Understudy

by Cheryl W

"Vegas" Universe: Police Detective John Sheppard joins the Atlantis team, but thinks it's not him they really want, it's the other John, the hero John, Ronon's BFF, McKay's idol. Figures that, the sooner they realize he's not him, the better off they'll all be. No Slash.

11. Premeditated Risk

Understudy

Author: Cheryl W.

SGATSGATSGATSGATSGATSGAT

Chapter 11: Premeditated Risk

SGATSGATSGATSGATSGATSGAT

"McKay, I don't like this!" Ronon menacingly growled, hands fisted at his side his storm cloud aura having already caused the rest of McKay's geek squad to skedaddle out of the lab leaving McKay alone to face off with the towering anger soldier.

But McKay met Ronon's angry frustration with his own. "And you think I do?! This isn't by my choice! But Colonel Sumner made it pretty clear he wasn't going to green light Sheppard for off world missions until he went on a mission with him." Knowing what Ronon was going to insist on next, he shot that thought down like Sumner had to him. "Annddd…he won't allow you or me to go along on the mission."

Ronon seethed, couldn't believe Sumner was being this petty. "Sheppard's defended the Daedalus on our way here, stopped the Wraith signal on earth. He doesn't need to pass his test."

As much as McKay agreed, he knew they weren't getting around Sumner. Ok, he had made the same argument with Dr. Weir but she shot him down. Now he used her excuse on Ronon, though he didn't think it would help the situation any more than it had quelled the fear in his own gut at the situation. "Well, as the military commander of Atlantis, Colonel Sumner has the pull to say who does and does not go off world. I might have gotten Sheppard on the expedition but my influence only goes so far with the military brass."

Choosing that moment to make himself known to the two bickering men, John strolled into the lab, drolly challenged, "So what you're both thinking is, I'm going to fail the Colonel's test."

"No," Ronon snapped back firmly while McKay came back with a wavering "Maybe". At Ronon's huffy look to him and John's resigned one, McKay explained, "From what I know, Colonel Marshall Sumner is a straight laced as they come. He doesn't tolerate insubordination or any deviation from his say so. And…"

"…He read my file and hated me before he ever met me. I kinda got that on our first meeting. I think you were both there" John smart-aleckedly remarked, didn't know why the two men were rehashing this. Sumner hated him, didn't trust him, thought he would condemn others to save his own butt. He used to expect that opinion of him…he was just out of practice. Damn Rodney and Ronon for being so forgiving of his past failures, it had made him let down his guard. The whole "hero" thing had apparently gone to his head and now sharp reality was taking a bite out of his hide again. Hoping to lighten the mood and not let on how worried he was about passing Sumner's test, he taunted, "But you hated me too when you met me, McKay."

"Hey, I did not hate you!" Rodney heatedly denied, especially when he could feel Ronon seething at his side, aching to punch him if he thought John's accusation was valid. "I ..I just needed…." He stammered, hadn't expected that first meeting to come back to bite him on the butt after all the threesome had been through. 'But apparently it is,' he grumbled as both men continued to look at him waiting for an answer, a good one too. And he knew enough to not lie, John needed to trust him, he wanted him to be able to trust him. Folding his arms across his chest in a defensive stance, he acknowledged, "Ok, I wanted to leverage you, make you squirm a bit…." At John's raised eyebrow of surprise at him actually admitting to that while Ronon was crowding in closer to him because the Satadan knew that wasn't all of it, Rodney reluctantly confessed to them both, "And yes, I wanted to gain your respect. Satisfied?" this last he directed huffily to Ronon who instead of looking pissed, smugly smiled.

"Aw, he was nervous and had a little bit of hero worship happening," Ronon taunted.

"Did not!" Rodney childishly denied

Whatever Ronon was about to say was interrupted by a comm. call. "Alpha team, we're moving up our time table. We got off world in 30 minutes. Sumner Out."

That sucked whatever levity the three men had managed to elicit from the very air they breathed. Ronon turned to his team leader, "McKay I don't trust him. I should go along." The "him" came out as a growl of contempt.

McKay sighed, knew what Ronon meant but they couldn't change the situation. "That wasn't the deal."

"I'll be fine," John declared with none of his real sentiments showing.

"Sumner won't have your back," Ronon snarled, hated to think of John in enemy territory, face to face with more than one Wraith for the first time, with people who didn't care if John came back home or not. But even worse, John would be out there without him, would be out of his sight, out of his reach, somewhere he couldn't protect him…for the first time since he'd met the man.

Reading Ronon's distress, John didn't brush off the other soldier's dire warning. "Ok, I won't expect him too have my back. Happy?"

"Happy isn't the word for the feeling in my gut," McKay dispiritedly mumbled. "John just….be careful and try to not piss him off more than your mere presence already does."

John sheepishly retorted, "I think it's a little too late for that advice," because that instruction should have been given out before he met Sumner during his first five minutes in Atlantis, before he smart mouthed the man and implied he would take orders from Elizabeth willingly…but not him. 'Not that I probably would have heeded McKay's advice anyways,' he admitted to himself.

McKay didn't need a reminder for John's less than civil first meet and greet with Sumner. "Yeah, what was with the attitude!? You did not win him over with your charm."

"Who said I had charm?" John drolly challenged before he realized where that erroneous belief came to Rodney. "Oh wait, he had charm. I'm really starting to despise the other John Sheppards you guys knew. He's set the bar too damn high for me and that was before I got innocent people killed in Afghanistan."

Ronon grabbed John's arm, jerked him to face him. "The only John Sheppard we're worried about coming home is you!"

"Because your John is already dead," John tersely pointed out as he tugged out of Ronon's hold.

"Sheppard!" Ronon shouted but McKay took his life in his hands and stepped in Ronon's path, stopped him from going after John.

"Having that conversation yet again now… it's not going to get it through his thick skull," Rodney declared, though he wish it would, that sometime when they told John that it was him who mattered to them, he'd actually accept it.

Watching John leave the lab, Ronon gave a Satadan curse and paced the lab like a trapped wild animal, wished to break something.

"We have to just give him more time…let him see that we value him.." Rodney placated, even as he knew he was biting at the bite too to get John to accept their intentions toward him were for him, not for the other Sheppards.

"Well we better get that through to him soon or he'll decide him lying down and dying is acceptable to us," Ronon darkly predicted before he shoulder checked McKay on his exit of the lab.

Rodney grumbled to the empty room, "Wow, thanks for that cheery comment to keep me feeling sick all day until Sheppard's back in one piece."

SGATSGATSGAT

Five hours later, both Ronon and McKay were there when the gate activated under Colonel Sumner's IDC codes. Rodney watched in relief and Ronon in trepidation as Sumner's offworld team started to pop through the wormhole. But when Sumner came through and barked out an order to close the gate, John Sheppard wasn't among the returned.

SGATSGATSGAT

In the gate room conference room, McKay bellowed, "You left him there!"

Colonel Sumner calmly sat at the table and gave his unruffled and totally unrepentant reply, "He told me to. He was leading the Wraith away from our team."

Ronon couldn't bear that his dark prediction to McKay had come true, felt guilt and regret and fury, fury fury. And that fury he directed at Sumner. Moving faster than Sumner ever gave him credit for, Ronon grabbed the Colonel, flung him up out of the chair and slammed him against the conference room wall. "He was a junior officer, you don't follow his orders, he follows yours! Did you order him to be the bait!?"

"No, he volunteered!" Sumner snarled right back, trying to loosen Ronon's elbow from its painful pressure on his throat with no success.

"Crap, that sounds like him," Rodney bemoaned, pacing the room, didn't dare look to Ronon this whole time, didn't want to see the 'I told you so' in the other man's face.

Ronon's furious eyes bore into Sumner's, even as he increased the pressure to the man's throat. "But you were only too glad to let him do it. Leaving him behind as Wraith bait, that was fine by you, wasn't it?!"

"Specialist Dex, release the Colonel!" Weir stridently commanded, her hand coming down on Dex's shoulder. Dex did as she ordered but savagely tossed the man nearly to the floor as he obeyed.

"We're going back for him, NOW!" Ronon insisted, didn't care if he had to go alone. He was getting John back home again.

Though Rodney understood Ronon's sentiment, wanted to go get John too, he had to put some reality into the situation, something the hot headed Satadan forgot to take into consideration sometimes. "It's crawling with Wraith!"

Ronon gave a chilling smile to that news. "That's fine, I'm in the mood to kill!"

Straightening up his uniform, Sumner bit out, "This is unadvisable," but from a safe distance from Dex.

Ronon stalked for Sumner but Weir bravely got between them. So he snarled at the other soldier over her head. "What's "unadvisable" was leaving him behind! We don't leave our people behind!"

Sumner had the balls to smirk. "Caldwell's not here to get all gooey-eyed about looking of so moral just so he can impress the brass. I'm in charge, so I make the rules."

"That rule wasn't Caldwell's, jackass. Was Sheppard's. My Sheppard's," Ronon seethed, felt like Sumner was insulting his John.

"Well he's not here," Sumner snapped back, was so sick of hearing about Sheppards in all known universes.

Ronon flinched, felt that flare of bereavement again, of loss that overshadowed even his anger.

Surprisingly, in Ronon's pained silence, it was Weir who took up the argument for this world's John. "Obviously this John Sheppard has the same loyal devotional streak, Colonel, or you and your team would be dead right now. He made himself bait to save you…and you're going to return the favor," Weir heatedly decreed. Turning to Rodney, she instructed, "McKay, get your team ready and the Colonel will get two of his teams set to go. Move out in ten minutes." It galvanized all three men to promptly exit the conference room, intent on following her orders.

STAGATSGATSGAT

But when they gated back to where Sumner had abandoned Sheppard, John was gone..and so were any signs of the wraith Sumner's team had tangled with. Checking the stargate's last dialed number, Rodney wasn't surprised it wasn't Atlantis, couldn't be after all. But the coordinates did ring a bell with him. "They are familiar but…."

"Dial them already!" Ronon insisted.

"And walk into an ambush or off a cliff?" Sumner chided.

But Sumner's comment sparked something in Rodney and he snapped his fingers in a eureka moment. "The coordinates…this is the gate that's …" But he broke off, suddenly hoping he was wrong for a change.

Teyla read the panic in her leader's expression. "What is it Rodney?"

"This gate..the last one dialed…it goes to a world that was being flooded because of shifts in the planet's tectonic plates," Rodney revealed, the blood draining from his face as he calculated just how high the water would be now, certainly thirty feet above the gate, making redialing from that world…nearly impossible because you had to add another twenty feet to that depth to reach the control panel. Then there was the real possibility the crystals wouldn't work or the control dial had been damaged by the flooding. "Damn it, I told Radek to not tell Sheppard gate coordinates he shouldn't go to! He must have gotten them confused, thought it was a safe planet…"

But Ronon had stilled at the news, grimly came to a different conclusion. "He didn't choose wrong. He went to that planet because of the flooding…went there purposefully hoping the Wraith would follow him and drown." Turning fully to Rodney, wanting the man to agree with him, he pointed out, "John's a strong swimmer, we know that, McKay. And he knew what he was gating into."

Surprisingly, it wasn't Rodney who believed his assessment but Sumner, who took him at his word and ordered, "McKay dial Atlantis. We need a gateship."

It was taking longer than Rodney could bear until they got the jumper, especially since he practically had to lay across the dialing console so Ronon didn't head to the planet after Sheppard and get himself drown in the first two seconds of reentry. Still he would have probably gotten bodily tossed off the console if Teyla hadn't intervened, took Ronon aside and used that practical calm voice on him. "If this was his strategic plan, John will have been prepared to be met with water in his entry. He will be there waiting for us."

"Water yes, thirty feet of it…" Rodney mumbled worriedly, until he fell under Teyla's sink eye and tried to do optimistic, sort of. "But I'm sure my calculations are off, would have been much lower when he went through…like a couple inches shy of 30 feet then to add on the distance to get to the crystals…"

When Teyla said his name in a warning tone, Rodney clamped his mouth shut. Right, optimistic, he was supposed to be optimistic. 'But really how many bad odds do we actually think Sheppard can overcome…in like a two month period?!'

SGATSGATSGAT

The jumper was poised to enter the wormhole but Rodney was still giving our dire warnings from his seat right behind the pilot. "Be care …there might be obstructions right when we enter. Don't hit anything…and don't hit him…you know if he's…." his voice trembling on the mental picture he had conjured up in his own head. Teyla reached across, gave a reassuring squeeze to his wrist, trying to give comfort to the shaken man. He gave her a small smile of thanks before having eyes only for the view outside the window.

To Teyla and Rodney's surprise, Ronon had chosen to sit in the back of the jumper, right by the hatch. But Ronon was a man of action, didn't want to look out the window, wanted to be able to be outside as soon as he could. Vowing to himself that he would get to Sheppard fast. Because Sheppard, he'd be there waiting for him. Had to be. There was no other possibility that Ronon could bear to consider.

Then they were through the wormhole but Rodney's exclamation had Ronon surging to his feet and heading for the front of the ship to see the view outside that had startled his leader… the sight of a body right in the ship's path. There was no way to avoid the collision and the body hit the window, the wraith's features clear as they pressed against the window and then the body floated up and over the ship. A collective beat of relief fell in the craft before renewed tension filled the very air. They were in the right place and the wraith had been there…but was John there too, was he alive or was he another corpse floating in the waters surrounding their ship?

"Tracking for heat sources," the pilot announced and a schematic grid came up on the screen. Small blips shown, clearly fish and then another blip showed on the top of the grid, which Sumner pointed to. "Got a heat source on the water's surface."

And that was enough for Ronon to head back to the hatch, to wait another few agonizing minutes until he could go for John. Tried to not hear Teyla's question…or Rodney's response.

"Can we tell from your scanner if it is human or …wraith? And if they have heat does that mean they are alive?"

"We won't know…either thing until….well, until we see for ourselves," Rodney grimly replied, torn between wanting the answers to Teyla's inquiries and terrified to learn them at that same time.

"Take her up five hundred yards from the source," Sumner advised his Marine. McKay was about to protest but the Colonel spared him a look and an explanation. "If it's a wraith, I'm not going to have us jumping out there blindly and giving him a change to do damage to the ship or to my people, Doctor," he snapped, emphasizing McKay's nonmilitary rank.

Ronon didn't bother protesting, he could swim five hundred yards quickly and easily to reach Sheppard. 'Just be there waiting to get rescued, Sheppard,' he implored. Then the ship broke the surface and the water cascaded off the window, concealing the heat source for long moments. When the view was finally cleared so they could see five yards in front of them, they saw a figure floating in the water…giving them a little two fingered wave and greeting them with a wet but totally human smile.

"Get over to him!" Ronon roared but there was a grin creeping its way onto his features, cracking his rough façade. A grin that turned into a joyous smile as the gate ship hovered above Sheppard. Reaching a hand out, he pulled Sheppard up the ramp into the ship right into a fierce hug. "If I wasn't so glad to see you I'd probably knock out some of your teeth."

A little stunned to be entangled in the Satadan's hug, John lightly and a bit awkwardly patted Ronon on the back, "That would have sucked to survive today's crapshow only to lose this beautiful smile of mine."

Then McKay was there, already lecturing Sheppard before John even managed to pull out of Ronon's hold. "Out of all the gates, you had to dial that one!? You couldn't have remembered a gate with a nice tropical beach, armed garrison prepared to kill off the wraith?! No, you randomly recalled the gate that we knew was water logged! That certain drowning assured!"

"I chose the gate because of the flooding," John defended against McKay's ranting. "Never read that Wraith were great swimmers and their darts don't do much darting underwater. And I can swim, quite good at it, though that skill set didn't come in handy in the Vegas desert."

Ronon smugly said, "Told you so," to McKay who was still sputtering, "Wait, you choose…you wanted…you planned…."

"You took them there knowing what to expect when the Wraith didn't know what they were heading into." Ronon nodded his approval. "I like it."

But Rodney's voice rose into a screech, "Like it! He nearly drowned and he couldn't dial the gate because the dial was now thirty feet under strong currents of water! How is that plan something to praise him over!?"

John shrugged, "Hey, I survived." Didn't know why that seemed to piss McKay off.

"By dumb luck," Rodney ranted, was still doing calculations in his head of how improbably John's survival was.

"No, I…" John began, looking to Ronon and McKay, he cleared his throat, told himself it was ok to tell them the truth. "I knew you'd come. That you wouldn't….leave me behind. You came when I was a nobody bleeding out in the desert, so you'd come find me now." And then he held his breath because this was a far greater risk than dialing into a soggy world, this was…risking his soul, trusting someone….two someones. And he hadn't trusted anyone in a really, really long time.

"You were never a nobody," Ronon heatedly objected to his self description.

Meanwhile Rodney was a little overwhelmed at John's words, at having gotten the withdrawn man's trust..something he honestly wasn't sure he'd ever earn. "Well I'm glad….that you….that you trusted…that we didn't….disappoint…."

"He means he's glad you made it back," Ronon provided a translation to Rodney's stammering.

"Yeah, I am too." John agreed and meant it, that it was good to be alive…with them. But then over Rodney's shoulders, he saw Colonel Sumner approaching. Ronon must have caught the look in his expression and he turned to block Colonel's path to him, could feel the tension between the two men as they did a staredown. "Ronon, it's ok."

"He left you to die!" Ronon snarled, eyes singeing to Sumner's.

Putting a hand on Ronon's shoulder, John corrected, "No, he …trusted me to do what I said I would."

Sumner, realizing Dex still wasn't budging, no matter what Sheppard said, met John's eyes past Ronon's protective figure. "I judged you by what was in your file. Going forward, I'll judge you by your actions."

McKay bulked at the olive branch "What?! That doesn't sound very grateful. He saved your lives, deserves more than more tests…"

"Fine by me, Colonel Sumner, Sir," John cut across Rodney's rant, his eyes on Sumner who nodded and turned to leave. But he turned back at the last second, "Oh and …you're green lighted for off world missions."

John smiled in gratitude. "Thank you, sir." Then Sumner departed back to the front of the ship.

"I guess, it's a case of all's well that ends well," John happily surmised.

Which Rodney scathingly protested. "Ends well!? You nearly died! By the wraith and then by drowning and/or hypothermia. You might have earned brownie points with the gung ho Colonel but in my book you're looking at some serious workshops on self-preservation!"

"He means he's glad you're not dead," Ronon explained, tugging John down into a seat, while he claimed the one beside him. Realized that the rest of the Marines had smartly moved toward the front of the ship, not wanting any part of Colonel's tiff with Sheppard or to intrude on the three men's present conversation.

"When did you of all people get to be my interpreter?!" Rodney snapped at the usually taciturn Satadan.

Ronon looked up with Rodney, answered with a hint of amusement in his tone, "Since you started not saying what you mean."

That caught Rodney off guard. "I mean what I say… most of the time."

But John remembered a time when he thought that wasn't true. Looking up to Mckay, he smirked. "You were going to take back what you said to me."

Arms crossing his chest, certain Sheppard was wrong, Rodney demanded, "When?"

"Vegas. You said something about "I know what I said but…" then the cell reception cut out," Sheppard recalled, personally found he couldn't stop thinking of that incomplete conversation, now months later.

Rodney's jaw clenched, remembered that moment, would forever remember it. It had his blood pressure rising just thinking about it and this felt like the moment he could finally get it off his chest. "Oh, yeah, because I was going to say, "Don't go up against a well fed, goal oriented wraith with a stupid handgun in the middle of the desert all by yourself"!"

"So you didn't want me to be like that other John you met…" John teased, ignored the fact that Ronon had shucked off his coat and was draping it around his shoulders to fight off the chill that was making his teeth chatter.

And as offhanded as John was treating this, Rodney knew it mattered what he said next, how he expressed his concern, the thoughts that had ran though his head back then. "I didn't want you to die because you thought you had to…that you were being compared to and …." But he wasn't getting this right. Testily he looked to Ronon and demanded, "What?! Now you don't pitch in and finish my thoughts for me?!"

"Not sure where you're going this time," Ronon admitted, was curious himself, didn't see much of this insecure side of McKay that John seemed to always bring out in the man.

Sighing, Rodney turned back to John. "Fine, I didn't want you dead. Didn't then…don't now." That confession out of the way he claimed a seat across from John and almost implored, "So could you…cut back on the kamikaze runs. I really am not that great with caring, and talking about my feelings… and this is making me see why I prefer computers, hard data and algorithms to people."

John didn't tell McKay his last statement was full of crap but he did protest his accusation. "It wasn't kamikaze, it was tactical."

"This was, Vegas wasn't," Ronon quietly but firmly reproached eyes coming to hold John's startled expression, didn't want the man to think he didn't know the difference, would tolerate John making another Vegas decision.

John didn't reply for a moment, then surprised himself by solemnly agreeing with Ronon's conclusion. "No, it wasn't. But it felt…like the right thing to do." Wanted Ronon and Rodney to at least know that, understand why tactics had gone out the window back there..along with his plan to head out of Vegas and ignore the alien in the room (town).

Ronon couldn't let John think what he had done was wrong, it had saved millions of life. "It was the right thing to do but…" Now he felt like Rodney, unable to find the words for how he felt. But that wasn't right, he knew the words, they were just hard to say, to admit, even to himself. Running a hand through his braided hair, he exhaled and met John's curious gaze. "I almost lost you before I found you. I wouldn't have been ok with that," he hoarsely confessed.

"Not to mention he would have killed me because he told me to take care of you," McKay interjected into the two men's bromance moment.

That had John chuckling and facing Rodney. "What? You never told me that!"

"Yeah, well, I'm your boss, I don't have to tell you everything," Rodney smugly returned, pretty happy he had snagged John's attention from Ronon. Feeling like she had given the men enough time to talk, Teyla approached, crouched down by John, "Major Sheppard, how are you feeling?" She reached out, touched a bleeding gash on his head, noted the man's black eye and bleeding knuckles, indicated close quarters battle. "Those wraith weren't gentle with you."

"I'm sure they would have warmed up to me once they got to know me," John drawled, trying to not seem like a victim, to get them to remember he won the day by outsmarting the enemy. And ok, he had his butt handed to him by the four Wraith who caught him before he made the wormhole jump but that was supposed to just be a small side note on the big picture.

Rodney barked in laughter at his boast. "Wraith…warming up to you?! Major Sheppard you have a lot to learn about the Pegasus galaxy." Even Teyla couldn't hold back an amused snort at the picture of befriending a wraith.

But Ronon cleared his throat and sat up straighter in the seat, drawing all eyes to him before he reluctantly supplied, "Actually John…my John he….it wasn't your normal situation and it wasn't like he set out to make a Wraith his blood brother, it just…happened. He did what he had to do to survive."

"He charmed a freaking Wraith?" McKay was thunderstruck, hadn't heard this tall tale from Ronon before.

"Come on, it's not so hard to believe, McKay," Ronon protested before he smiled and jerked his thumb at their John Sheppard. "He charmed Colonel Sumner into liking him today and we both thought that was impossible."

"Hey, I did not charm anyone. I used common sense, proven military tactics, good ole fashioned wiles to do what needed to get done," John groused, would not let them insinuate that he was some pretty boy suck up.

But the growing smirk on Rodney's face only intensified, "Sure, ok. If that's what you want us to believe but honestly, I think you charmed Dr. Weir on the Daedalus on our way here. Because she was all against you being here and then, miraculously, she was more than ok with it, was all smiley at you."

"She was not "all smiley at me"," John huffed.

"But you did talk with her on the Daedalus," Rodney pressed, feeling like he was finally getting to the bottom of Weir's turnabout.

John mumbled under his breath, "We might have met in the hallway…."

That got McKay thinking back when he wasn't with John, would have missed this momentous meeting. He snapped his fingers as it came to him. "When you went AWOL from the infirmary, that's when you met her. You were…ok, I get it, you were in infirmary scrubs, looking all fragile and little boy lost. That gets to women, even the ones as strong willed, no nonsense as Dr. Elizabeth Weir."

"I did not look fragile," John protested before he tried to deflect the conversation, "And what does little boy lost look like, exactly?!"

Teyla smiled and saucily said, "Oh, I have a pretty good idea you're looking like that now."

"Must be a cross between drown cat, beat up waif and hair gone wrong," Rodney merrily supplied, making John subconsciously run a hand through his flatten hairdo.

When Ronon spoke, John hoped he was about to defend him. He was sorely mistaken. "I'm ok if Dr. Weir feels protective of him. With his "kamikaze" habits, we'll need all the people we can get to keep him in check," he cheekily taunted, enjoyed John's miffed expression.

"Hey, again not kamikaze and I can hear you. I'm right here so stop talking about me like I'm not," John groused.

"Do you hear something?" Rodney joked, cupping his ear and the threesome surrounding John chuckled until he reluctantly smirked.

SGATSGATSGAT

Hours later, against his protest, John was finally escaping the infirmary. He wasn't all that surprised to find Ronon waiting for him in the hallway. The man fell into step beside him silently. Shooting Ronon a look, John knew Ronon had something to say, something he didn't want to say today when the others were around. "You decide you do want to knock out some of my teeth after all?"

But Ronon didn't rise to the bait, simply kept pace with him, but did override John's reach for the transporter location. Selected a different section of the city than John's room. When the doors opened, John's mouth dropped in stunned appreciation as he stepped out, saw the night time sky boasting two moons, their combined light glimmering off the water. Leaning against the railing, he couldn't stop admiring the breathtaking view."Gotta say, wraith infestation aside, your galaxy has its perks."

Ronon had come to stand beside him, enjoying the same view John was. "Yeah, I'm pretty attached to it myself," affection and pride in his tone for Pegasus, even this alternate one. But that appreciation, it had not been there at first, all comparisons to his home universe had been…painful. Until now. Until this world's John Sheppard had found his way to him, until they were walking this journey together. And he needed John to know how important that was to him. "John, I don't need you to replace the friend I lost."

He felt John go rigid beside him but the man didn't look at him, kept his gaze transfixed on the moons. That was ok, as long as he heard him. "My John…he's…." Ronon swallowed hard, didn't think it would get to him to speak openly.

His pain was enough to get John to look at him in sympathy. "You don't have to…" trying to give him a pass, to not open himself up to hurt.

But Ronon shook his head, this pain would be worth it if he could make John understand. "My John's here," and he tapped his heart, knew his friend would live forever there. That family, brothers never left your heart. Then he faced John Sheppard. "I just need you to be you, John," he hoarsely insisted emotions bleeding through enough that John simply nodded in consent, would do what he could to ease the other man's pain. At John's silent vow, Ronon felt like he could breathe again even cracked a smile and tagged on another demand, "And I need you to stick around. Clear enough?" his hand came up to cup the back of John's neck, their eyes meeting and holding.

Knowing Ronon was waiting for a confirmation, John croaked out, "Yeah, pretty clear." And Ronon accepted his word just like that, smiled and pulled his hand away and then they stood there, watching Atlantis see the end of another day in the Pegasus galaxy.

And a darkness that John had long carried with him eased. Years ago he had wanted his father to beg him to stay, to not tell him if he was going to join the Air Force he was no longer a son of his. Had wanted his brother to side with him, tell him he wanted him in his life, regardless of their father's anger. Had wanted the Air Force to tell him they needed him, wouldn't boot him out because of one well-meaning but doomed rescue attempt. But not one of them had ever asked him to stay, had all vehemently wanted his absence.

It was almost ironic that he had to come to another galaxy, had to be a doppelganger to a hero in another universe, had to take on aliens with a taste for human souls to finally find somewhere he was wanted. Somewhere he might even belong.

Ronon broke into his thoughts with a threat. "And if you do go on another kamikaze mission…I will knock out all your teeth."

John couldn't hold back a smile as he turned to the smirking Satadan, "You'd have to catch me first and, I have to warn you, I'm pretty fast," he boasted, suddenly liked his odds…in this galaxy..and in these new friendships he'd found. Or rather that had found him.

SGATSGATSGATSASGAT

TBC

SGATSGATSGATAGAT

Love to all my reviewers and hugs to all the silent readers out there! Wish I had more time and energy to reply to your awesome so treasured reviews but I am hoping my updating this story shows just how much your support means to me and that your encouragement keeps me writing new sappy chapters of my favorite team.

I do send out prayers for your health! Stay well, stay safe, and know you are not alone. God is always there with you reaching out, aching for you to reach back.

Cheryl W.