A/N: This is a rewrite of the fic 20 20 Hindsight because that one was not going where I had intended it to. I just didn't start it with enough of a plan. I like where this version is going a lot better.
The inhabitants of Atlantis had, as a rule, done a fair job of turning the alien city into a home. Personal touches could be seen in labs, offices, and especially living quarters. Pictures, diplomas, and framed letters from home took up wall and desk space. Such touches gave the blank walls and lonely rooms a sense of being lived in, even when they weren't.
They were all distinctly missing in the room of Lt. Col. John Sheppard. The room was very much like the man himself. It gave the illusion of being lived in with its few stacks of DVDs, laptop, and guitar propped in the corner, but gave away very little at all about the person who occupied it. It was neat not because he tidied it but because there was simply not enough in the room in the first place to clutter if up.
The only truly personal touch to the whole place was usually buried at the back of a drawer in the bedside table, beneath a book and a stray Sports Illustrated. Out of sight, out of mind.
At that moment however, it had been unearthed from its hiding spot for the first time in well over a year and was clutched in very slightly shaking hands. It was a picture. Worn around the edges and wrinkled from being many times folded, the image remained clear. The faces of two children were preserved forever in ink, young and innocent as they hadn't been in years. Crouched between them and holding their hands was John. Free of wrinkles and the weigh of years and command, wearing a smile that for once reached his eyes and an ice cream moustache, he didn't much resemble the man sitting hunched over on his bed. They were, in a way, different people.
The man in the picture was part of a life he had left behind long ago. The last remnant of that life lay dying in a hospital bed in another galaxy.
John stared down at a little boy with an ice cream smile. In a sense, he was already dead.
The picture fell to the floor.
