AN: Okay, as some of you've noticed, this is a very character-narrative driven story, and because of it, I'm more nervous than usual (as my friends know more than anyone right now). Drufan, yes, the voice is different, and that was a very good catch! I hope that despite the lack of 'action, action' it'll keep being a rewarding read. There will be action, but it's not the focus of the story, but more about the characters and how they react to the situation. Thank you, so much, gaffer, Linzi and Shelly. I fear by the time this is over, I will have worn you out! LdyAne, trust me, being my beta is exhausting LOL! (if you only knew how much I whined and whimpered over this particular chapter).

Thank you Cpt. Untouchable for pointing out the goof (I'm going to blame it on a late late night...yeah...grin)

Chapter Four

It's amazing what twenty-four hours can do to one's optimism. John had gone from hopeful, to angry, and then back again to hopeful only to come crashing down again when he'd woken this morning to the news that a house was being prepared for them.

Gadmere had been formal, polite, and firm. They were members of the Nokomisian people now. They would be discharged from the hospital soon and expected to begin their new life, with slight accommodations for their conditions. It made John think of the saying 'nothing in life is free', because apparently, these people subscribed to the same philosophy. Not that he'd expected a hand-out, but he would've preferred Gadmere pack their bags, give them their things, and say 'have a safe trip home'.

Then again, every time he thought about actually making it back to Atlantis, he had to face the unpleasant prospect of being sent home on the Daedalus. He wanted to fly. He wanted to see. No one wanted to be blind, but to have all those things, and lose them -

"Feeling sorry for yourself?"

John jumped, and his heart sped up. "Rodney!" he yelped. Yes, he actually yelped. "Shit, don't sneak up on me." God. It'd suck to have survived a fall, traumatic brain injury, and some freak alien pox, only to die of a heart attack.

"I didn't sneak up, I'm in a wheelchair!" Rodney snapped. "You were so into your mental whining that you didn't hear."

Annoyed at the fact that he'd been that transparent in his thoughts, John grouched, "They let you up, great. Their timing is about as good as the Wraith." So what if he'd been engaged in mental whining? He didn't do it out loud, much, and if a guy was ever entitled to whine to himself, John figured this qualified. Truthfully, he'd felt he'd come far from those first few days when the panic had been his constant companion, and then the fear, and the anger – okay, the anger was still hanging around. And maybe the panic…and the fear…a little.

"You have your hair, something to be thankful for," Rodney bitched. "You could've been paralyzed, or any one of us could've been." He felt Rodney's hand on his arm, and was going to pull back, but then McKay kept talking. "Shep…John – this first name thing is ridiculous; anyway, I know that right now, things seem bad to you, but you've got to remember, it can always be worse. You're blind…not dumb. At least I never believed you were."

"Rodney McKay, wheelchair psychiatrist," joked Sheppard. "Did you come down here for the sole purpose of getting on my case, or was there a legitimate reason?" he asked sharply. And this time he did pull his arm away. "I thought you said you didn't do hand-holding."

"That is a legitimate reason." There was a noise, which sounded a lot like a snort. "And I don't, unless someone acts like a child and needs it."

"Rodney," warned John. He really didn't feel up to this today. As relieved as he was at knowing that McKay had been well enough to do the visiting this time, it just…he sighed. Too much on his shoulders. He didn't need to add Rodney trying to be there for him. "I'm touched, okay, but let's leave it at touched and move on. Have they told you we'll be leaving to set up house soon?"

There was a huff to his left, and McKay relented, "Fine." John felt his bed shake, and he was going to ask Rodney what he'd done, but McKay kept talking. "Teyla told me that Gadmere was getting everything set so we could play 'the Munsters meet the Cleavers'. She also said you seemed depressed."

Teyla had dropped by earlier. Her doctor was making sure she was up to being released. Her injured arm was in a sling, and her surgical incision, from what she described, was similar to the laparoscopic kind from back home. Small and she said it wasn't hurting much anymore. He hadn't been talkative, but he was sure that was more to do with the fact that Gadmere had just left after dropping his ultimatum. John hadn't ever equated depressed with himself, not even after that disastrous mission in Afghanistan. "I wasn't depressed. I was pissed, and get your feet off my bed." John had figured out what'd made his bed shake.

"How did you -" Rodney started to say.

"Psychic."

"Can I join the party?" Ronon asked, and Jesus, was EVERYONE going to keep sneaking into his room today? Okay, maybe he was a little grumpy.

He waved a hand in the direction that was his door. "Sit somewhere," he ordered. "Are you on crutches?"

"Yeah," Ronon grunted, and John listened as the sound of rubber hitting floor worked clumsily around his bed. He was pretty sure he heard some wood knocking into wood, and a few low curses. "This is stupid. Nobody can walk on these things." Ronon dropped into the chair that Gadmere usually sat in, and John heard the crutches clunk to the floor, hard.

"Sure they can," he replied smugly. "I had a pair in sixth grade. Eight weeks, too. Maybe it's your size, makes you uncoordinated."

"I wonder what the weight limit is on those things," Rodney piped in. "You might want to take it easy or boom, they snap like your, uh…never mind."

John had the sudden impression that Ronon was glaring across his bed at McKay. "Play nice," he intoned, and trying to do the reassuring leader thing, he turned his head in Ronon's direction. "Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it."

"I don't want to get the hang of it."

"You don't have a choice," Rodney pointed out. "Just be happy your hair -"

"Would you stop it with the hair," John retorted.

"Fine," Rodney replied. "Then how about the fact that every time I try to use my right hand, it shakes so hard I could win an award for best impression of a Parkinson's patient, or that the vision in my right eye is virtually non-existent, hmmm? Or would you like to hear about the headaches that make my teeth hurt, or the fact that I haven't been able to go to the bathroom -"

Everyone was stone dead silent.

McKay coughed self-consciously. "Okay, that was too much information."

"Yes," Ronon and John chorused.

The situation was getting out of hand, and the 'party' was turning into a 'one-up' on the pity factor. Not to mention, it did disturb him to hear Rodney lay it out like that. He'd known that he and McKay faced the more, what was a good way of putting it, career killing injuries. The work Rodney did was delicate, and he needed his eyes and his hands, almost as much as John did. Shit. They needed a miracle.

"Look, tomorrow we're getting released," he said. "Let's keep things in perspective. We're all screwed right now. Between the four of us, we could make a run for making a complete body out of what we have left that does work, but that's not going to get us home. We've got to focus. Get out of here, do what they want us to do." It hung unspoken in the air, that when they were out of here and could talk with a bit more privacy, they'd start planning on a way to get home.

It wasn't long after his pep talk that Gadmere and a couple of staff members knocked on his door, and announced it was time for everyone to eat some lunch and rest. After Rodney and Ronon left, loudly, and for once he was thankful that neither one of them was being quiet, John asked Gadmere if he could stay and talk for a moment.

"I'm sure you have a lot of questions," Gadmere said. "I'll answer what I can."

"Why are you so afraid of us leaving?"

There was a pause, and it lasted so long John wondered if Gadmere had left, but the administrator started talking, and now he was so close it made John jump, and God, did he hate that reflexive action.

"Because, John, all that you see," the man stopped with the obvious misspoken word heavy between them. "All that is here," he amended softly. "It's what we have left." Gadmere swished around to the chair.

John had a sudden urge to move it somewhere else in the room when Gadmere was gone, just because. The man sat, and continued, oblivious to Sheppard's internal musings. "Thousands of years ago, our planet was…teeming. Our people, John, it was…a great civilization. We had the future in our hands, and we were grasping it!" Sheppard was startled by the raw passion in Gadmere's voice. "Did you know we were allies of the Ancients?"

"The Ancients?" John asked, trying for confused.

Gadmere's chuckle told him he failed, miserably. He really had to work on his deceptiveness. "We have the items you arrived with, so don't bother lying, Colonel."

"You know our names, and where we come from, and that we have Ancient technology, so why don't you just trust us, and let us leave?"

"That's just it!" the man exclaimed. "They left us. Abandoned us to die at the hands of the Wraith."

There was bitterness now and it made John cringe. He tried to inject reason into a very old grudge. "They were going to lose, Gadmere. Being decimated wouldn't have changed your situation."

"My situation? It wasn't me, John, but my ancestors. They did the only thing they could, and that was begin to build underground, but the cost -" there was an edge of hysteria as the administrator continued painfully, "– oh, the cost. Millions of lives, John, millions! Sacrificing themselves to the Wraith so the others could work undetected."

"You're not the only people that have suffered at the hands of the Wraith," he replied, forcing himself to keep it calm. "Teyla lost her world."

It was only after he said it, that John realized he'd played right into Gadmere's hands. "Exactly," the man declared. "That is why you will remain. You may find living underground a desperate tactic, but it works. The properties of the dirt above hides our presence. It was only an accident that the maintenance crews missed the air shaft you four fell down, and I am truly sorry for that, but it's done."

John listened as the man stood. "I am sorry," stressed Gadmere. "I know this isn't what you wanted to hear, but you need to understand. Your friends, Teyla and Ronon, they'll be assigned jobs at a work desk until their injuries are fully healed, and then if they wish, they may change to something more…physical. As for you and Doctor McKay, you will stay with them, and continue to recover. I'm afraid we have nothing for you at the moment, considering the type of injuries you both sustained."

There was murmuring that clued him in on the arrival of someone else, and at the same time, he smelled the food. Lunch. Funny enough, he'd lost his appetite, again.

The table was pulled over to his bed, and the tray clunked onto it. "Eat, and rest. And begin to accept what you cannot change. There is no way out of Nokomis." Long after Gadmere left, John sat in his bed, and stared at nothing but the blackness.

OoO

The next day brought a lot of chaos. There was a constant stream of staff coming in and out of John's room. The plan was for Teyla and Ronon to go first, get the house ready for Sheppard and McKay. They had to go on some job orientation, and because of their recuperative status, the Nokomisian in charge had promised to make it short for both of them so they could rest more before working a half-day tomorrow.

Teyla had shown up at his room that morning, and when John asked if she was sure she felt up for this, she'd insisted she was fine. It was something else that was bothering her.

"I do not like leaving you and Rodney…John," Teyla worried beside his bed.

Even though Gadmere had given up that he knew a lot more about them than John wanted, he still preferred they drop titles and keep it simple. They were being forced into living a different life right now and they needed to try and keep from slipping into old habits that might reveal too much. Tilting his head towards her voice, John reassured her, "Teyla, if they wanted to hurt us, I'm pretty sure they would've done it by now."

He could imagine her frown. When she spoke again, he could even hear it. "It is not that," she stressed. "It is not being near in case -"

In case they should get worse. In case something should happen, and they'd die or get separated, or any other worst-case scenario she was dreaming up. John knew what she meant, because he'd felt the same. It was normal, he guessed, when you'd gone through what his team had. Every one of them injured, waking up alone in a strange place, and then forced into a situation where they had to depend on everyone else for food, water, hell – living. All of them were on edge. Their injuries were more than the ones on the surface.

"We'll be fine," he smiled, hoping to convey that he believed it. Fact was, he did. He didn't believe the Nokomisians were dangerous, just as long as you didn't try to leave, apparently. John wasn't sure what these people would do at that point. One thing he did know, was that they weren't in any condition to find out. "Where's Ronon?" he changed topics.

"The doctor is instructing him again how to move on crutches. He broke the other pair and is becoming frustrated. It is unfortunate Halling is not here to give him lessons."

Now, he heard the amusement in her voice. Halling had struggled with the crutches, eventually discarding one of the pair before finding a way he could move and not break his neck. "Good, tell him to keep an eye out when you go," he reminded.

That was the upside of Teyla and Ronon going ahead. They'd be free to start looking around the city, and that meant finding a possible way back to the surface. Gadmere insisted there was no way, but they'd gotten down here, which meant there'd be another way back out. If these people had made one mistake, they could've made two.

"I will, John…how are you…handling…"

Teyla was fumbling with her words, and John knew it was because she meant his blindness. He hadn't talked to her about it, and Ronon was avoiding the topic like it was the plague. Rodney, of course, mentioned it in every conversation, as if to prove he wasn't affected by it. Sheppard knew that it meant the opposite. Rodney was the most affected, aside from John himself. Maybe that was because apparently McKay had his own vision issues bothering him.

"What's there to handle?" he replied tightly. "Life throws you lemons, you make lemonade."

"I see," she said gently. "Another of your sayings to pretend that everything is better than it really is."

John's lips thinned and he didn't say anything. He heard Teyla stand, and her hand found his shoulder, and she squeezed. "Despite your fears, we will not leave you, ever." The hand was gone, and he heard her footsteps retreating.

Her declaration meant more than just here, and John knew it. She was referring to the long haul, if and when they made it back to Atlantis, and surprisingly, John felt comforted by that. It was hard enough to fight the fears of not being able to see. Every sound was amplified, and you couldn't help letting your imagination run with a creak of the floor, or a hiss in the air. But, to fear your future, on top of all the other burdens of being blind, that was hard, and it was taking a toll on Sheppard. He was trying to cope by focusing on the present situation, and that was getting his team back home.

The rest of the day went a lot slower than John would've liked. He found himself dwelling more on what it would be like if he never got his sight back. Without Ronon or Teyla to visit with, he didn't have any other distractions. He couldn't read, no movies or games, just himself talking to himself in his head.

Wheels squeaked and he knew McKay was coming to see him, but John really didn't feel up to talking. He kept his eyes closed and held his body still. It's funny, he didn't even know why he didn't want to talk to Rodney, but sometimes there isn't any good reason for what you feel like.

"Sheppard," McKay called.

Almost as if Rodney knew he was avoiding him, the use of his last name was something McKay knew would irritate him. John sighed, and opened his eyes, staring up at the same darkness that only changed at the peripheral edges, and even that hadn't lightened any further. "John, okay. You're a genius. It's a name, not the equation to calculate relative speeds of light."

"Next time, don't be so predictable. I could set my watch by you," and Rodney's hand latched on to John's, again. He tried not to flinch. "I'm not going to let you lose yourself in self-pity because of this," Rodney declared.

Pushing himself up off the bed with the palms of his hands, John shook his head at the man's temerity. "Tell me that you aren't scared about getting back? You told me yourself that your right hand shakes, and you can't hardly see out of that eye. What do you think you'll do if they send you back to -" he broke off, sweating a little at realizing how close he'd come to saying Earth. "-home. What will you do? Lose the job you care about more than anything else, and what do you have left?" he snarled, surprised at the harshness that had forced itself out.

John worked to control his emotions, his mouth, but it was a little too late for that. He hadn't meant to say those things to Rodney. There was silence, and John strained to hear if McKay was still there. Finally, McKay responded, "I didn't realize you were a quitter."

The heaviness in the sentence made John want to deny it, but maybe Rodney was right. Still, how can you fly when you can't see? Hell, how could he get his team home? And maybe that more than anything was weighing him down. They were his responsibility, and he couldn't even look in their eyes and see if they were doing okay.

Rodney leaned in closer towards him, and John could feel the heat radiating from McKay's body. "Every time you turn around, I'm going to be there. You may not be able to see me, but you can hear. You didn't die in that shaft, and I'm not going to let you begin to think maybe you should have. Get that through your thick skull."

"That's what this is about?" John asked, suddenly getting the picture. "Rodney, I won't deny that I'm going back and forth between being pissed, worried, angry. Hell, I'm waffling more than a damn waffle iron, but I'm not suicidal."

There was an awkward pause before Rodney cleared his throat. "I never said you were," he stated. "I was just saying…that…I'm going to stick to you like… bad lint."

"Bad lint?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake. Look, I suck at the whole 'be a friend' thing, okay? I know it, you know it, and apparently so does Ronon, but Teyla thinks I can handle it, and she's worried you aren't coping with this…blindness thing."

"Maybe that's because Teyla's the one not coping," reasoned John.

"I've got an idea." McKay shifted topics suddenly. "Crossword puzzles. We can forget this whole embarrassing conversation took place," he offered tiredly. "And then this afternoon we'll get shipped off to our new home for the hopelessly injured and screwed up, and learn just how much we didn't know about each other. I'll start. Eight letter word for inflexible," McKay quizzed.

John scrunched his face. When he got it, his muscles slackened, and he rolled his sightless eyes. "Cute, very cute – stubborn."

"Yes, well, subliminal messages, and all that secret spy stuff," Rodney sniffed.

John grinned, two could play that game. "Seven letter word for guilt?" He could just imagine Rodney twitching over that one. Of course, imagine was all he could do, since he couldn't see.

"You hear the sound of me not laughing," Rodney deadpanned. "It's remorse, by the way, and never let it be said that I don't know my dictionary. Your turn, nine letter word for complex?"

Vowing he would repay Rodney for this, he replied, "Difficult." At least he had the satisfaction of getting them right. He'd lived on crosswords as a teen. It had almost bordered on obsessive. The afternoon waned with each one continuing to challenge the other by getting in personal insults via crossword clues. John found it oddly exhilarating.