Stargate Atlantis: S7—A Terrible Beauty5
John tossed and turned, tossed and turned. Frustrated he shoved down the blankets. He kicked his way out of them and sprawled onto his back. He kept his eyes shut, thinking that if he pretended to sleep it would eventually come. It wasn't the approaching battle that kept him awake. He had done everything in his power to ensure victory, and however the chips fell he knew that he would prevail, one way or another.
It was the thought of Moira that kept sleep away from him.
He tried to relax, letting his mind wander over the erotic memories; the feel of her softness and curves yielding to him; the taste of her mouth and skin; the soft sounds she made as they reached mutual satisfaction; the intimacies that he found himself craving even now. He sighed. He missed the sex of course, but it was more than that.
He missed her.
He knew the decision had been a correct one. Much as it rankled he knew he had to keep her survival a secret, at least for now. He couldn't explain how he knew she could be in danger; only that she was. The city had told him, and John never doubted the city, or his gut feelings.
It had been the same when he had told her his plan…
"What?" Moira stands, hands on hips as she stares at her new husband. They are standing outside the SGC. It is a beautiful autumn day and the leaves are all changing into yellow.
"Just what you said, Moy. It would be better if everyone thought you were…um…you know. For now. Something's not right and until it is you are safer this way."
"You sound as paranoid as me, John. I…I don't know if I can go back to Atlantis…after…" She looks away from him. The memories of what she had endured were still vivid. They were still scars that might never go away.
John steps closer and takes her hands into his. He fingers the wedding ring. "I know. That's why you'll be at Echo Base helping with the translation program. We've got a listening post there that is picking up all of the radio frequencies of the Fuglies."
"Homo erectus," she automatically corrects, causing him to smile, "and just how are you going to accomplish this, Colonel Sheppard? Will you be enlisting the help of a dead woman now?" She meets his gaze. "How will you sneak me aboard?"
John frees her hands. He steals a kiss before turning as a group of men approach. "Ah. We're ready to beam aboard."
"I'll inform the Daedalus. This must be Doctor Green?"
"Yes." John glances at Moira who is staring at him. "This is Doctor Green."
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"Doctor Green?"
Moira was staring at a computer screen. She was lost in thought, lost in the memories of her new husband. She was worrying about him. Their time together had been so short, as always. They saw each other infrequently, and it was starting to wear her down. She understood the reasons, the necessity, and she didn't want to go back to Atlantis.
Still, if John could only take a week here it would mean the world to her.
"Doctor Green?"
She knew he didn't have the time. She knew that these enforced separations weighed heavily on him, as much as they did on her. Or least she thought she did. Sometimes doubts would surface. Sometimes doubts would emerge even now; even after all they had endured, even after getting married. Was John Sheppard the aloof man of her hallucinations or the passionate lover who had just made time to be with her, however briefly?
She found it hard to believe that this man, this impossibly gorgeous and complicated man loved her.
"Doctor Green!"
Startled she jolted upright and spun round in her chair. A blush suffused her features. In her rambling reminiscing she had forgotten her alias. "Yes? Sorry, I was—"
"If you have any updates on the translation program you need to send them now. The mission will begin in a few hours."
"Of course." She turned back to the computer, feeling tears fill her eyes. "Sending them now. The flashdrive I gave to Colonel Sheppard was complete but it still would have been better if I was aboard the ship with him, er them. The program can only make calculated guesses and learns as it goes."
"Colonel Sheppard was very firm about you staying here, Doctor Green. The program will run as it was devised, correct?"
"Yes, with the proper input and Gaelic transitions, it should. I mean it will." Moira hoped she sounded more confident than she actually felt.
"What was the other thing?"
"Oh! This." Moira was grateful for the change in subject to occupy her mind. "I've found an older database from when the Ancients were here. There's a lot to go through but it seems to involve the Wraith and experimentation. There were some old records in both Ancient and Wraith which I am working on translating."
"Both Ancient and Wraith? Are you suggesting they were working together?" Sands's eyebrows rose in unison.
"Possibly. We're working with them right now. Perhaps the Ancients did too, or just a rogue element. Whatever it was it seems to have involved genetic research of some kind."
"Creating the Wraith…or destroying them?"
"I'm not sure yet. The data is incomplete. This could have been under the radar, as it were, considering how distant this planet is from the rest of the galaxy. Something seems to have happened here. The records break off rather abruptly."
"Do you think this was before the planet was seeded with Ice Age life?" Chris pondered.
Moira shrugged. "Possibly, or it could have been at the same time. Whatever happened caused the base to be abandoned, that much is clear. It could prove useful for the future."
"All right. Pursue that in the meantime. And let's hope we do have a future. Let's hope for all of our sakes that this translation program works."
"It will work!" she fumed, but hearing him leave she stared at the computer. Data wavered in front of her as she blinked back the tears of worry and heartache and sorrow….
"It will work!" John stands in his quarters on the Apollo, angrily facing her. His hands are on his hips and his scowl only accentuates his handsome features. It just wasn't fair that the angrier he became the sexier he became.
"It won't!" Moira argues, glaring at him. "What if the real Doctor Green shows up and wonders why the hell she isn't in the Pegasus Galaxy? What if someone recognizes me? What if I slip up and inadvertently forget this new identity? What if you—"
"It will work!" he insists. He lowers his voice as he grasps her arms and gently pulls her closer to him. Arguing with her always gets him hard and already his lower body is raring to go. A smirk slides across his perfect lips.
"John!" she scolds, knowing full well what he is feeling and wanting. "I'm serious! What if this Doctor Green shows up at the SGC demanding that her—"
"She won't. I got it covered, all right? You are now Doctor Green."
"You got it covered? How? Did you bribe someone or…Rodney? Rodney did something."
"Yeah."
"But that doesn't mean this Doctor Green won't come calling to the—"
John kisses her, interrupting her words. He pulls her closer and stares into her eyes. "It will work. You have to trust me, Moira. Nothing is going to get in the way, all right? Nothing gets in our way. Nothing."
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"Nothing." John sighed and ran a hand through his disordered hair. He sat in the mess hall, going over the figures and facts again on his data pad until his head started to spin. He shut the data pad and glared at it, as if the machine were the source of his bad mood.
"I think you've done everything you can for this mission. No need to worry over it. Besides, isn't that my job?"
John smiled as he met Rodney's gaze. The physicist was going over his own data pad, munching on a handful of popcorn. "Oh yeah. Right. So it is." John reached over and grabbed a handful of popcorn. "I hope we don't run out of this again."
"Me too. Think Woolsey would look the other way if we ordered a double quantity?"
"Make it a triple." The two men smiled at the jest.
"You'd think popcorn would have been invented out here, somewhere."
"They don't have microwaves."
"You can make popcorn without a microwave! Remember Jiffy Pop?"
"Oh yeah…as a kid I recall that."
Rodney met his friend's gaze. "I still think I should be aboard the Tria with you, John."
"We've had this discussion, Rodney. You are more needed here."
"I know that, but I think I will be even more needed on our ship. Just listen to me," Rodney continued, raising a hand to forestall any of John's objections. "The systems are advanced. I mean really advanced, and the updates I've engineered are way beyond complicated. There's enough firepower in her to take out several of those Fugly ships but if anything goes wrong, not that it will but in case it does you will need me there to fix it! Not to mention I can continue to keep trying to integrate the beaming technology into the Ancient interface, should we need it!"
"No."
"Are you even listening to me?"
"No." Before Rodney could implode John continued, "It's a done deal, all right? You keep Atlantis safe while I go save the galaxy. All in a day's work, right?" John sighed and lowered his voice, although the two men were alone. "Look…if anything happens to me, you know…if I don't make it back…I need you to look after Moira. Make sure she's safe and gets back to Earth, okay?"
Rodney's blue eyes widened. "Of course, John, don't be ridiculous!"
"Thanks."
"Nothing's going to happen to you anyway. We got this."
"Yeah…we got this."
Silence fell as the two men resumed studying their data pads.