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“Here is the thing, and I'm being serious here,” said Rodney. “I’m not 100% sure he’s not going to go jump off a cliff.”
The village elder looked alarmed. “He has been given a gift by the Ancestors!”
Teyla said, more patiently, “Colonel Sheppard is… not a man who expresses his feelings. I believe being forced to do otherwise is… upsetting to him.”
Rodney snorted. That was an understatement
Ronon was still guarding the hut in which Sheppard had barricaded himself, nominally in case someone tried to use his sudden attack of truth-telling to get tactical information about Atlantis, but also partially because of the cliff thing.
Elder Ionna frowned deeply. “The expression of sentiment is forbidden in his culture?”
“I don’t know what the hell happened to him to make him this way,” Rodney said.
Teyla interrupted him. “The point is, while we are very glad for the bestowing of a blessing of the Ancestors, we would like to know if there is a way to reverse it. Immediately.”
Sheppard had touched a pedestal thing, which had glowed and made everyone in the village generally very excited.
Then he had turned to Teyla and said, “Hey, that was weird. I feel weird now. Can we go back to the Jumper? I love flying those things a lot. I don’t tell you guys this but Jumper One likes me the best so it always flies better for me. One time I told Lorne it was broken just so he would take out Three and I could take a nap in One because it sometimes makes my nightmares go away. Hey, what the hell?”
And then he and Rodney and Ronon and Teyla had all freaked out, because they had obviously assumed Sheppard was dying or his brain was turning into sludge. But it turned out it was worse than that, and that pedestal thingy was a meditation tool for Ascension, and it had given its gift to him by creating a truth spell-style situation.
About the time they realized that was also the time Sheppard had stormed into someone’s hut, shouted, “I don’t want to shoot you at all but I’m going to be real with you I’m still kind of considering it!” and when the resident fled, Sheppard slammed the door. There was the sound of various furniture being pushed up against it, and then just kind of muffled talking, apparently to himself.
Rodney considered the negotiations to be on a time schedule of some sort.
“I am sorry, but no one has ever tried to have their gift reversed before,” Elder Ionna said. “It is simply not done— and it is granted so rarely in the first place. It has not happened in, oh, several generations.”
“Surely not everyone stays this way forever,” Teyla said, with a hint of desperation to her tone. “That would be. Inconvenient.”
“Our Blessed Ones stay in the monastery and train under the mistresses there,” Ionna said. “There they meditate on their life and the things keeping them from Ascension. At the end of their month-long training, their gift escapes them.”
“A month?!” Rodney squawked.
Teyla too had paled. “Certainly there is a way to speed the process.”
“Well,” Ionna said hesitantly, with the tone of someone who knew she was not in fact being helpful, “He could Ascend?”
Rodney and Teyla and Ronon clustered around the door to Sheppard’s hut, wincing at each other.
Eventually Rodney screwed up his courage and said loudly, pressing his face against the wood, “They’re looking into it. They’re very optimistic. Nothing to be worried about at all, honestly…”
“In the meanwhile, to be safe, we would like to go back to Atlantis and see what our testing can say,” Teyla said. “Perhaps Doctor Beckett has an idea to expedite the process.”
“Sheppard, get out of there,” Ronon said, pounding on the door with a fist. “The family whose house this is says they have a stew in the pot for dinner and the guy doesn’t want his rabbit to burn.”
The door creaked open, and Sheppard’s wristband-clad hand shoved a stewpot wrapped in a towel out the crack. Then, as soon as the guy darted forward to take it— hey, that smelled good— Sheppard withdrew his empty hand and slammed the door.
“Good, at least you’re not being dramatic about it!” Rodney called through the door.
The door opened again just enough to show Sheppard’s middle finger.
“Well, at least you can do hand gestures!” Rodney said. “Or, wait, hey!!”
Teyla grimaced, but her voice was patient as ever. “John, we really should go back to Atlantis. I am certain you know you cannot stay in this family’s house forever.”
There was more muffled talking behind the door, this time suspiciously more garbled.
He didn’t come out.
“Sheppard?” Ronon called.
Finally, the door swung open. Sheppard was on the other side with his arms folded. He had wrapped a bundle of gauze from his field vest around the entire lower half of his face, and probably shoved some into his mouth too by the looks of things. He looked like the Invisible Man with bad hair.
“Oh, are you serious?” Rodney said. “Please, you are so repressed.”
“Looks cool,” Ronon said unconcernedly.
Sheppard said something long and most likely uncomplimentary.
“Good!” Teyla said, nervously clapping her hands together. “We should go back to the Stargate. Quickly.”
Sheppard took off for the Jumper at a sprint.
Sheppard had bolted for his room the millisecond he’d been released from the infirmary. Rumor had it that some poor lance corporal had tried to stop him for a chat and gotten decked. That meant he was not present at the command meeting, and thus Rodney saw Elizabeth stifle a quick smile before she was able to get herself under control.
“This is obviously not ideal, on an opsec but also a personal level,” Elizabeth said. “Clearly, a month spent sitting around hoping this is going to wear off is not an option. Give me what you’ve got.”
“His brain is quite obviously affected on the Ancient scanner,” Carson said, “But other than a few overactive areas of the brain, there’s nae anything to be worried about. And there’s not much treatment for such a thing.”
“No unusual scans on our end either,” Rodney said. “And we did the works.”
Teyla added, “Regardless of how long it lasts, we must keep this information from spreading, even perhaps within the city. If someone were to take advantage of Colonel Sheppard’s sudden forthrightness, it could be very dangerous.”
“We’ll have to keep him away from the IOA for a month,” Lorne said, drawing off that with a look of horror. “That could be… Uh, that would not be good.” Everyone imagined this meeting of the minds and blanched.
“We might have to go back to the city and study the pedestal,” Rodney said glumly. “They said it doesn’t activate often, so I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s another ATA, Colonel Supergene thing, and maybe it’s touch-based as well. Everyone else should theoretically be safe from being affected as well.”
“I don’t like that theoretically,” Elizabeth said, frowning.
“I could spend the time finally having a productive therapy appointment with him,” Heightmeyer said. “Just kidding.” More wistfully, she added, “Just kidding…”
When Rodney knocked on the door to Sheppard’s room, it only came open the tiniest crack. Rodney rolled his eyes.
Sheppard was standing there with his eyes narrowed, and his mouth covered in a healthy layer of duct tape. Given Sheppard’s perpetual five-o-clock shadow, this was quite the sacrifice.
“You are alone in there,” Rodney said.
Sheppard said something underneath the tape and flicked Rodney on the forehead.
“Ow,” Rodney complained. “Anyway, we’re going back to the planet.” Sheppard’s eyes turned concerned, and he said another long and indecipherable something. “Yeah, yeah. Elizabeth’s already making us take Lorne and some of your other meatheads. And that’s even with knowing it’s pretty much safe there and they didn’t do this to you on purpose. We’re being overcautious, okay? So your objections, such as they aren’t, are noted.”
Sheppard looked amused, and although whatever he said was muffled, he immediately adopted a look of horror and backed hurriedly into his room, the door slamming shut instantly. Weirdly, Rodney was kind of flattered.
Sending Zelenka and his no-ATA-gene in turned out to be a bust. He got no readings and found no Ancient machinery besides what was presumably shielded inside the pedestal. What he did uncover, though, was a series of inscriptions written in Ancient on the wall immediately behind.
So Rodney had to schlep all the way in there, not that he was afraid of getting truth-spelled or anything, since Rodney McKay was not exactly known for hiding what he was thinking. However, he was cautious, and jumpy, and as he was trying to get a good scan of the writing, he may have become slightly snappish. A little.
And, upon telling Corporal Harris, or maybe it was Hansen, that his big giant head was blocking the light and if he had gone to boot camp to be a sunshade he was doing a really great job, but if was for anything else he should ask for his money back— Rodney touched a wall and found himself suddenly unable to speak.
Rodney did not know what his face did in that moment, but Corporal Herrera squealed and ran away claiming Rodney had finally developed those laser beam eyes after all, and he had attempted to explode his brain with them.
Rodney was so furious he was red-faced, gesturing angrily from Carson to the medical scanner to Sheppard and back to the scanner, then to the cabinet where they put the good drugs. Sheppard perked up at the sight of the cabinet as well, which made Ronon kick him.
“We spoke again to the Elder,” Teyla said. “We believe the device may not have been constrained to the pedestal after all, and it may in fact be built into the structure itself.”
Rodney attempted to communicate NO DUH!!!! with his face and several nurses backed away.
“Why is he quiet instead of compulsive truth-telling?” Elizabeth said.
Teyla said, “The Ancient writing speaks of finding people who are in specific need of issues to overcome before Ascension. It tailors the ‘gift’ specifically to each person, so is capable of more than what afflicted John. Apparently this is known in the village. Elder Ionna interpreted Rodney’s gift for us.”
“She said he needs to shut up,” Ronon said. Rodney jabbed him hard on the shoulder with a fist, and shook the pain out of his hand with extra pique. Ronon didn’t even look moved, the jerk.
“She said it is likely he needs to learn to consider what he speaks of more strongly,” Teyla corrected.
Rodney scowled.
“I see,” Elizabeth said tactfully. “Well, obviously, we aren’t sending any more ATA gene-carriers inside, and perhaps they shouldn’t be on the planet at all.”
Zelenka was getting his post-mission checkup and looked way, way too cheerful. When Rodney had come out of the building temporarily— TEMPORARILY!— mute, he had cackled and then said, “Lab will be very quiet for a while. Just kidding. I am very sad.”
So Rodney was thinking up ways to blow up Zelenka, which was making him feel a little happier.
“Agreed,” Teyla said. “Myself and Ronon will return. I feel confident I can negotiate the Elder into giving us more information on the process and how to reverse it. And in the meantime…” She looked at Rodney and then at Sheppard, still August’s Mr. Duct Tape, and pressed her lips together. “At least perhaps it cannot get worse.”
Rodney scrambled for some way to express his displeasure and ended up giving the whole room a vigorous, hard thumbs-down. Sheppard clapped him on the back and nodded in agreement.
Rodney’s day had improved immeasurably.
“Apparently it’s not ATA-specific,” Elizabeth said, looking tired.
Teyla gave a grimacing smile that indicated she was trying not to show embarrassment.
“Elder Ionna told me that while I may have no quarrel with the telling of truths and the showing of the inner exhortations of my soul, my brevity is a manner in which I hide the sincerity of these thoughts,” Ronon said. “Her eyes, as she said it, were bright as the sun and as piercing to uncareful eyes.”
Lorne quietly put his head down on the table.
“And Teyla?” Elizabeth said.
“Dark skies can brighten. A brightened sky can dim. A dawn sky is an in-between thing and despite its beauty should be treated with caution,” Teyla said, sulky.
“Um,” Elizabeth said.
“Elder Ionna said she believes Teyla’s diplomatic prowess is all riddles and twisting of truths, no true substance to be found,” Ronon said. “Of course I don’t think this is the entire of it, for Teyla is more true and more filled with quietude than any I know—”
Sheppard tapped him on the shoulder and handed over his roll of duct tape. Ronon took it enthusiastically and began taping over his goatee with reckless abandon.
“Please, I have to be able to understand one of you,” Lorne said to the table.
“A footstep cannot walk yet a being who walks walks in footsteps,” Teyla said wisely.
Back on the planet, Elder Ionna gave Sheppard and Ronon and their duct-taped mouths a weird look. She also gave a weird look to Rodney, who was attempting one more time to type out a sentence on his tablet and instead was just jabbing his screen in random spots. Then one to Teyla, who had given her a really weird line about worms and the water cycle upon entrance and then had been visibly confused and said nothing else.
“I spoke to one of our historians,” Ionna said. “He believes there may be a ritual in which you can remove yourselves immediately of your gifts.”
Even Sheppard began to look less martyred as everyone perked up. Ronon stopped looking homicidal. Rodney considered kissing her on the mouth.
“It would be about revealing the inner portions of yourselves,” Ionna said, and Sheppard reverted instantly back to his tragic and dire expression. “You will have to overcome what it is the Ancestors chose you out for.”
She looked disheartened by their lack of expected enthusiasm.
“So Colonel Sheppard will have to tell each of you— his companions— his most deeply held truths. Dr. McKay will have to speak something which should be said but has not been. Mr. Dex will need to tell you a long and true story of himself. Ms. Emmagan will say something straightforward and with no personal aims. Do you understand this?”
Sheppard said something that, though garbled, Rodney interpreted as, “so where’s that cliff again?”
Ionna let them back into the temple to do their personal inner truths or whatever the hell.
Ronon peeled the tape off his mouth, inch by apparently painful inch. Rodney half expected him to be the first to fulfill the terms, but his speaking wasn’t compulsive like Sheppard’s and he didn’t even say anything.
They were all stubbornly quiet.
Rodney sighed and pointed at Sheppard. This was his fault.
Sheppard adopted a wounded look and pointed at himself like, me??
Rodney pointed again. Yes you!!
Teyla said, “That which is stirred cannot be separated back into what it was before.” Then she pointed at each of them sternly, and back at the pedestal and wall. We have bigger issues.
Ronon bared his teeth and gestured roughly to the pillar by the entranceway, which was apparently what had gotten him and Teyla in the trap. FIX. IT.
Rodney felt his face go considering. Around him, the team perked up again.
Rodney got up and paced around. The people on this planet used this temple once a week, for a church service thing. So there was just no way no one had touched the pillar, which was directly in the way, and looked like people leaned on it when they were taking off their muddy shoes.
And the trap— the gift— wasn’t ATA activated, which meant basically the whole town should have had their various vocal-related curses inflicted upon them long ago.
The team trailed behind him as he bounced from wall to wall, thinking.
Rodney pointed one more time to Sheppard, victorious.
This time his answering point at himself was like, me?
Rodney nodded.
Sheppard’s eyes widened; he had initialized a device which had probably been inactive for a thousand years. So it might have been able to shoot voicelessness out from other parts of the temple, that wasn’t the place where you turned it on.
That must have been the pedestal.
Everyone sprinted for it at the same moment. Sheppard slapped his hand on top of it and closed his eyes, obviously concentrating hard by his constipated expression.
It didn’t do anything; Ronon knocked on the wall where the Ancient writing was, with an interrogative eyebrow. “Many secrets are hidden where you do not expect. I have observed on Atlantis many wondrous things, and I have seen there that every thing, not just the living ones, need something to power it. This is in great proximity. And the light dapples on it beautifully from the sunlight.”
Sheppard nodded and moved position to the writing, doing the concentrate-y face again. This time, success. The writing was on a wall panel, which popped open and revealed wires which stretched under the floor, over to the pedestal. This was the control center for the device.
He assumed Sheppard was already thinking it off, with all his willpower, so that wasn’t a way to shut it down. Rodney frowned.
Teyla raised an eyebrow. It was an eyebrow that said, This hasn’t worked for 300 years.
Rodney waffled. He was as a rule against destroying Ancient stuff. You just couldn’t order it again at Sears. But then Sheppard gestured with his roll of duct tape and Rodney remembered that the alternative was going through unimaginable torture at the hands of facing your inner failures.
So then Rodney gave a hasty double thumbs up.
Ronon, who had his gun already out, shot the wall panel, which sparked excitingly and then died down with a sad whirr.
They considered this.
“Nice,” Ronon said, and gave everyone a round of enthusiastic back slaps.
Rodney said, “Holy crap I can talk! Life is worth living again!”
“For you, maybe,” Sheppard said, crumpling his shed duct tape into a ball. But he had a, for Sheppard, surprisingly enthusiastic and genuine smile. Well, then again he had narrowly avoided being forced to talk about his feelings, or, worse yet, an actual human desire, so probably there was no question why he looked like he’d just been told the firing squad had been cancelled.
“That was good thinking from us all,” Teyla said, smiling at them.
There was a knock on the front of the temple. “Hello? Have you finished your meditations?”
Teyla shot out an elbow and knocked the wall panel closed, at the same time as Sheppard began to wave away the residual smoke and Ronon hastily put his gun away.
“Oh, good!” Elder Ionna said, when the team emerged from the temple talking like un-crazy people. “So, the rituals were successful? You have each learned your lessons?”
“All thanks to your guidance,” Teyla said serenely. “You were correct about what it was we needed to do to free ourselves from our burdens. Very simple, after all.”
Sheppard was scratching at his stubble. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Of course, Rodney knew what his one thing he’d have said was. There was only one thing it felt like he could say, in the middle of his enforced silence, and it was something sappy and stupid and annoying about how much he loved his team; how he had never felt like he could have a family that could actually choose him or would want to stick around. And he was very grateful for them.
But he was never going to tell them that. Gross.
Weirdly, he thought he knew what it was his friends would have said too. And they didn’t even have to say it, which was a win in everybody’s book. Sheppard might have imploded or something.
Elizabeth watched them get, finally, cleared in the infirmary.
“Everyone’s back to normal and healthy as ever,” Carson said, giving his four patients an approving look.
“I’m glad to see— and hear— that,” Elizabeth said.
“That sucked,” Sheppard said, scratching again at his slightly reddened mouth. “That ever happens to me again, just get Lorne to feed me to a Wraith. I know he wants my job anyway.”
“He does not want your job, your job sucks,” Rodney said.
“You suck,” Sheppard said.
“So,” Elizabeth said, with the kind of caniness that sometimes made her very dangerous as a boss, “You were just able to press a button and reverse your issues. That’s convenient. It’s odd, even, that you didn’t find it before. I don’t suppose anything happened there I wouldn’t approve of.”
“Dr. Weir, you know that diplomacy between peoples is very important to me,” Teyla said, with her innocent negotiating-with-the-locals face, even managing to look slightly hurt.
“Everything’s good,” Sheppard said. “Went in. Pressed a button. Could talk normal again. Left.”
“And I, for one, find it actually pretty offensive that for some reason you consider your front line team bad at, you know, interpersonal relationships, just because we maybe started a war or two and got the Genii all up our asses. Which could have happened to anyone! Anyway what I’m saying here Elizabeth is that you really, really should have more faith in us.”
Ronon said, “Yeah. That.”