AN: This is a request fic to explore an alternate outcome to the Chaya/Sheppard sharing event at the end of Sanctuary. Because of this, it's what I consider AU, but in a slight way, think of it as a bump off the canon road.

Fractum Fugitum

To Break, To Flee

By M.N. Talbert

An Alternate Universe Story

Power, unrelenting…I was like a tiny sailboat on a very wide sea, and being buffeted about by strong winds. I was sick with the knowledge, and overwhelmed by the waves of information rolling over my entire being.

I gasped, and heard Chaya whisper, "Spirare." Breathe…

"What's happening?" I asked; my voice strangled by circumstance.

Sharing. She was sharing with me, but it was more than I was ready for, and my body reacted against my wishes. I heard Chaya talking, and heard worry. She said, "Something is wrong…John!"

And then I couldn't hold on any longer, and was washed away…


I don't know when I woke up, or even how, but I slowly began to realize I was sitting in the pilot's seat inside my ship. It was on, and waiting, but I was staring at the view out the front window. How long I'd sat there, I didn't know, but I knew I'd better get back to Atlantis.

I went through the motions of dialing the gate, and flew home. When I shut the Jumper down, and opened the rear hatch, Elizabeth was waiting.

"No McKay?" I asked warily.

She shook her head gently. "I told him to go to bed," she said.

Bed? "How long was I gone?" I asked, startled.

She'd been leaning, arms folded, against the edge of the Jumper, but with my question she pushed off with her back leg, and unfolded those long arms of hers. "Six hours," she said. "I was about to send a search party."

She had a small smile, but I could sense an edge skating along the thin ice underneath. "I'm fine," I asserted. I stepped around her and into the bay, taking a second look, not quite believing that McKay wasn't lurking.

"John," she called. I stopped and looked over my shoulder at her. "I want you to check in with Carson," she said, and her tone made it clear it wasn't a request.

I was feeling the lateness of the hour, and wasn't particularly inclined to take a side trip to Beckett's little shop of horrors. I grimaced. "First thing in the morning," I said confidently. I'd learned a long time ago, if you wanted something, then act like it was a done deal. Never have a question in a statement. State it like it already was.

Apparently, Elizabeth had heard of that tactic. "Now, John."

I was holding close the fugue that had enveloped me since returning from Proculus. I wasn't even sure what had happened to me there, and I knew that Beckett would figure out my sorry lack of memory. I didn't say anything for a moment, just stared at her face, searching for some crack in her iron will, but there wasn't one. Damn.

"Fine," I said irritably. I started walking, and she quickly matched strides and moved alongside me.

"It's on the way," she explained.

Her not so subtle way of making sure I did what she said. I grunted, the only acknowledgement of her company. She knew that I knew, and that made everything just ducky, in her book at least.


Beckett was staring at me like an insect on an entomologist's stickpin. I swallowed, wishing I were anywhere but here. He took the reading from the blood pressure machine, and made a soft hmmm sound. He'd been doing that a lot since Elizabeth had left me at the double doors.

They must have slipped it to him that I was on the way; maybe McKay had been in the landing bay after all, because Beckett had a waiting gurney and exam gown when I arrived. So much for making a quick exit after Elizabeth was out of sight.

A flash of light in my left eye brought me out of my internal musing, and I blinked away the black spot obscuring my vision, only to have another bright flash in my right eye. I scowled. "I didn't hit my head," I said.

"Then why haven't you been able to tell me what happened during the last six hours?" he asked tartly.

Yeah, well…there's that. Problem is, I wish I had an answer for him, but I didn't. What I did know was that I hadn't hit my head. "I never kiss and tell," I replied.

The look on his face showed he wasn't buying it. "You're staying the night, Major," he announced. Before I could give voice to the no brewing in my throat, he had a hand up, and was saying, "Don't bother saying it. Get comfortable, I'll be back in a bit to check on you."

As he strode off, I said it anyway, just because. One thing for certain, I wasn't going to spend the night on this thin gurney. I spied one of the more comfortable long-term beds empty in the corner, and that looked like as good of a place as any, so I hopped off the one and crawled into the other, after drawing the privacy curtain.

I lay on my back for a while, arms pillowed underneath my head. The ceiling was boring, but maybe boring was what I needed. What had happened in those six hours, and why couldn't I remember? I had gone back to help Chaya, or at least I thought I did. Confusing…and somewhere in those thoughts, I must have fallen asleep, because I was soon caught up in what had to have been the worst nightmare ever.

I saw Chaya, and then a flare of the most intense white light…and then I was flying through the stars. I was everywhere, and nowhere. It was amazing, and frightening. I had no form, no body…and the universe was bare before me. I saw entire worlds fall in a heartbeat, civilizations winked out of existence, and I saw a tiny infant struggle to take its first breath…and fail. Everywhere I turned, there was more death. Everything dies, always an end, and all the voices and whispers around me watched and did nothing.

A simple thought could save a planet…an infant…but the thought never formed to fruition. Observe, and be, they wouldn't intervene. They could have prevented so much; plagues, and floods, famine and despair, and none of it mattered, all of it senseless, useless.

I cried from the injustice. I cried when the infant stopped breathing before it even began, and I cried when the baby wolf curled in it's dead mother's fur, because I knew it would die soon as well. So much death…and I cried…


I woke, and my face was wet. I swiped a hand unsteadily, trying to clear away the dampness, but before I could recover any equilibrium, Beckett was yanking the curtain back, and searching for me with concern etched across his face.

"Major?" he said uncertainly, his eyes locking on mine. "I heard…"

He didn't finish, because he saw my red-rimmed eyes. Men didn't cry. Never had a more bullshit lie ever been propagated. We did cry. We just did it in private, and what goes on behind closed doors, stayed behind them. But this wasn't behind a closed door.

"Bad dream," I said softly. I knew I didn't have to put on an act, but I'm not the poster boy for fluff and feeling, either. "Onions," I joked, pointing to my eyes. "Get me every time."

He nodded. "If you need anything…"

"I know," I said.

I watched him go, tugging the curtain closed behind him. Then I closed my eyes so tight it hurt. What the hell had I seen? It was there, I was there; real, and I knew that it wasn't a bad dream. I'd experienced it…lived it, seen it. I fought against the bile crawling up my throat as I saw the infant, like a picture inside my head, and saw it die again, and again, and again...


I lifted the spoon, and took a sip. The soup had grown cold, I realized, but I kept dipping the spoon, and went through the routine of lift and sip, and back down for more. You would've thought that the contents would be gone before they had a chance to grow cold, but there you have it. Dip, and sip. Sip and dip. Routines, the manna of comfort for the burdened and the stressed.

"You got released, I take it?" spoke McKay. He sat down, sliding his own lunch tray onto the table.

I was looking at McKay, but I wasn't looking at him. I guess I was looking and not so much seeing. "This morning," I answered. Dip and sip.

He started moving his fork around his plate. Spaghetti. The sauce was dark red against the white noodles…blood red, on pale skin, as life left the body, and oh my God, it was McKay's blood, spreading out underneath him, and inching across the floor like water from an overflowing sink.

I jerked, and the spoon clattered against the dish. McKay paused, his fork loaded with twisted blood-red noodles inches from his mouth. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," I said. "Just remembered I forgot to shut the water off." I practically jumped out of my seat, and retreated. I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't care.

I missed McKay peering into my bowl, and wondering why I'd been scooping up soup when there wasn't any left in the bowl.


I started walking, and I never stopped. Every step echoed with another vision. McKay dying, Elizabeth, Teyla…even Bates. I saw the death of every member of the expedition. It slammed home like a hammer on a nail, and I felt a physical blow each and every time. I saw my own death, and Jinto. Every person was dying, and the trees in Atlantis withered, and dried, their remains blowing away; gone forever, like everyone I knew. What was the point of living when all you saw was dying? I walked. I heard footsteps running behind me, but I didn't stop. I kept walking.

"Major!"

Elizabeth then. "Leave me alone," I said. I never turned, or stopped. I kept walking. But, reality was, I was running. Running from the images engraved in my mind that wouldn't stop. They wouldn't go away. "Make it stop," I tried to explain. "It has to stop."

I felt Elizabeth touch my shoulder, but I kept on walking. "Make what stop, John?"

How do you explain that you are seeing hell played out inside your skull? Your own personal hell, watching everyone, and everything die, and being helpless to stop it. I know I had a hero complex. I thought I could always do the right thing, and save the world. I'd been confronted with limitations before, but not like this.

"Death," I whispered. And I stopped walking. I stopped running. I stared at Elizabeth, and I saw her face wrinkle and wither before my eyes. Her death. "Too late." And then I was falling.


"Will he be all right?"

"I don't understand what happened…"

I heard snippets of conversation, but I kept my eyes closed. I was waking up, but I wasn't quite there yet.

"Did he say anything to you?"

"He didn't look good…"

They were talking about me. Not exactly a Sherlock Holmes leap of deduction, but considering the muddled state of my mind, I guessed I was doing pretty good.

I strained to make out more words, but I heard the voices fading away. I struggled to open my eyes then, because I didn't want to be left alone. "Don't…" I stopped and tried to swallow, my mouth was tacky and didn't want to work right "…go," I finished.

I finally succeeded in opening my eyes. McKay and Elizabeth were already walking towards me, Beckett right behind. They looked tired.

McKay spoke first. "Fine, eh?"

"Relatively," I said, rolling my head on the pillow, pulling my eyes off them and finding something innocuous to watch above me. "Your area of expertise," I pointed out.

"Relativity and relatively aren't the same thing, Major." McKay didn't look amused, I realized, as I let my head drift back to watch them. The ceiling was boring, and besides, I kept seeing faces…dying faces on the bland tiles.

"Close enough," I murmured.

McKay stared at me, then looked over his shoulder at Beckett. "Are you sure he's okay?" he asked. "Because those two words aren't even close to the same on my planet."

"Rodney, I think Major Sheppard is pulling your leg," said Carson.

"Easier than taking candy from a baby," I whispered. I really needed some water.

Elizabeth slipped a slender arm under my back, and helped me struggle into a sitting position, but I wound up more or less listing towards her on my elbow. "Here, John." She handed me a glass of water, which I drank greedily.

"Thanks," I said, and let myself fall back against the bed.

She took the cup and sat it down on one of those metal trays on wheels, and then I could tell she was sizing me up. "How do you feel?" she finally asked.

I lifted a hand, and rubbed my forehead, trying to ease the headache that was causing more than my fair share of discomfort. How did I feel?

"Sick," I answered honestly, because I did. Maybe the dead people were all fevered hallucinations. I looked over at Beckett. "Do I have a fever?"

"Not really," said Carson, watching me with curiosity. "You feel sick? Like your stomach, Major? Or, head cold kind of sick?"

I didn't know what to say. He was waiting, and so were McKay and Weir, and all three were watching me with that overly scrutinizing look. How do you explain that you don't feel right inside? That you're seeing things that aren't there, and they're scaring the hell out of you?

I guess I wasn't ready to face up to the implications, because I wussed out. That's not a pretty word for it, but I've always been one for telling it like it is. "Head cold," I said. "Or something."

There wasn't a lot of belief going around the room, but no one argued or pushed me on the fine details. Beckett took the initiative, and said, "Your tests came back fine, but you'll be my guest for another night." Carson turned to Elizabeth. "I want him taken off the duty roster for now."

Elizabeth waited, and I think she expected me to object, and when I didn't, the skepticism and worry rose a notch in the room. I wanted to, and in a way, I kind of wondered why I didn't. Finally, she nodded, "Consider it done."

I made an obvious motion of scrunching downward, into the blanket. As much as I hadn't wanted to be alone before, now I craved it. They were talking about me like I wasn't here, and I didn't like the topic of conversation. Grounded, and I wasn't even offering up a protest.

Beckett and Weir took the hint; a soft pat on my shoulder from Elizabeth, and a "Feel better," before she left. Beckett reminded me that he was in his office, and if I needed anything to give a shout. Then they were gone, but Rodney wasn't.

I shifted purposefully again, watching him, and waiting. He stared back, nonplussed. In fact, he pulled up a chair and sat down. "Care to explain that little show you just put on, Major?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I protested. I stopped watching him, and found that annoying speck on the ceiling tile again, stubbornly refusing to meet his gaze.

I felt my bed shake, and glanced down to see McKay's dirty boots propped on my bed, beside my knee. I glared at him, and realized he got what he wanted, which was my attention back on him. "You're not sick, and as bad as you are with directions, you're even worse with lying, so out with it," he said. "I'm not leaving until you do."

I was looking at him now, so he got that much right, but what I saw made me swallow again, trying to keep my stomach from crawling up my throat. He was lying on a darkened metal floor, and the pool of blood was flowing out of him at a rate that signaled the fatality of the injury. A body didn't lose blood at that rate and live.

I closed my eyes against the sight. "I see dead people," I admitted quietly.

I heard McKay snort, and my bed moved as his body jerked from his laughter. "Very funny," he said, but then his laughter stilled, as he realized I wasn't smiling. His feet dropped to the floor with a thud, and I heard him lean forward. I forced my eyes open again, and this time it was only to see the live McKay leaning towards me. "You're serious?" he exclaimed.

I had barely time to nod, before he continued. His face had fallen, and now he was muttering, "Oh, this can't be good…people don't just see dead people." He stood, and started pacing. "That's a bad sign, Major. A really bad sign."

He stopped pacing and asked, "Why didn't you tell Carson?"

"Because it's a bad sign," I said dryly.

He lifted his eyebrows. "Good point." I could see the mental wheels turning, so it didn't surprise me when he asked, " Exactly what dead people are you seeing?"

"Everybody," I admitted. "Elizabeth, Beckett…you." I wondered how much to say, or even how to explain it to him. I saw a world I'd never been to explode in a cataclysmic ball of fire, spewing debris outward. I felt myself rocked by the shockwave in space, but I was the space…and the stars. I watched a flower break through the ground, and the tender shoot stretch to the heavens, only to shrivel against the chill, and wilt to the dirt. Watched the cycle of decay break down what it was, so it could become something else.

I suppose I'd been quiet to long, because McKay was standing uneasily beside me. "How?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "But I need your help."

I could tell I'd taken McKay by surprise. I don't know why, it isn't like he hasn't asked me for help before; of course, we both knew how badly that turned out.

I could tell he was debating whether to call Beckett back, but he finally asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"Research, but don't let anyone know why," I said. I knew that once the cat was out of the bag I'd be stuck in the infirmary. I hadn't cracked. I knew I wasn't nuts, so there had to be some explanation for what was happening. "Look for any information related to…"

"…seeing dead people?" he finished for me.

Why did it sound so bad coming from someone else? "Yes," I replied. "Exactly." He started to leave, but I called to him, "McKay?"

He paused, waiting for me to say what I had to say. "Thanks," I said. He nodded, and left. Lost in this screwed up world of mine, it was a relief to know I could count on McKay to help me through this. Now I just had to figure out how to keep this from Beckett as long as possible…


I must have fallen asleep because I was disembodied, soaring through the ether, and then I was watching…I didn't know the world I was on, but it was a special event. There was a crowd, and laughter. Kids ran around, screaming and shouting with delight, throwing toys and playing games. Adults were talking, and dancing. Alien music played, and decorations whipped in the breeze. A beautiful sunny day, and the world was alive with the promise of the future. I smiled, and thrilled with the enjoyment of those around me, almost dancing with the rhythm.

At first, the shadow creeping along the ground went undetected, but then a child at the edge took notice, and stilled in his play. He watched the shadow creep slowly across the field, touching first his toes, then his legs, before his whole body was in the shadow. He turned to his friends, and now the music died, a protracted last discordant note sounding a funeral cry. Eyes riveted to the sky to watch the hulking monstrosity move overhead. At first, I knew they watched in a mixture of wonder, and awe. There were some worried looks, but shock hadn't allowed thought to present fear…not yet. But when the lasers began raining down from the underbelly of the giant, friends and family began to fall. Cut down, their bodies hewn by excited particles, a bloodless death, because the power was so great it cauterized the sliced flesh as it moved through, killing.

I screamed along with the people. I raised my eyes and saw the others…they were there, watching. Always watching. Why don't they stop this? "This is wrong!" I shouted angrily. The tears ran down my face that wasn't even there. How can a soul not cry out at so much death? I stumbled through the bodies. The children, who moments before had rambled and jumped, now lay still, eyes staring at nothing every again.

"It's the natural order of life."

I heard the voice but it wasn't coming from anywhere; it was just there.

"It's not natural for children to be slain," I protested angrily.

"Everything dies, Major Sheppard."

I tried to calm down, but it was hard, walking among the bodies- children, adults, and crushed petals, all smoking and ruined. "Being killed isn't dying," I argued.

"Death is the same, regardless."

I didn't know who I was arguing with. I wanted to make them feel the outrage, the hurt…the horror of what I felt. "It's not the same," I stressed instead, head bowed, as I walked past a beautiful girl, her blonde hair splayed on the ground. A blue ribbon was half burnt beside her body, and I would've thought she was sleeping if it weren't for the fact that there was a thin line down her middle, and I knew if I kicked the body, it'd separate at the line. Even though I knew I wasn't there, it was too much. I started gagging, and felt my insides lurch.

In the blink of an eye, and the age of a lifetime, I was back in my body, and quickly rolling to the side, retching. Somewhere during losing my breakfast, and then lunch, Beckett came in, and a nurse followed. I heard comforting murmurs, and a cold cloth was pressed against my forehead as I continued to hang over the edge, not quite certain it was okay to lay back.

Finally, I let them push me back, and I put a shaky hand to take over holding the cold rag on my head. I was clammy, and felt sick. Beckett seemed startled by the events. I suppose his disbelief in my earlier assertion at being ill was to blame. He hadn't expected me to actually be sick. He didn't know it was what I was seeing that was doing it to me. I don't know that it would do any good, even if he did know, so I let him come to his own assumptions.

I heard him talking to the nurse to run some blood work, and then he turned to me and asked what I'd eaten lately. Food poisoning. Maybe it was a good thing to let him think that was the culprit. "Some kind of soup," I told him.

He wrote it down. "What about breakfast?"

"Ate it here," I said. Kind of wondered why he didn't remember that.

He frowned at me. "I know that. What did you eat?"

Oh. Now I felt stupid. I'd gotten a choice of two different breakfast meals. I'd chosen the egg and sausage omelet that had tasted more like reconstituted eggs and cardboard. Funny, but the cliché about hospital food was a cliché for a reason; it was always true. "Egg and sausage omelet," I provided.

He wrote down some more. The nurse was back with a tray filled with needles and empty tubes waiting for blood. I sighed, more because I really wanted to be left alone, and partially because I was seeing her with a big hole in her head. Beckett mistook my sigh as one of frustration.

"We'll be just a minute, and then you can rest, Major."

I nodded, but I wanted to say rest was the last thing I wanted. I prayed I never fell asleep again. I couldn't go through that again. I just couldn't…