Rodney McKay ran his hands through his aggressively thinning hair and continued to pace the line he'd steadily been carving into the floor for the past few minutes. He wasn't used to this... being on the sidelines with nothing to contribute, while others took the lead. For ten entire minutes they'd been trying to stabilize John and now Rodney was hearing words like "surgery" and "he'd never survive another round" pop out over the din of voices.

Maxwell Roth, the doctor who had come with them from the SGC and was now overseeing John's care was going over the readouts from their latest scans. Rodney made himself pay attention to everything he said, despite his terror.

"He's bleeding again," Roth said, pointing to something on the pad he held. "See it?"

One of his colleagues, a man Rodney had seen around the infirmary a few times but had never officially met, squinted down at it. "You're gonna have to go back in there."

"But look at these readings, Tom. He'll never survive another round of surgery. I kept telling them bringing him here was a mistake."

Roth and his colleague both glanced over at Rodney. When they realized he was hanging on their every word, they turned away and started conversing with their heads close together and low to the screen.

Normally a comment like that would have set Rodney's teeth on edge and made him say something he'd later regret. But he found he just didn't have it in him this time. Bringing John here probably was a mistake, but what choice did they have? Roth and his buddy had told them all to 'prepare themselves'. One could argue that bringing John here was doing just that. It was giving them all an opportunity to exhaust every avenue they could possibly think of so that at least some of this wouldn't haunt them for the rest of their lives. And why not bring John here if they just thought he was going to die? Better he do it here on Atlantis, in the city he always loved, then in the middle of some cold military base.

Rodney knew they were out of options now. Even after spending hours in the infirmary just pounding out ideas for what more they could do, in the end, they'd come up with nothing. Just a sorry little mashup of desperation and failed ingenuity.

Rodney had been given a problem that he just couldn't solve, and it was driving him mad.

He knew it wasn't logical to think that way. There were other variables at work here besides his own ineptitude. For one, he had no control over the fact that none of their off-world allies were coming to help. Or that forcing John into a stasis pod would just prolong the inevitable. Not to mention go against the advanced directive he'd shown Rodney once, back in the early days of the expedition. But those cold, hard facts weren't as comforting as they should have been. Normally, he could accept a failure if there were elements of it that had been beyond his control.

But not this time. If John died, Rodney would shoulder the blame, regardless of what Carson had said. The old Rodney might have seen reason, but not this one. Not where John was concerned.

Casting his eyes to the infirmary entrance, Rodney searched for signs of his son. They were quickly running out of time and he was alone. Carson had been taken for tests in another part of the infirmary, Lorne had been MIA since delivering the news that none of their off-world allies were coming to help. TJ had left to find Carrie what felt like hours ago.

Rodney had been left alone to deal with a finality that was just starting to settle down around his shoulders. A realization that this was it. He knew firsthand what it was like to lose someone without ever getting to say goodbye, and he would spare his son and John's friend that misery if he could. They just had to get here first.

"Where in the hell is everyone," he growled into the comms. There was a crackle of static for a moment and then nothing. "You all better get your asses back in here. Now. "

Rodney tried to keep the desperation out of his voice, but knew it hadn't worked.

"BP is dropping, Dr. Roth. 85/52," a nurse informed the room as the monitors continued their harried alarms, sounding more and more desperate the longer Rodney let himself listen to them.

For the first time in days, Rodney watched as John shifted beneath his infirmary blankets. He looked on the verge of regaining consciousness, his brow creased in that way it always did when he was in an incredible amount of pain but trying to hide it. The movement got the attention of Dr. Roth who came back over to the side of John's bed. He consulted the monitors for a moment before listening to Sheppard's chest with his stethoscope. Rodney wanted so badly to ask what was happening, to demand answers, but knew his questions would only distract Roth and his staff. It nearly killed him, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Let's set up for an echocardiogram," Roth requested to a nearby nurse as he continued to listen to John's chest.

The other doctor, what's his name, came up beside him. "Did you notice the jugulars?"

"I saw 'em," Roth replied tiredly as he straightened. "I'm also hearing muffled heart sounds."

"Do you think they missed something the first time around?" what's-his-name suggested. "A bone fragment or a piece of a bullet maybe?"

"Or it could just be from the chest trauma," Roth mused. "Let's run the echo and see what we get." Rodney watched closely as a nurse handed Roth the wand to what he could only assume was the echocardiogram.

They had the front of John's infirmary gown open now and Rodney tried not to look at the bandages that covered each one of John's four bullet holes. Or the blood that had soaked up into them, likely from all the moving he'd been doing. Even the bruises Sean Fitzpatrick had left behind on his chest were too much for Rodney to comprehend at the moment.

"Cardiac tapenade," Roth said, pointing to a monitor Rodney couldn't see.

For the first time in his life, Rodney was kicking himself for all the times he'd ribbed Carson for how soft a science he found the medical profession to be. If only he had paid more attention instead of turning his nose up at it all, then maybe he would have been able to understand some of what was going on. Maybe then he would know exactly what they planned to do with that enormous needle one of the nurses was preparing beside John's bed.

The nurse handed it to Roth. Rodney wanted to look away, but he couldn't. The needle went in and John's body reacted, going rigid as if he were in pain. Rodney wanted to grab the sides of his face and scream at them to stop as the plunger of the syringe was pulled up and dark blood started filling the tube.

"Pops?"

Overwhelmed, Rodney finally turned away from John and pulled his son into a desperate, bone-crushing hug. "Where have you been?"

"Looking for Carrie, like you asked."

Rodney let TJ go. "You couldn't find her?"

"I found her, but she wouldn't come with me!" TJ replied, his voice high with panic. "She kept saying she had something else to do first."

"Something else to do?" Rodney repeated incredulously. "Did you explain to her what was happening down here?"

"I tried to Pops, but she just grabbed my shoulders and told me to go on without her. Told me I had to warn you not to let him die until she got back."

Roth was discussing something with What's-his-name behind them, but Rodney tried to focus in on his son. "Well, did she at least say where she was going?"

TJ shook his head. "She just took off in the other direction."

"Where was this?"

"Up in tower 9. I was taking us down the stairs but she turned around and went somewhere else on the top floor."

Rodney tried to picture the tower in his head. He couldn't remember any transports up in that part of the city, but that didn't mean there weren't any. But if there were… how in the hell would Carrie know about any of them?

"Pops?" TJ was tugging at his shirt, but Rodney was still trying to figure out what that woman could possibly be up to in that part of the city.

"Dad?" TJ tried a little more forcefully, and Rodney finally looked up.

"What ? "

TJ's eyes were wide and frightened as he pointed over Rodney's shoulder. "Something's going on."

The new alarms issuing from John's monitors finally reached Rodney's ears. As did the next words one of the nurses called out.

"He's in v-fib, Dr. Roth!"

Rodney might have been turning his nose up at the medical profession since he was a kid, but he'd seen enough hospital shows on TV to know what that meant.

"Saints preserve us," someone said from their left, and Rodney and TJ both turned their heads just as Carson came up beside them. He was on his own two feet, but looked pale and tired as he clung to the IV pole he'd brought along with him for support. Rodney had so many questions he wanted to ask his friend about what was going on, but found he lacked the strength to ask any of them. Besides, he knew what this was. What the concern on Roth's face meant as Rodney finally turned around to face it all again.

They stood in a crooked little line and watched as one of John's nurses began CPR. With hands clasped together, she mercilessly pushed down on the center of his chest over and over again, trying to coax his heart back to life on sheer force alone. Another of the nurses had come on the opposite side of the bed and was attempting to stick two pads onto John's chest. Had it not been smooth from being shaved before surgery, Rodney imagined it would have been a much more difficult task. The bandages covering John's bullet wounds still made it complicated, but eventually the pads were placed.

"Charge to 360," Roth called out.

Lorne stumbled into the room and up beside Rodney the moment everyone near John's bedside took a step back.

It was the most horrific thing Rodney McKay had ever seen in his life. As a scientist who frequented strange alien planets, that was saying something. Had it been anyone other than John Sheppard, then it might not have been that big of a deal. But it was John lying there in that bed. It was John's torso that lifted from the bed as electricity coursed through his chest, contracting his muscles as it tried to shock life back into his heart.

Beside him, Lorne lifted a hand to his mouth. "Oh my god."

It went on like that for an eternity. Endless rounds of compressions and then drugs. Shocks and then more compressions. In the middle of each round Roth would stop to listen with his stethoscope to check and see if any of it had worked. Then around and around it went again until the entire horrible ride suddenly stopped.

"Asystole."

Rodney reached out to wrap an arm around TJ's shoulders, capturing a fistful of Carson's hospital gown in his hand in the process.

"Another round of epi," Roth said. "Charge to 360."

Rodney felt something wet slide down his cheeks as John's torso lifted from the bed yet again. The mournful wail of a flatline underscoring his grief.

Carson began mumbling a prayer.

"Hail Mary full of grace…"

But there was no grace left in the world.

"The Lord is with Thee…"

No deity left that could save John now.

"Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."

Rodney had been a fool to ever think they could have saved him. That some little band of misfits could ever trick death.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners…"

Or keep her away with hubris and arrogance.

"Now and at the hour of our death."

Roth straightened from where he had been standing over John, glancing at his watch. Rodney waited for him to give the order for more CPR, but he stayed silent. A moment later he just looked up and caught Rodney's eyes.

"No…"

"I'm so sorry, Dr. McKay."

Rodney looked to Carson, desperately searching for someone who might tell him not to give up hope just yet, but Carson was silently sobbing on the other side of TJ, a hand covering his eyes. TJ was just standing there with eyes forward, nothing giving away his monumental efforts at staying in control than the muscles flexing in his jaw.

"Time of death," Roth began as someone silenced the alarms, "Eleven…"

"Stop."

The voice came from the doorway and all the eyes that had been so intensely focused on Roth turned in the direction of that demand.

Carrie Sinclair, looking wild-eyed and disheveled, stood in the doorway. She moved forward, pushing Rodney and Lorne out of her way with a blast of energy that seemed to come from within as they tried to approach her. Rodney recovered quickly but didn't go after her like he wanted to. He realized then that the woman's skin was glowing.

She strode forward with purpose, blasting anyone who got in her way aside as she approached the side of John's bed.

"Not yet, Johnny boy," Rodney thought he heard her whisper.

Rodney wasn't really sure what he'd been expecting to see next, but it certainly wasn't to watch the bedrails lower of their own volition or to witness that glow to Carrie's skin intensify. But it happened and Rodney had to put out an arm to stop Evan Lorne from advancing.

"Just wait a second," he hissed.

What little remained of the ATA gene in Rodney's blood was singing as every device in the infirmary came to life at once. Everyone in the room froze, either too stunned or too scared to do much else. It was in that frozen silence that Rodney began to feel the pull.

It was small at first, barely more than a fluttering in his stomach. It was the same feeling he often got when he first sat down to do work with one of the Ancient's devices. Or that overtook him when he prepared for a jumper flight. It was the call of Atlantis to the last vestiges of his ancestors coursing through his blood.

In a sudden moment of clarity, so instantaneous it nearly knocked him over, Rodney McKay knew what he needed to do. What Carrie and Atlantis were asking of him.

Without a thought or sound, both Rodney and Carson stepped forward at the same time, leaving a bewildered TJ and Lorne behind as they joined Carrie near the edge of John's bed. Rodney reached for an ankle, Carson took hold of one of John's hands. A moment later they were joined by three other people from the crowd, a nurse, and an orderly, and finally Dr. Roth's colleague. They were three people Rodney would never have guessed carried the gene and, judging by the shocked looks on their faces, neither did they.

Something immense was building up in the center of the circle they unconsciously formed. Rodney could feel Atlantis' call go out to the entire city on a burst of invisible energy. Sense as it reached every single ATA gene carrier in the city. Felt it the moment they each heard the call and dropped what they were doing to head in the direction of the infirmary.

Rodney could feel something being drawn out of each of them and he looked down at his arms, half expecting to see little arcs of white light cascading down his skin to disappear into the still figure beneath their hands.

There was some kind of transfer going on and Rodney closed his eyes as it happened, willingly offering up whatever Atlantis might need to make this alright again. To bring John Sheppard back from the dead.

Rodney understood it then. What would happen once that transfer was complete. The connections and rumbles he'd felt for years would no longer be there. The city of the Ancients would no longer light up for him as it once had. He would no longer be able to sit in the cockpit of a puddle jumper and make it fly. Atlantis was demanding something from him after all, and he would gladly give it a hundred times over if it meant his friend would live.

But something was wrong. The longer he felt their energy being drawn away the more certain he was that it wasn't going to be enough. John was too far gone and Atlantis was getting desperate.

A warm hand clamped down hard on his wrist and suddenly, Rodney was falling.

There was no burst of bright light. No warning sign or a surge of energy to give him any warning that it would happen. Rodney McKay simply opened his eyes to see who had grabbed his arm and then blackness overtook him. He was dumped unceremoniously in the middle of a large, darkened room seconds later.

The floor that surged up to meet him was warm and damp. Rodney scrambled up to his feet as fast as he could, unnerved by the sudden and unexpected change in his scenery. He peered into the darkness, trying to gauge where he might be but the blackness was too absolute.

The room he was in felt cavernous, of that much he was sure. The darkness pushed in on him from every direction, but he could sense he was in the middle of a vast, open space. The air was thick and humid, a soupy mess that clung to his skin and damped what little was left of his hair. There was a pungent, decaying smell to it as well. The smell was so awful at times, Rodney nearly drew up a hand to cover his mouth and nose.

But the smell was one he was very familiar with and Rodney knew instantly where he was. Though he had yet to find any light source to confirm his suspicions, Rodney knew he was in the belly of a Wraith Hive ship. It was like being stuck in a greenhouse and subjected to that strange sensation of being wet yet having all the moisture sucked right out of his cells at the exact same time.

Rodney forced himself to focus. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, he realized it wasn't quite as impenetrable as he'd originally thought. He could just about make out the edges of the room, and as he turned in place to map it out, something caught his eye. It was maybe 50 yards away from where he stood and appeared to be some kind of opening or doorway in the wall. Emitting from that doorway was a faint, almost otherworldly glow. A glow Rodney McKay had seen so many, he'd lost count. A glow that could mean only one thing.

It was an event horizon, there was just no other explanation, and Rodney made his way towards it carefully.

As Rodney approached, he noticed there was a figure standing just outside the room that must have held the Stargate. It was a woman, and for one silly moment, Rodney almost thought it was Teyla. But the closer he got, the more the realization sunk in that it was not his long-dead friend, but Carrie Sinclair.

"Carrie?" Rodney called out cautiously, trying not to startle her. She turned and even in the low light, Rodney could see that she'd been crying.

"I'm so glad you're here," she said, running up to him and taking his hands. "I tried. I tried so hard to get through to him... but he just wouldn't listen to me."

"Who?"

"John," Carrie replied, pulling Rodney towards the door by his arms. He peered inside and could see a dark figure kneeling just before the Stargate. Backlit by the swirling blue of the event horizon, it was hard to make out exactly what John was doing. He appeared to just be sitting there, the floor around him littered with the bodies of dead Wraith.

"I tried everything I could think of," Carrie went on, her voice sounding almost manic. "But I think he's too far gone now." Carrie grabbed one of Rodney's shoulders and spun him back around to face her. "I think he's been waiting for you."

Rodney shrugged out of the woman's grasp. "Excuse me?"

"You're the only one he asked for when I went in there earlier. I know you two have a connection I could never understand, and I know he feels differently about you than all the others. Why do you think I brought you here?"

"Is that what all this is?" Rodney asked, glancing around at what little he could see in the low light.

Carrie looked around as well. "I think so. You all know so much more about this place than I do."

"You'd be surprised," Rodney muttered. "I've been living and working in this city in one capacity or another for nearly 25 years and she still manages to throw me curve balls. Case in point."

Whatever kind of place this was, be it construct or shared hallucination, Atlantis had gotten the details of a Hive ship down pat. Everything seemed to ooze and pulsate with slime as the living walls continued to gestate around them. It made Rodney want to shudder as he backed away from the wall he was dangerously close to bumping with his shoulder.

"Do you know where we are?" he asked.

Carrie shook her head. "This woman came to visit me while I was getting some air up in one of the towers."

"TJ told me. He also told me you disappeared up there."

"I don't know how to explain it, but I could sense there was a city transport up there. I used it to get to this old part of the city that was half underwater. Atlantis… I don't know… she kind of pulled me in the direction of this lab, and the next thing I know, I'm standing over John and my skin is on fire. My hand snapped out to touch him and then BAM." She clapped, nearly startling Rodney out of his skin. "I was in this place and I found him in there."

Rodney looked into the room Carrie had pointed at. John was still kneeling beside the Stargate and had not moved.

"Carson told me lights come on in the rooms you walk into. Is this true?" he asked.

Carrie nodded. "What does that mean?"

"You have what we call the Ancient Technology Activation gene. It means you can connect to the city and control it. This place was meant for people like you."

"That's what she said, too," Carrie said, chewing on her lip.

"Who?" Rodney asked.

"The woman who visited me in the tower. But she also told me I'm not supposed to tell anyone else about it and that you all would try and stop me from using it."

But Rodney figured that was a conversation for another time. "What's he doing in there?" he asked, inclining his head towards the room with the gate.

"When I first arrived, I found him in there surrounded by all these dead people. I tried to get close to him, but there's some kind of force field around him. I'm not sure how to explain it. I begged him to just get up and leave with me, but he just kept telling me to find you and get off the ship. He kept telling me to run."

None of it was making very much sense, but Rodney got the distinct impression Carrie and Atlantis were expecting him to go in there next.

"What kind of force field?" he asked, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. "Describe it to me."

"You can't see it or anything," Carrie explained. "It's just like this wall of glass. I couldn't get past it."

Rodney nodded. "Alright, stay out here and let me see what I can do."

Before Rodney could go in, Carrie grabbed his arm again. "He looks… different."

"How do you mean?"

"Younger. Be careful."

"I will."

Rodney left Carrie standing in the doorway and made his way into the room. The Stargate stood in the direct center of the space, its grey, stone face covered in all the ancient symbols Rodney now knew by heart. The undulating blue of the event horizon bathed everything in flickering light. John was still kneeling in front of it. Rodney could see that he was dressed head to toe in full tactical gear and there was a P90 strapped to his torso.

Carrie had been right. John did look younger. Rodney walked further into the room and saw the grey was gone from his hair and his frame was leaner. He looked exactly the same as the last time Rodney had seen him. As if the past 18 years had just melted away and they were once again on that Super Hive, fighting against the clock and advancing Wraith as they tried to escape before the entire thing blew.

Surrounding John were countless bodies, each one of them riddled with bullet holes, their teeth bared even in corpses farther out from the Stargate were all Wraith, but there were two bodies near John that appeared to be human. Rodney swallowed hard as he realized who they were. He had yet to meet the strange barrier Carrie had described, so he made his feet keep moving forward.

Rodney had only spent a few seconds in that corridor where they died. Just long enough to grab John by the arm, haul him back up onto his feet, and drag him away. That scene appeared to be recreated here, just in a different way. It looked to Rodney as though John had finally gotten his wish and had gone back for his friends, but he'd gotten stuck somehow. Probably because his body back in the Atlantis infirmary was effectively dead. He also had a feeling the energy he could remember being drained from them was the only thing keeping this place alive.

Rodney's heart rate quickened as he got closer and Teyla and Ronon's bodies finally came into full view. It was very obvious that John had dragged them both here. Teyla's neck was clearly broken and her unseeing eyes were pointed away. Ronon's were open as well, his death gaze pointed towards the ceiling. John was holding both of them by the arms and Rodney could see that he was shaking. He closed the last few yards between them but was stopped just shy of being able to reach out and touch his friend. Carrie had been right about this, too. He wasn't blasted back off his feet or anything, but there was something solid and unyielding blocking his way.

Rodney put a hand to it. It felt like glass under his palm, cool and smooth with no definable edges that he could find. He spent a few seconds searching, but it appeared to make a circle around John and the gate.

"Sheppard?" Rodney called out, his hand still on the glass. There was no acknowledgment from John. No movement but trembling shoulders beneath his tac vest. "Are you going to let me in?"

Rodney thought he saw John's grip on Ronon and Teyla tighten, his jaw clench, but he couldn't be sure. The unpredictable light of the event horizon made it hard to pick up on much of anything happening inside that forcefield.

"Sheppard, it's me," he tried again with no luck.

"I know it seems like you can't escape this nightmare right now, but I promise you can. Just let me in and I'll help you get them through the gate," Rodney continued on, trying a different tactic. "You know you can't do it on your own. Not both of them, anyway."

Rodney searched for some sign that John was hearing him, but there was no movement. His shoulders weren't even shaking anymore, so maybe that meant he was at least listening now.

"I can help you. Between your brawn and my brains, there's nothing we can't do. You know that, right?"

Nothing.

"Sheppard, please?"

Not even a hint of recognition or awareness.

Having nothing left in his arsenal, Rodney fell back on one thing that had always worked for him in the past. Something he rarely ever did, as if it were some secret weapon he kept hidden away and safe so he could pull it out for just such an occasion.

Rodney put both his hands up on the barrier and drew in a shaky breath.

"John?" he called out, speaking a name he had been holding so close to himself for so many years that it nearly broke his heart to let it go again.

John stiffened and turned his head ever so slightly.

"John, please let me in."

The barrier beneath Rodney's hands disappeared so suddenly, he stumbled forward and nearly ended up in a heap on the floor. He recovered quickly and rushed over to John's side. With Teyla and Ronon's bodies in the way, he had nowhere to go but directly in front of his kneeling friend.

John's face was dirty and streaked with blood. His messy hair that had always been such a source of contention amongst his superior officers was plastered against his head in places, the substance too thick to be sweat. But it was his eyes that tore into Rodney and tried to rip the very heart right out of his chest. Tears had cut clear paths through the blood and grime. John's eyes were bloodshot and haunted as he looked up at Rodney with all the grief he'd been feeling for the past 18 years plainly visible there on his face. He looked ragged and wretched and Rodney had to try very hard not to react.

He fell to his knees in front of his friend, touching the side of John's face. Sheppard leaned into his palm and closed his eyes.

"I tried to save them."

"I know you did."

"But I was too late... again."

"It's ok, John. I know."

Sheppard drew in a shuddering breath that shook his entire frame. It was some strange mixture of a sigh and a sob. "I'm so sorry, Rodney."

Rodney was at a loss for words. He'd been trying to tell John that none of this was his fault ever since he'd found him in that cabin in Wisconsin. It felt pointless to try and tell him again now. So Rodney did the only thing he could think of. He reached out with both hands and pulled John Sheppard in close.

The soldier stiffened in his arms at first but then melted into Rodney's embrace soon after. The connection brought back so many memories of desperate moments. Back then, those were the only times where they could let the world and all its expectations for how they were supposed to behave as men fall away and just express what they were feeling. Rodney put all the love and care he had left in himself into that hug and just held on for dear life as John let out 18 years' worth of loss and regret. Carrie was in the room now, her cheeks wet from crying herself as she watched them. John's sobs were desperate against Rodney's neck. He couldn't for the life of him remember if he'd ever even seen John Sheppard cry. Emotion was something he'd rarely ever shown, choosing to put on a brave face to the world and get the job done. A lifetime of bottling it all up was bound to break anyone down in the end.

Rodney felt the evidence of that breakdown against his chest. The full weight of mourning as John Sheppard came apart in his arms.

He could also feel the exact same moment it changed.

"You have to get out of here, Rodney," Sheppard said suddenly, pushing him away. His face was even more filthy than before. "You have to take Carrie and run. It isn't safe here."

John crying, while uncharacteristic, had been something Rodney could handle. But a John Sheppard who clearly thought all of this was real, was a completely different animal. His normally stoic and level-headed friend was genuinely terrified, and it was something Rodney had never seen before. Desperate, panicked, and broken .

John was trying to get up onto his feet, only he was too weak to do it. He managed to get his boots under him, but then everything suddenly collapsed and he was falling back into Rodney's outstretched arms. Teyla and Ronon's bodies had disappeared, as had all the Wraith. Even Carrie had withdrawn back into the shadows.

"Please Rodney, you have to go," John said against his neck. Rodney was cradling John in his arms now, his sweaty and blood-saturated head tucked up under Rodney's chin. "They'll come back. They always come back. Run... run... run..."

John's begging was so mournful, Rodney had to close his eyes to keep his own emotions under control. Blue and white light from the Stargate danced along the flagstones of the floor. John felt so fragile in his arms, quaking like a leaf and mumbling words Rodney could no longer understand.

Was this the place they would have trapped him in had they put John into a stasis pod as Rodney had suggested? Was this the fate they would have subjected him to if they went against his end-of-life directive and tried to keep him alive while they attempted to come up with a better solution? It had Rodney rethinking his entire plan of rescuing John now. There was so much torment left in him. This place was proof enough of that.

So what if Atlantis wasn't giving Rodney a chance to save John... What if she was giving him a chance to say goodbye? And not only that, but to help John as well. Give him a chance to say his piece and then move on.

But could Rodney do it? Could he say goodbye to the man he was holding now? Let go of 18 years of wishing they had at least acknowledged the feelings they were starting to have for each other back in the day. They were both old men now, despite the form John had taken here. Their time was over. It would be a devastating loss to TJ, to watch his chances at returning to Pegasus disintegrate right there before his eyes. But holding on to John for their own selfish reasons was wrong and cruel. Like leaving a loved one on life support just because you're unable to let go.

"Is that what you want me to do?" Rodney asked up into the ceiling. "Let him go and say goodbye?"

Atlantis was silent around them, the flickering blue light of the event horizon on the flagstone floor the only movement in the room. Even John had gone quiet in his arms.

Rodney looked back down, catching the eyes of his friend who had stopped struggling and was looking up at him as well. Really looking.

"Is that what you want?"

John said nothing.

"For me to let you go?"

His friend blinked, breath hitching in his chest.

"I'm too late, aren't I?"

A small smile played at the corners of John's mouth as his breaths became shallower and shallower. Rodney could feel the exact moment when John's body went limp in his arms. His lungs emptied slowly on that last exhale. The one that took all the light in John's eyes right along with it.

Rodney stared down at the still face of his friend, his own tears dripping from the end of his nose to splash down onto John's forehead. He brushed back the sweat-soaked hair there with his hand. "God damn you, John Sheppard."

A hollow spot had opened up inside of Rodney. Deeper and darker than the one from before. The empty place it created left room for nothing else and Rodney knew he would never be whole again. He would exist now as half a person, the better part of himself, of them all really, gone forever.

"Rodney?" he looked up as Teyla knelt beside him. Ronon appeared next and settled down onto the floor on the other side of John with legs crossed.

"I couldn't save him."

"It's all going to be alright now, Rodney," Teyla promised as she placed a hand on John's forehead.

"We've got 'em from here," Ronon rumbled next.

But before Rodney could even question them about what was happening, Carrie was there as well. Her skin was doing that weird glowy thing again as she knelt to join their circle. She put her hands out as waves of white light began cascading down her arms like a waterfall under midday sun.

John's body began to heat up in Rodney's arms. It felt hot enough now to singe, but Rodney held on anyway. He wasn't afraid of it. None of them were.

Carrie paused before laying her hands on John, looking over at Rodney. She was giving him a choice, he realized. Keep going or let John go. Rodney knew how selfish it was, but he nodded anyway.

Carrie refocused on John and placed one hand on the side of his face and the other directly over his heart. The light coming from her grew stronger until it was illuminating the entire cavernous space around them. John began to stir in Rodney's arms as he pulled in a sudden and sputtering breath. Whatever Carrie was doing was working.

There was a sudden flash of that light and a surge of pure energy and suddenly Rodney was being hurtled through time and space yet again. Teyla's voice was echoing in his ear, "please tell him I love him." To anyone else they would have assumed she meant John, but Rodney knew what his dead friend was asking.

He found himself unceremoniously dumped to the floor again. The darkness of the Hive gave way to the low light of the infirmary slowly, but once Rodney was aware again, he could see that everyone who had been circled around John had been blasted off their feet. Rodney scrambled over a stunned orderly to reach Carrie and help her back up onto her feet. She looked stunned and swayed a bit as she stood up.

Before Rodney could even open his mouth to ask her what just happened, she was grabbing his hands again.

"Did it work?"

They looked over at John, their mouths falling open at the same time in shock.

It had.