Melissa Scott - The Inheritors

"Well, I'm going to try," Jennifer said. She looked ridiculously young and slight in her black leathers, not like Teyla, not scary. But not like a girl either. Just a lot like Alabaster.

"It's just…." He couldn't quite finish the thought. "I thought you wanted to go back to Earth," he said. "I thought you wanted to get married and live in a suburb or maybe in the country somewhere and practice medicine and…. I thought you were the one who didn't want to come back to Pegasus. I thought you wanted…." He waved his hands at all the things he couldn't name. "Strawberries. You keep saying you miss strawberries and there aren't any in Pegasus. And daylilies. You know. Those yellow flowers. Or the red ones."

"Poppies," Jennifer said. "They have those here. I've seen them."

"I haven't," Rodney said.

"When do you ever look at the plants?"

"When they're trying to eat me," Rodney said. "But that's beside the point. You don't even like it here. And there are leeches. You hate leeches. And it's a long way from your dad, and you don't even have email, and…."

She put her hand on his arm. "Rodney."

"Yes?"

"I want to do this." Her eyes were very clear. "When I get back… maybe then I'll want to go home and have all those things. In their time. But right now it's time for me to do this."

"I can't wait forever," he said quietly. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not old , but I'm not getting any younger. I was hoping we could get married here in Atlantis, maybe even — well, after all, Teyla has Torren, and how much more trouble would having one more child in the city be? Woolsey let me keep the cat." He couldn't ask the question, but he hoped she heard it anyway.

"You take care of Newton, all right?" It wasn't an answer, or maybe it was. They had never been very good at finding words. "I'm doing what I need to do. You should do what you need to do."

"I will," he said.

"You always do."

There wasn't any answer to that. And so he smiled at her like a sturdy adventurer ought to. "Take care of yourself," he said, and gave her a sketchy salute. "And if you need anything, just whistle."

"I'll remember that," Jennifer said. She pulled herself up, shoulders squared, and gave him a little smile.

And then she turned and walked across the tarmac toward the cruiser, toward the dark figure at the foot of the ramp. He loomed over her, bending to speak, and then she went past him up the ramp, her head high and her back straight, Todd following after. Jennifer didn't look back. The ramp retracted and the docking port irised closed, blue lights winking out. Wind gusted as the cruiser’s thrusters came online.

Sam and Teyla were still standing in the doorway to the building, whatever pretend errand of Sam's forgotten, and Rodney hurried out of the landing zone as the cruiser's engines rose in a rising whine, the wind swirling around him.

Teyla put her hand on his arm, steel presence comforting as sunlight. "She will be all right," Teyla said.

"I know." He'd thought this was the story of how he turned himself into a hero and got the girl and they lived happily ever after. And maybe that story hadn't really been about the girl at all, but only about becoming a person he could be proud of when he looked in the mirror. He had done that, and sometimes it took him by surprise to realize it.

Teyla looked up at him. "Do you wish you were going with her?

"On a Wraith ship?" But there was some part of him that ached for that still, and wondered if walking aboard the cruiser would have felt like coming home. I'm already home , he told himself, and knew that for him that was true. "Don't be silly," he said briskly. "Besides, do you have any idea how much work I have to do?"

There was only a little lump in his throat as he watched the cruiser Eternal lift into the darkness and vanish over the storm tossed sea, a darkness against the stars which swiftly disappeared.

It was a day of rest, and the captain of the Hammond was going fishing.

"How's that?" Sam said.

"Not too bad," Jack said. "If I reposition a little…."

"Move around all you like," Sam said. She unfolded her chair and sat down, propping her feet up on the low stonework of the edge of the pier.

Jack moved his chair around a little more, fussing with it, then sat down and adjusted his baseball cap, looking out at the calm sea.

Sam sighed happily. "Look at that! Almost worth coming all the way out here for, isn't it?"

"Almost," Jack said.

Sam shrugged as he baited his line neatly and cast. "Yeah, but not many guys can say they've dipped their pole where you have."

He stopped, the rod dangling in his fingers. "I can't believe you just said that, Carter."

"Fishing, Jack." She cast her line with a smug look, watching it plop satisfactorily into the water next to his.

"I think I've got a bite already," he said, leaning forward.

The end of his pole bobbed, then a tentacle rose from the surface of the water, exactly the same shade as the fishing line. It waggled back and forth, then purposefully wrapped around the end of the pole and jerked it out of Jack's hand, disappearing into the depths.

"I'll be damned," Jack said as Sam started laughing.

"I guess we'll just have to enjoy the view," she said.

Supposedly, it was a day of rest, and the morning stretched before Teyla invitingly empty. She cradled her coffee mug in her hands, her elbows resting on the railing of the balcony, looking out at sea and clear skies. It was warm enough that she was comfortable in a light jacket. This passed for a beautiful spring day here, on their new world, and she could not say it was otherwise.

The doors slid open and John came out, his sweatshirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows, a mug in his hands. "I thought I'd find you out here," he said.

"I am enjoying the sunshine," she said, tilting her face up to the light, feeling it warm on her own skin.

"This planet is starting to grow on me," he said, taking a sip. "There might be some interesting stuff here. We've only just started going through that Ancient installation Ronon found on the island. Now that we've got some time, maybe we can actually do some exploring."

"It would be a nice change," Teyla said.

"There's an awful lot we could do," John said. "Next year or the year after. And when that Indian research vessel launches I expect they're going to want to leave a team here. And Jackson was saying that there needed to be a bigger social sciences presence."

"I expect Alabaster will want a permanent envoy," Teyla said. "And Jinto is annoying Halling, begging that Dr. Zelenka would like him to be his apprentice, if Mr. Woolsey will allow it."

"That could work," John said, leaning on the rail beside her, looking out over the light-touched towers. "There's plenty of room in Atlantis."

"For all the children of the Ancestors," Teyla said. And that was right and good. They were all heirs to the Ancients, all heirs to their pain and their hubris and their beauty and their insatiable curiosity.

"Yeah," John said. He looked contented.

"And you," Teyla said. "You are talking about the future as though you mean to see it."

He lifted his head, his eyes on the distance. "I guess so," he said slowly. "When I was getting ready to go on this last mission to get rid of the weapon, I didn't want to."

He said it as though it were a painful admission, and Teyla looked at him sideways. "Of course you didn't want to."

"I didn't want to die. I had to do it, but I didn't want it. I don't want…." He trailed off, and Teyla waited in silence, waiting for him to find the words. "I didn't want life to be over. And now that it's not, it feels like a reprieve. Like some guy waiting on death row and then finding out he's been pardoned. If that makes any sense."