AUTHOR'S NOTE: Wow, lots of happy FB on this fic. Thanks.

I'm dreadfully sorry it's taken me so long to post this. It only takes me a few hours to write a two-thousand-word chapter—it's finding those few hours that's the problem, because lately I've been spending most of my free time asleep. shakes fist at schoolwork I was planning to finish this entire fic over Thanksgiving break, in fact. And look how that worked out.

Anyway: I realize that a lot of people have probably forgotten what this fic was about—I almost did, and I'm the one writing it. So I'm reposting part 1 for your benefit.

I will do my level best to get part 3 done as soon as possible. We'll see.


It was maybe two months later that John's intercom went off at somewhere around three in the morning. Mumbling resentfully—he'd been having a very nice dream about Rodney—he rolled over and slapped it. "Whaddaya want?"

"Major!" Rodney sounded not only wide awake but—if such a thing were possible—even more caffeinated than usual. "Could you come down to my lab, please? It's quite urgent."

"Are you nuts?" John grumbled, still half asleep. "McKay, if this were anyone but you—" He slapped a hand across his mouth. Gotta wake up, he told himself. Can't make slips like that. Can't play favorites. "You sure it can't wait?"

"Please, Major." His voice was slightly distorted by the intercom system, but Rodney did sound impatient. "I really think you'll want to hear about this as soon as possible."

"Fine, I'll be right there. And you'd better not be wasting my time." John hit the button again and forced himself out of bed, buoyed by the thought of seeing Rodney in a few minutes. Rodney and his inescapably infectious enthusiasm. It was a little childish, he knew.

But it was also the only thing keeping him from staying in bed and going right back to sleep.

-

Ten minutes, a t-shirt, and a pair of jeans later, John made it into the lab. "All right, McKay. This had better be pretty damn important."

"Believe me, it is." Rodney waved John around behind the desk and began entering rapid commands into his laptop. Within seconds, a file popped up: pages upon pages of text and equations, accompanied by dozens of diagrams John couldn't understand. The file ended with a picture of what looked like a complex of huge, white-domed buildings.

John frowned at the screen and leaned forward, resisting the sudden ridiculous urge to rest his chin on the top of Rodney's head. "What's this?"

"A totally unstoppable, incredibly powerful weapon." Rodney looked up at him and grinned.

John straightened up. "That doesn't help," he said impatiently. "What kind of a weapon are we talking about here?"

"Well . . ." Rodney paused—maybe to gather his thoughts, more likely just for dramatic effect. "Simply put, this is a device which can project bursts of zero-point energy to a specified location. Extremely powerful bursts of energy, in fact."

There was silence for a few seconds while John thought this over. "Like the Genesis Machine?" he asked at last.

"Very similar, yes." Rodney's eyebrows went up. "I wouldn't have thought you'd be into Hogan."

John shrugged. "Guess we're both full of surprises today. Now what else can you tell me about this thing?"

Rodney turned back to his computer and scanned through the file. "The Ancients were still working on this technology when they abandoned Atlantis. My impression from reading this is that they could never get the device to work properly, but my team and I can go over these notes. There's always the chance we might be able to figure out what went wrong, although it's more likely there was some kind of glitch in the construction."

"I knew it," John groaned. "You want to go check this place out in person."

"Yes, Major, I do," Rodney agreed patiently. "How else am I going to be able to work on this?"

John raised his hands. "Whoa, McKay, slow down. I agree, this could be a fantastic thing if it's still around and if we can get it working. But this isn't the kind of technology the Ancients would just leave lying around. For all we know, they blew the whole thing up when they left. At the very least, they must've had some kind of security systems in place so Wraith couldn't wander in and steal the technology." Security systems . . . the phrase jogged something in his head, but John couldn't figure out what, so he shoved the feeling to the back of his head and ignored it.

"Well, of course," Rodney said, all confidence. "Remember who you're talking to here. I promise you, I will proceed with all due caution and then some."

"Should've expected that . . ." John nodded slowly. "Okay, we'll go see Elizabeth. In the morning," he added hastily. "Right now, I'm going back to bed. And so are you."

As expected, Rodney immediately began to protest. "But—"

"I don't wanna hear it, McKay," John cut in tiredly. "You've been working all night, and I expect you to quit right now."

"Or else?" Rodney challenged.

"Or else I go talk to Beckett and get him to tell Elizabeth you're not healthy enough to work on this kind of project."

John turned and left the lab, feeling all too clearly the prickle of Rodney staring after him. He'd been a little abrupt, he knew, but it had been for Rodney's own good. That was what mattered—

—so long as no one noticed anything unusual about it.

-

John had heard that, after maybe a dozen missions, General O'Neill (then Colonel, of course) had begun complaining about the frequency of trees on alien planets. The idea had sounded inane at first, but he was beginning to sympathize. This was a whole other galaxy, after all. If he'd wanted to see trees, grass, and blue skies, he might as well have taken his P-90 to Nebraska and threatened cows with it. He'd take cows over Wraith any day.

Unless you believed the X-Files movie, however, Nebraska was also severely lacking in enormous Ancient weapons silos, which this planet apparently was not.

Of course, Nebraska didn't have Rodney either, and this planet did at the moment. Which left Nebraska at a distinct disadvantage as far as John was concerned.

Focus. He had to focus. On something other than watching Rodney's ass, anyway.

Dear God, those buildings were huge. John didn't have a very good grasp of how this weapon was actually supposed to work—that was Rodney's job, after all—but apparently it took up a whole lot of space. As they got closer, he could see that the complex was easily half as big as the city of Atlantis. "At the very least," he mused aloud, "there's got to be a ZPM in there somewhere."

"That's what I'm hoping for," Rodney agreed.

Ford considered this. "Kinda like a consolation prize?"

"Watch it, Lieutenant." John reached over and smacked his shoulder. "You're veering dangerously close to naming things."

Teyla cocked her head inquisitively. "Since when is Lieutenant Ford prohibited from naming things?"

"Since he wanted to call the 'jumpers 'gateships.'"

"But 'gateship'" would indeed be a better name for them," Teyla objected.

"Shush, you." John pointed a threatening finger at her. "Rodney, why are we heading for the most insignificant-looking building?"

" Larger buildings tend to be primarily for equipment. I'm guessing that the central control room is in here." Rodney shook his head in frustration. "But this door won't open. Which lends credence to my theory, but is otherwise unhelpful."

"Let me try." John moved forward and pressed his palm to what looked like a scanner mounted on the wall. After a moment, the door hissed open. He wiggled his fingers gleefully. "The hands that made me a legend."

"You can quit gloating," Rodney told him sourly. "The Ancients were probably worried about people acquiring the gene through artificial means like the therapy Carson used on me. It's not terribly surprising that they'd set their security systems to exclude such people."

"Fine, burst my bubble. See if I care." John advanced cautiously through the doorway, P-90 at the ready; you never knew what the hell the Ancients had left in their labs to greet their unsuspecting descendants. But this one, at least, seemed fairly innocuous. It was just a small domed chamber with an enormous control panel mounted at the far end. It looked inexplicably familiar. "Huh," he said, lowering the gun. "That's weird."

Rodney, already engaged in examining the controls, didn't even look up. "What's weird?"

"Just that this room looks really familiar. Probably just déja vu."

Ford shrugged. "Well, it's not like we've been here before. This just looks exactly like every other Ancient lab we've ever been in."

"Maybe to you—" Rodney began.

John cut him off. "So am I the only one who gets a really bad feeling from this place?"

"I do not." Teyla glanced around. "We appear to be the only ones present, Major. I do not see what could pose a threat."

"I don't care." John shook his head decisively. "I don't think we looked around thoroughly enough. For all we know, there could be a shipful of Wraith sniffing around the other side of the complex. We oughta go back out and look around some more before we camp out in here for the day. Fair enough?"

Teyla and Ford nodded, but Rodney was developing an all-too-familiar mulish expression.

John sighed. "McKay, I don't want to leave you here by yourself. You have a tendency to get into trouble. Frequently trouble of your own making."

"I'll be careful. I can look after myself, believe it or not." Rodney patted his Glock in what was undoubtedly meant to be a reassuring manner, although John wasn't sure which of them he was trying to reassure.

John shook his head. "It's not a very good idea." In fact, this place was making him jumpier with every passing second, and he was torn between the equally strong instincts to stay and look after Rodney himself and to get the hell out.

Not that he was going to admit to either of those things, of course.

"If you insist," John agreed at last, not daring to make too much out of the issue. "Even though I'm probably going to regret this later on. Just radio if anything happens."

-

Not only were the domes huge, there were an unbelievable number of them—far too many to be housing a single machine, in John's estimation. He wondered what else the Ancients had been working on here. And he still felt like he'd walked straight into the X-Files movie.

Something more than that was nagging at him, though. He wasn't as twitchy as he'd been in the control room—being in there had practically made him nauseous, although that was another thing he'd never admit aloud. It wasn't nearly as bad out here, but there was still something.

John stopped walking and turned around to look back at the small dome where they'd left Rodney.

"Something wrong, sir?" Ford asked from behind him.

John opened his mouth to say no. Then he glanced back at the dome again—and, all of a sudden, he realized why this all looked familiar.

He was leaning against that patch of wall, shaking uncontrollably, trying and failing to stop his almost continuous dry-heaves. He couldn't stop, he couldn't stop thinking about—

Rodney.

No, not Rodney. Not any more.

A pile of gray ashes.

And then, still terrified, he'd looked through the fire and asked, how did this happen? how can I save him?

And the Knower had answered, you cannot. not if you continue to hide yourself from him. this will come about because you have hidden too well.

The Knower . . .

"Oh, crap," John said instead. "Wait here," he added quickly, and sprinted back the way they'd come.

He burst through the entryway just as Rodney was heading for the doorway on the other side of the room. Without pausing to think, John launched himself toward the other man, making what was all but a flying leap and yanking him back right out of the entrance to the corridor.

There was dead silence for maybe fifteen seconds as both men's awareness caught up with what had just happened.

"Major," Rodney said at last, "what's going on?"

John took a moment to calm himself down. He discovered that he was still holding on to Rodney—was, in fact, gripping him firmly by both shoulders, so that they only stood a few inches apart. Rodney looked extremely confused, which was a rare enough thing for him that John suddenly found it unbearably sexy.

"Major?"

John slid his hands up to cup Rodney's face and kissed him thoroughly.

It took him another few seconds to realize that Rodney wasn't kissing back. As a matter of fact, Rodney seemed to be making a point of being as unresponsive as possible.

John let go and stepped back.

"I repeat," Rodney said acidly, "what the hell is going on?"

By way of response, John yanked out the first thing that came to hand, which turned out (of course) to be a Power Bar, and tossed it into the corridor. There was a bright flash of light, and when it faded all that was left (of course) was a small heap of ash. "Security systems, remember?" It was difficult for him to speak; his throat was closing up.

Rodney nodded, taking this in. He crossed the room, picked up his note from the shelf, and deliberately crushed it into a very small ball. "You could have just said it was dangerous."

John was saved from answering this by the crackle of his radio. "Major?" Teyla asked. "Are you all right?" She sounded quite worried. How nice, John thought absently. How nice of everyone to care so bloody much about me.

"I'm fine," he lied through his teeth. "Absolutely fine."


To be continued. Of course.