Whoah. Wanted to get this puppy done before Misbegotten aired – and I've just about done it! How AU this chappy turns out to be remains to be seen.. it may well be that I can tie all this in to the next eppy and keep it fairly canon – almost like inbetween scenes to the canon stuff – or it may be that events in Misbegotten will make my little whumpfest here entirely AU. We shall see!

Anyway, lots of whumpy Shep in this chapter and a bit more explanation as to why he's feeling so crummy.

Please read and review. :)

The first thing Sheppard saw when he opened his eyes was McKay hovering over him, his expression an odd mixture of panic and concern. Sheppard blinked slowly, feeling sluggish and confused, vaguely aware of a generalised ache that seemed to have settled bone deep into his every muscle.

"Colonel?" McKay's voice was tight, too high-pitched.

He struggled to focus his thoughts. Over McKay's shoulder he saw curved, rib-like columns stretching toward the ceiling and memory flooded back; hive ship, they were on the hive ship. And he was in the queen's chamber – flat on his back on the floor of the queen's chamber. He looked up into McKay's worried face.

"What happened?" His voice sounded tired, shaky.

"What happened? You fainted is what happened!" Relief showed on McKay's expressive face even as his mood shifted quickly from concern to impatience.

"Fainted?" He remembered the sudden pain in his leg, the pounding in his head, feeling that he couldn't breathe. He grimaced. This day was just getting better and better. He felt utterly exhausted, his muscles weak and trembling, an aching weariness weighing him down. Unfortunately, he didn't have the luxury of time to rest right now. He groaned as he levered himself gingerly up to a sitting position.

McKay, predictably, snapped right back into panic mode. "Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah! Where do you think you're going?" His hands on Sheppard's shoulders tried to hold him down and it was more of an effort than it should have been to brush them aside.

"I'm going to check on my team," he gritted out, ignoring McKay's fussing as he struggled to get to his feet. He felt oddly light-headed and he couldn't seem to stop his legs from shaking. A sharp, pulling pain shot up his right leg as he tried to stand and he couldn't hold back a hiss of pain as he sagged back to the floor.

McKay was trying to hold him down again, his fingers tight on John's arm as he gabbled nervously, his voice rising in disbelief. "You can't! You're in no fit shape to go anywhere! Need I remind you that you just fainted in the middle of a mission?" It occurred to Sheppard belatedly that he and McKay were alone in the queen's chamber. The rest of his team was gone.

"Where's Lorne?"

McKay looked distinctly uncomfortable and Sheppard knew immediately there was something he wasn't telling him. "He's gone to supervise locking up the Wraith. I mean, the humans. The former Wraith. What the hell are we supposed to call them now anyway?.." Sheppard frowned, trying to keep focused on the matter at hand as McKay got himself distracted.

"How long was I out?" he interrupted.

There was that look again.

"McKay," he said warningly.

"About 10 minutes," McKay admitted grudgingly. "They've started beaming over from the Daedalus and Lorne went to go check on things; I stayed here to wait with you."

There it was. That guilty look, McKay deliberately avoiding Sheppard's gaze as he explained. McKay was a crappy liar and he knew it. John's eyes narrowed and he pulled his arm free from Rodney's grasp. "Wait for what?"

McKay gave up his pretence at ignorance, taking refuge instead in defiance, his stubbornly raised chin making it clear that he knew John wasn't going to be happy but that he felt that he knew best in this situation, so there. "The medical team from the Daedalus."

Dammit. Sheppard shifted uncomfortably, his pained expression telling McKay exactly what he thought of that brilliant idea. He didn't have time for this – he'd get some rest and get himself checked out when the crisis was over but right now he had responsibilities to attend to. He knew Rodney meant well but the scientist had a tendency to get fixated on the small print and ignore the larger picture. The last thing they needed right now was for him to be forcibly out of action. McKay just didn't understand that. He grit his teeth in determination and ignored both the stinging pain in his leg and Rodney's ineffectual attempts to restrain him as he scrambled unsteadily to his feet.

The dizzy feeling rushed back in to unbalance him almost before he was upright and he swayed a little, surprised to find Rodney there beside him once again, his hands hovering as though expecting to have to catch John at any minute. He blinked a couple of times. Funny. He didn't remember seeing McKay getting to his feet too. "I'm fine," he growled, waving away Rodney's concern.

"You're not fine!" McKay was panicking again, apparently working up to a fully-fledged hysteria. "You fainted, Colonel! Passed out cold in front of your team in the middle of a hive ship!" The physicist quailed a little at the glare Sheppard sent him for kindly reminding him of just how he'd embarrassed himself in front of Lorne and the Daedalus marines, but carried on doggedly, a slightly sick expression on his face, "And in case you hadn't noticed, Colonel, you're bleeding all over the place!"

That stopped Sheppard in his tracks as he looked down at himself in bemusement. Bleeding? He was surprised to see dark stains on the leg of his BDU pants, blood soaked into the fabric over his right thigh. He recalled the pain he'd felt before he'd passed out, remembered rubbing at his leg, trying to ease the ache and…he brought his hand up and found it still smeared with drying blood.

Dammit. He didn't remember getting cut anywhere. He frowned as he vaguely recalled fiddling with a couple of small tears in his pants as he sat struggling for breath on the bridge of the Daedalus. Hadn't there been some spots of blood on his pants then? Must have cut himself somewhere during the chaos of the past 24 hours.. probably just opened up the wound a little when he fell. He'd be okay once he got moving again.

"It'll be fine," he mumbled and turned to go. He staggered a little as his right leg trembled when he put his weight on it and he knew Rodney hadn't missed his involuntary grimace as the twinge of pain in his thigh.

"Colonel!" He ignored the exasperation and anger in McKay's voice and took another less than steady step forwards. It didn't hurt as much the second time. See. He'd be fine. Just stiffened up a little from his brief, unintended nap. Keep moving, that was the thing. Plenty of time to rest later.

"Let's go, McKay."

He was moving about pretty much normally, Rodney tagging along reluctantly behind him, keeping up a steady, caustic, stream of pointed criticism about him being up and on his feet when he was clearly in no fit state to do so, when he heard the tramp of booted feet and turned the corner to come face to face with the promised team of medics from the Daedalus. He scowled as he heard McKay mutter, less than discreetly, "Oh, thank goodness."

"Colonel Sheppard, Sir?" The lead medic was a veteran marine with a buzz cut and a face that said he didn't take any nonsense from anyone, patients included. "Dr McKay reported that you required medical attention?"

Sheppard smiled thinly. "Dr McKay was wrong. It happens." He went to move past the four man medical team but found his way blocked by the unsmiling team leader.

"With respect, Sir, why don't you let me be the judge of that?"

"He fainted back there and he's dizzy and his leg is bleeding too!" McKay blurted out from behind him. Tattletale.

"Sir?" The medic's stance was uncompromising as he gestured to a nearby chamber, his dour expression making it clear that he considered it more an order than an invitation. Sheppard thought seriously about arguing the matter but, truth be told, standing still wasn't doing wonders for his dizziness. He was okay while he kept moving but it seemed that if he wasn't moving then the walls were going to do the moving instead and that was really kinda disconcerting. He sighed. Maybe a quick check-up and a Tylenol or two wouldn't go amiss after all. Five minutes, ten max, and then he could check on Lorne and the marines and get on with working out where the hell they went from here – and what to do with several hundred confused ex-Wraith.

The room was empty but for a raised area under the window that Sheppard assumed was a seating/sleeping area and he found himself wondering at the lack of any real furniture in Wraith hive ships. They knew the Wraith hibernated for long periods of time, in some kind of pods from what he'd seen after he'd killed the Caretaker, but they really had no understanding of Wraith society, of how these creatures lived on a daily basis. Did they even sleep? Or, once woken, did they remain awake until it was time to hibernate once more?

The medical team followed him into the room and waited expectantly as he lowered himself gingerly to sit on what he couldn't help but think of as a giant window-ledge. His head was pounding again but sitting down didn't do much to alleviate that or the ache of his exhausted muscles. Feeling uncharacteristically ill-tempered, he cast a dark look at the still hovering McKay as the medics descended on him with blood pressure cuffs and pen flashlights. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?" he griped uncharitably.

McKay's answering scowl was a rather odd mixture of offended and worried but his tone was as sarcastic as ever as he snapped back, "What? And miss the entertainment value – not to mention the blackmail potential – of seeing you take another swan dive for the floor? Hardly."

They glared at each other for a moment but John couldn't help the hint of a smile that started to curve his lips. In all the excitement and danger he'd not really had time to stop and think about how close he'd come to losing this – his friends, Atlantis, everything. They still weren't safe, not by a long way, but the immediate threat was over and he was still alive – and so were Rodney and Ronon. They'd been damn lucky. He flinched as a medic shone a flashlight in his eyes.

For the next coupla minutes he sat still and did as he was told like a good little soldier.

"Keep your head still and follow my finger, please."

"Just a quick scratch, Colonel."

"Tell me if this hurts?"

"Any nausea? Dizziness?"

He drew the line when one of the team moved to take a pair of scissors to his BDU pants.

"Hey! I don't exactly have any spares with me, you know?"

The lead medic's face was not unsympathetic but he was nonetheless resolute. "We need to have a look at that, Colonel."

Sheppard sighed in frustration, and no small measure of embarrassment. "Well, you're not cutting my pants up to do it," he grumbled, reaching reluctantly for his belt. He had to stand up to slide the pants down over his hips and several pairs of hands reached out for him anxiously as he swayed slightly. He was not too dizzy to slap away those that tried to take over removing his BDUs. "I'm perfectly capable of undressing myself!" he snapped. He got the pants over his hips and sat back down a little too heavily, his legs trembling. The longer he sat around here being poked and prodded, the more he could feel his energy draining away and his aches and pains catching up to him.

He couldn't hold back a hiss of pain, closing his eyes as a medic peeled the blood-soaked fabric down his thighs.

"Holy shit…" He looked up at the sound of McKay's shocked voice and found the scientist still hovering, peering over the medic's shoulders with a look of mixed surprise and revulsion on his face. Sheppard glanced down at his leg and momentarily forgot his discomfort at sitting here in his boxers with everyone staring at him. He was as shocked as any of them to see that the side of his right thigh was peppered with tiny wounds. Okay, and one or two not so tiny ones. His skin was slick and crusted with blood, fresh and drying, but as a medic shone his flashlight over the wounds he could have sworn the light glinted on something.. metallic?

"What in hell..?"

"How did you do that?"

McKay was demanding an explanation even as John murmured his surprise at the expanse of torn and bloody flesh.

"How should I know?" he answered absently, his attention focused on his leg, wincing slightly as a medic started to cleanse some of the blood away with a sterile swab.

"What do you mean, how do I know? How can you do something like that to yourself and not notice?"

Sheppard spared the irate scientist a quick glance and could see that McKay was working himself up into another lecture. "Well, it's been a pretty hectic time recently, Rodney," he pointed out, not a little sarcastically.

McKay opened his mouth, no doubt to give some cutting retort, and then abruptly closed it, his expression changing suddenly as a thought apparently occurred to him. He gave Sheppard a suspicious look. "How did you get on this ship?" he demanded, accusingly.

"I beamed over from the Daedalus, Rodney. You were there at the time." More than a little sarcastic this time.

"No, no, no, no, no." McKay waved his hand dismissively. He could be like a dog with a bone once he got his teeth into an idea and it was apparent he wasn't going to let Sheppard get away with this one. "The first time around. How did you get onto the hive ship in the first place?"

Sheppard sighed. This conversation really wasn't helping his headache. "I told you, I latched onto the hull of the ship in my F302." His leg jerked involuntarily, pain stabbing through his thigh muscles as the medic dabbed at one of the larger wounds.

"Sorry, Sir."

McKay was glaring at Sheppard now, ignoring the muted discussion of the medical team as they fussed over the Colonel's leg, his voice impatient as he picked apart Sheppard's vague answers. "So you said. But how did you get from the F302 on the outside of the hive ship to walking around inside the hive ship, Colonel?"

Sheppard didn't answer for a moment as he watched the blood-soaked swab slide over the irregular pattern of tiny lacerations. Truth was, he wasn't exactly sure about that part of it himself. His memory of the chunk of time between the wing of his F302 disintegrating and Michael rescuing him from his Wraith escort was pretty blurred and indistinct.

"Colonel Sheppard?" McKay continued to push.

"I took some fire," he admitted.

"Took some..? You mean took some fire as in you were shot down?" McKay's voice was incredulous, rising to a pitch that made John's head hurt.

"Well, not shot down, Rodney. There is no down in space," he muttered defensively, "and it's not like I crashed or anything."

McKay's sarcasm was cutting, "Oh, thank you for clearing that up for me, Colonel. That makes all the difference. Just how much damage does, "I took some fire" entail then?"

Sheppard gave that some thought. "I'm pretty sure it blew the right wing off."

There was a moment of shocked silence and Sheppard looked up to see McKay regarding him as though he were some kind of raving, probably dangerous, lunatic.

"Ow!" The stab of pain took him by surprise, his leg flinching instinctively away from the medic's touch.

"Umm. Sir?" The medic called his superior over, his gloved, blood-smeared fingers holding up something too small for Sheppard to see. He watched in exhausted bemusement as the lead medic leaned in for a closer look, McKay snapping out of his shock enough to peer inquisitively over the man's shoulder.

McKay looked sick as he straightened up. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yes, Doctor, it is." The team leader brought his flashlight up to get a closer look and the light reflected off the small piece of metal that the medic had just pulled from Sheppard's thigh.

TBC…