title: Horizon
author: m
rating: PG
disclaimer: Atlantis not mine, John not mine, Emily not mine. Emily belongs to angelsgracie whom the story was written for.
summary: he always comes back here...
i.
He sits, sometimes, and stares at the horizon. It's a beautiful view, beautiful and completely unremarkable which is ironic really. The horizon viewed from within the walls of Atlantis should be spectacular, unique, and absolutely unparalleled.
Except, it isn't and he finds it funny. It's just like every other ocean view he's ever seen. Lots of water, lots of sky. Sun goes up, sun goes down, and clouds drift by...same old, same old. Which is fine, he doesn't like to think of the times the horizon has truly been spectacular. That way lies memories of his gun heavy in his hands, sweat burning in his eyes, and Elizabeth's scared face in his crosshairs.
Life in this city can be a little too unparalleled at times. Sitting and looking may be a mundane pleasure everywhere else but here it brings far more satisfaction than he ever thought possible.
He doesn't let himself think like that a lot but when he does, the others give him his space. Rodney cuts the snark, Elizabeth politely refrains from concerned looks, and Emily...she gives him space but manages to be never too far out of reach. She's got a knack for knowing how to keep an eye on him without crowding him in.
When he's asked, she's laughed and almost always says, "We live in a city in the middle of an ocean on a planet that's three galaxies from home, John...where are you going to go?" The smile that accompanies her words is teasing and flippant and chases away the chill. He'll never stop looking for that smile or the look in her eye.
They represent everything Atlantis has given him. A fresh start he didn't deserve to get and a second chance at all the things he thought forever out of reach.
Emily's face is the face of all that. He wakes up, she's there, and it all comes back to him. Everything this place has given back, everything that it's given anew, everything still waiting around the corner to be given.
Some mornings that's exciting, some mornings that's wearying, some mornings depressing, and some mornings it scares the living hell out of him.
If he's really going to have a day, it does all of the above all at once. He hasn't had a morning where none of it has and sometimes the thought of that scares him more. What would happen if he ever numbs to the possibilities, the blessings, or the pain?
Those are the thoughts which haunt him, drive him to sit alone and think. There are probably some to whom the idea of a contemplative John Sheppard is a physical impossibility. They don't know him nearly as well as they think. John doesn't care for them to know him as well as they think.
Sometimes it's good to keep a few surprises back. Especially in a city that keeps its secrets like Atlantis.
He can't help but think of the city as a living entity even though it's just as hard top think that it is. To spend so much time sitting alone and empty, century after century in silent emptiness, and then to suddenly explode into life and activity...it's enough to drive you mad.
Throw in the Wraith, the Genii, and the crazy Czech and Canadian bitching at each other and it's a miracle above miracles that any of them had any sanity left to call their own - John chief among them.
Of course, there's always the chance he has snapped and Emily is a sympathetic creation of his own subconscious. If so? John really needs to send his subconscious flowers. Flowers and possibly the playmate of the month cause, as sympathetic projections go, Emily is tops.
Like so many others in Atlantis, Emily rolls with the punches like a professional. They've all spent their lives taking every sucker punch the world's thrown their way but the Pegasus galaxy fights dirty. It's throwing things they've never even dreamt of at them. He can still feel the hint of scales on his skin, alien landscapes haunt his dreams, and inhuman sounds echo in his ears. Almost everyone here has their own ghosts like that, their own personal demons licking at their heels.
John knows that better than anyone, he watches the people under his command, he sees the shadows in their eyes. Cousins of the shadows in his own.
He sees so many things. The shadows and the light. Sometimes, he thinks that's the real power of the place and why it's still here. The shadows run deep but contrast sharply against the spires of the city and in the people. Emily, Rodney, Elizabeth...he won't say it aloud but in the moments when he sits and stares at the horizon, he lets himself think on it. Every encounter with the Wraith, every loss...each one a shadow in its own right. They carry the shadows and the scars but reflect the light like the spires of the city.
John isn't the only one who watches the horizon and thinks, they all do it although none say. It's one of the city's unspokens, the things which everyone holds but no one voices. Some things about the city just can't be spoken aloud and can't be summarized in any report. Things like the way Emily likes to sit in the puddle jumper just because she likes the way they make her feel or how Elizabeth drinks her first mug of the day on the balcony while on the nights he can't sleep, Rodney ends up one of the docks to work on McKay's symphony no. 9...everyone contributes to the unspokens of the city and John is gatekeeper to them all.
ii.
He always comes back here to the balcony and the horizon. He can't seem to help it. He isn't sure he wants to help it to be honest.
The railing is cool beneath his palms but warming from his body heat. In the waning chill of early morning, John's jacket provides just enough protection and he thinks maybe they've finally entered the fall. Figuring out the seasons on this planet is a disorienting experience but there's a new edge on the breeze. Winter's inevitable onset is around the corner and he idly makes a mental note to check with Teyla and see if the Athosians have everything they need to see them through it. They've never spent a winter on this world and no one really knows what to expect from it. If the winter weather's anything hurricane season then they'll know one thing for sure. The Ancients have lousy taste in real estate.
Of course, he can't fault them for the view.
Out here, he thinks better, things are clearer and make more sense. Out here he can get a handle on the things that confuse and overwhelm him in the confines of the conference room. With the water and the sky expanding out before him he has the room he needs to really think. Most days he can't find a second to catch his breath much less compose his thoughts so time like this is a luxury that he usually can't afford. Too many decisions with too many lives hanging with precious little time for things like thinking.
There's never enough time for anything, a complaint which makes him smile ruefully. Six months spent trapped in a time dilated sanctuary from which his friends spend barely a day trying to free him...It's given him a topsy-turvy view of time.
It's become a word loaded with subjective meaning for him now. Like a lot of things for him, it's something he doesn't like to dwell on which drives Heightmeyer nuts. She's convinced he needs to 'process' and John's not in any hurry to kick off said processing. He does think about it sometimes, he just doesn't like to think about it. If he does, he has to face the fact that he'd really started to believe they'd given up and that he was facing either ascension or maybe a career as the local groundskeeper. He lost hope and he lost faith in his friends. Friends who'd been working frantically to get him back out and working for hours, not months. Rodney and Emily can explain it a hundred times and it won't change the fact he feels guilty. He feels like he didn't give them the chance they deserved and gave up before they really got their game on.
It's like he betrayed them and that's why he's out here, thinking, while everyone's inside. Time dilation doesn't just play hell with the aging process; it messes with the head too. He can't wrap his brain around it, can't make it fit, and he has to. He has to find a way to...process things. Sometimes he thinks the Pegasus galaxy is just one big square peg trying to fit into one very round hole and nothing he does will figure it out.
"You know, you spend too much time out here sometimes…"
Emily's voice is light but he can hear the concern and he doesn't look as she joins him at his side.
"Oh come on," he forces his voice to match hers, "the ambiance, the breeze, I spend all that time-"
"Running around outdoors on alien planets?" Now her voice could try out a martini and he grins a little before he can stop himself.
"It's a difference ambiance," is his defense but she's not buying it.
She turns to rest her back against the railing and he tries not picture the railing giving way. The thing is ten-thousand years old and around here he's learned a healthy dose of paranoia means fewer trips to see Carson. For all they know the railing's sentient and homicidal due to thousands of years spent at the bottom of the ocean without the taste for human flesh…
Okay, maybe he should be talking to Heightmeyer.
"Bull."
Emily's blunt assessment gets him looking over at her finally and he can see the glimmer of mischief in her eye.
"Hey…" he protests, poking her shoulder. "It is not."
"Oh yes it is," she pokes back. "Total and utter bull with another word tacked on the end. You, John Sheppard, were out here brooding with a nice sulking chaser." Folding her arms across her chest, Emily lets the wind blow her hair unimpeded about her shoulders as she watches him with a knowing glint in her eye. "You're not a quantum physicist, John," she said after a while, revealing that knowledge. "You're not any kind of physicist so how were you supposed to know what was going on? You knew we'd try but..." She sighs a little and shrugs. "If I had to wait that long I'd give up too."
That's the thing about Em, about just about everyone in this place, she's damn relentless when she thinks she's right. It's cute on her, a thought that could so get him knocked in the drink if she heard it but she can't. Telepathy's fortunately not one of the 'gifts' Atlantis has chosen to bestow on them...yet. He keeps expecting that and that freakish little bear from the fabric softener commercials to show up any day now.
Really.
"You're too damn stubborn to give up," he argues good-naturedly because, really, she can be damn bullheaded. She can put most bull-headed people to shame. He'd take bets on who would win in a argument, her or McKay, except he knows better. She and McKay won't argue. It's much too much fun to torture him and Zelenka for them to ever turn on each other. "You'd make like MacGyver and hotwire yourself out of there."
She tucks her chin and gives him a chiding look. "John, I wouldn't and you know it. I'd give up too. It was six months to you...six months you lived not just dreamt away. Six months is hard to ignore and after that, I don't think there are many people in Atlantis who wouldn't give up."
John can't help but shake his head and turn his gaze back to the horizon. "It doesn't feel like it."
"Of course not, you're on the biggest guilt trip in history," she turns to join him and then bumps her hip against his. "How about you get off the damn train and come play in a puddle jumper." She gives him her most wheedling look. "Please?"
He can't help grinning at her. "That's not fair."
"Damn straight," she all but purrs. "I never play fair with you. I play fair with you I lose."
"Oh yeah, forgot about that," he leans into her, grinning a bit. "Well, y'know, all's fair in love and puddle jumping." She hasn't let this go and he hasn't let it go either but there's a lot of time to be spent on the balcony and he doesn't have to do it all today.
iii.
There's always another day and another reason to be out here, they're never in short supply in Atlantis.
Goa'uld...
Emily's mentioned them a couple times, McKay's regaled them all with the exploits of Anubis, and the personnel they stole from the SGC's ranks have made the odd comment, told the occasional story. He's read the mission reports, he knows just how damn unpleasant the snakes can be, but somehow...
He didn't think it would be this creepy because he is seriously, well and truly creeped the fuck out. It's bizarre to think he'd rather face down the Wraith than the Goa'uld but he would. There's something insidious about the Goa'uld that he just doesn't want to think about and dammit, he's thinking about it.
Carson's been running scan after scan of everyone on Atlantis and Daedalus, if there are any symbiotes left hiding in anybody in the Pegasus galaxy he's going to find them. It's no stretch to say he's been working like a man possessed and John thinks maybe he's taking the whole thing just the slightest bit personal. Which doesn't surprise him, they've all been just a smidge too casual with security. He's pretty sure the old homestead doesn't have a lock on parasitic beings with megalomaniacal bents. For all they know the next planet on the roster could have its very own Pegasus-styled Goa'uld waiting to sneak into the closest warm body and take over the galaxy.
They've all had a habit of being just a little too 'been there, done that' about the lessons learned by the SGC and John's sure that attitude's at least partially responsible for this. They haven't been there, they haven't done that, and a snake very literally managed to sneak into the garden right underneath their noses. If the Trust could get to Caldwell then there's not many they can't and that's the creepy part. That's the part that convinces him that he's not the only one around here creeped out by the fact Caldwell had a snake in his head. They're all wondering how long, who else and a hundred other possible nightmarish scenarios that're enough to keep him up, staring at the ceiling and trying hard not to think about it.
He and Emily had breakfast together in the mess hall and all John could do was picture her eyes flashing like Caldwell's had. Oatmeal has never ever looked so fascinating. He just wishes it was so easy to blot out the mental image. The idea of Emily being taken over by one of those things scares the living hell out of him. The idea of one of those things getting into any of his people scares the hell out of him but...
It's not their glowing eyes he's picturing when he closes his.
Reading the mission reports creeped him out but the evidence up close and personal? At least the Wraith kill you...it's a small mercy but, he's going to take it as mercy. He has a feeling Colonel Caldwell will be playing what ifs in his head for a very long time to come. What ifs and what was. He'd be doing the same if their positions were reversed. The idea of what could have been, what would have happened...He doesn't want to think about it but he can't stop himself. If they hadn't planted that bomb, if they'd tried something else, if they'd gotten their hands - figurative anyway - on him...
The image of Emily's eyes glowing gold makes him turn away from the view, slamming his palm against the railing in the same motion, his frustration with himself boiling over. Somewhere inside, Emily and Rodney are bickering over the latest experiment that she's been planning and he envies their ability to bury themselves in a whole lot of words that pretty much break his brain. This is the part of command he never wanted and still can't stand. He's got to figure out the fifty other different ways this could have gone wrong and make sure they never ever do while trying not to let the what ifs become the latest batch of nightmares to invade his dreams.
Hollywood's got nothing on the Pegasus galaxy when it comes to dreaming up a good horror story. He's pretty sure he'd make a killing back in LA with a few of the things he's seen here, except for the having to shoot anybody who watched the movie part. Though, as gimmicks go...
Sighing, he pushes himself away from the railing and walks back inside. He knows he'll be back later to think on this again but he wants to try a little escapism of his own and Rodney's got that plan for the jumper...a plan he stands pretty good chance of hoodwinking Emily into. Or a plan that she and Rodney are hoodwinking him into...
The fact that plan makes a lot more sense is actually scarier than the Wraith and the Goa'uld having a tea party/meet'n'greet. Rodney and Emily are in league against him and that means that John?
John picks up the pace. The horizon'll be there tomorrow.
If he's careful, so will he.