John took a deep breath as he watched the scanner bed cover slowly close over him. He felt like he was in a cramped MRI machine and for a moment he was relieved that he wasn't claustrophobic.

"If you can't trust your Chief Scientist to try to keep you from scrambling your brain, who can you trust?"

John folded his hands on his stomach and tapped his fingers idly. The tension he felt boiled over and he jumped slightly as his radio clicked on.

"Sheppard."

John reached up and tapped the call button on his headset. "What is it, McKay?"

"Take your headset off," Rodney replied smugly.

John was momentarily annoyed that Rodney had correctly assumed he still had it on. "Right," John sighed. He pulled the small headset off his ear and held onto it as he again rested his hands on his stomach. A minute passed, then another. He looked around. "Come on," he muttered. As if on cue the soft green tint of light turned to a deep red as a low humming seemed to vibrate through his body.

He didn't really know what to do, so John settled for trying his best to quell his nerves and relax. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath.

At first, it felt like someone was tickling the hairs on the back of his neck. Not painful, not annoying just… there. But, as he tried his best to stay relaxed, the tingling intensified, turning to an itch, then a mild burn. Okay, this isn't so pleasant anymore…

John winced as the pain grew. He could feel his jaw clench in response and he clenched his eyes tighter shut before drawing in a sharp, hissing breath.

The pain grew in intensity with every moment and with every passing second it spread through his head until he felt as if his entire skull was going to explode. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his breaths came in deep gasps. "Mc…Kay…" he stammered.

-----------------------------

"Ma'am, anything?"

Elizabeth turned and flashed a brief, strained smile at Major Lorne. "Not yet."

"With any luck, we're worrying over nothing," Lorne replied. "Still, I got my guys out scouting the city. We'll find the Colonel."

"He is not anywhere outside the designated green zones of the city," Radek Zelenka interjected quietly, "the sensors show no indication that anyone is out of bounds."

"Should've chained him to his bed," Carson groused quietly, "who knows what his mental state is now that the IOA has relieved him."

Elizabeth sighed. Bad news or not, for all intents and purposes, John was pretty level headed. "Carson, I don't think he'd do anything too rash…."

Carson smiled slightly. "Aye, he's got a good head on his shoulders, even if it's a stubborn one, but he might do something on impulse; think it's the best thing when it might not be."

"Him and Rodney," Elizabeth commented absently. Her brow furrowed. "Where is Rodney anyway?"

"He said he was in the middle of something and would be up in a few minutes, ma'am," the gate technician answered. He frowned, "that was at least fifteen minutes ago."

Elizabeth tapped her radio call button. "McKay, this is Weir, come in please." She looked down for a moment as she waited for a reply that never came. "Rodney? Do you copy?" She exchanged puzzled glances with Carson. "That's odd. Rodney's never away from his radio."

"First the Colonel, now McKay…" Carson's voice trailed off and his eyes widened as he stared at Elizabeth. "You don't think…"

Elizabeth felt as if someone had punched her in the gut. It was too much of a coincidence. John leaves her office angry, maybe even a little desperate, looking for a solution, now Rodney wasn't answering. Her racing mind ground to a halt as one answer stuck to her. She had no facts, only circumstances but her instincts screamed in warning. "The scanner." Apparently, she wasn't alone in her assumptions.

"Confirmed," Radek responded. "Two life signs are registering in the infirmary lab."

"Bloody hell!" Carson pushed away from the control panel he'd been leaning on and ran for the back stairs, Lorne and Elizabeth hot on his tail. "Beckett to the infirmary. Dr. Peterson, I want someone to check and see if Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard are in the auxiliary lab immediately!"

Elizabeth quirked a brow as Carson grabbed the stairwell rail and practically threw himself down the stairs. She looked back. "Radek, we may need your expertise as well." She nodded once as Radek left his post and hurried after them.

"Even with his ego, I can't believe Rodney would consent to help the colonel do something this insane!" Carson ranted.

"John can be pretty persuasive when he puts his mind to it, Carson," Elizabeth answered. "And Rodney… he's not going to let John do something like this all alone."

"Peterson to Beckett, the lab is inaccessible. Looks like the door is locked from the inside. We tried the back entrance but it seems to be locked as well."

Elizabeth sighed in frustration as Dr. Peterson's report came over the radio.

"Damn it!" Carson jumped down the last few stairs and jogged down the hallway towards the infirmary. "That tears it, they have to be there."

Elizabeth pursed her lips and followed behind Carson, Radek's colorful Czech expletives echoing behind her.

--------------------------

He floated.

Somewhere between the pain of awareness and the bliss of unconsciousness, John lingered. Each breath he took, each beat of his heart sent a new wave of pain through his head. Reds danced in his vision, cutting swaths of color over the blackness of oblivion that lingered just beyond. Slowly, the reds took shape; scenes, memories pulled from the reaches of his mind…

"Sheppard!"

John looked up from his plate and watched Colonel Hays cross the mess towards him. He dropped his fork and quickly stood. "Sir."

Hays waved absently at him. "At ease, Major. I have an assignment for you." Hays sat down opposite John and motioned him to take his seat. Hays waved at the plate. "Finish your meal. You've got a little time yet."

John slowly sat. "Little time, sir?"

Hays nodded. "Yep. I need you to ferry one General Jack O'Neill to the research station. He's en route. Should be here in about a half hour. I want you to meet him at the landing and take him right out to the outpost."

John's quick bite to his sandwich wasn't just to finish his food; he hoped the action would conceal his grimace, but, Hays quiet chortle proved he hadn't quite managed to hide his look.

"Don't start that, Major. I know ferrying diplomats and generals from here to the research station isn't the most glamorous or exciting job in the Air Force, but someone has to do it."

John stopped mid-chew and made eye contact with the colonel. Unspoken words radiated from Hays face.

You're damn lucky to be flying at all.

John swallowed his bite and nodded. "Yes, sir."

Hays stood and turned away from the table, only to stop and look back. "It'll blow over one of these days, John. You won't be in Antarctica forever." He held John's gaze for another moment before walking away...

The memories washed over John, faster than he could comprehend them, each one sending a new stab of pain through his skull. His breath turned ragged and his arms shot out to the side, his hands crashing into the cocoon that surrounded him. His tense fingers scraped down the sides of the machine as the assault marched on, mercilessly. But, through it all, like a dam opening up, memories and flashbacks swarmed over him, driving back the dark nothingness of amnesia that had shrouded him since his accident.

John stamped the snow out of the treads of his boots as he stepped onto the freshly plowed airstrip and walked towards his chopper. He looked left as Colonel Hays along with another man walked towards them. John stopped next to his bird and waited quietly as Hays and the man approached.

Hays nodded slightly in John's direction, before returning his attention to the other man. "General O'Neill," Hays waved back in John's direction, "Major John Sheppard. He'll be flying you to the outpost." Hays looked at John. "Major, General Jack O'Neill."

John straightened his posture slightly and nodded once at the General. "Sir." O'Neill's eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses and John found his expression hard to read, but the General seemed to study him for a moment before smiling slightly.

"Major."

A strangled cry escaped John's mouth, but he fought hard, trying to hold onto the memories and tune out the pain. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, where any rational thought still existed against the onslaught of pain, he knew the memories were coming back, and at this point all the pain in the galaxy was worth it…

"I kinda like it here…"

"Sir, what the hell was that?"

Like a gigantic puzzle, new memories tied to ones he'd already experienced, slowly forming the tapestry of his life the last three years.

"Did I do that?"

O'Neill stared hard at him. "and I think anyone who doesn't want to go through the Stargate is equally as whacked!"

"Stargate…" he croaked, "Atlantis…"

------------------------------------

Rodney could feel the color drain from his face. Though muffled, the agony in Sheppard's cry came through the lid of the scanner loud and clear. "Oh, God…" He looked down at his pad, quickly skimming the readings coming from the scanner. "Damn it!" Sheppard was in pain. God knows what the scanner was doing to him, but from everything Rodney saw in his data he realized that stopping the process would surely kill the colonel.

A pounding on the lab door snapped him from his thoughts.

"Rodney!"

Even dampened by the thick door, Rodney could still make out the heavy accent of Beckett. He opened his mouth to respond, only to hold his voice as his radio clicked on.

"Rodney, open the door now."

He winced at the cold, commanding tone of Elizabeth's voice. Reaching up, he tapped his earpiece. "Just a second." Taking one, quick look at the scanner, he swiftly walked across the room and replaced the door crystal. Not waiting for the door to open, he trotted back to Sheppard's side. From behind he heard the scuffle of feet as Elizabeth and company entered the lab.

"Shut it down, now!" Carson demanded as he stopped next to the scanner.

"No!" Rodney's shout stopped Radek who reached past him and towards the control console. He batted Radek's hand away. "You can't! The process is too far along! Look at the data! You stop it now, you'll kill him!"

"What the bloody hell were you thinking?" Carson demanded loudly.

"I didn't force him into this, Carson!" Rodney snapped back, a note of desperation in his voice. "He forced me! He was going to do this with or without me! He stood a lot better chance of not becoming a human vegetable if I was here to monitor the process! I didn't have much choice in the matter!"

"Damn it, Rodney," Elizabeth whispered as she laid her hand on the scanner lid and stared through the clouded glass at Sheppard's pained face.

-------------------------------------

Agony assaulted him, but somehow he endured; knowing that with it, came what he needed the most… his past. He felt like his head was on fire and strangled cries periodically escaped him. His breaths came in deep, rapid gasps as the scanner continued its work; technology that was so far beyond them… technology of the Ancients themselves…

"It's a metaphor. Don't you see? This entire expedition is the biggest Hail Mary in human history."

"The lights are coming on by themselves…"

"On the surface without a shield? We're target practice…"

John gasped loudly, the pain he felt suddenly nothing compared to the anger, and cold hatred that flowed through him.

Wraith…

"I'm sure you'll warm up to me once you get to know me, sir."

"I'm gonna fly us all out of here, including the colonel."

Sumner… he felt the concussion of the P-90 in his grip as he fired the bullet to end the Colonel's agony… and felt the guilt at doing it that plagued him for months and in some ways still did, for with the memories, came all the emotions associated. But, unlike before, they all hit him at once, creating a pain exponentially worse than the physical agony he suffered. Anger surfaced.

"That has to kill you…"

He could feel the Wraith's warm blood on his hands, the dark satisfaction he took in killing her…

The guilt over the repercussions of his actions.

Slowly, as the pieces of his past came together, he began to realize that, like a puzzle, the pieces were scattered; fitting into place sure, but not in order. His mind jumped all over the past three years, associating memories with feelings, not with time…

"Look, Lieutenant. What I'm trying to say is that if you don't get this damn thing off me, I have even less time than you do."

"The infirmary isn't secure. The inhibitor's only keeping me lucid, it's not slowing the retrovirus."

They'd helped him… stood by him… saved him more than once, and he them.

"You don't leave our people in the hands of the enemy!"

"Well, perhaps you've noticed that every time we step through the Stargate, bad guys try to kill us, and I'm getting a little tired of it. How 'bout you?"

"Our people are in the hands of the enemy, Doctor. Do you know what that means? It is just a matter of time before the Wraith figure out that this is the base of our operations…"

Desperation… these people were more than his comrades. Isolation and relying on each other for survival had forged a deep bond; a relationship he'd do anything to preserve. A memory came back to him. One that had flashed through is mind before, but this time, instead of confusing him, it made sense. He understood and felt the meaning…

"Weapon is armed and ready. I'm going in."

A strong sense of protectiveness pierced the pain that tormented him emotionally and physically. He'd never fought an enemy like the Wraith… no one from Earth had. He'd crossed lines he never thought he would in the name of protecting the people he cared about, and fighting an enemy on a level he never thought he'd ever face.

"We're at war. The Wraith will stop at nothing to kill every one of us. And we'll stop at nothing to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Hold on a minute, Doc. If we hadn't given him the retrovirus, he'd still be a Wraith. We wouldn't think twice about killing him."

Somewhere, deep inside and through all of this, he'd known that Atlantis was so much more than just a post to him… somehow, along the way, it'd become his lifeblood and he couldn't imagine being anywhere else. He'd found his niche here and as the Ancient device continued its work on him, the holes in his memory filled. He felt the pain of every death under his command, the guilt of decisions that went wrong… but all of it was countered by the friends that he'd made along the way. People that meant more to him then he was comfortable admitting.

"I was going to say, um... take care of each other."

The pain in his head lessened, and unconsciousness pushed on the edge of his thoughts. He felt like he was floating on warm waves carrying him to the blissful darkness. Somehow, though, he felt contented. The storm of memories quieted, but as he succumbed to unconsciousness one stuck with him.

"I'd do anything ... for any one of you. If I had to give up my life the way Ronon was going to, I would."

-------------------------------

"It's done," Rodney whispered as the fast streaming data on his pad, slowed to a crawl. He looked up, apprehension cramping his gut as the scanner slowly slid open. Almost numb, he stared at Sheppard's unmoving form. "Is he…" he has to be…

Carson knelt and pressed his fingers into Sheppard's throat before nodding. "He's alive."

Rodney spun, switched the device to back to passive scan mode and initiated it. He stared at the readings, his mind swiftly translating the Ancient language. "According to this, he's fine…" Rodney swallowed and looked down at Sheppard. "But, he shouldn't be unconscious."

"God knows what happened," Carson muttered coldly. "In some ways, Ancient physiology was very different than ours." He looked up at Lorne who nodded once.

Rodney just stared at Sheppard's unmoving form, barely noticing Lorne trot past him, open the main door to the infirmary and order a stretcher. "He was going to do it with or without me," Rodney muttered, more to try and convince himself than anyone else. "I didn't have a choice. I couldn't let him… not alone…." He looked up as Elizabeth's gaze met his and her expression softened. She backed out of the way of the medical team and walked over to him.

"Rodney."

Elizabeth's voice was gentle but Rodney wouldn't have anything to do with it. "I should've stopped him," Rodney interrupted Elizabeth. He looked at her, guilt swarming over him. "What have I done?"

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