Ellis Island
Ford realizes he's spending too much time lurking around Kate Heightmeyer's shelter. Technically, what he's doing could even be defined as "stalking".
A lot of people are having trouble adjusting to the new situation, and Dr. Heightmeyer's been busy. Ford can't work out how he can bump into her without going in to talk to her about his problems, and that's out. Even after the end of the world, Ford thinks that you're probably not supposed to make out with your patient, and so he doesn't ask to speak with her.
Once he sees her going to the lake to swim, a towel slung over her shoulder, something he's pretty sure is a bikini in her other hand. He's too stunned by the mental images this conjures up to follow her, and later he's glad. He doesn't want to be Creepy Guy.
Back on Earth, Ford was known to be good with girls. He's smooth and charming, and just earnest enough to make it seem real, and he got laid. A lot. But Kate Heightmeyer is older than Aiden, and smarter than Aiden, and Aiden thinks he might be in love with her. He doesn't know what to do.
He's considered casually asking Sheppard for advice, but his CO seems to be having a slow nervous breakdown, and Aiden, being second in command among the surviving military personnel, has no peers. A lot of people are lonely now, after all the deaths during the evacuation. Aiden isn't sure why people can't somehow transfer their need for friendship to new people, but no one does. And neither does he.
McKay tends to the graves. He started with Elizabeth's, and then he noticed that her grave made everyone else's look shabby, so he started to look after them all.
There are too many. Almost sixty, half marked by Earth symbols like crosses and six-pointed stars; half by the miniature stone shelters the Athosians build to house the souls of their dead. They were a small community, even before, and the survivors have had to double up on duties.
So Rodney is still chief scientist, but he also cares for the dead. At first, that's enough. But then the living start coming to him, and before long, he's a kind of priest. An Athosian woman discovers that she's pregnant with her dead husband's child, and comes to him for a blessing. One of the Polish scientists wants to pray with him for family on Earth. Several of the soldiers come to stand behind him when he tends to the graves of their fallen brothers and sisters.
Rodney notices that as long as he just shuts up, people will minister to themselves. Which is good, because Rodney doesn't actually believe in God.
Kate Heightmeyer wishes she had someone to talk to. Even on Atlantis, her position was difficult. She can't believe the expedition was put together with just one shrink. It's not that she's overworked - although she is - it's that there's no one for her to debrief with. No one whose opinion she can ask. No one to share the burden of all the secrets she hears.
On Atlantis, she could sometimes talk to Elizabeth Weir, but she died during the evacuation. Teyla Emmagen seems to be taking Weir's place, but as much as Kate likes the Athosian, she can't confide in someone who used to be a patient.
On what might be a Thursday, Kate can't take it anymore. She writes a note to say that she'll be back in a day or so, and tacks it to the door of her shelter. She takes a sleeping bag and a micro-tent, and the last of her freeze-dried rations.
Kate's two hours' hike from the camp when she realizes that she's being followed.
"Hello? Who's there?"
Aiden Ford appears from the woods next to the stream she's following.
"Doctor Heightmeyer," he says, and pushes his cap back on his head.
"Lieutenant Ford, are you following me?"
"Yes, ma'am," he says.
"Well, don't," she says, shortly, and continues on her way.
"I can hang back if you want, Doc, but you can't be alone out here."
Kate struggles over a tangle of thick tree roots. He takes her hand to help her over the roughest part, but she struggles away from his grasp.
"I just need some space, Lieutenant. Is that so much to ask?"
"Yes, it is, Doc."
She opens her mouth to argue, but Ford cuts her off. "Have a lot of backcountry hiking experience, Doc?"
"I'm from Manhattan," Kate says. Ford grins at her, and gestures ahead to a cluster of foothills.
"That'd be a good place to make camp, ma'am. I'll give you plenty of room, but I'm not leaving you alone."
"Ford," she says, and then: "Aiden, don't call me ma'am, okay? It makes me feel old."
"You're not old," Ford says, shortly, and grabs the micro-tent from her. He seems angry, and Kate's vision of two days of calm and solitude go up in smoke.
Rodney starts to have dreams that he's a shaman. His subconscious coughs up barely-remembered snippets of Navajo sand paintings and Tibetan sky burials and hippies dancing around Stonehenge, and Rodney dreams of fragrant smoke, and men and women coupling under a dark blue sky, and drums which speak in human voices.
He asks Dr. Littlefeather what he thinks about these dreams. John Littlefeather is built like a tank, and looks, Rodney thinks, pretty stoic and holy.
"You're asking me because I'm half Cree," Littlefeather says. He sounds like he's very close to being offended.
"Yes," Rodney says, surprising himself. "I am."
Littlefeather laughs. "I've never been religious, Dr. McKay. Maybe you should go on a vision quest."
Rodney does. He takes nothing but the clothes on his back, and he walks upstream until it's dark, and then he sits down to wait. Hours pass. He's thirsty, and hungry, and his skin is itchy with dried sweat. Also, the tree he's resting his back against is covered by tiny prickles which are slowly working their way through his shirt.
Clearly, this was a terrible idea. Rodney waits for another hour or so, judging by the slow movement of alien stars in the clear sky.
"Stupid visions," he says, and stands up. From his new angle, he can see a faint glow coming from upstream. His stomach drops, and he follows the light. As he approaches the clearing, he can see a man and a woman sitting by a small fire.
He surprises himself by not being disappointed to see that he's stumbled upon nothing more sacred than Dr. Heightmeyer and Lieutenant Ford.
"Hey," he says. Ford shoots to his feet, and only slowly lowers his weapon.
"Doctor McKay, what're you doing here?"
"I was vision questing," Rodney says, and moves to the fire. "Do you have any water?"
Kate hands him a canteen. "That should seem odd," she says.
"I know," Rodney agrees. "What're you doing out here?"
"I needed to be alone."
"Then what's Ford doing here?"
"I'm here to protect her," the lieutenant says, from Kate's other side.
"You think I need protecting?" Heightmeyer's hackles visibly shoot up, but Ford doesn't blink.
"No, but I think I need to protect you," he says. After a pause, he takes her hand in his own. "That sounded stupid."
Kate doesn't pull her hand away. "It-- it didn't," she says, haltingly. "It didn't."
Rodney puts his hand over their intertwined ones. "I'm pretty sure that this means you're married, in some cultures."
No one laughs. Kate is looking at Ford with something that isn't exactly surprise, and McKay swallows the urge to say something smug.
"Well," he says. "Some of us have been vision questing for hours without even a snack. Is there food?"
As Kate tugs her hand from Ford's, and rummages through her backpack, Rodney still doesn't believe in God.
Even so, he thinks that soon he will dream of a coffee-colored child.
Some of the camp's religious members have built an altar in the grove off to the east of the spring. An entire building would be too difficult, but the altar they can manage. There are no services as such, although once John walks by and sees Rodney McKay serving Communion to three earthlings and an Athosian.
Mostly, though, people just go there to pray.
John isn't sure God can hear you from the Pegasus galaxy.
On the ninety-second day, Teyla builds a loom. That is, she might have been working on it since they got there, he has no idea. They don't talk as much as they once did.
But on the ninety-second day, it's set up in the pre-fab shelter she shares with three other women, and she's weaving a rough fabric the color of a winter morning. He watches her work, her head bent over the warp and weft, the shuttle zipping from side to side, her thighs moving as she works the peddles. John feels a stirring of lust in his belly, and gets hard.
He runs to the edge of the encampment, finds an unoccupied bush and vomits until nothing comes up but gall. He trudges to the small lake between the two sloping hills just outside the camp, and rinses his mouth in the cool water. Then he sits down by the shore, resting his P90 on his knees. He doesn't know why he still carries it: there are no large predators in this area, and the herbivores are placid unless threatened.
The grass is knee-length all around him, and he hears her approach, although her footsteps are silent. She sinks down next to him and turns her face to the sun.
"This is beautiful."
She is, John thinks, but he hates the too-blue sky and the trees which are the wrong shape and the wrong color, and the not-crickets singing in the fake grass.
"When all things change, your heart remains the same," she says.
He looks at her. She gives a crooked half-smile and shrugs.
"It's from a story my father told me, when I was a child. Change is an illusion, is what he meant. One should practice non-attachment."
"Sounds like a great story," he says. Teyla doesn't smile.
"You do not like the grass, and the birds, and the sky, John. Because they are different than the grass you knew at home. And it troubles you."
"You've noticed?"
Teyla shrugs again. John thinks that Teyla notices a lot of things she doesn't bother mentioning. Sometimes how perceptive she is freaks him out.
"Non-attachment, huh? I should have guessed that you'd be a Buddhist," he says.
"I do not know this term," Teyla says, her head cocked like a bird.
"He was a guy who sat under a tree and-" John stops. He doesn't know enough about religion to explain it to her. But Teyla is comfortable with silence and they don't speak for several minutes. A hawk-like bird catches an updraft over the lake and circles lazily, searching for prey.
"You were troubled by my weaving," she says.
John pulls up tufts of the fake grass until he notices its deep teal color. The wrongness of it makes him taste bile.
"John," she says again, "someday our clothes will wear out, and there will be no storeroom full of replacements. What would you have me do?"
He feels rain on his face and looks up into the clear azure sky; his face is wet because he's crying. He scrubs his cheeks dry on his sleeve, and Teyla turns away from him to watch the hawk glide until he's composed himself once more.
"I don't know," he says.
Teyla slides an arm around his shoulders, and they watch the hawk for a time. The bird dives into the deep grasses on the opposite side of the lake, and John pulls Teyla down and starts kissing her.
She stops him when his hand starts to slide up under her shirt.
"You don't have to do that," she says. "I will hold you anyway."
John starts crying again. After a time, he stops.
"Come," Teyla says, rising to her feet, and holding out a hand. "Zelenka is planting flax near the bend in the stream."
John resists coming to his feet.
"John," Teyla says, "this community has no need for warriors."
"I know," John says. Teyla holds out her hand again, imperiously. He takes it, and she pulls him up.
"But we will always need you."
He's not sure he believes that, but he lets her pull him along to Zelenka's field, and he listens to the scientist chatter excited about fiber length and tensile strength. He bends over to grab a handful of dirt and examines it closely, rubbing it between his fingers. He has no idea what he's looking for.
"Good soil," he says.
"Yes," Zelenka says, "it will be perfect for fiber crops as well as several root vegetables we have in storage. I was thinking a fourth of the area should be cleared for flax-"
"Half," John says, firmly. "Teyla needs something to weave."
"Half, then," Zelenka says.
John turns to Teyla.
"I think I'm going to be a farmer," he says, wonderingly.
"Yes," she says, and her smile is like a benediction. Something blooms low in John's gut.
He thinks it might be hope.