A/N: In celebration of today being my birthday, I'm posting early. Enjoy!

Ch. 25

Surprise, Surprise

John had shoved himself into a corner of his little rumbling, jerking, jolting box to block his back from the cold. His front he protected with his arm and drawn up knees. He couldn't lay down, since he could only lay on his back, which made it impossible to bring up his legs.

When it wasn't the injuries inside his body making him hurt, then it was the cold. He trembled from both, and didn't even try to stop the occasional moans or whimpers that exited with his exhales. The cold had also increased the phlegm volume in his lungs, tightening his chest, and doubling the coughs that kept all the pain alive.

Yet he didn't care. He didn't have the means to. Misery was clinging to him like a tic – no, an iratus bug, intent on sucking him dead. And he could have sworn it was laughing at him, then realized the laughter was coming from the driver of the truck after a friend told him some joke that sounded dirty and not all that funny. Then again, John wasn't Iothian.

Somewhere along the line, John figured he must have kept losing consciousness. He could have sworn they never made pit stops, then the next time he awoke he found a thin blanket pooled on the floor at his feet. John took it with a trembling hand and wrapped it around his quaking shoulders. It wasn't much – sparse, rough, and not very large – but it was better than nothing.

The next time John awoke, it was to find himself on his back being pulled from the truck by his good arm and dumped unceremoniously to the ground in an agonized heap. He was then pulled to his feet, and shoved toward the tree line where his personal guard barked at him to relieve himself now or hold it until they arrived at the city. John did so, with an audience. Afterwards, a tin cup was shoved into his hands and he was ordered to drink. The water was bitingly cold, but soothing to his chafed throat going down. Then the cup was yanked from his hands and he was shoved back into the compartment.

This happened again a second time. Minutes, hours and even days were lost to John. His world was the compartment, the pain, the cold, and struggling to take deep enough breaths to satisfy his desperate lungs without inciting a cough riot. Adding misery on top of misery, the stitched gashes all over him were starting to itch and a few burn if he so much as shifted.

He didn't mind dieing all that much, and wished it would happen already so he could get beyond this little sliver of hell.

The next time he awoke, it was to a rather unpleasant smell, like sewage, and bad body oder. He heard voices – shouting and garbled talking. John craned his neck and straightened his body enough to peer out the window on his right above his shoulder. He saw buildings clumped together, and smoke coiling toward the slate smooth gray sky. Then he lost the energy to hold the small position and slumped back down, huddling deeper into the puny blanket.

At least he'd lived to make it this far. That had to be some kind of record. Logically, despite his stubborn nature, John new he should have been dead already. More subconscious stubborn at work.

He awoke again to a pinching grip on his arm and his limpid frame being dragged from the compartment. He struggled just a little attempting to get to his feet just for the sake of it, but really had nothing left to struggle with. It was twilight out, and darkening fast. John's personal enforcer pulled him toward a gray brick building of medium size with a small stoop and double doors. Being dragged up the stairs hurt, especially each time he fell to have his arm nearly ripped from the socket, and he couldn't help the grunts of discomfort.

The enforcer lugged him along through the doors, and the warmth that hit Sheppard made him shudder with relief. Until he was dragged through the large room of desks and cubicles to a door at the back and beyond. The cold returned, as did the foul smell. John was taken down a row of dank, barred cells to the one at the very end, which John thought vaguely odd what with all the other cells being empty. The enforcer dumped him within the cell and stepped back so that Tarl could step forward, who dismissed all present enforcers, leaving only Tarl and John.

John tried to struggle to his hands and knees, and could only manage propping himself up on one elbow.

" My... My people..." John began, only to be uninterrupted by a torrent of coughs that convulsed his frame.

" I know of your people, Lt. Colonel Sheppard."

John finally cleared his lungs enough to catch his breath, and looked blearily at Tarl.

The man was smiling, a smug smile that made John cringe.

" I discovered more than just the fact that you are an off-worlder. But I will not waste my time on the details. Know this, though." Tarl began pacing around John slowly, with small goose-steps. " My government has no intentions of returning you to your people. You've done us a great wrong, Mr. Sheppard. A wrong that we feel warrants the need for punishment. You have interfered in our affairs, and in so doing may have cause irreparable damage."

John's arm shook with the threat of giving out. He tried to fathom what the hell Tarl was talking about, but his mind was drowning in a mire of exhaustion and pain.

The weapons? Is this about the weapons we didn't give them?

Tarl, however, refused to elucidate until realization snapped through the fog in Sheppard's brain. And it did, in a way, though he was only guessing.

" The wraith?" he said, his voice hoarse. " The c-creature?"

Tarl's smile broadened. " More the beast, actually."

John finally dropped to the floor, and heaved out a tired, caustic laugh. " You knew about it. Crap, is that why you really came down? To keep the villagers from killing it?"

" Yes and no. My intent to stop the kidnappings was true. Keeping the villagers from killing the beast was my secondary objective. Well, more preventing the villagers from releasing the beast." Jorsek paused and stared distantly at the storm-gray wall of the cell. " I knew I should have locked that fool Jorsek up. But I digress." The pacing resumed, and John tensed half expecting to get kicked. It was a habitual reaction, because Tarl struck John more as the type to inflict mental torment to appease his superiority complex than to go for the physical and show off brute strength

" Yes, my superiors know of the beast," Tarl said. " I came to know of them when I reached my position as inspector. It's not exactly information you want publicly shared, not if you don't want fools running off with projectiles in hand, intent on hunting the very creatures keeping us safe."

John furrowed his brow. " H-how do you know about them? You don't even know squat about the wraith except for what off-worlders tell you."

Tarl shrugged. " I don't know all the details. Supposedly there's some book that makes mention of them, a diary or some such as, with an entry talking of when the writer witnessed one of these beasts killing a wraith. Carcasses of these beasts have been found, bones, wraith as well, over time or so I've been told. All locked behind tight lips, of course. The government isn't very forthcoming on the matter since it would only cause panic. There is a team that is supposedly expert in these creatures, and have even tracked a few, including the one formerly a resident of 443."

Tarl stopped, and spun to face Sheppard. " And according to this team, the beast you killed may have very well been the last of its kind."

John snorted. " I can verify that."

" Yes, well, needless to say, we are very much in trouble should the wraith discover this."

" But they won't," John said. " The wraith left to kill that last monster died before it could. The wraith'll never know these beasts are gone."

Tarl opened his mouth, But John jumped in before he could speak.

" And I'm not going to go yapping about it all over the universe. I've got friends on this world I'd rather not find lying on the ground prematurely aged. If you see me as some kind a of a threat concerning your secret, then you're wrong. It's not like I'm a citizen of this world. I get questioned by the wraith, the only questions I'll get'll be ones concerning my world. I'm not a danger to Ioth, Tarl, so you don't need to keep me locked up."

Tarl smiled again. " Oh, I wasn't intending to. I was just told to keep you from returning to your people since they were so keen on learning why our world was exempt from wraith interests."

John coughed hard then grimaced as he rode out the waves of cramping pains. " Yeah," he groaned, " and a fat lot of good your extinct wraith mutts will do us. Crap, your government's paranoid. Is that why you didn't arrest Maj? Because prosecuting her'll bring attention to the existence of these wraith monsters?"

Tarl folded his hands behind his back and began rocking on his heels. " Smart man, Mr. Sheppard. Maj is quite safe thanks to this secret. You, on the other hand... Well, let's just say that things will be getting worse for you."

John lifted his head from the smooth, cold floor, glaring hatred and fury at Tarl who's smile seemed a permanent fixture to his face.

" You son of a bitch. That monster would have killed that entire village if I hadn't killed it."

" A small price to pay in the grand scheme of things."

John coughed spraying threads of saliva on the floor. " Until it went to some other village and killed, then another and another, maybe even making a detour for the city. That's the problem with prices like that. They accumulate interest over time. Twenty of those monsters wiped out a thousand wraith, and wraith are harder to kill than cockroaches. Up against us measly, weak humans, I would give it a year before that monster had your population down to fifteen. Not to sound full of myself, but I saved your guys' ass." John lowered his head back to the floor. " Sorry you're too narrow minded to realize it."

Tarl shrugged. " Or perhaps it is merely a difference of opinion. Rest while you can, Sheppard. The Genii will come for you soon, and Ioth will have washed its hands of you. The Genii seemed quite urgent about finding you. I imagine nothing pleasant in the near future for you when they do."

Tarl turned on his heels and exited the cell. The door whined shut and the lock clicked into place.

John's heart stumbled in his chest.

The Genii? Koyla? Anger waltzed with dread. Please no. Not again.

John curled into himself, shaking from the cold, the pain, and the terror tightening around his throat. Death was no longer a prospect, it was a necessity, and John closed his eyes, begging it to come. He thought of his team, wondered if they had been searching for him, which he knew they would have been. Probably still were, which meant they were out there, within reach, but beyond sight and sound. They weren't going to be finding him.

Sorry guys.

He thought of Maj, who saved him for no reason other than she thought him a good person.

Sorry Maj.

John let the tears pricking behind his eyelids squeeze out and fall to the dusty, putrid floor.

ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

John had lost consciousness again. He jerked awake when the whine and clunk of a heavy door reverberated to him like a blast to his ringing ears. His head was throbbing, as though small sledgehammers were pounding to the rhythm of his heart, tenderizing his brain to mush. He sucked in a rattling breath, and released it in a fit of body shaking coughs.

" Down here."

John wanted to lift his head, to look Koyla in the eye with defiance, which was all he had right now. Footsteps moved quick down the corridor between the cells. John's defiant moment was snatched from him when agonizing coughs made him squeeze his eyes shut. He couldn't get any air in or even cough any more out. His lungs tightened, his back arched, and the hand of his good arm clawed the air as he struggled to recapture his breath.

A warm, soft hand grabbed his. The shock of human contact ripped through him, and his body remembered how to breathe. He sucked it a rasping breath that barely satisfied but restarted the cycle of breathing. The hand in his tightened, and an arm slid below his neck, gently lifting him. His head was lowered onto a solid but pliable surface that was distantly familiar to him.

" Colonel?"

That voice was even more familiar, and John forced his eyelids apart. The face that swam into focus made his breath catch and his heart leap.

Teyla?

SGA

They had almost brushed the enforcer off. When Teyla, Lorne, Ronon and Stewart had returned to the inn, the young officer in the blue fatigues had been waiting for them.

" We believe we may have your man in custody, but need your presence to identify him."

All four of them had been tired, and inches away from dismissing the young man by telling him that this could wait until tomorrow, except it couldn't. It never could, not even with the leads that took them nowhere. After countless days of searching medical facilities, morgues, and structures used by the city's countless homeless, hope had begun to dim like a candle moving away into the distance.

They had to force themselves to follow the officer, and had been hesitant about it before then. A ride had been provided in the form of the electric vehicles, which was a pleasant change. They were taken to an enforcer station, and Teyla and the rest had listened patiently as the chief of that station explained how the man had been found by an inspector sent to a village to ascertain and remedy a situation there. The man had been unregistered as an Iothian, but registered as an off-worlder. They were then led to the back of the station and through the door.

Teyla had moved quickly. Hope always sparked a little brighter when they reached their destination where Sheppard was supposedly sighted. She heard strangled coughing, and her steps increased. The enforcer had to run to keep up with her.

She had reached the cell, and the enforcer could not open it fast enough.

It had been like a dream, too slow and too clouded, one that Teyla was barely waking up from even now as she knelt on the floor with Colonel Sheppard's head resting in her lap. She still had hold of his hand, and with the other she ran it over his head, grounding her presence for him, and his presence for her. Tears slid down her face, a mix of joy and sorrow.

They had found Sheppard exactly as they had feared; thin, bruised, broken, and sick. These people had left him half-naked in this frigid cell. There were stitched gashes all over his body, parallel, like claw marks. Single cuts almost healed, and scabbing abrasions on his wrists. He'd been injured, then healed, then injured again and barely surviving it. Each of John's breaths were noisy and shallow, a struggle that made Teyla's own breaths continually catch whenever his did. Heat poured off him, and even in the cold sweat dripped from him. And he shook, he shook so hard Teyla was surprised he didn't fly apart.

Teyla looked up and over her shoulder at Ronon standing right behind her towering protectively. He was staring dangerously in the direction of the enforcer talking with Lorne.

" There's some paperwork to fill out..." the man was saying. Lorne nodded. He was playing at patience that was slipping according to the increasing tension in his body.

" Yeah, could you get that ready for us," he said at last. " We're gonna need a few minutes with Sheppard. Make sure he's not gonna die on us before it's time."

" I could call in a healer if you want?"

Lorne patted the man's shoulder, then pushed him toward the cell-block door. " Yeah, you do that."

The man walked off, and Lorne entered the cell, tapping his radio.

" Daedalus this is Major Lorne. We have Sheppard, so get us the hell out of here. Straight to the infirmary."

Ronon moved around Teyla and bent to scoop the shivering Colonel into his arms, holding him close. Lorne and Stewart moved in closer, and Teyla rose to stand beside Ronon. A flash of white, a second-long sensation of cold, and stone floors became metal. Ronon moved straight to the nearest infirmary bed and carefully laid Sheppard's battered body on the clean, soft surface. He stepped back just as Beckett and his team swarmed around the Lt. Colonel, with Beckett shouting instructions and for needed items. An oxygen mask was placed over Sheppard's face and a sheet over the lower half of him before they removed the flimsy pants.

" Sheppard?"

Teyla pulled her attention from John to Rodney attempting to struggle his way out of bed, two beds away from where Beckett was attending to Sheppard. Teyla hurried over and pressed her hands into the physicist's shoulders, but Rodney fought against it. Even a fierce Ronon coming up beside Teyla didn't deter him.

" Let me go! I gotta see him!"

" Dr. McKay, Dr. Beckett is taking care of him. You must lie back down."

Ronon folded his arms. " You know the doc'll let you see him when he's done. You'll just get in the way otherwise. So wait. Besides, you can see him from here."

Both he and Teyla turned their heads. A gap opened up in the wall of medical personnel that allowed Rodney to see Sheppard from across the beds. The physicist's face went chalk white, and he stuttered.

" What the hell happened to him! What's wrong with him? Are those stitches? Wait, are those scratches? They're freakin' huge! Is he having trouble breathing? He looks like he's having trouble breathing. What the hell is Carson doing for that? Maybe he needs a tube down his throat..."

Ronon shook his head, and Teyla placed her hand on Rodney's shoulder and patted it. The physicist rambled on as Beckett and his team worked to get Sheppard settled. The babbling eventually petered out as they became caught up it what they were normally unable to witness. Most of it was was hidden when the staff closed in filling the gap. A portable X-ray machine was rolled in, used, and rolled out. Sterile wipes and cotton gauze soaked in dirt and dried blood dropped to the floor piling like litter after a festival.

Teyla didn't try to decipher the murmuring but thought she caught words like sutures and infections, and was certain her ears had become trained to catch such words over the years. Tone of voice too – There was no urgency in Beckett's voice. Whoever had tended to John's injuries must have done a good enough job to cut Carson's efforts in half.

" Where did you find him?" Rodney's voice made Teyla jump. She glanced at the physicist, who appeared riveted but not liking it on the proceedings across the way.

Teyla looked at Ronon, unsure if McKay should hear the details. Ronon just shrugged.

He's going to hear about it sooner or later.

" In a prison," Teyla said.

Rodney slumped back into his pillow wearing a scowl to make Ronon proud. And it did. The Satedan arched an eyebrow in surprise.

" I knew it," Rodney growled. " They had him the whole time. Probably debating over whether or not to use him in a trade for weapons."

" They said he was found in some village," Ronon said. " Brought him to the city because he was unregistered."

Rodney looked at Ronon askance, then rolled his eyes. " Great. I see a tale worthy of the exploits of Captain Kirk in the near future. I think I'll start a pool. My money's on a dark haired milkmaid."

" I vote on blond," Ronon said.

Teyla scowled at the both of them, and it was enough to silence them fast. Rodney looked down at his hands in abashment.

" Right, too soon, sorry. I was just... Well you know how I get in situations... like these. Sometime I find a little consolation in being an ass. It's a coping mechanism thing. You know, you've seen it before."

Teyla softened. She had. Rodney wore abrasiveness like armor, and the darker the situation, the thicker the armor.

Rodney shook his head. " With wounds like that, you already know he wasn't having a good time." He looked up at Teyla, and his eyes seemed to be pleading, asking yet not wanting to know the answer. " You found him like that? All..." he twirled his hand, " cut up like that, in a prison? No hospital?"

Teyla nodded sadly. Rodney's fist clenched, and slammed down on the mattress as he looked away. " Freakin' bastards."

More time drifted by and the team just watched, content enough just to be able to. Sheppard was clean, and bandages were wrapped around his chest and arm, pinning his arm to his chest to remain immobile for the duration of healing. The bandages nearly vanished against John's skin except where it was splotched in bruises. Beckett and the nurses handled Sheppard's body like a limp doll made of glass, and worked as one setting him back down against the pillows when they finished with the bandages.

Beckett snapping his gloves from his hand made Teyla jump. A nurse was left to disinfect the lesser wounds, and Carson tossed the gloves into a trashcan by the bed before turning and jumping himself on seeing John's team clustered two beds away.

" Have you been here the whole bloody time?" he asked in wide-eyed surprise. Ronon nodded in answer. Carson reared his head back. " And no one's given you a post check?"

Ronon shook his head, which made Carson's shoulders slump.

" I am so bloody sorry. Got a little caught up in the moment when you brought the Colonel in. Thought for sure the poor lad was going to need surgery. Where's the Major?"

They all glanced around in search of Lorne, and found him talking to Caldwell next to the med-bay entrance, Stewart with him.

" Good. Let's get this underway then," Carson said, and pulled his stethoscope from his neck.

Ronon stiffened. " Can we see Sheppard first?"

Carson looked over his shoulder, then back to Ronon. " Nothing new to see up close than you can from here. After your check."

" Will he be all right?" Teyla asked.

Carson pressed his lips into a hard line. " Hard to say so soon. He's got a fever that's been kept at bay some thanks to the Colonel's decreased body temperature, but that could easily change. His body's a bloody right mess that could have been worse if someone hadn't already started treatment. Numerous broken ribs, a break below the shoulder and in the collarbone, some malnutrition, dehydration, near hypothermia, and other such little nasties. And of course infections with a few of the cuts trying to go septic. Recovery's going to be a right bumpy road for him I can tell ya now. Whatever happened to him must not have been a one time ordeal either. I found older wounds beneath the new, and already don't like the possible story behind the injuries on his wrists. The lad's got a tale to tell and I don't think the tellings going to go down easy."

They all looked to Sheppard now open for view with the rest of the nurses finally gone. The regular beep of the heart monitor became the only sound in the room, until Carson's voice joined it when he placed on his stethoscope.

" All right my bairns, let's get this wee debacle over with..."

SGA

Be vociferous about something enough times, and demands get met without them ever having to be voiced afterwards. Sheppard's bed was moved, switched with the empty bed that had been next to Rodney's. Carson said it was for two reason – to keep the bed on the end clear for any new arrivals, and the bigger reason of being able to have a familiar face nearby for when Sheppard woke up.

" Glad to see we're on the same page, then," Rodney said, smug that he didn't have to put the realization in Carson's head concerning what needed to be done. It was a short lived self-satisfaction when Rodney realized that Sheppard's waking could involve blood-curdling screams and panic attacks. Delusions of battle right in the heat that would ignite John into becoming a torrential killing machine. The pilot could be emaciated with toothpick arms and legs, and in that state of mind still be able to snap Rodney's neck like an actual toothpick.

Not that it had ever happened, or more accurately come quite that close to it, but only because at the time Rodney hadn't been in the same room or within reach. He had walked in toward the end of quite a few delusional moments over time, and had found it ridiculous that it had taken Beckett, five nurses, and two brawny male marines to get a twiggy and sickly Sheppard back into bed. It was amazing they hadn't broken anything else on that breakable looking body.

Sheppard could out-stubborn a mule and out-violence a missile, and that kept Rodney on guard for changes in the beat of the monitor.

The finger of Rodney's right hand moved rapidly over the cursor pad of his laptop, and the other hovered over the keys.

" Where are you you little piece of crap?" he murmured. This was the part where he always died.

And always because of that damn... A skinless, bloody zombie dog popped out of the shadows, and Rodney's heart felt like it had popped in reaction.

Rodney threw his hands up. " Son of a...! Crap! Stupid...! Why did I let Sheppard talk me into playing this stupid game! 'Play Resident Evil, Rodney, it's totally awesome!' Gah! This stupid game's going to kill me before the wraith ever do." He tapped his finger against the side of the laptop, then hit the keys that restarted the game from where he last saved. He was going to get past that dead dog, and hopefully blow its head off in the process.

And won't that be sweet. Damn, I'm starting to sound like Sheppard.

Rodney glanced over at the prostrate colonel and his mask obscured face. Sheppard's forehead was creased with either lines of pain or lines of confusion. The laptop almost slid from Rodney's lap when he flinched in realization that Sheppard was showing signs of consciousness – not the awake kind, just the 'not in a coma' kind. Rodney flicked his tongue over his lips nervously and searched the Daedalus infirmary for either a nurse or Carson. He saw neither, so looked back at Sheppard.

John's head was moving slightly as though he were trying to find a more comfortable position without moving his body. The muscles of his forehead sharpened the creases.

" 'S quiet." If it hadn't have been, Rodney wouldn't have heard John speak. Rodney set his laptop on the cart beside him and leaned in toward John a little.

" Sheppard," Rodney hissed. " Hey Sheppard!"

Rodney saw motion beneath the covers where John's hand slid out to tug weakly at the edges of the blanket trying to pull them to his chin. It was a depressing endeavor to observe as the blankets kept slipping out of John's languid fingers. Rodney grew irritated by the effort, and slid from the warmth of his own covers to quietly pad over to John and pull the covers up for him. And John still shivered.

" 'S cold. Stove needs... More wood... Maj?"

Rodney didn't know where the extra blankets were stashed, so confiscated the blanket from the bed next to Sheppard and draped it across the overly lean body.

" I don't know what century your fever warped you back to – or movie – but we're a little above and beyond wood burning stoves. And who the hell is Maj? Your milk maid savior?"

John's eyes flew open and he gasped. His vacant eyes darted around frantically, his head lifting a little off the pillow, until his sights landed and froze on McKay.

" Rodney?" Sheppard's tone was as freaked as his expression, as though he were seeing something that wasn't supposed to be there. His breathing rate increased, along with his heart-rate according the the monitor. John lifted his convulsive hand and almost hesitantly – nervously – started extending it toward Rodney's face.

" Um," Rodney uttered watching the hand tersely until it finally registered just to take it before any of the slender fingers had a chance to poke him. For a body that was supposed to be radiating enough heat to create its own mirage, Sheppard's hand was ice-cold in Rodney's grip. " Yeah, Sheppard, it's me. You're all right... We're all right. All safe, sound, and snug on the good ship Daedalus."

The heart monitor climbed back down to its original beat, and John's breathing declined with it with his head lowering back to the pillow. But his eyes were still wide – shocked – as they moved off of Rodney to rove around their surroundings a second time.

" You... found me?"

He sounded surprised, and Rodney felt a little affronted about it.

" Well yeah. What, did you think we were just going to leave you...?"

" Alive?"

He sounded even more dumbfounded, as though each breath and each heartbeat were supposed to be the impossibility. That Rodney got, and it made his gut clench and his throat close off. Sheppard had been dumped in a cold cell half-naked, injured, hungry, and ill, and no one could say how long he'd been in that condition before being brought to the prison. Long enough to face the facts that death was inevitable. Worse than that, long enough to actually hope for death?

John's head rolled back to facing Rodney. He just stared at McKay in an exhausted, expressionless way, until his face shifted and Rodney saw the tired smile under his mask, and caught the shimmer of moisture brimming at the bottom edge of his eyes.

" Thank... you," he whispered, and his eyes slid back shut.

Rodney chewed his lip uncomfortably. He hadn't found Sheppard. Yes, he knew Sheppard meant 'you' as in Atlantis 'you', the team 'you', it just twisted him that he couldn't include himself as part of that 'you'. He was caught between wanting to feel like scum and wanting to rage at Carson for not cutting him a break and letting him out a little early. Rodney had wanted to be there when John was found.

Although... on the other hand – as Rodney actually took the time to think about it while watching Sheppard's thin, sleep-slack face that had smoothed out of its tension – he was here now, and Sheppard's face was tension free because of him. And Rodney usually enjoyed that a lot more than being present during the moment of discovering Sheppard in his blood-caked, bruised, starved, horror-movie aftermath state of being.

Okay, I won't complain, spare Carson this round.

Rodney patted John's hand. " You're welcome."

SGA

A/N: I've never played Resident Evil, but I want to. Sheppard is safe – seriously this time - so everyone breathe out sighs of great relief. One more chapter to go, then an epilogue.