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In the end, she dies anyway.

==

It doesn’t start with a handshake (even in Antarctica they had never been so formal, so familiar), but after the first day there’s loss (and fear, but they knew to mourn when they could) and they’re as good as partners this side of the galaxy after all.

==

They last, for the most part, longer than she expects; survival born out of instinct and nowhere left to run. Atlantis is home now, more often than not, even as their grasp on the city slips.

The Pegasus Galaxy is a numbers game, sometimes “nine days past,” or “the twelfth at sunrise”. It’s archaic, but sufficient, and she steps in to negotiate every “month’s half” at the trading colony on M4G-112 for the ZPM they so sorely need.

They converse in Russian, or a strange dialect of Russian that seems to have evolved from Slavic roots and then been warped by the influence of Ancient.

“I speak in my own words; you talk as you like,” she says to him, this Russian blend rusty, knowing he doesn’t understand.

But he learns.

[Continue: Atlantis FanFiction]