Disclaimer: It's Brad Wright, Robert C. Cooper and MGM's sandbox, I'm simply destroying the sandcastles

Written in 2012

Title: A Second Chance

Author: Jade-Max

Era: Stargate Atlantis

Episode Tag: Seaons 3, Episode 7 - Common Ground

Characters: Teyla Emmagan, John Sheppard

Genre: Friendship / Angst

Summary: Teyla seeks out John after their return to Atlantis

A Second Chance

Teyla had feared the worst.

The last time she'd seen John Sheppard, it had been through a video feed from Kolya to Atlantis and John had not been in good shape. He'd been alive, yes, but prematurely aged and obviously weakening as he was being fed on by a Wraith.

It had been a nightmare to watch.

Forced to view the vital man who was not only her commanding officer and the head of her team, but also a close friend, as he suffered, he'd been beyond her power to help. The man who aged as they watched, his very life force sucked from his flesh by the monster of her most horrific dreams.

The very same monster she now held her gun trained upon as he spoke with John beyond the ramp of the cloaked jumper. The same Wraith who had not only drained John of life, but then, in a rare act of honor, restored it; something she'd never before borne witness too, but had heard legends of - and completely discounted.

Wraith didn't give life, they took it.

Yet, the proof was before her eyes in the form of one healthy and hale John Sheppard. He stepped back into the Jumper as the Wraith was distracted by the sound of a dart, and he paused inside the back, his gaze drifting across the team that had come with her. Rodney, Ronan and Carson, all friends, all important to him, all having come to rescue him, only to have it finally settle on her.

Their eyes locked and Teyla couldn't mask the surge of her relief, didn't bother to try, as a smile slid across her lips unbidden. John nodded almost imperceptibly her way and headed for the cockpit.

"Let's go home."

The trip was short and uneventful, John flying the Jumper as if nothing untoward had occurred and completely discounting Carson's attempts to have him rest or to examine him. "I'm fine, Doc," he told Carson, "I just wanna get home."

The trip through the ring brought them face to face with a very grim, and then startled looking Elizabeth. Her gaze flicking to John's, Teyla could see him flash Elizabeth a jaunty wave, as if they were just returning from any other normal off world deployment, and a smirk that trembled at the edges. John, she could see, was acting cavallilerly for everyone's sake. What she couldn't see, or even begin to guess, was what he was hiding. No doubt being drained of life and having it restored was traumatic; just how it would manifest in the stoic man she called friend would tell in time.

It wasn't until the Jumper landed that John showed any visible signs he'd been through anything extraordinary. As the Jumper powered down, Teyla caught his hands shaking; a shake he hid by getting to his feet and rubbing them together only to stumble and put one arm out to brace himself.

"Carson!"

Teyla was under his extended arm a heartbeat later, Carson taking the other as John seemed to suddenly deflate between them, his head lolling to the side.

She heard the call for medical assitance as she braced herself, taking John's dead weight as best she could. Concern had her looking from him to Carson and back as a flury of activity and voices swirled through the back of the Jumper and not yet near the cockpit.

Ronon appeared beside her and took John in his arms, lifting him - equipment and all - onto the newly appeared stretcher.

"What?!" Rodney sounded panicked as John appeared, Carson at the stretcher's side. "But he was fine just a minute ago!"

"That may be, Rodney, but he's not now." Carson tossed over his shoulder before addressing the other members of his first reaponse team. "Come on now, lads, let's get him to the infirmary and under a scanner."

Rodney all but jumped back as John was wheeled quickly away.

"Since when do Wraith heal anybody?"

Teyla glanced at Ronon, but secretly wondered the same. "I agree that it is unexpected."

"I'm just glad he's not dead!"

Trust Rodney to get to the heart of it. "As am I."

"Me too." Ronin agreed. "Think it's permanent?"

Silence greeted Ronin's surprisingly insightful question and Teyla found she had no answer. The legends spoke of men and women who could live for a long time as Wraith worshipers, but they were the same legends she'd discounted before. Was it possible? The Wraith had told John it was the gift of Life, something they obviously didn't practice on a wide reaching scale, but was it possible?

Everything in her prayed it would be so.

Watching John whither and disappear to age under the hands of the Wraith, only to have him restored to her, was beyond any of her wildest dreams. She wanted, badly, to believe it was permanent. So, so badly. Still, she didn't know for sure and her answer to Rodney's question was somber. "I do not know. Time will tell, Rodney."

"Well, I sure hope it's permanent," Rodney frowned, belatedly starting to follow the stretcher. His next comment was lost in the cavern of the jumper bay as he disappeared beyond the Jumper.

Ronin hung back with her, looking between the Jumper's exit and then back at her. He regarded her with a schrewd gaze for a long moment before raising an eyebrow. "Are you okay?"

She wasn't, and knew Ronin knew it, but gave her head a single shake anyway, her gaze on the Jumper's ramp where John had just been lying, so still and limp, on the gurney. It took her a moment before she found the right words. "I thought he was lost to m- us."

"Yeah."

"That was too close, Ronin." She hesitated before putting her fears, the unrealized ones she knew he shared, into words. "What if the Wraith had decided to leave him as he'd been?"

"Then he'd still be Sheppard," Ronin came back immediately, "and he knows I wouldn't have forced him to live like that."

Would she? Teyla wasn't sure. John was a trusted friend and ally, someone she cared about so very, very much, yet she wasn't certain she'd have been able to pull the trigger if it had meant a world, and Atlantis, without him in it. John was one of the main reasons she felt so comfortable in the city and without him, she wasn't certain it would still feel so much like home.

"Come on," Ronin placed a hand on her arm, drawing her attention back to him, "let's go see what the Doc has to say."

Without a word, yet still trapped in her troubled thoughts, Teyla followed him from the Jumper and towards the infirmary.

"There we go," Carson smiled as he finished setting John up in one of the infirmary's beds, Teyla watching with Ronin and Rodney as they waited for the verdict.

"Easy, Doc; I was an old man not too long ago."

"And you'll be an old man again, Colonel, just not any time soon," Carson assured him with his usual cavaliere attitude. "I'm going to keep you over night to do some tests every few hours, but from what I can tell from these initial readings, the Wraith did, indeed, reverse the effects of the artificial aging. In fact, according to my scans, you've the healthy body of a thirty two year old."

"Thirty two!" Rodney's indignation cut John off before he could speak. "I knew it, I knew it! The Wraith made you younger than you were before; that's not fair, that's cheating!"

"You think I asked for this, Rodney?"

"Well it doesn't really matter if you asked for it or not, does it?" the scientist retorted sharply, "You got it anyway."

"Next time, I'll let you piss of Koyla so he feeds you to the Wraith, okay?"

"Rodney." Teyla placed her had on his forearm. "You forget that John was a prisoner and did not ask to be fed upon-"

"Who does?"

She let it go, choosing to continue her thought. "-John also did not ask for the Wraith to return his life. He did not know it was possible. In fact, I suspect he asked the Wraith to end his life rather than live as we had last seen him."

"See," John told Rodney pointedly, "Teyla knows."

"Oh sure, I-"

"Come on, McKay," Ronin grabbed Rodney by the back of the shirt and propelled him towards the exit.

"But!"

"Ronin's right, Rodney," Carson told him firmly, "The Colonel needs to rest. You can debate the fairnss of his extended life when he's out of my infirmary. Tomorrow."

The trio left the room, leaving Teyla alone with John and the retreating sound of Rodney's objections.

"I thought he'd never leave."

She laughed softly, stepping up next to his bed. "No you don't."

The look John shot her made her smile widen. "You may wish us to think it, John, but I know you better now." He looked away uncomfortably and Teyla changed tactics, her smile dying. "How do you feel?"

"Like I came back from the dead."

"In a way you have."

"Not just in a way, Teyla," he was looking at her now, his expression serious, "Todd had me. He'd drained me to the end point; if he'd gone any further, I'd have been a corpse. He didn't have to give me back my life, but he did."

"And you do not know how you feel about that."

John considered her words carefully and then shook his head. "No. I don't. I understand why he did it, I'd have done the same in his place."

"Did you not already give him back his life by helping him escape Koyla?"

"Yeah... I guess I did."

"So he simply repaid the debt he owed."

"Yes and no," John sighed, tilting his head back against the raised bed and staring at the ceiling with a frown. "It was more than that, Teyla."

She said nothing, waiting for him to formulate his thoughts; John was often slow to form them, but inevitably he would speak with her. Waiting him out also sometimes drew admissions and feelings from him he might not otherwise share and she wasn't about to waste the opportunity.

John finally returned his gaze to hers. "He called me his brother and I don't think he's wrong. In a way we're connected. I don't trust him and I sure as hell wouldn't bring him home to meet the rest of the family, but we shared something. Something powerful. I don't know. I think I'm explaining it all wrong."

"I think I understand, John."

"Well, I'm glad one of us does, 'cause I sure as hell haven't made heads or tails of it."

An Earth saying, she was sure, and one she didn't fully understand, but she understood him anyway. John's context wasn't exactly complex. "You have shared an experience with an enermy that bonds you beyond the end of it. I admit, I, too, am unsettled by your experience." She paused, wondering if she should continue and, after a moment of hesitation, forged ahead. If nothing else, John's time as Koyla's prisoner had shown her it was better to speak of some things before the one who deserved to hear them was gone. Ironic, since she had never lived without that fear. "I do not like to think of the Wraith as anything but the monsters I have always known them to be and now... I am indebted to one for returning you to me."

John blinked, clearly caught by surprise and Teyla smiled, making light of the admission. "To us. Atlantis would be a poorer place without you and your unconventional enthusiasm."

"God forbid you lose my enthusiasm," he came back with a chuckle. "Unconventional or otherwise."

"As you say." She inclined her head to him. "I should let you rest. It does not sound as if Doctor Beckett will be allowing you much of it tonight."

They shared a laugh and a knowing smile before Teyla reluctantly stepped away from his bedside, tucking away anything else she might be feeling into the deep recesses of her mind. Now was not the time, if there ever was one; John surely knew what he meant to his team and to her. The same, she believed, that they all meant to him. Family. Not of blood, but of shared bonds. It was strange, she reflected, to have a Wraith claim the same of him. The lights dimmed as John closed his eyes. "'Night, Teyla."

"Good night, John."

Shaking her head as she left the infirmary, she reflected on the idea of sharing a member of her family with a Wraith - and not as food. It was as unsettling as it was mystifying and, putting it from her mind, Teyla glanced back one last time at John, his eyes closed, resting in the infirmary bed. Whatever the Wraith's reason for restoring John to health, Teyla was greatful. Perhaps she wouldn't shoot the Wraith on sight if she ever saw him again.

Perhaps.

fin