A shiny Canadian penny to all of you who caught the Princess Bride ref in the previous chapter. Inconceivable... :-) A huge thank you, as always, for the awesomely fantastic reviews. As promised, lotsa Shep in this one, and glory be, we're almost done!
With a quick, distracted glance at the chessboard, Rodney took one of John's rooks with his queen and set the piece down on the table. Rodney's gaze kept drifting out the commissary windows, but he wasn't seeing much of the view outside, just like he wasn't paying much attention to their game. He was finding it difficult to fully concentrate on much of anything since he and his team had returned home three days ago. He couldn't stop thinking about those villagers and about Tosia, even though another team had since taken over 'mission relocation,' as Ronon had rather ineptly dubbed it. Carson had also assigned a few of his medical staff to go along and treat the various injuries and illnesses, so it wasn't even as though they weren't being well taken care of.
But what was getting to Rodney, what was seriously ticking him off, was the fact that despite all his team and Tosia had done, only a few of her people had so far come around to considering the idea of relocating. Some of the elders, including Kornel, had expressed interest in an offer to visit the mainland and meet with the Athosians before making a decision themselves, so perhaps that would be the extra push the villagers needed. After all, Rodney thought, no one wanted to buy a piece of property without actually seeing it first, right? And if they still weren't convinced, maybe it all came down to what Tosia had feared; her people simply weren't ready. Either way, it was out of his hands.
Rodney had, however, found a large degree of satisfaction when, shortly before returning for home, he had spotted Silas skulking around sporting two spectacular black eyes and a fat lip. And in the jumper, on their way back to Atlantis, if Rodney noticed Ronon's reddened and skinned knuckles, well, he was discreet enough not to comment on them.
He jumped, startled, at a loud thunk. Rodney snapped his attention back to John, who had made his next move, banging his chess piece hard on the board to get Rodney's attention.
"All right, all right," Rodney groused. "Even drugged to the eyeballs, you're still a pain in the ass, you know that?"
John shook his head. "N-not drugged to... eyeballs."
"Okay, to your teeth, then," Rodney countered. In truth, Carson had cut back considerably on John's medication, but his motions and reactions were still slow and sluggish. Rodney slid his bishop to take one of John's pawns.
John scowled at him then stared at the board.
Rodney's attention drifted again as he waited for his next turn. He gazed around the commissary, but it was largely empty and despite his distraction, it still seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for John to make his next move. Rodney looked to his friend, and with a pang of guilt at his abstractedness, he realized that John's gaze was still fixed on the board, but his dulled eyes were distant and unfocused. His mouth hung slightly open, head tilted to one side, as though he were listening to some far-off conversation.
He'd been doing that a lot lately, over the past week. Lucid one moment, seemingly almost normal, and then he'd just zone out, completely unresponsive for minutes at a time. Thankfully, the manic pacing and freaking out had stopped, or maybe John was just too stoned for such displays of energy, but Rodney couldn't help the fear that surged through him every time John seemed to slip back.
Worried, Rodney watched his friend and waited to see if John would resurface on his own, as he did sometimes. Instead, John began slowly rocking back and forth in his chair. Rodney snapped his fingers in rapid succession in front of John's face. John only blinked and scowled at the board.
"Hey! Atlantis to Sheppard!" Rodney called loud enough to cause some of the people at the other tables to turn and look at them. He waved his hand in front of John's face. "Anybody home?"
With a flicker of panic, John's gaze darted to Rodney, then back to the board. Scowling in furious concentration, John picked up the queen and hovered it over the board. Unfortunately, it was the white one.
"No, no... you're black," Rodney reminded him. "You're always black, remember?"
His eyelids heavy, John slowly blinked at him, then nodded after a moment. He placed the chess piece back in its previous square. "A-always black," he muttered, but to Rodney's relief, it sounded more like a mental note than the odd echolalia of only a week ago. John pulled in a deep breath and pushed a black pawn forward one position, leaving his king wide open for a checkmate. Rodney didn't have the heart to end their game just yet and instead, slid his queen back.
"Could've... taken me," John said dully.
Rodney gaped at him surprised, then grinned. "You noticed that?"
John nodded then tore his hand through his hair, roughly tugging on it. Most of the bandages had finally come off both hands, revealing numerous crisscrossing lines of pink scar tissue that made Rodney wince to look at. John's right index finger remained in a splint, and the webbing between his thumb still had a large strip of gauze wrapped around it. He raked his scarred fingers through his hair, pulling on it and making it stand even more on end.
"You're gonna lose it if you keep doing that," Rodney told him. When John looked back at him, confused, Rodney pointed at his own receding hairline.
John dropped his hand back to the table. "S...sorry."
Rodney shrugged. "Hey, it's your hair, just thought I'd mention it."
John began twining and twisting his fingers together in an odd, nervous gesture, as though he no longer knew what to do with his hands. "Where's Ronon and Teyla?" he asked without looking at Rodney.
"Doing their stick fighting thing," Rodney answered, seeing no point in mentioning that John had asked the same question twice already. The guy was finally talking in full sentences, so who was Rodney to dissuade him with mentions of forgetfulness? John nodded again, but his expression was troubled. His eyes drifted shut. He resumed the slow rocking and whispered something under his breath.
Rodney was about to call to him again, then realized that John's mutterings sounded Ancient. He leaned forward and grasped John's thin forearm. "Sheppard? What is it? What are you saying?" When John didn't respond to him, he nearly shouted his friend's name again.
"D-don't know..." John finally answered and tore his eyes open, his features pinched with confusion. "All m-mixed up. Don't know... it's... all messed up."
"What is?" Rodney said, curiosity momentarily overriding his concern for his friend. "Can you make some of that Ancient stuff out?"
John shook his head and pulled in a sharp breath. "No! All mixed up!"
"What's all mixed up?" Rodney insisted.
"Everything..." John said, looking back down at the board. "M-me and them..."
Rodney stared at him, unsure what to make of that. "John... listen..." he began, then trailed off with absolutely no idea what to say or how to help.
John ignored him and with a shaking hand, resolutely picked up another chess piece and set it down in the wrong position. When he knocked over the surrounding pieces with the awkward splint, he yelled in wordless frustration. He swept the remaining pieces from the board. They clattered to the table, and Rodney quickly caught a few that nearly rolled onto the floor. Looking at his friend, Rodney couldn't help but think that the Daedalus was only five days away.
John pressed his lips tight together and darted a stricken glance at Rodney before fumbling to pick up the pieces from the table. "S-sorry..." he whispered, his voice trembling, "d-didn't mean to..." The pieces kept slipping from his grasp and dropping back to the table but he didn't give up trying.
Rodney took gentle but firm hold of John's wrist, stopping him. "Hey, it's okay. Let me get it."
John shook his head and yanked his hand free. "I want to do it," he protested, setting his jaw in stubborn determination. He finally managed to grasp the pieces one by one and carefully began setting up the board again. He frowned, his hand trembling in mid-air when he couldn't remember their positions in the game.
Rodney couldn't stand it anymore. "You know, I'm not really in the mood for chess," he said, pulling a wry face. "Let's play something else. Checkers? Go Fish?"
"No," John said. "Start again."
"Sheppard, you suck at chess even under normal circumstances—" Rodney lied. In truth, John beat Rodney two out of every six games – no small feat, considering Rodney's obviously superior intellect, and the fact he had been playing since he was two years old.
"Start a-again!" John insisted, slapping his hand on the table.
"All right, fine!" Rodney raised his own hand in a placating gesture. He wondered why the hell he had even suggested this in the first place. "Let me set it up though, or we're not playing anymore. Got it?" he added, pointing a warning finger at John.
Nodding, John took a deep breath and crossed his arms tightly over his chest, trapping the nervous motion of his hands. When Rodney finished setting up the pieces, he realized that John was muttering to himself under his breath and shaking hard enough for Rodney to see the tremors from across the table.
"Sheppard?" Rodney waved his hand in front of John's face again, at the same time, readying to call Carson. "Still with me?"
John looked at him, and his eyes were bright with what took Rodney a moment to recognize as stark fear.
"D-don't want... go back," John whispered, shaking his head.
Rodney blinked at him. "Go back where?"
"Earth," John answered with a sneer, as though their home planet was the worst place imaginable. "N... not going back."
Rodney stared at him, his thoughts racing. There was no way Carson or Elizabeth would have told Sheppard of the possibility of being sent back home. Or would they? Even as anger filled him, Rodney tried to remain calm. "How... what makes you think—"
"Nurses. H-heard them... D-daedalus coming s-soon."
"Dammit..." Rodney made a mental note to find out those nurses' names and personally see to it that they were the ones on the next trip back to Earth, not Sheppard.
"Not g-going back," John repeated in a tight, wavering voice, clenching his shaking hands into fists and placing them on the table.
"No, you're not," Rodney agreed, looking straight into John's now furious eyes. "Not if we can help it, so try and concentrate and pay attention to what we're doing," Rodney instructed, as though it were that simple. "I mean, just... just try to stay in the here and now, with me, and out of la-la land, all right?"
"All right..." John echoed in an uncertain whisper, his brows pulling together. Still distressed, he twined his hands again, fingernails plucking at the splint. Rodney reached over the table and placed his strong hand over John's slimmer ones.
"It's gonna be okay," Rodney said, giving John's damaged hands a quick squeeze before letting go. "You've come a long way since that rather frightening turnip impression of yours, and you are getting better," he told his friend in a firm, confident voice, as reassurance for both of them. "You're going to be just fine in no time, and there's no way in hell I'll let anyone send you back. So don't you worry about that anymore."
John stared at him wide-eyed and hopeful, as though Rodney was his personal salvation. Rodney held his gaze, surprised by the vehemence of his own words. He could only hope that in five day's time, he wouldn't be forced to go back on them.
"Okay," John said after a moment, straightening in his chair. For the first time in far too long, he smiled at Rodney in that lopsided smirk of his that was only slightly marred by the faint, but still visible tremors coursing through him.
Rodney returned the smile with a hopeful, crooked one of his own and started a new game by moving his King's pawn two spaces. John glanced at him then frowned at the board with such intense focus that Rodney feared he'd give himself an aneurysm. Finally, John made his opening move – the Dutch Defense. It was his usual opening counter-move – the aggressive, but weak one that Rodney always ragged him about. But this time, Rodney was glad to see it.
---A---
John wandered the darkened corridor, his slippers shushing along like the voices that still from time to time filled his head. Even as he thought of them, the voices started again, but they were quiet now, like whispers in the night that you couldn't quite make out. Light rain tapping on the windowpane instead of a howling maelstrom.
The damp cold of the floor seeped through his thin slippers. The air was too chilled for the light robe he had pulled on over his T-shirt and sweatpants. He didn't know why he had come down here. Maybe he'd just wanted to see it again. To see if it was real or if he'd just imagined it.
But as he kept walking, the city humming reassuringly all around him, he couldn't find Tosia's old lab. He knew it was down here somewhere in the lower levels, but he couldn't remember exactly where. He kept wanting to ask Rodney where Tosia was, if she was all right, but he was afraid of the answer, just like he was afraid to ask Carson if he truly planned to send John back on the Daedalus only two days from now. Pushing that terrible possibility from his mind, he remembered Tosia's tearful goodbye to him. He remembered what she'd told him, and how, back on that planet, she'd been the one presence he could hold onto and trust. He missed her. Maybe that's why he wanted to see her old lab again. Maybe later, he'd ask if he could go see her.
He'd been wandering aimlessly along endless corridors for too long now though. He was cold and tired, and he couldn't find the damn lab. He entered a room at random, stopped and looked around him. He was in a storage room, crates lining the walls and stacked to the high ceiling. The only light was a pale spotlight high above him, and the far end of the room was filled with indistinct, frightening shadows. The city hummed and hummed, and with a pang of unease, John realized that he was lost. The voices started to rise up, some of them screamed, as though recognizing his growing fear. Some of them even chortled at him: Stupid, stupid John. Getting lost in your own city.
Pathetic, as his father would have said.
John's heart began to race, his breaths rasped and echoed around him. Suddenly, he didn't want to see the lab anymore. He wanted to go back to the infirmary, to his own room. Anywhere familiar. He darted from the room and back into the corridor, pushing through one doorway after the other and he still couldn't find his way. The robe tangled around his legs, nearly tripping him, and he shrugged it off, throwing it to the floor. His slippers twisted under his feet and he kicked them away. He found another doorway and it obediently opened for him. He found himself in a dark, wide open space.
Then he saw the blue-tinged swirls of energy, flickering, pulsating, encapsulating. His eyes widened. His breath caught in his lungs and tight pain gripped his chest. Eyes fixed on the glowing, contained mass of energy, terror seized full hold of him, paralyzing him. The voices whispered on and on, the voices of the Ancients, those long dead souls. He saw the faces of those lost in battle, taken by the Wraith, by disease and hunger. Atlantis, bustling with life, with so many people, with children dressed in strange clothing running giggling through the corridors. Explosions, countless people screaming, torn, bloodied and begging, crying for help... Floating, weightlessness, all-seeing, a vast network of interconnected beings, power, so incredibly, terrifyingly powerful, grabbing hold of him, ripping at him—
His vision swam and there was a strange whimpering sound echoing around him and it took a moment until he realized it was coming from him.
Calm down, John, You're okay. Don't listen to them.
Memories, so many memories... countless, endless memories, and he didn't know where his started and theirs ended. If he wasn't so scared, he'd try to flee but there was no place to where he could run. He swiped his arm over his face, wet with sweat and tears, and the clamor filling his head was enough to make him want to scream along with them.
Dammit, John! Stop it! They can't hurt you! the familiar voice told him again. They're just thoughts and old memories that don't belong to you. Look around you. You're okay. It's okay. Just look...
John hugged his arms to his chest and listened to the voice. He slowly looked around him. He was in one of the grounding stations, standing by a naquaada generator and in front of the two long tanks filled with bubbling, glowing blue and green liquid. It was just a power source, he realized. It was just the generator that powered the city, and it couldn't hurt him. He held his breath to silence its rasping sound, and he could hear the hum coming from the tanks, the hum of the very heart of the city.
Even still, the voices kept whispering, and John allowed his knees to buckle. He sat down hard on the cold floor and slid on his backside to lean against one of the tanks. It vibrated against his back, reassuring and warm. He listened to its hum. The sound reminded him of the ruins, and that, too, was strangely comforting. He closed his eyes, and he ignored the interminable flashes of endless, endless memories. He tried to calm down, tried to slow his rapid breaths.
That's it. Don't pay attention to them anymore. Let them go.
He thought back as far as he could, searching for his own memories. It took a moment to focus, and then he remembered his tenth birthday – his parents had bought him a brand new, bright red BMX bike that he had trashed only a day later, riding it down 'Deadman's Hill.' He'd gone so fast, it felt like he was flying. He remembered letting go of the handlebars, holding his arms out like wings and for a moment, he was flying. That was, until he'd reached the bottom of the hill and crashed into a parked car. He'd bent the bike's front wheel beyond repair, broken his left arm and chipped his front tooth in the process. He'd caught all kinds of hell for that, after all, bikes didn't grow on trees, as his dad reminded him.
He thought of his first date at thirteen with Lori... something. She'd let him slip his hand under her sweater as they made out in her bedroom – the Ramones playing at full volume.
Losing his virginity at fifteen with a seventeen-year-old German girl he'd met while his dad was stationed in Heidelberg. John had skipped school the day he'd met her to explore the city, and she'd been sitting outside a tiny, dingy coffee, shop. She was the prettiest girl he'd even seen, and he'd stopped, mesmerized by her. She'd only known three sentences of English to his five words of German, but somehow they'd managed.
His mother's funeral and the following reception that had ended with John and his father screaming at each other in front of horrified and appalled relatives. It was one of the worst days of John's life in a long list of terrifically crappy days.
He thought of the first time he'd flown a fighter jet and how he couldn't imagine doing anything else with his life.
His wedding day and how her side of the small town church had been completely filled, while John had invited only Mitch and Dex, forgoing a best man altogether. It was strange how 'till death do us part' had lasted only fourteen months.
The exile to the Antarctica that was like a strange sense of limbo, of being suspended in time so that nothing he did mattered anymore.
Then the first terrifying, amazing, incredible time he'd stepped through a Stargate. The first time he'd felt Atlantis's thrum through his veins. Like it had been waiting for him, like he had always belonged there.
All his... they were all his memories. His heart rate finally slowed to a more regular pace, and his chest didn't feel so tight anymore. The other voices faded into insignificance. He felt sorry for those lost souls. So much fear and pain, but none of it was his. They were long gone and he didn't have to listen to them anymore, didn't have to see them anymore. He took a deep, shaky breath and tried to hold onto the here and now. Just the city around him and the cold floor beneath him.
That's it, the familiar voice said. You're okay, just let them go now. Stay put and wait for your team to come find you. They'll be here soon. You're okay.
And listening to that persistent, strong voice, John finally recognized it. The voice that had stayed with him all this time. That had helped him. He understood now why it was so familiar.
It was his own.
He smiled and dropped his head against the hard metal. He pulled up his legs, tucked his cold hands under his arms and waited for his team to come find him.
And some time later, they did. John woke from a light doze to the sound of muted footsteps. He heard Rodney lecturing someone then Ronon's deep grumbling protest. Teyla telling them to be quiet and concentrate on finding John.
John pulled himself up a little straighter and called out to them, but his voice came out in a hoarse rasp. He tried again with better success. "Over here!"
The footsteps quickened in pace, and John was surprised that Rodney reached him first. Rodney dropped to his knees in front of him, his blue eyes wide with concern.
"Sheppard?" he asked a little breathlessly as Teyla and Ronon crouched on either side of him.
"Hi..." John replied, shivering.
"You okay?" Rodney asked, looking him up and down for signs of injury. "How did you – what are you doing down here...?"
"Got l-lost," John said, then couldn't help laughing a little at that. "C-couldn't find my way b-back…"
His team exchanged a nervous look over his head.
"It is all right, John," Teyla said, placing a hand on his shoulder. She frowned at how cold he was. "We should get you back to the infirmary—"
"I u-used to know this place like the b-back of m-my hand…" John tried to tell her through rattling teeth, through the weariness overcoming him.
"Yeah, well, evidently not so much anymore," Rodney snapped, but John knew that was just his friend's fear talking. "The infirmary bathroom is the first door to your left, you know."
John snorted, then rubbed his hand over his eyes that were still bleary from sleep. "I-I'll remember that... n-next time."
"Just don't do this again, okay?" Rodney said in a gentler tone. "You get the sudden urge to go exploring the city, ask Ronon to be your guide dog."
Ronon shot Rodney a look of mingled irritation and amusement, then looked at John. "You all right, Sheppard?"
John took a breath, and when he realized that his thoughts were still quiet, he nodded. "Can't hear them so much anymore," he said and smiled.
Rodney raised his eyebrows. "And that's a good thing, right?"
"Yeah…" John breathed out, "very good." He closed his eyes and was relieved to see nothing but the blue-green light shining through his lids. There was a gentle touch on his face and startled, he pulled his eyes open again. Teyla gently brushed her thumbs over his face, wiping away the nearly dried tear tracks. She took hold of his shoulders and lightly touched her forehead to his, in the tradition Athosian gesture. John bowed his head to hers, and then he found himself holding onto her, tightly, as though she and the rest of his team would disappear if he let go. Teyla seemed surprised, then enfolded him in her arms and held on just as tight.
"We have missed you, John," she said softly, tearfully. Ronon clasped firm hold of John's shoulder and kept his strong hand there, warm and reassuring. Rodney looked uncomfortable for a moment, then tentatively patted John's leg.
John kept hold of Teyla's slight frame, unable to let go just yet. It didn't matter that the floor was cool and damp beneath him, that the bare soles of his feet were cold numbed or that his tailbone ached from the hard floor. All that mattered was that he was finally home. He wanted to just sit here with his family close around him. He wanted to stay like this for a while longer.
---tbc---