CHAPTER ELEVEN

The gym was poorly lit, something that John had noticed was true of most of the buildings he had been in while back on Earth—though, admittedly, he knew that he had been spoiled by the lights on Atlantis that were, for the most part, controlled by his thoughts, adjusting to how bright he wanted the light to be with nothing more than a fleeting consideration. The room itself was fairly basic, some weight machines, some free weights, a boxing ring, two treadmills, a rowing machine, a row of punching bags, and a few other machines that John remembered once relying upon for his exercise—going to the gym was basically the only way to stay fit in Antarctica, going for a run outside not really being an option—but, again, John wasn't used to having equipment beyond fighting sticks, floor-space, and some great running routes.

"When you said you wanted to hit the gym this isn't exactly what I had in mind," Sam said as she spun away from a high kick aimed at her shoulder.

"You said you've been keeping up on your hand-to-hand," John reminded her, ducking under Sam's responding punch. He swept his leg out to knock Sam's legs out from under her but she jumped high enough to avoid his tactic.

Sam chuckled. "You've been training with an alien fighting warrior princess, John."

"Oh, like Teal'c never taught you any moves," John replied, rolling his eyes.

"Took him a few years to realize he wasn't going to break the tiny blonde on the team by fighting me, but, yeah, sure, he and I've sparred a little," Sam admitted. She arched an eyebrow at John. "Were you calling Teal'c a warrior princess?" John rolled his eyes in response. "So, really, this is how you relax now? You never used to be all that into hand-to-hand."

John shrugged. "Things changed."

"That… is true," Sam agreed. "Still, you didn't just get back from a five mile hike off-world," she pointed out.

"Why do you think I'm goin' easy on ya?" John smirked, knowing that the comment would incite a reaction in Sam.

Which it did.

They fought hard for several minutes before mutually pulling back from the intensity of the fight and circling each other, sizing each other up before the next round of attack.

"So rumour has it that there's a guy," John said conversationally as he and Sam circled each other. "How's he feel about you moving to Nevada?"

"Huh. Apparently the gossip mongers around here are a few steps behind," Sam commented. The rumour mill never would have moved so slow before Doctor Janet Frasier was killed, Sam realized sadly. "The guy is gone," she said as she executed a series of attacks that pushed John back toward the wall.

John ducked away, moving around behind Sam and moved back to the centre of the room. "Was it serious?" he asked.

Sam rolled her shoulders. "We were planning the wedding," she said casually.

Arching an eyebrow at that, John's eyes met Sam's. "You were engaged?"

"Kinda," Sam said. John stared at her and Sam threw her hands up in the air in defeat. "Okay, yes, we were. But I broke it off. His picture of me and our future didn't meet up with reality… and when dad died… I started really thinking about the reasons that I got into the relationship and… well... they were bad reasons, really. I was coming off a pretty intense thing… went back for years… though mostly it was a safety net for me, when it was gone… then Mark introduced me to Pete and… it kept growing."

"He wasn't like Hanson, was he?" John asked protectively. He had been there for Sam all through the Jonas Hanson years—had actually been a pretty strong point of contention between Sam and Jonas Hanson because of their close friendship—and John hated Hanson for what he had made Sam think and feel about herself.

"No," Sam said quickly. "He was just… he didn't really get that I love my job and I love my life despite the weirdness and the aliens and the evil and the cheesy villains." She brought her fists up defensively. "We gonna spar, or what?" she asked, effectively closing the subject.

John nodded and assumed a fighting stance. "I just want you to be happy, Samantha."

Sam attacked John, knocking him down and pressing her knee into his back as his face hit the mat. "I am happy," she said, applying a little more pressure before getting up and holding out a hand to help John to his feet.

"Good," John said, because, really, that was all he wanted. "So, I'm supposed to pick your brain about the X-302's," he said as he and Sam grabbed their water bottles, taking a mutually agreed upon break from their sparring.

"What about it?" Sam asked as she stretched her arms above her head, unused to the workout her body had just been through.

"General Landry is sending me to learn to fly 'em," John shrugged.

"I doubt you'll have trouble," Sam said, "you've always been able to fly whatever's put in front of you."

John shrugged. "Not worried about learning to fly the things. Landry just suggested that I talk to you about your… experiences, I guess."

"Okay. Well, I'm sure you'll get a full briefing when you get to Nellis, but the first thing you need to remember is that the X-302 is hybrid technology. It is, in essence, a fighter jet like any other, expect that it has alien technology including the ability to open stable hyperspace windows," Sam said.

"Hyperspace windows. Got it," John nodded.

"Now, I assume that you've got a basic understanding of inertial dampeners," Sam said.

"Yeah, I've got a good handle on that concept," John said.

"Good," Sam said before she went on to explain more about the fighter jets that John would soon be training on.

As he watched the highway speed by John thought about the events of the days since arriving on Earth. The first few days were just what he had predicted—invasive and intense physical by the SGC doctor, several painstaking eighteen hour days of steady debriefings, and then Elizabeth left for DC to do the politicking thing, Carson left for Scotland to visit with his mother, and Rodney holing himself up in the lab that had been made available for his use. The only thing that was any different from what he had anticipated was that he had found one of his oldest friends at the SGC and had spent most of his time with her and her team rather than bored and alone.

"If you don't mind my asking, sir, what is Atlantis like?" asked the young Sergeant who had been tasked with driving John to Peterson Air Force Base then bringing the SGC car back to the mountain.

On Atlantis, unless dealing with official situations, rank tended to more or less simply fall away, an environment that John and Elizabeth had fostered and, to differing degrees, revelled in. Sure, neither one of them was hesitant to pull rank when necessary, but, for the most part, the only designations that seemed to matter were military or scientist, and even those classifications tended to fall by the wayside under certain circumstances. Since returning to Earth, however, John had been thrust back into an existence of ranks and protocols that had been drilled into him and every other military type from day one. The problem with rank, at least in John's opinion, was that it tended to make situations that should be relatively casual and painless—for example, a car ride that is approximately fourteen and a half kilometres long through some very picturesque terrain—into an awkward and tense reality.

"Atlantis is… crazy," John said, chuckling. "On one hand there are the Wraith and the Genii and various sympathizers. But on the other hand… it's Atlantis. The Lost City of the Ancients." He shrugged. "It is home," he said, unable to accurately describe what Atlantis was like.

John and the Sergeant chatted through the ride to Patterson. The Sergeant, it turned out, was an avid football fan, especially at the college level, so John soon found himself more or less up to date on his favourite game. It hadn't been a very good year for her favourite teams, but he'd already known that from the few moments he'd cut away from life at the SGC to check the internet for the general overview of the season he'd missed.

The Sergeant had a bit of a lead foot, John noted, because the trip between Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson, which took about an hour when taking all the variables—traffic, construction, other man-made and natural obstacles—was over in less than forty minutes, and not because traffic was light. The good thing was that John was certainly not going to miss his hop—he shuddered to think what Landry would do to him if he missed the transport—but the bad thing was that he had over forty minutes to waste before he had to even think about starting to head for a seat on the hulking C-17 that was being checked over on by a crew when he arrived.

So, as he often did when he was bored, John turned to Elizabeth for help in keeping his mind occupied.

Of course, on Atlantis, all he really had to do was go to her office, or maybe the Mess, perch himself on the edge of her desk or sit across the table from her, and strike up a conversation. A continent apart—not to mention a galaxy away from the familiar metal-and-glass city that they called home—turning to Elizabeth was a little more difficult, and generally required a phone line.

Fortunately John had a phone and the knowledge that Elizabeth didn't have any meetings that day, a vote in the House taking the attention of most of the people she needed to meet with.

It didn't escape John's notice that Elizabeth's cell phone was the first number in his speed-dial—a concept he had had to adjust to after a year on Atlantis, eighteen months in Antarctica, and two years being stationed anywhere except the United States. Of course, he rationalized, he had a limited number of people that he talked to, and even fewer that he wanted to talk to, at least on Earth, and Elizabeth was the only person who wasn't easily accessible by simply wandering the halls of the SGC or dialling the proper extension and leaving a message. Before he'd left the SGC he had had Sam program in any other numbers he would need while in Nevada—her numbers, Daniel's numbers, any number that Teal'c could be reached at, Rodney's extension, Carson's numbers in Scotland, all the numbers he would need for the SGC, and, he was surprised to note, the numbers of a few of their old Academy buddies that Sam, apparently, had handy while she had been messing with his phone. Sam had put herself in as the second speed-dial designation, then the main SGC switchboard (which was answered by someone who didn't have the clearance to know who she was connecting calls to) was put in as the third. The rest were left empty, which was fine with John. It was just as easy to scroll through the phone book—it wasn't like it was full of names and numbers—to find the number he needed.

After keying in the speed-dial designation—2, on his phone, 1 connecting him to his voicemail, not that he had any, anyone who called him immediately getting a response because his phone was always with him, just like his radio back on Atlantis—John's thumb lingered over the SEND key, unsure of whether his call would be well-received or not. It was, after all, Elizabeth's day off, and she had said something about relaxing and washing away the mental grime she had found herself accumulating during her meetings. John knew mental grime well, in all its unsavoury forms.

He was still trying to decide whether or not to call when his phone sprung to life in his hands, first vibrating and then letting out a rather annoying pop-rock polyphonic ring tone—obviously, he decided with a frown, when Sam had been entering phone numbers she had also decided to futz with other things, as he knew for a fact that his ring tone had been a simple ring-ring, default-4 or something like that, the ringing unique enough that he knew it was his but bland enough that no one in the SGC thought twice when they heard it.

With the feeling of at least forty sets of eyes on him, John quickly answered the phone, eager to stop the looping song that he didn't recognize and would get back at Sam for at a later date.

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Manic Penguin