Author's Note: Hope the two chapters at once makes up for the long drought. Thanks again for the reviews and patience!

Chapter 7

A Gift

"Major!" Teyla shouted, even as the last drifts of ice debris settled into the impenetrable barrier between them and their leader...their friend.

Ford stood stunned beside Beckett, his mind processing the last actions of his commander. "Major." He whispered to no one.

McKay was animated and angry, "Son of a bitch, Sheppard you bastard." He stalked towards the cave-in, furious in the face of his helplessness. He started clawing at the blocks, feeling the cold rip against his fingertips. "We haven't come this far to lose you now."

"There's nothing you can do."

McKay wasn't going to listen. He wasn't going to stop. That wall was coming down and he was going to get Major Sheppard back to Atlantis.

"McKay." Beckett put a restraining hand against McKay's arm, "Rodney." He grabbed McKay's face, forcing him to acknowledge his presence, "It's too late...he was crushed in the collapse." Beckett's words were as tired and hurt as he felt inside.

"You don't know that."

"Look at it Rodney." Beckett ordered.

McKay stood stone-faced, refusing to acknowledge the situation.

Beckett felt himself give to the emotions tumbling through his soul, "I said look at it! Do you believe he's alive?"

McKay did look this time. The base rocked with another volley, this time farther away, the wraith unaware that they had come so close to the target they were searching for. He shook his head, and pulled his chin up, "We should go."

"Yes, we should." Beckett pulled him back towards their original location, "Ford, Teyla?"

Neither one spoke, taking a place beside the others. Teyla was fighting back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. This wasn't the time nor the place to grieve over their loss.

There was white light all around. His hands, his clothes, the very air, everything was white. "Am I dead?" Sheppard asked aloud. He wasn't sure if he expected a response or not, but he got one.

"Not yet."

He turned, searching for the source, but all he could see was white mist. It was as if he stood in the middle of a fluffy white cloud, and it went on and on as far as the eye could see.

"Who are you?" He asked, keeping his voice neutral.

"We are you."

Sheppard sighed, "That doesn't help."

No reply. Sheppard kept walking not sure of what to do. As he was walking he realized something. He felt good. Not just good, but great. He must be dead, despite what the disembodied voice had said.

"You know, the place could use a little...something." He said, digging for a reaction.

Nothing. "No joy on the burn." He muttered to himself, taking refuge in the pilot language of his profession. He wondered if he sat down and quit would he get booted out of heaven...or the netherworld, wherever he was.

"I'm a little thirsty. Could I get a drink...a table...I don't know, maybe some company?" He tried again.

"We are here."

"Oh, that's great. Good to know. And where is here?" Sheppard had kind of figured death would be a little bit more precise.

"You know where we are."

Sheppard stopped. "No, I don't. I don't have a clue who you are, where I am, or how I got here!"

"Major John Sheppard, United States Air Force, of the planet Earth. You know where you are."

The voice had taken on an authoritarian tone, paternally, and insistent.

"Voice in the cloud, in the middle of no-where, I do not know where I am." Sheppard bit back.

Silence greeted his outburst. "Hey, you! I want to go home. I want to sleep in my bed again. I want to watch TV, and have a big bowl of popcorn." John made a large bowl with his hands and eyed it with a grin, "And more than anything, I want to see my friends." The last statement sobered him again.

"You can go home."

Sheppard looked up, if it was up in this place, surprised. "I can?"

"Yes."

"How?" John couldn't keep the hope from surging through his body.

"You know how."

John whirled in a circle, "I...don't...know...how!"

"You know everything. You are us, we are you." The voice answered steadfastly back.

Sheppard sighed. Great. Maybe this was his version of hell. To wander aimlessly through a void filled with a voice that loved ambiguity. He kept walking.

"Where is Major Sheppard?" Elizabeth Weir was searching the group that had returned from the outpost. Two of the men were being taken out on stretchers, victims of the wraith stunners, and two men were gone. Major Sheppard and a sergeant whose name eluded her at the moment.

Rodney paled, and Ford's jaw tightened. Beckett stepped away from the technician preparing the last stretcher, and shook his head.

Weir felt the lump rise within, "The virus?"

"The wraith." Ford said.

"We were bombed from above. It caused a collapse in the ceiling. Major Sheppard pushed me away." Teyla explained, "He saved my life." The again remained unspoken.

Weir hesitated, sensing the turbulence in the people around her, "Teyla..."

But Teyla was gone.

Elizabeth figured it was best to let her go. She felt the need to escape as well but she had a job to do. "The outpost?"

McKay held up a device, "Destroyed."

"Then he's really gone." Weir whispered softly, her face falling with the evidence of his loss staring her down.

She received no answer, she hadn't expected to. The men left the room, dejected, and heartsick. Elizabeth was left standing in the gate room, the hollowness of his loss hitting her hard, like a punch in the gut that you weren't expecting.

She stood there for a long time, staring at the gate...staring at nothing at all.

Sheppard was tired. The great feeling was long gone and in its place was an overwhelming fatigue that sapped his strength. He wanted to sit, lay, drop...whatever it was except for being upright on his feet. The only problem, he continued to be stuck in this ethereal mist and no more of an idea of where he was than before. He was disoriented, confused, and lost. He had no concept of time or direction.

"Please. How?" He begged again. He had asked over and over again, first with sarcasm and wit, then with anger before falling into pleads for release. He no longer cared the outcome he just wanted an end.

"You know how. Look inside. The answers are within you. They always have been."

John dropped to his knees, half-surprised to find solidity beneath them, "I don't have the answers. I told you." He lowered his voice to whispers, "I told you." And he toppled to his side, cradling his body into a fetal position.

Flutters of thought touched his mind, suggestions of the past and the future, concepts and schematics. He was in a million different places at one parsec of time. His body moved fluid throughout the strings of time balanced on a thought and nothing more. He felt free and terrified at the same time, and he understood.

"We told you." The voice echoed throughout his mind.

Sheppard tried hard to hold onto who he was, feeling his mind blur against the knowledge barging against his ability to maintain sanity, "How is this possible?"

"You are us, we are you." The voice answered.

"I died." He said.

"Not yet."

Sheppard swore, he was blind, the white was gone as well as the feeling of material plane of existence, "I am dying."

"You are returning. You will not die. You will continue. We are you, you are us."

Sheppard had a last conscious thought, "Will I remember?"

An echo of a reply, "Perhaps." But he couldn't be sure. Pain blossomed in his mind, the overwhelming sensations searing trails of fire across his synapses. He didn't know if he'd wake again. He didn't care.