There was a war waging inside of John. On either side of the battle lines were the cajoling masses of his disordered thoughts. Each force was equally ferocious; gnashing broken teeth and swords at the same time in his head. The million and a half questions he had for the man standing in front of him took up one side of the battle, while his anger at what Fitzpatrick had done stood resolutely on the other. Both were ready to defend to the death that inner sanctum of trust John had always guarded so carefully within him.
Fitzpatrick was the kid the IOA had put in the chair after Carson had refused to be a party to mass murder. He was the unknown soldier who was the only other person on the face of the planet who knew exactly what John Sheppard had gone through that day. They were connected in ways no one could have ever imagined, and yet his counterpart was currently standing there with a gun pointed at John's head and murder in his eyes.
Nothing about this was right. The universe had screwed up again because on that first day, as soon as John walked into the training room and up to that big, burly Irishman, something should have happened. The skies should have opened up. The very Earth should have begun to shake. The moment of their reunion should have unmade the world. But there was nothing. No indication from the universe that John had just come face to face with the only other person who knew what it felt like to end two billion lives.
If John had gotten some warning, some indication of their shared history, then maybe he could have prevented all of this. If he had just stuck around after the war, then maybe Sean Fitzpatrick didn't end up here. They could have helped one another, rather than end up here, in this moment, with guns and bombs and canisters filled with cyanide gas separating them on the battlefield.
John and Fitz had been through the same inexcusable horror, yet John could not help but notice how differently they'd each handled that trauma. Or how close John had come to sharing in Fitzpatrick's madness. For dark, dark years after the war that he hadn't told anyone about yet, John had entertained sinister ideas of just what he could do to those he held responsible for ruining his life if he ever got his hands on them. Revenge had always been an enticing prospect in his head that he would pull out every so often during his years of exile. Make a few foolhardy plans of exactly how he would do it when he needed something to distract himself from the life he'd chosen. But they had always been just that, plans - and ones he knew he would never follow through on. That was where the similarities between John Sheppard and Sean Fitzpatrick ended.
Fitz had let what happened to them twist his insides into unrecognizable highways of psychosis. He was threatening to murder an entire mountain of people over what had been done to them and seemed to be under the delusion that John was somehow going to help. And yet, as much as that thought revolted him, as much as it shook John to his very core and went against everything he stood for, he couldn't help but wonder, had his life been different, would he be in the same place as Sean Fitzpatrick was right now? Would he have chosen this violent path over the one he had taken, had he not had Blue River or his memories of Atlantis to fall back on? While John couldn't say yes to that question, he also couldn't say no to it either. That fact alone had him looking up at Sean Fitzpatrick and seeing him in an entirely different light.
Their pasts were inches apart from each other and had even traversed the same path for a while, yet had veered off course so completely eighteen years ago. While their futures were miles apart now, John could understand the place where Fitzpatrick was coming from and a little of the anger inside of him died. Lord help him, but John could understand where the guy was coming from.
"Is that why you killed all those ATA gene carriers, Fitz?" he asked, letting the sharp edge of his voice fall away. "Because of what happened to us that day?"
Evening had settled outside of the cottage. The windows across the way were dark now and suggested several hours had passed. John wondered if it were true, or just a trick of the mist that had once again taken over the valley. The heat inside the cottage was stifling now and Fitzpatrick had begun to sweat heavily. They all were, really. The heat the fire produced was mixing with the tension in the room, the two forces roiling together and making everything feel heavy and close. Even the look Fitzpatrick threw him next seemed to hold such. He was eyeing John doubtfully.
"The expedition can't be allowed to continue," Fitz said with dead eyes and a voice devoid of emotion. "I can't allow it."
"But why kill them? Why not just...?"
"Seriously, Sheppard?" Fitzpatrick interrupted with eyes flashing. The gun still pointed at John's head shook in the man's hand. "As long as there are people around able to power the ancient technology, the SGC will never stop trying to get back to Pegasus. You of all people should know that by now. I mean, look at what they did to you! They tracked you down in the Wisconsin wilderness for Christ's sake! And then dragged you back here just so they could get their precious program back up and running. After everything that happened to us, they still came and that right there should have clued you in on the type of people they have running the show.
"I mean, come on! They were so eager to get their star quarterback up off the bench and back in the game that they let me, a high school dropout with nothing more than a GED and a fake college diploma, play shrink to their most valuable player.
"And I faked everything , Sheppard. My service record, my schooling, the psychology degree, all of it. And it was pretty fucking easy too. They were just so desperate to get you in the right headspace again that they practically let me waltz right onto the base. If they can't even be bothered to protect their most valuable assets, then what does that say about how they feel about the rest of the human race?"
"But you were helping me, Fitz!" John pointed out, his voice going high in his indignation. "That's the part I don't get. Why did you do that if you were just trying to stop the entire expedition all along?"
Fitzpatrick's mouth curled up into a rueful smile. "Do you have any idea how closely they were monitoring you? The only time I was able to get anywhere near you was in the training rooms and even then Dr. Beckett was always watching on those damn monitors of his. Always spying and listening to everything we said."
"We were alone on Atlantis," John pointed out, but Fitz just shook his head.
"Not truly. I couldn't risk someone overhearing, not with all the new security measures they were adding to Atlantis. I had to keep up appearances. Otherwise, they were all going to figure out that I wasn't who I said I was.
"But I had a plan! I was going to take you paintballing like we discussed to help you get your mind off Beckett and explain everything to you then. And then you and I were gonna come back here and finally end all of this, once and for all. But your goddamn guard dog in Blue River had to go and fuck it all up for me with that phone call. And now here we are. You don't trust me anymore and none of this is going how I planned!"
"And I never am going to trust you, Fitz," John said carefully, watching Fitzpatrick for any sign that his control was about to slip again. He seemed to respond best when John kept his voice level and his demeanor calm, so he spoke his next words very carefully. "I can't trust you. Not when you've got my friend over there wired to a dead man's switch. Maybe I'd have a little easier time believing all this if you'd just let her go. Let her walk out of here alive and unharmed and I'll listen to anything you have to say to me."
"Oh relax, Sheppard," Fitzpatrick said, waving his gun at John dismissively. "I had to make sure you knew I was serious and wouldn't come in here guns blazing. I may have overexaggerated that part a bit." Fitz raised the hand holding the dead man's switch. "I don't really have her explosives wired to this. Only the gas canisters hidden in the mountain."
"So you'll let her go?" John asked almost hopefully, gesturing towards the front door and the marines he could only hope were waiting there, hidden in the mist.
Fitzpatrick actually laughed. In the firelight, he looked almost devilish. "Not so fast, Romeo. She's still sitting on enough C4 to level this place and pressure switches that won't deactivate until I release the gas. Once you help me do that though, she's home free. I swear to god."
Fitzpatrick smiled at him again, though it was more like a grimace. All John could see lingering behind it was the madness that seemed to be fueling Fitz's decisions. The counterfeit SEAL was talking about John helping him kill everyone in the mountain again and John's brain was back to trying to figure out what plan Fitz could possibly have that would make him think John would ever even entertain such an idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the other figure still sitting in the chair beside Carrie. He hadn't heard a peep from whomever it was, nor had he seen them move in quite some time.
What was Fitz planning? John could only hope his ramblings were nothing more than the product of a warped mind. The incomprehensible connections made by a man who had recognized the same similarities in their lives that John had, but had come to different conclusions. Like that John would support another round of mass murder, or that Fitz knew what made him tick.
"Keep him talking, Sheppard," Rodney finally said in his ear. "We're evacuating the mountain as we speak. Lorne's team is sweeping the entire base. We'll find the canisters and disable them."
John hid his relief at finally getting an update with a quick look over his shoulder. The figure beside Carrie was still hooded and unmoving. Backlit by the roaring fire, John caught Carrie's eyes next. They were wide and confused, but there was nothing John could do about that right now. He had to figure out a way to end all of this that didn't involve more bloodshed. His only option at the moment seemed to be giving Rodney and Lorne more time. Well, John could do that. He and Fitzpatrick certainly had enough to discuss.
John pulled his eyes away from Carrie, trying to promise again that he had everything under control before turning around to face the man again. If Rodney wanted John to keep him talking, then by god, John was going to keep the man talking.
"How can I believe anything you say, Fitz?" he said, keeping his voice steady. "You tried to murder my friend yesterday."
"Can you blame me?" Fitz asked desperately, stepping forward. When John stiffened and put out his arms to cover more of Carrie and their still unveiled fourth, Fitz froze instantly. His glazed eyes took on an almost dejected look as he let his head fall.
"I know he was your friend," he began sadly. "But Dr. Beckett forced my hand. He was going to start his ATA gene research up again. Once he did that, I knew it was only a matter of time before you all realized who I was. And I couldn't allow him to do this to anyone else. That gene therapy they forced on me... it changed me somehow." Fitzpatrick looked back up and flickering firelight caught the moisture gathering in his eyes, making them shine for a moment. But it was a flash of black, not green, that caught the light.
"Carson Beckett turned me into a fucking monster with that poison of his and I had to stop him. I had to! Before he ruined any more lives.
"But I was always going to make it all up to you, John!" he promised with pleading eyes that seemed to be desperately seeking approval. "If you don't believe anything else I tell you, believe that. I knew his death was going to destroy you at first so I was going to bring you here and reunite you with your girl and then give you something back in exchange for what I took." Fitz gestured towards the hooded figure beside Carrie. "And this gift I have for you is big, Sheppard. Huge! Something you've wanted ever since the day they forced us to kill all those innocent people."
Fitzpatrick moved forward again, forcing John to back away from the fireplace with his Baretta. John had no choice but to comply and held his breath as Fitz approached the two chairs. Carrie froze in place, her dark eyes wide and panicky as Fitz came closer.
But Fitz was apparently not interested in Carrie and came to a stop beside the chair occupied by the hooded figure. The chair must not have been wired because the bound figure jerked violently in his seat and nothing exploded. John thought he caught the barest hint of a strangled whimper.
John knew he needed to buy Rodney and Lorne more time to search the mountain and get everyone to safety. Either that or try and wrestle the deadman's switch away from Fitzpatrick somehow. But the fake SEAL had a good, solid 100 pounds and enough crazy on John to easily win that fight. Plus Fitz was the only one with a gun, and now there was a hooded and bound figure between them. The way Fitz was looking over at John he figured, whoever it was, the man considered the figure his biggest bargaining chip yet.
Whatever Fitz had planned, John felt as though they had come to some kind of defining moment. A culmination of weeks of bread crumbs and conjecture. All the pieces of the puzzle ready to slot into place and reveal the final picture. Whether it was a death scene or everyone riding off into the sunset, alive and well, John could only guess. All he knew for certain was that he really didn't want to know who was hidden underneath that hood.
Something about the figure in the chair was familiar to John, but he hadn't been able to come up with a name. Whoever he was, Fitzpatrick seemed to think he was important. Important enough to excuse him of everything he had done up until that point. Important enough to get John on board with whatever dastardly plan he had cooking up in that seriously mixed-up head of his.
Fitzpatrick jerked the chair away from Carrie a bit and pressed the barrel of his gun into the fabric of the figure's hood, pulling another strangled noise from the person beneath. He smiled then, all teeth and hysteria and John resisted the urge to try and pull Carrie away from it all.
As fucked up as the situation was, John drew some comfort in the knowledge that Carrie was not in any immediate danger should Fitzpatrick decide to release the dead man's switch he had clutched in his other hand. Fate might have granted John a reprieve in that one thing, but he could only imagine what was going through Carrie's mind at the moment. She'd put on a brave face earlier, but if he got them all out of this alive, would she even want to speak to him? John was putting her through hell, even before he agreed to come back to the SGC. Now she was strapped to a chair and sitting on enough C4 to vaporize a small town, and all John could think about was how he'd put her there. Maybe not intentionally, but it was a consequence of his actions, and he wondered if that was even a forgivable thing.
"I'm not the bad guy here, John," Fitzpatrick was saying, still throwing his name around so casually. "Do you remember what we talked about in the training room the other day? I told you that there are people out there who really deserve the blame for everything that happened to us. I dedicated my life to making sure each and every one of those bastards paid for what they did. And they did pay, John. I got all of them, except for one. One I saved just for you.
Fuck, you have no idea how long I searched for you after you disappeared. I scoured the countryside just hoping you might show up. Checked all the hospitals. We were supposed to do this together! But then you left me and I had to find out that you were in Wisconsin the whole time shacking up with some whore!" Fitz said angrily, waving the gun in Carrie's direction. John stiffened, uncomfortable with the shift in conversation.
"Think of everything we could have done together!" Fitzpatrick went on. "If only you would have waited for me! Why didn't you wait for me, John? Why?"
"I woke up in a hospital registered under a fake name," John replied, trying desperately to keep his voice level and calm. "I was completely alone and thought everyone hated me for what they made us do! What did you expect me to do?"
"I don't know." Fitz countered angrily, "Try to get some answers first? Reach out to all of us before you decided to just disappear off the face of the Earth? I needed you, John! And now those bastards have you brainwashed again and I have to try and undo it all! I'm not the bad guy here," he beseeched John. "It was the IOA and everyone else who let it happen who are the real villains in our story. Remember?"
Fitz dug the gun harder into the side of the hooded figure's face. Whomever it was tried to scramble away but his bonds were too tight.
"Believe me, Sheppard, once you do this, once you put a bullet in this man's brain, you're going to be free. And then you and I can release the gas together and put an end to all this madness. No more Wraith. No more SGC. It will finally be over." Fitzpatrick reached forward, brutally tearing the hood away from the head of the figure sitting bound in the chair.
Anger and bile rose up into the back of John's throat as he saw who it was. Promises made years ago echoed around in his head as John clenched his fists into tight balls of fury.
Something dark overtook him then and it was fighting against that part of himself that would always value human life... But the funny thing about white was, as soon as you let it mix with the tiniest bit the black, you got gray. And no matter how much white you kept trying to dump back into it, you still only ever got gray.
John felt as though he was about to be sick as he took in the man before him, bound and gagged and shaking like a leaf. He was staring up at John with wide, frightened eyes that begged for rescue.
John knew Fitzpatrick was watching him closely, gauging his reaction, but nothing John tried would make his gaze break away from the cowering man before him.
Richard Woolsey looked old. Time had not been kind to him. His face was a network of creases. One, John imagined, for every life that he had taken. One for every sleepless night he'd lived through. Woolsey's hair was nearly gone now but the white half-ring that remained was long and stringy. Sweat had plastered most of that stringy hair to his flushed skin. The rest stuck out at ridiculous angles that made him look like some kind of mad scientist. These were all details John hadn't noticed that morning in the hall.
John looked up at Fitz who was smiling proudly. He knew he needed to consider his next move very carefully. If he showed even the slightest bit of the disgust he was feeling for the fraudulent Navy SEAL in that moment, then there was a very real chance the man might fly off the handle and do something stupid. If he played along, he wasn't sure he'd be able to live with himself afterwards.
Then again, something was whispering to him from the back of his mind. A small voice, but a dark voice nonetheless. The revenge John so desperately craved was sitting just a few feet away from him, bound and gagged and defenseless. Fitzpatrick was handing that revenge to him on a silver platter. All he had to do was take a few steps across the room and end it once and for all. Fitz was reviving something dark and hungry that had been living down in the darkest recesses of John's soul for 18 years. A darkness he could so very easily release right now.
"Why, Fitz?" he asked, figuring it was safe enough.
"For you, of course," he replied, watching him closely. "I did all of this for you. Once I was able to escape Area 51, I started planning. You have no idea how easy it was for me to establish a fake identity and lay the groundwork for all this. I just wish you could have been there with me. You should have seen it. I practically had Woolsey here eating out of my hands by the time I was finished with him and Bradshaw."
Fitzpatrick pushed the gun barrel into the flesh of Woolsey's cheek and chuckled. "Hear that Richard? You know, if John here didn't need to kill you himself, I'd almost be tempted to let you live. Just for all the help you and Major Bradshaw gave me." Fitz drew the gun away again and then patted at the red place on Woolsey's cheek as if in apology.
"I knew this one would never stop trying to find you," he went on, still looking down at Woolsey. "They were never going to stop trying to get their precious expedition back off the ground, no matter how many lives they destroyed in the process." Fitzpatrick pressed the gun to Woolsey's temple this time and the man tried to tip sideways to get away from it. "I couldn't let it happen though. I couldn't let Carson Beckett infect one more person with that poison."
"So, what?" John asked. "You decided to poison them first?" Fitz's logic seemed seriously flawed.
"Better dead than forced into that chair," Fitzpatrick said with a shrug. "I only wish someone would have done that for me before..." But Fitzpatrick couldn't finish. He pulled his hand away from Woolsey's face to cover his mouth with the back of it. "If they had, then maybe my Ma would still be alive."
"Jesus, Fitz. I'm sorry," John said, realizing that he genuinely meant it. There were so many things about the past he wished he could change. So many people he'd let down; this poor, lost kid, included. John should have been there to protect him.
"It's Liam," Fitz replied, dropping his hand.
John furrowed his brow in confusion.
"My real name," Fitzpatrick explained softly. "It's Liam Maguire."
John was struck again by the thought of how very close he had come to being exactly like the young man standing in front of him now. Lost. Utterly alone. Completely misunderstood, standing in a fire lit room and talking in circles that only made sense to him. Wishing that someone would have just taken the time to stop and find out what the hell was going on with him.
"I'm not really sure what you want from me here, Liam," John said, testing out the name. "What's the endgame here?"
Fitz's face hardened slightly. "What I want from you, Sheppard," he said on an irritated sigh, bringing the gun up to rest against his own temple, "is to know that you understand why I'm doing all of this, and then I want your help to end it."
"Keep it together, Sheppard, " Rodney's voice tried to soothe him in his ear. "Just stall for as long as you can. We've already found and disabled one canister and are still sweeping. You can do this. Keep him talking."
John resisted the urge to raise his hand up to his ear and tell his friends to hurry the fuck up. They were all running out of time and John had no idea what Fitz was capable of any more. The things he was saying, half of them didn't make any sense.
But John had a feeling he knew exactly what Fitz was going to offer him next, and that thought terrified him more than the man's erratic behavior. For the first time in his life, John wasn't sure he would be able to say no.
"So you want me to help you murder a mountain full of people?" John asked, moving their discussion away from Woolsey.
"No, John!" Fitz yelled, pointing the gun in his direction again. "You can't look at it that way! What I want you to do is help me ensure that the Atlantis expedition never recovers. I want you to end all of this with me, once and for all. Together. Just like we did that day in the skies 18 years ago."
"I don't think I can do that for you, Liam," he answered truthfully and was surprised when the man actually smiled softly at him.
"That's okay, Sheppard. I figured you were going to say that at first. That's why Richard is here with us today. Once you put a bullet through his skull, you're going to understand. Everything will become clear after that. And then you and I will walk out of here and put this place and everything she represents, behind us."
The man named Liam Maguire rounded the panicked figure of Woolsey and set the pistol he'd been using the whole time down onto the floorboards near his feet. With a quick kick of his boot, he sent the gun tumbling across the floor and towards John. It came to rest against the side of his own boot.
John looked down at it, distracted for a moment by the firelight glistening off the metal, giving the piece the illusion of luminescence if only for a second.
"Just a few more minutes, John. We're close!" Rodney screeched in his ear.
"There's only one round in there," Liam warned as John bent over to pick up the gun from the floor. "And don't forget who has the switch. You try and use that thing on me, I will let go of this." Maguire held the dead man's switch out for him to see as if to reiterate his point.
The gun he'd been given was impressive. It was one John likely would have enjoyed using himself. It felt secure in his hand, well balanced and snug against his palm. John wrapped a trembling finger around the trigger. The grip was still warm from Maguire's own hand. He pointed it towards the ground, testing its weight, wondering what the kickback would feel like reverberating up his arm.
"Once you do this, you'll see," Liam said.
"You know that from experience?" John asked.
Maguire nodded vigorously. "Oh hell yeah. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. Like the world reveals itself. Everything is going to make perfect sense to you once you do this, I promise."
"Hang in there John, we're doing everything we can. Stall him!"
Carrie started to struggle against her bonds, but John only had eyes for the two men in front of him. Everything else fell away.
"It's what you've always wanted," Liam all but whispered as John raised his arm to point the gun at Woolsey. The man was openly crying now, snot and tears running down his face.
"Admit it. You can't tell me this face hasn't haunted your dreams every single night for the past 18 years. Think of how good you'll sleep once he's gone."
The rest of the world fell silent around him as John found himself standing in an empty room with nothing standing between him and the revenge he'd been seeking for nearly two decades. And that revenge was so tempting. It sat vulnerable and weak before him, tied to a chair and trembling in fear.
It would be so easy to just squeeze. One bullet and it would all be over. Just one and it would be enough to end his torment forever.
"John..." It was Rodney's voice that reached him then. His real name spoken by the only person in all the world who was allowed to use it and never did.
"I know what you're thinking. But you can't. You can't murder a man in cold blood. That's not who you are. That's not the man I…"
But John already had his answer. It was no big epiphany or sudden revelation. He just simply realized that the answer had always been there hiding beneath the layers of his anger.
"The sweep is done and the mountain is secure!" Rodney called out.
John chambered a round.
"The canisters have all been disabled!"
John let out a shuddering sigh...
"We're coming! We're coming for you guys, Sheppard!"
He lined up his shot and pulled the trigger.
At first, nothing happened.
John and Fitz just stood there, John with the gun still held out in front of him. The man formerly known as Sean Fitzpatrick standing there with mouth agape.
There should have been blood. There should have been a wound. The gun had gone off, but there was nothing.
John kept looking from gun to man still standing unharmed before him, realization dawning on him like the summer sun over the mountains.
Blanks. Fuck.
"You... I mean, I had to plan for it of course, but I never thought... Not in a million years..." Maguire stammered as John pulled the trigger again. But the chamber and magazine were empty. The click of the hammer echoing uselessly out into the empty space between them like the betrayal it represented was the only sound it made.
Woolsey was crying.
Liam's face morphed into something John had never seen on another man's face before. It was like pure evil. The man was snarling and John tensed as he watched him reach around behind to draw something out from his waistband. It was another gun.
But before John could even lunge forward, Liam pressed the barrel to the side of Woolsey's head and pulled the trigger.
Blood and brains splattered out and right into the side of Carrie. Some of the mess made it into the fire and globs of it sat sizzling on top of the logs as she screamed around her gag. The cottage filled with the unmistakable scent of burning flesh that had John fighting against the urge to be sick. It was what his own bullet was supposed to have done. He'd pointed it at Maguire instead.
John sprang forward without even thinking, and dove headfirst into Liam's middle just as his hand began to point in Carrie's direction.
It was like rushing a brick wall and the impact knocked the wind out of John, but it had the desired effect. Liam lost his footing and went down hard under the unexpected attack. Unfortunately, John had underestimated how easy it would be to throw the former soldier off balance and followed him down onto the floor, the gun skittering away to places unknown.
They were a tangle of angry limbs for a moment, the larger man trying to grab John's more lithe frame any way he could with the now defunct dead man's switch still clutched in his hand. With Maguire occupied with trying to keep the switch away from John, he was able to twist out of holds that normally would have incapacitated him and get back up onto his knees. But Liam eventually got frustrated with the useless scrabbling and struck out at John with a fist.
Those fists must have been made of lead because knuckles impacted his cheekbone right below his left eye and John could hear the bone break.
The eye swelled shut almost instantly, warm blood trickling down his face from the cut Maguire opened. In the brief moments of incapacitated shock and blindness that followed, Liam wound up for another swing. He used the hand still clutching the deadman's switch and drove it up into the center of John's gut. The force of the blow knocked the oxygen right out of him and sent him skidding a few inches across the floor as he was thrown backwards.
John rolled instinctively and then started coughing. He could taste blood and feel the familiar tightness of either bruised or busted ribs. He couldn't tell which. Based on how much power Liam had managed to get behind that fist, John's money was on broken.
Maguire was scrambling up to his feet, but John was smart enough to know that he was never going to survive this if the guy was allowed to find sure footing. He kicked out with a heavy boot, catching Maguire in the face. The satisfying crunch of bone reached his ears and he nearly smiled. He sprang up from the floor on the rattle of a damaged lung and moved forward to try and keep Liam down any way he could, but he'd missed something. Maguire had gotten a beefy paw around the gun that John had lost sight of in the fight. He raised it up, quick as lightning.
The cottage was once again filled with the sound of a gunshot. The bullet impacted John's shoulder forcing him to stumble backwards a few steps.
At first, there was no pain, though his body crumpled as if there was. From somewhere over to his left, Carrie gave another strangled scream.
Stunned for a moment and unable to pull himself up off the floor, John watched helplessly as Liam Maguire got his feet underneath his bulky frame and stood up, swaying slightly but recovering quickly.
The former soldier's face was a mess when he turned. Just as John had suspected, his nose was broken again and he was now missing several of his front teeth. As Maguire came to loom over John, blood dripped down from his mutilated mouth in stringy red bands.
John dragged himself backward, leaving a trail of blood in his wake until his back finally hit the far wall. John had led Maguire as far away from Carrie as he could manage. Sensing he was about to be cornered, he tried to get up on his feet again. But Liam got there first and brought a heavy boot down directly over John's knee.
He screamed. He couldn't help himself. The knee had never fully healed. It had been giving him trouble for weeks and he banged his head back against the wall trying to escape the pain. Agony was the only word he could come up for the lightning bolts that flashed up from the shredded joint and into his thigh.
"Stay down!" Liam ordered, even though it was fairly obvious John was going nowhere any time soon.
"God damn it, John! I just fucking handed you Richard Woolsey on a silver platter, and this is the thanks I get? You trying to murder me?"
"You're the murderer here, you asshole!" John raged back at Liam, just as frenzied but half hoping his words would keep the man occupied. Give his team more time to bust in and save the day. "If you just would have come and talked to me like a normal human being that first day, I would have helped you! And you want to talk about trust? You didn't trust me enough to come talk to me first."
But Maguire just kept raving like he hadn't even heard John speak. "I bring you the woman you love, practically fucking gift wrap the man you've wanted to kill for the past 18 years, and this is how it ends for us?" Liam was pacing up and down the space in front of John's outstretched legs now. When he looked over in Carrie's direction, John just started talking.
"Fucking hell, dude. You really are insane!" he yelled around the pain. Any moment Rodney and Lorne were going to burst through that door and end this. They would get to him before the alarmingly large blood pool soaking his left flank and arm got any bigger.
"I was never going to get on board with this, Liam. Not in a million years! And the fact that you even thought I would be capable of shooting someone in the head just goes to show how you have no idea who the fuck I really am." John spat a mouthful of blood out onto the floor beside his throbbing knee and pulled as much air as he could into his rapidly weakening lungs.
"I'm sorry that you had to live through what you did, kid. I really am. But killing a mountain full of innocent people isn't going to change what happened to us!"
Liam stopped mid-pace and came to crouch down in front of John. "Maybe not, Sheppard, but it sure as hell will keep it from happening ever again, won't it?" He was sneering again and John tried not to flinch when the barrel of the gun was pressed into the side of his head. He should have made a move for it, he knew the maneuver by rote, but his arms were nothing more than dead weights at his sides now. The bullet in his shoulder had rendered his dominant hand useless.
"No, buddy," John said, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him when it became too heavy to keep up any longer. "It's not going to change a thing. There are always going to be men like those IOA members in the world. Even the Wraith culling a quarter of our population can't stop that. What's going to save our planet is men like us. So come on, Liam. Put the gun down and help me out. Untie my friend and then we can leave here and do all that together. Like we always should have done." John pulled in more air, noting a rattle in his chest. "No more dead people. Not on our watch. Help me save them this time."
Maguire paused like he might actually be listening. The gun pointed at John's head retreated as he stood up again.
"Help me save them," John pleaded with him again.
For one brief moment, John thought he saw something lucid pass across Liam's blood-covered face. It took root right there behind his eyes, just as a perfectly round red sniper dot skittered up his shirt and settled in the middle of his forehead.
"LORNE WAIT!" John bellowed on the last full breath he had left, but Liam had seen the dot on the front of his shirt.
He looked back over at John. His eyes lost whatever light had been in them before. And in that moment, John Sheppard knew he had lost him forever.
Another casualty of the Pegasus Galaxy. Another name written on the stars in blood.
"Rodney..." John whispered...
Liam threw himself out of the way of the first bullet like something out of a bad action movie, his arms and legs extended out in front of his body as he flattened his back. The bullet whizzed past his head, missing his skull by mere inches and it embedded itself uselessly somewhere in the wall above the fireplace. John tried to crane his neck around to see if the shot had strayed anywhere near Carrie. But before he could, he was pushed back into the wall on some kind of concussive force he didn't quite understand. Three impacts, barely noticeable.
John looked back over at Maguire, taking in the smoking gun in the man's hand and the strange half-smile playing at one corner of his mouth. The smile lingered there even as the next sniper's bullet found its mark.
Liam Maguire crumpled to the floor, his gaze never breaking away from John's, even as the life fled from his eyes.
The cottage around them erupted into a turbulent wind tunnel of frantic noise and worried footfalls as John sat there, still staring into the empty eyes of the man he'd once known as Sean Fitzpatrick.
He was dead. As dead as Carson had been in his dreams. Sean Fitzpatrick - or Liam Maguire, if that's how history decided to remember him as - was gone and John hadn't been the one to pull the trigger.
The pool of blood that had been forming beneath John finally reached his useless right arm. The thick liquid was still warm. John looked down. There was so much of it.
"Rodney?"
"I'm here," Rodney said, falling to his knees beside John. Lorne was right behind him, securing the scene and kicking Maguire's weapon away, even though he was very obviously dead.
Gentle fingers reached up to check the pulse point at his neck as John tried to get his eyes to stay open and focus on Rodney's face.
"Carrie?"
"She's fine, Sheppard. They're taking care of her now. Try not to talk." Lorne was speaking from somewhere off to their right.
"Rodney…"
"I know. Just hold on. The medics are on their way."
John knew now that the concussive force that had thrown him back against the wall had been bullets. He could feel them. Three shots, center mass, point blank range. He wasn't going to make it.
"Rodney, I need you to listen to me for a second," he said, barely forcing the words out before he started choking on the blood he coughed up a moment later.
"Stop it," his old friend said, starting to fumble with the velcro straps of John's tac vest. He grabbed one of Rodney's wrists with his one good arm and held it to the center of his chest.
"Thank you..."
"For what?" Rodney asked, trying to pull his hand away. John used the last of his energy to keep it there.
"For saving me."
Rodney looked up and their gazes locked instantly. There was so much John wanted to say. Confessions and apologies and declarations of undying fealty and devotion. But there was no air left in his lungs and he had no energy left to fill them back up again.
"You can't leave me," Rodney pleaded, emotion cracking him wide open when he seemed to come to the same conclusion John just had. He wasn't going to survive this. "I just got you back."
"Remember... what I said."
John could no longer hold his arm up and it dropped uselessly back down to the floor, splashing into the steadily growing pool of blood beneath him. "You're a hero."
The scientist, his oldest friend, the person he would miss the most, lifted his hand and touched the side of John's face just as the medics arrived and he was pulled out of the way.
Rodney's name died on his lips as John lost his grip on consciousness and slipped, once again, into the darkness.