There are a few things I need to share about this story. Firstly, it's a sequel to Emerald Isle, which was one of my early stories and which I'd probably write differently now, but still regard with a great deal of affection, partly because it's set on a version of the Isle of Man, where I'm originally from. I've taken a few more liberties with the geography in this story, but not that many - it's still recognisable. But if you haven't read Emerald Isle, you can still read this story, because important things are recapped, there are new characters and old ones are reintroduced.

Secondly, this is a McShep story, although in this part there's nothing explicit.

Thirdly, as you may have noticed, this is part one, and I have to be upfront about this, I haven't written much of part two and don't know if I can or will. My cancer has reached the palliative care stage and my time is incredibly precious to me - I have to spend it doing the things that mean the most and I'm just not sure that I'll be in the right place to complete this story - maybe, maybe not. Having said that, it's well worth reading as it stands - well, I think so anyway. Various things are kind-of resolved and the stage is set for the next part of the adventure - I promise that it doesn't end on an 'oh no!' kind of cliffhanger.

I'll post the chapters regularly - every day, if I get time. So please, read and enjoy.

You have found a measure of peace here, John. Do not lose it when you return to your world. Retain in your heart the goodwill of those of the Hill and the Island. Remember our homes and our hearths, our heather-clad hills and our shifting seas.

I won't forget.

But back on the Daedalus after long months away, everything felt cold and sterile. John missed the open air, the wind on his face, the smell of the sea. He was showered, shaved and uniformed and to all appearances back to the old Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard. But his uniform felt stiff, and he wanted a real fire and a mug of ale.

I won't forget.

Chapter 1 - Jump

"Jump! Sheppard, jump!" Rodney's fingers dug into John's shoulder, gripping tight and hard. "The hyperdrive's got two more short jumps in it - two more, if we're lucky! Even though Zelenka said - but what does he know? Just jump, now! Now, Sheppard!"

The Jumper was ready, the newly-installed hyperdrive's hum rising to a whine. It was all on him - all on John. Jump. Just jump.

"John, they are coming."

She didn't need to say it. They didn't need Teyla's Wraith-sense to know that the hives were coming - the two great hives and all their darts and all their hatred of the little Puddlejumper and the team of four - protected, for now, within its thin shell.

"Where to?" The vast blackness of space surrounded them. But where could they hide? Where could they hide, when their ally had betrayed them again? He didn't trust Todd - he never had. So why had John let the wily Wraith lead them into another total fuck-up?

They were firing, the hives sending out great beams of energy that would incinerate the little Lantean ship instantly - and Darts were coming too, showers of them, bursting with thin, pinpointed skewers of destruction.

"Home," said Ronon. "Jump home!"

"No!" Rodney's voice and John's sounded together.

"We can't do that!" said Rodney. "They'd track us! We can't give away Atlantis' location."

They'd kept it secret, since they'd brought the city back to the Pegasus galaxy - a better secret than last time when first the Genii had found out and then everyone else, including the Wraith.

An alarm flared in John's mind as well as on the HUD. Their pursuers were swarming toward them - clouds of Darts, and he couldn't possibly dodge or destroy all of them. He jinked to starboard, then to port, flipped the Jumper and came up behind a Dart and hit it with a drone.

Twelve o'clock, six, three, eight: they were all around - he swerved and fired and swerved and spun. "Damn you, Todd, if we get out of this…"

"We won't!" Rodney's fingers were drilling holes in John's shoulder-muscles. "We won't unless you jump!"

John sank into the interface, forgetting his own body. He became the Jumper, spinning and turning in the maelstrom of death and darts. His body was its shell, frictionless in the void of space, heat skimming and burning across his sides as the enemy fired. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide that the Wraith couldn't track and follow.

Nowhere to run, no safe hole to dive down. Except perhaps…

He breathed.

And jumped.

Blue-white, shining in his eyes and all around him.

"Sheppard! Sheppard, where are we going?"

His hands were on the controls, but he was a fish, swimming in the light, swimming through the interstices of existence, gliding and twisting within the currents of subspace, until instinct caught him in its net and he leapt from the stream.

And…

out..

"Thank fuck!" said Rodney. "Where are we? Where did you… whoa! What the -?"

The sliding blue-white of hyperspace had been replaced by a floating, cookie-crumb scene of grey and brown against black. John dodged and wove once more, but not through a sea of Wraith darts.

"Asteroids," said Rodney. "No. Sheppard, no, you didn't, did you? Tell me you didn't jump us into this fucked-up mess of… God, you did, didn't you?"

"You said jump. I jumped."

"Well, you can jump right the hell back out of here, right the hell now!"

A huge asteroid loomed and John swerved. There was another blocking the way. He dived and corkscrewed beneath and shuddered as the Jumper whisper-scraped the projecting pumice-sharp edge of the giant lump of rock.

"Where are we?" said Ronon.

"You don't know? You don't recall the three months you spent grinding a path through this lot the last time we got stranded inside it? Because, yes, the resulting harvest of rare minerals was all very nice, but - Sheppard!"

There were too many. He couldn't find a path and then the scene before him was spinning and warning lights were flashing on the HUD as well as in his mind. Another impact sent them spinning in a different direction.

"Get us out of here!" Rodney's yell was high and panicked. "Jump! There's enough juice for one more. And you'd better make it a good one, Sheppard or we'll be even more screwed than -"

A surge of will was all it took, a desperate grasp for safety, for peace, for a home that he'd known briefly and a place where he'd come to belong.

White and blue, streaking through the place between.

And… out…

The curve of a planet stretched wide before him, and all around them its upper atmosphere burned and rasped, and then began to roar, with white-hot, painful intensity.

"What? No! I meant jump out! Out of the gigantic asteroid field, Sheppard! What have you done?"

"I've found us somewhere to hide." The controls shook under John's hands and the seat was vibrating too as the hull was scoured by the thickening atmosphere. "Inertial dampeners are fried," he ground out. "Hold on."

Rodney ignored him and crouched down on the floor, ripping up the panels that hid the circuitry for the dampeners.

"McKay."

The ship was shuddering. He couldn't control its descent. They were going in too fast.

"I can fix this. I can fix it!"

"Rodney, I do not think you will have time." Even Teyla sounded shit-scared. John glanced over his shoulder and she looked back, her eyes wide, her hands clamped around the arms of her seat. Torren was waiting for her - her little boy, waiting for his Mom. John would get them down safe and then he'd get them home - somehow.

He couldn't see anything. They were a fireball, hurtling through the sky like a shooting star. But they wouldn't burn up - he wouldn't let them. The HUD blazed with warnings as bright as the flames of their plummeting descent. John turned it off.

He closed his eyes and stretched out his senses like he was wrapping the Jumper in his hand, closing his fist around it, finding every last drop of its power to slow them, to alter their angle just enough, just enough to get them safely down.

He didn't need to open his eyes to see the sky turn a paler blue, or to see the curve of this world disappear as they were swallowed by its atmosphere, becoming a part of the sky instead of an object in space. He didn't need to open his eyes to see the vastness of the ocean that encircled the globe, to feel the great craters which lurked in the ocean depths, the marks of the many meteors which had struck. And, still with his eyes shut tight, he could feel the speck on the surface which was the only visible hint of a great mountain rising up from the depths of the seabed, so that just its very summit was visible. This was his goal.

John's seat fell away beneath him and then rose up and jolted him so that his eyes flew open and he bit his tongue. Ronon swore. The ship juddered and lurched and Rodney yelled as he was flung forward beneath the control panels.

"Stay down there, McKay!" John's voice shook along with the ship. "Wedge yourself in!"

There was a muffled response. The ship lurched again, like a horse taking a flying leap at a fence when you weren't ready. John fell sideways, banging his head on the control stick. He tried to push himself up in his chair, but couldn't get straight. He was dizzy. They were spinning, around and around.

"Come on… come on…" He spoke to himself as much as the aircraft. "Get it together. You can do this."

A burst of dwindling power righted them, but they were still going way too fast.

"We gonna crash?"

John laughed, desperately. "Yeah, Chewie. I think that's on the cards."

More muffled expletives came from beneath the control panel.

"But we're gonna crash right." He promised his team as he promised himself. "I'm gonna do it right." His jaw ached and he could taste blood.

They'd land in the water. They'd skim the waves and land on the ocean. And if he couldn't get them down in the right place they were totally fucked because there'd be no rescue coming and they'd sink and sink until the Jumper crumpled up like a tin can. But he would get them down in the right place. He would.

He'd do it. They were lined up. The tiny island was there, shaped kinda like a fish with its mouth open wide. He'd land them just above its back, next to the fleck of land that was its pilot fish, the little islet with the fort where there were both warm hearts and warm hearths and the beer was the right mix of bitter and mild.

But they were going too fast and the inertial dampeners had gone and John's control was slipping away, fingernails snapping as they clung to the edge of a cliff.

The island grew from a stickleback, to a trout, to a salmon, bigger and bigger. John's arms ached and his mind roared and they were too fast, too fast. And the angle was wrong.

The island grew into a whale, or a basking shark, its great mouth open to engulf them. Any of the coast would do. Anywhere, within swimming distance, if they could just get down, get the hatch open, get out - all four of them. And then they'd be safe and they could walk over the land to get to the hilltop fort or the little islet - both were safe. Both were havens.

The land mass nearly filled the window. Then control slipped and the Jumper swerved to one side. The land was gone and there was just ocean. John wrenched at the controls and threw his heart and mind into the Ancient circuitry. "Come on…"

The ocean was dark - a dark cobalt blue. White streaks ran in parallel lines across it.

"Come on… back around… just a bit further."

The shoreline crawled back onto the corner of the windshield. A pointed angle - the fish's nose. It'd have to do.

"Brace yourselves. We're going in."

"I am ready," said Teyla. And she sounded like she'd prepared herself for the end.

John flung his head round and met her eyes in a brief flash and Ronon's in another and his foot, shoving at the lump on the floor that was Rodney, would have to stand for the same thing. They were his team. And this wasn't the end.

Then it seemed like it was.

They hit the water. The controls were ripped from John's hands and he was flying. His back hit something, then he was flying again and his jaw and his chest took the brunt of his fall. Then he was tumbling and blows came from all directions and there were shouts and dark and light and pain and then a gasping shock of wet and freezing cold.

It was dark.

The flinging had stopped, but there was still the pain. And there was salt in his mouth - washing away the iron-tinged saltiness of blood with the rasping, burning brine of seawater. John coughed and choked and couldn't get a breath. He couldn't see either, and the darkness was filled with roaring and buzzing and swirling light. Then he was sliding - rolling down a hill and his arm and the side of his face slapped against the freezing cold. His lungs exploded in a yell that rang through his head. Fingers grasped at the back of his shirt and vest. He was being dragged out of the water and someone was speaking. John kicked out.

"I've got you. Keep still."

He coughed and rasped, "Ronon?"

"Yeah."

It was cold, so cold. John couldn't see his team.

"Teyla? Rodney?"

"We are here, John."

"We're here and we're sinking and in a minute we'll be drowning if I can't get… this… thing… open! Come… on! You piece of…" Rodney's voice blurred in and out.

"Huh, what?"

"Oh, thank you so much for that erudite contribution, Colonel. And thank you very much indeed for getting us smashed up by asteroids and then crashing-landing us in the middle of the fucking ocean!"

He'd done his best. He always did, even though, many, many times it hadn't been enough. But thinking like that - or getting pissed at McKay - never helped anyone. John pushed away Ronon's hands and ripped at his tac vest, pulling out an emergency light-stick and cracking it. A blue glow lit the sloping angle of the Jumper's rear compartment, the rippling swirl of swiftly-rising water, and Rodney, his hands deep in the overhead controls. Rodney shot him a swift sidelong glance of fear and anger.

"'Mergency r'lease." His tongue was clumsy and Rodney's face blurred.

"Oh." Rodney snapped his fingers. "I hadn't thought of that. Isn't it great that you're here to save the day?" The flood of sarcasm was as cold as the rising water. "Of course I've tried the emergency fucking release!" He turned back to his work, ripping out crystals and swapping them around, his hands a blur of panic.

Water seeped in through John's boots and he drew up his legs, but it followed him, rising over his ankles and up his calves. He scrambled away, standing up with a rush of sickness and roaring in his head, and found himself clinging to the raised hatch, between Ronon and Teyla.

Vague shadows shifted as the light in his hand shook.

Teyla's face was grey in the sickly glow. There was darker grey on her cheek and she held one arm with the other. Ronon looked okay, his expression impassive - but that meant nothing.

"No, no, no!" Rodney was standing on one of the benches now to stay above the water. He flung a crystal over his shoulder and rammed another into place. "Come on! Just fucking work! Come on!"

"McKay."

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

John just held the light higher, to give his friend and colleague more light so that he could save all their lives. Rodney would do it. He'd scrape together the last dregs of power and get the hatch open in time. Rodney always did what he had to, no matter what the odds.

The water lapped over John's knees. The light shimmered on Rodney's face. John couldn't hold it still. Teyla's breaths were loud gasps and her teeth rattled. The water had half-covered her thighs.

"Open! Fucking well open, you piece of shit!"

The hatch jerked, metal groaned and shrieked against metal. And there was a narrow band of grey-white light.

"That'll do," said Ronon. He reached down into the water and pushed Teyla up and forced her out through the crack. John held out his hand to Rodney who took it and let himself be boosted upward. He stuck fast, his legs kicking frantically, but Ronon put both hands on his ass and gave him an almighty shove. Rodney yelled and disappeared.

And then Ronon held out his hands in a foothold. "Go."

"No. You go."

"Sheppard."

The water crawled up John's thighs. He clenched his jaw tight to stop his teeth chattering.

"John. You're hurt. I can get out behind you. Go."

He was hurt. He must be. He must have been bashed on the head so hard it knocked the sense out of him, because he agreed. He let Ronon boost him out of the gap between the edge of the ramp and the Jumper's roof. His head and shoulders were out and one arm and then the other.

Saltwater hit him in the face and he spat, but water came from above as well and he didn't know if it was spray or hard, pounding rain. John pushed back on the hatch and grabbed at the edge of the roof. He couldn't move. His vest had caught. Something ripped, but he still couldn't move. The waves were closer, slapping his skin, filling his mouth. Ronon. John tugged at the zipper, unfastened the clasps and he was free. He dropped, headfirst into the water, his legs scraping against the edge of the hatch.

The cold bit at him and he gasped and swallowed, kicked and thrashed. One hand hit something hard. Up. Need to go up. John forced his limbs to go slack. He drifted then kicked his legs and flapped his arms with resolution and broke the surface, coughing and sucking in painful breaths.

Ronon. Help Ronon.

The Jumper had gone.

John circled his legs and flapped his arms to turn and there was surging pressure from one side, then the other, then a curling wave that wanted to force him under, then another that wanted to drag him in a spiral. Where was Ronon? Where was the Jumper? Where was the land?

Had Ronon been dragged down? John dived, pulling himself down into the treacherous currents, his body forced one way and then the other. The yellow-green water boiled and churned about him. He could see nothing. No sign of Ronon. No sign even of the dark bulk of the Jumper. He was running out of air.

And for a moment, he thought he was lost. The water was heavy above him, a great hand pressing and shoving him down. John pulled himself to one side, arms thrusting the water away, chest burning hot and stabbing with pain that made him want to gasp. Then he was rising, the roiling current forcing him up. His head broke the surface and he coughed and choked again and searched among the forest of spitting waves for any sign of land.

He glimpsed a darker grey amongst the tumbling water - a brown-grey line where the waves were smashing themselves into white peaks of spray, while around him they broke against each other or against nothing. But the waves were dragging him away, pulling him out into the blank, endless heaving slate.

John fought. He fixed his eyes on the constant line and kicked and dragged, choked and spat, kicked and dragged some more. He'd fought all his life against one enemy or another - his father, his superior officers, the Wraith… himself. He was used to fighting and he was good at it. It was the other things he couldn't do - finding a partner, someone who would love him for who he was, someone who could show him how to love himself. But he would fight anyway - for his team. Even though they all had someone now - Rodney and Jennifer, Teyla and Kanaan and Torren, Ronon and Amelia. They all had someone to love. To love them back. But they were still his team. His, to protect or to die trying to protect.

John swam. And though the waves pushed at him and buffeted him, slapped him down and spat in his face, he carried on - because John Sheppard was used to that kind of treatment. So he fought back, and slowly, so slowly, the solid line grew.

It grew into a great bank of shingle, rising steeply out of the turbulent water. And between the slapping, pulling, sucking waves, John could see two shapes - two blurred brown shapes, bent toward him, reaching out.

Two shapes.

He was cold. So cold he couldn't feel his legs or arms and just had to carry on sending the same signals to them and hope they were still kicking against the water and pulling him through it. And at last his ears, which had been full of the rush and roar, picked up voices, calling his name and he sent the signals to his numb limbs even more urgently and carried on sending them and sending them until someone said.

"We have got you, John. John, you can stop."

There were hands, pale against the sodden black of his sleeves. There were faces, pinched and shadowed, their hair plastered flat. He couldn't feel their hands. He couldn't feel the drag of his legs up the bank of shingle. But they were there and he was moving, until his head lay against something soft and dark and the stormy grey ocean was on its side, leaping even more wildly as his body was jerked and pushed and pulled.

"He needs dry clothes."

"We all d-do. K-keep rubbing. G-get his cir- circl-"

"I know, Rodney."

John's mouth wouldn't move and his mind was equally sluggish. He wanted to say their names. Teyla. Rodney.

Ronon.

Where was Ronon? John struggled. But his body was weighted down.

"John, you are safe."

"Safe? I don't know how you define safe, but this is not my idea of safety! If we don't die of hypothermia, we'll die of starvation!"

"Rodney, that is not helping."

"And where's Ronon? Teyla, where's Ronon?"

John dragged air in through his salt-raw throat. He ordered his body to move by willpower alone, as if he was pulling on the stick of a Black Hawk that was spinning, out of control, toward the deck.

He hauled himself up, his whole body shuddering and shivering and there was wet hair in his face and cold skin against his brow. He mumbled into stiff, wet fabric. "Ronon. Tried. Couldn't…" He coughed and spat. "Couldn't find him."

Arms tightened around him. "The Jumper sank, John." Teyla's voice shook. "We didn't see him. We saw you and then it sank."

"No."

"I am sorry." Her threadlike words were whipped away on the wind. "I am so sorry." Was she crying? How would he tell, wet-through with saltwater as they all were, and water running from the sky too - he could feel it now, pelting against his skin like hard dashes of thrown pebbles. It was warm after the freezing cold of the ocean. He shivered.

"No. No." John squirmed around in Teyla's arms. There was a weight on his legs - Rodney, his face set, his eyes fixed on the ocean.

"McKay."

"Don't talk to me."

"Rodney."

The eyes which met John's were hard. "You could have taken us anywhere. Into the corona of a sun would have been better than this. At the edge of a black hole. Anything to confuse their sensors. But you had to bring us here."

John said nothing. Was Rodney right? Could he have found somewhere else? Should he have set the Jumper to finding somewhere they could hide, camouflaged by radiation or by sucking gravity? Maybe. Yes. No. John shook his head, loosening the thoughts, letting them fly away. It didn't matter what Rodney thought, or what anyone thought. Facts were facts and it was his responsibility. He should have found somewhere better, no matter what. And he hadn't. He'd brought them here because of a memory that felt safe to him. He'd made a decision based on emotion, because his team all had someone and he didn't and he wanted the warmth he'd found here last time. He wanted comfort, like a miserable little kid. But he wasn't a little kid. He was supposed to be a leader, a protector, a soldier.

And he'd failed to lead and failed to protect, again, and now Ronon was dead and they were stranded without hope of rescue.

"Rodney."

"You d-don't have to say it, Teyla," Rodney snapped. He was still shivering too. "I know getting pissed with Sheppard doesn't help. But I'm doing it anyway. Maybe it'll warm me up."

"No, Rodney, look! John, look!"

John turned his head, mashing his face into Teyla's neck. He tried to pull away from her, but he didn't have the strength.

The waves roared still, smashing themselves against the shore. The currents boiled and seethed, the water from one side of the island at endless war with the other, meeting here at the land's end and clashing in froth and fume and fury.

But amidst the churning white was a dot of black - a dot of black that thrashed and disappeared and then burst out of a wave and thrashed and fought again.

Rodney was on his feet, his arms clasped around his waist, his shoulders hunched forward. "Ronon!" He took an unsteady step, his feet sinking into the loose stones.

Teyla slid away from John and he listed to one side, but then drew his legs beneath his body and, curling forward, his teeth chattering and his eyes stinging, peered at the struggling figure that sank and rose and sank again, but didn't give up.

"We have to help him!"

"We can do nothing, Rodney," said Teyla. "If we try to help, we will be swept away ourselves."

"Ronon! Come on! Come on! Over here! Ronon!" Rodney's voice was raw from the salt. Teyla's was too, and John's lips still didn't want to move and he could barely pull the sounds together. But he did his best, along with his team mates, to bring Ronon home to them with just their voices, because it was all they could do.

"Ronon, we are here! Ronon, swim to us - swim!"

"C'mon. C'mon, big guy. Don't let it beat you. C'mon."

"Get moving, you great big barbarian lump! Come on, get your ass in gear! Get moving! Are you going to let a bit of water get the better of you? Come on!"

The wind and the rain and the ocean's roar couldn't drown them. John tried to shout louder to match his teammates.

"C'mon, Chewie! We need you! We're here!"

He could see Ronon's powerful arms rising and falling, rising and falling as he was swept first one way and then the other. Rodney began to run along the crest of the shingle, tracking his teammate's movements.

"He's getting swept along the shore. Come on, we have to follow! We have to be there to pull him out!"

Teyla staggered after Rodney. John fell forward onto his hands and crawled, then got his feet under him and pushed, fell forward, thrust himself up and then he was moving, falling, running, tripping - and waking all his cuts and bruises as his circulation returned.

"He's nearly there! Come on, Ronon!" Rodney tumbled down the steep bank. His feet splashed in the water and waves slapped at his ankles, threatening to drag him in.

"McKay!"

"He needs our help!"

"Rodney, do not go in any further."

Rodney yelled in frustration, but stood still, his arms still wrapped tightly around his body.

And then a huge wave smashed down onto the shore, soaking Rodney, and John thought it would pull him with it as it slid back into the ocean. But when it ebbed away Rodney was still there, and then another figure erupted from the water in a cloud of spray, staggered forward and fell, to land face down, at Rodney's feet.

I hope you enjoyed that first helter-skelter chapter! Thank you for reading.