Lieutenant Annie Parker sat beside him on his bed, playing with the hand-woven quilt Aiden'd brought from Earth as his one personal item. Gran had made it for him and now Annie was tracing each delicate stitch with nails ragged and caked in dirt. She looked small and almost self-conscious, lost. They had been here for at least ten minutes since he dismissed the two sergeants. He knew Makhem and Stackhouse wouldn't talk, despite appearances. They had been there too, watching Sheppard convulse and cry out. They would understand that being alone was just too terrifying a concept right now.

When Annie finally spoke, she spoke so quietly he had to ask her to repeat herself. "They're evil," she said, plainly, tucking her legs in to her chest and looking so frail and small, like her skin was painted, coated in ivory or coral, carved into stone by the gravity of the moment. "The Goa'uld, I could understand. Their hate, their rage, their pride ... They were human, Aiden. I could imagine murderers and dictators and people I might put on trial some day every time we went after one. They were just weak people given damning power. Dr. Jackson ... he said that maybe it wasn't the Goa'uld that were evil, but a magnification of the inherent sinfulness of the host. Like ... as Unas they learned brutality, but with humans they learned deceit ... and they learned how to rule. He said that maybe it was the fact that the symbiote so wanted the host to survive that they used the sarcophagus, and the sarcophagus poisoned their minds ... brought out the worst in both."

"But it's the symbiote that takes the host, not the other way around."

"Yes, but the first host ... the first one before the Goa'uld has turned evil, before they passed down their genetic memory, is it not possible for the Goa'uld to love them the way you do your first love? It's the attachment."

Molly. Aiden thought back, remembered her sweet voice, the way her dull brown hair sparkled golden in the sunlight, sitting with her head resting on his stomach, staring up into the pale blue of the sky, discussing trivial little nothings - the movie playing at the local theater that weekend, the latest gossip floating around school, how much they both hated senior English, how they would get married and the names of their children, what Aiden would do in the military, his mother's illness, even the painful circumstances of his father's death. But they never discussed the one thing that would eventually pull them apart. He was black and she was white and they lived in Idaho. It wasn't like the south ... there weren't enough minorities there to segregate. But, in the end, she couldn't understand. She went off to WashU and got drunk and stoned and practically molested every weekend and he joined the marines. And they lost touch ... became different people.

Molly said he could've gotten a scholarship ... could've been the first in his family to attend a real university. But didn't she get it? Annapolis was a real school - only they paid him to go there - good money he could send home to Gram and Gramps to help with the farm. He knew he would never be the top of his class. He would never ever be able to look and act like some brilliant tactician. He could place shape charges with the best of them, but when it came to ships ... well, he was from Idaho. As for the game ... the ladder climbing, he held the class record with a rope, but apparently grinning and trying your best to be hospitable wasn't what helped you up the social one.

Even with Sheppard's lax command style, he couldn't seem to fit. Sheppard liked McKay better, despite the fact that the man was a paranoid, annoying, asshole, who talked down to everyone and thought he was God's gift to the human race. But he seemed to respect Sheppard ... they even developed an odd antagonistic banter. Aiden tried to chime in every once and a while, but McKay just made fun of him, and Sheppard would laugh, or say something intelligent and witty, and Aiden would just freeze up or respond with something so idiotic that McKay would choke on his tongue laughing. He wasn't like McKay, who gave as good as he got ... with the scientist and his CO it built up and turned into itself until the banter was seemingly a creature all its own. He wanted that. He just wanted Sheppard's friendship ... wanted to know the mysterious and charismatic leader, not just because everyone else did, but because, he like him and cared about him. Wasn't he justified in wanting his respect?

But Aiden wasn't an intellectual like McKay or Zelenka. He wasn't a bright young star like Annie, and he wasn't a strangly insightful and perceptive native warrior like Teyla. Aiden would never be any of those things. He was damn good at his job, and he thought Sheppard respected that, the way you appreciated the fine edge of a really fine blade, but his job was to be the guy you trusted to take point, or watch your back, or know how to blow something up. There was an invisible line between him and Sheppard. It wasn't the military hierarchy -though that was a good excuse- and it wasn't the racial thing, considering the fact that Sheppard would befriend aliens and not even blink. It was something else. Maybe it started out as a race thing, but ... nobody expected him to be brilliant. It was his job to follow orders. And that was supposed to be an escape from the awkwardness of the university where he could have gone to be with Molly, if they hadn't been too different. He couldn't stand walking around with all those rich white tree-huggers from the Pacific Northwest, with them looking at him thinking, 'he's just here because of affirmative action.' But now he was here in another galaxy, with multiple PhDs looking down at him through their glasses thinking, 'cannon fodder.'

But Sheppard was supposed to understand. He was supposed to be on his side - they were military, the band of brothers, all that. But Sheppard was different. He had to be laid out on an infirmary bed spouting random bits of Buddhist philosophy before Aiden realized it. All Aiden knew about Buddhism was that it was either godless or had a bunch of gods, but was definitely pagan and wasn't that supposed to make it evil? Heathen, at least. He wondered if this meant Sheppard was going to hell. He found it hard to believe, considering how brave and how just the man seemed to be. Sheppard was a good guy, though he did kill Sumner - not that Aiden hadn't killed, but never one of his own. He'd only killed the enemy. He remembered asking Sheppard once if he thought the Wraith were evil. Sheppard had said that it didn't matter. They were trying to eat people; he'd 'like to pump them full of bullets regardless of their place in some vague Judeo-Christian metaphorical classification system. Is that a turkey sandwich?' Now he realized that this was Sheppard's way of telling him that he wasn't a Christian at all. But Aiden couldn't imagine someone so good going to hell. Hopefully, Sheppard would take last rights. Or they'd make an exception or something, because he didn't deserve this. It was something the Wraith deserved. Because they were evil.

Aiden remembered the hatred boiling through him, hardening him in tensed muscles and hyperaware senses. He remembered the fear on Annie's face as she looked into the eyes of that monster. He had never felt so alive before, so pure in his purpose or mandate. The hate was the height of emotion, cresting the wave that was sympathy, maybe even love in a life or death sort of way. He had never felt so connected to another human being than when he saw her helpless at the hands of that kind of enemy, facing that kind of horror.

"Aiden?" He looked down to see Annie's hand on his thigh, shaking him gently.

"Sorry, I was ... I'm just worried about the major, is all."

She smiled warmly, looking strangely tired. "It's okay. I'm worried about him too. But Dr. Beckett will figure something out. I only know a small amount about neurobiology, but I do know that it's linked to both the genome and environmental effects, and Beckett's the top geneticist out there. It could be as simple as a problem with the phenotypic expression of the ATA gene. I mean, in order to have the mental component it does, it has to affect neurotransmitter levels and brain development, and nobody has used their gene like the major. We don't even know if there are any common health problems among carriers, considering it was just discovered, or what type of people tend to have it. I think that the effects ..."

Aiden stared, dumbfounded. Even Annie was one of them. He had known she was smart, but he'd always felt so comfortable around her that he'd forgotten how smart. He pulled back, unable to accept the fact that the person he had so completely connected with just moments before was probably constantly talking down to him ... thinking circles around him. She was probably just being nice, in the way Sheppard sometimes liked to be when he was playing dumb - when he didn't want McKay to bug him about something. Could they even talk honestly with each other? McKay had told him once that it was impossible for people with more than 10 points difference in IQ to truly communicate. He thought it was just another of the scientists' smarter-than-thou rants, at the time, but maybe McKay was being sympathetic in his own way, apologizing for the fact that no-matter how many times they faced death together, they couldn't seem to connect.

"I'm sorry, Aiden. I don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm babbling. I'll just shut up now," Annie backpedaled. She does feel sorry for me. She looked down at where her hand still rested lightly on his thigh. "I just ... I was so scared today. I don't know why." When she looked back up at him he saw tears dripping down her face. "God, I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to be like this: all pathetic and emotional. The Air Force isn't for crybabies and weaklings and trembling little girls." She was actively sobbing now. "Maybe they're right. Maybe women aren't meant to serve. Maybe we're too hysterical ... like Freud says. Or too fragile. We can't contain our fear."

"No, Annie," he didn't hesitate to embrace her. "Don't think that." Her tears were warm and salty against his cheek, liberating somehow. At least that still had that one thing in common, regardless of race and intelligence and gender - they still had fear and they had a common enemy. "I was afraid too. The Wraith are terrifying." He didn't care what Sheppard said about Jewish-Christians, he didn't see how beings who lived to steal the souls of humans could be good in any way. What he believed was "they're evil."

She sniffed and then suddenly he was looking into luminescent blue eyes, the kaleidoscope of her tears transforming her sadness into something else ... into desire. He leaned forward. In a world with so much evil, in a world where they were all alone so far from home, there was only one thing he could do and that was to look for that connection. He wanted to feel what he had when he saw her with that Wraith. He wanted to feel that there was someone else in this universe to understand him, to need him, to remember him when all else was lost. It didn't matter who. So he kissed her.

But it couldn't last. They were too different. He'd done this already, and it had only hurt him. He still missed Molly, even when he knew how much she'd changed. And now he was a galaxy away and at war. Their CO was dying and he or Annie would probably be put in charge after this. And there would be questions of power and legitimacy and nights spent sitting out on the southwest pier, where he sometimes found the major when he went on his morning run - pondering questions of survival, of the universe, of what he'd done. Aiden didn't want to be the one to ask those questions. He didn't even know if he could. But when that time came, for him or for Annie, this ... this tryst ... would only serve as a weakness. He pulled back, feeling his lips, swollen now, even though he had been almost numb to the kiss.

"This is wrong."

Annie shook her head, ponytail swinging back and forth like a horse's tail behind her. "I need to know, Aiden." She clasped his hands, pleading. "I need to know what's good. Not what's wrong or what's right. I need to be wipe away the darkness." He saw it in her eyes, in the tentative movements of her body like a wound, not black but rippling like a shadow.

"It's a mistake." He had so many reasons why, but he'd never be able to win against her. She was supposed to go into law, after all. Like Sheppard and McKay, she'd always be able to talk circles around him, belittle him until he believed he was too dumb to even think at all.

"Mistakes are part of being human." She moved closer.

"And being human makes it justified?"

"Being human means not being like them." She shook. He didn't know if it was from fear or anger, only that it wasn't from passion. "I need this, Aiden, please. I need to feel alive." But she was alive. Wasn't that enough?

No, it couldn't be. The Wraith were alive. And so were snakes and lizards and that bug that had tried to choke the major, and all of God's creatures over which He had given man dominion. The difference was that human beings could love. Sometimes they didn't love wisely, like he and Molly, separated by something so flimsy as their heritage, but they loved. And right now, facing death and destruction and evil, Annie was right. He needed to feel human.

So they kissed and it was like time turning, like the clouds of a storm as they billowed and contracted, like so many things perched at the edge of darkness that Aiden could convince himself was where the soul dwelled. The Wraith were evil. They were cold in their temples of shadows and arches, built like hives of swarming insects, foreign and disgustingly geometrical. The two Lieutenants were in a city of light, of wide-open spaces and walls of stained-glass that opened its arms to the dawn. The sea air blew in to the balconies and the sun burned away the despair that must lurk in those caverns of death and eternity, the two poles that only the Wraith could feel fully. This was the promise of humanity, where death was buried in the shadows and so feared that feeling alive could justify anything, and eternity was just a wish, a prayer sent to Christ or Yahweh or Allah, because paradise was the opposite of the end of all. So they kissed and that was a triumph for the Wraith, because it was good only by the absence of evil.