"Rodney, is the future counterpart of my chief military officer fixing the plumbing?" Elizabeth was a diplomat, not a plumber, but she'd seen her father put in a new bathroom once and it looked like John was putting common household copper piping into the ZPM console.
"I have no idea." Rodney hit the comm. "Radek, what the hell are the two of you doing?"
"Leaky pipes in ZPM console. We are losing two percent of power to ten thousand year old pipes." Radek slid out from underneath the console. "John brought schematics. We will be done tomorrow."
"I know you boys are busy," Elizabeth cut in. "But you've been under there for six hours."
"Really?" John looked at the strange watch that Carson swore was welded on but that John had removed easily for his x-rays. "I think it's time for a break, Radek."
Radek slid his Cold Heat back into his pocket and started to pack up. "She will come back."
"Can't stop her."
"I will learn to live with it."
-----
The purple creature from PK-83412 made really good steaks. John hadn't have one in almost two years, so when he'd seen that the mess was serving them, he'd gladly taken a helping, along with the blue potatoes they grew on the mainland. He was just cutting in when the two seats across from him were taken. "Checking up on me?"
"We would be remiss not to." Teyla gave him her diplomat's smile.
"You're upsetting Sheppard." Ronon stole a potato off John's plate. "We want you to stop."
"I've been here twelve hours! I said less than ten sentences to the man." John pointed his fork at Ronon. "Get your own, Dex. I stood in line fifteen minutes for these."
"You never call me Dex." Ronon bit into what the Americans called a French fry but one of the Frenchmen had told him was actually a Dutch dish.
"I'm not a soldier anymore, you're not under my command." John, deciding his food was probably safe for the moment, set down his fork. "Let me guess. He wants to know why I resigned my commission."
"I think the glasses bother him more." Ronon studied this version of his taskmaster. Aside for the gray hair and wrinkles, he seemed to be in passable condition. He'd seen older soldiers in worse shape, but who knew how the humans ran their military? They seemed to have all sorts of bizarre rules of conduct.
"I'm still a pilot, if that's the problem, just not for the Air Force." John, who had been scanning the room and seemed to have found who he was looking for, reached down below the table and retrieved his bag. "But that's not what's bothering him, is it? He wants to know why I'm alive when the rest of you are dead."
"He does seem to be dwelling on it." Teyla watched John as he dug around in his bag. He finally unearthed what he was looking for: a small round metal tin, with foreign writing on it.
"That's because you're not dead." John twisted the tin open and sniffed. "Either of you, as far as I know. Haven't made the trip to Pegasus in six months. When the expedition pulled out of this galaxy, you both stayed behind. To quote, 'Earth is a nice place to visit, John, but we have no desire to live there.' I understood. I didn't want to go either. 'Scuse me." Taking the tin with him, John walked over to the table where a few of the scientists sat.
"Dr. Kasanagi." John slid in beside the quiet Japanese scientist. "I have something for you."
Miko blinked at him a few times. Everyone knew about their visitor, but he'd spent most of the day cooped up with Dr. Zelenka. "For me?"
He extended the tin to her. "For you. Thank you for everything you did for me, Miko."
"Did for you?" Miko opened the tin and smelled, then sniffed again as if she couldn't believe her nose. "Matcha. From home." They had tea here, and she'd brought some as well, but the good stuff was long gone and it was hard to get more.
He patted her arm, then went back to Ronon and Teyla. "As I was saying. You're not dead, and I did my damnedest to keep Rodney alive long enough to come with me, but I'm not a doctor. I'm an engineer." He picked up his fork again. "I've missed you guys, by the way. Been a long year since we lost the City, cooped up in the Mountain. Never thought I'd think of Tokyo as uncrowded."
"You still have not told us why you left your military." Teyla noticed he'd dodged the question.
"You're right, I haven't." John took a bite of his dinner and let the alien taste settle on his tongue. "And I'm not going to. I'm here to save Atlantis, not disrupt the time line. I've already changed too many things. The next ten years are going to be different just because I'm here and I want them to be different in good ways."
"Sheppard,"
"No." John pointed his fork at Ronon again. "I liked my life, until we lost Atlantis. I had a nice apartment, a cat, and they let me build and pilot experimental space craft. You know, we'd been to another galaxy before we set foot on Mars." They gave him blank looks. "The planet next door. Imagine never having gone to the planet next door."
"Humans are strange." Ronon stole another fry.
"I've missed you, Dex, but steal anymore of my food and I'm stabbing you with my fork." John went to work on his steak. "Are you done interrogating me?"
"For now." Teyla stood, that diplomat's smile on her lips again. "Come. We will get you some greasy potatoes of your own, Ronon, before our visitor becomes violent."
-----
At about 3 am, John woke up out of a sound sleep to find a woman standing over his bed. He was very proud of himself for not shouting and in the same instant he reached for the pistol he kept in the headboard. "I have removed your weapon, John."
"Really. Well, wasn't that considerate." The knife under the mattress was gone too. He slowly sat up. It wasn't everyday he woke up to find an attractive woman he didn't know standing over him, but it wasn't the first time. "And you would be?"
"Ananke, AI tactile holographic mainframe interface. I wished to observe you as you were in 2005." Ananke produced his pistol from the thigh holster she wore, but when he checked it, there was no clip in it. "You could not harm me, but the damage to the walls would be troublesome to repair."
"Right." An artificial intelligence, walking around in a holographic shell, who had wanted to watch him sleep. Creepy, very creepy. "Do we know each other?"
"Yes." She placed the clip at his feet. "You and Radek retrieved me from the mainframe before the city sank. You refused to leave without taking some part of it with you."
"So... you're the living, sentient embodiment of Atlantis. Did you chose this form?" God, he was never going to live this down if Atlantis thought this was what he was looking for in a woman.
"No. The physical body you see is that of the Alterran's top female adult entertainer. It was redundantly stored and easy to retrieve." Ananke seemed to be staring at his form beneath the blankets, twisting the crystal on the necklace she wore. "I don't suppose you'd allow me to observe your current physical form, for comparison?"
"Naked?" The hologram nodded. "How about no? Why are you even here? Won't my evil twin miss you?" No way was he getting naked for the creepy hologram. In fact, he was getting her out of here as soon as possible. Apparently, his taste in company had changed a bit.
"John asked me to entertain myself this evening. He has other plans."
-----
The door chime dragged Rodney's attention from the new power usage curves. Those new copper pipes really had made a difference, although Rodney wasn't sure how yet. "Whoever it is, go away!"
The door slid open, despite the multilayer locks he had on it. Atlantis would only do that for John, but there were two of them now. Rodney turned around in his chair. "Doctor Sheppard, I presume." John didn't say a word, but the door slid shut and Rodney heard the manual lock click as it relocked. "Can I do something for you?"
John strode across the room and pulled Rodney to his feet, then pushed him against the wall. "No talking."
"Hey!" But then Rodney didn't have much to say, because this stranger (and he was a stranger, no matter how much he looked like Colonel Sheppard) was kissing him like they'd been lovers for years – and for all Rodney knew, maybe they had. After the twenty seconds it took to get over the shock enough to calculate exactly how much of a bad idea this was, Rodney shoved John away. "What is the matter with you?"
"I'm trying to get you into bed." John was still standing too close and his arms were still looped around Rodney's waist. "You're not making it very easy for me."
"With good reason! Do you remember the conversation we had about why this was a bad, horrible, dangerous idea?" Rodney did, the two of them sprawled across Rodney's bed, the last night they'd spent on Earth before boarding the Daedalus. "Setting aside the fact that you were having an affair with a man, which, given the nature of this project, they probably wouldn't kick you out for, top-secret knowledge and revenge being what it is, you were fraternizing with a member of your gate team!"
"I'm a civilian, and seeing as how I'm existing outside of time, I think I'm outside the chain of command." John traced the line of Rodney's jaw. "Now, don't tell me you don't want to have sex with me, because I know you'd be lying. I've got less a month to live, Rodney, and I'll spend a chunk of that time stark raving mad. Are you really going to tell me to leave?"
"I should." Rodney let his head fall back and hit the wall. "Why are you doing this?"
"What?" John leaned in a little closer and dropped a line of kisses down Rodney's neck. "You really thought it was over? That I was just going to forget about you, settle down with the first non-Ascended woman to catch my eye? Didn't work that way. You look, sound," John nuzzled behind Rodney's ear, "and smell a lot like someone I spent the better part of the past ten years sleeping with. I have less than a month to live, I gave up my life and my entire world to come and save you and the city. Now, you don't have to provide a dying man with some small comfort during his last few days. Just say the word and I'll go knock on Ronon's door."
"That's... actually disturbingly hot." Rodney let John's hand drop and tilted his neck to the left, to give John better access. "But don't go anywhere. As you probably know, I'm undersexed and easy."
"We'll work on the first part," John's hand was starting to undo Rodney's belt. "But believe me, Rodney, the second thing? That's the part of the charm."
-----
"Elizabeth." The future John flung himself into one of the chairs in her office. "Don't send them. Send another team later."
"Can you tell me why?" Gate Team One was set to deploy in ten minutes. She didn't have time to play 'Guess the Future.'
"If you send them through the gate, they're going to be gone a long time. They'll find Ford and then they'll be captured, first by Ford and his motley crew, then by the Wraith. Teyla and Ronon will end up hooked on the enzyme and Rodney will nearly give himself a stroke trying to escape after we were forced to leave him behind. But..." John leaned forward, hands braced on her desk. "But, they'll start what amounts to a civil war and destroy two hive ships."
Wonderful. Just wonderful. "What happens if I don't send them?"
"In the end, the infighting keeps the Wraith busy for a few years, but they have to eat, Elizabeth. They always stopped killing each other long enough to eat." John sat back in his chair, the stylus from her tablet somehow in his hand. "There'll be other chances to start the in fight. We're 98 sure Ford dies on the hive ship and what Rodney does fundamentally weakens his constitution, which is why I outlived him even though I had a deeper connection to the city. Think fast, Elizabeth. They deploys in about eight minutes."
Elizabeth rubbed at her temples. There was that headache again. "John, so help me. If the Wraith show up two weeks from now, I'm sending you up to start my civil war."
"Knew I could count on you, Elizabeth." If nothing else, even if he failed completely, next time he went back in time Rodney would be with him and he wouldn't do what he'd done last night.
"You're late." John was checking his pack when Ronon strolled in, five minutes before they were scheduled to leave.
"Am not." He dropped onto the bench beside Rodney. He sniffed once, did a double take, then clapped Rodney on the back and said something in Setedan that Rodney really hoped had been mistranslated.
"I'm sorry, did you just say, congratulations on bagging an officer?" John couldn't believe his ears and his hands froze, halfway through tying a knot.
Teyla looked like she was stifling a laugh and Rodney looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. "That isn't a traditional saying on your world?"
"No, it's not." John let the stings fall from his fingers. "So. The other plans that sent the porn-star AI to my room last night? That would be you, Rodney?"
"Apparently, and how do you do that?" He shot Ronon an exasperated look. "It's not like I didn't shower!"
"Perhaps this is a discussion best kept for another time?" Teyla had the strong desire to smack Rodney across the head. What had possessed him to sleep with John's future counterpart? No, never mind. Men were men, no matter what their race.
"No, now's good. Christ, Rodney, what the hell were you thinking?" It hurt, why did it hurt? What they'd had, those weeks, it wasn't supposed to have meant anything. John didn't let anyone get that close, not anymore.
"Gee, Colonel, I don't know. Maybe that someone who looks a hell of a lot like you was pushing me against the wall and-"
Teyla clapped a hand over Rodney's mouth. "Rodney, this is not the time or the place for this. We must prepare to go into the field."
John touched his earpiece. "Copy, Elizabeth. We're not going anywhere." The look he leveled at Rodney was a combination of hurt and barely concealed anger. "What happened to 'the worst idea we ever had'?"
"He's not you, Colonel." Rodney threw his pack in his locker and marched out of the departure room without another word.
John stood frozen in place for a minute, until they all heard the transporter at the end of the hall initialize, then he calmly put his things away and walked out. Only another warrior could see the tension he carried everywhere.
"Wrong Sheppard." Ronon nodded to himself. "He's going to kill me, isn't he?"
"It is a distinct possibility, but I am more concerned with the other repercussions of what just occurred." Teyla lay back on the bench and stared at the ceiling. "The Colonel and Doctor McKay were in a relationship, prior to re-establishing contact with their home world."
"I thought they were just sex-blind." It had been a condition common enough among academics and soldiers on Seteda. Professionals trained to match people with opposing obsessive traits paired them off to ensure every able-bodied citizen had a partner and reproduced, especially when these two functions had to be performed by different people.
"The Colonel's people forbid fraternizing between comrades." As John had explained it to her while very drunk one evening, that was actually a bigger issue than the violation of America's sexual mores.
"That's stupid."
"It is indeed."
-----
The door to the quarters they'd given him slammed open then shut. John hadn't heard a door slam in Atlantis since, well ever. There was only one person it could be. "Hello, John."
"You slept with my scientist!" The man he'd been a decade ago was livid.
"No, I slept with a scientist you gave up claim to six months ago."
His evil twin had a point. "You know what I mean." John wanted to hit something. Preferably that smug bastard with his face.
"Let me guess. You had the ah-ha moment, even without Aidan. All those years of not caring, of keeping everyone at arms length, of trying not to get attached to another Natasha, gone down the tubes. Congratulations, John. You're no longer the cold detached bastard everyone left. You actually care." He shoved a chair in his younger self's direction. "Sit down."
"I don't want to sit, I want you to keep those callous-free hands off my physicist!" John kicked the chair over. "Why? Just tell me the truth."
"Why did I have sex with Rodney, or why is it Doctor and not General Sheppard?" Said Doctor put the chair back on its feet.
"The second thing." John sat down in the chair as if he were being forced at gunpoint. "Then the first thing."
"Why does it matter?"
"We walked away and never looked back. I want to know why I looked back." He'd joined the Air Force to forget about the years he'd spent in academia. He hadn't done any math not needed to fly an airplane in almost a decade, and he hadn't engineered any thing more complicated than a house of cards in just as long.
"If I told you we'd been discharged for our relationship with Rodney, what would you do? Transfer him off the team? Find a girlfriend?" The older man reached out and put a hand on John's shoulder. "Wouldn't change a thing. One day, you'd still wake up next to him."
"Were we? Answer me!" John knocked the hand away.
"No. I resigned in protest of a military operation. Feel better?"
Okay, now John felt like an ass. "A little."
"As for why I slept with Rodney... You aren't. Yet. Why should both of us suffer?" He gave John the grin that had always given their Cos fits. John suddenly got why.
"Can I trust you?" John trusted his own judgment but this man was ten years and a million decisions away from him.
"You can trust I will do whatever is necessary to save Atlantis."
Well, wasn't that comforting. Not.
-----
Elizabeth, who often wandered the corridors when she couldn't sleep, found John – the future John - sitting at the computer console, an arm thrown around the blond woman seated beside him. "Doctor Sheppard?"
"Evening, Elizabeth." John didn't look up from the screen. "You can call me John, you know."
"Fine. John, are you going to introduce us?"
The woman extended a hand to Elizabeth. "Ananke, AI tactile holographic mainframe interface."
"Hello." Elizabeth shook the hand and decided not to ask why their mainframe interface looked like a playboy bunny. "It's almost dawn."
"I am not in need of rest and John refuses to return to his quarters. I am ensuring that he does not accidentally harm the city." The AI gave John a long look that spoke volumes. Elizabeth could tell they'd had this argument before, probably often.
"We're trying to find the pressure point, what causes the eventually destruction of the City. Unlike some people, who'll live forever unless her creator deletes her out of spite," And this time it was John staring at the AI, "I have a limited time frame. I have about three days before organ failure and insanity sets in, and then I'm going to die a slow and painful death."
"You don't sound very upset."
"I've known for almost a year this was coming." Death and John Sheppard were old friends. This isn't the way he'd always thought he'd go out, but it was a good a way as any, dying for the city.
"Gate Team Six found some interesting garbage on that planet you told me not to send Major Sheppard's team to. Empty vials of what Carson tells me was the Wraith enzyme." He'd been right. Elizabeth could only imagine the chaos that must have reigned with her A-team missing. "Is there anything else coming up?" Any other worlds she should avoid, any lives she could save?
"Nothing I can let you interfere with, Elizabeth. If the Civil War starts a few months later, no big deal, but somethings, somethings you just have to let happen." John flexed his right hand. "You can just... fix them a little."
If Elizabeth had paid very a careful attention to the scene before her, she would have noticed John's left hand in a tight, white knuckle grip on Ananke's arm and his pupils dilated from pain.
-----
He left John asleep, but when Rodney came back, fully outfitted to go on their next mission, John was awake. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but don't you ever sleep?"
"I'll sleep when I'm dead." By not having their little adventure with Ford, the weeks they'd spent with him had disappeared from the mission rosters and the time line of future events had been bumped up. Gate Team One was on their way to their next mission. "Have fun looking for a ZPM."
"Do we find one?" Rodney stood at the foot of the bed and took a moment to enjoy having John naked in his bed again, even if it wasn't exactly the John he wanted.
"Finding a ZPM is the easy part. Keeping it is a little trickier." John rolled over so that he was lying on his back. "Rodney, you have to go with him."
"What?"
"You have to go with him." John reached down and snagged Rodney's pack from beneath the bed, then tossed it to him. "Just this once, Rodney, do as I tell you."
End Part Two
