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'No', Cat shouted again. The distant connection between her and John was fading and the pain in her abdomen almost gone. 'This is not going to happen.' With all the strength she could muster she concentrated on him, trying to grasp a thread of life to pull on. Suddenly she was in a vast white space. In the distance she could see a hazy outline purposefully striding towards a door in the far wall, the familiar spiky hair and the lazy gait showing her his identity. 'John!' she shouted and ran as fast as she could towards his retreating figure. 'Don't go! I'm here now. We're here, my darling.'
She saw him turn and sensed the determination in his stance as he struggled to make his way towards her as though fighting against an invisible force and, as he neared, a range of emotions fluttered across his face: confusion, pleasure, fear, resolution all crossed his features in quick succession. Somehow, they managed to meet in the centre of the space; she threw her hands around his waist, feeling the pull from the distant door attempting to suck his body and the last remaining strands of his life through it. In turn he hugged her with a tightness and a desperation he'd never felt before and together they huddled, united in one purpose. They could concentrate on nothing else, the physical effort almost too much for both of them, but strengthened by their mutual resolve and refusal to give in; a stubborn cling to life. A third helped too. From within her, Cat felt the unintelligible voice speaking to her again; giving her strength.
In the dark room, deep underneath the planet, Rodney and Ronon were paralysed with shock. Teyla was stroking John's forehead tenderly, as though a touch could bring him back to them and Rodney cried tears the like of which he'd never cried before. Losing his friend once had been bad enough, but to be too late to save him, too late even to say goodbye was unbearable. Ronon was numb in disbelief. Even when Todd had fed on John, even when he saw his desiccated form on that Genii screen, he'd still believed that his friend could and would survive anything.
Suddenly, Teyla shouted as John's lifeless body jerked and he began to breath. 'What.....?? By the Ancestors, he's alive. Rodney, Ronon, he is breathing.' She checked John's pulse. 'His pulse is weak and thready, but it is there. I do not understand.' In front of them their friend had come to life, still with the gruesome knife sticking into his gut and the livid bruising shining against his pale skin. 'Ronon, we need to find a way out of here and quickly. Someone needs to get help.'
Ronon thought for a minute. 'On it,' he shouted as he ran from the room. Teyla placed John's head in her lap, still gently stroking it as though stopping would end his life again and looked up at Rodney. While the tears had dried, leaving dirty rivulets down his cheeks, his colour had not yet returned, nor had he said a thing. Eventually, he managed to squeeze out a few shocked words, his eyes fixed firmly on John's face.
'I...I don't understand. I mean, he was dead, right? Look at all that blood! And that knife!'
'I do not understand either, Rodney, but that does not matter. We need to concentrate on getting him safely out of here and back to Atlantis. Then we can worry about why he is alive and how he seemed to come back from the dead. I have seen many strange things in my life, but never this.' Teyla and Rodney hushed again, silently guarding John, waiting for whatever Ronon planned to do, trusting his resolve to find a solution.
Ronon ran back towards the room where they had tied up the first soldiers, hoping at least one would be conscious. Luck was with him and, grabbing the smaller man by the throat, he growled, 'Now, you're going to show me the way out of here and you are going to do it now. Because, if you don't,' and here he pointed to the other man, 'I will kill you and let him tell me instead.'
The young man nodded a frightened and hasty agreement, something in his attacker's expression telling him that it was dangerous to deny him anything, and Ronon untied him roughly, pulling him to his feet. 'Now, move,' he threatened. The corridor they ran along gently sloped upwards at first, then at the last there was a steep set of steps and a large iron hatch which opened up onto the windswept and sandy surface of the planet. From here, Ronon could just see the gate and the jumper parked near to it. For a moment, he was torn. Should he tell Cat what was happening? In the end, he decided that she would forgive him under the circumstances and, stunning the Genii once more, he placed a scarf around his mouth and nose and ran for the gate.
The hasty request for military and medical assistance was met with shock and surprise in the gate room. The city had already grieved for its lost military commander. Now, it seemed, he might again do the impossible, this time outdoing even his remarkable record. Woolsey did not hesitate. Within minutes a medical team and the first group of marines were sent through the gate, another two teams already getting ready to depart. Ronon had requested three teams: one to guard the gate, one to take out any resistance in the Genii base and one to protect John. A second medical team was prepping just in case it was needed. At the other end, they wasted no time. Jennifer Keller found it difficult to take on board what Ronon was saying and privately doubted that John had been 'dead' as he suggested. It didn't really matter, anyway. From the sound of his injuries, he would need to be handled very carefully, if she were not to have to operate at the scene, but even she was unprepared for the little tableau she saw as she ran into the torture room.
John was lying, still and pale, his head in Teyla's lap and Rodney was leaning against the far wall, shock and disbelief etched onto his features. Ronon paused behind her before stepping forward and standing protectively over his friend and mentor. In the centre of the picture was the awful knife, deep in John's stomach; already drying blood had seeped from the wound and pooled deeply around his middle, shiny and slick on the dark floor. There was evidence too that he'd taken a considerable beating, with a nasty swelling over his left cheek bone and deep wounds across his back and arms. To one side was the prone figure of a tall woman, a grimace of anger on her face as though stopped in the process of some awful act. Jennifer ran to his side and felt his pulse. Though thready, it was beating regularly and yet all her medical training told her that he should not be alive. 'Right, let's see what we can do to stabilise him so that we can get him out of here.' She fell back on all her expertise. 'I want a blood transfusion straight away, and a saline drip please? We'll bind the weapon and the wound so that we can move him. I really don't want to operate in these dirty conditions if I can help it. We also need morphine. He may be unconscious, but he could well be suffering here.'
Within ten minutes she had stabilised him as much as she felt was possible and he was placed carefully and tenderly on a stretcher. They were just about to head out when Teyla noticed something glimmering in the dust of a dark corner and leant down to pick it up. It was John's ring, the one she had helped Cat choose what seemed like an eternity ago. Carefully, she put it in her pocket, hoping that she would see the day when he would wear it proudly around his neck again and she cursed the woman lying on the ground next to them, still unconscious from the blast of Ronon's gun. Knowing John, she understood what pain it would have given him to have the Athosian ring taken from him and, though generally a gentle soul and kind of heart, she wanted nothing more than to kill the woman. No. Her time would come, and she sincerely hoped that it would be at the hands of her best friend. For now, they would focus on getting John safely home. She would leave the marines to deal with Charel and the Genii left on the base.
The next was not easy. It wasn't difficult to get volunteers to carry John. Every one of the men wanted to help, to take their commander to safety. Ronon and even Rodney were also desperate to carry him, not wanting to let him out of their sight. In the end, four marines carried the stretcher, Rodney and Teyla at the front and Ronon at the back guarding the rear and the painstaking walk to the surface began. Every jolt and every little shift in level could have been fatal. All the time, John remained peacefully still, as though in some kind of trance. All were worried about the steep steps to the surface and how they would get the stretcher and its occupant safely to the top.
'Okay!', said Ronon from the front. 'Here we go. I'll take the back, two of you steady the middle of the stretcher and two plus Rodney and Teyla front. With all his strength and a determination that his friend should come to no more harm, he virtually pushed the stretcher to the surface by himself and within minutes they were safely heading towards the gate, protecting John from the harsh weather conditions on the surface.
'Ronon, Rodney, you go through the gate with John, I will check on Cat and let her know what is happening. She must be desperately anxious.' Teyla ran towards the jumper, anxious to let her friend know that John was alive. Behind her came the familiar whooshing sound of the gate opening and the wet plop as the medical team took its charge back to the relative safety and security of Atlantis. She tried not to worry about what might happen next, putting all thoughts to one side, unwilling to dwell upon the dangers that John had yet to face or to think about the strange events in the Genii stronghold. In a different time, with different circumstances, she knew that she and John might well have been lovers and she held for him a deep affection that went way beyond mere friendship, but had never quite crossed the boundary into passion. His ability to stay alive, to fight through seemingly impossible odds and come out smiling at the other end had been her rock for many years. Back on Atlantis when she believed he'd finally gone, her grief had been impossible to bear and she now was determined to hold onto the tiny thread of hope that he might still live. Anything else, she had decided, was impossible.
While the rescue had been taking place, a small medical team were having a puzzling dilemma of their own. It wasn't that anyone had forgotten Cat, it was just that it had been assumed that she would be safely protected within the square solidity of the jumper and everyone knew that she would want John to be their priority. They expected her to be anxiously waiting, yes, but what they found was a prostrate Cat, lying on her back on the floor of the jumper, eyes tightly closed. Nothing they could do woke her up and her condition was causing real concern. There were no obvious injuries, but her heart rate was erratic and thready, and there was evidence of rapid eye movement behind the closed eye-lids, as though she were dreaming vividly.
Teyla took in the scene in front of her. As one who had been through many strange events, her belief boundaries were way more stretched than the medics who were trying vainly to wake Cat up and she began to grasp the significance of what she saw, an understanding much assisted by the almost matching expression on Cat's still face, pale and strained, to that of John's as he was carried through the gate. Somehow, some way, the two were linked and she knew instantly that they had to take Cat back to Atlantis as soon as possible to be close to her husband. If she had sensed John's dying breaths, she might well have reached out with her mind and have tried to stop him going and, if that were the case, then distance might be important, but there was also a terrible danger that if one died, the other might too, and that would mean the loss of more than two lives.
'Quickly,' she insisted, 'we must take Doctor Sheppard back to Atlantis immediately. Please do not ask me why now: we have no time to lose.'
Woolsey waited anxiously for the return of the teams. He knew how much John Sheppard meant to the Atlantis population and how important he was to the whole expedition and, damn it, he had also become important to him, as a friend and as his 2ic. The loss had been felt so deeply through the city that a shadow of deep sadness had crept through every corridor and very corner. Tensely, he watched the medical team return through the gate with their precious cargo; even from his vantage point he was able to see the knife tightly bound, giving the uncomfortable impression that John was pinned by it to the stretcher below.
Just as the gate shut down behind them, Jennifer Keller shouted and the stretcher was lowered in a careful rush. 'He's stopped breathing. Quickly, bag him.' Desperately she worked on her patient, trying to breathe once more into the pale and lifeless form. At the same time the gate dialled again and an urgent message came through from Teyla.
'We must bring Doctor Sheppard back to Atlantis now. I am afraid that Colonel Sheppard will not survive so far away from her. Please, hurry.'
They clung to each other tightly, the distant door pulling him towards it like a powerful magnet. Her arms were numb with effort and she could feel his hands grabbing her back, imprinting finger marks in her skin. Suddenly, he let go and they were lifted from the ground, the invisible force holding them in the air for the briefest of moments, before drawing them towards the exit. At first, she refused to let go and then she realised that she couldn't. Together they were dying, leaving the strange room to whatever lay beyond.
Without a moment's pause, Woolsey beckoned to Chuck to lower the shield and a second stretcher appeared through the blue puddle and was placed next to that of her husband's.
They noiselessly dropped to the ground, becalmed once more, only this time so close to the exit that she could almost reach out and touch it. She could feel his breath on her neck as he strained from the exertion of resistance and once more his arms tightened around her in the desperate cling for survival.
'Okay, don't tell me how, but he's breathing again. Let's get them both down to the infirmary. We must operate as soon as possible.' Side-by-side the two, no three, were rushed out of the gate-room, Ronon still at the rear of John's stretcher and Teyla with Cat, on the surface a strange and potentially tragic scene, yet the group friends and colleagues who accompanied them felt more hope than they had in days. There was something about the unity of expression that connected Cat and John which emitted a powerful sense of strength and resolve. Even Rodney, normally rigidly scientific in all things, sensed something else, something beyond the explicable. Mind you, after seven years in the Pegasus Galaxy, he had begun to realise that almost anything was possible.
The scene in the infirmary was both familiar and strange. Rodney sat on a chair next to Cat's bed, laptop in hand, desperately trying to occupy himself. While the priority was John's survival, his scientific curiosity was peaked and he had insisted that sensors were placed on their heads to monitor their brain waves. What he was recording astonished him. They matched perfectly, every peak and dip exactly the same and he knew that to be impossible. The only explanation was that they were telepathically linked, as one. Suddenly, he had a thought and rushed from the room to talk to one of the doctors. Within minutes they returned, and a baby monitor was set up next to Cat's bed. The nurses had checked her initially and confirmed that the heart beat was fine and strong, but he had another theory. Within minutes, the theory was confirmed. Before him was absolute scientific proof that the three were as one, their brains perfectly matched, unified in the battle for survival. Normally, Rodney Mckay would shout such a discovery from the highest tree top, but for once sense and sensitivity, and maybe just a little emotional exhaustion, overcame his ego and he quietly saved away his findings, to be revealed at a more appropriate moment.
Teyla, while desperately worried about John, was on the other side of Cat, quietly stroking her arm and watching her face. Every now and then there would be little tremors across Cat's features as though some effort was taking place and then she would relax again. Only once had she shown more expression, her face contorting with what appeared to be pain, followed by a very familiar stubborn determination so characteristic of her, then had relaxed back its almost eerie calm. It was almost mesmerising, watching her, as though Teyla could somehow understand John's condition by watching these, often miniscule, shifts. A nurse stayed by the bed, frequently checking Cat's pulse and respiration and monitoring the life inside her.
Ronon paced the far end of the room in hyper-active exhaustion, unable to relax until there was some definite outcome. It had been three hours since John had gone into the operating theatre. He, too, had half an eye on Cat, watching for some kind of clue to how his friend was doing, dreading every over-long intake of breath that might signify the end of both. Just as he felt ready to collapse, leaning up against the wall, the doors were flung open and Jennifer Keller arrived, taking off her mask as she did.
Quickly she allayed their fears. 'We managed to remove the knife and repair most of the damage. He's lost a lot of blood, but it was lucky we managed to transfuse when we did. The knife missed all vital organs, fortunately. Other than that, his cheekbone is broken and he won't be so pretty for a while and the wounds on his back and arms will probably fade to slight scars. We nearly lost him once, but that man is a fighter.'
'Or maybe he had some help?' Teyla looked at the peacefully sleeping face of Cat. She thought back to that moment when Cat appeared to struggle and fight against some invisible foe, and she knew that this had been the last crisis moment, when she had battled once more for his life.
John's bed was wheeled out of theatre and placed next to his wife's. It would be a while before he woke up, and his recovery would be long, but side-by-side they could find a way through the next few weeks.
There was a noise in the distance, a regular beep and, she was sure, a female voice. Imperceptibly, the need to hold onto John began to fade as the force that was pulling him out of the room abated, as a storm dies down. He gradually released his arms from around her and looked smilingly into her eyes, his hazel eyes glowing pale from the iridescent light that shone around them, then he cupped her chin in his hands and gently kissed her on the lips. As he did, the room faded away, to be replaced by the more familiar rain-forest greens of Atlantis' walls and the pungent odour of antiseptic peculiar to the infirmary.
Cat opened her eyes. It took a while for the world to focus and she was distantly aware of her name being called and a hand on her arm.
'Cat, it's Teyla. You are safe and in Atlantis.' Teyla touched her arm. 'Look, John is next to you. He is alive. You saved him.'
Slowly, Cat turned her head to the bed next to her. Though covered in bruising, with a spaghetti of wires attached to his torso and head, he was definitely alive and breathing, not even needing the artificial stimulation of a ventilator. She knew she was smiling, just as she knew the baby inside her was too, and she cried tears of relief and exhaustion, before she drifted into a natural and restful sleep.
Deep in the bowels of the city, Charel paced the cell, anger seeping from every pore of her body.
'It's not over yet,' she sneered, under her breath.
TBC
And it isn't over yet! Please R & R if you want. Constructive comments always appreciated.