors, he debated taking out a PowerBar while they waited. Ronon, meanwhile, had settled down on a conveniently-placed boulder a short distance from the cave entrance, which he figured was enough indication that they had some time to kill. The metallic crackling of the wrapper being torn open was a satisfying enough distraction, at least, and he made a pleased noise at the taste of chocolate and peanut butter.

Ordinarily, waiting was something he could deal with, especially when another member of his team was around when they were outside of Atlantis (and sometimes even within the city). He wouldn't tell them that, of course, overtly-inflated egos about their own craftiness… but having others around to keep watch was, on occasion, appreciated. Ronon glanced at him, and he pretended to be absorbed in PowerBar and scanners both, in case that mind-reading thing wasn't a Teyla exclusive.

They didn't have to wait long - only about one and a half PowerBars into their little break - when all of them looked up at the sound of Sheppard making his way to them, on the heels of Teyla and their group's guide. Charmingly handsome pilot Sheppard may be, stealthy the man was not. Exchanging looks with Teyla and Ronon at the way Sheppard cursed at a rock Ronon had upturned, they tacitly agreed to return to placid team member dynamics when the colonel looked back at them.

"Alright guys," Sheppard said, dusting his hands off with a couple good smacks on his thighs, "What do we have here?"

He looked at Ronon, and Ronon looked at him - decision made, Ronon shoved forward the kid to answer for them, who did so with only a little bit of a stink eye in their direction.

"Here is the shrine to Dorma," Their guide stated, puffing up and attempting grand gestures now that there was a new audience to impress, "She guides you through your dreams, that you may find what you're looking for."

Raising an eyebrow at the deliberate omission, he sighed when Sheppard made a curious face at him, "And also marriage."

Now both of Sheppard's eyebrows were up, and so were Teyla's as she stepped forward, "Do you mean that this is a traditional location for couples to marry?"

The kid looked a little abashed, which was understandable, because that was a lot of people's reactions when Teyla was focused on someone, "Uhm. No. Rather, uh- this is where you may dream under the watch of Dorma, and if you are meant to wed, then you shall see your beloved in your dreams. Many marry within a year."

He hadn't expected Teyla's expression to acquire that complicated little nuance he often associated with Troi or T'pol when they were meeting the society of the week, and he shifted uneasily at the sight, wondering what it was Teyla was about to say.

"And what of those that do not dream of their beloved?" Teyla asked, in a tone that wasn't quite censoring but also wasn't quite curious, "Or those that have already met their beloved?"

And there was something he could pick up on: Or lost their beloved? With how the Wraith were a common denominator in this galaxy, and how indiscriminately they tore apart families in order to feed, he was honestly surprised there wasn't more to this lore. But then again, the logs in Atlantis of this gate address were precisely why they were here - it wasn't quite like M7G-677, but evidence of some protective devices with undeniable strange energy signatures was worth checking out.

Perhaps if he found something useful here, he could find a way to better maintain the shield. Frowning to himself, he turned back to the entry way, shadowed as it was by the thin overhang of stone similar to the statue they had first found. No sense of doom overwhelmed him, which was about as sure as he could be that nothing was supposed to be amiss.

"Whatcha doin' there, McKay?" Sheppard called out.

"Hmm," He stretched a hand out, letting his fingers drift along the edges of the entry. It was noticeably warm to the touch, which he supposed would have been a welcome refuge for drunk teenagers in the middle of the night, and the LSD indicated a faint degree of radiation that would have translated as luminosity - maybe even faint enough to see, "Curious, mostly."

Everyone shuffled closer to him, which he could tell mostly by the reduction in sunlight and the vaguely looming quality of his team mates. Roundly ignoring it, he adjusted some parameters on his scanners, holding them up in an awkward grip so he could figure out where the opening mechanism of the door was. Either it opened down the middle, or off to one of the sides-

Or perhaps it was simply a strong hologram, as his hand slipped past the edge and a vaguely familiar sucking feeling pulled him through the entry. He barely had time to yelp, and the hands at his back could only slip across his tac vest as he stumbled into blinding darkness.

The breath he sucked in was loud, and he shut his eyes on instinct, curling the scanners closer and fumbling at the pockets of his vest for a torch. He couldn't hear anything, not even the static of an interrupted transmission from the teams' radios in his ear - it was that, more than anything else, which made dread settle icily in his gut.

Ohhhhhh no, He thought to himself, the bolt of fear that ran through him convincing him to be as silent as possible. What conclusions he could come up with were dour, ranging from teleportation to a broken lab from some Ancient to- to- to things he didn't want to think about.

Somehow or another, his numb fingers found the little torch everyone was issued with their field kit, and he clutched the scanners to his chest to turn the light on.

What he discovered shocked him enough that he almost wanted to turn it right back off. The same stone as the statue and the entryway, but smooth and all-encompassing, radiating a warmth he couldn't tell if it was artificial. It abruptly reminded him how obsessed Ancients were with ascending, and that tremble of fear he was attempting to suppress roared back, making the thin circle of light shake in his hand.

He whirled around in a circle, attempting to find the entry - or exit, rather. But while he could see the architectural markings of it, there was only a convex shaping of stone, with no indication of any mechanism whatsoever.

"Fuck," He whispered, voice echoing oddly in the silence. When he also realized that his voice was probably the last to be heard here since that long-ago person who ascended - because if teenagers regularly fell into here, the town would know something about this place - he swallowed dryly, echoing his sentiment, "Fuck."

Looking down, he could see no traps. Only an ordinary floor, one that wouldn't have looked out of place in some of the very abandoned places of Atlantis. It provided him with little in the way of creature comforts, especially with the lack of mentally-interactive components that all gene carriers had become accustomed to while living in the city, that gave them such comforts as opening doors and adjusting lights.

His heart tripped in his chest, and he sucked in a breath, flinching at the sound and the lack of appropriate echo in a chamber this well-shaped. Were it not for the situation, he would have loved to figure out how they constructed noise-dampening here, but as it were he could only focus on approaching the door.

The closer he got, the stronger the feeling of doom. He glanced up, wondering if the place was booby-trapped. How the hell did people get out of here? He wondered, finding nothing as he moved the torch in an arch to study the doorway, This can't possibly be a crypt, there would have been a- a podium, or something, here.

Dizziness crept over him, slowly making him aware of darkness spotting his vision outside the boundaries of his singular light source. He sucked in a breath, and then another, wondering with a muted sense of panic why it was so difficult to do.

When he looked back up at the keystone of the entry - and what a ridiculous thing, in Ancient architecture, he thought - the last thing he saw was some dark, round thing pounce upon his heart.

-

Consciousness filtered in bits and pieces, a bucket of water dredging sand up from beneath the waves. It was light, and that was unusual, but the exact reasons escaped him. He felt weightless, and that, too, escaped his attention on why such a detail was important to note.

Thus he drifted, one iota of information fed to him an eon at a time. It was, in a way, peaceful, but as he had nothing to compare it to, it was the most peaceful thing he could remember. As if he were wrapped up in some vaguely pleasant dream, caught between one scene and the next.

But the next thing-

The next thing he heard was a scream, heart-wrenching and sinking his heart back down to wherever his mind was.

-

He only knew something had occurred by the faint sense that he was missing something, and so attempted to peel his eyes open to see what it was he needed to know.

This was impossible, and frustrated him, and stoked a minuscule thread of fear into his heart - a feeling that didn't quite connect, which only made it stronger. He struggled against it, uncertain of how to proceed in this instinctive lashing of anger, and was propelled into sight.

What he observed shocked him. Mostly, though, that he was seeing without his eyes, and when he attempted to speak, he was likewise stalled on this ability. He swallowed - or believed it did - the ensuing panic down, and looked around.

Cold metal, familiar but not what he last remembered. What did he last remember? Hmm. Sunlight, and warmth. This- this room, it was anything but, as much as it assuaged some nuance of his current location. Steel. Yes, that sounded correct, and the following thought, We had that brought in on the Daedalus.

Easy to clean, was the next thought, and then, Sterile.

Yes, sterile he believed, sight catching on the multiple doors around him, an instinctive reaction he couldn't discern the source of. Most of them were square, and covering a wall, with large hooks - no, not hooks, latches - over them. A door handle.

That sounded right. He nodded, ignoring the disconnection of it for later assessment, and tried to move, wanting to reach one of the doors. But that didn't seem to work, so he looked down.

And saw himself. Or at least, he was reasonably certain it was himself. It looked familiar enough, the way he thought recognizing one's own body ought to be an instinctual sort of familiarity. There was- was a vest, with many pockets, which nearly blended into the black jacket and pants.

Now why would I wear that? He thought to himself, puzzled at the sight, Not enough colour in that at all.

Just as his mind was beginning to drift off into the vagaries of fashion, which somewhere in his mind sounded ridiculous and was pinned as a panic response, he heard a swoosh. Well. As much as he could hear a swoosh at all, given that he seemed to be temporarily - mostly? - divested from his body.

That particular little garden trail abruptly cut off at the sight of people filing into the strange, sterile, cold metal room. Some were garbed in a robe that looked dismally thin, some in the same black clothing he was in, and another- she looked important, and sad, and nodding in all the right places.

Elizabeth. A name, at least, he could pin.

Almost as if he had spoken aloud, this woman in her red shirt and red-accented jacket - something he found himself looking at with attentive interest for its distinctiveness - looked right at him.

Or close enough. She was looking at his body, lips pursed together and arms crossed. He had a vague sense memory of having done the same, but uncertain as to when, and wanted to mimic the posture despite… well, despite being inconvenienced of corporeality. Perhaps these people were here to fix this?

In which case, he needed to get their attention. How the bullocks he was going to accomplish this, he had no idea.

Regardless of this fact, he appeared - his body, again, rather - to be the center of attention, anyway, with everyone drifting closer at the cue of one of the robed people.

Hmm. The hat looked a little silly, he believed. What was the point of wearing a hat covering your face, if you just cut out a hole and stuck- stuck something in the middle? He made a disgruntled noise, and the main robed person flinched.

"C'mon," One of the others said, too tall to be believable but somehow also unaffected by the cold everyone seemed to be experiencing, squeezing the robed-person's shoulder, "We need to know."

"Right, right, yes," And that voice was also familiar. How many of these people did he know? All of a sudden, he wanted all of them to speak, to hear their voices, to reminisce over him. How did he know them? How did they know him? The urge to reach out was incredible, but out of the robed man's fear from a moment earlier, he settled down with intense curiosity.

The other robed person - a woman? He squinted, then nodded to himself. Blonde, but that was all he could tell, held up a… thing. Not for writing, but tapping, and colourful, bringing up images. Fascinating.

"As far as we can tell," The woman stated, voice warbled through the hat… hat thing? Irrelevant, he determined, listening more closely despite the continual shivers from the man, "When the device attached to his chest, he died instantly. The head injury was likely postmortem, given the sluggish rate of bleed and how cold the chamber was when you were able to retrieve him."

Huh? He blinked, But I'm right here!

If he were dead, certainly, wouldn't he have moved on? Or some such nonsense he was beginning to believe he never understood in the first place. Not this… this halfway mode of existence, tied to a body he couldn't use, able to see and hear but not reach or speak or touch.

That thought brought a heaviness onto his chest, and a feeling of dread underneath it. He blinked several times, looking away. It seemed to be the general reaction to those words, because when he was able to look back again, some still had their eyes closed, as if in pain.

"We, ah," The robed man said, "We havena, yet, found out why. Insofar as your reports from local investigation could concur, this seems to have been a complete happenstance. We canna even recognize the device, as it doesn't respond to our scanners, nor are we able to. Well. Remove it."

One of the men, in black, put a hand over his mouth. It didn't quite look like nausea, but he didn't think anger and nausea would mix, even if it settled so easily on this man's expression. A part of him felt muddled at the sight, the urge to reach out snapping at his thoughts.

Not that he would be able to soothe anyone in this state, much less himself. That bit of dread was lodged firmly over where his heart would be, pulsing as if alive the way he wasn't. Even the beat of it sounded woefully familiar, a rhythm he had heard his entire life if he could just place it.

"You're not cutting it off," The man in all-black said, firm and angry and somehow backed by so much miserable vulnerability that he understood, now, why the other had a hand over his mouth. Too many emotions at once, and fragile ones, "You're not, he- no."

"John," Someone said, and this was another woman, her expression soft and worried. He could only see comfort from this woman, a refuge of solidarity, and this was how she behaved, shoring up the leaking bits of this man - John! Finally, a name! - with a hand on his arm, "You are his emergency contact, but we may have little other choice if we must investigate the cause of his death."

He heard a strangled noise, and he was shocked to hear that it was from more than one person, seeing the robed man and another, that looked awfully familiar with those… glasses, yes, glasses and a frowning face.

"Do we not use another scanner for this?" That man asked, looking at all of them, eyes passing right over him, "I could, ah, we have Rodney's data from the scanners he brought with him, and it is still recording data. We have only plugged it into some computers to extract the information."

The man, John, turned to this man with a determined look on his face, "I think it would be best to review everything first, before-" John licked his lips, glancing at… well, his body, not him, before continuing to speak, "Before we, uh, investigate other avenues."

He thought, Just in case, and by the nodding of the others, he wasn't entirely certain if it was only him thinking that. At any rate, John seemed to be the one making decisions around here, at least for this, and it settled something in him that echoed with the strange noise he kept hearing in the background. The rapid th-thump was slowing to a regular, relaxed beat.

It seemed to be something that picked up on the spectacled man's radar - and that word didn't sound quite right, but close enough, because he looked down at whatever was in his hands and made a noise that had the others lurching toward him with concern on their faces.

He waved them off save one, gripping the forearm of the robed man with a white-knuckled grip. Both peered at the thing (and how irritating, he felt like he ought to know what it was!) and made those shaky, uncertain noises again. "Well, ah," The man said, leaning into the other, "It seems like… like we have an agreement to investigate the scanners first."

Everyone froze, even him, that persistent noise in the back of his mind speeding up in an irregular rhythm. It reminded him of anxious anticipation, and the man adjusted his glasses with rapidly blinking eyes, looking up around the room and settling somewhere where he - he him, not the body lying on the metal slab - was, "Rodney?"

Rodney. Yeah, that sounded like him.

It was too bad that was the last thing he remembered before succumbing to darkness again.

-

He didn't know what to think of all of this. Running a hand through his hair, he leaned against the wall, only a few steps outside of what Carson had quickly - unfortunately - established as the expedition's morgue.

Where Rodney laid, dead to the world save for some device suckered onto his chest like some horror movie monster and replicating his heartbeat as if it were the one live thing left of his friend. He pressed a hand against his mouth, unwilling to let what would assuredly be concerning noises leak out where everyone would be able to hear it.

If Radek hadn't suggested what he did… It didn't bear thinking about, his stomach roiling already. He had been involved in enough paperwork, long before Atlantis, of what to do with fallen soldiers and civilians. What doctors demanded and the reports they needed to make, even if the idea of an autopsy and all its clinical frills disgusted him on a visceral level. Maybe it was because it was Rodney, or that he couldn't shake the afterthought of an image out of his head that Rodney would simply wake up.

Either way, what he wanted didn't matter as much as finding out the cause of Rodney's death, nor the mysteries behind the device attached to his friend's body that was eerily good at mimicking a live, responsive heartbeat. At multiple times in his life, he had wished for nothing more than to hear just that, under his own ear, and it felt like a unique twist of cruelty now when Rodney didn't come with it.

He blinked rapidly, wanting heartily to press his hands over his eyes to stave off the tears, only the thought that someone would see him like that stopping him. If nothing else, his team - the rest of it - was easily as agonized as he was, if not more. Rodney was, despite his myriad faults, the most innocent of them, still a rookie with a firearm and nearly always coddled into the center of the team when they were in an unknown, potentially dangerous situation.

A civilian. Even if there were more and more days Rodney felt like a brother-in-arms, more creative with his technical expertise than his slowly-accumulating martial prowess. Accumulated, he corrected himself, the strict reminder to use the past tense stinging more than it ought. All of Rodney's skills - the man they had gotten to know - had reached an endpoint, a maximum.

The echo of Rodney's heartbeat reverberated in his ears, carried over by an unknown, likely Ancient mechanical device.

He swore, vehemently, to himself. It wasn't a sound that buried Rodney, and he wasn't sure he wanted it to.

-

The sensation of coming to was more familiar this time, if slightly off to one side, although if he took the time to make suppositions, the mentioned side would be rather above him. Or behind? He wasn't sure.

A lack of anything to ground himself made the border of sleep and wakefulness hazy, only circumstantial definitions available to his ken.

He wanted to groan, but wasn't sure how to do that, either, nor even a fixed interpretation of what groaning was. It was a vexing enough puzzle that his memories were slow to approach him, swimming around and out of order, uneager to settle where he could catch them.

John.

Now that, that was familiar. An image of something black - a lot of black, really, but first hair and then... then something broad, an expanse of space his mind lingered upon. The disjointed sight was nevertheless soothing, a sense of safety carried with it.

John?

John. That was a name, he could tell that now. A name to a... he felt irritation brew up, bubbling close to the surface. Name to a what?

Green-brown-... stone. No, not stone, but like it. Warm, sunlit, teasing. He felt a lurch, remembered that it came with a sound, and, oh, that was him, wasn't it? That pattering and unsteady rhythm, wobbling at this John and the sparse recollections of him.

But this seemed important, and he pushed against the pressure ahead of him, wanting to know more. Something sparking and sharp rebutted him, and he faltered, clinging to these faint images to bolster him.

Eventually, a crack was found, enough for him to find some leverage. He wasn't absolutely certain what to do after this, but the sense of urgency stayed with him, prodding him forward into picking something.

Momentum was difficult, and he doubled his efforts against whatever it was stalling him.

The sharpness returned, as strong as his efforts to proceed, reverberating out from the core of him with stinging pain that stole his determination from him. It almost unseated him, almost left him swirling alone in the eddies of mindlessness.

But something lingered, just different enough that it grew brighter in his awareness, hazy and indistinguishable from the shadows. Curiosity as much as a keenness to latch on to a distraction drove him forth, a cord of attention that was delicate and warming the nearer he was.

Such effort was draining, loosening his grip with washes of fatigue. The little stone of something different nevertheless remained, seeming stubborn to his blunted senses. It was difficult to grab it, but he tightened his grip, anyway.

Warmth permeated him, comfortable and soothing. It eased some of the last of his struggle, and he roused to wakefulness, coming to the sight of a lot of black and sombre green stone.

John. Near him, hands clasped. It didn't matter that John wasn't looking at him, only that he was nearby. Some of the residual fear leached away as he heard the noises around him more clearly. I found you. How are you?

Nobody heard him, as much as he tried to assuage the ache that it was merely a matter of effort, rather than some pervasive, inhibitory force. It didn't stop him from trying again, this time compelled by the internal pressure of desperation, something - anything - to confront the aching look on John's face that had him shoving against that invisible barrier he seemed to be wrapped up in.

Nothing seemed to help, and he watched wearily as John sighed, the hands clasped behind his back loosening their hold enough to soothe himself, thumb pressing against thumb in a repetitive, pensive manner. The sight struck something familiar in him, a deep-seated sort of pain that shook the foundations of his- his he didn't know, but it felt like an imprisonment, watching John squeeze his eyes shut as tightly as he squeezed at his own hands.

He could hardly bear witness to the ragged inhale, how it wavered wetly and stuttered on its exhale. Pain. Oh, and yes, a lot of it, nearly enough to be tangible. Pain at what, he wasn't entirely certain, only that his discomfort with the sight prickled at him. No, no no, please don't.

"Rodney," John said, electrifying despite the bereaved tone. He froze, wanting to twitch but knowing there was nothing to serve the instinct, no body nor threat to abide by, pinned in place only by the shock of hearing his name - one he so recently learned - re-learned? - from a person whose presence tugged at him by mere proximity, "Rodney, how could you?"

Guilt enveloped him, an accustomed weight he was unsurprised by, watching as John struggled for composure in front of his body, the other's hands covering his face. The sight reared up an echo, scratching at the underpinnings of his memory and ushering forward something looking nearly like this. He couldn't blink, not really, and the overlaid image of- of John looking a little different, less craggly and aged like he did now, hands over his face like now, curled over broken sobs driven by the grief of losing others.

Oh. A thin sliver of his mind acknowledged that they had, then, known each other for a while, long enough for time to slip in the cracks and show up on their skin, to reflect in their hair. The rest of him, that could rail against this invisible barrier, wanted nothing more than to reach out, to hush and shush, to thread fingers through John's hair and guard the grief that only showed itself on occasion.

A blipping noise pierced through the haze, startling John into dropping his hands from his now-reddened face. The man looked a little wild-eyed, tracking the source of the sound and drawing his attention along with the decisively pointed finger. It hurt a little, almost, to look at, like the sun. He pauses, digesting this information as John points emphatically to some strange, oval device, a pulsing red hue to its light that disconcerted him. A memory flitted past him, Show me the solar system.

It was almost too intangible to grasp, but the noise thumping in the background seemed also to be audible to John, whose face crumpled, aimlessly waving a finger at the thing, "And you- you have no right to sound like him. Dammit, none at all."

That- that didn't make any sense. And it stuck out, too, like waving a little- something, and he wanted to vent his frustration, the lack of context stealing sense from him. It, apparently, showed itself as a reverberation, no longer a background noise, but rather an extension of himself that was removed from his own reach. John stood stock still, the glittering of his eyes drying to something deeper, more cutting in its unknown depths of nuance.

John leaning forward, carefully and slowly, to speak over him, was only eclipsed by the lack of perspective. If he could figure out how to make John look at him- or, rather that he him and body him were one and the same - he would have assuredly done more than watch over John, the tufts of black hair bleeding into the black clothing as the man spoke to, well, him.

"You're going to let him go," John said, and the firm tone was nearly brittle, hands balled up so tightly he could see the whites on John's knuckles, "Let him go. He-"

Peering down at John, listening to the hitch of breath that almost blended into the thudding noise that picked up, minutely, pace, he watched as John composed himself into a rictus of authority, "He's not yours. Give him back to me."

He didn't get a response, but something seemed to reach out regardless, the tone of John's voice shifting to something softer as he continued speaking over the low noise that echoed back to both of them, "Rodney..." John brought a hand up, covering his mouth as his eyes slid shut, a furrow in the man's brow forming alongside the deepening creases at the edges of his eyes. A few tense, watchful moments later, John sighed, shaking his head as his hand fell back to his side, "You're- you were a good man, Rodney, don't- don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

The thumping noise seemed to exist in simultaneity with John's breathing, a nearly regular in-and-out that stuttered only a little bit. He watched, lost, as John stared at his body with an expression deadened into neutrality, before the man blinked a few times and then made an about-face.

John left, and left him there.

-

The air felt a little wobbly, or perhaps that was just him. It was only now that he could feel an encroaching numbness, still staring at the door John left through.

John didn't come back, nor did any of the precious few others that he had seen earlier. His thoughts ground to a stop, needing to process that, perhaps, he was alone. Another feeling followed, something his mind automatically labelled as "sour", with the flicker of an overlaid image following it, acrid misery that he hadn’t had a choice but to allow.

He turned around, wrenching himself away from the sight of the lone, unused door. The rest of the room - which wasn't much - was, outside of his body lying on something the same colour as everything else, bare and a little boring. What colour there was had dimmed after John left, everything a wash of monotone with only a few solitary lights at the edges of the room.

Only him, and grey, and what he was now speculating was a pervasive chill that settled upon every surface and lingering in the air.

Abruptly, the sourness rose up, overwhelming with its contrasting heat. The thumping noise grew more insistent, easily matching the tumultuous thoughts racing over him in a stampede of emotions.

He turned and turned, until he was dizzy with it. The dark, gloomy grey was his companion, now that John had left - and was likely not to come back. No, He thought, frantic, No no nonono-

But there was no "yes", nothing to affirm outside the easily confirmed. John- John, wait!

He struggled, beating against the edges of his cage, now urgent in his efforts to escape. Where was John? He didn't know, didn't know anything beyond this room, but John was not here, was outside, and the pressure of remaining as he was acted as an equal force upon him. It whispered, almost, grey fading at the edges into black, to fall down, to release his efforts unto the ether, where a thin, minuscule prick of light could be found.

But that light, as tempting as its promise was of certain blindness to his present circumstance, was not John. John brought his own light, a whole room's worth, and that was far more enticing than a slim chance of encompassing comfort.

The ills of John's pain, so deftly hidden by solitude, was worth the jagged edges, if it meant that there was John, near him. He braced himself, an action that stumbled the singular beat of noise pressing back at him, and threw himself against the darkness.

-

Waking was a pain, both literal and metaphorical. He groaned before he knew it was something he could do, an automatic action that had him also curling up on himself.

It was familiarly unfamiliar, long lines of achiness sparking in warning, something heavy on him that pulled and stuck. He swatted at it clumsily, a grasping slap that hurt his hand as much as his chest.

"Ow?" He muttered roughly, throat sticking dryly and making him cough. The next breath was a struggle, chest expanding as he hacked and wheezed.

His thoughts were sluggish, senses mainly preoccupied by controlling his lungs and cringing at the lack of feeling in his extremities. The protests of his body piled up, knees the loudest, and he shifted, only realizing that the surface he occupied had strict dimensions when he fell off of it.

That pain was much louder, easily shaking off the ones before it with a loud clang upon the ground. He clutched at his head, grimacing at the stickiness he felt. Whatever it was, it was unimportant, only the beating tattoo inside his head - matched, unfortunately, by the beating tattoo outside his head - going John, John, John of the only notable relevance.

It pushed him to his feet, as shaking as they were, and he clutched at that despicably grey thing that he had fallen off of, fingers sticking and skipping against the cold metal as he heaved himself up. His stomach roiled, and he gasped around it, the heaviness on his chest heavier around the incipient taste of acid. He swallowed, pressing a hand against his stomach in an urge to quell the sensation.

His heart clenched around a sharp pain, like needles perforating the centre of his chest resolving itself as quickly as it struck him, and a large weight fell, rather literally, off of his chest. It landed with a clatter on the cold metal before him, and with its descent came knowledge slamming into his mind, a full recollection of memories that almost threatened to completely overwrite what he had thus far- then far- experienced.

He groaned again, head thunking against the metal and letting the coolness evaporate some of the headache away, eyes squeezed tightly enough to see starbursts as the full depth of his life settled back into the grooves of his brain. The roiling nausea fluctuated, and he swallowed repeatedly, wishing for some water.

Blinking a couple of times, he remembered that the morgue did indeed have a functioning sink, replete with a working faucet, and as much as he wanted to grimace about using it, potable water of any kind was its own enchantment. He sucked in a breath, attempting to quell both the pain and the accoutrements of it, and stumbled to the nearby sink, clumsily turning on the faucet to bring handful after handful of water to his mouth.

His hand-eye coordination was still shot to hell, and a fair amount of water went down his chin. It was just as well, as he ran a wet hand over his face, reveling in the feeling despite the cold cutting through the pleasure of his renewed liveliness. Grappling blindly by the sink, he found the roll of paper towels that Carson kept nearby, getting most of the roll wet but managing a few sheets to dry his face off with.

Feeling a little more present after his impromptu ablution, he leaned against the sink, disjointed thoughts still dusted up in the vigour of his reawakening. They were taking too long to settle, but outside of the incessant, thumping need to find John, he had to sort out- sort out something, John was still too large of a priority to consider much else outside of it.

He shivered, and remembered clothing was something to do. To wear. Nodding to himself, he wondered how the hell he would do that, blinking wearily around the room. Right. Carson would- should have some scrubs around. Piece of cake.

Which, luckily for him when he made his way to the clothing locker, wasn't locked. He vaguely recalled some protocol around that, but dismissed it as an idle thumb-twiddling for later, grabbing an extra lab coat after dressing himself with frustratingly weakened hands and swaddling the device in it, setting it back down onto his assigned morgue table and sliding the tray back into the wall. A crude containment method, but insofar as he could recall, there probably wasn't even any dead bodies in here.

Outside of himself, of course, but given that he had to deal with such mortal concerns as the resumption of his bad back - not helped in the slightest by his temporary death - and the unpleasant lack of shoes, he concluded that he was probably alive. The real test would be to see if he could leave the room.

Swallowing in apprehension, he approached the door cautiously. The overlapping memory of John leaving through there without so much as a backwards glance was perturbing, so the door silently swooshing open like it usually did for him made his shoulders sag in relief.

Time to find John.

-

A great many people he found, while blatantly shocked at his appearance, were not John. He found this vexing, and ignored the various responses, from gap-mouthed shock to attempts to stop him, which he thwarted with irritated slaps of his hand as he found the nearest transporter. It was, unfortunately for his progress, rather a hazard of keeping the morgue close enough to a common through-way in the city, as they had need of the place more than once. There were other back-up rooms, he remembered grimly, for when they simply had too many dead.

His clearance must not have been pulled yet from the system, as he was able to reach the residential area with relative ease. The brief, compressive sense of vertigo, almost like a miniature wormhole, felt distinctly like home, if at the moment too similar to his experience with whatever device it was that had killed and then subsequently reanimated him. He quickly exited the transporter as soon as the doors opened, keeping up the same pace as he strode toward John's quarters.

The way had long ago been memorized, John leading him there when their conversations kept them up later than the rest of the expedition, or the rare quiet hours between simulations and observing the experiments of others. He counted the doors to John's silently, a sense of accomplishment settling over him as he waved his hand over the door latch, a quiet noise of acknowledgment coming from the door as he passed through its barrier.

It was dark - how dark, how long, that he didn't know, only that John was laid fast asleep in bed. The lump of a profile, only partly covered with a thin sheet, was still breathing deeply, and even pace granted from the room's lights remaining dark, allowing him to approach undisturbed. For a moment, he could only stare, John's sleep-slackened face still holding the edge of distress, an echo of what he had seen earlier.

More than anything, that was what had him reaching out, resting his hand as gently as he could manage over John's outstretched own, where it laid in a loose fist beside the pillow. It brought about a sense of peace, to feel that John was alive and only slumbering, unharmed outside of his grief. He hoped that it would, this time, abate enough for him to apologize and possibly slake just a touch of the guilt he felt for entering that temple without waiting for John's say-so.

His hand twitched over John's, and that was enough to rouse the other man, a full-body jerk that had John nearly sitting up in bed in an instinctive panic. The second they locked eyes was immediately apparent, even from the distance where he had shuffled away to in order to avoid John headbutting him on accident.

John's eyes were wide, even in the dim light of the city lights filtering through the window. For a tense moment, they just stared at each other, and when he cleared his throat to speak, John uttered, with the same devout fear as any hardline Catholic, "Jesus Christ."

What he then watched was John slumping back onto the bed out of shock, dead to the world as he was probably twenty minutes ago.

"Ah, hell," He sighed.

-

John waking up a second time, this time warily, as if he didn't trust his surroundings - a perfectly understandable sentiment, if he did say so himself - landed them in a synonym of a few moments earlier. He sighed as John tensed up again, hand automatically reaching for a pistol that had already been removed before bed.

"Hi," He said, raising an eyebrow from where he sat in the rolling chair appropriated from John's equally minuscule desk. It was still shit for his back, but it was better than standing around awkwardly and waiting to see if John would wake up in an appreciable amount of time.

The bewildered look was back, and he shook his head, waving at John. After a long beat, John didn't stop looking bewildered, but raised a hand of his own and waved back. He felt a rush of fondness at the ridiculousness, unable to stop the smile from stretching across his face.

Clearing his throat again, and waiting out the tense and release of John remembering he had passed out from shock, he raised a brow, "Were you really going to try and shoot a ghost?"

John's face, which had been shifting from 'what in damn hell is this' to cautious assessment, dropped into bereavement in two seconds flat, "So I'm hallucinating you, then. Great."

"Well," He glanced at the bedside clock. Three AM. Hm, "No. And I'm not a ghost. Or a revenant. Or whatever."

He got a raised eyebrow of John's own back, and he shrugged, eye twitching at the spasm of his back, "And I'm supposed to believe you."

Oh, for the love of- "Just don't pinch me," He complained, already anticipating that John would want some sort of physical proof and trying to deescalate from 'probably going to shoot me, anyway' to 'pinch me to see if I'm dreaming' to… something marginally less violent, "I bruise easily."

John did get out of his bed for that one, ignoring his shoes - and not tripping over them, curiously, for once - and keeping his eyes locked on him as he stalked forward. Like he was a mission, or something equally unflattering. But he tilted his head up, needing to keep looking at John as much as John seemed to need to do the same with him.

When John raised a hand, it was so slow, and so cautious, that he felt worry crawling up his throat, "Hey, are you-"

A thumb settled at the corner of his mouth, stealing the words out of his mouth with a feather-light touch. He inhaled sharply, John's hand firmly reflexively against his cheek, and then his head was being tilted further up, and he was leaning back - just a touch, John's space filling what he vacated - eyes sliding shut as John kissed him.

Oh. His hands came up to reciprocate, kneading at John's shoulders and the black shirt covering them, Well. I like this much better.

"Missed you," He murmured, when John gave him a sliver of room to breathe between kisses, the words caught against their lips.

"Missed you," John replied, stamping another kiss on his mouth before pressing a gentler one to his forehead, the warmth of the gesture sinking into him just as much as the proximity of John, "Don't ever do that again, understand?"

He nodded reflexively, curling his fingers in John's shirt, breathing the familiar, comforting scent in, vestiges of Aqua Velva clinging to the other man’s skin, "Okay."

John sucked in a breath, drawing him out of the chair and bundling him close, arms tight around him, "Okay. Okay."

-

Author's Notes

Shout-out to @hylotelephiumfanfic for illustrating this fic! You can find their work here.

"In thermodynamics, nucleation is the first step in the formation of either a new thermodynamic phase or structure via self-assembly or self-organization within a substance or mixture. Nucleation is typically defined to be the process that determines how long an observer has to wait before the new phase or self-organized structure appears. […] Nucleation is a common mechanism which generates first-order phase transitions, and it is the start of the process of forming a new thermodynamic phase. In contrast, new phases at continuous phase transitions start to form immediately. Nucleation is often very sensitive to impurities in the system. These impurities may be too small to be seen by the naked eye, but still can control the rate of nucleation. Because of this, it is often important to distinguish between heterogeneous nucleation and homogeneous nucleation. Heterogeneous nucleation occurs at nucleation sites on surfaces in the system.[1] Homogeneous nucleation occurs away from a surface."

- Nucleation, Wikipedia

See also: “Jet Pack Blues” by Fall Out Boy, from the album American Beauty/American Psycho.

Dorma’s name is taken from the Latin dormīre, which means “to sleep” but also figuratively “to rest, be at ease, be inactive, be idle” (Numen, the Latin Lexicon). Yes, it was meant as a place for ascension, but also as a graveyard – the architectural features mimicked the Celtic (and also broadly Eurasian) tumulus (Wikipedia). As is common with canon, this was originally built by the Ancients, and its purpose had shifted over time as people forgot what it was meant for. Within the background lore for the fic, though, Dorma is also the name of the Ancient buried there, and the inventor of the device that attached itself to Rodney, which utilizes some Replicator-type parts. The device was meant to assist those on the path to ascension by mimicking the state of death, because it’s rather common to be afraid of dying, and the device was intended as a “try before you buy” sort of thing. Did it work? No, probably not, hence the plot.

Additionally, hashka liquor was written with respect to the Mongolian Airag, a fermented milk that’s also known as Kumys (mongolfood.info), which does have a little bit of naturally-occurring ethanol in it due to its fermentation process. Waving the magic plot-fixing wand, we can pretend hashka is a stronger version of airag, and the usual process for sweetening any type of yogurt is honey and/or spices, so by that logic, so would hashka, heated up the same way one would schnapps to infuse the additional flavourings.

Regarding John’s grief, I have this headcanon that John and Rodney have probably had a few moments of grieving in the same space as each other, because there’s a lot of events that would support this idea (the various dangers on Atlantis the least of it, including the Wraith siege and the events of the episode Hot Zone, where I imagined quite a few people died in an already small expedition). What’s a break-down or three between friends, eh? They already display a canonical habit of hanging out in John’s room, I imagine canon wouldn’t elaborate further on any other shared experiences between the two of them (so I did, hah).

As this fic was created for ficwip’s Fairy Tale Bang, I sourced two particular fairy tales, both from D. L. Ashliman’s list of different types of fairy tales/folklore. The first is “Nightmares”, and the second is “Revived from Apparent Death by a Grave-Robber”.

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