Title: Dreams vs. Nightmares
Author: Drey'auc475
STARGATE: ATLATIS
Rating: K+
Spoilers: SG-1 Point of View, Atlantis Before I Sleep.
Genre: general
Setting/Season: AU, season 2
Summary: Some revelations and a bit of water…
A/N: is set about a month after the last chapter.


-----The Cat, the Watch and the Kitchen Sink-----
It was early one Sunday morning and John was plucking things from the laundry basket and tossing them into the washing machine, just as Rahni had told him to. He got half way down and he became bored with it. Looking cautiously out the laundry door, he reached into the laundry basket and lifted the rest of the clothes out and dumped them into the washing machine.

Satisfied, he reached up and took the washing powder off the shelf and dumped two scoops into the machine. Closing the lid he pressed the START button. Standing back, he smiled proudly to himself as the contraption began to fill with water.

It had been a long time since he had washed his own clothes, seeing as there was an Ancient laundro-mat in Atlantis, and there were staff that were assigned there to clean everyone's clothes. There had also been a laundry service at McMurdo, and on all the other bases that he had been stationed at, so he hadn't really had the need to wash his own clothes.

Now that he was living with Rahni, she had stated categorically that he would have to pull his weight around the place if he wanted to stay. He had been glad to oblige, and had mown the lawn, fixed the clothes line, tuned the car and helped her take the rubbish bin to the dump, since it hadn't been emptied for about two weeks and was on the verge of over-flowing. She had also told him that he would have to cook dinner for both of them two nights a week (something other than pasta and turkey sandwiches), do the washing while she was at work (Rahni had taken up a partnership with the new owner of her dad's old café to pay the bills) and help with the house cleaning on weekends.

Sure, he took shortcuts sometimes, but the jobs were always done when she came home at the end of the day.

His attention turned to the washing machine, which seemed to be making thumping and meowing noises. Intrigued, John lifted the lid to peek in. The machine was now about half full of water. His view was suddenly cut off by a flying mop that was leaping out of the machine, soaking wet. Startled, he jumped backwards and ran into the wall. The… thing… landed on his chest, drenching him, all the while digging its claws into his skin. John cried out in surprise and pain.

With the thing still attached to his chest, he dove out of the laundry and into the hall, running out into the lounge, where Rahni was vacuuming the floor.

She looked up seeing John running into the room. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of him. He now had his hands around the creature trying to pull it off him as it writhed, obviously aggravated by the sound of the vacuum cleaner.

Rahni shut it down instantly and rushed to the linen cupboard and grabbed a towel and rushed back to John. She batted his hands away and wrapped the towel around the creature and gently pried the creature off him.

She wrapped the towel around it and began to rub it dry. It began to calm down as she whispered to it.

John sat down at the dining room table, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. He looked down at his grey t-shirt; the front was soaking wet and had tiny red pin-points growing in size on it, right where the… the… thing… had latched onto him.

John looked up at Rahni who was still whispering to the bundle in her arms.

"What the hell is that?"

"This is Belle," she stated simply. Part of the towel fell back and John saw the wet head of a black cat. He had never really been much of a cat person, especially now.

"That… cat… was in the washing machine!" John exclaimed.

"No," Rahni said patiently. "She was in the laundry basket. I told you to empty it one thing at a time. She likes to sleep in there sometimes and buries herself under the clothes."

"Well, I got bored of it once I got to your underwear!"

Rahni rolled her eyes at him and scratched the cat on the head. It began to purr. John scowled at it. He got up and headed to the bathroom and pulled his wet t-shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor.

Taking a tissue from the box by the basin, he began muttering about 'bloody wet rats'.


It was just after lunch and John now wore a clean t-shirt to cover up the several band-aids that he had stuck on his chest where the cat had latched onto him.

He went back to Rahni's parents' room where Rahni had let him sleep. She had simply said that it didn't feel right for her to sleep in there despite the lure of a king-size double bed.

John decided that he wanted to go for a run, and reached for his watch and joggers. Sitting on the bed, he put his watch between his teeth and pulled on his shoes. He stood up and headed out into the hall where Rahni was stacking the dry towels in the linen cupboard.

"I'm going for a run up to the park," he said putting his watch on.

"OK," Rahni said as she stacked more towels in the cupboard. "But remember that it's your turn to cook tonight."

"Yeah, yeah," John replied, ruffling her hair as he passed in a way that he knew she would hate. He could feel her eyes burning holes in his back as he headed to the front door.

He looked at his watch 09:53.

Wait a minute; that wasn't right. Looking at the clock on the wall, he saw that it was 14:46. Shaking his head, John realized that there had been a difference in times between Rahni's universe and his own. But as John flicked through the settings, he remembered that he had already changed the time after he had come through the portal. But it had been around about 9:40 when he had changed it. John looked at the date on the digital display. It was from two months ago! And the seconds were…

"Rahni!" John all but screamed as he froze in the kitchen.

Rahni, who had finished putting the towels away and decided to go for a shower, stuck her head out of the bathroom. Still dressed, she went to John with a frown.

"What's all the hollering about?" she asked. He had his arm cradled close to his chest, and his head bent over it. "What's wrong?"

John turned to her, and held his watch out to her. She looked at it and raised her eyebrows.

"Look at it," he instructed.

"Its a few hours behind," she stated an amused smile on her lips.

"That's not funny! Look at the seconds."

Rahni sighed and watched the seconds tick on the display. Except…

"They're not changing…"

"Exactly."

Rahni looked up at John. "Well, this is a bit of a problem."

John gave her an aspirated look. "It wasn't on that time when I changed it the first time."

"How long ago was that?"

"Two months ago!"

Rahni's eyes widened at this news. Then she frowned, thinking hard. "OK, let's think about this. You brought that watch through with you. And your universe was about 12 hours ahead." She said all this slowly, mulling it over as she talked. "What if, and I'm only guessing here, what if time in your reality progresses faster than here. And your watch is still connected to it." Rahni began to pace the kitchen. Rahni shook her head.

"I'm a little overwhelmed here," she gasped. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. To be entirely honest, I am way over my head here."

John snorted. "So am I."

"Well, all we need is a little time to work this out. Just to sit own and think it over." Rahni wandered over to the sofa and sat down.

John frowned. She looked like she was either thinking hard or in shock. Probably both. He had seen that look on hundreds of faces. Mostly pilots and soldiers during his time in Afghanistan. He sat down in the chair across from her and watched her as she tapped her finger on her chin, something he had seen her do as she sorted out the bills.

She looked up at him, a twinkle in her eyes. John looked at her expectantly, hoping for an explanation soon.

"Ok," she began. "Do you remember what I told you about the Quantum Mirror and alternate realities?" John nodded.

Rahni had explained to him the events that had happened in his universe with SG-1 and the Quantum Mirror a few days after his strange arrival. She also explained that there were an infinite number of them, one springing from every choice he made. Every time he came to a fork in the road, that reality would spit into two separate ones, two versions of him heading down a road each. In a way it confused him, but in another way, it made perfect sense.

"Like Sliding Doors?" he had asked. Rahni had been surprised that he had ever seen that movie. John explained that one of his ex-girlfriends had been obsessed with it and made him watch it with her once a week.

Rahni rubbed her temples. "What I think is that we are in a sort of… pocket universe." Rahni made her hands into a spherical shape. "A kind of clusterofrealities, where they're totally unrelated to any others." She stabbed a finger at John. "You are evidence that this TV show is real, that it exists in the flesh, out there, somewhere. If that's the case, then there must be alternate SGC's out there, like it says in the show."

Rahni jumped up and began to pace in front of the coffee table. "But this one is different." She turned to John. "Did you ever see a TV show called Wormhole X-Tream?" John gave her a confused look and shook his head. "Of course, you probably didn't get much TV out at McMurdo." John shook his head again. "Well, it didn't last long, only about a season before it was cut for low ratings. Anyway, Wormhole X-Tream was based on the SGC. A... man on Earth had gotten insider information about the SGC and decided it was great for a TV show. Well, it's kinda the same here, 'cept there's no SGC to copy off. The idea for the show is completely original."

Rahni was pacing again and becoming increasingly frustrated, as the situation was becoming increasingly harder to piece together.

"I'm sure that this universe is much the same as any other, splitting and dividing as we make choices. But your group of universes is different to mine. All though they are very similar there are huge differences. Yours having a Stargate, the Goa'uld, the Ancients, and an SGC. But mine doesn't. In yours you exist as people, in mine, you're actors. There also seems to be a time variation."

Rahni stopped talking here, still pacing and chewing her bottom lip. She fiddled with a ring on her finger; one John knew her mother had given her.

"What are you getting at here?" John asked, breaking the silence.

Rahni sat down across from him again. She motioned to his watch. "Your watch, John, is an indication of how much faster time is traveling here. It means that you may have only been gone for a few hours, or several minutes."

"But I've been here for weeks."

Rahni smiled at him. "Exactly."


John was now jogging around the park not far from the house. He had told Rahni that he needed time to think about it all.

Rahni's voice rang in his head. It means that you may have only been gone for a few hours… The number of times he woke in the middle of the night dreaming of Atlantis and the Wraith dart that had flown over the city the day he accidentally left were too many to count. Thinking that because he was no longer there everything had gone south, and that Atlantis could possibly be destroyed by the Wraith kept him awake at night until the incredibly early hours of the morning. This had also forced Rahni to add numerous tins of coffee to the shopping list.

But now, with the thought that he could have been gone for only a few hours everything had changed. If he was lucky, he could go back now and nothing would have changed. His friends would still be the same, Atlantis would still be there. And Elizabeth…

John exhaled deeply as he thought about her. He was having an increasing number of dreams about her. About her face, her hair, her skin, all grey and aged like the Elder Weir they found in the Stasis Pod in Atlantis, her eyes filled with pain and fear as a Wraith stood over her his hand attached to her chest, sucking the life from her body –

John shook his head to clear the image from his mind, and powered on through the park. Everything would be fine, he told himself as he slowed at the water fountain in the middle of the park. He stretch as two women, one with a stroller, walked passed. They looked at him with pleased eyes, and John nodded to them. They turned to one another, giggling. John rolled his eyes and headed the opposite direction, back towards Rahni's place. He had never quite gotten used to life on Earth again, but had decided to keep fit for when he got back home. He was no used to anyone as an unfit soldier in a war.

He also knew it was a safe neighborhood, but he still kept his 9mm under his pillow at night. Old habits die hard.


When he got back to the house, Rahni was in the kitchen washing the dishes.

"Hey."

"Hey, have a good run?"

John smiled. She asked him that every day, but John never answered. He didn't need to. He had realized that it was a rhetorical question after the first week. Everytime he had answered she would hide a smirk. In a way, he was glad to hear it everyday.

Slipping off his running shoes at the door, he grabbed a bottle of cold water from the fridge, and downed most of it. He re-filled it, placed it back in the refrigerator, then went for a shower before he cooked dinner.

Two hourslater, they sat at the table eating large spinach and meat pies, something John had found in Rahni's mothers vast cook book library. They chatted about general things, and about alternate universes, until John was sick of hearing those words. They cleaned up after dinner and put the dishwasher on, before Rahni buried herself in paper work, as she did every Sunday night. John watched the movie of the month.

The dishwasher clunked to a stop, and Rahni got up and stretched. She walked over to the dishwasher and opened it to allow the dishes to dry properly. Rahni turned and grabbed a mug from the over-head cupboards above the stove. She grabbed the kettle off the bench and took it to the sink to fill it when she stepped in a puddle of water in the floor. She couldn't remember ever spilling water on the floor. Maybe it was John when he was cooking and forgot to clean it up. She was always cleaning up something after him.Sometimes she felt like his mother.She went to the linen closet and grabbed a town and mopped up the water. She then put on the kettle and made her self a cup of coffee.

John finished his movie and said good night. Rahni tidied up the paperwork an hour later and headed to her own room. Neither of them saw the puddle of water in the kitchen until the next morning.


AN: bad ending, I know. But I hope you liked the chap. Bit of babbling and a bit of back story. This one will have a follow up, but not for a few chapters yet. Please R&R!