Chapter 10: Get it together soldier (John's Point Of View)
It wasn't until we found the dead bodies that the seriousness of my current predicament hit me. Seeing yourself lying stone cold dead on the floor will do that, even to the toughest of individuals.
I was harsh with Rodney but I had to cut off his panic-stricken rant on the relative similarity between us and that dead team because I needed the reminder too.
We were still alive. They weren't. And I was going to do everything in my power to make sure we stayed alive long enough for my Rodney to fix this.
So now Rodney was reviewing the notes of his alternate self, Teyla and Ronon were searching through the main cargo holds looking for any supplies left behind, and I was taking a moment to remind myself that there was always a solution.
I have to admit that this time felt different than all the other times I'd gotten myself separated from Atlantis … from Sabina. Even those 48,000 years into the future had seemed surmountable because we were still in the same reality. She'd found a way to me then and I swore I'd do the same for her now, because there was no way in hell she was having my child without me being there. It just wasn't happening. End of story.
The ship was still cold, despite Rodney having restored power. I steered clear of all the obvious places because McKay was right – the other team would have striped the ship bare of anything useable in an effort to survive. We had a few basic supplies in our Puddle Jumper – maybe they did too. With any luck they'd decided to leave them as a last resort they hadn't been able to cash in on. Whatever happened to them looked like it had been sudden – I couldn't see any version of myself leaving my friends dead on the floor unless I was already dead myself.
The hangar was colder still and I shivered as I strode quickly towards our Jumper. Grabbing the emergency kit I hung the strap crossways over my chest and then moved on to the second Jumper. It opened silently, the lights coming on immediately. There was nothing wrong with it, meaning they could have left the Daedalus if they'd wanted to.
"So the big question is - why didn't you use the Jumper to escape?" I murmured, ducking inside and looking around suspiciously. A Puddle jumper wasn't long range but if they'd waited for a reality with a viable planet below they'd easily have been able to make it down there.
Searching through the back section I didn't find anything. Moving forward I took the pilot seat and sat for a few moments, wondering how much I was going to regret what I was about to do next.
Putting my hands on the controls I powered up the Jumper. "Show me the last recorded log," I requested. Despite telling Rodney the other team wasn't us I knew myself well enough to predict what I'd do if faced with the inevitable. I'd try to leave some kind of message, the content depending on what else I had in that other life to go back to.
"This is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard," my own voice sounded different contained inside the Jumper but outside my own head. scratchy with a stronger accent than I thought I had. I guess no one liked hearing their own voice played back to them. "All previous attempts to navigate the Daedalus back to our own reality have failed. With supplies dangerously low Teyla Emmagen, Ronon Dex, Doctor Rodney McKay, and myself have unanimously agreed to risk a controlled overload of the reality drive. McKay believes with sufficient power released simultaneously that the drive will shut down, buying us the time we need to find our way home. If our attempt fails, let the record show that we gave it our best shot. Sheppard out."
"Okay," I swallowed dryly and then took a deep breath. "That can't be it. Are there any other logs dating back to the same date stamp?"
My display screen flashed on one other entry, password protected. This was something my other self didn't want anyone but the intended recipient to hear.
"Play log," I commanded.
"Password required."
I stared at the flashing words for a few seconds. "John Ryan Sheppard," I said confidently. I had to guess and if I had someone in my life I needed a personal message for, odds were it was Sabina. I'd have to choose a password that she could guess that wouldn't be immediately obvious to anyone else and I'd probably rightly decided she'd crack if I used a name. Our son would be on her mind and she'd know he'd be on mine too. Since we hadn't named our child yet in my reality I had to go with what we knew he was called in other realities.
The log opened after a small delay and I was confronted not just with my own words, but my own visage as well.
"Okay, this is awkward," my alternate self said. "I don't know where to begin except to say I'm so sorry Sabina. I never meant for us to be separated like this and the fact that I'm recording a last words message should tell you I don't hold out much hope that we'll find a way back. We don't do last words though, do we babe?" My other self sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. They shook and all at once I felt his emotions thick in my throat.
"Pause," I ground out, pushing away from the console and standing with my back to the view screen. "Damn," I muttered, pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. "Get it together soldier," I ordered myself grimly. "That is not going to be you!"
After repeating that silently to myself a couple of times I returned to the pilot's chair. I owed it to that other me to finish, especially since there was little chance his Sabina would ever see the message.
"Play," I pressed my lips together, intent on getting it done without any more unnecessary empathy clouding up the works.
"You're probably wondering what happened, huh?" My other self raised a self-mocking smile. "We finally found a problem the great Rodney McKay can't solve. Well, he thinks he has but there's a pretty huge risk attached to playing it his way." The other John leaned closer to the screen, his eyes intent as though he really were speaking directly to his Sabina. "See, the thing is, we could take the Jumper down to the planet below. It's the same as home, minus Atlantis. Plenty of natural resources, fresh water, everything we need to survive for a really long time. We could do that," he repeated, "but it would mean accepting that I'm never going to see you again. I just … I can't do that Sabina. I can practically hear you telling me not to be stupid, to take that life and live it the best I can. I know you'd be proud of me if I did that but … I just can't and I'm sorry for that." He laughed suddenly. "You always said I was strong and I never corrected you. Sure I'm strong, when I have you to anchor me. Without you I'm just reckless and impulsive and a disaster waiting to happen. I don't want to live like that, not now I know how much better I can be."
He stopped, looking way and swallowing hard. He was pushing back tears – I knew it because I'd done the same thing myself in the past, something I'd never admit out loud.
"So anyway, I'm putting my money on Rodney McKay," the other John continued. "I tried to get Ronon and Teyla to leave but they refused – there's nothing I can do to change their minds. Rodney thinks if he floods the reality drive all in one go he can stop the engine and buy us some time. If it works we spend a few weeks here living off the land while we wait for him to figure a way back home. And if it doesn't," he shrugged, "well, we won't know it. The radiation will make it pretty much instant. I won't suffer – people always say that when someone gets killed. They didn't suffer. I don't know how that's supposed to help but maybe you'll find some comfort in it."
He smiled then and it was genuine and so full of love in so obvious a way that I found myself smiling too. That's how much I loved Sabina and somewhere in the tragedy that other John had suffered I found a small sliver of silver lining - seeing from outside myself what that degree of love looked like.
"I love you Sabina Sheppard and that's forever, no matter what happens. I don't regret a second and I wouldn't give any of them back, even the ones that led me here. Tell Ryan about me but don't glorify what I was. I want to be real to him in a way that still leaves space for someone else to be a father to him. I trust you to find someone worthy of my boy, worthy of you. Don't spend your life grieving for me baby because then what I've achieved really will amount to nothing. If I don't make it back, go out there and live. Make me proud."
The message ended and I sat staring blindly at the blank screen. Somewhere out there another Sabina grieved for a man whose fate she'd never know, forced to raise a son without his father. I couldn't care about her or that boy because then I'd have to care about every version of Sabina out there – it was too much, impossible to get my head around. What happened to that other team and the flow on consequences were sad but there was nothing I could do. Another Sheppard had put his faith in Rodney and his entire team paid the price. It explained so much about how we'd found them, together as though something had hit them all at the same time and dropped them cold.
"That's not going to be us," I muttered under my breath. Standing I bent over the console and requested a copy of both log messages be transferred to the Ancient scanner from my Jumper before resetting the system so they'd be available for someone else to play, on the off chance the Jumper did end up back in the right reality. I didn't know how likely that was and it depended on how successful Rodney was in reversing our own path through realities. The copies were another back up – we'd come across other versions of ourselves before. Maybe one day we'd stumble across the right one and I'd be able to hand over the message. Knowing what happened would always be better than never knowing.
Pocketing the palm pad, I powered down the Jumper and exited. I needed to check in with Rodney and fill him in on what I'd learned.