Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or its characters…
Author's note: I just can't stop this fic; I really enjoy writing it. So I might as well keep posting it… marella001 suggested that John do "some serious nocturnal visiting of Rodney or someone else." I think that it is a good idea, and he may just have to do that once Elizabeth gets fed up with him.
"Are you David Carradine?" Elizabeth guessed, confident that she was right, but starting to get annoyed all the same.
"Yes I am, grasshopper," John said, smiling. After god knew how many hours of playing twenty questions, he still seemed to enjoy the game.
He was sitting on the floor of her room, his back against the bed…well, as against it as the body part of a not-really-there man could be. Elizabeth was lying on her bed staring at the ceiling. She wasn't allowed to leave her room; there were even guards posted outside. No one was to sneak in work for her to do. Visits could only consist of mindless small talk; no Atlantis-related business-speak. And it was all John's fault.
The first meeting with Dr. Heightmeyer hadn't gone so well, especially with John making faces and jokes the entire time. She just couldn't ignore him, and broke down into fits of laughter as he went through his psychiatrist routine, asking her how being crazy made her feel in horrible fake German accents. Kate couldn't let the seemingly random behavior slide, so Elizabeth had to try to explain it away. Of course she had failed to convince the woman of John's existence, and now it was probably official that she had suffered a mental break and was delusional. They seemed fine with treating her on Atlantis for the time being, but deep down Elizabeth was afraid that they'd give up and ship her back to Earth. How would she be able to help John then?
"Oh! I got another one," John exclaimed excitedly. Elizabeth sighed heavily. Figuring that she owed him big time for not being able to completely restore him to normal (yet), she submitted to participating in what seemed like the hundredth round of the childish game.
"Are you an actor?"
"No"
"Are you a movie character?"
"No."
"TV character?"
"Yes."
You're so predictable, John. "Are you from the 90s?"
"No."
"80s?"
"Yes."
Knowing him… "Do you shoot people?"
"No."
"Really?"
"Yes," John confirmed, enjoying her brief bafflement. "And that counts as a separate one."
"That's not fair," she informed him.
"I don't make the rules," he excused. "I just obey them."
"If I recall," she said. "You're under my command and are supposed to obey my rules."
"That doesn't work for two reasons," he contradicted. She leaned over the edge of the bed to give him a look.
"Oh really?" she asked, daring him to explicate further the reasons why he didn't have to listen to her.
"One: I'm officially dead and you can't bark orders at a corpse and expect it to respond," he informed her with a self-satisfied smile. "And two: you're not really in command right now, because they all think you've gone loony."
She swiped a hand through his ethereal form, attempting to wipe the smug smile of his face. It stayed exactly where it was.
"Tut-tut," he scolded. "Now that wasn't very nice."
She flopped back down on her back, exasperated with the man that she knew she couldn't get rid of, but at the same time was overjoyed by his presence.
"Are you a mercenary for hire?"
"No."
Fine. Be that way. She just lay there stretching her mind over what little she remembered or bothered to watch of television during the 1980s. One thing was certain, twenty-questions was a good way to keep her mind from the real dilemma she faced. How was she going to get John back, completely back?
A thought sparked in Elizabeth's brain. Unfortunately, it only satisfied the lesser dilemma she currently faced.
"Do you blow things up?" she asked.
"Yes," he conceded. "When necessary."
The appearance of a qualifier signaled to her that she was on the right track. "Do you fashion explosive devices out of paperclips and chewing gum?"
"Sometimes."
"Are you MacGyver?"
"Yes!" John exclaimed, rather amazed at her ability to figure out what he was thinking. Most people required way more than the twenty questions allotted for play, or gave up halfway through. He supposed it was part of her job, and skills, to be able to read people well.
"I've got another one," he informed her, ready to start all over again. He supposed that it should've grown old by then, but it just hadn't. He was just so starved for attention that he was capable of overcoming his tendency towards a short attention span that he had always suffered previously. Someone could actually see him, hear him, talk to him, and not just by being in a dream state. Maybe he shouldn't have teased Elizabeth so much, got her in trouble. He really had only hurt himself by making her appear mentally unstable to the others.
Elizabeth got up and crossed the room to her dresser. She opened a drawer and pulled what John recognized as a bra and panties from it. She proceeded to open the drawers below the first, removing a pair of lounge pants and a camisole to contribute to the pile of clothes in her arms. Adding a towel to her pile, she made her way across the room to the attached bath.
"I'm taking a shower," she told him coldly. "Then I'm going to bed. I do not want to meet you in my dreams. Understood?"
Maybe she was being a bit harsh, but the man was driving her crazy. Pretty soon, she would have to agree with the others' assessment of her mental state. But that would mean resigning herself to spending the rest of her days confined to a small room, which would no doubt include John Sheppard who had nowhere better to be. That was something she would not be willing to do. She definitely needed to do something about this mess, but it was very difficult to figure out what when you had someone like John, who had been deprived of real human contact for months, guilting you into playing twenty-questions with him for hours on end. What she needed was some time alone to think.
John nodded his head, realizing that she was becoming sick of his nagging presence. He had tried to remain light and humorous so as not to alarm her, but he was really quite anxious inside, in addition to being desperate for the social interaction he had been deprived of for so long. What he really wanted to do was to have another try at the alien device, or for Elizabeth to take some sort of action. That was always where they had differed the most, over how to approach situations; Elizabeth was patient and willing to give talk a chance, John always wanted to take immediate action. But he felt that he couldn't push her into doing something rash, especially when he couldn't give her much more than moral support.
Those guards were a definite problem. How would Elizabeth be able to incapacitate them? Maybe she could talk her way past them. Either way, the authorities would be alerted, and they wouldn't have enough time to figure out the device and return him to normal before they were busted again. Well, it would really just be Elizabeth who got in trouble. But if she got stuck, so did he with her. John's future depended on hers. He shook his head and placed it in his ethereal hands. It was all so complex; Complex and frustrating. He couldn't do anything to help Elizabeth help him. Or could he?
John surveyed the room. The noise from the bathroom informed him that Elizabeth was in the shower. He briefly considered sneaking through the wall to spy on her, but not only could she now see him (why hadn't he thought of that earlier when he couldn't be seen even if he had wanted to), it was most certainly inappropriate. Besides, he had an idea. John would invade someone's dreams tonight, other than Elizabeth Weir's, and hopefully would be able to manipulate some answers out of them.
John stood up and confidently walked through the door of Elizabeth's room past the guards into the hallway beyond. This would work. It just had to. He made his way towards the place where he knew he'd find one Dr. Rodney McKay: the science lab.
The question was, how much coffee had the scientist drank and how long would John have to wait for him to fall asleep?