A/N - Thank you so much to everyone who is enjoying this fic! There will be three chapter after this one.

Teyla called before long, using the video chat software that Ronon hadn't yet been able to master. Rodney had a panicked moment where he was sure something else had happened, but surely if there was a problem, it would be Sam who notified them.

"Rodney?" she said once he had answered. "I was wondering if I might talk to you and John for a moment?"
Rodney looked over at John. He had abandoned his lunch, and was now lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

"Um, let me check with Sheppard," Rodney said. "He might be...asleep."

Rodney went over to John and shook him slightly. John's eyes slowly blinked over to focus on Rodney. Rodney felt a rush of both horror and pride at the fact that he could differentiate between John's fevered gaze and his drugged out one. Right now, John was fine, just high and exhausted. Rodney didn't think he'd be much help with...whatever it was Teyla wanted to talk to them about.

"Sheppard, do you wanna say hi to Teyla?" Rodney asked.

"Hi, Teyla," John said obediently.

Rodney sighed. "No, Sheppard, she's on the...nevermind."

"Nevermind," John agreed softly.

"You've got me," Rodney informed Teyla. "What is it?"

Teyla made a hissing sound through her teeth that Rodney recognized as a very dangerous sound indeed, then shook her head.

"Ronon," she said, biting off the end of the name with a venom that Rodney hoped never to see turned on him. "He is being...difficult."

Rodney nodded in sympathy, opening his mouth to respond, but Teyla continued before he could get a word in edgewise.

"I understand that he is worried about Colonel Sheppard," Teyla said agitatedly, her volume rising. "But he seems to forget that everyone else is, as well. And the rest of us are not acting like children-"

Rodney let Teyla rant until she ran out of steam, rather overwhelmed at the extent to which the team clearly depended on John's presence. Not that he'd ever tell Sheppard that, the man's ego was big enough already….

"I'm sorry," Rodney said diplomatically, when he thought that Teyla was probably done. "It's...hard. But, but you'll figure it out, I'm sure. Really. And, you know, don't tell Carter I said this, but she's got brains in that blonde head of hers. She's...she's good at this sort of thing."

"Colonel Carter," Teyla said grimly, "is not the problem." Still, the Athosian seemed marginally more relaxed than she had been when the call had begun. As much as Rodney wanted to give himself the credit for talking Teyla down, he suspected that she had just missed the rest of her team.

"Well, if that's all-"

"Thank you, Rodney." Teyla sounded much more like herself now, and Rodney let out a quiet sigh of relief. "I am sorry, it is just…."

"Don't be sorry," Rodney said quickly. "It was nice to talk to you. Uhh, do you want me to see if Sheppard's awake, so you can say goodbye?"

Teyla nodded, smiling gratefully, and Rodney picked up the laptop and brought it over to where Sheppard had entangled himself in the blankets.

"Sheppard? Are you asleep?"

"Mmm...yep," John whispered, his eyes closed.

"Umm, alright. Do you want to say goodbye to Teyla?"

"Where's Teyla?" John asked softly, cracking open one eye and staring blearily up at Rodney.

"Hello, John," Teyla said, waving from the screen. John smiled back, flopping his head around slightly until he could see her.

"Hey," John said, and his eyes drooped shut again. Rodney took the laptop back, flipping it around so that he could see the screen.

"Sorry, he's pretty out of it…. I think he'll be better by tonight, though, with the way the doses are working out. We, um, tried to solve the mystery today, and he wants to watch some kind of crime movie, you know how he gets with that sort of thing…."

The crime movie - they picked an old black and white Sherlock Holmes - proved to be slightly too ambitious for John. He kept falling asleep, and then waking up and demanding that they explain to him what had happened. This proved difficult, because Ronon spent the whole movie sharpening his knives and didn't even seem to be trying to follow the plot, Teyla kept getting confused by Earth references she didn't understand, and Rodney was pretty distracted by John. By the time they'd finished the film, Rodney had no idea who the bad guy was or why he'd committed crimes. Not all that different from Rodney's real life, to be honest. At least Ronon and Teyla seemed happier.

By the time the movie was over, John was well and truly out. Rodney didn't bother waking him back up, just took away one of the pillows behind his back so he could lie down more comfortably, and drew the blanket up around his shoulders. It seemed like the drugs were still keeping him pretty comfortable, so Rodney couldn't complain.

Rodney fell asleep, and, for the third night in a row, was awoken in the middle of the night by John. This time, it was by the sudden, rapid beeping of his heart monitor. Rodney sat bolt upright on his cot, trying to figure out what was happening. At first, he thought that John had somehow disconnected the monitor again. But it wasn't indicating that John was flatlining, just that John's heart was beating very, very fast.

"Sheppard?"

No answer. Rodney stumbled out of bed and flipped the light on. John immediately flinched away from it - so he was awake. His face was grey and waxy looking, and for a horrible second Rodney thought he was going to be sick.

"Sheppard, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing," John said, voice hoarse. "Go back to sleep."

John's heart rate was already settling back into something resembling normal. Two years ago, Rodney might have taken John at his word, and gone back to bed. But not now. Not when John was like this.

"Tell me what's wrong."

"It's nothing," John growled. "I said it was nothing. Go to bed."

"Is it the nightmares again?" Rodney asked. He'd slept near Sheppard enough on missions to know that nightmares, at least the ones like he'd been getting the past week, were not a frequent occurrence for him. But if the past few nights were any indication, that just wasn't true right now.

John sighed, closing his eyes. Suddenly, he looked beyond exhausted. He nodded, once, and for a moment Rodney thought he wasn't going to elaborate.

"They're usually not this bad," John said quietly, as though he were trying to defend himself. "I...it's worse on drugs. I-I never have this many."

Rodney didn't know what to say. It almost seemed as if John was worried that Rodney would somehow think less of him, just for being human. In Rodney's book, Sheppard was still the toughest person he'd ever met (even including Ronon), but he couldn't exactly say something like that.

He settled for handing Sheppard a glass of water and sitting in the chair next to the bed. "I know," Rodney told him.

"'Kay," John mumbled. "This...it's not normal for me. It's just 'cause-"

"Because you've been shot full of poison and locked in my room with a killer running loose around Atlantis," Rodney finished. "I should think that would give anyone a few nightmares."

John actually cracked a half-smile at that. "Yeah. I mean, bein' trapped with you…."

Rodney poked him lightly in his uninjured shoulder. "Careful, Sheppard. You are in my room, remember."

John snorted softly. There was still a bit of panic lingering around his eyes, but the heart-rate monitor had slowed to almost a normal pace, and some of the color had come back into his face. "Whatcha gonna do? Read a physics textbook at me?"

"I might," Rodney said darkly.

John made a face, and his eyelids began fluttering. "'M gonna go t'sleep," he muttered.

"I suppose physics can wait until the morning," Rodney conceded. Sheppard's only response was a snore, as he drifted off again.

Rodney went back to his bed, but pulled out his laptop until Sheppard's breathing was deep and even. Eventually, he fell asleep as well, the quiet tone of Sheppard's heartbeat serving as white noise in the background.

John blinked awake, shaking the dregs of sleep away. He couldn't remember any specifics of his dreams, but he had a vague sense of disquiet. He knew his night had not been restful, and he was a little nervous about trying to sleep more during the day, in case the nightmares came back. He knew it was mostly just an effect of the poison and painkillers, but still. He didn't like having nightmares. Knowing that it was just a temporary state didn't make it easier to bear.

At first, he wasn't sure what had woken him up, but then he realized that Rodney's computer was buzzing with the sound of an incoming video chat. Rodney had clearly also been asleep, but John watched as he stumbled out of bed to hit the lights, then settled back down in front of his computer to answer the call.

Sam's face appeared on the screen. "Good morning," she said. "I know it's early, and I'm sorry if I woke you. Things have just been so...this was the only time today I knew I would have time to talk. I'm sorry I haven't checked in earlier."

"That's...that's fine," Rodney said quickly, looking both excited and relieved to get a chance to talk to Sam. "How...have things been?"

"Is John there?" she asked.

Rodney tilted the laptop so John could give Sam a half-hearted wave - he was happy to see her, but he was still half-asleep and processing slowly. He hoped Rodney would be paying attention to everything she was saying, because John certainly wasn't.
"Hello, John. Jennifer told me you were feeling worse a few nights ago, but now you're feeling a little better."

"Yeah," John said. He wasn't feeling much better right at this moment, but he knew he was on a general upward trend for the time being.

Sam nodded slightly, looking satisfied. "That's good to hear. We're still working as fast as possible to identify the Jorian who did this to you, so we can make sure that nothing like this happens again. We're keeping them confined to a specific area of Atlantis, although there are so many children involved that actually enforcing boundaries has been...difficult, to say the least. We also have a few teams scouting for planets that we can relocate the remaining Jorians to. In a worse case scenario, once we find a suitable home for them we can get them off Atlantis and you'll be able to move around freely. Although we haven't found a good home for them yet, and since a few of them are still being cared for in the Infirmary, I think that's at least a week or two away."

John sighed softly - a week or two trapped in Rodney's bed, drugged out and in pain, sounded like literal hell. But he supposed it was better than being dead, which is exactly what he would be if he tried to leave too soon and was hunted down again.

"Why hasn't the investigation been moving faster?" Rodney demanded. "I thought Ronon and Teyla finished talking to everyone...I don't know, a long time ago…."

Sam blew out an exhausted breath and shook her head. "The first round of questioning is done, yes. But there were a lot of people to get through, and it took a few conversations even to narrow it down to the five we have. Before what happened to Sheppard, we were watching the Jorians, but we didn't have them under constant guard. It's very difficult to determine exactly who was where during the Colonel's morning run, especially since we can't exactly rely on testimony from the other Jorians. And there's a number of inconsistencies, it seems almost impossible that any of them could have done it, if we take their statements at face value…."

John blinked softly. This seemed...important, probably, but way too many things for him to follow currently. Hopefully, Rodney was listening better than he was managing. Maybe Sam wouldn't mind if he just closed his eyes for a minute, maybe he could manage to process things a little better if he just focused on listening. John yawned, as quietly as he could, and let his eyes slip closed.

Rodney looked over at John, who seemed to be drifting in and out of a doze. He wished John would just let himself fall fully asleep. Sheppard must be exhausted, what with the nightmares that had kept him up half the night.

"So what's the next step?" Rodney asked, after Sam finished outlining the current state of the investigation. "Ronon and Teyla do more interviews? Will that help?"

Sam's mouth thinned into an angry line at the mention of Ronon's name, and Rodney was suddenly very glad that he was confined in his room, far away from Sam and Ronon.

"I doubt it," Sam said sharply. "Seeing as how Ronon-"

John's eyes drifted open, and he tilted his head towards the screen. "Ron'n? How's he doin'?"

In the fraction of a second, any anger in Sam's face was gone. "Ronon is fine," she told John pleasantly.

"Good," John mumbled, and turned his head away again.

"Frustrated?" Rodney asked sympathetically, when he was fairly sure that John wasn't listening.

"Oh boy," Sam muttered. "Everything is a battle. And about the strangest things, yesterday he-"

Sam broke off, shooting a glance at John, who was watching them sleepily through half-lidded eyes. Clearly, she didn't want to complain about Ronon in front of John. That was kind of her, Rodney thought, especially considering how problematic Ronon was being.

"It's just a stressful time for all of us," Sam said politely, after taking a moment to compose herself.

"It's okay, he's asleep now," Rodney told her, as Sheppard began to snore softly.

Sam let out an exhausted sigh. "I know he's just worried about John, and wants things to be moving quickly. But he's...proving himself to be something of a wild card, and it's making him impossible to work with. He won't drop the idea of questioning the Jorians, even though everything else aside, answers they give during torture wouldn't be anymore reliable than the answers we already have from them. And he's taking the bit of John's death way too far. He seems to have taken it upon himself to get as many of John's men to cry as possible, and he won't stop asking about a funeral for him…."

"That does sound like Ronon," Rodney said. There was a part of him that was glad he was stuck inside the room, doing a job he knew he could do well, as opposed to trying to balance working with Ronon and Sam. He wasn't at all surprised that Ronon was being impossible. "You can complain to me though. I won't tell anyone."

"I thought working with you was hard," Sam said with a sigh. Rodney smiled wryly - he knew she didn't mean anything by it, not anymore. "Turns out, that was nothing."

"He's worried about Sheppard," Rodney said. He figured Sam knew this, but it didn't hurt to be reminded. "He isn't very good at processing feelings in a way that's...helpful, and he can be kind of destructive when he's stressed. But he doesn't really have anything against you. And he's...I mean, he's big, but he would never really do anything, no matter how agitated he got…."

"I know. It's just a lot to deal with, especially now, with everything else."

Rodney let Sam complain about Ronon until she ran out of things to complain about. By the end of their call, she really did seem to be feeling better. Rodney thought most people underestimated the wonders a good long session of complaining could do for the spirits. They said their goodbyes, and Sam promised to try her best to contact them more often.

Rodney let John sleep as long as he wanted, which turned out to not be particularly long. Within the hour, John was starting to stir again. When he woke up, Rodney could tell that he was doing slightly better, although not quite so well as he'd been doing yesterday. He managed some crackers and enough water that even Keller was satisfied when she came by to check on him.

By the time she left, John seemed well and truly awake, as well as slightly drugged and somewhat happier.

"So, what are we doing today?" Rodney asked John, dimly shocked to remember a time when he'd had a job outside of entertaining Sheppard.

"First, what'd Carter say?" John asked, looking a little embarrassed. "Think I might've fallen asleep."

Quickly, Rodney relayed the information Sam had given him, relieved that John seemed to be following it this time around.

"Wow," John said quietly, once Rodney was finished. "That's a lot more helpful 'n anythin' Ronon's been sayin'."

"Isn't it?" Rodney agreed. "Not that I don't love hearing about his plans for your funeral, but…."

John giggled softly, shaking his head. "My funeral…. Bet you'd cry, McKay." He looked up at Rodney, eyes glittering mischievously.

"I would not," Rodney answered automatically, but the thought of Sheppard's funeral, even a fake one, sent a chill straight through his heart. He never wanted to have to find out whether or not he would actually cry at John's funeral.

"So, what are we doing today?" Rodney said quickly, before John could pick up on his discomfort. Luckily, all the drugs in John's system seemed to be making him more distractible, and Sheppard willingly dropped the subject of his own funeral.

"Solvin' the mystery," John said, as though Rodney had missed something obvious. "Colonel Carter jus' gave us more clues."

Rodney didn't particularly want to spend yet another day fruitlessly trying to solve an impossible crime, but if it would keep John distracted, so be it. All he had to do was display enough interest to keep John occupied. Surely, he could manage that.

Three hours later, Rodney was pacing around the room, jabbing at the air with a pencil. "No, see, Janadi can't possibly have been involved, he was in the infirmary the whole time!"

"Yeah, so he knew when I usually go on my run," John insisted, trying to work himself more upright with his one good hand. "Ronon called me from the infirmary t'tell me he couldn't make it on the run, 'cause he got a bit banged up in the extraction."

"No, no, that's all supposition," Rodney said impatiently, turning back to the whiteboard. Their tentative diagram of suspects, motive, and opportunity had grown into a mass of papers and notes, connected by strands of twine that Rodney had found in a bottom drawer, and punctuated by the occasional angry scrawl of whiteboard marker.

"Write it down," John insisted, trying to push himself up again and sagging back against the pillows in frustration. Rodney had noticed him steadily declining over the course of the day, but had chosen not to say anything. He was now looking pale, drawn, and exhausted, but still seemed determined to solve the case. Who was Rodney to try to put a stop to that?

For a while, Rodney had tried to tell himself that he was only trying to solve the case to shut John up. But at this point, Rodney was pretty sure that ship had sailed. Regardless of how tired and sick John was, if John kept making up facts and treating them like reality, Rodney was going to strangle him.

Rodney, very grudgingly, added Janadi to the list of suspects. He tried to show John how annoyed he was by including suspects with no basis in fact by making his handwriting look angry, but John didn't seem to pick up on that.

"I put him on the list," Rodney said when he was done, "even though he had an alibi and including him is completely ridiculous."

"Hey!" John said. "Like everyone on the list has an alibi. It's really easy to have an alibi with no evidence on Atlantis, since there's no security cameras or anything."

"There was evidence." It took all of Rodney's effort not to scream at John. "Keller saw him in the infirmary. While the attack was happening. She remembers filling out his chart when she got the phone call from Ronon."

"But still," John insisted. "It just seems...I mean, probably there's someone who thinks they saw pretty much everyone on the list that morning, but someone has to be lying, or...or mistaken, I mean...that's just common sense-"

Rodney took a step towards John, and he realized just in time that he had been half-prepared to take his friend by the shoulder and shake him.

"I think we should take a break from this," he said, as gently as he could manage. "We've...we've done enough for today."

"Rodney," John said, sounding for all the world like a whiny child. "We're not done, we need to…."

Rodney was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be having anywhere near this many emotions about a case that it wasn't even their job to solve, and there was absolutely no point in both of them getting so worked up over it.

"But we didn't even talk about Elexa yet, and I' m also pretty sure we need to revisit Teragon, I mean, Ronon said he seemed a little crazy during the interview and Sam said Zelenka was the only person who saw him near the mess hall…."

"We will," Rodney said. "But you need to get some rest first."

"But-"

"We're done for now," Rodney said, as firmly as he could. He didn't want this to even dance along the edge of turning into an actual fight.

"Fine," John hissed, and looked like he very much wanted to storm out of the room. Instead, he slipped slowly down his stack of pillows, closing his eyes and crossing his uninjured arm across his chest slightly. The effect was somewhat ruined by the overlarge sweatshirt, and the fact that he couldn't move his other arm, but Rodney let it go. Within a few minutes, John's scowl had relaxed, and he was asleep again.