Chapter Twenty Five – The Explanation

It was two weeks later when Colonel John Sheppard first felt the wind in his hair again. The south-easterly breeze played with it, tousling the strands of unruly black. He stopped just outside the door to the large balcony next to the gate room for a moment and closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts. He stood there, just stood there, letting the wind sooth his frayed nerves as he took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. It felt good, the fresh air filled him with energy as the sun warmed his pale face. He slowly walked up to the railing, curling his fingers around the top bar until his knuckles turned white. Carefully he leaned forward and glanced down the Central spire of Atlantis, the view breath-taking. The ocean below glittered in the sun as the waves gently lapped at the piers. He continued to take in the stillness, the peaceful tranquillity that had settled over the large ancient city in the late afternoon. Everywhere he looked lights were on, every tower and lower building bustled with life.

His eyes darkened when he thought back to the sister city of Atlantis and her sacrifice, her inhabitants' sacrifice, both the originals and the new ones.

The door behind him swished open suddenly and he tensed for a moment, then forced himself to relax; he was, after all, safe and sound back home. There would be no Wraith, no fighting resistance or crazed military officers coming for him.

"There you are," Rodney said, sounding relieved. "I looked for you in the infirmary. I even went to your quarters-" he trailed off as he walked up to stand next to his friend and team leader. "Should you be standing here? You might catch a bug or something."

"I'm fine, Rodney. I'm not made of glass," Sheppard returned but his voice sounded weary, thoughtful even.

"No, you're not but sometimes, I swear, I don't think you're human either," Rodney said solemnly as he too leaned forward over the railing to gaze out over the ocean. "It's not that I'm not glad that you survived, don't get me wrong-" he let the sentence hang in the air and sighed. "I just don't know how you do it. And I just don't know how many more times I can take it."

John turned toward the scientist, looking almost annoyed as he narrowed his eyes. "I don't like deep discussions Rodney, and I know you don't either," he cautioned.

Rodney mirrored his movement. "No, I don't. I'm not good at it so don't make it harder for me than it already is," he said with an undertone of deep emotion. "I don't make friends easily, you know that. I'm perhaps persona non grata to many, an idiot to some-" Rodney's eyes gleamed as he added arrogantly: "but those are an exception."

Sheppard rolled his eyes, his lips curling slightly upwards in amusement.

"Fine, I get it, I'll try not to die," John promised.

"No, that's not what I meant," Rodney protested.

Sheppard grimaced. "Geez, thanks McKay," he returned dryly.

"Well, basically it was, but you make it sound so simple," he reasoned. "Bottom-line, stop attracting trouble."

"Believe me," John returned ruefully. "I try that every single day."

They stood in silence for a while, no words really necessary. Then suddenly John spoke up. "I guess I've never asked, not sure I really wanted to know, but what happened Rodney?" he asked seriously. "What happened on P3X-667?"

Rodney scratched the back of his head absentmindedly, averting his gaze from his friend for a moment to stare at the floor. "Ah, look, why don't we go down to the mess hall?" he suggested. "I'm starving."

"I haven't been outside for almost two weeks, Rodney, what's wrong with this place?" John asked.

"It's a long and complicated story. I'm hungry and I don't plan on standing here till midnight because that's how long it would take. Now, do you need help getting there?"

Sheppard gave him an indignant look.

"Good," Rodney added.

OOOOOO

Teyla and Ronon glanced up as the door opened to reveal Rodney and John. They had been waiting for them at a table next to the windows with a view of the west side of the city.

"So you planned this?" John asked sarcastically as he spotted the rest of his team from a distance.

"Not really," Rodney returned as they walked up to the line. "It was you who wanted to talk. I only planned to get you to eat."

Teyla got up from the chair and moved gracefully toward them, waited till Sheppard had his plate full and then gently put it on a tray along with the knife and fork, napkin and a glass of water.

"Teyla," John began softly, yet the underlying sarcasm shone right through as he spoke. "I'm not an invalid and I'm not dying carrying that myself."

She eyed him, her eyes stern but her lips were slightly curled upwards as she ignored his remark and moved away with the tray.

Soon they were all settled. John raised an eyebrow as Rodney dug into a huge steak. The plate was filled to the brim with sauce, mashed potatoes and vegetables. To top it all off, a cup of Jell-O sat next to it on the tray. "You weren't kidding when you said you were hungry Rodney, huh?" John asked dryly.

Rodney gave him a glare but said nothing.

John eyed his own tray where a bowl of soup sat waiting. "You know sometimes people say things, little white lies, to soothe things over…"

"What you call tactfulness I call a waste of time," Rodney interrupted as he took another bite.

John couldn't help but to chuckle in exasperation as he picked up his spoon to carefully sip on his soup.

"I'm glad you could come, John," Teyla said as she put her fingers around a steaming cup of green tea that sat on the table before her. "It is the small things, things that we do every day, things that we take for granted, that give us the whole picture."

"We've missed you, Sheppard," Ronon said as he reached for Rodney's Jell-O, earning himself a look of disbelief followed by a "Hey!"

"We've touched the subject briefly every now and then but we've never really talked it through, have we?" Teyla stated softly. "Jennifer didn't want us to discuss it, did not want any setbacks in your recovery."

"Maybe I would have recovered quicker if someone would have just had the guts to tell me what the hell went on at that planet!" he returned with a hint of underlying anger yet he kept his voice controlled.

No one said anything for a moment; instead an awkward silence settled over the table and its occupants.

It was John who broke the silence, his voice low, not wanting the rest of the people in the room to overhear. "It still wakes me at night sometimes," he said solemnly. "I keep seeing you leave me, I feel the arrow impacting my leg, feel the raw flesh and the poison spreading through my body as I watch the Ancient ship leave after they'd delivered the final blow to the Stargate."

Rodney gently swiped his mouth with the napkin and put down his fork. "We ran through the gate, we reappeared in Atlantis and we waited for you to come but you never did. As I said to you on the planet, we thought you were caught in the buffer. We tried to redial but it was in vain."

Ronon shrugged as he dug into Rodney's Jell-O. "We got onto a jumper, dialed a space gate to try and get you back. It took us some time to get back there," he filled in.

"We came as fast as we could, John," Teyla said with regret. "What happened?"

He nodded, he knew they did, still he couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed. "I feared the savages would come after me once everything had calmed down. I began to walk, then drag myself forward as time went past. I came to an incline and headed for the top, I never thought I'd find a city-"

"Yes, how did you end up there?" Rodney asked curiously as he took a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

"That I don't really know, Rodney," John let on solemnly. "When I came to the edge, staring down at the lights of the city from above I let go of consciousness. I just wanted to be left alone, to rest in peace for a moment. When I woke up I found myself in a hospital bed-"

"Considering your track record, that's not really unusual," Rodney quipped.

"Rodney," Teyla cautioned with a glare.

"There was a man there questioning, whom I later learned to be, the Chief Medical Officer, Lani Nadim. He wanted to know everything about me. He demanded answers, threatening to take me to some military compound – the experimental bunker."

Ronon smiled maliciously as he leaned forward where he sat next to Rodney, opposite Teyla. "But you escaped," he said, proud of his friend.

"Not the way I planned," Sheppard let on cryptically.

"Why do I get a bad feeling about this?" Rodney complained.

"I got abducted by some Medic called Teldan Tori who, together with his associates, took me down below the city to meet and greet with the leader of the resistance; Amni Lak," Sheppard finished sarcastically.

The others waited for him to continue.

Sheppard eyed them one at a time, he looked serious and dismayed at the same time as he recalled the events. "I was thrown into the middle of a politic gamble, I found the planet was on the brink of civil war. I've never liked politics and diplomacy and now, after this little adventure, I like it even less."

"Anyway, they thought I was a member of the Special Forces, namely the Alpha teams. They told me their version of why they were fighting the military and the government, they told me of disbelief and superstition. They told me the final straw had been drawn. At the time I didn't know who to trust, who to label the good or bad guys. Quite frankly it took me a long time to do so."

"Surely Lani and Sha-" Teyla began.

"I didn't have the pleasure seeing them any time soon," Sheppard countered. He knew Teyla had no way of knowing what he'd been through but he still felt as if he was trying to explain a complex mathematical problem to a five year old. "Instead I was fed a story of an upcoming alien invasion, about a prophecy painted on the walls of an old cave. I was told as of how the savages had come down to the city and caused a wide spread panic by sharing their belief. In the middle of this I realized the dark enemy they were talking about were the Wraith. The fact that I was in a room of Lantean design and that the name Janus was mentioned to me gave me some hope that I might get out of the situation alive."

"After a while Amni Lak and his cohorts of the resistance suddenly turned the tables and instead of taking me for an Alpha member they suggested I was an alien coming from the ship that had roamed the sky earlier. It turned ugly, they had found the government was poking in the past and that things of Lantean design could be useful in the upcoming war. They knew almost nothing of the society that had once been on the planet and didn't understand that they was currently residing in an old flying city far more powerful than anything else on the planet."

"And so they made you turn something on?" Rodney asked as he finished his meal.

John frowned.

"Come on Sheppard, smart guy over here," Rodney added with a sly smile.

"Yes," he let on, unconsciously wringing his hands, his soup mostly untouched. "Unfortunately or fortunately, I still don't know which, an Alpha team decided to crash the party. I managed to escape the immediate danger but-" he chuckled without mirth. "Let's just say I had some trouble getting where I wanted in the city."

Rodney nodded. "Yes with the proximity problem out of the way the most reasonable thing to do would have been to find Askula's own Stargate," he said.

"Katan caught you," Ronon guessed.

Sheppard nodded. "And he blamed me for everything," he said as he leaned forward looking directly at Ronon and Rodney. "So, where were you guys?"

"That's small of you, Sheppard," Rodney muttered somewhat angrily. "You think it was a walk in the park to find you?"

John shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. I know you did what you could."

He felt a small hand close on his upper arm, giving it a squeeze. He turned slightly to see Teyla looking at him sombrely with a soft smile on her lips that didn't reach her eyes.

"The Wraith passed us on their way to the planet," she explained. "We landed next to the savage's land, the only place we knew of."

"Almost bumped into a hoover craft, turned out to be your doctor, Lani Nadim," Ronon filled in.

"Dadan, the old wise man, greeted us and asked us to forgive them for being narrow-minded, for not understanding what we were," Teyla explained.

"He guessed we were descendants of the Ancients?" John asked carefully, curiously as he thought back at the furious old man and his young soldiers that had hunted them with bows and arrows the first time he'd met them.

"Then we slowly began to learn about all the intrigues and resentments among the different factions in the city," Teyla went on. "With the help of Lani we found the old city below. We decided to split up to push things along. Ronon and I started the search for you while Rodney and Lani took a detour to the museum."

"I was hoping to find something that might speed along the rescue mission but instead we found the history of Askula," Rodney let on. "We found the reason to why the old Lantean city was sitting in a crater beneath the new larger city above."

"She saved them all, John," Teyla said with pride. "It was as Rodney thought, something was going on at the planet. It was a place for discussion, for technology exchange and mission briefings. The cities connected to each other like they were back on the Asuran home world."

"Then the Wraith came," Ronon spoke up in a low voice as he stared at the bottom of his empty glass. "They broke up the gathering, took out several cities and extinguished a lot of lives. Askula stayed behind to shelter the rest with her advanced shielding technology that Janus had been working on."

"She saved the others, Atlantis among them," Teyla explained. "If it weren't for Askula and her inhabitants we would never had found Atlantis at the bottom of the ocean four years ago."

"Maybe she hadn't made it to earth," Rodney mused.

"Ancients with guts to act," Ronon added with a faint smile. "Wish there were more of them."

"What happened to them?" John asked curiously. "Not all of them were laid to rest in that cave we found on our first visit."

"They travelled through the Stargate, leaving Askula behind. The city was beyond repair, they were outnumbered and lacked the resources. They set up the shield to protect the planet's native inhabitants from Wraith attacks, feeling it was their fault they came to the planet in the first place. That in turn made it possible for a civilization to grow and flourish to the extent we've seen," Rodney added.

"But they never learned the true story?" John asked sceptically.

"Not until now," Rodney replied. "The city was left in darkness and riddled with mysteries. She was badly damaged and, as you know, loss of structural integrity made it hard to explore her. Also they set lose a virus in one of the labs in an era when superstition was strong that led to a belief that the city was haunted."

There was a silence settling over the company while everybody contemplated on the fate of Atlantis' sister city.

"Then we finally found you, bleeding to death before our eyes," Rodney let on sarcastically.

John looked a bit awkward as he straightened in his chair, grimacing as certain actions still hurt, pulling on the incisions that went across his torso, a remainder of the tragic shooting at the planet. "This might sound a bit odd to you but-"

"The word odd has a whole new meaning to me since I embarked on this expedition," Rodney interrupted dryly, his way of telling that nothing Sheppard could say would actually surprise him.

"If it weren't for Carson I don't know if I would be sitting here today," he finally admitted.

"The mind can play tricks on you," Teyla said. "Especially in your condition."

"I saw him, he appeared before me, right then and there," John let on stubbornly. "He told me to hold on, that you would be coming for me and that we would see each other again in the near future."

"Carson was killed in that explosion, John," Rodney said solemnly, his expression stern and his eyes haunted as he thought back on their friend and his demise.

"I don't know any longer, Rodney," John returned cryptically. "Stranger things have happened in the Pegasus Galaxy."

"What did he tell you except to hold on?" Rodney returned unamused. "That pigs do fly and that Elizabeth Weir will knock on our doorstep in a week or so?"

Sheppard refrained from telling him about Elizabeth, instead he just shook his head ruefully.

"I'm a scientist," Rodney cautioned. "I believe in facts, rules and regulations until otherwise has been proven and so far I don't know of any way in which you can bring back the dead."

"Let's leave it there shall we?" Teyla said diplomatically, her voice soft yet with a hint of caution. She turned to look at them one at a time and smiled when her eyes settled upon Sheppard. "We're just glad you are still alive, John."

He nodded slowly, accepting her statement. "What happened then?" he finally asked. "I'm afraid I don't remember much after Katan used me for target practice."

Teyla sighed and ran a hand through her hair but it was Ronon who spoke up, surprising John.

"It's complicated, Sheppard. Like you told us the society was made up of factions disagreeing on everything between earth and sky," he said.

Rodney harrumphed. "More like what was in the sky," he added sarcastically.

The Satedan and the scientist glared at each other for a while and John suddenly found himself immensely grateful for everything normal around him. He'd missed it, missed them; Ronon's straight forwardness, Rodney's arrogance and Teyla's diplomacy and tact. Together they made up the best team in the galaxy.

"I'm sure that on your world it's more common than for any other here in the Pegasus galaxy," Teyla began slowly as she gazed out through the window and caught the last light of the sun before it passed the horizon. "We saw a movie once together that may be best described as a parallel. I believe they used double agents."

John frowned and made a face as he dipped some broth into the now cold soup. "I'm all ears," he said, encouraging her to go on.

"They called themselves Triples," Rodney filled in. "I fail to see why? Made me think about Star Trek and that episode with all the tribbles."

Teyla raised an impeccable eyebrow and turned to face McKay. "What is a Tribble?" she asked.

John almost choked on a breath and coughed lightly, his lips twisting upwards in what looked like amusement. "I'll tell you about them, Teyla, some other day."

She looked indignant as her gaze lingered on him for a moment, knowing there was more to it.

"Your doc, Lani, she was one of them," Ronon offered casually.

Rodney nodded. "She and that blond guy – military defense officer, Rodin," he explained as he eyed the now empty Jell-O next to Ronon in envy. "You know you took the last one, don't you?"

"You mean you took the last one?" Ronon countered with a smirk. "Snatched it right in front of the botany assistant. I saw you. Where's your manners?"

"You-" McKay began, his voice low and threatening.

"Careful, Rodney," John said with a smirk, his eyes twinkling. "It's not good for the blood pressure to get that upset."

"Katan was taken to detention and Sha just took over his position like a natural thing. There were no questions, only obedience and acceptance from the soldiers. Many of them already loyal to him and not Katan," Teyla explained. "Had it not been for Lani and Sha. Had they not chose to step forward the whole matter would have ended differently."

"The Wraith," John stated.

"They penetrated the defense grid, gave us a lot of trouble," Rodney said seriously. We got into a game of hide and seek. Teyla and Lani took off with you to the infirmary while Ronon and I tried to reach the chair."

"We reached the infirmary," Teyla said, her voice becoming hollow and sad. "I waited for you to come around but you were seriously injured, Lani fought hard to patch you up. I couldn't stay, I couldn't sit idle, John, I'm sorry."

"Why would I blame you, Teyla?" John said softly as he reached over and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You made a choice to help, a good choice."

"About that," Rodney said solemnly. "I'm sorry I couldn't act sooner."

Something jogged John's memory and he distinctly recalled Carson's pale face as he said Teyla's name. He had on the tip of his tongue that Carson mentioned something was amiss but caught himself. Some things were best kept to himself.

Rodney turned to John. "Long story short. Dadan and his tribespeople ventured into Askula to lend a hand. With their help we managed to get to the chair and fire off the remaining drones."

"Blew the Hive sky high," Ronon added proudly, wickedly.

"Not before it blew the military command complex sky high with Teyla in it," Rodney reminded him.

"I'm glad you managed to take it out at all," Teyla reassured him. "I don't think it would have stopped firing otherwise."

"Then we found the control room," Rodney said, then snorted, his lips paring in a smile that seemed almost manic. "Put like this it sounds so simple, like it was a walk in the park."

"We got caught up in the middle of a fighting faction, they tried to engage us," Ronon let on. "Then Teyla, Sha and several Alphas came to even out the odds a bit."

Teyla seemed amused as she fixed Rodney with her eyes, looking almost sympathetic. "It was Sha who pointed us in the right direction so that we could find the Stargate," she pointed out.

Rodney leaned forward, his elbows on the table before him. "Sure, why don't you rub it in?" he asked ironically. "Let me just remind you who it was that reconnected the gate to the system and fixed so that we could all go home?"

"So it was a team effort then?" John asked with a smirk.

"That's pretty much the end of it," Ronon added succinctly. "Lorne came with a jumper, took out some Wraith down below. Keller was with him – took care of you, probably saved your sorry ass," he said, the last sentence dripping of sarcasm and amusement meant to trigger annoyance.

John merely raised an eyebrow cockily. He then shrugged and glanced around the now empty room, except for the team. The sun had long set and darkness hung around the city.

"So," he finally drawled, feeling awkward all of a sudden. "Thanks for saving me, guys."

"Anytime, I just love to meet and greet some Wraith, being shot upon by alien Special Forces, resistance members and half crazed tribespeople-"

"What Rodney means is that we'd do it again, John," Teyla interrupted softly as she gently squeezed his shoulder. "We would do it anytime."

"I told you, lad," a faint whisper echoed through the room.

"John?" Teyla asked in concern as she felt him tense.

"Anybody else hear that?" he asked carefully.

Rodney shrugged. "The ventilation system has been off lately, probably a bug in the system," he offered, like it was no big deal. "I suppose I shouldn't have let Zelenka be in charge of fixing it."

Ronon silently got up and slid behind John to slap him on the back. "Glad to have you back, Sheppard," he said.

"Yeah," John admitted as he gingerly rose from the chair, the others mimicking his action. "It's good to be home."

Rodney cast a glance at his watch and shook his head.

"What?" John asked in annoyance at the creepy smile on the scientist's lips.

"I told you it would take till midnight, turns out I was off with only three minutes," he said smugly.

OOOOOO

To be continued

/Sorry for the wait. As usual, thanks a lot for all encouragements and reviews ;) You do make my day.