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This story is completed
By Gaia
In her life she has been called many things. As a child playing in the soft spring blossoms that bloom by the lake on Proculus, she was call Nel. Our daughter, our beauty, sweetling, by her parents she barely remembers them now. She has been darling and lover and kaisha (which means betrothed). She has been teacher and mistress and priestess, and even goddess. As a goddess they called her Athar, but when she spoke those words, what she too was praying to something higher.
Names come with identities, and if one lives long enough, one finds many. The teachers say that to stop changing one's identity is like the world ceasing to spin. Names are always gifts, but they can be prisons too.
When she was Ascended, she was the soft whisper of the wind through a chime, subtly moving the world with her joy. There, she had no need of a name as we think of it. And thus, for our purposes, we must call her Chaya.
When Chaya first met John Sheppard, she was a cloud of pure energy, cold dancing rage, enjoying destruction as much as flight. He too was flying, and he too can be cold. But the thing that she loved most about him was his loneliness, clear blue like the folds of her dress, like the thick layers of ice and their sparkling caverns down at the poles.
A woman has many roles,' Oma once told her. We are first daughters and sisters then headstrong maids or unplucked flowers, lovers and wives, mothers, grandmothers. We can be protectors or goddesses, givers, takers, manipulators, but the only realm in which we are ever truly heroines in our own lives.'
Oma is the feel of fresh earth between your toes, grounding and real and sticky sometimes. The thing about earth is that though many men will weave it, abuse it, grow their livelihoods upon it, in the end they can never truly change it.
Though ages pass by her, unnoticed, tangled in stars and sunlight and give and take of harsh life in the forests, or the desert, or the sea, Chaya always remembers the days that Oma comes to visit her, where they tend to the sacred garden of Athar, feeling the soft brush of fabric against skin and reveling in the sound of laughter. They both were punished for loving this mortal coil too much.
When she meets Dr. McKay for the first time, Chaya immediately dislikes him. He gives himself many names Doctor, genius, hypoglycemic, claustrophobic, problem-solver, Superman. But, Chaya wonders if a name is still a gift if given to oneself.
But John has names for him too teammate, scientist, geek, brother, answer man, man with the plan. Maybe lover too, but she dares not peak into the future to find that there.
Chaya is jealous of Rodney, but not for the reasons you might believe. She has lived ages, been many things, known the past and the future and the present like few others, but she still cannot say that she knows the truth with any sort of confidence.
Chaya remembers her mother as a soft song and a warm lap to rest her head upon. When she was a baby they would walk beneath the stars, but never name them. All of the stories her mother told were about magical forests and far off kingdoms where a prince would climb a great tower in search of his princess.
John is just flawed enough to be human, just awkward enough to be cute. His attraction to her is genuine, though she can see a restlessness in him that she will never be able to tame. He loves flying more than he has loved any woman, and she would not be so vain as to believe that she will be any different.
Chaya's father was a gruff man. He was wedded to her mother when they were both just sixteen. He had dark hair and piercing sable eyes and he would lift her up into his arms and toss her until she felt like she was flying. He never dropped her. Not once.
People have patterns to their lives, though while living them, it is near impossible to see it. Chaya has seen many lives from birth to death. And she has learned to see the patterns.
In John, she sees a man who has lost much but held on to nothing. Even the values and institutions he claims guide him will bend when needed. John Sheppard does not fail, nor does he betray. When bad things happen he can always say that he did what he needed to. He never loses, only puts off the day of judgment until another crisis comes.
John is a man of no home and no possessions. He does not cling to identity as many of the non-Ascended do, but instead he clings to his emotions, doling the true ones out sparingly. It is not change that frightens him, but loss of control.
The Ascended are defined as much by what they cannot do as by what they can. Chaya studies religions, studies gods and their rules and laws and acts upon the Earth so that she might know her role, her place among the people she protects.
Her favorite is a tale of long-ago Earth, though she has never been there. It speaks of Gods staring down at humans from a mountain. Of Zeus and his lust for flesh, of Hera and all her jealousy, of Poseidon who cursed those that dare defy him, of Aphrodite who could cast spells on mortals to make them fall in love, of Hephaestus, the Earth his home. Chaya is all of them, though sometimes she wishes she was Diana, strong mistress of the hunt, who turned men to their own hunting dogs when she caught them gazing upon her virgin flesh.
The thing about John is that, as much of an instrument he is of his own fate, molded quick and empty as the steel of the greatest sword to live the task of hero, there is not a moment that passes in which that fate is not his own. John Sheppard has never lived life on the sidelines. He knows only to take both action and responsibility, unable by very nature of his being to be a supporting character in the play of life.
John Sheppard is Heracles.
The people of Proculus know no dangers. They know neither the Wraith nor the Ori nor the scourge of disease. They live long lives and they produce only what they need. They have faith and beauty and family and none of the horrible things that Chaya's generation knew. For the longest time she thought of them as her children, until Oma pointed out that even mothers do not try to protect their children from everything.
There are no heroes on Proculus.
"Do you have children?" Chaya asks one day as they garden.
"I have many." Oma always likes to tease.
"Before you Ascended, I mean."
"Yes. Two boys."
Chaya never had a child. She Ascended before she had ever even made love. She has done so many times since, but cannot know whether it would be the same.
"How are they?"
"Long dead." Oma smiles. Though there is sadness in her eyes, she seems almost proud of that fact.
Teer comes to her. Chaya would never actively seek another that has touched him. There is something petty in it. Human, she thinks.
Others too have come, those that seek exceptions to the rules, ones who Oma finds in danger of becoming too brash. Chaya plays her role then, as example.
Her favorite among them was Daniel Jackson. He brought with him many stories of far off worlds, and when she shared with him, she saw that beside the water and the trees and the starlight and so many beautiful things, humans, too, can be wonderful. Daniel left her far too soon.
But Teer does not come to her to learn the path of non-interference. Raised in the Sanctuary, the ascetic life is all she knows. No, Teer comes for John.
For Chaya, John was a hero, but he was not hers. For Teer, John is the one great passion that no other will ever rival, no matter how intimate it may be. He has made Teer who she is as much as Chaya's own defiance has made her.
When Chaya left her world for Atlantis the first time, it was also for a man. She no longer remembers his name, only that he had brilliant golden hair like rays of sunlight and a soft secretive smile.
They met as she prayed to the ancient goddess Athar, gazing into the black depths of the wishing-pools and asking her for protection, a end to the suffering of her people at the hands of the Wraith.
She first saw his face in the cool waters of that pool, golden like sunlight, and knew that with him, lay her destiny.
It was not until much later, when she revisited that moment, that she saw the scanning device in his hand, the way his eyes lit up when he came upon her.
Back then, all she heard were his first words to her. "You are beautiful."
Chaya comes to Atlantis a second time because this time she thinks she will not make the same mistakes twice. John is nave, infantile, young. But, he awakens something in her, a young rebellious passion to break the rules, to will the consequences of ones actions away, to see the world once again like a newborn calf, where every bad happening is a personal affront and every good one is of your own making.
It is amusing that he thinks that he seduced her, when there was never any seduction involved, only need.
Chaya has had many men in her long years - young ones, just on the brink of life, ropey and strong and so eager, old ones, wrinkled and parched and filled with such wonder and gratitude at her tenderness, angry ones and hopeless ones and those that would never appreciate her gift to them.
The pleasure of the flesh is a pale shadow of the pleasure there is in life if one just stops to revel in it. But Chaya keeps returning to the beds of men, because they call to her.
Sharing is nothing at all like sex. It is far less pleasurable but much more intimate. To see and experience and know the world through another's eyes is also to see yourself in them.
Sharing is what Chaya imagines losing your virginity must be a painful vulnerability which promises of many joys not yet lived.
You may think that Chaya shared with John because she wanted him, but what can a man who has lived but a mere 36 years bring to a woman who has seen most all of time? Even the death and destruction and anger of a warrior was not new to her, just echoes of a painful memory.
No, when Chaya shared with John, she did it for him. Because it was what he needed.
"Why did you do it?" Oma asked, though they both already know the answer.
"Don't you ever feel lonely?"
"I have my children."
"All children eventually grow up."
"That is true," Oma admits. "But he, too, would have changed. He was never one that you could keep."
And that, perhaps, was the attraction.
If Oma's role is mother and Chaya's is rebellious daughter still searching for her place then Teer is little sister, lady in waiting, best friend, pining lover. She is the woman everyone overlooks, but that does not mean her loyalty and her passion do not shine.
In the mythos of earth, she is the Lady Elaine, loving the shining knight from her place in a high tower, while he rides into the adventure he loves so much more below her.
To Chaya Teer is a gentle babbling brook high in the mountains, transparent and gentle, on her way to the great wide ocean but not in a hurry to get there just yet.
"Dr. McKay refers to you as that glowy space slut,'" Teer says, returned from her many romps to spy on her hero. Together, they do not garden, but walk amount the people of the villages, like two young acolytes, heads raised high, drawing the eyes of the populous.
Chaya shrugs. "He is jealous."
Teer looks down at her bare feet, crunching the dry dust of the village road between her toes. "I would be jealous too."
"You do not need to be."
Teer purposefully ignores this olive branch, instead speaking of McKay. "Does he not know how lucky he is? Close only because he fights the same fight?"
Chaya sighs. "He would not be jealous if he did not feel that he must fight for his place."
Chaya thinks back to the Ancient stories of Earth, the myths of heroes and heroines. It is the knights of the court that are remembered. Even the great Queen Guinevere went down in history as the woman that tore the best of friends apart.
If John were Ascended, he would be constant rain, a thick storm of water drops and electricity all falling inevitably through the sky, destined to either bless or destroy the lives of those below.
People pray for rain even on worlds that no god or goddess has chosen to protect.
"What would you do?" Teer asks. Today she is wearing a long white dress, walking delicately across the surface of a lake and teasing the fish beneath her. "If you were released from this place and this burden, where would you go?"
Teer thinks that Chaya, too, would haunt John Sheppard, take comfort in his triumphs, nurse him in his sickness, help him if she could, even if it meant death or banishment more severe. But this is not the case.
"I would go back to Atlantis. Maybe back to Earth."
"Why?" Teer lifts water lilies from their beds, and when she blows against them, Chaya is caught in a cascade of brilliant bubbles, like soap suds dancing and falling around them in their own delicate storm.
"To see who our kind were before. To see why they chose to search for this life."
"You must know. You Ascended."
Chaya smiles her most secretive seductive smile, opening her arms and taking Teer in. Together, they are the waves, crashing up against the shore with monotonous passion. Dark sometimes, and violent, but bringing comfort to all those that cannot sleep without the soft rumble of the ocean to lull them into dreaming.
Teer is convinced that once John has fulfilled his role in the fight against the Wraith, then he will join them, and then Teer will know him as Chaya has.
But, the secret that Chaya is still careful to keep, even as she opens her heart to Teer and floods her with the joy of a thousand springtimes, worlds and people and wisdom the secret is that Chaya does not need to look into the future to know that John Sheppard will never Ascend.
"Did you love him?" Chaya asks one day. Teer and John never shared, though they found their more human pleasures in ways John and Chaya did not. Teer spent months in his presence, while Chaya had mere days.
Teer smiles, a very human smile, though her teeth and her eyes and the curls of her hair are perfect. "I always knew he was the One."
But they both know that destinies and necessities and solitary things do not by their own virtue make them precious.
In none of the stories that her mother ever told her, did Chaya find out what happens to the princess once the prince has finally taken her home, saved, but there are things to be said about men who would willingly fight a dragon for a women they have seen only from afar.
On the day that John Sheppard dies we will not reveal how Teer and Chaya sail together among the many moons of Proculus, waving at the Stargate as it flashes to life below them. Their laughs are moonbeams that echo through the thoughtless void around them.
They are not surprised to see a strange oblong shape waiting for them there, a space-boat round, an unnatural beige marring the stark beauty of the void.
Inside, they find Rodney McKay, older and perhaps wiser. Most definitely quieter. For them, time has danced by in heartbeats an eternities, from washes of color to spaces between atoms, to the many things that they have shared, but by the sad hunch of his shoulders, they can see that this man who helped to take John away from both of them (though they have finally stopped saying steal') has changed.
"Chaya!" he shouts. "I know you're there! And I know I've been kind of a . . . well, I haven't been very nice to you in the past, but really, I was right and you were lying and, even despite that, I'm going to apologize because I . . . I really need your help."
Both Chaya and Teer know what he will say, even as they both know what the answer must be, if they might wish otherwise.
Dr. McKay is startled when Chaya appears at his side.
"Oh," he says. "I wasn't actually, expecting . . . well . . ." His eyes are tear-streaked and his soul, what she can see of it, is a thousand boiling clouds, expanding and contracting with every breath, a tumultuous confusion so thick that when she reaches out a hand to grip his shoulder, the touch feels almost numb.
Perhaps, before, she would have gotten some pleasure from seeing him humiliated, but now she only wants to wrap him in a firm embrace, hold him to her warmth until the storm has melted away.
There is a body, numb and lifeless and wrapped in a simple wool blanket. Chaya does not need to be Ascended to know what she will find beneath it.
"You have to bring him back," McKay demands, his certainty cracking like fissures in a bed of ice. "I'll do anything. I'll wave incense. I'll become a believer and give up coffee and bow five hundred times to Mecca every day. I'll kiss your feet. I'll . . ."
"You know that is not possible, Dr. McKay."
"Why didn't he Ascend? Why didn't you help him? What's the good of being omnipotent if you can't keep the ones you love from dying?"
Chaya remembers what Oma told her long ago that all children must grow up, and mothers must let them. "He did not ask it of me."
"Of course not. I doubt that brain-dead . . . he never even thought he was going to die. And ask for something that he really wanted? John Sheppard? Never."
Chaya smiles at this. She remembers seeing that in John too.
"There is a legend, among your people, of a great king who fought nobly in many wars. In death they set him in a boat, rowed him out into the mists of a magical lake never to return."
"Okay, just cut through all the hippie-bullshit and . . ."
In a flash, McKay is gone, sent back to Atlantis to mourn as he should.
Teer and Chaya watch as they send the ship up in a great blue haze of electrical flame. A hero deserves a hero's death, with only Gods as gravediggers and the universe to speak the final prayer.
On Earth, there is a story, and it begins like this: in the beginning, there was the word, and the word was God. Most humans read this as a myth about creation, but for Chaya, it is a cautionary tale for those that hope to someday Ascend. It's lesson is simple: if you are to create the great story that is the world, then as both narrator and creator, you cannot but help to write yourself into it.
FIN