"I have no idea," John answered.

"Are you sure?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes, Elizabeth. I don't know the address of the damn planet!"

She frowned. "No need to shout, John. Jeez."

John sighed. "I'm sorry." He rubbed a hand over his face. "This is just really frustrating."

"Yeah, I know." She nodded. "But you said that they found the device in an abandoned Ancient outpost there. If that's the case, I'm sure the address will be in the Ancient database," she pointed out optimistically. "Maybe you can look through it and find a match?"

"Can I do it after lunch?" he asked.

Elizabeth smiled. "Of course, John."

XXXXXX

"Mind if I join you, sir?" Ford asked, standing next to Sheppard with a full tray in his hands.

"Absolutely." John gestured to the empty chairs around him. "Pick a seat, Lieutenant."

"Actually, I'm a captain, sir," Ford corrected, opting for the seat in front of his sort-of CO.

"Really now?" John asked, dipping a French fry into his puddle of ketchup. "When did that happen?"

"Last week." Ford grinned. "I sent pictures to my grandparents."

"I'm sure they'll be proud," John said with a smile.

"Yes, sir," Ford said, then took a big bite of his less-than-delicious burger. When he had swallowed, he asked, "So, what's this about me being dead where you're from? If you don't mind me asking, sir?" he added quickly.

John didn't really feel like reiterating the memories, but Ford looked expectant, so he decided to go for it. "About a year ago, we were besieged by the Wraith. We probably wouldn't have made it if Earth hadn't sent reinforcements, the Daedalus, and a ZPM."

"That happened here, too," Ford jumped in. "Did you cloak the city to make it look like we'd activated the self-destruct?" John nodded. "So…I died fighting the Wraith?"

"Not exactly." John paused to take a drink of water. "You were…partially fed-on. But you and the Wraith somehow ended up in the water and it shot you full of its enzyme. It kept you alive, but it kind of…messed with your head. You stole a jumper and left the city."

Ford looked surprised. "Carson didn't fix me?"

Now John was confused as well. "What?"

"Here, Carson was able to harvest some of the enzyme from the Wraith that we took as prisoners," Ford explained. "He weaned me off it in about a week. Saved my life." He grinned and added, "He even fixed my eye." John looked at where the young man was pointing and he saw a scar near Ford's eye that he hadn't noticed before. The Marine stole one of pilot's remaining fries and asked, "So, you never found me?"

John looked down. Those were memories he was even more against revisiting. "We looked for a long time," he said at last, then skipped over the incident with the hive ship and went straight to, "We have no idea what happened to you."

Ford frowned. "Well, that's depressing." Suddenly, an idea struck him. "Hey, you wanna go shoot some hoops? Take your mind off things?"

"I'd love to, Lieu-- Captain," John said, reaching for what was left of his burger. "But after this, I've got a date with the Ancient database."

"Oh." Ford nodded. "Well, you have fun with that, sir."

John rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah. Can't wait."

XXXXXX

After five and a half hours of reading descriptions of planets, John had come up with several colorful descriptions for his afternoon and "fun" was not one of them. He'd gotten a good bit of the way through the database and hoped fervently that he'd find the world he was searching for by tomorrow. His butt had gone numb about an hour ago, but he didn't realize just how long he'd been sitting there until Rodney dropped by to ask why he hadn't been at dinner.

John groaned as he rubbed his eyes tiredly. "You pick me up anything?" he asked, standing up and stretching his sore muscles.

"Sandwich," Rodney said, tossing John a plastic-wrapped ham and cheese.

John looked at the sandwich less than enthusiastically, then decided he was hungry and unwrapped it. "So," he said around a mouthful of bread, "what do you guys do for fun after hours besides play basketball?"

"Nothing exciting tonight, though you're welcome to go with me to the rec room," Rodney offered. "Maybe we can convince Evie to take her nose out of her book and play cards with us."

John nodded. "Founf goo."

Stepping out of a transporter a few minutes later, they were greeted by a smiling Teyla.

"Hey, Teyla. How goes it on the mainland?" Rodney asked.

"Very well. Kalea delivered a healthy boy," she announced with a smile. "They named him Harin."

"That's great."

"Hi, Teyla," John said, wondering how she compared to the beautiful Athosian of his reality.

"Hello, yourself," she said with a smile, then grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him against her, pressing her lips to his.

John was caught completely off-guard. Rodney, who was chuckling, had failed to mention earlier whether or not their Sheppard was in any kind of relationship. John didn't kiss Teyla back, but he didn't stop her, either.

When she let him go a minute later and saw his surprised expression, she asked, "Something wrong?"

"I, uhh…" He looked to Rodney, who just crossed his arms and looked expectant, all the while trying to repress a grin. "Teyla, this is going to sound crazy… I'm not -- I'm from an alternate reality. I'm not the John Sheppard you know."

Teyla arched an eyebrow, turning her head toward Rodney.

"It's complicated, but true," Rodney said, nodding.

"Then what happened to our John?" Teyla inquired.

Rodney shrugged his shoulders. "As far as we can tell, whatever this John did only transferred his consciousness, and not his physical body, into this universe. Maybe he's taken over our John, or maybe our John is in his reality," he explained, and refrained from adding the possibility that their John might be dead.

Teyla appeared to be digesting this for a moment, then looked to John. "In that case, I apologize for the manner of my greeting."

"Don't worry about it," John said, waving a hand. He decided that this Teyla seemed a little more…'loose' wasn't the right word… Just more relaxed, he supposed. She also had a completely different dress code. She was dressed in a colorful top that was obviously an Athosian garment, though this one covered her midriff. And in sharp contrast, though it totally worked, she wore a pair of loose-fitting, khaki cargo pants that gave her a less feminine look than the tight pants John was used to seeing his Teyla wear.

"What?" she asked when she caught him staring.

"Nothing, sorry," he said, returning his gaze to her eyes. "It's just… My Teyla dresses a little more…slutty." Not that he was implying anything about her character; it was just the first adjective that came to mind.

"Slutty?" Teyla repeated. "What is slutty?"

John chuckled. "Never mind."

"I suppose I won't be seeing you tonight, then?" she asked.

"Tonight?" When she gave him a coy smile, realization hit him. "Oh! No. Uhh, Rodney said he'd get one of the spare quarters fixed up."

"Then I will bid you both goodnight, as I'm exhausted," she said with a weary smile.

John decided not to point out the miracle that she'd just used a contraction and instead returned, "Goodnight."

XXXXXX

When Rodney and John entered the rec room, they found Evie on the oversized blue couch, engrossed in a thick book just as Rodney had predicted. "Having fun?" Rodney asked, poking her shoulder. Evie nodded, not looking up. "Why do you bother coming here?" he asked, sitting down next to her as John pulled one of the chairs over.

"I like being around the people," Evie answered, turning the page.

"But you're ignoring them all."

"I still know they're there," she stated, using her own form of logic. When Rodney gently placed his arm around her shoulders, she grunted. "Lemme finish this paragraph." Rodney sighed and waited patiently. A moment later, Evie stuck a bookmark between the pages and leaned over to kiss him.

The second their lips met, John stiffened. He even felt slightly nauseous. It was quite possibly the weirdest combination of emotions he'd ever experienced: he knew he didn't have the right to break them apart, but at the same time it felt so wrong. When the kiss became obviously more involved, causing Evie to make the softest of sounds, John couldn't stop himself. "Can you stop?" he snapped.

Rodney and Evie looked at John, startled. "What?" Rodney asked.

"Could you two not do that in front of me?" he begged.

"Hey, we have a license for PDA," Evie said, holding up Rodney's left hand and pointing to the wedding band on his finger.

John tried not to think about all the things that ring meant. Instead, he questioned, "Why don't you wear yours?"

"Slips off my finger, sir," she answered. "I've been meaning to get it resized." After a moment, she asked, "So…we're together in your reality?"

He nodded. "It's really complicated, but yes." When she decided not to ask anything further about the subject, John spoke up again. "I don't know how many brain cells you two devote to remembering the planets you've been to… but do you by any chance recall visiting M6X-412?" John had mixed feelings about that planet, but since it had led to his and Evie's first kiss and the start of their forbidden relationship, he usually counted it a positive.

Rodney looked like he was concentrating for a minute. "Did the natives have a name for it that didn't involve numbers?" he asked.

"Emaria."

Rodney nodded. "Yeah, that was, what, a year ago? We were over-cautious and had, uhh… Lorne's team join us."

John's face fell. That explained a lot. Then again, maybe the Sheppard of this universe had never been interested in this Evie at all.

"Why?" Rodney asked.

"Nevermind," John said, then changed the subject. "So, in my reality, you just got yourself married to Dr. Heightmeyer. Did you two…ever have a thing here?"

"Me and Kate?" Rodney asked, surprised.

"No, Mary."

"Mary who?"

"Mary Heightmeyer. Kate's sister."

"Kate doesn't have a sister," Rodney stated.

"What?"

"Kate Heightmeyer is an only child, and she wouldn't have dated me if I was the last man in the universe," Rodney said pitifully.

"Wait… You're telling me that Mary Heightmeyer doesn't exist in this reality?" John asked, confused. Flying was his thing, not theoretical astrophysics.

"Well, having children is a choice, John, not an unchangeable," Rodney explained. "She may exist in your reality but apparently in this one, the Heightmeyers decided that one child was enough."

"Maybe it's better that way," Evie pointed out. "Or where would we be?" Rodney was about to kiss her again, when her face screwed up in pain and she clutched a hand to her side.

Rodney offered his hand for her to squeeze and asked, "Do you have your injector with you?"

Evie sucked in air through her teeth and nodded, pulling what looked like an epi-pen out of her pocket. The sophisticatedly-small jet injector was needleless, however, and did not contain adrenaline. She lifted the hem of her shirt and placed the end of the injector against the skin above her waist. She pressed the button and the device shot a drug into her.

"Are you okay?" John asked, concerned. "What's that for?" He eyed for a moment the red mark it had left on her skin.

Evie let out a short, hollow chuckle. "You guys never ran into the Navedites, did you, sir?"

John shook his head. "Don't think so."

"We'll let you memorize the Gate address so you can add Navedia to your banned planets list when you get back home," she said, sliding the jet injector back into her pocket.

"They attacked you?" he asked with a frown.

"Not technically," she answered, and John noticed that Rodney's expression had saddened considerably.

"What, then?" he pressed.

"They had a plague, sir," Evie said after a pause. "The planet was dry and desolate and everyone on it was dying. Major Johnson and I got infected before we knew what was happening."

"Just you two?"

She nodded. "And thank God that it was just us," she added. "Summer's got to raise baby Aaron, and that baby's got to have a father, too."

John felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. "You mean you're--" He couldn't say it. It may have been an alternate reality, but so far, she was almost exactly like his Evie.

She nodded again. "Carson gave Major Johnson and me two months based on what the Navedite doctors were able to tell us."

John's throat tightened. "God, Evie…" He wanted to get up and hug her, but couldn't bring himself to. "I'm so sorry."

"I don't want your pity," she said, shaking her head. "But any chocolate you may have hidden in your quarters would make me a very happy lady."

"I'll check later," he managed quietly.

Evie smiled and opened her book, not wanting to answer any more questions.

Though she had stopped paying attention to him, John couldn't take his eyes off her. That's why she'd lost weight. And that's why she looked so pale. He wanted to kick himself for the comment he'd made earlier. He hoped she wasn't in pain. When he remembered the painkiller she'd just shot herself with, he frowned. Of course she was in pain. After a minute of pondering questions he wouldn't dare ask her, he stood up. "I think I'm gonna walk around for a while. See you two in the morning?"

Evie nodded without glancing up from the pages of The Count of Monte Cristo, and Rodney mumbled an "Okay."

After a few minutes, John entered the infirmary. When he caught Carson's eye, the doctor sighed. After placing a file in his office, he returned to where John was standing. "I swear, Colonel, if you need attention again…"

"No, doc," John said, shaking his head.

"What, then?" Carson asked impatiently.

"I wanted to know…" He swallowed hard. "What's Evie got, Carson?"

The Scotsman sighed heavily. "Rodney mentioned that you were with her in your reality." John nodded. "It's a terrible tragedy," Carson began, using a gentle tone. "Both Evie and Joshua are wonderful people."

"Carson…" John really didn't want to be moved to tears right now; he just wanted answers.

"A'right, sorry. With the limited information we were able to obtain from the Navedite doctors, we've determined that the disease is only infectious during its incubation period, which is one week. Thankfully, we were able to keep them in quarantine and nobody else contracted the disease. As far as we can tell, it's not like any of the fatal diseases on earth. It has similar traits to some, in that it shuts down the organs of the body, but it does so incredibly slowly and the pain is more intense than it should be. Both of them complain of throbbing and stabbing pains in parts of the body that haven't begun deteriorating yet."

"Can't you do anything for them?" John asked sadly.

"I've given them the strongest painkiller I can that will allow them to remain on active duty," Carson answered.

"That stuff Evie shot into her side?"

"Aye. It's actually an ingenious blend of morphine and the drug that the Navedites use. In a sufficient dose, the meyanel is able to dilute the morphine enough to keep the patient lucid and alert."

John nodded, then paused for a long moment. "When will… Evie said that you'd given them two months."

Carson frowned sadly. "That was a month ago," he said quietly. "Judging by what happened with the Navedites, they'll have about three more weeks before they become too weak to walk."

John kept his eyes on the floor so that Carson couldn't see the tears pooling there.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said softly, his brogue slightly soothing. "Is there anything else you needed?"

Blinking the tears away bitterly, John managed, "No. That's enough, thanks."