“What’s the worst?” Dick said.
Martin shrugged. “That if we’d wanted O’Neill calling the shots in Atlantis, we would have hired him.”
Dick wasn’t sure what response he could profitably make to that. “What would you like to hear from me, Senator?”
“Whose side are you on, Mr. Woolsey? And don’t say ‘Earth’. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to represent the interests of the entire planet.”
Dick shook his head. “Then with all due respect, Senator, I’m not sure what there is left for me to say.”
Martin considered him for a moment longer, and then turned away. “See you in the next round of hearings,” he said. “You might want to give the question some more thought before then.”
“As might you,” Dick said. “I understand Shen is interested in the job.”
Martin snorted. “And I understand it’s good ice-skating weather in Hell this time of year.” He picked up his briefcase and went out, closing the door behind him.
Dick gathered up his notes in the sudden quiet. None of them had proven to be of very much use. He resisted the urge to crumple them angrily into a ball, and put them away carefully instead.
It was all he could do at the moment on behalf of either Atlantis or Earth. He wished it didn’t feel like doing so little in the face of what he could hardly believe anymore was a simple communications problem.
“I’m sure they’re all right,” he said aloud, hoping that would make it sound more like it could possibly be true.
Atlantis quieted down at night, but it was never silent. Besides the few people assigned to man the control room and monitor the city while it slept, there were always some who just weren’t sleeping. Some of that was what on Sateda they’d called ‘losing the sun’; when you spent too much time on planets where the day was different, it was easy to get day and night screwed up. Jet lag, they called it here, although Ronon had never entirely figured out why.
He thought some of it was just that as busy as they usually were, if people wanted time for themselves, they had to steal it at weird hours. John could usually be found after midnight doing pretty much anything but sleeping. John and Rodney played video games or played with toys like a couple of overgrown kids, although at the moment that was out.
John also hung around the gym if Ronon or Teyla were up, although he didn’t seem as ready to spar with the Marines as he used to be. Ronon thought it wasn’t even that he minded if some eighteen-year-old guy got the better of him so much as that he didn’t think it looked great for a commander to get kicked around too often by his own men. He was a good fighter, and Ronon thought he’d finally shaken off the ache in his side that had bothered him for a while after he got impaled twice in a month, but still.
He wasn’t in the gym, though, or in the TV lounge watching the new DVDs people had bought while they were on Earth, or out driving golf balls off the balcony into the icy waves. It was probably a little dark for golf, although John was apparently kind of fascinated with it since a giant tentacle had reached up out of the waves and snagged one of his golf balls a meter above the water. Or anyway so he claimed.
Ronon was heading back to his quarters when he nearly ran into John carrying McKay’s cat with the same defensive expression he had sometimes when Teyla handed him Torren, as if daring anyone to say anything about it.
“Not again,” Ronon said.
“I found him wandering around, and I hate to wake up Keller, so I figured I’d just keep him until morning.”
“Better you than me,” Ronon said. “What if he ruins your stuff?”
“I’ll put him in the bathroom,” John said. Ronon trailed him out of a sense that this ought to be entertaining. The cat flailed as John attempted to put him in the bathroom, and John hissed in pain, or maybe that was the cat hissing.
“Stupid cat,” he muttered as the door shut.
“You’re bleeding,” Ronon pointed out, settling into a chair.
“I’m used to it,” John said. The cat yowled from the other side of the door, making an impressive variety of noises. “He’s not as bad as the Wraith.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, fingering the scratches on his wrist. Ronon couldn’t help noticing that the room looked neater than usual, as if John hadn’t actually been spending very much time there. “So,” he said.
“So, what?”
John shrugged. He looked tired, as if this was just one more thing added to a really long day at work. “I never really got a chance to ask,” he said. “Are you okay with the way things went down on Sateda?”
“This works,” Ronon said.
“Okay,” John said after a moment, in a tone that invited more of an answer. Ronon thought about it, although he hadn’t actually been hoping to talk about work at this point either.
“It would be better if the Satedans could keep the artifacts of the Ancestors,” he said. “But right now we need a lot of supplies for rebuilding, and this stuff is valuable. It’s better to make a good deal that means we get help rebuilding and Atlantis and the Genii get stuff that helps them fight the Wraith.”
“We?” John asked, his voice carefully casual, and, okay, that wasn’t entirely about work.
“I’m still Satedan,” Ronon said. “I thought I could never go back. Now… maybe when I get done fighting the Wraith I could retire and have a house or something. Train the new Satedan army.”
“Yeah, you could go home,” John said, with a smile that didn’t look happy at all. “That would be a good thing.”
“When I get done fighting the Wraith,” Ronon said. “I don’t think that’s going to be anytime soon. I’m not quitting the team.”
“I wish there were more of one,” John said. “Right now it’s you and Teyla and Radek, and Radek keeps making it clear that he’s only planning on doing this in the short term.”
“In the long term, we get McKay back, and somebody else takes over Woolsey’s job so you can go back on the team.”
“Maybe even Woolsey,” John said. “Or somebody. But not me.”
“You’re not doing too bad,” Ronon said. “Nothing’s blown up.”
“Not exactly a really demanding standard there, but I see your point.” He looked away, his eyes shadowed.
“So?”
“So what if it is me?”
“You try not to get stuff blown up,” Ronon said.
“I can do that,” John said. “It just isn’t the same as being on the team.” He still wasn’t meeting Ronon’s eyes. “And, I mean, I know that’s just… sooner or later this happens, right? You get promoted or transferred or something, and people say they’re going to write, but…”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, I’d still be here, but there’d be a new team, and…” John looked like he was struggling for words. “Just working with people isn’t the same as having friends,” he said finally.
Ronon looked at him for a long moment. “You think it’s all about the team?”
“It’s intense,” John said. “You get to know people, and you spend all your time hanging out with them, they’re your buddies, and then…” His mouth twisted in a sharp smile. “People move on.”
“You suck, Sheppard,” Ronon said.
John looked like he had no idea why Ronon’s voice had gotten so sharp. “Okay.”
He was tired of crap like this, tired of dealing with the ways that Earth people talked about things like friendship or loyalty and turned out to mean something entirely different, something he didn’t understand and wasn’t sure he wanted to. For a moment it was tempting to rethink Cai’s offer to come back to Sateda. It would mean living with people who made sense again.
“You said we were friends,” he said.
John shrugged one shoulder. “We are. So?”