Miles To Go Before I Sleep by catescorner

Hello, all, and welcome to the next instalment! Thank you all, so much, for your very kind reviews!

Since the boys still have so much to talk about, it won't all fit in this chapter. There's plenty more to come, through the rest of the story, which now looks like it will run for a total of six chapters. So with John taking his share of it too, let the angst-fest continue!

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

Chapter Four - Past Regrets, Future Fears

They were getting there. Slowly, and still cautiously, but… no, John Sheppard didn't care about that. If it brought his XO back on an even keel again – hell, he didn't care how long it took to do it. They'd come with supplies anyway, for this trip to the mainland, so - yeah, if it came to it, they'd stay out here all day, and for a hopefully untroubled night.

The signs were promising that it wouldn't come to that. After a shaky start, Evan Lorne's curiosity was back at its full, insatiable strength. He wanted to know everything now, about last night's walkabout. When it had started, and how long his 'episode' had lasted. And knowing that he wouldn't sleep, literally, until he had them, John was covering every last detail – dryly noting that Evan's obsession with accuracy hadn't just come back, it was starting to rub off on him too.

"You had three… uh, episodes, as you call them. Starting with where I found you in the armoury, they followed one after the other, right through the night. For the first two, you came back to your quarters, and slept for half hour or so, before you got up again. After the third time, I guess you were tired enough by then to crash out when you got back, and stay asleep until you woke up for real."

Evan's eyes saucered at that, then narrowed into a puzzled frown as he sighed and shook his head.

"Well, that's a first. Three times in the same night? No, I've… um… never done that before."

"You've never been under that kind of stress either," John reminded him through a gentle smile – drawing from his own experience now, in the sad knowledge that Evan had just been through it too. "Being controlled by an alien entity, it's… well, you know, gonna do that to you."

"Yeah, one thing you can say about life in this galaxy, it's never dull," Evan agreed just as dryly, taking a deep breath, before quietly confronting the helplessness and anger that still haunted him. "I just wish I'd tried to fight it harder, it… damn it, John, it brought me this close to killing you."

Holding his thumb and forefinger millimetres apart, his voice had inevitably risen to reflect his anger. All the terror he'd felt then, and the helpless shame he'd felt afterwards, had flooded back into his eyes. And for John, there were the equally painful memories of staring down the barrel of that Beretta – knowing how traumatic it had been for his friend, to be controlled by an enemy that he couldn't fight.

His own body had left him powerless to stop the entity that had found the perfect way to exploit it – as powerless as John now felt, for not knowing what to say to convince him that it wasn't his fault.

The inability to remember it had made it even worse, and… well, he could do something about that. Even if those memories came from a secondary source, at least they'd fill in some of those terrifying blanks.

"I know you can't remember it yourself, Evan, but I saw you fighting it," he said at last, breathing a sigh of relief when the bitter regret in Evan's eyes gave way to far healthier curiosity.

"You – You did? I don't remember any of that."

But then he frowned again, silently cursing the childhood quirk that still left him so vulnerable. Sleepwalking, and its after effects, were traumatic enough for anyone, but when you carried a gun – yeah, those gaps in your memory left you, and those you cared most about, dangerously exposed.

So when he finally spoke again, after taking several deep breaths, his voice was tellingly quiet.

"All I remember is what you told me afterwards. That I held you and Colonel Carter at gunpoint, and tried to kill you."

Not surprisingly, his eyes had clouded over again. To his dismay, John now understood why. For the first time since this ordeal started, he was beginning to realize the full hell of somnambulism. Having no memory of such traumatic actions were good in some ways, and devastatingly bad in others. Combine that with Evan Lorne's conscience, his unwavering loyalty, and – yeah, now he understood.

Damn, no wonder he'd gone off the rails. If he'd gone through what his XO had just gone through, he'd have done the same. And as he continued to study his friend, John knew this was the perfect time to let the auto pilot take care of flying the Jumper, while he took care of more personal business.

"Well, you were pretty deeply under… you know, with the sleepwalking thing," he said at last, settling himself back beside Evan's seat so that he could look his XO straight in his wide, startled eyes. "But I could still see it, Evan. Right through that standoff, I could see it, and I knew it. You did not want to shoot me."

Now, as it had done then, Evan's face had become a battleground of conflicting emotions – running the same range of hope against despair, loyalty against betrayal, and belief against doubt.

Even when the winner finally emerged, tiredness kept its return to a quiet, strained whisper.

"But I came so close, John! If Ronon hadn't shot me when he did, I would have killed you."

"But you didn't, Evan. You didn't kill me, because you didn't want to," John told him gently, hoping the subtle stresses he'd put on two vital words would finally get his message across.

Almost, but not quite. So close, but still so far. Evan was still trapped in the unthinkable horrors of what might have been. However frustrating it was, though, John knew that he had to keep trying, for both their sakes – even if that meant gripping Evan's shoulders, and gently shaking them, to make him see his point.

"Whatever that thing was making you do, Evan, you did not want to kill me. It was that thing inside you that was trying to kill me, Evan, not you. That's the difference, that you need to understand. I know I should have told you this, long before now, but I need you to believe that I don't blame you for what happened. It wasn't your fault."

For several seconds, Evan stared back at him, fresh hope battling against the doubt in his eyes. Then, at last, the battleground started to clear, and John grinned as the winners finally emerged. Hope and belief had returned to Evan Lorne's eyes. At long last, the tide was starting to turn.