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Entry tags:
- fic,
- my_fic,
- pangeneses,
- sga
Pangeneses, SGA, PG-13, Part Two
Part One, with Summary/Warnings
---
The day of the wedding dawns bright and hot. John and Rodney look sober and dignified in their black and gray Atlantean uniforms; Charin feels bright and awkward next to them, in the orange dress with the six gauzy overskirts that Jenet made for her. Her ears feel funny; her head feels weird and empty. When the jumper went through the Gate, she had a sudden, horrible sense of vertigo as the City blinked out, and she keeps trying to find east, and then remembering there's nothing there.
It's been a couple of hours, though, and now she finds it kind of fun.
She sees Senna and Nene, in blue and green and purple, and waves, and says "Dad, can I go stand with them? Can I?".
Rodney looks around, squints, nods, and Charin manages not to step on her own dress, or get it stepped on, as she weaves through the crowd in front of the matrimonial altar and grabs Senna's outstretched hand. There aren't so many people up here - on the roped-off platform at the head of the city's biggest plaza - but behind them, and below them, there are hundreds of people, thousands of people, along the rooftops and balconies of the capitol, all dressed in bright clothes and waving banners, shouting to each other, buying iced fruit and cake rolls from roving vendors, throwing flowers, holding up babies. Charin tries not to look down there, because the sheer volume of people makes her a little dizzy, and the last thing she needs is to faint on her first trip off-world. Rodney would probably never let her leave the city again if she did that.
"Have you seen Jinto?" she asks Senna, and Senna says, "I was back with him an hour ago. I thought he was going to throw up. He's so nervous." Senna squeezes Charin's hand. Something about the mood of the crowd is infectious; Charin finds herself grinning, and impulsively she picks Nene up - Nene's six, just barely still small enough - and says, "There, there's the castle, they'll come from there -"
There is a pounding of drums, and a bright, high blast of music, and the doors open.
In the Athosian settlement, a husband would be conducted to his bride's house by relatives, and there would be music and dancing on the path, and old men telling dirty jokes, and a meal with lots of cakes and just enough hard cider to keep the old people from complaining that their daughter's settlement threw a much better party. Here there was just the wedding party - the head priestess, and Jinto, and the Queen - walking up to the platform, the only sound the low throbbing of drums in the distance.
Jinto looks tall and thin in his fancy robes, and a little pale around the mouth, but Charin sees his glance pass her direction, and his mouth quirks up, just a little. Charin moves Nene's hand in a wave. The Queen steps onto the platform, and a murmur runs through the crowd. She is not a small woman, imposing, dressed in a high-necked gown that is as simple and straight as Jinto's robes are bright. The priestess stops, steps between them, raises her hands -
It is the loudest noise in the world, and Charin ducks, pulling Nene down with her, and then thinks, What is wrong? What has happened?
Then there are shrieks, and smoke rising, and Charin can't see the Queen or her brother because there is a swarm of soldiers over the high platform, and other people - she feels for Senna. She is still holding Senna's hand. Another noise, and this time stinging gas in her lungs, and someone has hold of her, is carrying her along, and then there is a flash of light and her head goes dark inside.
She is in a big room full of people. Some of them are wedding guests, sitting or laying on the floor, looking bruised and sometimes bloody. Some of them are thin, wearing dirty green, and armed. Her head hurts horribly.
Senna is beside her, already awake, with Nene on her lap.
"Where are we?" Charin mouths, and Senna shakes her head. Charin tries to sit up, and groans, and a person in dirty green holding a large and unfamiliar kind of gun looks over at them and shouts, "No talking!" and Charin bites her lip to keep from crying as she levers herself upward.
Senna bends to move Nene to Charin's lap, and murmurs, her hair falling to cover her face, "It's a kind of bomb that makes you faint. I read about it in my mother's books."
Charin can't see Teyla, or her dad. She looks around frantically, and then Senna puts her hand on Charin's shoulder and stops her. "Wait," she whispers, almost silently, and then the guards are muscling them up and moving them. Charin holds Nene, and Senna holds onto Charin, and there are a lot of guns, and a lot of cold-eyed people holding them.
"Through the arch," the man in front barks. His gun is smaller and his hat has some sort of stamp on it. Charin looks up. They must be in the old part of the city, because the arch overhead has an Ancient stone in it, the kind that glows for no good reason besides that the Ancients liked glowy stones. Charin is pretty over the glowing stone thing.
Senna is watching ahead, and she whispers, again, "Charin. Think off. Think off."
A guard take Nene out of Charin's arms, and Charin tried to grab for her and is shoved through the arch, and she thinks OFF. The stone is blank. Nene is pushed through, and Charin catches her and starts crying again. A woman right behind them passes through the arch, and the stone lights up, and she is muscled off to another room.
"No crying," the guard says, and shoves them down the hallway with the butt of her gun, and locks them in a cell.
---
"What happened?" John says into his radio, and the response is staticky but real. He is holding Rodney by one arm; Rodney is mute, shaking, and John had to drag him back from the fire and the crowd, the shouts of the wounded and the rising smoke between them and the high platform where the royal guests stood. Where Rodney and Teyla's children had stood, moments before.
"There was a transporter signature, Rodney," he says, and Rodney shakes his head, pulls towards the platform. "They're alive. They've been taken somewhere. We will find them. We have to get out of here." Rodney has a cut along his jaw and says, low, "I have to look for them - let me go look for them -".
John feels familiar, suddenly, and twenty years younger. It is not a good feeling.
---
Charin doesn't know how to fly a jumper, She definitely doesn't know how to fire a gun, and when Senna and Jinto learned stickfighting Charin got bored and wandered off to watch the tatum-hens squabble over their new feeder. She's kind of regretting it now.
"I wish Selena was here," Senna says, dully, and Charin agrees. Selena would knock the guard unconscious, build a ladder out of his underwear, and have them all home in time for dinner. Charin scrubs at her face furiously, smearing the makeup she let Jenet put on her for the ceremony - "Fourteen," Jenet had said, "Old enough for something around the eyes". She looks at the glittery smear on her palm and bites her lip again. She's done enough crying for a couple of years, at least: she's not going to start again now.
"Nene, are you warm enough?" she asks instead. Their cell is windowless and damp, and Charin counted stairs going in and thinks they're a couple of stories down from where they started; Charin is still hot with fury and adrenaline, and she's wearing about twelve layers more than she really needs. She's pretty sure some of it could make a blanket.
"M'fine," Nene sniffles. She's lying in the concaved bell of Senna's skirt, wrapped in the shawl Senna had carried; all that is visible of her are two dark eyes, puffy from crying. "I want to go home."
Charin clenches her hand, shakes her head, says, "We're going to." She's pacing; the straps on one of her shoes has already broken, and the elegant hem of her skirt is filthy with dirt and what she's pretty sure is someone else's blood. She turns away from that thought, and tries not to figure out exactly who she was standing near.
"Charin," Senna says, impatient. "Sit down. You'll get tired faster." There is a bruise on her face where she got hit with the butt of a gun on their way down the stairs, an accident, maybe, and Charin hates whoever they were - with their uniforms and their big guns - a little more.
"There has to be a way out of here," Charin says. She is pressing her nails into her palms so hard that it stings; she hates small places, she hates small, dark places, and her brain won't stop running in circles of what-if. What if Senna - what if Nene - and where is Jinto? Where is - oh god, her father. Her father was up there. He was back in the crowd, did she see him?
"Charin," Senna says. "They did not put us in the one cell that two teenagers and a six-year-old can break out of using nothing but a comb and their wits. Come here and sit down, I'm cold."
"You have a comb?" Charin says, hopefully, but she goes and sits, her skirt huffing out around her, and puts her head on Senna's shoulder like she had when they were children. She tries to control her trembling.
"Alright," Senna says, after a bit. "They have not hurt any of us. I have umami jerky in my bag -"
"You have a bag?" Charin asks, and Senna gives her her you are an idiot look and says "I hid it in the hoopskirt, they just scanned us for weapons, they didn't search us."
Senna is a year older than Charin but Charin usually doesn't feel dumb around her. "Do you have anything I can pry with?" Charin asks. "There's Ancient technology in the wall by the door, I can feel it, if I can get that brick off I can get at the wiring -"
"There's a man with a gun outside that door," Senna says, "And another one behind him. And Charin, they'll probably decide you're ATA if you start messing with the wiring with your brain."
Charin folds her arms. "Okay. I want jerky."
"Not until we get water, I think." Senna shifts. "Oof. Nene's asleep."
"How can she sleep -" Senna hushes Charin. "You think they're after ATAs?"
"That blue arch we walked under."
"Oh god, do you think -"
"Wait." said Senna. "I think they'll bring us water, and maybe some food, and then we'll decide what to do."
It's an unspecified amount of time before the door slides open, and for some reason Charin is on her feet, standing in front of her cousins, even though Senna plucks at her sleeve and whispers, "Charin, get down."
The tall, androgynous figure who enters spreads his - her? - hands, empty, unarmed, and Charin doesn't know what she'd do anyway except that the three or four people who come in after are definitely armed. Charin draws back.
"Sit," the tall figure says. It's a woman's voice, smooth. Charin sits.
"What are your names?" she asks, and when they are silent, she smiles. Her face is wrinkled and splotched, like she's spent all her life outside; she is missing teeth. "I am Anil."
Senna has pushed her way a little in front of Charin, so that her shadow falls across Charin's face, and Charin shoves at her. "Where are our mothers?" Senna asks, voice shaking. "Why have you taken us? Are you at war with the Athosians?" and Anil holds up one hand, and Senna falls silent.
"I am going to explain," the woman says. Her voice is hard, and rasps a little. "And you will listen quietly. Too many people have died this day for me to have to shout over hysterical children."
"We're not hysterical," Charin mutters, and Senna pushes her further back.
The woman sits, easily, like she's always sat on dirt floors. Charin can smell her dirty uniform in the small room. There are brownish smears on her knees. She folds her hands in front of her, and says in her broken, sing-song voice:
"The Ancestors came to our planet." She pauses, like she's waiting for a response, and the continues. "They were great and good and noble, and we laid down on our faces and praised them, and put all our faith in them, and they protected us from the Wraith."
Her posture, and her voice, are like Teyla's telling a story, and Charin can feel something scared in her chest settle and listen. She narrows her eyes. She reminds herself that this woman throws little children in dungeons.
The woman continues. "Thy protected us sometimes. And for a while. And when they left, they left their marvelous machines, and those who had the Ancestor's gift wielded them. At first they asked only to be fed and cared for by their villages - like warriors, or any artist - but as time wore on their gifts grew rarer, and weaker, and they gathered together in their fastnesses and sent out word that they would defend only those who paid them tribute, and then, only those who obeyed their words. The first of them was called Virtuous. Queen Harmony is the three hundredth and forty-second monarch in his line." The woman lifted one dirty, thick-fingered hand, and let it fall. "It happened on many worlds. This is one of them. Queen Harmony's line has controlled this continent - where the only protected humans dwelt - for nine hundred years."
She looks behind her, at the armed men who stand, blank, grubby, their big, ugly hands resting on their big, ugly guns. "Some of them weren't so bad," she says. "Some of them were very bad. These cells were built, centuries ago, to hold people who disagreed with them. There are torture chambers, deeper underground." Her gray, lined mouth twitches upwards like the ghost of humor. "It is a very fine line," she says, "between disagreeing with a monarch and being accused of loving the Wraith."
"But the Queen - " Charin blurts, and this time Senna finds her arm, twists, pinches and Charin's mouth snaps shut.
"Yes," Anil says, her mouth twisting like she tastes something horrible. "Queen Harmony. Propped on her throne by a delegation of aliens after her own family tried to depose her. She will make a fine last Queen. And even if -"
Charin sees suddenly that the woman's hands are pressed against her knees so hard that the knuckles show red. "If she had died childless - if she had ruled even ten years more with no spouse and no heir - we would have stayed laboring in our fields until she passed in peaceful old age. She is not - a cruel woman. But when she brought a half-alien - one of the Atlanteans! - to be her child-husband and reseed the royal line. No -" she pushes herself up, standing, and Charin shrinks back "- we can't risk a thousand years more of ATA rule. We won't. Surely the Athosians can see -" She stops. "Well. The Athosians have made their alliances. But even so, I have respect for the name Emmagen. They were brave, and wise, and a humble nation. And so I speak to you, because we will release you to your mother as soon as our conditions are met, and I wanted her eldest - natural child -" again that lemon-sour twist at the mouth - "to hear the truth from me."
Senna stands, and brushes Charin's hand from her skirt when Charin tried to hold onto her. Her back straightens. She is dirty, and small, and bloody, and she looks like Teyla, and Charin wants to cry.
"Do I tell her the commander told me?" she asks. Her voice is trembling.
A smile rises and falls on Anil's face. "Child, before this I grew beans and told stories, and if I live I will farm beans and tell stories. You tell her a farmer from Duras told you a story. Tell her you listened."
"Our cousin -" Senna says, gesturing towards Charin. "She is from the Northern farmland - she has no dealings with any of this -"
Anil shrugs. "That depends." And then she says, smiling, "We might all still die." And then she nods at them, and turns, and leaves, and the men with guns back out behind her.
"That was a lie!" Charin says.
Senna says "Shut up and let me think."
Charin is quiet for a minute or two, watching one of the endless rivulets of damp drip down the stone walls, and then she says, "Do you think it was true? Do you think the old ATAs tortured people here?"
Senna shrugs. "It happened other places."
"She called Jinto half-alien." Charin says. "Do you think he's all right? You're half-alien too, aren't you?"
"Not the half that counts," Senna says savagely, and Charin is quiet.
Later Charin says, "They hate ATAs," and Senna doesn't say anything.
Later Charin says, "But we - but Atlantis. We try to help everyone. That's what we do. We're trying to give everyone the gene! So that everyone can use the technology!"
"Maybe they don't want it," Senna says.
"That's crazy," Charin says. "That's - that's not scientific. If they'd just gone to Elizabeth and asked -"
"We have treaties with the Queen," Senna says. "So do you. Binding treaties."
"And so what if the ATAs in the capitol get some extra fruit! Everyone didn't get eaten! And we - we overthrew the Lord Protector on that planet where they all lived in a tower! John and my dad did!"
Senna looks at Charin, and Charin says "What?"
"Do you remember when my little brother died?" Senna asks. "Beltran, he was six months younger than Nene."
"Of course I do." Charin says. "During the Garanian Flu. I was eight."
"He died on the eighth day." Senna says. "He didn't even get sick until the fourth. And on the ninth the doctors came, with a cure."
Charin says, "I cried for weeks," and then she says, "They started the medical school after that, didn't they?"
"Because they didn't have enough doctors," Senna says. "By the time they finished vaccinating everyone in the city and the village and came out to the settlement, it was too late for a lot of people."
"Some people in the city died too," Charin says.
Senna nods.
"They had to make sure the city was vaccinated so they didn't spread it through the Gate," Charin says.
Senna spreads her hands, inclines her head.
They don't talk about it again.
---
"It's the anti-Royalists," one of the Athosian men says to Teyla, and Teyla's face goes blank and dull. Her face is sooty, and John has a sudden, fierce memory of days and nights on battlefields with this woman. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and she starts, then nods and turns back to the tactical map in front of her. They are in the royal bunker, a continent away from the fighting - they were carried there immediately, in the squadrons of jumpers that had gathered to transport wedding guests. The Royal Guards have already quelled the panic in the city, put out the fires, carried the wounded to field hospitals. Or so they were told, as they watched the blue-green planet fall away and then draw close again.
One of the Queen's Escord, in a military uniform with a chest full of spangles and bars, nods, and says "We have received no communication, but this has their fingerprints all over it. The Queen is safe -" a ripple of relief around the room, from the Harmonians - "but the Son of Athos has not been found, nor have those abducted from the parade grounds. We traced two separate transporters -" she leans to the table they stand around, and taps it, bringing up maps. "We know where they are, more or less. We -" She grimaces. "We fear greatly for their safety."
"Do these people do this a lot?" John asks, and doesn't flinch when all eyes turn to him.
"Sometimes," the commander says. "This is their largest incursion. They kidnap the mayors of villages for a ransom, or burn barges loaded with tax grain. Of course -" another pause. "This is the largest public gathering since the Wraith war. I don't think anyone anticipated that other Durasians would dare attack it." Her mouth twists, and she spits on the cement floor. "Traitors, all of them. It's disgusting."
"You just can't please everybody," says John, and then makes his who, me? face when they stare at him.
The general begins talking about infiltrators, hostage negotiations, the complex geography of a city built to fend off air atacks, and John and Teyla find themselves shunted to one side. John reaches for Teyla's arm, and realizes then that they are both shaking slightly.
"Teyla," he says, without knowing what to say, and she answers,
"Nene is six years old." And then says, "And Senna is fifteen. They -" She is quiet for a moment, collects herself, continues. "Both of them grew up in peacetime. They've never held a gun. We have to -"
She turns to John. "John, we have to."
And John meets her eyes, and says, "I know."
When the air strikes begin - knocking out the transporter interdiction field around the old dungeons under the Old Palace's pleasure gardens so that the Durasian troops can transport directly into the stronghold - John is on the jumper. He is wearing a gun strapped to his hip, and the weight feels uncomfortable, and familiar, and he refuses to think about what he may or may not find ahead of him.
--
It might have been a day or two or three. Food is shoved under the door at irregular intervals; the back corner of the cell stays dry, and the drain at the front stinks but doesn't clog. Charin is asleep - Nene has stopped sleeping, or really waking up, but lays on Charin or Senna's lap in a ball - when she is awoken by the first dull thump in the distance, like thunder.
She wakes, and Senna is already awake, sitting alert and staring at the door.
"What is it?" Charin asks. "Thunder?"
Senna shakes her head. "It must be bombs,." she says. "The Royal Army, or Atlantis. I don't think these guys down here have bombers."
"Then they're coming for us!" Charin says, and Senna glances at her, and then says, "They probably don't know we're here."
"We have to try to signal them," Charin says. "The wiring in that wall - I can use it, it's ATA technology -"
"Charin!" Senna hisses. "I don't know what will happen if they know that you have the gene! They're fighting people with the gene!"
Charin is up, inspecting the panel again. "Do you have something to pry with?"
"For all we know they will take you out and shoot you the second they suspect," Senna says.
"Or we could die when the bombs make all these old tunnels cave in!" Charin snaps. "No. Give it to me."
Senna pauses, and another thump shakes the building. She nods, and hands Charin the long-handled comb - metal, and it shows signs of surreptitious sharpening, and Charin feels at least a little forgiving towards her cousin. Then Senna hands Charin the thin plastic wire of what Charin recognizes as a radio, and Charin is suddenly furious.
"It doesn't pick up anything," Senna says. "I've been trying."
"That is not teamwork," Charin hisses, furious, and turns to the wall panel. The thumping is closer, and dust is filtering down from the ceiling with each impact. Nene lets out a whimper.
"The back left corner," Senna says. "I think it's under a support beam, it might hold."
"Okay." Charin says around the comb in her teeth. She's got the brick off, and the wiring should carry the signal; she hits the activator, hits it again -
Through all the Gate-translated babble, she hears the sudden clear syllables of English, and presses her face close to the pickup, crying "Atlantis, this is Charin Cadman, can you hear me?"
There is a pause, and then a voice says "Holy shit." It's Charles Campbell. "Charin, where are you?"
"Underground somewhere," and then she goes, "You idiots, scan for my IDC, I'm standing right by a transmitter -"
There's a scuffling sound, and then Colonel Sheppard's voice. "Charin, are you okay?"
"So far," she says, and she's pretty sure everyone can hear her voice shake. "Senna and Nene are with me, we're in a cell, we went down four flights of stairs from the surface, we're pretty deep -"
"We've got your location," he says, and then, "Charin, you need to sit tight, okay? Don't make any noise, just hang on until we get to you -"
The radio cuts off.
"Disconnect it," Senna says, and when Charin hesitates, she jerks it out of Charin's hands and pulls the wires off. "Put it back," and Charin understands her, shocks herself unpleasantly getting the wires back in the wall, jams the brick back on. There's a sound of running feet in the hallway, and Charin lets Senna drag her back to the far corner they've decided is their bomb shelter. Nene curls into a tight ball in Charin's lap; when the air starts to fill with dust, they wrap the gauze from their dresses over their heads. When they start to smell smoke, they lay down and put their faces near the floor.
"The door," Charin says, and Senna says, "I tried, Charin," and it's at that moment that the door blows in, and the light is bright, blinding, and Charin throws her arm over her face.
"Senna? Charin?" It's Sergeant Campbell again, and Charin stumbles to her feet. "Come with me, quickly. There's a fire." Charin lifts Nene, and Senna stumbles after them. Their eyes are watering in the smoke; there's a contingent of city guards, and a couple of bedraggled, bruised people in formalwear - other hostages, Charin realizes, and then rolls the word hostages around in her head.
The guards help them along, hurry them along, and Senna has to carry Nene up the stairs, panting. And then the man scouting in front stops at the door to what Charin thinks must be the ground-level courtyard and turns back, says "Campbell - the kids -" His hand is clutching his gun.There is a smell of ash and burning, a smell like the city abbatoir on a hot day, and Charin's stomach gives a heave.
One of the women in bedraggled court finery steps forward to look out at the courtyard, flinches, and presses Senna and Charin back. "The light." she says, kneeling. Her face is gray, and green around the mouth. Her voice is light, and false. "You've been underground too long. The light will hurt your eyes. I want you to put these over your head -" She tears two panels off her skirt with a sharp noise, wraps one around Senna's head and one around Charin's. "Carry the baby," she says to the man beside her, "put her head under your coat, they shouldn't -" She turns back. "Put those over your eyes hold my hands," and Charin does it, and she can hear that Senna does too. "Just - keep your eyes closed. Promise me."
Charin isn't stupid. The perfume and sweat and dirty smell of the cloth helps mask the smell in the courtyard, but it's horrible and thick, explosive dust and - she turns her thoughts away, she tries not to gag. She tries not to think about what she might be stepping on. Years later, she will turn to Senna and say - "the bombs", and Senna will say, "From the jumpers. The rebels were in the courtyard above ground." It is not something they will speak of until then.
They are herded into the jumper - Charin doesn't want to, doesn't want to go into another small, dark room, and has to be herded - and Charin and Senna sit on the floor, in the corner, and hold Nene between them as the jumper takes off. There is a column of smoke behind them, and Charin doesn't think about it, and then the shuttle is going straight through the Gate, and straight to the jumper bay, because there are more coming behind them.
John is there, suddenly, in a uniform that is torn and sweat-stained and shows a blank black rectangle on the shoulder like a scar. He says "Charin," and falls to his knees, wrapping his arms around her, and then she starts crying and goes, "Dad, where's my dad?", caught up in blind panic before her father's arms catch her. Rodney's out of breath, pulling Jenet by one hand, and he catches Senna and Nene too, and Charin realizes suddenly that this is the first time since this started that she's seen Senna cry.
---
Teyla will say nothing to John, but she remembers him in the first years of the war, and will never want to ask. And Rodney will say, "the kidnappers?" And John will crack an old, painfully genuine smile and say, "They pretty much all died." Rodney will say, "Good." And they will never say a word to their children about that, no matter what.
When John comes home to the City, dirty uniform on his back, gun on his hip, they are all waiting for him - the ones who look like him and have been watching him, who he realizes have been waiting since he woke up. They are there in the Gateroom, uniformed, ranked. He feels the weight of the uniform on his shoulders. He stands there, awkward, and then says, "I guess I'm your commander now."
He tries not to flinch when they start cheering.
---
Jinto is tired, bruised, and thinner than he was the last time Charin saw him; the Queen looks like she cut her braid off with a pocketknife sometime in the last week, and is wearing the kind of stiff black clothes that signify a military uniform on any planet. Jinto is in the gateroom office; the Queen is in the palace on Duras, because she can’t leave the city, not during a coup.
Charin shouldn’t be here, but she’s been sticking by Jinto since he came back – they all have – and he’s standing right up on the balcony, because he’s seventeen years old and doesn’t care who knows his business.
“I still want to,” he says, and the gateroom is a little too quiet. There are butterfly bandages in a line down his cheek.
“Jinto.” The Queen’s voice is soft, but Charin is lurking back by the gate controls, and can hear her. Her battle fatigues are not new; they are flat, and plain, besides the sash. She and Jinto were hauled out of the same cell, three days ago. “I could not ask – not after everything –“
She straightens a little, on the screen, and her mouth is a firm straight line. “Jinto Emmagen, I formally release you from any contract between our peoples or ourselves –“
“No,” he says, but she continues –
“I can have my stewards redraw the treaty – the fighting has mostly died down, we can resign it in the weeks to come –“
Jinto is still, and then his back straightens. “Alright,” he says, and the noise in the gateroom that has all-so-subtly died down picks up again, suddenly, bustlingly. And then he says, before she can turn off the communication system, “Marry me.”
Her hand falls from the off button.
“If you’re taking back your proposal, I’m proposing.” He looks kind of brave, Charin thinks, skinny and seventeen.
“You cannot –“ she says, her hands worrying at her sleeve, and then her fingers reaching towards the screen, “After everything – Jinto, I can’t protect you. I know that now.”
“I know,” he says. “And you tried. You tried to protect everyone, and you got us out of there, and I want to marry you.” His voice is fierce, and Charin, who has never given her half-brother a day of privacy in his life, finally catches herself and turns away from the two of them, separated by a screen and dozens of light years.
---
“I mean, we spent a lot of time in alien jail cells, and we’ve got a – what’d you say, Rodney? You think we have a strong relationship?”
Rodney swats at John’s hand. They are both watching Charin eat dinner, with the kind of hypervigilant care they have shown since she got back.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re just suffering from thirty years of Stockholm Syndrome,” Rodney says. It’s supposed to be a joke, but nothing is really a joke, and Rodney walks to school with Charin every morning. When she wakes up in the middle of the night from dreams of the dust and stone burying her, he’s always awake, waiting in the living room with a pot of tea. John would hover too, but he's almost never there anymore. She finally got her wish. He spends most of his time down on the parade ground. Sometimes he comes home smelling like explosives and she stays in her room.
“I want to go to the mainland,” she tells her father. It’s three or four in the morning; the moons are clouded over, and the ocean is a dull silver shine out the window. He has made her umami milk with caramel in it, warm, like she’s a little kid, and she looks at her balding, graying, exhausted father and thinks that it is probably impossible to love someone more than she loves him in this exact moment. But when he says, “For a visit? Sure, John can –“ she cuts him off and says, “No.”
She says, “I’m pretty much done with the lower school. I have to decide what to do next. I want to go to the mainland.”
“I thought –“ he says. He sits, wraps his hands around his mug, uncurls his fingers one by one. “I thought you’d go to the upper school, with all the other kids – you’re so smart, I thought maybe gate engineering, or one of the science tracks –“
She doesn’t want to say what she’s going to say next. She doesn’t think about the stench in the courtyard, or Jinto’s bruises, or the sunworn lines under Anil's eyes. It's not - it's not just that smell, which is in her nostrils now, which she doesn't pay attention to, and doesn't, and doesn't. It's the horrible creeping edge of doubt she feels when she walks down the too-clean city corridors, like none of it's real, or none of it means the things she thinks it means.
“I don’t think I want to be an ATA for a while,” she says, finally. “I’ll stay with Teyla. There's room now.”
Rodney will argue with her, later, and John will get involved, and books will be thrown and there will be shouting matches, but right now Rodney reaches out an arm to her, like he’s too tired to say anything, and she puts her head on his shoulder and drinks her milk. In another month – a month in which Charin doodles in all her classes, continues her campaign of noncooperation in appointments with Doctor Heightmeyer’s interns, and doesn’t talk to anybody if she can help it – she packs. She folds up her underwear, and adds her toothbrush and her copy of Jane Eyre. She leaves both of her computers on her desk, hugs John lightly and Rodney hard, and gets on a jumper to the mainland. She walks down the path between the grainfields alone, in the early summer air; Jenet greets her quietly, and sets her things in Jinto’s nook, with its privacy screen, and its empty shelves, and the shadowy shape of paper stars glued against the translucent ceiling. Then she sends Charin out to feed the poultry, and bring two pounds of beans up from the storehouse, and ask down at the butcher’s if there are any bones for soup.
That night, Charin lays in the dark, listening to Senna and Nene breathe on their pallets under the longhouse's curving roof. Her pillow smells like her brother – acrid teenage boy and dirty socks – and she’ll air it out in the morning, but for now she loops her arm over the pillow and goes to sleep.
---
The day of the wedding dawns bright and hot. John and Rodney look sober and dignified in their black and gray Atlantean uniforms; Charin feels bright and awkward next to them, in the orange dress with the six gauzy overskirts that Jenet made for her. Her ears feel funny; her head feels weird and empty. When the jumper went through the Gate, she had a sudden, horrible sense of vertigo as the City blinked out, and she keeps trying to find east, and then remembering there's nothing there.
It's been a couple of hours, though, and now she finds it kind of fun.
She sees Senna and Nene, in blue and green and purple, and waves, and says "Dad, can I go stand with them? Can I?".
Rodney looks around, squints, nods, and Charin manages not to step on her own dress, or get it stepped on, as she weaves through the crowd in front of the matrimonial altar and grabs Senna's outstretched hand. There aren't so many people up here - on the roped-off platform at the head of the city's biggest plaza - but behind them, and below them, there are hundreds of people, thousands of people, along the rooftops and balconies of the capitol, all dressed in bright clothes and waving banners, shouting to each other, buying iced fruit and cake rolls from roving vendors, throwing flowers, holding up babies. Charin tries not to look down there, because the sheer volume of people makes her a little dizzy, and the last thing she needs is to faint on her first trip off-world. Rodney would probably never let her leave the city again if she did that.
"Have you seen Jinto?" she asks Senna, and Senna says, "I was back with him an hour ago. I thought he was going to throw up. He's so nervous." Senna squeezes Charin's hand. Something about the mood of the crowd is infectious; Charin finds herself grinning, and impulsively she picks Nene up - Nene's six, just barely still small enough - and says, "There, there's the castle, they'll come from there -"
There is a pounding of drums, and a bright, high blast of music, and the doors open.
In the Athosian settlement, a husband would be conducted to his bride's house by relatives, and there would be music and dancing on the path, and old men telling dirty jokes, and a meal with lots of cakes and just enough hard cider to keep the old people from complaining that their daughter's settlement threw a much better party. Here there was just the wedding party - the head priestess, and Jinto, and the Queen - walking up to the platform, the only sound the low throbbing of drums in the distance.
Jinto looks tall and thin in his fancy robes, and a little pale around the mouth, but Charin sees his glance pass her direction, and his mouth quirks up, just a little. Charin moves Nene's hand in a wave. The Queen steps onto the platform, and a murmur runs through the crowd. She is not a small woman, imposing, dressed in a high-necked gown that is as simple and straight as Jinto's robes are bright. The priestess stops, steps between them, raises her hands -
It is the loudest noise in the world, and Charin ducks, pulling Nene down with her, and then thinks, What is wrong? What has happened?
Then there are shrieks, and smoke rising, and Charin can't see the Queen or her brother because there is a swarm of soldiers over the high platform, and other people - she feels for Senna. She is still holding Senna's hand. Another noise, and this time stinging gas in her lungs, and someone has hold of her, is carrying her along, and then there is a flash of light and her head goes dark inside.
She is in a big room full of people. Some of them are wedding guests, sitting or laying on the floor, looking bruised and sometimes bloody. Some of them are thin, wearing dirty green, and armed. Her head hurts horribly.
Senna is beside her, already awake, with Nene on her lap.
"Where are we?" Charin mouths, and Senna shakes her head. Charin tries to sit up, and groans, and a person in dirty green holding a large and unfamiliar kind of gun looks over at them and shouts, "No talking!" and Charin bites her lip to keep from crying as she levers herself upward.
Senna bends to move Nene to Charin's lap, and murmurs, her hair falling to cover her face, "It's a kind of bomb that makes you faint. I read about it in my mother's books."
Charin can't see Teyla, or her dad. She looks around frantically, and then Senna puts her hand on Charin's shoulder and stops her. "Wait," she whispers, almost silently, and then the guards are muscling them up and moving them. Charin holds Nene, and Senna holds onto Charin, and there are a lot of guns, and a lot of cold-eyed people holding them.
"Through the arch," the man in front barks. His gun is smaller and his hat has some sort of stamp on it. Charin looks up. They must be in the old part of the city, because the arch overhead has an Ancient stone in it, the kind that glows for no good reason besides that the Ancients liked glowy stones. Charin is pretty over the glowing stone thing.
Senna is watching ahead, and she whispers, again, "Charin. Think off. Think off."
A guard take Nene out of Charin's arms, and Charin tried to grab for her and is shoved through the arch, and she thinks OFF. The stone is blank. Nene is pushed through, and Charin catches her and starts crying again. A woman right behind them passes through the arch, and the stone lights up, and she is muscled off to another room.
"No crying," the guard says, and shoves them down the hallway with the butt of her gun, and locks them in a cell.
---
"What happened?" John says into his radio, and the response is staticky but real. He is holding Rodney by one arm; Rodney is mute, shaking, and John had to drag him back from the fire and the crowd, the shouts of the wounded and the rising smoke between them and the high platform where the royal guests stood. Where Rodney and Teyla's children had stood, moments before.
"There was a transporter signature, Rodney," he says, and Rodney shakes his head, pulls towards the platform. "They're alive. They've been taken somewhere. We will find them. We have to get out of here." Rodney has a cut along his jaw and says, low, "I have to look for them - let me go look for them -".
John feels familiar, suddenly, and twenty years younger. It is not a good feeling.
---
Charin doesn't know how to fly a jumper, She definitely doesn't know how to fire a gun, and when Senna and Jinto learned stickfighting Charin got bored and wandered off to watch the tatum-hens squabble over their new feeder. She's kind of regretting it now.
"I wish Selena was here," Senna says, dully, and Charin agrees. Selena would knock the guard unconscious, build a ladder out of his underwear, and have them all home in time for dinner. Charin scrubs at her face furiously, smearing the makeup she let Jenet put on her for the ceremony - "Fourteen," Jenet had said, "Old enough for something around the eyes". She looks at the glittery smear on her palm and bites her lip again. She's done enough crying for a couple of years, at least: she's not going to start again now.
"Nene, are you warm enough?" she asks instead. Their cell is windowless and damp, and Charin counted stairs going in and thinks they're a couple of stories down from where they started; Charin is still hot with fury and adrenaline, and she's wearing about twelve layers more than she really needs. She's pretty sure some of it could make a blanket.
"M'fine," Nene sniffles. She's lying in the concaved bell of Senna's skirt, wrapped in the shawl Senna had carried; all that is visible of her are two dark eyes, puffy from crying. "I want to go home."
Charin clenches her hand, shakes her head, says, "We're going to." She's pacing; the straps on one of her shoes has already broken, and the elegant hem of her skirt is filthy with dirt and what she's pretty sure is someone else's blood. She turns away from that thought, and tries not to figure out exactly who she was standing near.
"Charin," Senna says, impatient. "Sit down. You'll get tired faster." There is a bruise on her face where she got hit with the butt of a gun on their way down the stairs, an accident, maybe, and Charin hates whoever they were - with their uniforms and their big guns - a little more.
"There has to be a way out of here," Charin says. She is pressing her nails into her palms so hard that it stings; she hates small places, she hates small, dark places, and her brain won't stop running in circles of what-if. What if Senna - what if Nene - and where is Jinto? Where is - oh god, her father. Her father was up there. He was back in the crowd, did she see him?
"Charin," Senna says. "They did not put us in the one cell that two teenagers and a six-year-old can break out of using nothing but a comb and their wits. Come here and sit down, I'm cold."
"You have a comb?" Charin says, hopefully, but she goes and sits, her skirt huffing out around her, and puts her head on Senna's shoulder like she had when they were children. She tries to control her trembling.
"Alright," Senna says, after a bit. "They have not hurt any of us. I have umami jerky in my bag -"
"You have a bag?" Charin asks, and Senna gives her her you are an idiot look and says "I hid it in the hoopskirt, they just scanned us for weapons, they didn't search us."
Senna is a year older than Charin but Charin usually doesn't feel dumb around her. "Do you have anything I can pry with?" Charin asks. "There's Ancient technology in the wall by the door, I can feel it, if I can get that brick off I can get at the wiring -"
"There's a man with a gun outside that door," Senna says, "And another one behind him. And Charin, they'll probably decide you're ATA if you start messing with the wiring with your brain."
Charin folds her arms. "Okay. I want jerky."
"Not until we get water, I think." Senna shifts. "Oof. Nene's asleep."
"How can she sleep -" Senna hushes Charin. "You think they're after ATAs?"
"That blue arch we walked under."
"Oh god, do you think -"
"Wait." said Senna. "I think they'll bring us water, and maybe some food, and then we'll decide what to do."
It's an unspecified amount of time before the door slides open, and for some reason Charin is on her feet, standing in front of her cousins, even though Senna plucks at her sleeve and whispers, "Charin, get down."
The tall, androgynous figure who enters spreads his - her? - hands, empty, unarmed, and Charin doesn't know what she'd do anyway except that the three or four people who come in after are definitely armed. Charin draws back.
"Sit," the tall figure says. It's a woman's voice, smooth. Charin sits.
"What are your names?" she asks, and when they are silent, she smiles. Her face is wrinkled and splotched, like she's spent all her life outside; she is missing teeth. "I am Anil."
Senna has pushed her way a little in front of Charin, so that her shadow falls across Charin's face, and Charin shoves at her. "Where are our mothers?" Senna asks, voice shaking. "Why have you taken us? Are you at war with the Athosians?" and Anil holds up one hand, and Senna falls silent.
"I am going to explain," the woman says. Her voice is hard, and rasps a little. "And you will listen quietly. Too many people have died this day for me to have to shout over hysterical children."
"We're not hysterical," Charin mutters, and Senna pushes her further back.
The woman sits, easily, like she's always sat on dirt floors. Charin can smell her dirty uniform in the small room. There are brownish smears on her knees. She folds her hands in front of her, and says in her broken, sing-song voice:
"The Ancestors came to our planet." She pauses, like she's waiting for a response, and the continues. "They were great and good and noble, and we laid down on our faces and praised them, and put all our faith in them, and they protected us from the Wraith."
Her posture, and her voice, are like Teyla's telling a story, and Charin can feel something scared in her chest settle and listen. She narrows her eyes. She reminds herself that this woman throws little children in dungeons.
The woman continues. "Thy protected us sometimes. And for a while. And when they left, they left their marvelous machines, and those who had the Ancestor's gift wielded them. At first they asked only to be fed and cared for by their villages - like warriors, or any artist - but as time wore on their gifts grew rarer, and weaker, and they gathered together in their fastnesses and sent out word that they would defend only those who paid them tribute, and then, only those who obeyed their words. The first of them was called Virtuous. Queen Harmony is the three hundredth and forty-second monarch in his line." The woman lifted one dirty, thick-fingered hand, and let it fall. "It happened on many worlds. This is one of them. Queen Harmony's line has controlled this continent - where the only protected humans dwelt - for nine hundred years."
She looks behind her, at the armed men who stand, blank, grubby, their big, ugly hands resting on their big, ugly guns. "Some of them weren't so bad," she says. "Some of them were very bad. These cells were built, centuries ago, to hold people who disagreed with them. There are torture chambers, deeper underground." Her gray, lined mouth twitches upwards like the ghost of humor. "It is a very fine line," she says, "between disagreeing with a monarch and being accused of loving the Wraith."
"But the Queen - " Charin blurts, and this time Senna finds her arm, twists, pinches and Charin's mouth snaps shut.
"Yes," Anil says, her mouth twisting like she tastes something horrible. "Queen Harmony. Propped on her throne by a delegation of aliens after her own family tried to depose her. She will make a fine last Queen. And even if -"
Charin sees suddenly that the woman's hands are pressed against her knees so hard that the knuckles show red. "If she had died childless - if she had ruled even ten years more with no spouse and no heir - we would have stayed laboring in our fields until she passed in peaceful old age. She is not - a cruel woman. But when she brought a half-alien - one of the Atlanteans! - to be her child-husband and reseed the royal line. No -" she pushes herself up, standing, and Charin shrinks back "- we can't risk a thousand years more of ATA rule. We won't. Surely the Athosians can see -" She stops. "Well. The Athosians have made their alliances. But even so, I have respect for the name Emmagen. They were brave, and wise, and a humble nation. And so I speak to you, because we will release you to your mother as soon as our conditions are met, and I wanted her eldest - natural child -" again that lemon-sour twist at the mouth - "to hear the truth from me."
Senna stands, and brushes Charin's hand from her skirt when Charin tried to hold onto her. Her back straightens. She is dirty, and small, and bloody, and she looks like Teyla, and Charin wants to cry.
"Do I tell her the commander told me?" she asks. Her voice is trembling.
A smile rises and falls on Anil's face. "Child, before this I grew beans and told stories, and if I live I will farm beans and tell stories. You tell her a farmer from Duras told you a story. Tell her you listened."
"Our cousin -" Senna says, gesturing towards Charin. "She is from the Northern farmland - she has no dealings with any of this -"
Anil shrugs. "That depends." And then she says, smiling, "We might all still die." And then she nods at them, and turns, and leaves, and the men with guns back out behind her.
"That was a lie!" Charin says.
Senna says "Shut up and let me think."
Charin is quiet for a minute or two, watching one of the endless rivulets of damp drip down the stone walls, and then she says, "Do you think it was true? Do you think the old ATAs tortured people here?"
Senna shrugs. "It happened other places."
"She called Jinto half-alien." Charin says. "Do you think he's all right? You're half-alien too, aren't you?"
"Not the half that counts," Senna says savagely, and Charin is quiet.
Later Charin says, "They hate ATAs," and Senna doesn't say anything.
Later Charin says, "But we - but Atlantis. We try to help everyone. That's what we do. We're trying to give everyone the gene! So that everyone can use the technology!"
"Maybe they don't want it," Senna says.
"That's crazy," Charin says. "That's - that's not scientific. If they'd just gone to Elizabeth and asked -"
"We have treaties with the Queen," Senna says. "So do you. Binding treaties."
"And so what if the ATAs in the capitol get some extra fruit! Everyone didn't get eaten! And we - we overthrew the Lord Protector on that planet where they all lived in a tower! John and my dad did!"
Senna looks at Charin, and Charin says "What?"
"Do you remember when my little brother died?" Senna asks. "Beltran, he was six months younger than Nene."
"Of course I do." Charin says. "During the Garanian Flu. I was eight."
"He died on the eighth day." Senna says. "He didn't even get sick until the fourth. And on the ninth the doctors came, with a cure."
Charin says, "I cried for weeks," and then she says, "They started the medical school after that, didn't they?"
"Because they didn't have enough doctors," Senna says. "By the time they finished vaccinating everyone in the city and the village and came out to the settlement, it was too late for a lot of people."
"Some people in the city died too," Charin says.
Senna nods.
"They had to make sure the city was vaccinated so they didn't spread it through the Gate," Charin says.
Senna spreads her hands, inclines her head.
They don't talk about it again.
---
"It's the anti-Royalists," one of the Athosian men says to Teyla, and Teyla's face goes blank and dull. Her face is sooty, and John has a sudden, fierce memory of days and nights on battlefields with this woman. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and she starts, then nods and turns back to the tactical map in front of her. They are in the royal bunker, a continent away from the fighting - they were carried there immediately, in the squadrons of jumpers that had gathered to transport wedding guests. The Royal Guards have already quelled the panic in the city, put out the fires, carried the wounded to field hospitals. Or so they were told, as they watched the blue-green planet fall away and then draw close again.
One of the Queen's Escord, in a military uniform with a chest full of spangles and bars, nods, and says "We have received no communication, but this has their fingerprints all over it. The Queen is safe -" a ripple of relief around the room, from the Harmonians - "but the Son of Athos has not been found, nor have those abducted from the parade grounds. We traced two separate transporters -" she leans to the table they stand around, and taps it, bringing up maps. "We know where they are, more or less. We -" She grimaces. "We fear greatly for their safety."
"Do these people do this a lot?" John asks, and doesn't flinch when all eyes turn to him.
"Sometimes," the commander says. "This is their largest incursion. They kidnap the mayors of villages for a ransom, or burn barges loaded with tax grain. Of course -" another pause. "This is the largest public gathering since the Wraith war. I don't think anyone anticipated that other Durasians would dare attack it." Her mouth twists, and she spits on the cement floor. "Traitors, all of them. It's disgusting."
"You just can't please everybody," says John, and then makes his who, me? face when they stare at him.
The general begins talking about infiltrators, hostage negotiations, the complex geography of a city built to fend off air atacks, and John and Teyla find themselves shunted to one side. John reaches for Teyla's arm, and realizes then that they are both shaking slightly.
"Teyla," he says, without knowing what to say, and she answers,
"Nene is six years old." And then says, "And Senna is fifteen. They -" She is quiet for a moment, collects herself, continues. "Both of them grew up in peacetime. They've never held a gun. We have to -"
She turns to John. "John, we have to."
And John meets her eyes, and says, "I know."
When the air strikes begin - knocking out the transporter interdiction field around the old dungeons under the Old Palace's pleasure gardens so that the Durasian troops can transport directly into the stronghold - John is on the jumper. He is wearing a gun strapped to his hip, and the weight feels uncomfortable, and familiar, and he refuses to think about what he may or may not find ahead of him.
--
It might have been a day or two or three. Food is shoved under the door at irregular intervals; the back corner of the cell stays dry, and the drain at the front stinks but doesn't clog. Charin is asleep - Nene has stopped sleeping, or really waking up, but lays on Charin or Senna's lap in a ball - when she is awoken by the first dull thump in the distance, like thunder.
She wakes, and Senna is already awake, sitting alert and staring at the door.
"What is it?" Charin asks. "Thunder?"
Senna shakes her head. "It must be bombs,." she says. "The Royal Army, or Atlantis. I don't think these guys down here have bombers."
"Then they're coming for us!" Charin says, and Senna glances at her, and then says, "They probably don't know we're here."
"We have to try to signal them," Charin says. "The wiring in that wall - I can use it, it's ATA technology -"
"Charin!" Senna hisses. "I don't know what will happen if they know that you have the gene! They're fighting people with the gene!"
Charin is up, inspecting the panel again. "Do you have something to pry with?"
"For all we know they will take you out and shoot you the second they suspect," Senna says.
"Or we could die when the bombs make all these old tunnels cave in!" Charin snaps. "No. Give it to me."
Senna pauses, and another thump shakes the building. She nods, and hands Charin the long-handled comb - metal, and it shows signs of surreptitious sharpening, and Charin feels at least a little forgiving towards her cousin. Then Senna hands Charin the thin plastic wire of what Charin recognizes as a radio, and Charin is suddenly furious.
"It doesn't pick up anything," Senna says. "I've been trying."
"That is not teamwork," Charin hisses, furious, and turns to the wall panel. The thumping is closer, and dust is filtering down from the ceiling with each impact. Nene lets out a whimper.
"The back left corner," Senna says. "I think it's under a support beam, it might hold."
"Okay." Charin says around the comb in her teeth. She's got the brick off, and the wiring should carry the signal; she hits the activator, hits it again -
Through all the Gate-translated babble, she hears the sudden clear syllables of English, and presses her face close to the pickup, crying "Atlantis, this is Charin Cadman, can you hear me?"
There is a pause, and then a voice says "Holy shit." It's Charles Campbell. "Charin, where are you?"
"Underground somewhere," and then she goes, "You idiots, scan for my IDC, I'm standing right by a transmitter -"
There's a scuffling sound, and then Colonel Sheppard's voice. "Charin, are you okay?"
"So far," she says, and she's pretty sure everyone can hear her voice shake. "Senna and Nene are with me, we're in a cell, we went down four flights of stairs from the surface, we're pretty deep -"
"We've got your location," he says, and then, "Charin, you need to sit tight, okay? Don't make any noise, just hang on until we get to you -"
The radio cuts off.
"Disconnect it," Senna says, and when Charin hesitates, she jerks it out of Charin's hands and pulls the wires off. "Put it back," and Charin understands her, shocks herself unpleasantly getting the wires back in the wall, jams the brick back on. There's a sound of running feet in the hallway, and Charin lets Senna drag her back to the far corner they've decided is their bomb shelter. Nene curls into a tight ball in Charin's lap; when the air starts to fill with dust, they wrap the gauze from their dresses over their heads. When they start to smell smoke, they lay down and put their faces near the floor.
"The door," Charin says, and Senna says, "I tried, Charin," and it's at that moment that the door blows in, and the light is bright, blinding, and Charin throws her arm over her face.
"Senna? Charin?" It's Sergeant Campbell again, and Charin stumbles to her feet. "Come with me, quickly. There's a fire." Charin lifts Nene, and Senna stumbles after them. Their eyes are watering in the smoke; there's a contingent of city guards, and a couple of bedraggled, bruised people in formalwear - other hostages, Charin realizes, and then rolls the word hostages around in her head.
The guards help them along, hurry them along, and Senna has to carry Nene up the stairs, panting. And then the man scouting in front stops at the door to what Charin thinks must be the ground-level courtyard and turns back, says "Campbell - the kids -" His hand is clutching his gun.There is a smell of ash and burning, a smell like the city abbatoir on a hot day, and Charin's stomach gives a heave.
One of the women in bedraggled court finery steps forward to look out at the courtyard, flinches, and presses Senna and Charin back. "The light." she says, kneeling. Her face is gray, and green around the mouth. Her voice is light, and false. "You've been underground too long. The light will hurt your eyes. I want you to put these over your head -" She tears two panels off her skirt with a sharp noise, wraps one around Senna's head and one around Charin's. "Carry the baby," she says to the man beside her, "put her head under your coat, they shouldn't -" She turns back. "Put those over your eyes hold my hands," and Charin does it, and she can hear that Senna does too. "Just - keep your eyes closed. Promise me."
Charin isn't stupid. The perfume and sweat and dirty smell of the cloth helps mask the smell in the courtyard, but it's horrible and thick, explosive dust and - she turns her thoughts away, she tries not to gag. She tries not to think about what she might be stepping on. Years later, she will turn to Senna and say - "the bombs", and Senna will say, "From the jumpers. The rebels were in the courtyard above ground." It is not something they will speak of until then.
They are herded into the jumper - Charin doesn't want to, doesn't want to go into another small, dark room, and has to be herded - and Charin and Senna sit on the floor, in the corner, and hold Nene between them as the jumper takes off. There is a column of smoke behind them, and Charin doesn't think about it, and then the shuttle is going straight through the Gate, and straight to the jumper bay, because there are more coming behind them.
John is there, suddenly, in a uniform that is torn and sweat-stained and shows a blank black rectangle on the shoulder like a scar. He says "Charin," and falls to his knees, wrapping his arms around her, and then she starts crying and goes, "Dad, where's my dad?", caught up in blind panic before her father's arms catch her. Rodney's out of breath, pulling Jenet by one hand, and he catches Senna and Nene too, and Charin realizes suddenly that this is the first time since this started that she's seen Senna cry.
---
Teyla will say nothing to John, but she remembers him in the first years of the war, and will never want to ask. And Rodney will say, "the kidnappers?" And John will crack an old, painfully genuine smile and say, "They pretty much all died." Rodney will say, "Good." And they will never say a word to their children about that, no matter what.
When John comes home to the City, dirty uniform on his back, gun on his hip, they are all waiting for him - the ones who look like him and have been watching him, who he realizes have been waiting since he woke up. They are there in the Gateroom, uniformed, ranked. He feels the weight of the uniform on his shoulders. He stands there, awkward, and then says, "I guess I'm your commander now."
He tries not to flinch when they start cheering.
---
Jinto is tired, bruised, and thinner than he was the last time Charin saw him; the Queen looks like she cut her braid off with a pocketknife sometime in the last week, and is wearing the kind of stiff black clothes that signify a military uniform on any planet. Jinto is in the gateroom office; the Queen is in the palace on Duras, because she can’t leave the city, not during a coup.
Charin shouldn’t be here, but she’s been sticking by Jinto since he came back – they all have – and he’s standing right up on the balcony, because he’s seventeen years old and doesn’t care who knows his business.
“I still want to,” he says, and the gateroom is a little too quiet. There are butterfly bandages in a line down his cheek.
“Jinto.” The Queen’s voice is soft, but Charin is lurking back by the gate controls, and can hear her. Her battle fatigues are not new; they are flat, and plain, besides the sash. She and Jinto were hauled out of the same cell, three days ago. “I could not ask – not after everything –“
She straightens a little, on the screen, and her mouth is a firm straight line. “Jinto Emmagen, I formally release you from any contract between our peoples or ourselves –“
“No,” he says, but she continues –
“I can have my stewards redraw the treaty – the fighting has mostly died down, we can resign it in the weeks to come –“
Jinto is still, and then his back straightens. “Alright,” he says, and the noise in the gateroom that has all-so-subtly died down picks up again, suddenly, bustlingly. And then he says, before she can turn off the communication system, “Marry me.”
Her hand falls from the off button.
“If you’re taking back your proposal, I’m proposing.” He looks kind of brave, Charin thinks, skinny and seventeen.
“You cannot –“ she says, her hands worrying at her sleeve, and then her fingers reaching towards the screen, “After everything – Jinto, I can’t protect you. I know that now.”
“I know,” he says. “And you tried. You tried to protect everyone, and you got us out of there, and I want to marry you.” His voice is fierce, and Charin, who has never given her half-brother a day of privacy in his life, finally catches herself and turns away from the two of them, separated by a screen and dozens of light years.
---
“I mean, we spent a lot of time in alien jail cells, and we’ve got a – what’d you say, Rodney? You think we have a strong relationship?”
Rodney swats at John’s hand. They are both watching Charin eat dinner, with the kind of hypervigilant care they have shown since she got back.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re just suffering from thirty years of Stockholm Syndrome,” Rodney says. It’s supposed to be a joke, but nothing is really a joke, and Rodney walks to school with Charin every morning. When she wakes up in the middle of the night from dreams of the dust and stone burying her, he’s always awake, waiting in the living room with a pot of tea. John would hover too, but he's almost never there anymore. She finally got her wish. He spends most of his time down on the parade ground. Sometimes he comes home smelling like explosives and she stays in her room.
“I want to go to the mainland,” she tells her father. It’s three or four in the morning; the moons are clouded over, and the ocean is a dull silver shine out the window. He has made her umami milk with caramel in it, warm, like she’s a little kid, and she looks at her balding, graying, exhausted father and thinks that it is probably impossible to love someone more than she loves him in this exact moment. But when he says, “For a visit? Sure, John can –“ she cuts him off and says, “No.”
She says, “I’m pretty much done with the lower school. I have to decide what to do next. I want to go to the mainland.”
“I thought –“ he says. He sits, wraps his hands around his mug, uncurls his fingers one by one. “I thought you’d go to the upper school, with all the other kids – you’re so smart, I thought maybe gate engineering, or one of the science tracks –“
She doesn’t want to say what she’s going to say next. She doesn’t think about the stench in the courtyard, or Jinto’s bruises, or the sunworn lines under Anil's eyes. It's not - it's not just that smell, which is in her nostrils now, which she doesn't pay attention to, and doesn't, and doesn't. It's the horrible creeping edge of doubt she feels when she walks down the too-clean city corridors, like none of it's real, or none of it means the things she thinks it means.
“I don’t think I want to be an ATA for a while,” she says, finally. “I’ll stay with Teyla. There's room now.”
Rodney will argue with her, later, and John will get involved, and books will be thrown and there will be shouting matches, but right now Rodney reaches out an arm to her, like he’s too tired to say anything, and she puts her head on his shoulder and drinks her milk. In another month – a month in which Charin doodles in all her classes, continues her campaign of noncooperation in appointments with Doctor Heightmeyer’s interns, and doesn’t talk to anybody if she can help it – she packs. She folds up her underwear, and adds her toothbrush and her copy of Jane Eyre. She leaves both of her computers on her desk, hugs John lightly and Rodney hard, and gets on a jumper to the mainland. She walks down the path between the grainfields alone, in the early summer air; Jenet greets her quietly, and sets her things in Jinto’s nook, with its privacy screen, and its empty shelves, and the shadowy shape of paper stars glued against the translucent ceiling. Then she sends Charin out to feed the poultry, and bring two pounds of beans up from the storehouse, and ask down at the butcher’s if there are any bones for soup.
That night, Charin lays in the dark, listening to Senna and Nene breathe on their pallets under the longhouse's curving roof. Her pillow smells like her brother – acrid teenage boy and dirty socks – and she’ll air it out in the morning, but for now she loops her arm over the pillow and goes to sleep.