Author's Note: I can't believe this is it!

So, um... wow teary. This whole story was a marathon effort... good thing I like running, huh! Anywas, I'm sad to see this finish, it's been a long time in the making... maybe a month writing and then over a month posting it... What am I going to do now...

Guess I'll just write some more! Or maybe I'll do some school work...

Anyways, wrapping this up. I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, it really means more than even I can articulate. Seriously, some of you had me speechless, so, thank you. And this last chapter is for you all.

Please don't kill me...


Chapter 29: Rising

"I have an idea, but you're not going to like it."

"Get up, Sheppard."

The voices felt like they were outside his head now, and at that, hoping beyond hope, Sheppard opened his eyes, heart dying just that little bit more when he didn't spot Ronon, even though he could have sworn he had heard the big guy's voice.

They moved into the conference room at Fairfield's insistence. The Olympian leader hadn't liked the look on Sheppard's face.

"Okay. What's this big plan then?"

"I can't," he told no one, his whisper echoing slightly in the isolated corridors of Atlantis. There was no one there, though he thought that even if there had been, his blurry vision wouldn't have been able to spot them. Everything wavered, and everything looked like a dream.

"On your feet, John."

"I can't, Teyla." He shook his head, and then coughed, watching with some degree of fascination as blood dripped from his lips to splash on the floor. "I'm so tired. I just want to rest."

Upon hearing his plan, Fairfield realized the reason he hadn't liked the look on Sheppard's face. The man was giving up.

"No," the Olympian denied, and Sheppard stared at him, not even bothering to glare. "That plan is stupid."

"No, it isn't," Sheppard told him with a sad shake of his head. "It's the only one. I can kill Michael by destroying this city. And then all you have to take care of is the ones in your own galaxy."

"But you're going to kill yourself!"

"You can rest soon."

"I can't get up," Sheppard told them, told those non-existent voices, heart breaking that he was denying them this just as he had denied them peace. "I'm dying, Rodney."

"Yes, you are. But you need to do this first." The feeling that they were really there nearly overwhelmed him, and he dropped his head, tears breaking out. Why now? He missed them so much, and he had been ready to give up because he would never see them again, only now they were here, in his final moments, and it hurt. Oh God, it hurt.

"On your feet, Sheppard."

"Why?"

John looked at Fairfield and shrugged. "Because I'm tired," he told the man, being honest. "I'm exhausted, and it goes deeper than anything that sleep or medicine can cure. When I realized I could never get back home, a part of me started dying."

He slid back onto the table and slumped slightly, looking each leader in the face. "Because I'm not meant to be here. Because I'm supposed to be dead and buried and dust a hell of a long time ago. Because every moment I spend here, I hurt just that little bit more."

"Come on, John. There isn't much time."

"I need help," he whispered to them, head coming back up, blood softly bubbling over his lips. "I can't do this alone."

"We're here, John. We're here."

With a huge effort and a near-scream, John stood up straight, not bothering to remove Michael's knife, lacking the energy to spend on little things like that. Gathering whatever energy remained, knowing there was a high possibility that he still wouldn't make it, he pulled at the muscles in his legs. And with another loud scream that echoed throughout Atlantis, he started walking.

"But this is the city of the Ancestors," Chayal reminded him once more, obviously disturbed and worried. She seemed to be looking for a reason. "You said yourself, in the very message that brought me here, that you would not let the hybrids destroy the legacy of the Ancestors"

The pilot shook his head. "I wasn't talking about the city. I was talking about us. You and me, and every human in the universe who evolved from the Ancients. That's their legacy."

"But destroying Atlantis now would be -."

Sheppard cut her off. "Appropriate. In this case… it would be appropriate." He looked around the city. "She's old, just like I am. She's tired, just like I am. She wasn't meant to be abandoned for so long, and it's eaten away at her will."

He staggered into the wall with his first steps, nausea rippling through him, coughing with the movement, losing even more of that precious blood. He heaved, and panted, unable to stop the tears of pain and death streaking down his face.

We're with you, Sheppard, came the sound of his friends, and he closed his eyes, just for a second, imagining they were there, right beside him. He was so close to death's door that it was easy.

He opened his eyes and set them squarely on the doors to the chair room. Fifteen feet. Fifteen small steps. He could do this.

"I know you respect, even worship the Lanteans," he continued, looking the two natives in the eye one at a time. "But they were around so long ago. It's time they were left behind. It's time for you to make your own history." He smiled sadly. "Not even Atlantis was meant to last forever," he told them gently. "It was a great legacy, while it lasted, but it is time for her, and her creators, to become the legend they were meant to be. Nothing is meant to last forever. Let this city's final act be an appropriate ending to the Ancients. Let her last stand be something incredible."

Fourteen feet, and he was struggling to remain standing, couldn't walk in a straight line. He crashed repeatedly into the wall, eventually using it to guide him, seeing as his eyes were beginning to betray him.

Thirteen feet, and he pushed off the wall, suddenly determined to do this of his own accord, teeth set grimly even as blood from his lungs stained them a scarlet red. He staggered, and he stumbled, but he staggered and stumbled on his own.

Twelve feet, and he swore he could see shapes out of the corner of his eyes. Though, if he turned to look at them, the shadows, such familiar shadows, they disappeared, figments of his own imagination and death.

Eleven feet and he stopped looking around, the continuous movement of his head making him dizzy. He crashed into the wall again, and had to pause, heaving, knees locked to keep from falling.

"Why?" Fairfield asked again, and Sheppard sighed. "Why are you so willing to do it?"

"Because this time is nice and all," he told the man, looking at Chayal and remembering their conversation only a few nights ago. "But it isn't mine. And it never will be. You all have the right to live out your lives. Mine ended when you woke me from that stasis chamber and told me I had spent one thousand years too long asleep."

Ten feet and he was back out in the middle of the corridor, right arm held out, skimming the air, left arm curled protectively around his injury. Still he staggered and stumbled, and still those shadows darted around in the corner of his eyes.

At nine feet, he closed his eyes and squeezed out the tears, because he was inches from death, and, if he was hallucinating or if they were really there, it didn't matter, because it felt like they were there, and that's all he cared about.

At eight feet he began picking faces out.

"I don't like it."

"I told you that you wouldn't."

At seven feet he saw Caldwell, and Zelenka, Katie Brown, Kate Heightmeyer, Cadman, Stackhouse, Mitchell, Jackson, O'Neill, so many faces he had wished to see just one more time, and he closed his eyes, not wanting to lose the image of those faces, of those friends and comrades, afraid to open his eyes and find out that they weren't there. He thought if he did that he would be unable to go on.

At six feet he had to open his eyes anyway, because he stumbled into a wall, distorting the shadowy forms of either hallucinations or ghosts, John didn't care, because they were there.

At five feet, everything started going grey, and he swore sound evaporated, but he just didn't realize it was because he was losing touch with reality. Didn't care to realize it was because he was finally succumbing to death.

At four feet, he was close to the crossroads before the chair room, and he smiled with relief to see, to pick out more of those faces called forth to guide him forward, to rally around him from the subconscious of his own mind. Keller, and Lorne, Beckett, Colonel Carter, Elizabeth, they all stood there with him, for him, urging him silently on with shadowy faces. But he knew it was them. He had to know it was them.

At three feet he stumbled forward, taking the last two feet in one giant stride to fall against the door, losing touch with those shadowy forms. For a second panic threatened to overwhelm him, but he recovered, taking a huge, silent breath, or at least silent to his ears.

Suddenly remembering the self-destruct, Sheppard pulled his wrist up, blinking deliberately a few times so he could actually focus on the watch. Two minutes to go. He could do it in two minutes.

Shaking fingers pulled the panel off the Lantean version of a door knob and then he reached into his pocket to remove the crystal still safely hidden there. Trying not to collapse and die before he could finish this task, he aimed for the central slot. This one last task, that was all he had to do.

Three tries later the crystal was in the panel, and it opened with a whoosh. He stumbled through with enough hurry to shove him onto the chair, the door closing with a sense of finality behind him. One minute and thirty seconds.

Sheppard dragged his body into the seat, taking a deep breath as he tried to relax. He tried to concentrate beyond the blood loss and pain on activating the chair. It came on almost instantly, and the city welcomed him with open arms.

She knew that together they strode to death and the destruction of the hybrids in one fell swoop. And she was pleased.

That sense of relief filled him, and he couldn't help but smile, leaning back into the chair, finally able to relax. He called on the two systems he needed, knowing he was going to struggle concentrating on both, but sure he would be able to manage. He would have to.

With a smile, and a sense of returning home after a long, long journey, Sheppard nodded at no one, because although he could sense his closest friends, his family, his team, surrounding him, encouraging him with more than words, guarding him as he strode towards oblivion, they weren't really there.

They were dead and buried and dust, and he longed to join them.

The thought reached out into the city's systems, and beneath him, without even thinking about it, the stardrive pulsed into power, struggling slightly but managing. He knew she could do it, knew she wanted peace as much as he did. That thought made him sad, as he remembered the vibrant, loving city he had found with his friends, the city he had called home for four long years. That she longed for ending made him choke up, almost made him lose his concentration as slowly, achingly, Atlantis rose into the air.

One minute.

But he knew how she felt and that she, with him, would be going out in such a fitting way was all that really mattered now. The fact that he was giving her, with him, a chance to do some serious good before both their lives were plucked from time… that was worth the years of sadness she had endured.

Almost forgetting the pain, almost forgetting the fact that he was about to die, he flew up through the toxic atmosphere of the very planet he had landed this ship-city on. The chair rotated slightly, but he didn't notice, so connected with the city's systems was he. He felt almost as if, as his life drained away, the city accepted it, and together, they would be death.

Thirty seconds.

Up through the sky they flew, the man and the city at death's door, the power draining from the single ZPM still remaining. And, like rabid wolves, Michael's remaining ships closed in.

Inside the chair room, Sheppard snarled, and Atlantis snarled with him. Together they were death.

And together, they collapsed the shield until all that was protected was the tower in which Sheppard sat, spinning on a chair, oblivious even to the intense fire that struck the outer rims of the city and made her rock.

Ten seconds.

His consciousness and life almost seeping into Atlantis, Sheppard pulled on what strength he had left and called on the remaining drones hidden within the city. With a ferocity the galaxy had not seen in 50,000 years, the drones escaped their bindings, and flew up, up, dancing around the outside of the shield, glowing with such intensity that the hybrids within those ships felt mesmerized. The firing slowed, though never stopping altogether, and taking a deep, final breath, John let those drones dance, spinning and weaving their magic around Atlantis for one final, magnificent show, until they lit up the space around them. Time drifted towards an end.

And then, as the cold vacuum of space seeped in, Sheppard thought one final command, and let the drones pelt from their hovering positions around Atlantis. Not towards the ships attacking the fair Lantean city. But towards the fair city itself.

Inside the city itself, inside her very systems, Sheppard knew the instant the drones struck the surface of Atlantis. But he didn't care. Having time only to heave a sigh of relief, he let go of everything, finally accepting oblivion as all around him the city exploded. He slipped, the sense of his friends and family surrounded him…

And as the white embraced him, all John Sheppard knew was nothing.


Epilogue

When the Olympian expedition to Atlantis finally returned to their home, it was to celebration and victory. Michael's forces, the hybrid armies besieging their very galaxy, were leaderless and in chaos. And everyone knew it was because of their team.

The war was not over, not by a long shot, but victory was finally in sight, when it had never been there before. Finally, there was hope.

The returning expedition members told strange stories. Of a legend thought long dead. Of an enemy upon whom retribution had been wrought. Of people and places believed to have disappeared in the distant past.

Of a great explosion that had wiped out half a solar system. Of one man's sacrifice for a people who could never be his own. Of his return, hopefully, to friends and family he could call his.

Those expedition members tried to get the story out. Of John Sheppard and all he had done for their people. But even with proof, even with the message the man had sent out, and the hard-won Module, and the Lantean designed ship they introduced as the Shepherd, the Bringer of Freedom, there were not many who believed them. Not many who believed a man from 50,000 years ago had saved all their lives.

Within a generation the truth of the Atlantis expedition became tales. Within two, they became myths. Within ten those myths had become the property of scholars, who dared debate about the authenticity of happenings that should have been remembered for eons.

The Pegasus galaxy finally rejoiced in their hard won freedom, and they, at least, dared not forget the sacrifices made in that battle. But even they, over the decades, relegated those happenings to fireside tales of a time long past, to tales of men and deeds so amazing that it was hard to take them for the truth they were.

After all, nothing is meant to last forever.


Okay, I think I should explain why I chose to do that. And to be honest… I'm not one hundred percent sure. I did think that if Sheppard were stuck in that time, he would not have wanted to stay. Everything I said though, everything Sheppard told Fairfield, Chayal and Damora... I meant it. This story was meant to be an ending, for Earth, the Ancients, and most of all, Atlantis.

I told you there was not going to be a spectacularly happy ending!

Anyways, I hope you liked it. Thanks again to everyone who reviewed! And I guess I'll see you in my next story, whenever and whatever that may be.