Original Story: Alpha Centauri by Hth

Teyla stands on the threshold between the night-dark forest and the ruins of the cave that was, this morning, home to Zaddik and Ellia. Sighing branches hide the moons, but starlight trickles down to the rocks at her feet, painting the path to the river in gray shadows. At her back, dried herbs and broken beakers litter the benches and the floor, half swept aside by Dr. Beckett's mercurial cataloguing. The air smells sharply, strongly, of clean water, and spices, and pine. Teyla crouches down and picks up a sprig of silvery leaves. Its shape reminds her of the Earth plant sage, though it smells like viansha, the choosing herb. Teyla crushes the stem and brushes its powder from her fingers, breathing in its scent.

If this cave had been a home to her people, then tonight would mark the vigil of leave-taking. As long as the moon lasts after the Wraith pass, they do not touch the tents of those drained and lost. In the morning, Teyla leads the apportionment of their belongings, taking some small token for herself, leaving the rest for all those who claim kin with the dead. It's with a gratefulness so strong it is nearly pain that Teyla counts back to the last leave-taking; it was before they came to Atlantis.

There will be none to come at sunrise to bid Ellia farewell. The villagers returned with Zaddik's body to their walled houses, but they will have nothing to do with the girl, the monster. Teyla long ago learned that no planet honours the dead in the same fashion, and she has never mourned a Wraith; still, she wishes there was more for Ellia than to return to Atlantis as Dr. Beckett's experiment: a specimen, a prize. She would offer her own silence, but she finds it impossible to find her focus and make the gift worthy.

She stands and turns away from the forest, filled with its unquiet dead. The cave is warm and well lit with lanterns. Her head aches still, and she can feel bruises forming beneath her skin. Colonel Sheppard's arm must pain him as well, though it did not seem serious enough for Dr. Beckett to rush them back to the Stargate. Indeed, Dr. Beckett lay down nearly an hour ago, "to rest my eyes," he said. Now he sleeps deeply, his breathing hitching with an occasional sighing snore.

Rodney is still awake.

Teyla reaches for her center once more, and finds herself watching him instead. Rodney hunches over his laptop, squinting at the display, muttering and jabbing the keys with curled fingers. He's frowning, lips thin and turned down. Teyla measures his restlessness by her own. She wishes this night watch promised more than lost sleep; she would enjoy testing herself against an enemy once more, and not find herself wanting. Rodney's fingers twitch and snap softly, his knee jiggles, and he glances often towards the secondary cave entrance, as if he is watching Atlantis's displays ticking away seconds towards disaster.

Teyla has spent a lifetime learning customs and taboos from a hundred different worlds. The Stargate has allowed her the chance to gain wisdom from as many peoples as there are pebbles in a riverbed, and she knows that only a handful of stones have slipped through her fingers. It took her far less than the year she has lived among the Atlanteans to understand the importance of understanding nothing. She has, for the colonel's sake as well as for Rodney's, been senseless, sightless, and during more than one off-world mission, determinedly deaf.

She wonders, now, if Rodney thinks that she truly is as blind and as witless as she has pretended. Perhaps; compared to his, her skill at pretense approaches the infinite. That is her father's teaching, but she is quite sure that he never intended for it to be used on her friends. Certainly, never for this.

"My fucking arm hurts!"

Rodney startles badly at the sound of Colonel Sheppard's voice. His grip on his laptop turns white-knuckled, and he's halfway to his feet before he stops himself. He jitters for a moment and sits down again. Teyla forces back her own concern. The colonel sounded more petulant than hurt, and--again for Sheppard's sake; for the team she is a part of--she cannot go to him. He isn't alone, keeping watch on the second entranceway. Ronon is there too.

"They do not care if you are afraid of them!" Ronon's shout comes through the closed door clearly. Rodney's head jerks up as if it is being pulled by strings. This time, he sees her watching him, and he returns to his work, red-faced and miserable.

Teyla takes the sticks from her belt and draws them out. She begins the ritual of smoothing oil into their surfaces, hoping to find her calm in the easy, repetitive movements. It would take more wisdom than even the Ancestors possessed to know if she should interfere. She cares for all three of them, no matter the ridiculous situations they insist on dragging her into. And, in the end, she cannot sit here all the night through and watch the wretchedness on Rodney's face as he insists to himself that nothing at all is wrong.

"You are moping," she says.

"What? I am not." Rodney snaps his laptop shut and glares at her. "Why would you think-- Just because this particular mission didn't cater to my strengths, and Carson's witch's brew nearly killed us all, and me in particular in the most nightmarish way the Pegasus Galaxy has so far thrown at us, I'm not--"

Teyla works oil into her sticks. The places where the woodgrain has grown to know her hands shines, and she takes care with the grips. She listens: it is her skill.

"I'm not. Moping. Anyway you needn't concern yourself. In fact--" Rodney stands and starts pacing, wringing his hands. His movement is abrupt and erratic, but there is almost a pattern to it; and he draws nearer to the doorway with each pass.

There is another word from the room beyond, Ronon's deep mumble: "I don't want to feel this way anymore..."

Rodney starts in earnest towards the door, and Teyla says, "You did not protest the sleeping arrangements earlier." With that she commits herself. She has interfered. She looks up from the instinctive movement of her hands to meet Rodney's eyes. They large and hurt-filled, like a small child's when he discovers for the first time that the world is unfair.

"No, I didn't," he admits, and with a twist of his lips his bitterness returns. He takes two steps away from the door, as if to prove to her that he doesn't intend to go through. "I suppose none of us have been fooling you."

"No," she says, and almost smiles. They are like children, young enough to think that they are the first to discover love; young enough that they believe they are the only ones to hold its secrets. "Why?"

"The Ancients' weapon platform," he says.

Teyla blinks and waits for the explanation. With Rodney, at least, she never doubts that an explanation will come.

"You weren't--you and Ronon were off-world," he says, and Teyla looks away, because she has her own guilts about that moment. She remembers, though, Dr. Weir's shouts passing through Atlantis's walls. She read the mission debriefing, not only in the dry words of Colonel Sheppard's report, but also in the tightness of his face and shoulders when he looked at Rodney for several days afterwards.

"The energy...those power spikes made no sense!" Rodney says, now, hands grappling with the air in front of him. He paces once more, and neither his rising voice nor his footsteps seem to disturb Dr. Beckett, soundly asleep, or Colonel Sheppard and Ronon. "I calculated--well, it doesn't matter what I calculated, because I was wrong, and I don't know how I was wrong, which is worse, and I used--John trusted me. Not Colonel Sheppard. John." Rodney stops. "I thought I could control it. It changed too fast."

"Are you speaking of the Ancients' weapon platform?" Teyla raises an eyebrow and allows her gaze to slide towards the door. There has been quiet from the room beyond, and she can trust to the looks she has seen passing between Ronon and Colonel Sheppard in the training room to imagine that it is not because they are sleeping. Ronon's people take honour from knowing their place, and Colonel Sheppard is a master at hiding from his. They will fight, but it will not last, and in the morning Teyla will have yet more things that she is not supposed to know.

"I suppose this is going to turn out to be all my fault," Rodney says. "I'm just not--" He waves a hand to finish his sentence. She takes in his meaning anyway.

"You are doing this so that Colonel Sheppard will trust you again?"

Rodney shrugs. "We've talked about it," he mutters. "John and I--Ronon's so stupidly appealing, and it's not just that he's handsome, because I could handle that. I did handle that. For months... Of course, it was easier when I didn't know if he was going to snap me in half for daring to suggest he use cutlery. Before he remembered that his planet was actually halfway civilized, though apparently even more backwards than Earth when it comes to soldiers' idiotic insistence on encouraging pigheaded macho posturing under the completely misleading label of honour." He snorts, and glares at the wall as though he can see through to what is happening on the other side. "Obviously I did my part. I didn't even mention the word threesome, although of course I've always--I mean, even Amy Nields might have taken second place if two gorgeous blonde Swedish co-eds had suggested that we quietly slip away to their private hot tub-- Although Amy Nields did have that postdoctoral degree in theoretical quantum physics, so it would have been a wonderfully difficult choice--"

"But it is different with Colonel Sheppard?" Teyla asks. There is never any use in waiting for a pause in Rodney's speech. She knows that there are many on Atlantis who would gladly gag him, but she is honoured by his words. He trusts her.

Rodney tilts his head, as though listening, and a brief flash of hurt crosses his face. "He's fairly one-of-a-kind," he says.

Teyla returns her sticks to her belt and puts away the small vial of oil she has kept with her since her people fled to the city of the Ancestors. The scent of the oil has mixed with the crushed herbs on her fingers, and it reminds her sharply of home: of Athos, in high summer, where viansha grows wild along the warm riverbanks.

For an instant, she is wildly, unexpectedly homesick. By her count of months, it is early spring on Athos, and all the wildflowers are in bloom. The south winds are warming the soil, but there are no tents to snap and tug at, no fires to whip into sparks. Any who remained have long since been culled, and the earth has been burned by the Wraith in vengeance for their resistance. And her kin on Atlantis' mainland are no longer her people; she has accepted the city as her home instead. She is their leader, but no longer their guide, their mediator. She has moved past them.

This is, she thinks, how Rodney must feel, in offering Colonel Sheppard this moment with Ronon. Sick at heart with a fierce and sudden loneliness, and longing for something that he can never return to.

"You should sleep," she says, because she is certain he would reject any advice she might give. Tell him that you love him is at once too simple and too incomplete. She does not know, any more than she suspects he does, to which of them he would say it: Ronon, or John?

"I won't sleep," Rodney says. "I don't know how Carson does it; you'd think the sharp jabby pointy bits were a Posturepaedic mattress, the way he naps on any hard surface." He's only talking because he always does. He's listening, guilty and jealous and saddened and, perhaps, aroused. Teyla forces her eyes away from his face; it is too open for her, too vulnerable. She walks again to the door that leads to the forest, and breathes in the night scents.

It is in the warming spring that lovers on Athos offer the viansha to each other. The herb only blooms for a short time in summer, and the dried leaves, like love, must last all through the cold sleep of winter and the thawing rains, held closely and protected. Choosings come in spring, and blessings.

For an Athosian year, Teyla has chosen the city of the Ancients; she has chosen Atlantis and the people of Earth. She was never blind to John and Rodney, and she never turned away from the pain of having a place apart from the new village, the new Athos, that her people have established on the mainland. Rodney's hurt is not unfamiliar. He's holding himself suspended between what is and what might be.

She is still there, perhaps an hour later, when she senses the warmth and mass of Ronon behind her.

"I'll take the watch," he says. In the darkness, his eyes give nothing away.

Teyla nods, needing no more words. In the cave, Rodney lies on a hasty mattress made of gear and bedding, as restless in sleep as he is in waking. The door between the two rooms of the cave is open, and beyond, she supposes that John is just as deeply asleep. Ronon stands on his own, waiting out the darkness.

Teyla finds her own sleeping roll, and aches for all of them. This choice, at least, has yet to be made.

There is viansha growing on the mainland. Charan brought it and many other plants with her, precious packets of Athosian soil and moisture, filled with seeds and questing roots. They have planted gardens, and cleared fields, and begun a second season of sowing. When Teyla returns to visit the village, swept towards the mainland at a puddlejumper's speed, she occasionally forgets that this, too, could be her home. Her people have long been hunters, trusting to Athos to provide the plants they needed. Now, for Atlantis' sake, they are farmers, learning to till and harrow. Long ago, before the Wraith, they lived in cities and by their learning more than their instincts. They are no strangers to change. But even here the viansha grows in the well-tended plots, and the air smells like home.

Lieutenant Cross grins at her as he powers down the puddlejumper. Moments later, Eydena runs across the landing field and he sweeps her up into his arms, kissing her soundly. Even Michael Cross is less a visitor here than she; Eydena gifted him with the choosing herb months ago, during Atlantis' spring. Teyla moves among the tents slowly, glad for each one that she recognises.

In the city, Colonel Sheppard is still recovering from his experience as an iratus bug. She is waiting for him to be well again, but she chooses to stay away from the infirmary in the meantime. Rodney and Ronon take their turns at John's side, and she is not ready to watch them circle about each other, wary and uncertain.

They have fallen into the well of each other's gravity. This will not end soon, or well; and since none of them have asked for Teyla's thoughts on the matter, she comes here, to sit by Charan's fire and listen to the old stories.

For a few weeks, she has this luxury; her team stays close to home, and she is welcome in the village. She tends the fire with twigs and kindling, but she is not allowed to touch the cookpot. Charan urges her to sing, songs of spring love and winter loss, and Teyla finds her throat closing on the words. They are both things that are denied to her, here. When Lieutenant Cross's leave finishes, she returns to Atlantis, with a spray of last season's viansha tucked into the deepest part of her pack.

She returns again to the city on the night after they have rescued John from his imprisonment among the ascending Ancients. She is not home more than an hour, Atlantis slides into the deep-night watch, when Ronon appears at her quarters, looming in the doorway silently. Teyla sees at once that he has been running: his sweater, an old one of Palam's, clings to him, and his face is wet with sweat, though he still breathes as deeply and evenly as he does during their sessions together in the training room.

"Ronon. Come in," she says, and he nods and steps inside. He favours his right knee, very slightly, but she knows the movements of his body too well not to notice. He takes the chair that she offers him, with the tiniest of smiles to acknowledge that he has been pushing himself. Too far, too fast. His running isn't a secret; nothing can be, on Atlantis. There is always someone who sees. It's possible, though, that the reasons for it are still a mystery to most. Teyla may be the only one who does not have to guess. Her password will bring up the security screens, the ones that show each person's name next to their heat signature on the map of the city. When she returns home from the mainland, she checks it. If this is her home, then she wants to know that her new people are safe, just as she would account for every Athosian before moving their hunting camp. The small stars labeled McKay, Rodney and Sheppard, John were orbiting each other in Rodney's quarters, and she imagines that they are still. Ronon's visit does not surprise her.

"Sheppard had six months on that planet," Ronon says, resting his elbows on his knees and speaking to his lap. "He wasted every minute."

Teyla sits opposite him and smiles. "He is not patient."

"I'm not either."

"And he does not see any need for meditation."

Ronon grunts. Teyla watches the tilt of his head, the tension of his shoulders. She remembers her first lover, Doran: there was nothing simpler than to please him, nothing more beautiful than to see him laughing, with the deep greens of Athos' forests surrounding him. It was her second love that taught her that betrayal was more than a word alone. That was on Genia, and for many years she could not go there without the memory of that hurt. It must be worse for Ronon, who had only Kell until he came to Atlantis. First loves come as gifts, and even when they fail, it is possible to learn from them; second loves prove that the universe does not care especially for anyone, and that is, perhaps, a worse pain.

"I was not entirely truthful with you," Teyla says, thinking of Doran, who was lost many years ago: not to the Wraith, but to a hunting accident, a fall. She still keeps his favourite bow; it was hers to claim at his leave-taking. "On Langan, when you asked if I was lonely."

Ronon raises his head and looks at her, eyebrows raised, waiting.

"I am not lonely here on Atlantis," she says carefully. "But when I am among my people, I sometimes wish that my path had been different."

Ronon nods. "I could've gone with Solen and the others, on Beklan."

Teyla sits opposite him, and watches his face. "Not after Kell."

"No," he says flatly. "Not after Kell."

Teyla never approved of Ronon's killing on Beklan. She cannot forgive him that moment, when he broke peace and her word. She does understand. He believes it was necessary, and she trusts that only he could know what was required.

"Dex," she says, and Ronon looks up at her use of his first name. "Are you happy?"

He barks out a laugh, short and humourless. "No," he says. "Not for a long time."

"Since Sateda?"

He shrugs, and she dares one question more: "Are things...going well?" It might please the most tactful of Atlanteans to hear her dance so neatly around the issue, but Ronon is already aware that she knows all there is to know about his loves.

"I don't know." He stands. It marks the end of the conversation; he will not stay while she searches for her own answers in his past.

When he is gone, she takes the herbs from her pack. She tucks the viansha away, in a closet she keeps for such things. This is the radius that her heart covers, from the city of the Ancients to the mainland. She knows, though, that Atlantis is the center point, from which all her travels originate. The village on the mainland, Athos, her people: they are all points on the circumference, and she holds them dearly, but they are few among a countless many, and her path will take her away from them more often than not.

John is made entirely of surfaces when he arrives at her quarters. He offers Earth brandy, which tastes of muted fire, and his smile hasn't changed, except that it shows nothing behind his eyes. He is fiercely, insistently cheerful, but there is something brittle in his expression, like clouded crystal; opaque, and endlessly fragile.

News of his tradings among the Atlanteans has reached her from the kitchen staff. He has promised favours and offered deals to every soldier and scientist for the least hint of Earth foods and wines. The brandy is all that remains of that, and it is not difficult to guess where the rest must be.

"Can I tell you something?" he asks, and his mask falls away, so that she can see the boy that he once was. Anxious, and too unsure of himself to lead.

"Of course, John," she says. "I would be honoured."

He tells her of his mother: how she fell in love, mistakenly, helplessly. Teyla wonders if that is how it was for him with Rodney. Was it all accidental, unplanned? There is no way in her mind that the blame for it could be his. He has said himself that there is no fault in loving, yet he does not believe himself worthy of it. He has made his choice, and erased himself from an equation that he could not balance. He sees three points and draws a triangle; he does not see that they could just as easily mark a circle, endless and symmetrical. He is too generous, she thinks; he has given away too much of himself.

"You have tonight," she tells him, but he shakes his head and looks away.

"Seems like you've got it all figured out," he says, in a tone that is nearly a question. "You don't have a problem with it? I mean, it's no good for the team. I don't know how Ford coped..."

"I do not believe that Aiden knew," Teyla says. He was young enough to miss the signs, and he never would have expected it of Colonel Sheppard, and least of all with Rodney.

"Yeah, and what about you?" John asks.

Teyla thinks of Genia, in autumn; she was young herself then, and ignored all the quiet voices that spoke of caution: Charan's, her father's. "When the Wraith come, and we are few in number, it is always more difficult to let love have a voice in our decisions," she says.

"But it's not a problem? I mean, me and Rodney. Or Ronon. Or, hell, any of us. Christ, I don't know anymore."

"No. We love children, and we have need of them if we are to survive, but we love freedom more." Kinship by blood does not mean as much among the Athosians as it seems to for the Atlanteans. When the Wraith may come at any moment, it is love that binds her people together. Teyla is a part of John's circle, and of Rodney's and Ronon's. She belongs to all of them, and they to her. They have chosen each other.

John does not see that, or denies it if he does. He sees himself alone, a point apart, set on some solitary path. Teyla would draw circles for him, and show him that there are as many individual journeys as there are points on the wheel's rim. But John disappears again, behind the mask of the colonel. "As long as the team's okay," he says. "If you're uncomfortable--there are regs against fraternizing, and I could--"

"No," she says. She would reassure him more, if she only knew the words to use. "I do not mind."

"I better go," he says. "Roll call."

Teyla nods. She, too, has the need to have an accounting of everyone she loves, before the night's end. She feels that John will not be surprised if Ronon's and Rodney's lights, like fireflies, are circling each other.

It is a painful thing, to turn away from desire. Teyla does not think that John will have to live forever with this decision--some day, Rodney and Ronon will find a way to give him a measure of their peace. No matter how harsh the winter, there is always the hope for spring.

When John has gone, and she has centered herself, she opens the closet where she keeps the packet of herbs that she took from Charan's garden. The closet holds far more than that: it is the repository of the memory of all her kin, blood or chosen. Every leave-taking and every farewell has its token. There is an old pair of her father's sticks, well-worn and shiny at the grips; a dancing dress of her mother's, traded from the Manarians. And, last of all, from the mainland, she has brought one of the furs that formed her tent since she left her mother's dwelling. It is her last farewell to the village, to Wraith-burned Athos.

And the scent of viansha, the choosing herb, wafts over it all.

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March 24, 2006