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cjs_owndisclaimer. Not mine and none of the events described here in have any basis in reality.
title. A Series of Days (In Moments and Breaths)
rating. PG-13
crossover. A-Team & Stargate: Atlantis
pairing. Hannibal/Elizabeth, Teyla/Ronon, John/Rodney (Implied)
summary. A man they tell him is the Civilian Head of Science comes into the room, pissed off, and tells them all they're morons unable to be allowed anywhere near his equipment and oh, is this the new Colonel, does he know about the Wraith?
notes. Written for this prompt at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
a_team_kink.
A Series of Days (In Moments and Breaths)
. day four .
It's between the finish of one job and Face scouting another that Hannibal tells them to scatter, so much alarm in his tone that none of the boys think to argue. They just go.
Face regrets it the minute the beat up Mustang crosses into Texas, not even sure where he's headed; he hasn't had a home here since he left the group home in Houston behind a decade and a half ago. The home isn't even standing anymore – the state had torn it down eight years back and though he'd been invited to see the destruction by some of the other now-grown kids, Face hadn't gotten the message to come until long after (thank God) – and his brother's made it clear that he doesn't ever want to see Face, that Face isn't welcome in Pembrey's house.
So he pulls into a truck stop along the highway, eats a turkey sandwich from a vending machine that's seen better days and contemplates his options: he can keep driving until Hannibal sends word on where to meet him (this will always find Face, no matter if Hannibal knows where Face is headed or not), he can get himself a hotel room in some rinky-dink backwater town to hunker down in and work oddjobs until Hannibal sends word, or he can turn around the way he came and find out what had gotten Hannibal to send them packing. Simple options really.
He swallows the last bite of the sandwich and buys another, tosses it onto the passenger seat, and gets back on the highway.
. day one (a memory) .
Face leaves with cash in hand, laughing as he goes to get their dinner of Chinese take-out. He keeps his eyes on the ground; he never sees the guy in the Air Force uniform walk by him, walk toward Hannibal's hotel room. He's too fixated on Hannibal's orders to round up Murdock and BA and get them to eat.
. day six .
Sheppard had introduced himself only after he'd told Hannibal (via a note under the door to the room) that he'd been sent by Sosa to give them a choice, and only after John'd made a joke about the Air Force being lesser than the Army, did Hannibal let him into the room. Of course, that followed the quiet phone call to BA to tell them scatter.
Now Hannibal wishes he hadn't sent his boys to the edges of the country, because he's looking at something so beyond fantastic that he's not sure how he'll ever describe it to them, how he'll ever prepare them for this. Oh, Murdock, he'll think nothing of this, maybe say something about how the aliens have always been here (and apparently they actually have), but BA and Face? They're going to be stunned, perhaps into silence and anger.
Most definitely anger when they inevitably hear the deal that Hannibal has made for them. Which is when a man they tell him is the Civilian Head of Science ("This is Rodney McKay," John says, then leans in and whispers, "You will want to kill him. You will entertain the thought. But he is the best at what he does and he's saved our lives a few hundred times.") comes into the room, pissed off, and tells them all they're morons unable to be allowed anywhere near his equipment and oh, is this the new Colonel, does he know about the Wraith?
"Wraith?" Hannibal asks, as O'Neill says, "Oh-kay, campers, time for a briefing."
. day seven .
It's going to take time, he tells Sheppard the next day (after his brain has wrapped around the concept of life-force sucking aliens), to find the rest of the team. "I trained them to be so far into the underground that no one can locate them, not even myself for a period of four weeks minimum," he explains.
"Well, there's a way to circumvent that." Sheppard's laconic response makes Hannibal crave the cigar he's not allowed to have inside the SGC's walls, to ease the tension growing in his bones. There's so much he's had to learn in the last twenty-four hours; he needs a little more time to digest before the next thing is laid on him, but he knows he's not going to get it – welcome to life in the military, they say jump and you ask how high, sir?
Hannibal nods his acquiescence and Sheppard touches a little blue disc Hannibal hadn't noticed the younger man holding before. His vision grays out for a few minutes, coming back together in pieces; he sees Sheppard and McKay first, a man in a flightsuit sitting in a bulky square-ish chair, and then he turns around to see the Earth like a pretty blue marble below them.
"We have full range capabilities to beam up any being as long as they have a signature – a cellphone, a radio – that can be locked onto," McKay says, as though talking to a small child, and makes a face when Sheppard looks at him. "What?"
Smith moves closer to the window and looks down on the Earth, ignoring McKay in favor of trying to swallow around the lump in his throat because this is not abstract anymore. This is not the imaginative story that his denial had been screaming it was.
This is all real and it's happening and that, right there, is the Earth under his gaze, spinning lazily away, with so few below aware of the universe they live in. It's real.
He says it before he realizes what he's saying, "Holy mother..."
. day eight .
Murdock makes jokes about being beamed up and immediately discerns that they're on a ship. BA immediately begins to freak out.
Face just looks around, homes in on Hannibal and asks, "We shipping out, Boss?"
. day fourteen .
Atlantis is all clean lines, beautiful architecture, and neat rooms. Face loves it at first-sight, drinking in the high walls and the white lights like he's never seen something so grand, and he takes to Elizabeth right off the bat. He charms her, though it's obvious to all that she's not going to bite, but it's harmless and fun and when he tries the same with Teyla, he's politely (but oh, so firmly) introduced to Ronon, "my partner." It's clear what she means and Face backs off.
After the amusement of watching Face get his ass shot down for what was no doubt the first of several attempts, Weir sends them off to their rooms to get settled in. She calls at their backs, "Please let me know if you need anything," and watches them go.
Hannibal can feel her eyes on them long after they've gone from her visual range, and one corner of his mouth quirks up, mind lost in his thoughts for several minutes. He's always alert and ready for whatever needs to be done, one eye on his boys; still, Hannibal needs time to think every once in a while, apparently that includes right now. It's a subtle show of how he's beginning to feel safe and he knows Face senses it.
They arrive at the rooms as Hannibal lets his mind drop the subject it'd homed in on, and Hannibal finds he's only a few doors away from Sheppard, that Face's and BA's are across the hall flanking Murdock's. (He approves.)
"The doors to our rooms are keyed into our DNA and from there, the city will recognize you as a resident so doors will open, lights go on," Sheppard explains. "Those without the gene, it takes a little time for the city to adjust to but give her some time and Atlantis will speed up her responses."
"And those with the gene?"
Sheppard blinks, leans against the wall, and flicks his eyes to his room. The door opens and Johnny Cash spills into the hall.
"Impressive," Face responds, holding his hand out to the lock by his door and jumps back when a second later the door snaps open. The lights turn on so brightly, he lifts a hand to cover his eyes and the lights dim.
"Well," Sheppard smirks, still pressed against the wall, "You should come meet our Doctor Beckett. Then we'll go listen to Rodney ream some of the scientists back on Earth."
. day thirty-nine .
Ronon and BA are eating dinner when the food fight starts and neither seems inclined to stop it. They sit at their corner table while Murdock whoops and shouts and flings eggs at some poor soul from the maintanence department, while tables of normally-straight-laced soldiers get into the act themselves and start laughing while they do.
It comes to a natural end, albeit slower than it'd started, just minutes before Elizabeth and Hannibal come walking in.
"Murdock!" Hannibal is on the borderline of anger and amusement; he's getting close with his Civilian Commander, but he still can't trust that they won't be sent back for some infraction so he waits for her to speak.
Elizabeth simply smiles and states that anyone involved will be restricted to the mess until it was clean. No one argues, no one so much as makes a face, and when Hannibal sits down at the table beside her, their trays before them, he finds out why.
"Sheppard's going to be upset he missed the fight."
This is apparently a yearly thing.
"He'll live," she answers and picks up her coffee cup. "After all, there's still the game of laser tag he conducts that he thinks I don't know about."
. day fifty-two .
Face finds Teyla on the south pier. She looks quite beautiful in a light, summery brown dress; there's some beading on it that looks hand-done, and he feels like there's some significance he's missing. He doesn't hesitate though because of everyone in this fantastical city, it's Teyla who always puts him in his place without condescension or offense.
"Templeton," she greets. She's the only one who can get away with calling him by his proper given name.
"There's a party inside," he says by way of a hello. "BA's pretty funny when he gets drunk."
She offers a gentle smile and shakes her head, leans primly against the railing and turns to regard him with sad eyes. It breaks Face's heart to see her looks so... beaten down, raw – she's Teyla, and he wants to know what's hurt her so he can hurt it.
"My father died this time many years ago." She touches one of the beadwork patterns. "This was a gift from him."
Now Face can see the patchwork at the seams, as those someone has spent a great deal of care in letting out the seams, making the dress larger and (he thinks) taller. He can see where the beads are missing, where some have been resewn onto the fabric.
He leans in, wrapping an arm across her shoulders and tries not to think about how much he misses his own parents.
. day sixty-nine .
Sheppard's taken his team to a world they've been to before, and though normally Elizabeth doesn't sleep when her Primary Team is out, she chose to that night. There shouldn't be a reason to fret, she'd justified, because they've been to meet with the Ictarian half a dozen times before.
So when the alarm sounds for an emergency return, she isn't immediately in the gateroom and she isn't immediately awake (she doesn't sleep when Hannibal's team is off-world either and they'd only been home twelve hours when Sheppard's had gone).
Face, so close to the room, ends up knocking on the door until he gets fed up with waiting and uses his gene to override the lock. There he finds a neatly decorated but spacious room, decked out with bright fabrics to offset the Atlantian decor – a teal throw on the couch, white gauze curtains over the open balcony door, and linens in various shades of blue and green – and takes a minute to realize that there's two people in Elizabeth's bed.
He licks his lips and swallows, and whispers, "Hannibal, wake up. We got incoming."
. day seventy-one .
With Sheppard out of commission until his broken leg heals, Elizabeth has three choices – put Lorne with McKay, Teyla, and Ronon for a while, use Hannibal's team for first contact, or suspend missions for a few weeks. She weighs them all and then decides that they all need the rest, even Lorne who's been trying to help BA with his aviaphobia (along with Beckett; it's been an entertaining few weeks for anyone listening in), and orders everyone on standdown.
She tells Hannibal later, when they're curled up in her bed, Elizabeth's leg slung over Hannibal's thighs, that she thinks she was being a little bit selfish. "We could use some down time, but I was also thinking that it's nice to sleep with you."
He knows what she means, that either the tiredness is coloring her words into something a bit dirtier or his own exhaustion is coloring it for him, but he smiles nonetheless and murmurs, "I don't think it's selfish," only to find she's already asleep. Hannibal kisses her forehead and lifts the sheet over her back to tuck under a shoulder, and drifts off himself.
. day one-hundred and six .
They'd gotten word that the Wraith had gotten their hands on a new weapon, a device that could possibly get through Atlantis' shields and since the frontal approach is going to end in a massacre, Sheppard steps back to allow Hannibal to do what he and his team do best.
Okay, partially what they do best because they're not bringing the device back – intel says the tech is much too large for that – but they're to render it incapable of being used. Face said it wasn't a problem and he'd kept saying that right until he'd seen the outer casement and realized there's no way in hell their explosive charges are going to be able to do the amount of damage needed.
"Boss," Face calls him over the radio. "Change in plans."
But the rundown Face gives Hannibal is fraught with reasons to just call the mission a bust and get out. The first and foremost being that the only way to fully destroy the device was to destroy the ship and to destroy the ship, someone had to stay behind and keep the emergency protocols from kicking in to keep the cruiser afloat. It doesn't take Rodney McKay to know that Face intends for that someone to be himself.
Face pleads with him, "Just go, Boss," and "I'll find a way off."
Such an empty promise.
Murdock tries to stay, too, and BA, but Face has managed to get himself to the control room – forcefields in the corridors block the path and forces them in one direction: to the cargohold and the Puddlejumper. Hannibal feels his heart break as BA finally gives in and yanks the older man along, pulls him onto their ship, keeps a hand on Hannibal until they've gotten some distance away.
When the explosion comes, it's in reds and oranges and yellows and then it dies, sucked into the vacuum of space. Hannibal closes his eyes and tells himself to rewind because this isn't happening; they're in Pegasus and the learning curve is steep, the time to change plans is milliseconds, but he's Hannibal Smith and he doesn't just leave one of his men to die.
"Boss," he hears over the radio.
When Hannibal opens his eyes, the Icarus is floating serenely above them.
. day one-hundred and twelve .
The Icarus is the latest of the Daedalus-Class ships to be assigned to run between Earth and Atlantis. It's got a six-day transit time where the Daedalus had been eighteen, and its cargoholds are one-and-a-half times that of its predecessor. The ship can carry a crew complement of several hundred but run on as little as a skeleton crew of thirteen, and Rodney just about bounces out of his own skin when they arrive for their second run with new computers.
The aging fleet of laptops, now eight years old, have begun to break down quicker than he can fix them, so the new ones will be a happy exchange for the computers he's been holding together with duct tape repairs.
This makes him a very pleasant person to be around, according to the people who know him; for the newcomers, he's an arrogant asshole, yelling that no one is to touch anything until he says they can, while hugging a laptop to his chest and racing toward his lab.
"How have you not killed him yet?" Charisa asks Hannibal once the scientist has gone.
She's come not for them and not because of them, but because there's too much going on at the Pentagon (lies, money, cover ups). She can't take it any more and she needs to get away, remember why she loves what she does and why she loves her own country because she's beginning to think that there is no good fight.
Face answers. "He's not so bad once you get to know him. But plying him with coffee and chocolate helps."
Sheppard opens his mouth to add something and Face gives the other man an alarmed look, and John stops, laughing; above her, Charisa can hear Murdock and the Gate Technician debating. Hannibal has disappeared up to the Command Loft, into Weir's office and he's smiling at the woman.
It makes Charisa feel out of step, out of place; she may not have come because they were here, but it'd been a point in the pro column and now she sees that they've moved on.
title. A Series of Days (In Moments and Breaths)
rating. PG-13
crossover. A-Team & Stargate: Atlantis
pairing. Hannibal/Elizabeth, Teyla/Ronon, John/Rodney (Implied)
summary. A man they tell him is the Civilian Head of Science comes into the room, pissed off, and tells them all they're morons unable to be allowed anywhere near his equipment and oh, is this the new Colonel, does he know about the Wraith?
notes. Written for this prompt at
a_team_kink.. day four .
It's between the finish of one job and Face scouting another that Hannibal tells them to scatter, so much alarm in his tone that none of the boys think to argue. They just go.
Face regrets it the minute the beat up Mustang crosses into Texas, not even sure where he's headed; he hasn't had a home here since he left the group home in Houston behind a decade and a half ago. The home isn't even standing anymore – the state had torn it down eight years back and though he'd been invited to see the destruction by some of the other now-grown kids, Face hadn't gotten the message to come until long after (thank God) – and his brother's made it clear that he doesn't ever want to see Face, that Face isn't welcome in Pembrey's house.
So he pulls into a truck stop along the highway, eats a turkey sandwich from a vending machine that's seen better days and contemplates his options: he can keep driving until Hannibal sends word on where to meet him (this will always find Face, no matter if Hannibal knows where Face is headed or not), he can get himself a hotel room in some rinky-dink backwater town to hunker down in and work oddjobs until Hannibal sends word, or he can turn around the way he came and find out what had gotten Hannibal to send them packing. Simple options really.
He swallows the last bite of the sandwich and buys another, tosses it onto the passenger seat, and gets back on the highway.
Face leaves with cash in hand, laughing as he goes to get their dinner of Chinese take-out. He keeps his eyes on the ground; he never sees the guy in the Air Force uniform walk by him, walk toward Hannibal's hotel room. He's too fixated on Hannibal's orders to round up Murdock and BA and get them to eat.
Sheppard had introduced himself only after he'd told Hannibal (via a note under the door to the room) that he'd been sent by Sosa to give them a choice, and only after John'd made a joke about the Air Force being lesser than the Army, did Hannibal let him into the room. Of course, that followed the quiet phone call to BA to tell them scatter.
Now Hannibal wishes he hadn't sent his boys to the edges of the country, because he's looking at something so beyond fantastic that he's not sure how he'll ever describe it to them, how he'll ever prepare them for this. Oh, Murdock, he'll think nothing of this, maybe say something about how the aliens have always been here (and apparently they actually have), but BA and Face? They're going to be stunned, perhaps into silence and anger.
Most definitely anger when they inevitably hear the deal that Hannibal has made for them. Which is when a man they tell him is the Civilian Head of Science ("This is Rodney McKay," John says, then leans in and whispers, "You will want to kill him. You will entertain the thought. But he is the best at what he does and he's saved our lives a few hundred times.") comes into the room, pissed off, and tells them all they're morons unable to be allowed anywhere near his equipment and oh, is this the new Colonel, does he know about the Wraith?
"Wraith?" Hannibal asks, as O'Neill says, "Oh-kay, campers, time for a briefing."
It's going to take time, he tells Sheppard the next day (after his brain has wrapped around the concept of life-force sucking aliens), to find the rest of the team. "I trained them to be so far into the underground that no one can locate them, not even myself for a period of four weeks minimum," he explains.
"Well, there's a way to circumvent that." Sheppard's laconic response makes Hannibal crave the cigar he's not allowed to have inside the SGC's walls, to ease the tension growing in his bones. There's so much he's had to learn in the last twenty-four hours; he needs a little more time to digest before the next thing is laid on him, but he knows he's not going to get it – welcome to life in the military, they say jump and you ask how high, sir?
Hannibal nods his acquiescence and Sheppard touches a little blue disc Hannibal hadn't noticed the younger man holding before. His vision grays out for a few minutes, coming back together in pieces; he sees Sheppard and McKay first, a man in a flightsuit sitting in a bulky square-ish chair, and then he turns around to see the Earth like a pretty blue marble below them.
"We have full range capabilities to beam up any being as long as they have a signature – a cellphone, a radio – that can be locked onto," McKay says, as though talking to a small child, and makes a face when Sheppard looks at him. "What?"
Smith moves closer to the window and looks down on the Earth, ignoring McKay in favor of trying to swallow around the lump in his throat because this is not abstract anymore. This is not the imaginative story that his denial had been screaming it was.
This is all real and it's happening and that, right there, is the Earth under his gaze, spinning lazily away, with so few below aware of the universe they live in. It's real.
He says it before he realizes what he's saying, "Holy mother..."
Murdock makes jokes about being beamed up and immediately discerns that they're on a ship. BA immediately begins to freak out.
Face just looks around, homes in on Hannibal and asks, "We shipping out, Boss?"
Atlantis is all clean lines, beautiful architecture, and neat rooms. Face loves it at first-sight, drinking in the high walls and the white lights like he's never seen something so grand, and he takes to Elizabeth right off the bat. He charms her, though it's obvious to all that she's not going to bite, but it's harmless and fun and when he tries the same with Teyla, he's politely (but oh, so firmly) introduced to Ronon, "my partner." It's clear what she means and Face backs off.
After the amusement of watching Face get his ass shot down for what was no doubt the first of several attempts, Weir sends them off to their rooms to get settled in. She calls at their backs, "Please let me know if you need anything," and watches them go.
Hannibal can feel her eyes on them long after they've gone from her visual range, and one corner of his mouth quirks up, mind lost in his thoughts for several minutes. He's always alert and ready for whatever needs to be done, one eye on his boys; still, Hannibal needs time to think every once in a while, apparently that includes right now. It's a subtle show of how he's beginning to feel safe and he knows Face senses it.
They arrive at the rooms as Hannibal lets his mind drop the subject it'd homed in on, and Hannibal finds he's only a few doors away from Sheppard, that Face's and BA's are across the hall flanking Murdock's. (He approves.)
"The doors to our rooms are keyed into our DNA and from there, the city will recognize you as a resident so doors will open, lights go on," Sheppard explains. "Those without the gene, it takes a little time for the city to adjust to but give her some time and Atlantis will speed up her responses."
"And those with the gene?"
Sheppard blinks, leans against the wall, and flicks his eyes to his room. The door opens and Johnny Cash spills into the hall.
"Impressive," Face responds, holding his hand out to the lock by his door and jumps back when a second later the door snaps open. The lights turn on so brightly, he lifts a hand to cover his eyes and the lights dim.
"Well," Sheppard smirks, still pressed against the wall, "You should come meet our Doctor Beckett. Then we'll go listen to Rodney ream some of the scientists back on Earth."
Ronon and BA are eating dinner when the food fight starts and neither seems inclined to stop it. They sit at their corner table while Murdock whoops and shouts and flings eggs at some poor soul from the maintanence department, while tables of normally-straight-laced soldiers get into the act themselves and start laughing while they do.
It comes to a natural end, albeit slower than it'd started, just minutes before Elizabeth and Hannibal come walking in.
"Murdock!" Hannibal is on the borderline of anger and amusement; he's getting close with his Civilian Commander, but he still can't trust that they won't be sent back for some infraction so he waits for her to speak.
Elizabeth simply smiles and states that anyone involved will be restricted to the mess until it was clean. No one argues, no one so much as makes a face, and when Hannibal sits down at the table beside her, their trays before them, he finds out why.
"Sheppard's going to be upset he missed the fight."
This is apparently a yearly thing.
"He'll live," she answers and picks up her coffee cup. "After all, there's still the game of laser tag he conducts that he thinks I don't know about."
Face finds Teyla on the south pier. She looks quite beautiful in a light, summery brown dress; there's some beading on it that looks hand-done, and he feels like there's some significance he's missing. He doesn't hesitate though because of everyone in this fantastical city, it's Teyla who always puts him in his place without condescension or offense.
"Templeton," she greets. She's the only one who can get away with calling him by his proper given name.
"There's a party inside," he says by way of a hello. "BA's pretty funny when he gets drunk."
She offers a gentle smile and shakes her head, leans primly against the railing and turns to regard him with sad eyes. It breaks Face's heart to see her looks so... beaten down, raw – she's Teyla, and he wants to know what's hurt her so he can hurt it.
"My father died this time many years ago." She touches one of the beadwork patterns. "This was a gift from him."
Now Face can see the patchwork at the seams, as those someone has spent a great deal of care in letting out the seams, making the dress larger and (he thinks) taller. He can see where the beads are missing, where some have been resewn onto the fabric.
He leans in, wrapping an arm across her shoulders and tries not to think about how much he misses his own parents.
Sheppard's taken his team to a world they've been to before, and though normally Elizabeth doesn't sleep when her Primary Team is out, she chose to that night. There shouldn't be a reason to fret, she'd justified, because they've been to meet with the Ictarian half a dozen times before.
So when the alarm sounds for an emergency return, she isn't immediately in the gateroom and she isn't immediately awake (she doesn't sleep when Hannibal's team is off-world either and they'd only been home twelve hours when Sheppard's had gone).
Face, so close to the room, ends up knocking on the door until he gets fed up with waiting and uses his gene to override the lock. There he finds a neatly decorated but spacious room, decked out with bright fabrics to offset the Atlantian decor – a teal throw on the couch, white gauze curtains over the open balcony door, and linens in various shades of blue and green – and takes a minute to realize that there's two people in Elizabeth's bed.
He licks his lips and swallows, and whispers, "Hannibal, wake up. We got incoming."
With Sheppard out of commission until his broken leg heals, Elizabeth has three choices – put Lorne with McKay, Teyla, and Ronon for a while, use Hannibal's team for first contact, or suspend missions for a few weeks. She weighs them all and then decides that they all need the rest, even Lorne who's been trying to help BA with his aviaphobia (along with Beckett; it's been an entertaining few weeks for anyone listening in), and orders everyone on standdown.
She tells Hannibal later, when they're curled up in her bed, Elizabeth's leg slung over Hannibal's thighs, that she thinks she was being a little bit selfish. "We could use some down time, but I was also thinking that it's nice to sleep with you."
He knows what she means, that either the tiredness is coloring her words into something a bit dirtier or his own exhaustion is coloring it for him, but he smiles nonetheless and murmurs, "I don't think it's selfish," only to find she's already asleep. Hannibal kisses her forehead and lifts the sheet over her back to tuck under a shoulder, and drifts off himself.
They'd gotten word that the Wraith had gotten their hands on a new weapon, a device that could possibly get through Atlantis' shields and since the frontal approach is going to end in a massacre, Sheppard steps back to allow Hannibal to do what he and his team do best.
Okay, partially what they do best because they're not bringing the device back – intel says the tech is much too large for that – but they're to render it incapable of being used. Face said it wasn't a problem and he'd kept saying that right until he'd seen the outer casement and realized there's no way in hell their explosive charges are going to be able to do the amount of damage needed.
"Boss," Face calls him over the radio. "Change in plans."
But the rundown Face gives Hannibal is fraught with reasons to just call the mission a bust and get out. The first and foremost being that the only way to fully destroy the device was to destroy the ship and to destroy the ship, someone had to stay behind and keep the emergency protocols from kicking in to keep the cruiser afloat. It doesn't take Rodney McKay to know that Face intends for that someone to be himself.
Face pleads with him, "Just go, Boss," and "I'll find a way off."
Such an empty promise.
Murdock tries to stay, too, and BA, but Face has managed to get himself to the control room – forcefields in the corridors block the path and forces them in one direction: to the cargohold and the Puddlejumper. Hannibal feels his heart break as BA finally gives in and yanks the older man along, pulls him onto their ship, keeps a hand on Hannibal until they've gotten some distance away.
When the explosion comes, it's in reds and oranges and yellows and then it dies, sucked into the vacuum of space. Hannibal closes his eyes and tells himself to rewind because this isn't happening; they're in Pegasus and the learning curve is steep, the time to change plans is milliseconds, but he's Hannibal Smith and he doesn't just leave one of his men to die.
"Boss," he hears over the radio.
When Hannibal opens his eyes, the Icarus is floating serenely above them.
The Icarus is the latest of the Daedalus-Class ships to be assigned to run between Earth and Atlantis. It's got a six-day transit time where the Daedalus had been eighteen, and its cargoholds are one-and-a-half times that of its predecessor. The ship can carry a crew complement of several hundred but run on as little as a skeleton crew of thirteen, and Rodney just about bounces out of his own skin when they arrive for their second run with new computers.
The aging fleet of laptops, now eight years old, have begun to break down quicker than he can fix them, so the new ones will be a happy exchange for the computers he's been holding together with duct tape repairs.
This makes him a very pleasant person to be around, according to the people who know him; for the newcomers, he's an arrogant asshole, yelling that no one is to touch anything until he says they can, while hugging a laptop to his chest and racing toward his lab.
"How have you not killed him yet?" Charisa asks Hannibal once the scientist has gone.
She's come not for them and not because of them, but because there's too much going on at the Pentagon (lies, money, cover ups). She can't take it any more and she needs to get away, remember why she loves what she does and why she loves her own country because she's beginning to think that there is no good fight.
Face answers. "He's not so bad once you get to know him. But plying him with coffee and chocolate helps."
Sheppard opens his mouth to add something and Face gives the other man an alarmed look, and John stops, laughing; above her, Charisa can hear Murdock and the Gate Technician debating. Hannibal has disappeared up to the Command Loft, into Weir's office and he's smiling at the woman.
It makes Charisa feel out of step, out of place; she may not have come because they were here, but it'd been a point in the pro column and now she sees that they've moved on.
