THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI
By Gaia

Sergeant Eugene Bates wakes up alone. He doesn’t know where he is or who he is, but he’s not afraid. He wakes knowing that he’s not the kind of man that is easily scared. He wakes proud of that fact.

It comes back in fragments after that. First there’s Basic, his Drill Sergeant, all red screaming face, spittle flying. And then there’re moments of bittersweet happiness as a child. There’s the apartment where he grew up, the grungy old basketball court just down the block. There’s his mother’s face, sweet and round and full of pride for her oldest son. There’s Jessa, taking him by the hand and leading him down the hall toward the slick black of the coffin and the American flag, bravely hiding the tears in her eyes. There’s Little Kevin and the time he split his lip open at the park, the way he wouldn’t let anyone help him but Gene.

And then, scattered among these memories there are other things – a circle of shimmering water, the wise face of a man he respected, steel blue eyes and a US Marine Corps uniform, worn proudly. There’s a young lieutenant who reminds him a lot of Kevin, only older, with the same wide smile. There’s a woman with golden skin and auburn hair and so many secrets beneath. There’s a dark hallway, a creature with long white hair and skin pale and smooth as silk, glowing blue by the light of an undiscovered moon. There’s a man with sad hazel eyes and smirk for a smile, a planet filling out below him as he flies them through the empty black of space.

At first it’s hard to talk. He gets tired so easily – more tired than he can ever remember being in the few scant memories he calls his own. But people come to talk to him anyway – doctors, nurses, physical therapists.

They tell him that he had a terrible accident with a humvee in Iraq.

Gene may not remember everything, but he’s positive that he’s never been to Iraq and almost as positive that the last thing he remembers is a green-skinned warrior, tattooed and vicious, with teeth like knives and hands as dangerous, throwing him back against a wall.

They tell him that he’s in a private facility, owned by the US military, despite the fact that he hasn’t seen a soldier yet. He doesn’t tell them the things that he knows. Not because they’d think he was crazy, but because they’re classified, a word he knows before his own name.

On the third day, after the memories have begun to settle and he’s been allowed out of bed, if only for physical therapy, she shows up.

“Oh, Gene . . . my baby!” Only his Ma could get away with calling him a baby. He drinks in her scent – warm and spicy, just like her cooking. She hugs him so tight that one of the nurses almost has to pull her off him.

“Hi, Mom.”

“You don’t know how worried we were about you, honey. We don’t hear from you for a year and then we get this tape . . . and a few weeks later you’re back here and they won’t tell us anything . . .”

Her tears sound like laughter. His brain stretches. He can’t understand.

His Ma bullies him better than any drill sergeant ever could, yelling at him both when he pushes himself too hard and when he’s feeling apathetic and takes it slow. It’s frustrating – muscles like spaghetti after long months spent atrophying in bed. He’s casual about it, but he eventually finds out that he’s been asleep for three months, that his family stopped visiting after the first month.

He should have a problem with that, but he doesn’t. He feels either everything at once or nothing at all now. He’ll look at his bedside lamp and cry, but sit serenely by while his Ma rants about the military, about how it killed his father and nearly killed Gene, too. He used to get angry. Once he even came close to hitting her. Now he feels nothing at all, that anger faded completely like the images of a far off city floating in a luminescent sea.

It’s two weeks before Jessa can get more time off to see him. She’s been taking care of Kevin while Ma was in town and she looks tired and harried when she arrives, hair shorter now, but her smile is just as beautiful as always.

“Gene,” she says it like a little girl, so hopeful, so sweet. She kisses his cheek and squeezes his hand and makes him remember how much he missed her.

“Jessa.”

“I can’t believe you’re finally back . . . finally here. You have no idea how much I missed you.”

“Yeah.”

Gene doesn’t have enough words to fill the silence; they hang, dancing bright before his eyes, like the unnoticed buds that never bloom into roses or tulips or daisies, a tangled green mystery.

“So, I’m getting married,” she says, half excited, half sad. Gene hates the lucky man already.

It’s a while before he realizes that this is when he’s supposed to speak. Jessa looks straight into his eyes. He’s not sure if it’s because she missed his face or because she doesn’t want to look at the sterile white of the hospital blanket.

“Congratulations.”

“His name is Dylan. He’s a high school teacher. Sunnybrook. You remember? You used to play them in football.”

He nods. He remembers the championship, but not who won. He’s too embarrassed to ask.

“He makes you happy?”

She nods.

Before, he would have asked a thousand questions, but now he knows the uncertainty of this universe where you can be a galaxy away one moment and swept back to this awkward normalcy the next. Maybe security is too much to hope for. Happiness is all anyone can ask.

He falls asleep to the pitter-patter of her words, dreaming of a flying city, all metal and endless spires, a great fight to end all fights, the edgy desperation of going into battle and a face that haunts him – unruly brown hair, a narrow pointed chin, eyes that long for something still unnamed.

The nurses here are friendly, but quiet. They do little to engage him in conversation. He supposes that they are not supposed to. A small, almost-hidden clinic like this is probably filled with black-ops or classified-project people.

It has its benefits though – the fresh mountain air and the smell of pine, the private room with its own small porch.

Physical therapy is hard, but it’s nothing compared to the rest of Gene’s life – his life before all this, when it all meant something.

Jessa stays with him in the afternoon, now that Ma has returned to take care of Kevin. She sits with him, babbling on about meaningless things.

“How’s med school?” Gene asks, casually. Normally this kind of question provokes a flood of response. That way, he won’t have to think of things to say or come up with lies and deflections.

She shakes her head. “I dropped out.”

“What?!” By his count, she should have been pretty much finished by the time he left for Atlantis. It would be such a waste to quit so close to the finish line.

She shrugs, self-conscious for one of the first times he’s seen. “It wasn’t for me. I wanted the lifestyle more than I wanted the job and that . . . well, that’s just not enough.”

Jessa has always been the successful one - the one that won’t end up in the army or working at McDonald’s. She’s the one everyone’s proud of.

“But you were close . . .”

“I quit my second year. You were away fighting . . . I . . . I didn’t want you to worry.”

He’s not worried, really. After all the things he’s seen, not being a doctor is a ridiculously petty triviality. Being alive is enough. Still, it stings that she didn’t think she could tell him.

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“Hey, you don’t have to be.”

Maybe before he would have been upset at her for quitting, for giving up when all his life he’d done nothing but push himself to be better, stronger, faster. A Marine would die at the word of a superior office. A Marine never gives up.

Gene’d been a good soldier, but even that hadn’t been enough. They’d gotten into so much trouble, and all because they didn’t quit . . . because Sheppard didn’t quit, because he didn’t leave Colonel Sumner and the Athosians and Gene behind when he should have.

Jessa squeezes his shoulder, eyes misty. He’s always loved her so much and yet he’s never felt this connected to her before, never felt like he inspired her. Her smile folds, like it can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. He’s never figured her for the sentimental type.

“I talked to the doctor and they say you’re strong enough to travel. There’s a facility about twenty minutes from Dylan’s house . . . it’s not as nice as this, but I have to go back soon and I want to be able to spend time with you. You can see Kevin and more of the family and you can meet . . .”

Gene laughs at her sudden nervousness. “Okay.”

“Really?”

“Okay.”

He didn’t realized how much he’d missed all of that until he’d been trapped on another world, surrounded by threats, having to be constantly aware. He missed the safety of being with people you completely trusted, not aliens, not from some far off country with an unintelligible accent - people that looked like him and thought like him because they were blood, so much thicker than water.

Jessa smiles a blooming, uncontrollable smile. Gene smiles back.

Though this does present a problem. If he’s transferred to a private facility, this’ll be his last chance to speak with someone authorized to talk about the program. He hadn’t been nervous about it before. He knew the military bureaucracy and its own timing process, and he’s just a low-level peon in the grand scheme of things, so it made sense that the official debrief would be late in coming, but the need to know about Atlantis is now consuming. They’d survived somehow . . . or he wouldn’t be here. But how bad was the damage? Was the expedition recalled? What about the people he knew? His fellow servicemen? His commanding officers? The scientists? The aliens?

Gene speaks to the attending doctor when he comes to do some of the paperwork, but he won’t say anything more than that he’d informed the relevant authorities. There are no numbers to call, nothing.

He tries NORAD, but just gets routed around the typical network of bureaucratic deflection. General O’Neill is no longer stationed there, and there’s absolutely no record of Major John Sheppard. Gene hopes that this doesn’t mean that he’s dead (no matter how much of a blessing that might be for the expedition itself), only classified out of existence. Gene can’t even get a hold of the tech sergeant . . . Harriman . . . if that’s his name. Names still elude him.

Dr. Silvestre assures him that he’ll be perfectly fine with rest and physical therapy, but Gene can’t help wonder if some of the effects were permanent - even though they don’t affect function, they can still permanently strip him of some element of who he used to be.

Gene wants to know . . . he needs to know. He can’t just forget about Atlantis like a good little soldier should. He can’t live without some sort of confirmation that it is in fact all real, not a coma-induced dream.

Gene even goes so far as to write a letter to Sheppard himself, hoping that it will somehow get to him. He doesn’t say anything inappropriate, of course, only that he knows he has served Atlantis well and that when he recovers, he’d like to return. This way, if Atlantis isn’t destroyed, Sheppard will have no choice but to write him personally – he owes Gene that much, at least.

But the transfer comes and goes. In truth, he’s asleep for most of it. And when he wakes up, Kevin is there, nervous, but still smiling. Almost immediately, he thanks Gene for his message and the Lakers jersey Gene hadn’t given him for Christmas. He smiles knowingly at Ma. Even though she disapproved of his line of work, she made it a business to see that it didn’t hurt Kevin too much, and Gene tried as hard as he could to help her out.

It’s Gene’s sacrifice, to serve the Corps, to give up family and friends and a normal life to do his duty. He did it so civilians . . . people like Ma and Jessa and Kevin didn’t have to. They should never have to sacrifice the way Gene did, because sacrifice should be voluntary. It’s about the honor of choosing your destiny and choosing it wisely.

There isn’t much Gene and Kevin can do while one of them is a little whirlwind of childish energy and the other is mostly confined to a bed, but they work on things – board games and spelling quizzes and made-up stories about aliens and chopper pilots and untrustworthy foreign women.

Kevin’s favorite game is Pictionary. Jessa thinks he’ll grow up to be a painter someday. There’re worse things, Gene supposes, though not many of them.

Gene doesn’t miss Atlantis. He doesn’t miss always watching over his shoulder, never seeing a moment’s true rest. He doesn’t miss having half the galaxy and even some of his own out to get him. What he does miss is being a part of something; a part of something important.

When he does think of Atlantis, it’s not to think about the Wraith, but about Sheppard, all smirking grins and wild hair and unconventionality. Sheppard was unlike any commander Gene had ever had. He didn’t do things by the book, and his orders were just as likely to get you into trouble as out of it, but somehow, the universe loved him. It loved him like it hadn’t loved Marshall Sumner or Robbie Parsons or Dave Markham. It loved him like the universe had never loved Marines.

It’s long months of PT, short visits and hours and hours with the television on. Soap operas and ESPN and even basketball seem strange now. Even CNN covers a different, less important war. He keeps expecting to see a hive ship hovering in the sky, the ticker tape boldly proclaim ‘Space vampires come to kill us all,’ or maybe that stupid emergency broadcast thing, only not a test this time.

He’s almost convinced himself to relax, almost sure that even if he didn’t dream Sheppard and McKay and the city in the sea up, they might as well be a dream. And then he gets a note. It’s printed on official stationary, the SGC’s front-logo on the top.

He recognizes diplomatic language that can only be Weir immediately, words like ‘served well,’ ‘please know that we have survived to keep fighting,’ ‘played a vital role.’ Gene isn’t particularly familiar with politician-speak, but even he knows enough to recognize cushioning for a deep blow.

‘While you will be kept abreast of the vital status of the expedition and receive full benefits of the program, we will not be requesting your return. All of us here wish you a speedy recovery and all the best of luck in your future endeavors.’

When his health improves, he thinks about petitioning. He thinks about demanding to the highest levels, of making himself a squeaky wheel and getting an actual reply, because Sheppard needs him. The expedition needs him to protect Sheppard from himself.

But then he looks down at the bottom of the letter, to Sheppard’s messy signature right alongside Weir’s. He’s a Lieutenant Colonel now. Good for him.

Only that crazy motherfucker, O’Neill would ever submit to promoting Sheppard. That’s the problem with guys like them – guys who like to play the hero to the exclusion of all else. O’Neill’s better – he does his job and he makes the tough call when the time comes, but there’s some maniac something in him that sympathizes with Sheppard’s recklessness. The thing about O’Neill, is that he got to be how he is because he had nothing else to lose. He used to be a model officer.

He just doesn’t understand that Sheppard has always been this way. He’s always been charmed, always lived the top-gun life, hanging from a single thread, cult of personality. He trusts too much, even though he doesn’t really trust at all. He trusts in trade for trust, instead of making people earn it. He’s too used to people falling for his charm to realize that the people of Pegasus have lived the hard life he’s never had to – that they won’t fall for it because, like Gene, they see through the lazy smile and the crazy hair and find just another man trying to do what he can to survive.

Sheppard’s never had to work for his existence. He doesn’t understand the things people will do out of necessity. Gene himself has stolen and fought and smoked crack and lived in a trailer park and in a ghetto. He’s been beaten and he’s attacked and he’s held a gun to someone’s head who wasn’t a military threat. He understands security, the security that the military provides in its rules and its regulations and its assurances of loyalty against all foes. Where Sheppard sees a chance to playboy-it and fly, Gene sees a family.

And Sheppard doesn’t see it, just sees paranoia and anal attention to detail, but he needs people like Gene, people who understand desperation and security and the true effects of total war. But he can’t tell this to O’Neill, because O’Neill won’t understand anymore than Sheppard will. O’Neill has known tragedy, but he’s never known need. And he doubts any of the pretty-boy SGC specially trained officers they’ll send out will. Atlantis was a mission of science. Even the grunts were picked for their ability to understand and keep up with the needs of scientists. Gene was one of the few without a college degree.

No one will listen, so he keeps his mouth shut. That’s another thing he learned from the Corps – you shut your mouth and you do what you’re told because you don’t know enough to make the big decisions; that’s what officers are for.

It’s another month before Gene hears from anyone. Jessa gets married and he and Kevin do make it to that Lakers game and it turns out that Dylan is not a complete and utter bastard – he and Gene have had more than a few beers together. He’s even hinted at a new job for PE coach opening up at Sunnybrook, as though he’d actually want to see Gene on a daily basis.

It’s weird that he doesn’t know anything about how aliens could drop by in flying pyramids or honeycombs and kill them all any moment now. It’s incomprehensible that he doesn’t know that people can travel between the stars, that we are the second evolution of this form, that people like Sheppard can make whole cities come to life with a thought. But Gene is finding him good company anyhow.

Gene keeps the letter from Weir in the top drawer of his dresser. He reads it again every night, searching the words for signs of impending doom, wondering if McKay and Sheppard have destroyed the galaxy yet, with their little-boy obsession with cool guns and things that glow. They’re uncontrollable together and Gene knows that Weir doesn’t have the strength to stand against their naïve enthusiasm alone. He expects the news to come any day now, that Sheppard has made some emotional decision, that he’s trusted McKay too much and that it’s blown up in their faces, that Atlantis and all the people Gene cared about there are gone.

But it doesn’t go down like that. Instead of a solemn officer knocking on the door, the kind that all military wives have learned to dread, instead of somber letter, instead of transfer orders even, the military next finds him in the form of a tall well-muscled disgustingly all-American pilot, ridiculously out of place with his fair skin and his southern accent when he shows up at the park during one of the usual Bates family get-togethers.

“Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell,” he says, shaking Gene’s hand, still sweaty from letting Dylan trounce him at a friendly game of hoops.

“Sir,” he says, taking the hand, if only because you always take the hand of an officer.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it’s a busy galaxy and I wanted to come out here myself.”

Why, is beyond Gene. Mitchell is a colonel in the Air Force, leader of SG-1, as he soon learns, and Gene is a lowly Marine who didn’t even serve on the same project as him. When Mitchell came on board, Gene was already in another galaxy.

“Thank you, Sir.”

Mitchell smiles at that. “Call me Cameron,” he says. It’s not uncomfortable like it would be with Sheppard. It’s not supposed to be charming or deflective or anything but the simple signal that Mitchell is here for personal reasons as well as professional ones. Gene appreciates the clarity.

“Thank you, Cameron.”

“I suppose you’re waiting for news on Atlantis.”

Gene thinks about a deflective shrug, but why lie to a guy like this? “They didn’t tell me much.”

“Well, they’re still alive. The Daedalus got there in time to give them the ZPM and help them fight. We’re now in regular contact. The Wraith sent an armada, but McKay figured out a way to cloak the city so the Wraith think it’s been destroyed. Frankly, the situation’s only temporary.”

Gene nods, though he can’t think of anything better than that sort of temporary stalemate. “Casualties?”

“It’s a long list. But all the deaths will show up through official channels.” Mitchell doesn’t even know all the names. That makes Gene’s jaw clench. “I’m sorry.” Mitchell doesn’t try to touch Gene, but there’s real honest-to-god sympathy in his eyes.

“Sheppard’s still in command?”

“Yes. The man we sent, Colonel Everett, was fed on by the Wraith.” That seems to be the trend for guys who outrank Sheppard. Neither of them mentions it.

“He back here?”

“I have his address if you feel like giving him some company.” Gene nods, knowing even now that he won’t go. One thing he learned from the haunted look in Sheppard’s eyes – you don’t want to see someone who’s been fed on by the Wraith. “We ended up promoting Sheppard and adding a new XO: Major Nick Lorne. You know him from the SGC?”

Gene nods. He hated Lorne – too sarcastic, cold, but not in a soldierly way - that and his weird predilection for stupid pranks. He and Sheppard deserve each other, really. He can imagine poor young Ford, still so naïve for an officer, trying to carve himself his own personality between those two. “And Ford?”

Mitchell sighs. “MIA. He got injected with some sort of feeding-enzyme, like speed, made him paranoid. He ran off. Last anyone saw of him, he got sucked into a culling beam.”

Gene sighs heavily at that. Ford didn’t deserve that. Nobody did. “And McKay and Sheppard have managed not to blow up the universe,?” He tries to weed the resentment out of his voice, but looking at Mitchell, he can see that the man isn’t buying it. But then again, he isn’t judging. Gene gets the idea that Mitchell doesn’t care for Sheppard either.

“Just 5/6 of a solar system, so far.” Gene would laugh, except he can tell Mitchell is serious.

“Damn.”

Mitchell smiles at that, lazy drawl coming out to play. “Damn is right.”

Mitchell is nothing like Sheppard. Mitchell is the kind of guy Gene would have loved to serve under. He’s just as dedicated, charmed even as Sheppard had been. But he sticks to formality and protocol. He doesn’t live to keep you off-balance, slouch and smirk and keep his hair rebellious beyond regulation.

When the punch line comes (because they both know that Mitchell didn’t come all the way from Colorado to play basketball) he doesn’t make Gene beg for it. He just states it clearly, as clear as the welcoming hope in his bright blue eyes.

“I saw you when they beamed you down into the infirmary. You look a lot better now.” They both chuckle at that. “The doc thought you’d never recover, but I started betting against the odds from the beginning. I wanted you to wake up there, so I could tell you what some good people told me when I woke up nearly paralyzed after a crash in the battle over Antarctica. O’Neill told me that if I got better, I could have any position that I wanted. I got better all right. It looks like you didn’t need the motivation, after all, but I wanted to offer it to you just the same. I can’t do anything about Atlantis, but any position at the SGC . . . anything I can swing, it’s yours.”

Before, Gene would’ve thought fast, said what Mitchell would have expected him to say – ‘leadership of a Gate team.’ He would have clipped off a perfect salute and thanked his lucky stars for coming through for him again. But he thinks about Sheppard’s sad smile. He thinks about the Wraith and the Goa’uld and a galaxy of things that want to kill him. He thinks about the pain that still nibbles at the base of his spine and the letter in his top drawer with Sheppard’s signature an impersonal smudge at the bottom. “I’ll think about it,” he says.

Only after Mitchell has left and he and Kevin are back in the apartment, working on Kevin’s math homework together, does Gene realize that he’s not going to take the offer.

There are still battles raging a galaxy away, but Sheppard’s not the only one that needs Gene to show him something.

“But how come you have to add them afterwards?” Kevin demands.

“Because you do,” Gene says. He’s not a genius, but he can still offer a smile.

FIN