Cale Sternhall was livid.

He couldn't believe the audacity those two French idiots had to abuse their hostage during transport. It wasn't their right and he had specifically instructed them to bring him "in one piece".

And now that his personal doctor that was tending to the unconscious John Sheppard was saying that the concussion was critical, Cale felt as though it was only right that the two brutes shared in his turmoil.

Alas, he needed them. As idiotic as they were, they were also the scariest men in all of Europe – that trait often came in handy in the line of business he did.

Nevertheless, he began to fret over his new guest's medical condition.

David wasn't supposed to find out. But he had and he was just as angry as Cale – if not more.

"This wasn't part of the agreement!" he fumed, after bursting into his study, "if John dies, our deal is off!"

Cale regained his own composure in order to be authoritative in his rebuttal. "There's no going back on our deal no matter what the turnout is, Mr. Sheppard. And I never anticipated for your brother to be hurt so seriously. Believe me, it was my full intention to bring him here in complete, upstanding health."

He saw the tears forming in Little Sheppard's eyes and he took a silent, gleeful note in that fact. "Don't be upset."

"If he dies…" he trailed off, his face still beat red and his eyes flashing with a mixture of anger and terrible anguish.

"I promise you that is not my wish," Cale swore. "But I am not God. Whatever happens will happen."

David disappeared without another word. He made another mental note to keep a close eye on him – he wasn't sure he could trust Baby Sheppard to keep up his end of the bargain if things didn't go as planned.

III

Samantha was forced to tranquilize Teyla when it had come down to it.

The woman was hysterical when she arrived back at their flat. She was inconsolable and incoherent.

The general understood that whatever information she was trying to convey was probably of the utmost importance. But at the rate the other woman was babbling and her inability to form actual words when she spoke told Sam that there would be no getting anything useful from her until she calmed down.

Putting the shot to her arm wasn't easy. Carter wanted to keep those kinds of scarce resources for emergencies – but she supposed that Teyla's incident was reason enough for an emergency as any other.

Once she and Evan had placed her on her bed, they conferred in the other room.

"Maybe she finally lost it," Lorne said bluntly. "Having to watch Sheppard without saying anything, being away from her kid for so long, I wouldn't put it past her that she –

"Teyla's not crazy," Samantha interrupted his train of thought. "She's in shock. Whatever she saw must have been traumatizing. We'll get answers from her when she's ready."

The colonel shook his head and straightened up. "Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"

She knew she'd regret it but nodded all the same.

"I think this is a giant waste of time - being here," he said. "Even if Sheppard and Flock eventually find Cale, there's no way they're going to be able to take out his operation – and in turn, there's no way we're going to be able to take out theirs. Cale's business is huge and so is Flock."

"It does seem dubious," she allowed. "But we don't do things because they appear to be plausible, Colonel. We do them because they're right. And just like Ford was our responsibility and we went after him, John was also a part of us and we have to own up to our flops."

"But Sheppard is in his right mind!" Evan argued. "He knows exactly what he's doing and he thinks it's right – who are we to –

"He's not a part of us anymore," Sam admitted that she was getting emotional, but Lorne was pulling the worst time to argue in the case of someone who had caused her so much grief over the past six months. "It's not his place to pursue whatever charitable mission he happens to conjure up. And I'll go as far as to say that I'm pretty sure that all of his reasons for doing this aren't unselfish. He couldn't handle Rodney being in prison and this was an excuse to break him out. Sheppard had good intentions in the beginning but his methods are all wrong and so is the fact that he thinks he's qualified to do any of this."

They were interrupted suddenly by the sound of Teyla screaming.

III

John had no concept of time as his head swam contently in a sea of morphine and other wonderful drugs.

He woke up often, tried to communicate with whoever happened to be in the room. But either they ignored him or he just couldn't recall having any sort of conversation during his loopy hours.

When they finally began to wean him off the medicine, the nightmares plagued his once happy dreams again.

Sheppard woke up in fits and sweats, crying out and tearing the bed sheets. He fought off anybody who attempted to help him. He couldn't remember for sure, but he was pretty certain that he had once bitten someone.

It was all incredibly fuzzy and the only thing he knew in no doubt was that he was in an egregious amount of pain.

The first morning that he awoke with a clear head he would remember for the rest of his life.

The sun was setting on the west side window, casting shadows throughout the otherwise empty room – save for the guest sitting in the chair across from the bed.

Instinct overruled the soreness and John sat up, trying to focus on the face of the intruder.

"David?" he breathed, relief and incredulity washed over him as he stared at his brother.

He stood up from his chair and walked over, reaching out to touch him on the shoulder. But he flinched away.

"No," he resisted, looking him up and down. "What are you doing here?"

David started to answer but then the double doors to the room swung open and in strode Cale Sternhall – for some reason it didn't take Sheppard long at all to identify him.

"Feeling better, John?" he asked smugly, snapping his fingers to the two brutes that followed him in – the ones he recognized as the responsible parties for the whole reason of him being in so much pain for the past few days. They strode past him and gripped the arms of his brother, dragging him away without much resistance.

"Hey!" he cried out in protest. He started to get out of bed to protect his little brother, but dizziness overwhelmed him and he could feel himself slipping away once again. Desperate to remain conscious, he settled back down and blinked the darkness that was clouding his vision away. "Where are you taking him?" he asked.

"Just out of the room for now," Cale informed him, winking as he took the seat that David had been in. "You and I need to talk privately now, don't we?"

He snapped his fingers again and the doors were shut, leaving the two men alone in the room.

Sheppard was instantaneously uncomfortable. He didn't want to be alone with a man so drenched in blood.

"How long have I been…?" he trailed off, gesturing to himself and the heart monitor beeping nearby.

"About a week," he replied. "You had an awful concussion."

At the mention, he reached up to his forehead and rubbed the spot he remembered getting slammed into the car window. It was still tender but he could tell it was healing. "Yeah, all thanks to your French buddies."

Cale shrugged and nodded apologetically. "I'll admit, they can be overly brutish at times, but it's so hard to find good work these days. Sometimes, you have to accept these kinds of things as harmless slip-ups."

"Harmless?" John narrowed his eyes. "Pretty sure that could have killed me."

"Nonsense," he chuckled. "I have the best private doctor around and all the medical equipment to keep you going. I don't want you dead, Mr. Sheppard – not yet, anyway."

Wanting to avoid that area of conversation, he changed the topic. "Why do you have my brother?"

"You know the answer to that," Cale waved a hand dismissively. "It was an attempt at 'lighting a fire under your asses', or whatever it is you Americans say – streamlining a slow process, so to speak."

"That's not what I meant," he replied coolly. "How did you get him and why is he still here? David is a powerful man. There's no way he'd let himself stay kidnapped this long."

Sternhall seemed please with John's skills of deduction. "Quite right," he nodded. "I'll admit a bit of deception was used to lure him across the pond at first, but once he realized what I had to offer him, he seemed inclined to stay."

"Liar," he spat. "Dave's a greedy guy but he would never cooperate with a mass murderer like you –especially when you've threatened to kill him."

"Perhaps you haven't enough experience with politics," Cale mused, rubbing his trimmed goatee with mock consternation, "but it can change a lot about a man."

"I know politics," Sheppard retorted. "But I also know David. I don't believe you."

"Then tell me," he leaned forward in his seat. "With all that power that you claim him to have, how is it that he is still here – even after seeing his brother on the brink of death for a week? His morals are slowly being stripped away, John. Piece by piece – he will eventually become like me, perhaps even more so."

He shuddered involuntarily, realizing how right the man could possibly be. Still, he couldn't allow himself to believe it. "What did you offer him?" he inquired dubiously.

Cale smiled. "The United States presidency, no less."

III

It had taken Teyla a bit to fight past her fears, but she was eventually able to write down what she saw on a piece of paper.

She watched Carter and Lorne's faces as they read it.

"Where?" was the immediate question, but Teyla did not yet know how to describe locations by streets and numbers. She simply knew how to get there.

It took a few days for her to calm her nerves before she realized how ridiculously weak she was being. She needed to get her act together to save the man she loved. Why was she so frightened?

Forlornly, Teyla recalled the days as a team when John was compromised. Whenever he was made out to be weaker than she, a knot of uncertainty knotted in her stomach and a rising panic was forcibly quelled in the midst of crises.

Seeing it now after so long was perhaps a difficult thing to witness.

But then Jennifer called. At first, Samantha suggested that she call back later, saying that it wasn't the best time for Teyla. However, she then changed her mind when she saw the Athosian woman scrambling for the phone.

Instead of hearing Dr. Keller's voice on the line, Torren was there. He could tell something was wrong and asked his mother if she was okay.

Tears in her eyes, Teyla assured him that she was just fine and she would be coming home soon.

"I think I know what you're doing, Mama," the little voice said seriously.

"You do?" she responded half-heartedly, just happy to hear her son's voice.

"You're bringing Daddy back home, aren't you?"

She stopped and the tears poured down her face. How did he know? She knew Torren was brilliant, but how was it possible for an eight-year-old to piece that together?

Despite the fact that she strove to keep the terrible truth hidden from her son, she replied: "Yes, I am, baby. I'm bringing Daddy home."

III

It took another couple hours before John was finally able to stand and walk around – although the area he was confined to didn't allow for much.

The doors from his bedroom were locked sturdily and the not-so-inconspicuous security camera in the corner followed his every move.

After boring himself of flipping Cale the bird through it, he began to wander around, surveying as much of his surroundings as he could.

More than anything at that point, he wanted to talk to David.

Even through their trials, Sheppard had always maintained the fact that his brother was genuinely a good guy, underneath all that horrid greed and deception. It was difficult, but even after David had convinced their father to write John off his will entirely, he knew there had to be at least one moral fiber in the man's body.

"I want to talk to Dave!" he shouted at the camera for the fifteenth time. But, like all the other times, he got no response.

Frustration rising in him, Sheppard began throwing things – things that looked expensive, such as the marble lamp on the bedside table, or the oriental vase on the mantel that looked as though it was from an ancient dynasty. He figured that Cale was superficial enough that destroying his property would warrant attention.

He was right.

The brutes barged in and gripped John by his arms, dragging him out and then dumping him into another room unceremoniously.

Cale was there, sitting at a desk and studiously writing. It looked like it was his study; though Sheppard had a hard time believing that this man had anything to do that could be done in such a place.

"You want to tell me why you're throwing a tantrum?" he asked, without looking up from his work.

John felt like he was a child being scolded. He figured being in his boxers in front of everyone under the sun that day was enough humiliation.

"That's enough," he snapped. "I want to talk to my brother, I want clothes, and I want to know what the hell is going on."

Cale sighed, leaning back in his chair and staring at Sheppard as though he were working on solving a complex mathematical problem. "You're impatience is edging on the brink of irritating," he warned. "Everything happens in due time."

"Give me a pair of goddamn pants," he demanded, his anger rising.

As though he finally saw the logic in his request, Sternhall shrugged and nodded to a nameless assistant standing in the corner.

Feeling satisfied that he was getting somewhere, he decided to work his way up to his next appeal. "Where's David?"

"In his room," Cale returned to his writing, "waiting patiently, unlike you."

For some odd reason, that sentence sent John back to his childhood where his father was constantly praising David and admonishing him. He often used phrases just as the one Cale had used, always wondering why "the younger behaves much better than the older".

Sheppard had the sinking suspicion that Sternhall was doing just that – attempting to recreate his early experiences with his brother. He wouldn't put it past the man – he seemed to enjoy playing games with the mind. It certainly would have been an amusing one for someone as cruel as him.

The assistant came back into the room, carrying the pair of cargo pants he had arrived in. When he took them, they felt as though they had been washed and pressed.

Another mind game?

He pulled them on quickly, gradually regaining some sense of dignity from not being half-naked in front of everyone.

John took the seat closest to Cale's desk. "What is it you want me here for, exactly?"

He looked up and smiled slightly, tracing his goatee with his index finger and thumb. "Let me remind you – you were the one trying to find me. I only became interested in you once I learned of your pursuit."

"Interested?"

Cale put his pen down and leaned back, hands folded across his lap. "I researched everything about you. It's amazing what is available simply through Google. The rest, of course, I had to go through some lucrative sources to acquire, but for the most part, I know everything about you, John Sheppard."

He had no doubt that this was true. Sternhall was a powerful man and he predicted that he could find out about anyone in the world that he wanted to – right now to the last gritty detail.

"I'm assuming you were looking for me, for the sake of your friend, Rodney McKay?"

He nodded slowly, not sure how much information he was willing to impart, despite the fact that he claimed to know everything already.

"Now tell me," he leaned one elbow on the desk and smirked, "what would you accomplish by killing me? Your friend still rightfully belongs behind bars for treason."

"There doesn't have to be an accomplishment," John said sourly. "I'd do it for free."

Cale winced mockingly. "Such harsh words from a man that never met me before. How do you know we wouldn't be the best of friends?"

"It's men like you that I fought every day," he replied. "It's men like you that keep society at a trained bay in order to do your bidding. It's because of men like you that we can't make public the secrets that you did."

Sternhall guffawed. "I do hope you don't expect the world to believe that hogwash of a story you released."

The doors to the study slammed open and the assistant rushed back through, his face a sullen white and his composure completely lost.

"We have intruders, sir," he said breathlessly, "in the back garden."