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Three days after arriving in Atlantis, Evan ends up in a damaged part of the East Pier. It’s not flooded, but it also doesn’t look structurally sound, and it’s definitely not the place he had chosen on the transporter screen.
He’s very tempted to just get back in the transporter and try again, but the second lecture in Atlantis onboarding is If The City Does Weird Shit When You Try Something, Don’t Try It Again (Because You’re Not Colonel Sheppard or Dr. McKay, Idiot). And his desire not to be turned inside out by the city infinitesimally supersedes his desire not to become the laughingstock of the Marines on his third day.
It’s the God-given right of enlisted to laugh at officers, as long as it’s not to their face, but Evan generally tries to get to at least his second week before giving them something specific to laugh at.
But, again. Maybe getting turned inside out, or whatever the city does to people it gets mad at.
Evan toggles his radio to channel 4, which is the designated The City Is Doing Weird Shit And I Need Help channel, then says, “This is Major Lorne.”
“Major Lorne,” the person on the other side says, “go ahead.” They rotate through Marines to man this channel, mostly PFCs and Lance Corporals chosen almost exclusively because of their natural ATA gene. The gene therapy works wonders, but the city seems to be able to tell the difference.
“I was trying to go to the Armory,” Evan says, “and the transporter sent me to one of the damaged parts of the East Wing. Is it going to turn me into pink mist if I try again to head to the Armory?”
There’s a thoughtful pause, and then the person on the other side says, “Yes, sir, I see you on the Life Signs Detector. It should be safe to try the transporter again.”
Should is not the most reassuring word there, but there’s nothing on the city that’s a hundred percent safe, so Evan makes a face that he’s glad nobody can see, steps back into the transporter, and presses on the Amory.
This time, it gets him there.
“I’ll file an incident report, sir,” the person on the other side of the channel tells him. “Please report back if you end up anywhere unexpected again.”
It’s SOP, but the Marine is also definitely laughing him.
Whatever. Evan can deal. It’s not the stupidest thing the city has ever done to someone.
—
Evan ends up in the wrong part of the East Pier again.
It’s not even the same part, which at least would be telling him something. He can read the signs well enough to know that getting sent to the same place over and over by the semi-sentient city means something.
This isn’t that.
This is him stepping out of the transporter directly into sloshing water, which means that he’s in one of the East Wing basement areas that one of the scientists partitioned off in the system so you can’t go there without an override because, well.
The water.
“God fucking damn it,” Evan says where nobody can hear. He knocks his head gently against the door frame of the transporter. His socks are already soaked. He’s going to be squelching around like some kid from a stupid cartoon who got stuck in the rain. He does not need this.
“Please don’t hate me,” he says to the city, still leaning his forehead against the wall. Being hated by the city isn’t official grounds to be sent back to Earth posthaste, but it will unofficially get you inched up the list whether you want to be or not. And he wants to stay here. He likes it here, and it’s a great career opportunity.
It wouldn’t be for other people, because there’s no way to suck up to the brass here, which is generally required to make it past Major, but he’s already sold his soul to the SGC where promotion decisions are made…differently, and besides, there’s no sucking up to SGC brass like making them have to think about Atlantis as little as possible.
General Landry didn’t quite sit him down and tell him that his job is to make sure Landry needs to see the words “Sheppard” and “Atlantis” in an incident report as few times as humanly possible, but it was made very clear that everyone knows Sheppard is an absolute fucking loose cannon that is being kept on Atlantis because he will chew through his leash and then all of the couches if they stick him anywhere else, and he’s just a little too good with the ATA gene to wash out entirely.
Evan is here to be the sane Air Force officer, while Sheppard gets to run around getting his daily enrichment and being a nuclear bomb on standby if the SGC ever needs one.
They’ve never talked about it, but Evan’s pretty sure Sheppard knows that, too, even if he never said it. Sheppard may be a loose cannon, but he’s a smart motherfucker, and he knows how the game is played, even if he’s clearly and consistently unwilling to play it.
But if Evan gets sent home, Landry will stick him on scientist babysitting and VIP escort duty until Evan dies from boredom, just out of sheer spite of making him deal with Sheppard even one iota more.
So, hence, needing to not be hated by the city.
And he really shouldn’t be, is the thing. He’s a natural gene holder. He doesn’t press any stupid buttons. He doesn’t deserve to have Atlantis ocean water in his shoes.
Evan switches to channel four and says, “This is Major Lorne.”
“Major Lorne,” PFC White says, “go ahead.”
“I’ve ended up in one of the flooded parts of the East Wing.”
“Yes, sir,” PFC White says. “I have you.” There’s a pause, and it’s just long enough to tip over from thoughtful contemplation on getting Evan the fuck out of here so he can dry out his socks to ominous. Finally, reluctantly, PFC White asks, “Sir, can you check the screen on the transporter?”
That’s not the question Evan was hoping to hear. “What should I be looking for?”
“Whether it’s on, sir.”
Evan squelches half a foot over so he can look at it. It’s dark. He leans his head against the wall next to it, because he’s a little afraid if he leans his head against it, the city will just send him into the ocean. “It’s not.”
“Okay,” PFC White says. He doesn’t have a particularly soothing voice, though that may have something to do with the fact that he’s a PFC who’s clearly about to have to give a Major bad news. “The uh. We can’t. That transporter is locked out of the system to keep people from going there, so we’re going to have to figure out how to, uh. Fix that.”
Saying I eagerly await the outcome of your findings seems mean, so Evan just says, “Understood.”
He’s going to be here for a while.
He turns off his microphone, then says to the city, “Whatever you’re mad at me about, I promise to fix it immediately.”
The omnipresent low-level hum of the city sharpens a little, but he doesn’t know enough to know if that means that the city is mad at him or that somewhere, Sheppard is jacking himself off and the city is cheering him on.
“Great,” Evan says aloud, because there’s nobody around to hear him talk to a city that definitely can’t hear him or at the very least isn’t listening to him. “You want a cookie? A wax? I can say nice things to you every night before I go to bed, if that will keep you from sending me to flooded parts of the city.”
The entire world goes dark.
Evan jerks up his P90, switching on the flashlight. He sweeps across the hallway, the light rippling across the inch of water covering the ground, but he can’t see anything.
He switches back on channel four to say, “This is Major Lorne. Did you shut off power to the flooded section of the East Pier?”
PFC White says, “No, sir—”
Evan switches to channel one to say, “This is Major Lorne. I am currently trapped in the flooded section of the East Wing, which has lost power. I am requesting immediate assistance.”
Sheppard says, “On my way,” because he’s never quite figured out that it’s not a Lieutenant Colonel’s job to do that. “AS-1, with me. AS-2, secure the gate room.”
Securing the gate room is SOP in cases where there might be an infiltration, which is what they have to assume in a situation like this. They’re not on some shitty FOB on Earth, where they’re running on a generator with half its wires chewed through by local wildlife. Power should not be selectively shut off anywhere in the city unless they do it themselves.
Evan keeps his eyes fixed on the hallway, partially lit by his P90’s flashlight. He stills his legs as much as he can to minimize movement through the water, so he can notice anyone coming as soon as possible.
He really fucking hopes it’s not the Wraith.
He was on SG-11 for long enough that his nightmares are of golden glowing eyes and staff weapon wounds and of the knowledge that anyone could be the enemy, but the Wraith are starting to creep in, tall and pale and killing you in a way that no doctor can save you from. He knows that there are rumors on Earth about what Sheppard did to Sumner, knows that there was a friendly fire investigation that Sheppard survived by a thinner margin than Evan is probably supposed to know about, but—
Well.
Evan hopes it’s not the Wraith.
He keeps his breathing steady, his knees unlocked, sweeping the light back and forth to maintain visibility as best as he can. It’s not quite pitch black, because there must be a window somewhere nearby, but it’s close without the light. This is not one of the light, open spaces of the city.
In his ear, Sheppard and AS-1 coordinate. Evan pays it half a mind, but he keeps most of his concentration on the hallway in front of him.
He tunes in fully when he hears his name. “We’re reinitiating the transporter,” Sheppard tells him. “We’ll be there in thirty seconds.”
Evan gets the message and sloshes out of the transporter, keeping his P90 and his eyes up the whole time and sliding his feet to make sure there’s nothing he’s going to run into or step on that he can’t see. He puts his back to the wall next to the transporter, because he doesn’t want anyone to be able to get behind him, not like this.
The transporter doors slide closed behind him, then reopen, and Sheppard says, “Major?”
“I’m here,” Evan says. “No movement.”
“Glad you haven’t been eaten,” Sheppard says, a little flippant. AS-1 splashes out of the transporter, four P90 lights illuminating more of the empty hallway. Sheppard’s hand touches his shoulder. “McKay said they can’t see anything on the LSD, but we need to clear the whole area, just in case.”
“Teyla and Ronon?” Evan asks. Sheppard is rarely without them.
“With AS-2 securing the gate room. You ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
They move.
Clearing the flooded wing isn’t fast, and it’s made slower by the water, but they get through the entire thing without finding a single unexpected issue, Wraith or otherwise. There’s nothing to explain why he ended up here or why the lights are still off in the entire area.
A little hesitantly, hoping this doesn’t get him sent back on the next Daedalus trip, Evan says, “Maybe the city hates me.”
Sheppard glances up at the ceiling, the way he does when he’s communing with the city or doing something equally fucking weird, and then he frowns, just a little. But he says, “Nah, she doesn’t.”
Evan doesn’t want to think about she .
But Sheppard says the city doesn’t hate him, and if anyone would know, it’s him. Evan will take what he can get.
—
Evan tries to get to the botany labs and ends up in the chair room, which means he must be more exhausted than he thought. After almost twenty-fours awake while Sheppard merrily fucked with the city’s least functional puddlejumper, it’s hardly a surprise. He presses the button again, making sure to actually hit the right spot, and the doors close.
When they open again, he’s still in the chair room.
Evan switches to channel four and says, “This is Major Lorne.”
“Major Lorne,” PFC Alvarez says, “go ahead.”
“The transporters are redirecting me to the chair room,” he says, knowing that this is going to be fodder for the marines for a while.
“Yes, sir,” PFC Alvarez says. “I—there’s a note that you should notify Colonel Sheppard if you are redirected by the transporters again.”
“Understood.” Evan switches his radio to Sheppard’s personal channel, then says, “Colonel, it’s Lorne.”
“Go ahead,” Sheppard says. He sounds a little distracted, but not like he’s in the middle of anything dangerous.
Evan doesn’t sigh, because he’s a professional. “The city’s sending me to the wrong place again.”
“Goddamn it,” Sheppard says, but not like he’s mad at Evan. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right there.”
Evan gets out of the transporter, keeping his eye on the chair room in case something unexpected pops out of it. But it’s just a mostly empty room with the centrally located chair, which he’s never sat in and kind of hopes never to need to.
He’s the second option for the chair after Sheppard, and in any other circumstance he’d train on it regularly, but it takes such an inordinate amount of power that they can’t rationalize turning it on if they don’t need it.
And from what Sheppard’s said about it, the little bit he’s said about it, it’s more intuitive than any gun, than any plane.
It’s like it knows what you want before you do, Sheppard said, one of the only times he talked about it.
The transporter doors open behind him, and Evan turns to see Sheppard slouch into the room. He looks vaguely apologetic under the annoyance on his face.
“I told her to stop,” is the first thing he says, and it’s a little pointed, with a look up at the ceiling.
Evan asks, “Sir, are you telling me the city is fucking with me?”
Sheppard wiggles his hand back and forth in a so-so motion. “Not…exactly. She’s—there’s a game that they used to play with Lantean children, apparently, where they drop them off in unexpected parts of the city and then make them find their way back.” He doesn’t correct his tenses, and Evan doesn’t comment on them. He doesn’t want to think about it.
But then what Sheppard actually said hits him, and Evan demands, “Does the city think I’m a Lantean child?”
Sheppard snorts. “Only in the absolute vaguest sense of the word. It knows you’re not Lantean, technically, but you and I count as…close enough, I guess, in its systems. O’Neill would probably be the same.”
A moment of true existential dread runs through his body like a sheet of ice water down his back. Evan is not supposed to be the type of person who is special to the city. His ATA gene is strong, he knows, but it’s supposed to be the normal amount of strong, just enough that he can run the chair if Sheppard is indisposed.
He doesn’t want to end up like Sheppard, conversing with the city and calling it her .
He won’t get to stay if they think he’s not going to be an adequate buffer to Sheppard’s batshit nature.
And Evan is—
Well, he’s supposed to be normal.
“Anyway,” Sheppard says briskly, entirely unconcerned with Evan rethinking his entire existence next to him. “She’s apparently grumpy that you haven’t sat down in the chair yet, so she’s, uh. Gently hinting, let’s just say.”
“Will she—will the city let me leave the chair room without sitting in it?” Evan asks.
Sheppard glances up at the ceiling again, then shrugs, apparently unconcerned. “If you walk,” he says.
Evan is not doing that.
“The power requirements—”
“You can ask her to use less power,” Sheppard says, like that’s a thing that makes any fucking sense. He’s already looking at the chair though, so he doesn’t see whatever Evan’s face does at that.
Which is, frankly, just as well.
Sheppard turns on his radio to the command channel, then says, “Gate room, you’ll be seeing an energy spike from the chair room. No worries here.”
“Understood,” Chuck says.
With that, Sheppard gestures at the chair with a flourish. “I’m not going to wait around all day, so unless you’re planning on walking around the city for the rest of your life…”
Evan’s reluctance to sit in the chair is more about the fact that the city apparently has feelings about him at this point than about the energy concerns, but Sheppard is his CO, so he walks over to drop down into the chair.
For a half-second, there’s nothing—
And then the chair tilts back, turning, and he has the odd skittering sensation across his brain like pleasure and desire and too much knowledge all at once. He chases that feeling, like scratching an itch, and it shudders through him, pressing against his spine and the divots on his hips, and he’s half blind with it—
From near him, Sheppard says, “Think about where we are in the universe.”
Before the words are all the way out of the Colonel’s mouth, Evan knows what they are, and his attention sharpens, solidifies, and they are on Lantea, and Atlantis is showing him what is around it, thousands of planets that Atlantis knows, that it misses, that they had outposts on that are long deserted, and she was connected to them, once upon a time, the way that all things are connected, and she knows Evan isn’t Lantean but she misses them, the children in her city, who could speak to her, whose thoughts were hers, whose life was hers.
Something unclips, and Sheppard says, “Just taking your P90, Major.”
She is lonely, Atlantis, empty, meant to hold tens of thousands and today barely filled with hundreds, and so many of them can’t speak to her, or barely can, unintelligible mumbles that she listens to because there is nothing else there.
She is lonely, and he won’t speak to her, he never speaks to her, not unless she plays with him the way that she used to play with the children.
There is a planet, she shows him, where the sky is a color that the human eye can’t see, but she shows it to him, from video taken by the Lanteans, a color that does not exist but he can see it, knows it, and then she shows him a hundred thousand other colors, floods his mind with them like pleasure and overstimulation and the edge of the palette knife.
And then Sheppard says, “I know, I know, but you need to breathe through it,” and Evan gags around a breath, and the next one comes easier, like his lungs and his throat open up all at once, and there’s apology there, but also curiosity, and then she is showing him weapons systems and puddle jumper schematics and something that he knows is computer code even though it’s not in a language he’s ever seen before.
When she lets him go, Evan doubles over, gagging and gasping and trying to breathe. A hand settles on his shoulder, a little awkwardly, and Sheppard says, “You get used to it.”
“How the fuck,” Evan rasps out, “do you get used to that?”
“It’s about knowing what you’re looking for before you sit down,” Sheppard says, “but also you were fighting it, and that doesn’t help.”
“I wasn’t—”
Sheppard laughs. “Yeah, you were.” His hand is very heavy on Evan’s shoulder. It’s the only thing that feels real.
He kind of wants out of the chair, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stand right now, and lying on the floor in front of his CO seems worse.
“If you don’t fight it,” Sheppard says, and he sounds a little awkward now, “it’ll feel good.”
Evan squints up at him. “Good like…”
Sheppard shrugs, which seems to mark the end of the conversation. “Anyway,” Sheppard says instead, “Just chat with her sometimes, and you should be fine. And I’ll remind her that she’s not supposed to send you to random places without warning.”
“She’s—it’s a city,” Evan says, one last argument for the sake of propriety.
“You’ve sat in the chair,” Sheppard says, and that seems to be enough of an answer for him, because he pats Evan’s shoulder once, then takes his hand away and says, “I’m going to go bother Rodney.”
And then he leaves.
Evan waits for him to be gone, then slithers out of the chair and onto the floor in front of it. It’s very cool against his cheek, and his body feels a little like he just had a sparring match with Ronon.
His P90 is sitting on the floor next to him.
“I’ll talk to you all you want if you never show me those colors again,” he tells the floor.
The hum in his brain feels pleased.
Evan closes his eyes.
He’s just going to lie here a second, and then he’ll get back up, dust himself off, and become the sane Air Force officer again.
In a second.