I meant to update a lot sooner, but I was cut off from being able to do so while at home for the holidays. Thanks for being patient with me and for all the reviews I got. Happy New Year!
Elizabeth fell asleep again soon, and John made his way up to the forward compartment to check on their power supplies. It would be close, but a quick calculation in his head told him that they'd probably be okay until the Daedalus arrived. After eating a very small lunch, he managed to get a short nap of his own, sitting in the pilot's seat. He was awakened, however, by the sound of Elizabeth's voice.
"Why did we stop?" she was asking him. "Have we reached Atlantus?" John got up and headed over to her.
"We're not in Antartica, Elizabeth," he patiently said. "You were just dreaming." She didn't look convinced. Getting up took effort, but she managed to pull herself to her feet, shaking off John's attempts to keep her seated.
"Where are we?" she asked. "Who are you?"
"We're pretty far from home," he admitted. "Remember? Pegasus Galaxy? Atlantis?" Her eyes lost focus.
"John?" she asked in a voice that was so small he could barely hear it.
"Yep. You haven't gotten rid of me yet."
Elizabeth's legs gave out, but he caught her, gently lowering her back down to the floor. "You need to stay put," he told her. "As if you didn't have enough problems already. Wandering around while hallucinating is only wasting energy." He grabbed a container of water and held it up for her.
"The Daedalus isn't going to get here," Elizabeth quietly said after she'd taken a sip. "Not in time."
"Hey. Cut it out. No talking like that in my puddle jumper."
"You can only run from the truth for so long, John."
"I'm serious," he cut her off. "Do I need to annoy you into holding on? Because I can do that, trust me."
Elizabeth smiled slightly. "I don't doubt that."
"We've lost too much already for me to lose you, too. You're not allowed to leave me here by myself…and that's an order, Dr. Weir."
"Are you in charge now?" she asked. John smiled.
"Maybe. Would you follow my orders if I was?"
"Sure…about as well as you follow mine." John pretended to be offended.
"I've gotten a lot better, haven't I?"
"Most days, I'd say yes."
"I see. And is today one of those days?"
Elizabeth smiled. "I'll do everything I can not to leave you here." He returned her grin.
"Good."
There was a delicate trade-off in the process of removing Elizabeth and John from the simulation. Either they could take time to run analyses and ensure that they wouldn't harm the city's leaders while disconnecting them, gambling with the fact that Elizabeth would live long enough for that, or they could move quickly before she got much worse and gamble with the fact that both of them would survive disconnecting. Carson decided to go with the former idea.
It was almost four AM on a night where most of the science and med team members hadn't slept when they finally decided that they were ready. Rodney's team was down on the south pier with the device, while Beckett's was buzzing around in the infirmary. Ronon and Teyla hovered near the door to the room, waiting for the final outcome of their very long day.
"Dropping power levels," Rodney reported via headset.
"Acknowledged," Carson replied. No one was sure which of them would leave the simulation first, so half the team was around John's bed and the other half surrounded Elizabeth. A monitor beeped as her heart rate began to become unsteady, but a moment later it normalized – and her eyes fluttered open for a moment. Carson began calling orders like a general commanding troops as they rushed to make up for lost time in her treatment.
John had fallen asleep in the back of the jumper with Elizabeth in his arms, but he woke up to the feeling of a sudden chill. Her overheated body had been helping to keep him warm, but now she was gone.
"Elizabeth?" he said, looking around to see if she'd woken up and, in her delirium, had wandered to the forward compartment, but she wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere in the small ship – she'd vanished into thin air, and John was now alone.
"We've got Dr. Weir back," Beckett reported to Rodney once she had been stabilized.
"We've got problems," the scientist replied.
"What sort of problems?"
"The device has tapped into a secondary power source – it's running off of completely different systems. We're going to have to figure everything out all over again before we can remove Sheppard."
"How long?"
"Too long," Rodney replied. "Probably a couple days inside the simulation."
"Leaving him alone for two days without any idea of what's happening?"
"We'll work as fast as we can, Carson."
He sighed. "Yes, do that, Rodney."
It was REALLY quiet in that damn puddle jumper and much colder than it had been before as well. Night had fallen, but John hadn't bothered with a flashlight. He didn't care about sitting in the pitch blackness of the rear compartment.
He wasn't sure exactly when Atlantis had become home. Maybe it had just done so by default due to the fact that for months it had been the only place in the galaxy that they thought safe from the Wraith. He'd almost given his life in order to protect the city – and the planet it was a gateway to – so Atlantis definitely had become home. And the people in it had become family. They were all lost now; he'd believed that he could get Elizabeth to hang on until the Daedalus came, but had never expected her to vanish on him.
"You disobeyed an order, by the way," he said aloud, his voice breaking the heavy silence in the ship. "And yeah, I know, it's not like I never have, but…this was one thing I really needed, Elizabeth."
John suddenly didn't care all that much about saving power in the jumper. He slipped into the pilot's seat and turned everything back on – navigation, scanners, flight controls, and engines. The small ship lifted off of the ground, pulling free of the snow that had fallen on it, and began to climb. Turning back towards the ocean, John flew towards where Atlantis would be floating if the city still existed. He picked a spot where he thought he could still see some debris, then went into a steep climb until he'd reached orbit. He powered the jumper back down again and sat back to wait for the Daedalus.
The dawn was breaking outside of Atlantis by the time that John was finally pulled from the simulation. Just like the others had, he stared at the infirmary ceiling for a long moment in surprise and disbelief, blinking several times to see if it was still there when his eyes opened.
"Welcome back, Colonel," Beckett told him.
"Yeah, back…where am I?" he asked.
"In Atlantis."
John slowly nodded, not sure whether he could believe that yet, either. "Okay, sure."
"How are you feeling?"
"All right, I think…Am I actually awake? This is real?"
Carson smiled. "Yes, Colonel. You are awake now."
As he turned his head, he caught sight of Elizabeth sleeping in the next bed over. "Is she okay?" he asked. Carson looked over at the expedition's leader as well.
"She will be," he finally answered. John let out a relieved sigh.
"So, Atlantis, huh?" he asked. "I get the feeling I'm about to hear a hell of a story as to what just happened."
TBC...