Wide Open Road

by VetinariVimesy

John wants to get back to Pegasus. Too bad everyone seems determined to stop him. Between the IOA, the brass, & general idiocy it looks like Atlantis is stuck on Earth. At least there's stuff going on at the SGC to keep him occupied, right? A conspiracy against the Tau'ri unfurls. Attacks on multiple fronts; kidnapping, invasion, piracy, a bomb. Amidst the chaos, who's the target?

4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

Note:

The calm before the storm. (mwahaha)

As always this thing is unbetaed - so if you spot anything particularly embarrassing please do point it out! (Though caveat, in a couple of spots strikethrough formatting appears to have died horribly on me here, though A03 is displaying it correctly.)

Warning: Dr Rush begins to get a little more 'screen time' as it were here… given he's known to be Glaswegian, and had a pretty rough childhood in a very working class area… Well… I've thoroughly bought into SGU fandom's idea that he uses swearwords like punctuation a la Francis Begbie/Malcolm Tucker/(Secretary General of the UN) Chrisjen Avasarala. He tries not to use it in daily speech, given he made it into academia/the Stargate Programme with all those Americans/other international personnel who'd take those sentiments very differently than the people that know the c-word is a term of endearment, and pal means he's your worst enemy… But beware, the swearing takes a significant uptick whenever he's around!

---

Rodney didn't give Sheppard a chance to defend himself, as soon as the Colonel picked up, he started berating his thoughtlessness,

"I can't believe I had to wait to find out about this from Woolsey! Sheppard!"

Sheppard's voice was its usual irritating drawl, even over the interference of a phoneline,

"Hello to you too McKay."

Anger swelled in his breast,

"Don't you be all nonchalant at me John, you nearly broke your back for a training exercise!"

Sheppard sounded so reasonable, he always did when he'd pulled some idiotic stunt,

"I didn't know it was a training exercise Rodney."

"That doesn't make it any better! It was still stupid! You could have died! And then what would we have done? Atlantis needs you! I don't care about your stupid self-sacrificing nobility, I'm selfish, the expedition needs you John. You could have been atomised!"

The noisy static of a sigh being blown into the receiver was the only acknowledgement Rodney's piece of common sense received,

"How's things McKay? Met Keller's folks yet? Worked out the secret to the Asgard Core?"

Rodney spluttered loudly.

"Don't think you can distract me with science questions Sheppard, I'm wise to your ways! I know you don't really care about the details."

Sheppard didn't deign to acknowledge that statement,

"Well? How's the Trek-plicator going?"

"Trek- no. No no no no no. We're not calling it that Sheppard! You're not allowed to name anything."

"Well?"

"Urgh it's a disaster, I think Area 51 gave me everyone they secretly wished would meet a sticky end. I'm surrounded by incompetents."

John made a noise that could be amusement,

"Yes yes I know, not so different to normal. But these guys are all like Kavanagh squared! They're incompetent and they're arrogant! They refuse to listen! I barely averted disaster yesterday when three of them nearly broke their way into the lab with the exploding tumour machine."

That got a reaction,

"What?!"

Rodney felt vindicated,

"I know! It was only Ronon stepping in with his gun that stopped them. Idiots, they were looking at me like I was being the unreasonable one, and they were this close to killing themselves and taking a whole load of us with them!"

John made a grunt of disapproval over the line.

"Anyway, the first of Lantis's Asgard Core copies is nearly ready." Rodney smugly told Sheppard all the horrible details, "It's a disaster. We've got most of the skeleton of a 304 in the base of the main tower. Those pesky Asgardians really meant it when they said we wouldn't be able to separate the core from the ship. Even our copies of it need most of a Daedalus class carrier's system around it in order to keep working."

"Huh. That must be pretty crowded… The big meeting hall, right?"

"No, the engineering level below the waterline. The space down there is four times bigger than the largest space in the central tower remember. Near the chair room? We never worked out what it was for." Rodney gesticulated wildly, even knowing that John couldn't see him, "I keep telling the IOA that, since the Asgard cores can literally build parts by plucking atom out of the atmosphere, that a whole lot of stuff is going to start coming in gratis once we've got more than two or three of them properly linked in, so they should just give us our own Daedalus permanently since we've already got two thirds of one anyway… But they won't listen. Money pinching bureaucratic tightwads. It's taken this long for them to decide that the Apollo and Sun Tzu are worth repairing after all, since the Phoenix is still an empty shell at Colson's shipyard."

Rodney ran out of steam, then realised that Sheppard would normally have hung up by now. He must be missing his company. Though it was always hard to tell with Sheppard. Even after more than five years of friendship, the other man could still be a complete enigma. Sheppard cut across that thought by asking,

"So, you gotten those copies into the other 304s yet?"

"Other 304s? What? Oh, I knew you weren't listening the other day! No, you halfwit, the other 304s have all had copies of the data core installed for a couple of years now. It's the power source that's the problem, can't run the Trek-plicators," Rodney winced as he caught himself using Sheppard's imbecilic term for the technology, "without a decent supply, and we've yet to find anything. That's why they're letting us install them in Lantis. We've got the ZPMs… For now. Do you honestly think those scrooges would let us have anything decent if there wasn't something in it for them?"

Rodney eventually wound down as he realised that Sheppard hadn't said anything for a while,

"Sheppard?"

"Hrmm?"

"Were you listening to a word I said?"

"Of course I was, Rodney!"

"Yeah right."

Rodney didn't let the infuriating man have the satisfaction of hanging up this time, with great satisfaction he slammed the archaic handset back into its cradle.

---

Rush was trying to stave off the migraine that had been threatening to overwhelm his sense of time and place all day by sheer bloody-mindedness. It wasn't working. He'd been running off caffeine fumes and pure spite for nearly seventy-two hours - so caught up in the beautiful lines of crystalline code that spelt out the fifth of the 9-chevron cyphers that basic things like bodily needs had completely bypassed his notice until they'd become so pressing that they'd practically staged a revolt.

Well, Rush was thinking of it as the fifth, he had no idea if anyone had numbered the set. Or even if they'd worked out there was a set. He was a little hazy on the specifics of which details he'd shared. Nick thought there might be ten problems in total. Just as solving the beautiful interlocking puzzle that no one had realised was a fucking puzzle had opened a whole new world of encrypted problems to play with. Though there'd been no evidence for it, Rush just had a feeling that solving the nine obvious exercises would lead to one final challenge.

Rush still couldn't quite believe what had become of his life. Six months ago, Dr Daniel Jackson walked into his office at Berkeley, and tried to turn his world upside down. It hadn't worked.

By that point Rush was well-used to mysterious vaguely threatening members of unnamed organisations, most of them representing some government or other, trying to gain his 'cooperation' on some matter they refused to disclose. That's what happened when you solved the P=NP problem, and in one fell swoop of inspired mathematics put all the worlds security systems at risk in a moment of pure fucking genius, if he did say so himself.

Jackson's softly-softly approach felt like an amusing novelty at the time. Nick vaguely remembered making some sardonic comment about Jackson being the carrot, to the US government's stick. Then following it up with an outright rude remark about just where he could shove both the fucking stick and the fucking carrot. A week later, David Telford appeared out of nowhere, with a folder full of classified mathematics that he claimed meant he was breaking several dozen laws that would get him sent to Gitmo or worse, if it ever got out - so Rush could never tell anyone.

Rush's memory at that point went hazy, giving way to beautiful lines of mathematics, as the ninefold cryptographic cyphers took over everything. He'd signed on the dotted line there and then. Telford's hard sell infinitely more effective than Jackson's fucking kindness.

Gloria had already been unwell then.

Rush had thrown himself headfirst into the glorious alien mathematics and run as far from his life as his mind could take him. The base-eight maths that these, these Ancients, favoured just felt right. Where other mathematicians found the basic tenets of this alien system of mathematics bewilderingly confusing, Rush thought it made the most sense he'd ever seen in another person's work.

Glora. Gloria was gone now.

But the problem remained.

In the space of six months Rush cracked four of the cyphers. Well, five, if you counted the larger puzzle that unfurled itself into the nine individual sets contained therein.

He might have gotten more, but... The media buzz around P=NP flared up. Gloria had been unwell. There'd been the Field's medal. Chemotherapy. Wrapping up his work at the Mathematics department. Avoiding Gloria's well-meaning friends. Peremptorily seeing out his contracted teaching tenure at UC Berkeley. The funeral. Fending off offers to go to MIT, Stanford, the snobs back at Cornell, and the Ivy League. Avoiding everything to do with music. Being grateful that Gloria had given away her violin, when faced with the utter certainty that he'd have smashed it to innumerable useless splinters. And then he'd had to relocate his whole life from California, pack up everything of the life that he and Gloria built together, and cram it all into the small government provided flat in Colorado Springs.

Apparently in the three years before he'd arrived, no one had even realised that there were nine problems all wrapped in that larger overarching interlocking set. The overpaid and undereducated fools that the US government were employing to crack the set had spent the past three years plugging the supposed address straight into the gate in dozens of different permutations. Apparently getting increasingly perplexed when they received the same result repeatedly. The initial problem was so insultingly simple that Rush had been sincerely apoplectically fucking furious when he realised that no, it really wasn't an offensively fucking simple interview screening technique but a genuine stumbling block.

The first had been deceptively simple. A simple stream cypher laid out plainly in the inclusions to the basic HCP pseudo-crystalline lattice structure in the Naquadah alloy that apparently all Stargates shared. Doctor Perry had been the one to provide the scientific know-how that allowed him to crack that puzzle, her expertise in all things Ancient extending well beyond the hyperdrive engine systems that were her specialty. Little Miss Brilliant she was. It was absolutely fucking criminal that most people, even here, were so caught up in how brave she was being in the face of her disability to realise that she was a real living person, with an exceptional mind, and a brilliantly cutting sense of humour. But, well, people. The fuckers were the same everywhere. Rush wasn't sure why he'd expected differently just because they'd shown him some alien tech that was gorgeous in its crystalline majesty.

Rush made his way to the mess hall, in search of more caffeine to fend off the impending bastard of a headache he could feel gathering behind his eyes. It could possibly be mid-morning? His sense of time had gone completely sideways over the past couple of days.

Making a beeline for the coffee urns Rush's field of view narrowed down to the caffeine rich ambrosia, tunnelling in anticipation of the relief he'd soon be feeling. (Purely psychosomatic or not.) He could not be asked to make his way all the way to the surface, and through five security checkpoints just to smoke a fa- ciggie, fucking ciggie stupid bloody yanks with their backwards offensive bigotry. Couldn't even use slang properly, bastards.

No Rush could not be arsed to go topside for a cigarette, even though he was fair fucking gasping for it. The nicotine cravings so strong as a chain smoker who'd been forced to cut back, he was sure his hands were fucking shaking. (It wasn't the sleep deprivation, it wasn't.) The caffeine would have to do.

Perhaps inevitably, given that he'd been paying absolutely no fucking attention to where he was going, and that his motor-coordination was all shot to hell… Rush found himself veering into the back of something much larger than himself; the sharp edge of the fruit counter. He was sent sprawling to the concrete floor by the impact. The folder full of 9-chevron problems went flying, though fortunately his laptop wasn't a casualty, it was still clutched to his chest as he lay stunned and bruised on his back.

To make matters worse an amused voice spoke up,

"Need a hand up? You kinda walked into the fridge there."

Rush looked up from his prone position on the floor, the most unlikely individual to ever be seen wearing soldier's fatigues was peering down at him with a concerned expression on his face. For a start the lad was a skinny streak of nothing, let alone that hair, artfully standing on end as if its owner had recently been electrocuted. Rush wasn't one to judge, his own nearly shoulder length hair, proof that he kept forgetting to make a hairdresser's appointment, though the improbable spikes looked decidedly unruly to his inexpert eye. Far more so than the military types usually allowed. The bags under the taller man's eyes spoke of too many late nights, and got his headache throbbing again in sympathy.

Rush heard himself saying automatically, "Nono, I'm quite all right thank you." In a light tone, that even to his ear sounded completely false.

As he pulled himself together and clambered to his feet, the fight or flight instincts, honed by a childhood growing up frequently itinerant in the rougher neighbourhoods in Glasgow, wouldn't let his heartrate ease down from the near whirr that the jolt of adrenaline from suddenly finding himself in freefall had shot into his system. The soldier, oblivious in his black fatigues, was busily gathering up everything that Rush had dropped when he'd clipped the fucking fridge. In truth Rush was fair fucking mortified, this little incident was entirely the result of a ludicrous self-induced liability. Nothing to do with the man unembarrassedly crouching on the floor.

Looking around he noticed that whilst the mess was nearly empty at this time of day, people's eyes were fixed on the entertainment provided by pair of them. He scowled reflexively at the nosey bastards. The group that were clearly members of a gate team stared on unabashed, but the others all redoubled their interest in their trays.

"Oh hey. Cool math problem. Feistel cypher, and Shor's Algorithm, right?"

Rush blinked up at the soldier, who was unashamedly reading the contents of the somewhat crumpled sheet still in his hand.

"I hope you have the intelligence to understand that reading that is impolite." Rush spat acerbically.

"Wha-? Oh sorry." The man scrubbed vigorously at the back of his head, his hair immediately springing up again to its previous improbable position, "Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard."

The sheet of paper was hastily thrust towards Rush. Trying to keep his voice polite rather than curt, Rush nodded back,

"Dr Nicholas Rush."

Neither one of them held out a hand to shake, though Rush understood that was the etiquette. Then again, walking into the fucking fridge had bypassed etiquette entirely. Rush rubbed at his shoulder, trying to ease the tension there, and strained to resist the urge to glare at the inanimate fucking object that had caused this catastrophe of a social interaction.

The soldier, with no visible rank insignia that Rush could see, passed back the fucking disaster that had been made of his work. Rush noted with some concern, that the newly christened Lt Colonel Sheppard, was writing down the 'math problem' in his own small notebook, which as Rush looked more closely, he realised was hiding a fucking Sudoku book between its covers. The man played Sudoku, the most inane of the time wasting brainteasers. Even worse than those menial mental arithmetic problems, for fucks sake. It was one of the nine chevron problems too, laid out in base 8 maths. The man's angular scrawl got the details down perfectly, Nick wouldn't have credited him with the ability to remember something that complex, let alone the intellectual shrewdness to understand what he'd seen for all of a few seconds.

Rush caught an intriguing flash of an equation, and without thinking, snatched the taller man's Sudoku book away from him, ignoring the exclaimed "Hey! I thought looking was rude!" he got in favour of doing some of his own reading.

Letting out a heartfelt sigh of, "Just like McKay!" (whoever that was) Sheppard wandered off, picking himself a selection of fruit and a sorry looking sandwich from the fare on offer. From the corner of his eye Rush noticed that his hand hovered over one of those foul pudding cups that seemingly all American canteens served, before he snatched it back and moved back to the salads.

"Want anything?" Sheppard quietly called over his shoulder," Think of it as an apology for reading your work doc."

"Just coffee please."

Sheppard eyed Rush dubiously, eyes flicking to Rush's visibly shaking hands (from the migraine, caffeine, nicotine withdrawal, severe lack of sleep, or adrenaline, Rush didn't know) but didn't say anything. Sheppard took his tray over to a corner table, chose the seat that put his back to the corner, and his eyes facing the exits. Rush recognised the move as something he'd used to do habitually back in Glasgow. With no choice but to follow the man if he wanted his coffee, Rush sat down, uncomfortably aware of the open room at his back, and glowered until the mug was passed over.

Sheppard stared blankly back for a long minute, before seeming to realise that Rush was expecting him to say something,

"So doc, what're you up to at the SGC?"

Jesus Fucking Christ. The man's attempts at small talk were appallingly bad.

"Mathematics."

Rush's one-word reply was bitingly concise. Sheppard laughed, an appallingly loud braying donkey-like honk,

"Yeah I got that."

In lieu of interacting with the daft soldier anymore, Rush continued to flip through the man- the Colonel's notepads. He noticed with wry disbelief that it appeared to contain a mixture of meeting minutes, a collection of spaceship and aeroplane doodles mixed in with amusingly violent stick figures threatening bodily harm on someone labelled-Strom against a Marilyn Manson-esque monster, basic mathematics puzzles scrawled in another sloping hand, the sort you'd give to a first year undergrad, personnel reports about some people he really couldn't give a fuck about… and the more intriguing equations relating to energy production that had initially caught his attention.

"Hey doc, are you sure you've got the clearance to look at that?"

Despite the words in the question, Colonel Sheppard's tone was more amused than anything.

"Yes yes. Of course I do." Rush looked up, tried for a grin, from the look on Sheppard's face he missed by a mile, "I'm down here below the 11th floor aren't I?"

"I suppose…" Sheppard didn't make a move to take the notepad with its illicitly concealed brainteasers back, but he didn't look convinced.

"What're these power equations for?" Rush asked, tapping at the page in question with the edge of his mug. This cup would be his… He'd lost count at eight… Rush's many'th cup of the day. Fuck. He was losing his grasp of basic English.

"Uh I'm not sure I should be telling you that Doc."

Despite the wary tone of voice, there was a smirk playing about Sheppard's lips. The skin around the Colonel's eyes crinkled with mischief, Rush took a deep breath and launched into the angry diatribe that was his stock response to students he realized weren't using their gifts,

"Colonel. Despite the fact that you may have fooled your friend into thinking that you only possess a rudimentary grasp of basic secondary school level mathematics," Sheppard mouthed 'secondary school?!' in clear puzzlement, Rush barrelled on, "I can tell merely by looking at the stepwise logic you've applied here that these – these petty puzzles your friend has set for you are an insult to your ability."

Sheppard's face had gone blank.

"It's clear to me that you spent all of five minutes at most working through these things, but this, the elegance of your thought processes here. Either someone taught you 10-dimensional string theory, or you came up with this proposal all by yourself. And somehow, from the eccentricities in your method I suspect the latter."

"…Doc…" Sheppard's voice was a pleading whine.

"I think it's pure dead brilliant Colonel. Though the typical layperson would struggle to follow your logic through some of these intuitive leaps you've made. It's probably why your friend seems to have forgotten that to attain your rank you need a Master's degree at a minimum, and it's clear to me that yours must be in some branch of mathematics," Rush speculated out loud, "combinatorics? Applied or theoretical?"

Despite his previous high praise Rush immediately wanted to rescind the words as he watched with abject fucking horror the gaping look of blank idiotic incredulousness cross the other man's face.

"Right, yes. Well. Very good. I've got to go. Colonel." Rush nodded, quickly backed out of the cantee-cafeteria and fled that damning expression of stunned 'someone acknowledged me!' that he was more used to seeing on the more vulnerable of his student's faces than a grown man. He wasn't here to make friends and influence people. Let alone rescue a soldier of the United States Armed Forces from what looked like a severe case of intellectual starvation.

Halfway down the corridor, Rush's rusty conscience got the better of him. It clicked. He was that Colonel Sheppard. The one that several of the SGC scientists were convinced was some sort of closeted prodigy. That damned gate team watched him stalk back into the cafeteria like it was a ringside sporting match, he sneered at them again, and marched over to Sheppard,

"Come with me Colonel, I've got something you might like to see."

"Huh?" The colonel sent him a look of total idiocy.

Oh, why the fuck did he bother?

---

Vala was roving around the lab levels, she was bored. Bored! Normally she'd hang out with Sam or work off some steam in the gym with the team, or most fun of all, go and poke at Danny. But SG-1 were all off doing their own thing right now. Sam had the Hammond, Teal'c was off organising the Free Jaffa Nation, and Daniel, he'd left for Atlantis. Again. Even Cam, though he was in the mountain at least, was busy doing paperwork in the cupboard he called an office – paperwork!

Alas the Tau'ri held such a dim view of Vala's usual methods of entertaining herself, so she was stuck at a loose end. They never seemed to understand, that day by day, hour by hour, Vala had to choose to make the decision not to fall back on learned behaviour. Not to fall into the habits of a lifetime and do what her father taught her from birth. Or worse, give in completely, and fall into the learned pattern of recreating what Qetesh would have done.

Her own father had sold her. He'd instilled in her the belief that she was only worth what she could earn. She'd been host to Qetesh, watched herself do terrible things. Afterwards had been no improvement; the Tok'ra had tortured Qetesh before the end, uncaring of the damage they were doing to the Host. Just like the Goa'uld they claimed to abhor, they'd acted as if Vala wasn't even there to take into consideration. Of course, Qetesh fled from the pain, retreated into herself, leaving Vala to endure all the torture for her unwanted passenger. When she'd escaped their clutches? When she'd made it to Thor's Hammer with no help from anyone but herself? She'd lived through enough injustice, endured deprivations of the like most of the Tau'ri she'd met could never even conceive of. Their dangerously immutable morality was such a foreign concept to her. That startling belief that they were inherently good, that they were capable of arbitrating right and wrong. It was intoxicating, and terrifying.

Dragging her thoughts away from the dark memories with an effort, Vala ducked into Dr Lee's lab. He was always willing to be entertaining. She was surprised to see it was full of people. Hello, this looked like it could be fun. There was a whole crowd of Tau'ri science types in there, all peering at, and arguing about whatever was written on the huge white board that had taken up residence in the corner of the room Sam normally used.

Predictably, like hearing a word for the first time, and then hearing it everywhere, Dr Perry's friend was there – the irritable Doctor Rush. Vala decided that she really needed to dig up the dirt on that fascinating Tau'ri specimen. Doctors Lee and Felger were arguing, loudly, about the impossibility of working out whatever was scrawled on the board.

"No no no! You incompetent halfwit!"

"Oh kek! Like you'd know anything you, you, Moonguard!"

"Oh not the altar of Rodenderry again!"

"It's Rodenberry! Rodenberry! Even I know that. And no, it's the horde you nincompoop!"

Vala was competent at certain kinds of science; when you relied on your own wits, and whichever salvaged spacecraft you could get your hands on for interstellar travel, you couldn't afford not to be. But… Vala peered again at the indecipherable nonsense on the board. Whatever was written up there was beyond her. She could tell there were several sets of equations scrawled on the large board, but that was the extent of it.

Vala decided to fade into the background, it looked like this little drama would be more entertaining if she didn't join in for once. Dr Rush was, predictably, looking very angry at the small crowd gathered around him – oh, that was a surprise, the beautiful Colonel Sheppard was sat discreetly on a lab stool, slightly off to the side, watching the proceedings with interest. She liked the man, with his closed off demeanour that hinted at all sorts of dangerous things underneath. He'd ducked out on her before they could get up to any real mischief last night, more's the pity. Vala could still just about make out hints of the beautiful young man that lurked under that competently dangerous exterior. For his sake she'd refrain from calling him Beautiful again - when she remembered. Just as Rush was a fascinating puzzle, Sheppard was intriguing. So like, and yet utterly unlike her dear Cam, with more parallels with Daniel than she suspected either of them wanted to admit to. Behind that deliberate blankness of his, all sorts of things were going on.

"You don't even have a doctorate!"

Ah that was Doctor Kavanagh, berating a slightly portly olive-skinned man. Behind him a similarly chubby tall blond spoke up,

"Oh Kavanagh, as if your doctorate means anything decent. You blew up Midway." Blondy gestured at dark haired with a tan, "At least Brody would have managed to help save it."

"I did not! He's only an engineer!"

"Compared to your Salieri, Mr Brody over there is a Mozart."

Kavanagh might have been attractive, tall, dark haired, and with a certain air about him - if not for his appalling attitude toward anyone that he deemed to be less intelligent than himself, which was everyone. His attitude towards the people that intimidated him was almost worse, sycophantic slimy brown-nosing that somehow meant he got away with his actions. Vala had met plenty of his type over the years. She tended to think it was her duty to subtly (or not so subtly) wind them up.

"Oh, for god's sake! Enough with the music references, we all get it Volker, you had an 'education'. Look all I'm saying is that there's no way of getting into a DHD to get that information out again!"

The newly identified Volker, and Mr Brody did not look appeased, the argument looked as if it was about to round up a gear, unexpectedly Sheppard interjected,

"What about applying a zero-knowledge protocol to Birch and Swinnerton Dyer?"

His voice was abstracted, dreamy. Immediately Kavanagh began to scoff,

"Elliptic curves? Hah! Don't make me laugh Colonel, besides you wouldn't understand this stuff if it bit you on the as-"

"Shut up!"

A quiet voice cut across the commotion. It was Doctor Rush.

"No, I certainly will not!"

All the other scientists stopped their own fights to watch the back and forth. Rush spun around and grabbed the much taller man, he pulled him down so they were nose to nose and gritted out in that quiet threatening tone,

"Yes ye will ye little imbecile, before I shut yer mouth for ye!"

Kavanagh's response was high pitched, "I'm telling HR about this!"

"I couldnae giveafuck ye stoopid wee bawbag! Go git pumped!" Still clutching Kavanagh's shirt tightly, Rush turned to Sheppard, and perfectly politely asked, "What was that about Swinnerton-Dyer, Colonel?"

The contrast in Rush's attitude was comical.

"Uh. Well if we used Hilbert's there" Sheppard hesitantly gestured at a section of the board, "And used Hasse-well on that thingy. I think it could solve it, at least for that question up there."

Gesturing hesitantly at one of the problems scrawled on the board, Sheppard stuttered to a stop at the stunned silence. Vala wanted to give the man a hug, but from his standoffish body language with absolutely everyone, S.O. fairly radiated a large 'do not touch' perimeter around himself. It was broadcasting particularly strongly now.

"Yes. Yesyesyes." Rush's muttered imprecation was loud in the quiet, "Colonel, ye've only gone and dun it. Tha's fair fucking fantastic!"

"I- what?"

Sheppard looked stunned. That uneasy radius of personal space easing back down to that thoroughly intriguing tendency to lean in, as if he dearly wanted to touch and be touched, edged with that skittish fear, that Vala kept catching hints of. It was a fascinating puzzle, paired with that darkness in his eyes, filled with hard-earned unpleasant knowledge that she knew was reflected in her own. Sometimes Vala hated that part of her, that was always active, always eyeing up everyone around her for tells, weaknesses, constantly reading body-language, looking for ways to manipulate, cajole, deceive, where to hit hardest. In this case though it was like Daniel all over again, the man was thoroughly intriguing, and he'd ignited that all too rare urge to protect.

Despite the stretched collar of his shirt Kavanagh seemed to feel the need to add his piece again,

"Oh, like you understand anything about physics, you're a theoretical mathematician!"

"When I want yer advice. I'll give ye the fucking signal. Which is me being sectioned under the fucking Mental Health Act!" Kavanagh blinked, totally nonplussed. Rush turned to gloat, "Hah! I knew channelling Malcolm Tucker would shut ye up ye wee gobshite!"

Kavanagh opened his mouth, the other woman in the room, who up until that moment had been quiet, stepped between them,

"Stop it! Stop shouting!"

Dr Rush immediately looked chagrined, with a sheepish expression he stepped back, "Sorry Lisa."

Kavanagh looked as if he were about to start something again, Mr Brody stepped up behind the petite Eurasian woman, and glared over her shoulder at Kavanagh,

"Sorry Doctor Park."

"Good." Dr Park looked around at the rest of the scientists, "Now, let's all behave like the adults we are, yes?" She turned to Sheppard and cheerily asked, "What made you think of elliptic curves?"

Slouched on his stool as he was, Sheppard's shoulders were hunched up around his ears, as if he expected some sort of mockery. When none came, they slowly eased their way back towards a more comfortable position. He blinked at her, "Uh, can't you see it?"

"No, I can't." Sheppard started to look uncomfortable again, but Dr Park ploughed on rapidly, "But if Doctor Rush is getting all excited, then I believe you. Really, I do. And it's incredibly exciting, and frustrating. Because I should be able to see it too, but I can't. So, show me what you see?" She turned pleading eyes on Sheppard, Vala was impressed, "Please?"

Sheppard rubbed at his hair and hesitantly spat out an explanation that was even less intelligible than the previous one,

"Well… It's like that guy in that show who's really stupid compared to everyone else, the one with the plant-lady, floating slug emperor, Samus, and even the mad guy with the mask", Sheppard briefly devolved into mimes and whisper shouting, "My side, your side, my side!"

Dr Park looked alarmed, just as it looked like she was about to take a step back, Sheppard stopped, scrubbed as his hair again, and embarrassedly huffed out, "But he sees wormholes, yunno?"

Parks eyes widened, in complete baffled incomprehension, "Uh what?"

Comically Sheppard looked just as confused as Dr Park did, "1812? The wonders I've seen?" he asked slowly.

Dr Lee looked as if he understood what Sheppard was going on about, and Dr Volker seemed to be nodding along, but the rest of the scientists looked utterly blank. It was good to know that not all the Tau'ri were following. Vala had begun to think she'd never understand all the shorthand and references they constantly babbled to each other in, but from the looks of it, neither did they.

From his spot next to Dr Park, Dr Rush was clearly trying not to laugh at everyone else. Dr Park opened her mouth, presumably to ask for clarification of Sheppard's pitiable attempts to explain himself.

"Knock! Knock!" A British voice interrupted the attempt at a meaningful heart to heart, Vala's head whipped around, along with everyone else's, Dr Ingram was in the doorway. Dr Rush shot him a filthy look, he opened his mouth, no doubt to say something amusingly rude, but Ingram started talking first,

"Oh. Oh my. Is that what I think it is?" He walked right up to the whiteboard and peered myopically at it through his glasses, "That looks positively unsolvable." His gleeful tone was utterly at odds with his words, rather like his appearance. He was a tall, thin, dark skinned man, with an accent that Vala had been assured was from London, but unlike the rest of the scientists at the SGC in their apparent uniform of ill-fitted dress shirt and khakis, he was wearing an impeccably tailored suit, paired incongruously with a hooded sweatshirt and high-top Jordan sneakers.

"Yes yes Ben. It's precisely what you think it is." Rush's tone was snappish. He turned toward Sheppard, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable again. Vala decided it was past time that she interrupted, "Oh darlings, you don't think there'd be untold treasures at the other end of this address, do you?"

Vala didn't think she was imagining the relief on Sheppard's, or Dr Rush's faces as her distraction worked. Ben Ingram cheerfully waded into the bickering match between Kavanagh and everyone else, seeming to relish every minute of the contest of geekdom one-upmanship. She noted that Rush and Sheppard were talking quietly together in the background, aided and abetted by the British newcomer.

"Oh shut up Ingram, everyone knows your minor was in Norse Mythology of all things. You may have majored in engineering but you're no-"

"Oh shut up yourself Kavanagh." Ingram really did seem to relish the confrontation, "If you were half as clever as you think you are, you'd know there's no such thing as a major or a minor at the University of Cambridge. I read the Engineering Tripos, I joined the Norse Historical Society. Then again you wouldn't know that you ignorant… yank. You probably think port has something to do with ships and all Brits like tea. PS we don't."

During the inevitable squawk of outrage Vala slipped away from the continuing argument discussion, and, purely for the fun of it, hacked her way into Daniel's computer.

She typed Doctor Nicholas Rush carefully into the delightfully quaint little planetwide database that the Tau'ri seemed so proud of and gaped at the amount of information that immediately sprung up. Vala hadn't expected it to be that easy, she'd been hoping for anticipating having to practice her old skills back from when she'd been an …independent agent, but here it was all laid out. Now if only she could find some context for this information.

Dr Nicholas Rush, controversial Mathematician and Cryptographer. Spent his early years in Glasgow, educated at Oxford and Cambridge. Tenured at Cornell University and later Berkeley. Fields medallist famous for cracking the P=NP problem and putting encryption at risk globally. Where is he now?

Cracking her knuckles Vala opened a new 'tab' on the little search function and prepared to find out what the article she'd found actually meant.

---

Kavanagh couldn't believe that Sheppard had tried to show him up. Of all people, the stupid ignorant air force officer had been the one all his peers had sided with. Even the normally friendly Dr Park had taken the damned grunt's side.

He seethed quietly to himself in his corner of the mess, glowering unsubtly at the distinctive head of messy hair. How on earth did the lackadaisical careless failure of a leader get away with it? He didn't follow the rules of his own organisation. He risked the lives of everyone around him with his laissez-faire approach to management. And now, to add insult to injury, he was encroaching on Kavanagh's territory on top of it all.

It. It wasn't fair.

The management at the SGC never listened to his complaints. They'd been perfectly valid criticisms of a dangerous disregard for health and safety. But they'd gotten him kicked from position to position like a rescue dog that no one could tolerate for more than a few weeks.

"Hey there."

Kavanagh startled violently. He looked up; it was a Colonel. But, no one he'd cared to learn the name of. The grunt must have spotted his lack of recognition,

"Colonel Dixon."

"Dr Peter Kavanagh."

The grunt had the effrontery to look amused,

"Yeah Doc, I know who you are."

"What do you want?"

"I couldn' help but notice you were glowerin mighty fierce at Sheppard o'er there."

"What? No. No I wasn't!"

"Shh shh, it's fine Doc, no skin off my nose. In fact, I might have a couple of suggestions for you. See, we all know that ol' Shep there dunt much like bugs if you catch my drift."

Kavanagh grinned maliciously.

---

In the glorified store cupboard that the SGC claimed was his office, John was catching up on his paperwork. The AAR for the final training exercise was filled with doublespeak and other non-accusations about the whole sorry affair, though Sheppard had taken care to be thorough in his attributions to the three Lieutenants who'd temporarily been under his command. They really did deserve their spots on the programme. He was damned if he'd let his unpopularity rub off on them.

Since he was stuck on leave without permission to go off base until Lam removed the stitches, John was being a good little boy and trying to ensure Landry found no more excuses to label him unfit for his post. Though he had to admit, if the senior officer wanted to oust him John had given him more than enough excuses over the years. He was only grateful that he'd been somewhat sensible last night and not taken up Vala's offer of another round of drinks. John had seen the flirtation in her smile and taken it for the reflexive action it was, rather than anything genuine. They'd gotten back to the mountain well before midnight and parted amicably enough. He hadn't even had a hangover in the morning. John had discovered that most of the muscles in his left side had seized up overnight however, so he'd admitted defeat and popped a couple of the pills Lam had forced on him. Sheppard hated the way strong pain meds usually led to some loss of control, but there hadn't been anything else for it – if he'd thought he was feeling stiff before, it was nothing compared to the immobility he'd been faced with first thing.

Sighing, John finished the AAR, and moved on to the rest of the pile. Which was sizeable. The other paperwork to deal with was of the even more bureaucratic variety, unfortunately. The IOA were forcing John to go back over his years as CO of Atlantis and justify every requisition, additional member of his battalion, and his every action since the year dot. Now that they'd witnessed the dangers up close, they were finally listening about the danger the Wraith posed. Regrettably, their reaction was a useless combination of greed and outright panic.

The only upside to the sorry situation was that, barring the sheer unadulterated chaos that had been the ridiculously steep learning curve of suddenly having the mantle of command dropped on his head in the First Year - Sheppard had actually been pretty damned thorough about all this crap the first time around.

He hadn't wanted to give the SGC an excuse to oust him, after their reluctance to let him stay on in the city had been made so blatantly obvious. It helped too that he had a bureaucrat of his own on side this time, Mr Woolsey had pointedly offered to read over anything John was willing to send him, which John had taken to mean, 'For god's sake, let me check over everything before you give it to those vipers!'

Still, it was a whole hell of a lot of paperwork to get through. Damned queep.

He'd been at it for hours and was still only up to the fourth month of the First Year. Even though this stuff had already been gone over with a fine-toothed comb back when they'd first contacted earth again. Sheppard had just gotten up to the… sheer idiocy that was his behaviour when the nanovirus had been unleashed on them all, and he'd been so determined to contribute to the situation that he'd made everything even worse.

Sighing John picked up the model of a Harrier Jump Jet that just happened to be the miniature plane closest to hand when he'd hurriedly grabbed a few essentials from his Atlantis office during the rushed transfer to the SGC all those weeks ago. It was a neat little plane, with its fully vertical take-off. Being USAF, not RAF, he'd never gotten the chance to take one up, mores the pity. Though, jump jets notwithstanding, John still thought the USAF was far superior overall. He gently put the thing back on its stand; the single bit of personalisation in the dull concrete box that was his life for the foreseeable future made him miss Lantis even more wholeheartedly.

Well, there was one other thing.

John felt it burning at him through the layers of chipboard and laminate of his desk.

That folder.

Had he made a mistake letting Rush cajole him into doing that little bit of math?

John had to wonder.

In a desk draw, half hidden under the holepunch and the empty files, in the same rough spot where he usually stashed it, lay a well-thumbed and battered folder. It contained a problem he'd been chewing at, on and off, for decades. He'd started working on it in the 80s, long before he'd signed on to the OTS after finishing his master's at Stanford, and before the master's in aeronautics he'd finished at Maxwell. He'd meant to finish it, but the Balkans had happened. Then those years that meant Shep's file was more blacked out space than legible text. Then Afghanistan, and somehow there'd never been the time to give to the rush of pure wonder that mathematics had inspired when he was younger. Before everything he'd seen and done rushed in to fill that space in his head instead. After his first TOD whenever John shut his eyes and tried to summon that mind frame, all he got was images of blood and sand, or worse, icy cold, the fetid stink of rot, and the flash of an a-bomb. Perhaps it was penance for everything he'd done.

Sometimes, in his darker moments, John wondered if he'd lost it entirely; the intelligence to even begin to try to pick up where he'd left off. It was a quiet source of melancholy for most in the field; that for the vast majority who were bright enough to make a breakthrough, their best work was over before they hit twenty. Most mathematics undergrads had already aged out of the sort of brilliance that triggered most innovations in the field before the education system deemed them ready to start learning the sort of math that they really needed to get going.

John always felt that he'd left part of himself behind when he'd sold his soul to the Air Force. Not that he'd give up the sheer joy of flight for anything. Or the difference he'd made, would hopefully still make, out there. Even as a large part of him nagged that all too often that difference wasn't all that positive. Perhaps it was going over the First Year again that was doing it; the guilt for having woken the Wraith sat particularly heavy this afternoon.

John figured it was apt, losing the joy of math to his sins. Like most pilots he had his superstitions; he didn't think it was a coincidence that he'd come back from that awful off the books mission, blood still under his nails that simply wouldn't scrub off (he'd tried, god how he'd tried), and Nancy had turned to him with that look on her face. An awful expression of rage, hopelessness, hatred. He hadn't been there for her. There'd been… a child. Their child. He hadn't even known. And he hadn't been there. John hadn't contested the divorce, hadn't wanted to hurt her even more. Accepted the blame as his father automatically assumed the worst of him, threw himself into his work… It was why he'd behaved so monstrously towards Teyla when he'd first found out about Torren. He'd been terrified for her, for her child, hadn't wanted to be responsible for yet another death…

With an explosive snort of effort John forced himself to stop thinking about such things. This was why he hated strong meds. His mind was all over the place. Sheppard rubbed at eyes long since gone dry, and decided to go grab another cup of joe, paperwork was always weirdly tiring. John had been sat on his ass for hours, but he was as worn out as if he'd been running from the Wraith all day.

John made it to the coffee corner on this level, glad that he'd been dumped up here with the scientists, since the civilians had all protested the distance to the mess and started fixing himself a cup. Someone had left the pot empty, and the scant, burnt looking, quarter of an inch left in the bottom of the pot was full of sediment. Sheppard felt more than heard it when someone came up behind him. He turned and was nastily surprised to look up at Kavanagh's sneering face. The tall doctor was uncomfortably close, the concept of personal space completely disregarded. He was using that height difference to loom. John wasn't impressed. He'd been loomed at by experts, Ronon, Caldwell, Colonel Telford, Kolya, Todd. Kavanagh merely looked constipated.

"Dr Kavanagh." John said pleasantly.

"Colonel." Kavanagh smiled spitefully.

John did his best to ignore him, he got on with fetching the bag of coffee beans out of the cupboard at head height.

There was a noise too close, skittering right next to his ear, he jerked around on reflex and saw it.

---

Vala was strolling down the corridor, heading towards Sam's lab space when she spotted the confrontation. Tall and slimy was leaning over S.O. in the coffee cubby. Why wasn't he doing anything about it? If Vala knew anything about the Tau'ri after all these years living in their company, it was that their military were generally capable of fending for themselves. Then again, she'd also learned that the Tau'ri tended to regard those among them who volunteered to walk through the Chappa'ai as slightly insane. And both men obliviously standing before her fit into that category.

She flashed a grin that was all daggers and tears, well then, what on Chronos's hairy behind was going on here?

To Vala's disbelief, Kavanagh was the one who started it. One minute Beautiful (oh, she could still call S.O. that in the privacy of her own head) was clutching at a bag of that disgusting dreck that the ignorant Tau'ri who'd never tasted the ambrosia of the stimulant Telar root called coffee. The next the coffee cubby was a confusion of motion. There were brown beans everywhere. (The fussy Tau'ri scientists had insisted on beans and a grinder.) Kavanagh knocked the pot and warmer to the floor as he scrambled away from Sheppard. Sheppard was… Sheppard was freaking out. She recognised the signs for what they were, the Tau'ri called them flashbacks, Vala had known them as memory traps.

What had triggered it?

Kavanagh was backing away clutching a large grotesquely oversized insect in one hand, and a recording device still making skittering noises in the other.

Oh.

Oh by Yu's shrivelled scrotum! That spiteful coward! Vala internally descended into an angry stream of Goa'uld invective. She'd learnt a lot of curses from Qetesh over the years. Vala had no idea what the story was behind S.O.s reaction to the insect, but Kavanagh was clearly aware of it, and had cruelly exploited it. Sheppard was alternately clutching at his neck and making warding gestures at Kavanagh. He backed himself into the corner of the coffee cubby.

Vala became aware of another person in the corridor, it was Doctor Ingram, he was staring in horrified sympathy at the situation.

"Flashback huh?"

Vala saw his face go dark when he spotted the giant insect.

"Oh that little shit! Kavanagh triggered it on purpose!?"

The previously mild Tau'ri turned fierce eyes on her, "Let's deal with this together?"

Vala flashed a smile that was all broken glass, "Partners? Like, Mulder and Scully?"

Ingram tched at her, "Yeah, sure, why not? Who'd you want to take?"

"Normally I'd want to deal with the revenge. But… S.O. over there is stuck in his own memories, and I know what that feels like."

Ingram took a moment to parse her words, before he grinned at her all empathy and anticipation of doing something about this,

"Ah, you want me to deal with Dr Kavanagh?"

"Oh no…" Vala's answering smile was pure Qetesh, "I'll deal with Kavanagh eventually. But for now, I want to take care of John."

"Deal."

Before Vala could step forward Ingram called out, his accent thickening,

"Oi! Kavanagh you dickhead! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The tall Tau'ri turned a skittish look their way. Before he understood that his little act of unkindness had witnesses, he'd been all bravado and anger. As soon as he spotted them, he seemed to shrink, his tall frame collapsing in on itself as he realised, he'd been caught in the act. Ingram marched over and snatched the still squirming insect from the taller man. (It really was disgustingly large whatever it was.)

"S.O."

Vala warily approached the downed Tau'ri soldier. He was breathing harshly and didn't seem to hear her. Having been in his position several times too many herself, Vala was very aware that in this situation the individual trapped in their memories could lash out at friends and allies without realising what they were doing. She squatted down to his level, so she wasn't looming, and, keeping her distance started a low murmur of comforting 'I am here, this is now, and you are safe' phrases.

Behind her she was aware that Ingram was lowly ripping Kavanagh a new one, to coin a Tau'ri saying.

"You're an absolute wanker! You wanted to go to HR about a little argument, did you? Well you've certainly given HR something to chew on now you bastard!"

Gradually Sheppard seemed to come back to himself. Vala kept up the stream of gentle nonsense until John met her eyes. He tiredly rubbed a hand over his face, and got out in a voice that was barely louder than a whisper,

"I've usually got a better grip on myself than this."

He met her gaze desperately, grey-green eyes apprehensive,

"It's just… I've been going over the First Year pretty in depth all morning, and well, it dragged up old memories."

Vala really didn't understand what he was talking about, but she knew enough,

"Shh, Sheppard, John, it's alright. I've been there. There's no shame in it. And certainly no need to explain."

"It must have been Lam's damned pills." He groaned lowly, "I should have known not to take the things. Muscle relaxants my ass."

Ingram sent Kavanagh fleeing, the dark skinned Tau'ri had kept hold of the evidence of the taller scientist's cowardly attack and was glaring daggers at the man's retreating back. Curled in the protective circle of her arms Sheppard came back to himself fully, groaning and rubbing at his face. S.O. blinked reddened eyes up at her, then immediately started panicking,

"Crap, Vala they're already looking for an excuse to kick me out. This is it."

Vala rashly made her promise, "No, no Beautiful" He was still out of it enough that he didn't protest the nickname, "They won't. I promise."

"How can you possibly say that? They're gonna call it PTSD. They're gonna say I'm unfit."

"No, no they won't. Do you know how many times SG-1 have fallen into their memories? By Nirrti's sour pout! Cam sometimes falls into mind traps that aren't even his. They won't care, they know people who use the Chappa'ai regularly see too much." Beautiful did not look at all convinced, Vala huffed, "If you're that worried. We won't let them find out. Though it will make getting vengeance on tall and slimy over there more difficult."

Sheppard bleakly gestured towards the red LED steadily burning in the corner, and the camera above it.

"Dr Ingram?" Vala fluttered her eyelashes winsomely at the handsome dark skinned Tau'ri scientist, still glaring at the corridor Kavanagh had fled down he didn't seem to notice,

"Yes, Ms Mal Doran?"

"I don't suppose you know how to delete CCTV footage?"

Ingram grinned widely at her, his voice took on a sing-song tone that Vala knew meant he was probably quoting something, accent and all,

"Oh, Vala me dear. I've just been waitin for the opportunity to use the skills acquired from my misspent youth."

Vala clambered to her feet, she deliberately let her gaze linger over his form as leaned up against him, he playfully nudged her clearly recognising her game for what it was. She was surprised, too often the Tau'ri, even those who'd been through the Chappa'ai as often as SG-1, were too clean cut for their own good. This seeming youth got it though.

For the first time since this whole stinking situation had started, Vala grinned genuinely.

"Dr ingram, am I glad I met you." She hauled S.O. to his feet, "See John? Everything is going to be great."

Ingram kept up a steady stream of indecipherable Tau'ri computer babble, Sheppard was nodding along as if he followed it, even as he allowed himself to be guided through the nearly empty lab space. They moved slowly, S.O. was moving stiffly, and looked pale and shaky. The only other person in the large open-plan area was Dr Park, the woman looked anxiously over at them, and moved as if to try and help, but Ingram impatiently gestured her away.

"Don't worry about a thing Colonel. I'll soon have everything sorted out."

True to his word Ingram made an immediate beeline for the server room. An exclamation of 'Who wrote this crappy firewall!?' could be heard as it seemed like he immediately got into the systems. Vala sent Sheppard on his way to Dr Lee's office. The rotund Tau'ri seemed to have a soft spot for the Colonel and was kind enough not to say anything if he noticed that John was looking especially pale and interesting. Vala shoved S.O. inside and spat out a half-truth,

"Dr Lam gave him the bad drugs. They didn't agree with him."

Lee worriedly raked his eyes over S.O.'s pale visage,

"Oh dear! I'll give her a call?"

Beautiful certainly looked ill enough to sell the ruse.

"Come on Colonel, sit down sit down! I'm sure I can find a nice cup of coffee somewhere. Then we can talk about aeronautics, how about that?"

Lee bustled over and asked in an undertone,

"Do we need to take him to the infirmary?"

"No I think the worst of it has passed, Cameron's always complaining that muscle relaxants are too strong, and Sheppard over there probably didn't know to halve the dose."

Vala shot the friendly Tau'ri a grateful look and backed out of the lab, she had to find someone to help her plot her retaliation.

---

Joe Spencer's life was on the up. He'd reconnected with his wife and got to see meet his now grown son every week for coffee. It wasn't, things weren't back to the way they were, before the stone, and the Stargate, and Jack O'Neill and the System lords. But life was good.

Business at the barber shop was doing well. Charlene had hinted that she might be willing to start dating him again but take it slow.

He'd left Jerry in charge of the shop, it was his turn to go on the lunch run, and he fancied Italian – meatball subs and fries were the order of the day. Humming to himself he cut across the alley between Main Street and 3rd Avenue. Joe rounded the mess of dumpsters and commercial refuse that characterised these back streets, whistling the theme of Wormhole Xtreme cheerfully. It really was a beautiful day. Blue skies, but not yet high summer, so the desert climate wasn't unbearably hot.

Joe was startled when he nearly walked into a guy in a suit coming the opposite way,

"Sorry man, didn't see you there."

"Oh that's fine, not many people take this shortcu-"

Something impacted on his skull, and all Joe knew was black.

---

After the earlier unpleasantness Vala decided to treat herself by tormenting teasing Doctor Rush, and drag him kicking and screaming into her scheme to avenge S.O's state of mind. Of course, that meant she had to find the lovely storm of compressed hatred made flesh first. She tracked the little barely contained ball of seething rage wrapped in the thinnest shell of false civility down in the labs with Dr Perry. In hindsight, after spending a good forty minutes looking for the Tau'ri scientist the location was painfully obvious. Vala had seen them keeping each other company plenty of times before.

As she neared Dr Perry's lab, she caught some of their conversation,

"Oh Nick please, as if you have a leg to stand on" Dr Perry's voice took on a mocking high-pitched edge, and an accent that Vala guessed was her attempt to mimic Rush's, "Mister 'David can go suck on a giant cock, oh wait no, he's the only member of the military willing to let me take my work off-base please come back Colonel Telford all is forgiven, kissy kissy.' You know he's got a valid point about coding that problem into that Wormhole Xtreme game they're all talking about."

Rush's tone was warmly exasperated,

"Oh Mandy, please stop it. You know I've only had access to the cyphers for six months. I unlocked the problems within a day, they'd been sitting with their thumbs up their collective arses for going on four years. I'll get them, I know it."

"Yes Nick, but at what cost?" There was a pause "There's no shame in asking for help."

"Yes yes." Rush's tone was polite but abstracted, "Did you know about that Colonel? The closet maths prodigy?"

"Who?"

"Oh Sheppard, I asked Davi-"

"See? You two are friends!"

"No, no we're not. I can't stand the man, he thinks he's being subtle in his blatant attempts at manipulation, I only put up with him because he's so use-"

"Pot, kettle, Nick."

"Anyway. Sheppard, he has a Masters in theoretical mathematics, or combinatorics, I'm not sure which. He's a natural. It's the most frustrating thing I've ever seen."

Vala chose that moment to stick her head around the door,

"Most Frustrating thing Gorgeous?"

Before Rush could retort, Dr Perry playfully interjected,

"Yes, Nick's just telling me all about his latest crush."

"Oh, do tell me more!"

"Mandy!"

Dr Perry's eyes sparkled with mischief,

"Well much as Nicholas likes to deny it, we both know he's BFFs with Colonel Telford."

"I am nay such thing!"

Dr Perry continued as if he hadn't interrupted,

"It seems to me that Telford is about to be ousted from his throne."

Vala leaned deliberately into Rush's space, her breasts pressing against his upper arm as she reached across him to grab a pen, she was gratified that he didn't seem to notice. Her instincts that he was one she could get to trust seemed to have been right.

"What de you want Ms Mal Doran?"

Ah time to get to the point,

"Yes speaking of S.O." Vala spotted Dr Perry's confused expression and quickly corrected, "Sheppard, Dr Rush I need your help."

Gorgeous looked puzzled.

"With what?"

It wasn't a no.

"Dr Kavanagh pulled a nasty prank on Colonel Beautiful, made him believe he wasn't fit to lead when Kavanagh's the one who's only worthy to suck on a Goa'uld larva. I saw. I was there. I want revenge."

Vala hastily went over the bare bones of the situation without delving too deeply into what had happened. Both Rush and Dr Perry looked gratifyingly angry.

"Revenge?" To Vala's surprise the enthusiastic response was from Amanda, "What did Kavanagh do now, and how can we help?"

"Mandy…"

Dr Perry's voice was teasing over the rhythmic sound of the ventilator,

"Now Nicholas, can you think of a better way to seal your friendship?"

Rush let out a noise that was part exasperation part acceptance.

"Aright then. What's the plan?"

---

Bill led John to a lab stool and started bustling around with his private coffee machine. All the scientists seemed to have something. A woman hesitantly stood in the doorway, Lee didn't seem to think anything of it,

"Hey Lisa."

"Bill. Is everything okay?"

John warily watched her; she'd been in the open plan cubical area when he'd had his… breakdown. Crap. Now that he thought about it, had she seen? Was she going to tell anyone? Oh, John knew that the SGC took a more modern approach to PTSD than Big Air Force generally. They tended to focus on treatment, not discharge. He'd signed off on enough troops under his command in Lantis's battalion receiving EMDR and CBT to know that. But… Shep wasn't one of Landry's favourites, and he had his enemies.

"Hey!" She looked at him understandingly, "Kavanagh's an ass."

"Yeah I know." John replied, feeling his lips quirk up a little. "I was stuck on base with him for a year once."

"Ouch!" She shot him a look that seemed to be half worry, half pity, John hated it, "There's no shame in it you know."

He rubbed at the hair on the back of his neck and refused to meet her gaze. After a beat she got started again,

"I hate earthquakes." The non-sequitur got John looking directly at her, "You know, when I was growing up in San Francisco. There was an earthquake. I was trapped in my room with bare feet. There was all this broken glass. And I couldn't, there was no other way out, I had to."

Dr Lee made a wordless noise of compassion.

"There was blood everywhere. And even now I can't bear it, them, tremors. I hate California now." Lisa looked him straight in the eye, John felt frozen in place, "My point is. My point is it's okay."

"I know."

"No, I don't think you do Colonel." Her voice was full of it, the pity. Lee chose that moment to walk over with a mug full of what turned out to be hot chocolate, it made Shep feel even more like an invalid. Lisa practically snatched her own mug from the friendly scientist,

"Thanks Bill!"

To John's dismay Lee seemed to feel the need to butt in,

"Dr Park's right you know."

John tentatively sipping on the milky drink at that moment, made a questioning noise. More out of politeness than any real wish to continue the conversation. What he wanted most was some privacy so he could screw his head on straight in his own time.

Lam turned up and looked him over with a beady eye, though she seemed distracted by Dr Park's presence, which John was grateful for. Between the lie Vala had told Lee, and Park's obfuscations the base's Head Doc left the office under the impression that John had had a bad reaction to her prescription. She ended up giving him a different bottle of pills and the order to, "Come to me if you begin to feel any side effects, dizziness, headache…" John had been worried he'd end up back in the infirmary, but she'd seemed to realise that he didn't want to head down there, so she'd done the exam in the relative quiet of the lab before dashing off to check his blood work.

Awkwardly John gulped down his drink and made the appropriate noises at the right places in the conversation. John didn't think he'd have been able to talk about this with his team, let alone an acquaintance and a practical stranger. Park kept shooting him considering looks. Lee looked worried. He hated every minute of it, felt stripped bare by their gazes. Though Sheppard had to admit, he did feel less like he was going to topple over any moment by the time he finished his mug.

Lee and Park bickered on as he sat there, the arguments clearly well-worn and fond. Though the conversation soon came back around to the current topic,

"You know it'd be easy to delete the footage if you're that worried Colonel." Park offered.

"What!" Bill exclaimed.

"Oh like you've got a leg to stand on, we all know about your 'secret' workaround so you can play WoW in your lab."

Dr Lee had the decency to look chagrined. John added his own two cents, knowing he should probably be more alarmed about the ease with which the scientists were discussing bypassing security protocols, yet finding himself unable to care,

"Dr Ingram already offered."

"Oh good! I'll check in with Ben then. He's probably already dealt with it."

Lisa bustled away, humming to herself. Lee watched her leave fondly.

"So, Colonel? Played any Call of Duty lately?"

---

John finally escaped Dr Lee's well-meaning clutches. He dragged his sorry behind back to the storeroom that was his office, and sat heavily, ignoring the accursed mountain of paperwork. Deliberately, John locked the small vial of pills away in his desk, crammed next to that folder, so he was unlikely to go casually looking for it. He was still feeling stiff, but Sheppard did not trust his mind to behave on drugs.

The phone rang. Two phone calls in one day, that was a turn up. John blinked disbelievingly at the voice on the other end of the line,

"John."

"Dave? How'd you get this number?"

Dave was evasive, it felt weird being on this end of the equation,

"Hey John, you said you'd stop by if you had the time. It's been nearly 18 months since we saw each other. I'd rather it didn't turn into seven years again."

John tried not to react to the accusatory tone, in this at least his elder brother was right. He had promised. It had been nine months since the last phonecall. Shit. This reconciliation crap was easier over email, couldn't they stick with that? John had enjoyed bantering with his older brother about his nieces,

"Yeah. Sorry. Look about that, look we were facing a busy time of it on base for a while there, and I've been stuck in meetings since I got back to E- since I got stateside."

"Hah! My little brother too busy with meetings to meet his family. Oh the irony."

John made himself hear the joking tone of the jibe with an effort,

"Yeah, well. Need the brass to work out if I'll still have a job to go back to once my base is off-stand down."

"I'm sorry to hear that. You know you're always welcome to join the business."

John forced himself not to snap at that. Dave wasn't Dad. The offer was genuine. It wasn't a threat to use his old Cold War buddies in the brass to screw John over. John knew that. Seeming to sense the silence for a sore spot Dave quickly moved on,

"Anyway, Nancy dropped by just after you came for dad's wake."

John's heart dropped. He could almost hear the condemnatory accusations again, had she told Dave about the favour?

"And well, she had a box load of your old stuff that you'd never picked up. I've been hanging onto it for you. And figured, if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed's got to…"

"Yeah yeah I hear you."

"So where are you going to be in two weeks? Is it a good time?"

John blinked, Dave couldn't mean what he thought he meant.

"Uh. What?!"

"Come on Johnny don't be obtuse. Look, I'm going to be in Denver on business. Since it's just around the corner from Peterson, well. As I said, if the mountain won't come to Mohammed…"

"Dave…" John sighed, at once exasperated and touched. On the one hand he was kinda pissed about the imposition, and the assumption that John would be available. On the other? Well, coming all the way to Denver on some flimsy excuse. "I'll see what I can do about getting some real leave."

"Real leave?" The staticky burst of a sigh, "Oh don't tell me you're hurt again!"

"Dave! You know it's my job."

"I know. Sorry. Just. I don't want to get that knock on the door little brother. And god knows you never took care of yourself, so I doubt you're taking care of yourself now."

"Dave…"

John settled into his chair and prepared for a long conversation. Even as he felt something in his chest loosen at the realisation that yeah, they could do this over phone too. Learn how to be brothers again. They didn't need the separation of a screen to let them get the words out.

---

Despite his misgivings, meeting Doctor Rush to argue about math become something of a habit. Much as he hated to admit it, it had become the highlight of Sheppard's days at the SGC. He'd finally gotten through the unwanted downtime and was no longer run ragged between training exercises and daily IOA meetings. For the time being his duties amounted to drastically shortened IOA meetings, and paperwork. A whole hell of a lot of paperwork. As well as the mandated overview of his every decision over the past five years, there were personnel reviews, requisitions paperwork, and miles of inventory reports. It was only his long daily sessions at the gym and firing range that were stopping him from doing something truly drastic, like taking over the SGC again just for the hell of it.

John was bored enough that these daily powwows were a bit of a balm; especially after the sheer embarrassment of his overreaction to Kavanagh's bullshit when he'd made the mistake of taking Lam's medication. Nothing seemed to have come from Kavanagh's unpleasant little 'joke', Ingram and Vala must have kept their promise. Though part of Shep was waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall.

Mentally avoiding that subject John got back to teasing Rush,

"Well, I dunno Doc, last time I made the mistake of letting a civilian doctor do my bloodwork they nearly quarantined me on account of all the weird proteins floating around in my blood."

They were back in Dr Lee's lab, but thankfully the crowds didn't really gather anymore, at Dr Ingram's instigation a 'gawker free zone' had been erected. Rush looked mildly concerned and asked,

"Not Goa'uld?"

John noticed that Rush's pronunciation of Goa'uld was perfectly correct, if flavoured with his soft brogue. None of the exaggerated Gooold that most people at the SGC had taken to using. Not letting himself double-guess his answer John replied off-handedly,

"Oh nah – lots of deadly radiation, whatever's left of Carson's retrovirus, wraith enzyme stuff from when Todd gave me the 'Gift of Life', increased ATA gene expression due to interacting with Lantis daily all these years, uh… that weird happy juice we all had to drink as part of a trust ritual on that moon, uh M36-891… Well, you get the idea, life as a gate traveller in Pegasus, lots of little quirks."

Rush looked suitably horrified. John snorted,

"I know right? If I lived in a comic, like the Fantastic Four, I'd have superpowers by now. Be Mr Fantastic. As it stands, I'll probably get cancer", John paused for effect, musing, "and I've not had my little swimmers checked since before McMurdo."

John was enjoying shooting the shit with Rush, since he'd gotten back to earth and been peremptorily separated from his team, he hadn't been able to speak his mind with anyone for ages. Rush looked a strange mixture of pained and amused; Shep was alarmed to see some darker emotion in the doctor's face. He wanted to ask, to reach out and offer comfort to the obvious devastation that shone back at him from uncanny dark eyes. But his usual fumbling ineptitude when presented with anything remotely emotional had him hesitating too long, and the moment passed. Rush swallowed, and bit out,

"Are you ever going to show me your progress on that small mathematics puzzle I gave you Colonel?"

"Wha-? Oh that. Sure."

Sheppard pulled his notebook out of one of the oversized pockets in his BDU pants, predictably Rush snatched it from his hands as soon as it was within reach. The slight doctor was comfortingly like Rodney in that respect, though he did tend to at least try and observe the social niceties, that McKay still only intermittently observed, even with Doc Keller's fondly exasperated influence.

Rush's expression of discomfited pain gradually morphed into one of pure annoyance,

"Colonel, yer brain is wasted in the armed forces."

John tried to wave him off,

"Yeah yeah."

"I mean it. Your solution to this one," Rush tapped emphatically at a puzzle that had allowed Sheppard to spend an enjoyable half hour ignoring the IOA meeting twittering around him, "is pure dead brilliant."

John ducked his head and tried to ignore the warm feeling bubbling up in his chest, he wasn't going to get himself inappropriately attached to another scientist seconded to the SGC, he wasn't. This was all churning around, uncomfortably like those early days on the expedition, when his life had been shot through with surprisingly warm companionship alongside the pressing matter of winning over a hostile company of marines, and deathly terror. Just, minus the terror. Mostly. Well, okay, John was willing to admit to himself that he was waiting for the inevitable SNAFU to rear its head. The lessons learned in Pegasus were difficult to ignore.

"Uh thanks."

Nice. 'Thanks' Eloquent, Sheppard.

"You should come down to the labs some time and meet Mandy properly."

"Mandy?"

Sheppard ruthlessly quashed a flash of hot jealousy. He'd only known the other man a couple of weeks, didn't have any right.

"Doctor Amanda Perry. Little Miss Brilliant. She was there when Dr Jackson blocked the corridor with all those boxes? She'll like you." Rush must have spotted something on his face, since his next words were, "Oh don't worry Colonel. Unlike me she won't harp on too loudly on that ignorant soldier routine you insist on sticking to." After a beat Rush added, "It doesn't work you know."

"Huh?"

Oblivious to the alarm bells ringing in John's head, Rush blithely continued,

"Your marines all think you walk on water. And your scientists? Well Colonel, even the speed of light doesn't outpace the speed of gossip. You've clearly been in the military too long, if you expect academics to keep their mouths shut."

John managed to get out, around a throat that felt like it was closing,

"Who?"

Rush looked at him quellingly,

"Well, even if you hadn't dazzled us all with your knowledge of Elliptic curves, Dr Lee has always been extremely complimentary about your abilities, for all that the man is severely lacking in common sense, he is fair fucking brilliant at what he does."

"Crap."

"He told Dr Novak immediately when you insisted that he take all the credit for those trajectory calculations for the decaying orbit of that… What did Dr Lee call it? Human-form… Replicator? You were forced to burn up."

"Crap."

The word barely encompassed the depths of Sheppard's horror.

"Don't worry about it Colonel, from what I hear on base, your superiors are all wilfully oblivious to your talents. And as we witnessed earlier, the likes of Doctor Kavanagh will never believe it, even when it's right in front of their noses."

Rush's blasé attitude to the whole situation calmed John somewhat. If it had been Rodney… there'd have been a whole hell of a lot more accusatory shouting, and belittling going on. Still, John felt discomfited by the compliments, even backhanded as they were. The newfound knowledge that his ability to whizz through most math problems put to him was somewhat of an open secret was just another source of prickling unease to contend with. All his life being that little bit smarter than most people hadn't been a good thing. He squirmed in his seat, not meeting Rush's gaze. Just when he'd begun to enjoy these occasional meetups too, when he'd thought they made a nice break from the backstabbing and making nice with snake-like (hopefully not literal snakes, but you could never tell with some of these agencies) IOA officials who were still trying their hardest to get Atlantis broken down for parts.

Rush must have noticed Sheppard's internal struggle, the next thing he knew the doc was handing back his notepad,

"Honestly Colonel, it's only people who like you who know about this. Though I genuinely don't understand why you'd want to hide your light under a bushel. It's a useful skill. It's stupidly wasteful of you to refuse to use it."

---

Rush was fair fucking certain that Colonel fucking Sheppard had just bloody handed him the key to solving one of the nine-chevron problems. The knowledge burned like hell, cos the idiotic overgrown man-child did everything he could to hide his ability.

On the one hand Nick was pleased, he had a to do list longer than a fucking Leonard Cohen song, and Colonel Sheppard had shortened it considerably. On the other, what in bloody hell was he gonna do about Sheppard? The Colonel was wasting that brain of his. Nick hadn't told him, but the 'problem' he'd given the colonel to solve was one of the many opening forays people had tried over the years to work out the Riemann Hypothesis. Oh, Sheppard hadn't solved the millennium problem, or anything so Hollywood as all that, but he had proven that he could get into the meat of the hypothesis in a manner few people could, and with a disturbing level of ease.

Now, Nick was well used to dealing with recalcitrant students, for his sins. Despite his reputation at Berkeley as 'Professor Most Likely to Cause a Student to Suffer a Mental Breakdown' a badge he'd worn with ill-grace, even though Gloria had found the 'award' hilarious, or perhaps because his darling wife had found it so funny. (He'd ended up putting the thing on the bookshelf in his office, the students had tended to stare at it in horror.)

It wasn't Rush's fault; he'd spent his first stint teaching undergraduates at Cambridge whilst studying there as a PhD student. His fellow undergrads at Oxford had been similar. Somehow Oxbridge types knew to take their Professors' and teachers' opinions with the pinch of salt that they deserved. The cultural difference between universities in the UK and the US had been one he'd never quite managed to navigate. Then again, the culture shock between the underbelly of working-class Glasgow, and the fucking dreaming spires of Oxford had been much more profound. Though perhaps that was the issue. The differences were slight enough that he usually overlooked them until someone practically shoved them in his face.

"Knock knock!" A cheery voice sounded from the doorway, Rush looked up it was Vala Mal Doran again,

"Dr Rush, what do you know about C4?"

Nick fell back on another nugget of wisdom from Malcolm Tucker,

"Give me a second while I look up my little file of things I really don't give a fuck about."

Instead of leaving as he dearly wanted her to, Ms Mal Doran beamed at him and stepped into the room.

"Now lovely, we can't exactly plan a suitable sort of revenge on S.O.'s behalf without any actual… planning."

"S.O.?"

"John? Your new favourite Colonel? Kavanagh played that terribly meanspirited joke, and I had to sic Doctors Lee and Park on him to get him back in the present?"

"Yes yes, but S.O.?"

"Now, that would be telling."

Rush glared at the infuriating woman, but it only seemed to make her smile widen. Fuck. Vala smiled happily, but there was a certain tightness in her actions that had Nick's internal alarms ringing. Part of the reason the woman made him nervous was the obvious layer of armour between her and the world. It mirrored his own coping methods of old. Before Gloria had come into his life. Right now, he could see that something was making her fair fucking tense, more so than usual. Nick decided to cut to the chase,

"What's wrong Miss Mal Doran?"

"I told you. Kavanagh."Vala smiled bitterly, "It's been long enough now that no one will suspect retaliation."

She had a point, that sort of behaviour should not be allowed to stand.

It was one thing to take the military down a peg or two because they were being overbearing authoritarian examples of everything that was wrong with the American Military Industrial Complex. (Rush had decided opinions about such things.) It was quite another to try to hurt someone because you were feeling insecure about your own intelligence, and thus wanted to make them doubt their own.

Rush suspected, no, knew that Kavanagh had been acting on the latter. Even if the fool had been acting on the former, he'd have been inclined to do something about it. Sheppard was no wilting flower, but deliberately forcing your way into someone's darkest nightmares over something so fucking petty was absolutely fucking contemptible in Rush's book. Especially when it was so painfully obvious that Sheppard really was frightened of showing off that intelligence of his.

Perhaps it was the rusty ill-used teacher's instincts rearing their head. Oh, none of the students he'd interacted with had ever been children. They'd all been adults, grown and determined to prove it by the time they came to the likes of Berkeley. But most had still trailed that naïve innocence of youth. Inspired protective instincts. Rush snorted at himself, yeah right ye wee gobshite, as if ye can do anything to protect someone like the Colonel. Even he'd heard about the Training Incident.

Eventually.

From Mandy.

Who'd told him in pure fucking exasperation when he'd, as she'd put it, 'waxed lyrical once too often about non-existent innocence'. She'd probably have understood if she'd seen that look of disbelief on the man's face. He'd expected ridicule and scorn, when all Rush had wanted to do was gleefully exclaim over the man's utterly unique way of coming to his conclusions, he'd worked his way through the mathematics using some truly novel methods. Rush felt the dire urge to fucking castrate whoever had told the colonel his mind was worthless. Nick also had a terrible sinking feeling the person in question was the self-same owner of aforementioned mind.

"Lovely."

Vala's low tones interrupted Rush's wool-gathering,

"Yes yes, unfortunately people with Kavanagh's attitude are ubiquitous across all walks of life."

"That doesn't mean the mendacious little sneak should get away with it! Honestly you Tau'ri."

Rush's response was equally snappish,

"I wasnae saying that was I? Side's us polyglottal members of the SGC need tae stick together."

Vala was looking at him with quizzical annoyance,

"Multilingual? I assume ye don' entirely rely on the gate's translation circuits like the rest of the lazy halfwits around here?"

"You assumed correctly. What languages do you speak? I doubt Goa'uld, Hebridan and the unnamed language of the Land with the Kassa interest you very much."

Even as he realised, he had no fucking clue how the damned conversation had meandered this way, Rush continued,

"French, Gallic, Italian." Rush spotted her confusion and powered through the burst of grief that came with the explanation "My wife, Gloria, was a professional musician. The languages were useful."

"Oh Lovely, I'm so sorry."

Rush looked down at his notes and swore, redirecting from the reflexive word at the very last moment,

"Oh, f- donkey balls..."

"What?!"

Rush glared in disbelief at the instant messenger that had popped up on screen,

"Aright – Mandy says that Lisa says that Lee can get us intae the hazardous chemicals store cupboard with nae one gettin suspicious."

"Excellent!"

---

The plan was elegant in its simplicity.

Vala painted the first of the chemical washes over the lab benches the day before, in the guise of annoying everyone with a new scent that she'd supposedly become enamoured with. Her acting had been exemplary if she did say so herself. She'd had two identical bottles, one genuinely containing a pleasant-smelling scent the Tau'ri called Giorgio Armani Pour Homme. (Dr Felger had hesitantly pointed out that it was supposed to be for men as he'd embarrassedly whispered at her, but Vala only tutted about Tau'ri sensibilities being ridiculous.)

The other bottle contained the first of the two chemical compounds that she, and Doctors Lee, Ingram, Park, and Gorgeous Rush had concocted on the sly. It was half white phosphorus, a volatile chemical easily available on earth, half an organic compound that Dr Lee had inadvertently manufactured large quantities of several months back when Dr Parrish had brought over the latest of the medicinal botanical samples from Atlantis.

Vala's job was to pre-spray the area with the complex organic alkaloid, which was there to render the phosphorous less… obviously explosive. Her half of the job went perfectly, as an added bonus she'd even managed to spray a full burst of Giorgio Armani Por Homme straight up Peter Kavanagh's nose. According to Lisa, he'd had a runny nose for the rest of the day and wouldn't stop sneezing.

It was Rush's job to add the second half of the chemical mixture today. For all that he kept exclaiming that he was a mathematician not a chemist, the little Tau'ri scientist certainly knew his way around explosives. Vala couldn't help but wonder where he'd picked up the knowledge, but… She had learnt a few of the more obvious pieces of social etiquette on earth in the past few years. Vala also figured that asking pointed questions about someone's past when the relationship was at such an early stage probably wasn't the best way to continue the relationship.

Anyway. Revenge. Giorgio Armani. White phosphorous.

Vala couldn't resist hanging around to watch. Appropriately enough the perfect spot to watch the chaos was the little coffee cubby that had been the site of the first act of aggression in this little psychological war.

Rush came out of Kavanagh's lab empty handed. Unfortunately, Kavanagh came up to the coffee spot at just that moment,

"Hey. What's going on? That's my private workstation!"

Behind him Vala could see Dr Lee desperately signalling to abort the mission, but it was too late. Kavanagh was making such a racket that the SFs that manned every level had noticed.

Vala backed into the lab,

"Why I've absolutely no idea?"

Rush, looking remarkably innocent said quite convincingly, "I was just looking for a pen. I'm sure I lost it somewhere on this level."

There was a loud crashing groaning noise.

Behind them half of Kavanagh's lab space collapsed in a smouldering heap.

SFs swarmed into the trashed lab; guns already raised.

Rush turned to her, and inexplicably grinned,

"Hey. For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble."

---

Dixon didn't like the implication that Sheppard was goin to get rewarded for the absolute shitstorm he'd caused the other day. Oh, he was man enough to admit that the seethin ball of envy in his gut weren't entirely rational - for all his ego wanted a similarly important command role, the rest of him gibbered that with four kids and a wife at home, perhaps it was for the best that his entire wakin life weren't taken up with runnin a garrison and a city.

Still, needs must. Dave put on his best suckin up to the brass smile, and knocked on Landry's office door,

"Colonel Dixon! Come in, what can I do for you this afternoon?"

Dixon put on his patented aw shucks expression,

"Well, sir. You see… Vala and Dr Rush have been making a bit of a nuisance of themselves lately and I was wonderin' if perhaps you could see your way to keeping them out of trouble?"

Dixon tried to look innocent, Landry's round wrinkled face crinkled up in thought,

"Yes, you aren't the only one to come to me and express that opinion. Dr Kavanagh was especially incensed the other day. While we all know what he's like he did seem particularly upset."

Dixon wondered if the cranky general really hadn't heard the scuttlebutt about Kavanagh's lab, or if he knew and didn' give a damn. He realised he needed to add additional incentive, two birds one boulder an' all that,

"And well sir... Sheppard looks like he's gonna snap any minute, he looks like he's gun' stir crazy if you ask me."

At this Landry began to look alarmed. His amicably smiling face went slightly pale,

"Yes, well, none of us want him to have a reason to try anything."

Dixon pretended to look thoughtful,

"Yunno what sir? It must be comin' up on time for the Colonel's flight recerts…"

He let it tail off, Landry pounced on the suggestion as if it were a lifeline,

"Excellent idea Colonel! Sheppard has been looking somewhat stir crazy of late after Carolyn insisted on extra measures with those stitches..."

"I weren't gonna say it sir."

"Yes, yes. Thank you for bringing this to my attention Colonel."

Landry waved him out of his office. Dixon smiled grimly to himself.

---

Note:

I've managed to stick almost entirely with using Stargate characters (the franchise having a veritable cast of thousands helps), but in a couple of spots minor background OCs have proven necessary (there aren't all that many civilians in the show who aren't involved with the SGC programme in some manner.)

Dr Ingram? Isn't technically an OC. For those who don't know, Dr Benjamin Ingram was the intended scientist lead in SGA. But they just couldn't get it to work for whatever reason. (I have my suspicions, but this isn't the place for it.) Anyhow, I decided to make the guy a Londoner and when that happened ended up picturing him having Richard Ayoade's general unimpressed attitude towards life (anyone else been enjoying his Travel Man series?) but with Nathan Stewart-Jarrett's appearance/accent/body-language.

I do wonder if anyone's spotted the Expanse easter eggs that have been snuck into every chapter so far. (Yeah that's also a hint, depending on the timing of editing the next chapter into shape, chapter 5 might be posted a wee bit more slowly than the previous gaps between uploads have been due to me unashamedly binge watching the new series.)