The Twice-Drowned Man
Water closed over his head, the current dragged him under and he couldn't breathe. He died that night, pouring himself out into the dark liquid until there was nothing left of him but the hollow shell that they found and dragged ashore.
He fears the water.
Now, he crouches by a river, swiftly cold, ice deep. He grabs at the water as it flows by, knowing it contains something he lost but not knowing how to get it back. It laughs at his efforts, bubbling on down the hill, beyond his vision.
--
Carson meets the blank gaze of the man sitting on the edge of the bed and hates his job.
They put John back together, screaming all the way, but when the body healed, the mind didn't. Kate's going to do her best, but even a psychologist needs to work with something - and if there's something there, there's nothing there that they've seen before.
"Colonel Sheppard?" There's no blink of comprehension in the hazel eyes. Carson tries again. "John."
Still nothing.
He moves, he walks, and they think he understands, but he doesn't respond to anything that he was before. He eats, he sleeps, he can clean himself, but it's mechanical, wooden.
What's in there isn't John Sheppard. Not anymore.
--
There are faces in the river - endless repetitions of his own features, twisted reflections of who he is, was, will be. Another man in another life. Someone else.
It's cold and grey on this side of the river and he can see the sun in the fields beyond. But he has to cross the river and let the pain back in. He's not willing to do that.
He tries to snatch at the images in the river, at the men who smile and joke, who retort and scowl and give orders, but they splinter into nothing each time he tries.
The water swirls harmlessly through his fingers, freezing him to the bone.
--
"Sheppard?"
Rodney hates being useless. Give him an unsolvable problem and he'll find a way around it, but he hates not being able to do anything. And John's condition is psychological and physiological, not physics.
"Look, I'm working on the...the memory situation. Carson says you're there but...lost. We're looking at the database of the Ancient projects in the city for anything that could help you. You know, find the key you threw away."
He sits there for a while longer, wondering what he can tell this man who looks like John Sheppard but isn't behaving like him.
Finally, he manages two words. Just two, very quiet. "I'm sorry."
He hates looking at the empty-eyed gaze of his friend. It reminds him of his failings.
--
After a while, he becomes aware of people across the river - a melee of faces and bodies that seem...familiar. Almost.
Two men, the same build but very different personalities - one soothing, one abrasive; they argue a lot. Two men who are tall and lean and martial, both uncertain of what to say to him - not that they say anything like that, but he can see their expressions as they speak. Two women who speak to him in gentle, matter-of-fact voices, telling him things he knows he wants to hear about - the minutiae of who he is, was, used to be. He appreciates that, even if he can't tell them how much.
--
"I've authorised Colonel Caldwell as military leader of Atlantis," Elizabeth tells John.
She feels guilty for saying it, even though it's obvious that John's in no position to command the military forces in the city. Caldwell was better than the alternatives. She can work with Steven, and he knows how Atlantis works. That puts him hyperlight years ahead of the others.
"Rodney's wearing himself down," she says, wishing John would respond, look at her, say something, do something - anything but sit and stare at his hands. "Teyla's working on him and so is Kate - so am I - but he won't listen to us."
Kate thinks that John cocooned his 'self' up so his captors couldn't get at him. He did it so well, that even now, in Atlantis, John can't find himself anymore.
"We need you back, John."
--
He trails his fingers in the water, turning them this way and that, watching the images shatter and reform, fluid and unchangeable.
Across the river, there is playful laughter and he looks up. The tall man - lean and muscular - cheerfully wrestles a smaller woman into the water. In return, she hooks a foot around his ankle and shoves him thigh-deep into the river. He begins to climb to his feet, then stops when he realises he's being watched.
"Sheppard?"
It's odd. They're different sizes, different shapes, different cultures, but looking at them, he could easily believe they're twins.
--
Beckett's released Sheppard into the city with a couple of marines to shadow him in case the man gets into trouble. The idea is to see if something from the city jogs his memory.
Ronon got himself assigned to watching Sheppard that first day. All day long the inhabitants of the city greeted and talked to Sheppard, but the man never said a word or took anything interest in what was happening around him.
He would never admit it to anyone - not even Teyla - but Sheppard's uninterested gaze scares him. It's not Sheppard - not the man Ronon admired and followed. Ronon's reminded of the tales he was told as a child of beings that came along and took the form of people, but didn't know how to behave like people and just shambled along.
Sometimes, he wants to slap the man in the face. He wants to shake him and yell at him to wake up, come out of whatever bolt-hole he found himself, and wake up to who he is and the city that still needs him. Heightmeyer would probably say it such an action would be unhelpful to Sheppard's state of mind.
Ronon just wants his friend back.
--
He's not at the river anymore, he's in a room and the air is redolent with sweat, leather, oil, and an odd woody musk. There's a woman practising a type of movement he does-and-doesn't remember - wooden sticks in her hands. His body seems to know what should happen, though - how to block her strikes, how to attack in her weak spots.
She doesn't see him at first, too rapt in her own exercises. But when she does, she stops. "John?"
He can't speak, but he can take up the sticks that lie on the windowsill and spin them through the air like she does. And her astonishment and pleasure make him smile.
One eyebrow tilts. "Can you defend?"
In answer, he takes up what his body knows is defensive position.
--
Her people have not the knowledge of the mind that his people do, so Teyla did what she could to see John and speak to him and stayed out of the way otherwise. There were other things to do - to assist Elizabeth as she dealt with the city and its people, to ensure Rodney got a little sleep and Ronon did not damage the marines too badly while sparring.
Now, as Teyla watches him attack and defend against her, almost as fluid as he once used to be, she wonders if she should not have offered this sooner. The body remembers what the mind forgets, and John is himself in body, if not in mind.
They cannot spar at the level they used to, his physical condition does not allow it, but even this much is more than she expected.
She hears the marine out in the corridor giving a low-voiced report to Elizabeth. It is ignored as she fights Colonel Sheppard in the moment, smiling as he presses her back in an attack that is more instinct than design. Still, it is the patterns that are recognised and recognisable, the patterns of who he used to be returning.
It is more than they have seen in the months since his return.
When this finishes, Teyla will suggest a physical training regime for the Colonel that includes the activities he used to enjoy.
Perhaps, in time, his mind will remember what his body never forgot.
--
He stares at the river and wonders if he hasn't been doing this all wrong.
He remembers drowning, the water closing over his head, concealing who he was. He lost himself in the water, choosing to forget who he was so there'd be nothing for him to betray. He submerged himself deep into the icy water, to sleep, perchance to dream.
Even Atlantis rose from the sea after tens of thousands of years. John doesn't want to be a Rip Van Winkle, to wake and find the world has moved on without him.
John.
He has a name, and he knows it. The river calls to him, the aching chill of the water, and he skims his fingers over the tiny wavelets that bounce over the smooth stones of the riverbed, then plunges into the current.
And with this second drowning, he comes to new life.
--
John stands on the balcony that overlooks the Gateroom and listens to the murmur and chatter of the outgoing teams, to Rodney's exasperated remonstrances with the control room techs, to Elizabeth muttering to herself as she writes the reports in her office.
Atlantis feels so new and so old, given a new lease of life by the expedition, but carrying the weight of her years with elegant grace. John figures he knows how that goes.
Just this morning, he went for a jog with Ronon, saw Beckett for a physical check-up, and ate a long, leisurely breakfast with Teyla that saw them sitting in the mess until lunch. Later this afternoon, he's got another session with Heightmeyer about what the Wraith did to him and what he did to himself.
There are probably things John could be doing. Should be doing. Will have to do.
Right now, John's home in mind as well as body, among his friends, and in the city he nearly forgot in order to protect her and her people.
He's going to stand here and enjoy it.
- fin -