A/N – Hello again! Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday – you're the best readers I could hope for, and I'm so grateful for each and every one of you. As a reward for your sheer loveliness, please accept this newest chapter. I hope you like it! Enjoy!

~ Alone ~

Part Thirteen

"No…" John moaned. His sweat soaked body twisted and turned on the floor, but he couldn't break free. "Stop. Don't leave me…"

The wind roared through the trees, but even that wasn't loud enough to hide the cackling laughter of his friends as they waved at him mockingly from afar. They were leaving…they were leaving him alone…

"See, no one wants to be around you, Johnny boy," came his father's voice in his ear. He couldn't see the old man, but he knew it was him. "You have the unfortunate habit of causing trouble where it's not wanted. Where you're not wanted."

Teyla joined in. "You're not wanted…"

"No…" John clenched his eyes tight, but couldn't drown out their voices. They were closing in…

"He's right," Holland told him, his bloodied face flashing across John's fevered mind. "My death was your fault."

"And mine," added Ford.

This time a memory flashed across his vision. A young man, overcome by a drug far more powerful than anything found on Earth. John's body began to shake. Was that his fault too…?

Then Elizabeth's face swam into view. "And mine, John. Make no mistake; if you hadn't been on this expedition, I might still be alive."

"I definitely would be," Colonel Sumner suddenly added. "You killed me, Sheppard. You killed so many of us…"

"No," John moaned, twisting and turning as he tried to escape the ghosts and their accusations. He mumbled to himself, "You're dead. You're all dead…"

"Yes, John," Elizabeth said. "We're dead. And it's all your fault. No wonder your team haven't come back for you. You're just not worth it…"

"No…" John mumbled. His body shifted again on the floor, sweat dripping down his forehead. He was hot, he was cold; it hurt...

Please don't leave me…

Please come back…

Teyla joined in. "Why would we come back for you? Your father is right; you're not worth it, John. You're not wanted."

"Sheppard! Wake up…"

No wonder your friends haven't come back for you. You're just not worth it…

You're not wanted…

"Sheppard!"

"No," John repeated. Suddenly he could feel a hand – a real hand - on his shoulder and he jerked it away violently. "No!"

Not worth it…

Not wanted…

Please don't leave me…

"Please," John moaned.

"Sheppard!"

"No!" John shouted, snapping his eyes open with a cry. His chest was heaving with the sheer effort of trying to catch his breath, and he sat up suddenly, ignoring the way his vision swam as he desperately tried to pull himself back to reality. He could still hear the voices of the dead haunting him, so it took a few seconds to work out that they were fading away. They were leaving him…

Please don't leave me…

"No," John mumbled, shaking his head. He had no idea what was going on. No idea what was real, and what was fake…

A hand touched his shoulder again, and he flinched, immediately scrambling backwards away from the threat with all the desperation of a feral animal. His body ached with the aftermath what felt like a hell of an illness, but he moved all the same, only stopping when his back hit the metal side of the jumper. He had to get away, he had to get away…

"John…?"

Except, a minute later, when he had calmed down and had actually taken the time to actually look at what had touched him, he realised that it wasn't a threat after all…

"Teyla?" he croaked out. He blinked, trying to get rid of the fogginess left over from the nightmare. She was here? So it hadn't all been a dream? She'd come back…

He shook his head, but it didn't help, only serving to make him even more dizzy and disorientated than he already was. He just didn't understand what the hell was going on…

"John," Teyla sighed in relief. He could see tears brimming in her eyes and could feel the same in his own. "We are so happy that you are back with us."

It was only then that John noticed that they weren't alone. He dragged his tired eyes around the jumper and realised that the rest of his team were there too. Ronon, Rodney, Lorne, Teyla and Carson. They'd come back for him…

Please don't leave me…

"You guys…really here?" he asked, even though he knew that this time they were, closing his eyes as a dizzy spell passed. He still felt sticky and hot, and his body ached like he'd been through ten rounds with a professional boxer, but he felt a hell of a lot better than he last remembered feeling. When he had been dying…

John shook his head, trying to dislodge the thought. He was better now and that was all that mattered. Carson's doing probably…

"Of course we're here," Rodney told him with a frown. Then the scientist turned to glare at Carson. He pointed an accusing finger at the Scotsman. "You told us that he had a fever, not that he was brain-damaged."

"I'm not brain-damaged," John immediately said, his voice croaky from lack of use. At least he didn't think he was brain-damaged. He blinked heavily, trying to get his vision to clear. Then the other part of the sentence sank in. "Fever?"

Well that explained the achiness, the almost dying…

"A bad one," Carson confirmed quietly. "It appears that some of the local bacteria finally got the better of you. It was touch and go for a while there, son."

"You saved me," John said quietly. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair and tried to stop his hands from shaking. He still felt…off, but he thought that probably had more to do with sleeping rough than anything else. It was hard to feel good when his body had been through so much over the last few weeks. Beatings, hungry, thirst, loneliness…

But he was alive. He might still be a little bit flush with the aftermath of the fever, but he was flush with life as well.

He was alive…

"Like I said, it was touch and go," Carson replied. "But you're going to be okay."

"If you say so," John muttered. He felt a cough bubbling in his chest but he tried to hold it in for reasons even he didn't truly understand. He didn't want his team to worry. He didn't want them to think he was weak. That he wasn't worth it...

The high of waking up alive was starting to wear off already. Even though he was getting better, he still felt like crap, and the remnants of his nightmare were making it hard for him to work out what was reality and what wasn't.

And he didn't even want to think about what was going to happen next. When they went back to Atlantis, and everything had to go back to normal. Except they'd left him, and he wasn't sure, no matter how hard he tried, that he could ever forget that…

Even if they hadn't wanted to, they'd still left him behind.

Please don't leave me…

"Hey, Sheppard," Rodney said, a concerned look on his face. "You okay?"

"I don't need a shrink, Rodney," John snapped, clenching his fist. He'd got used to not having to deal with people over the last few weeks; it was harder than he'd imagined to see his friends again. It was getting harder by the second. "I don't need a mother either. I'm fine."

Of course he wasn't even close to fine, but he didn't want them to know that. Seeing their pity would only make it harder since that they had been the ones to cause this in the first place.

"Right, of course. So…uh," Rodney began awkwardly. "Nice place you've got here."

John shrugged roughly, trying to clear his head a little bit. Instead of looking at his friends, he diverted his gaze to the jumper instead. It was dark, cold, and there were parts all over the place from his attempts at trying to fix it. The last thing it was, was nice….

John frowned. Still, he hadn't meant to snap at Rodney; he knew the scientist tending to spout more bullshit small tax when he was anxious. It was how the man was, but John still felt the bubble of anger that was rising up through his stomach. He tried to push it away though, a part of him well aware that they wouldn't have left him behind without a good reason.

Not worth it…

Not wanted…

John decided to try and make an effort.

"Yeah, well it's a work in progress," he told them gruffly. "I was thinking of putting in a rug, or you know, fitting a sky-light or something. Let a bit of light in maybe."

"Right," Rodney agreed awkwardly. "A little light can go a long way."

"Right," John agreed.

John shifted slightly in the uncomfortable silence that followed. He'd spent weeks wishing that his friends would come back for him, and yet now that they had, he had no idea what to say to them.

A part of him wanted them to go away again until he was ready to face them…

"So, I see you've kind of got a bit of a Tarzan thing going on," Rodney said, clearly trying to lighten the mood as he nodded towards John's slightly longer, more out of control hair and his thick beard. Unwilling to ask for a mirror, John looked down at his body, only to find that he was shirtless and covered in one of the emergency blankets. With his no doubt wild, dark hair and his bare torso, John could kind of see what Rodney meant.

Five weeks wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but John guessed that his appearance had changed quite a bit in that time. Hell, he'd changed quite a bit…

Rodney continued along his Tarzan tangent, obvious to John's growing internal distress. "I mean, you're living off the land, and you've even been adopted by the local wildlife…"

John watched as Rodney glanced nervously over to Jett, who was watching intently, almost as if he was waiting for his master's signal to attack. John almost smiled. Almost.

"Feel a bit more like Tom Hanks in Castaway actually," Sheppard replied hoarsely, tiredly rubbing at his beard. "All I'm missing is Wilson."

"And the beach," Rodney added, gesturing towards the heavy, never-ending rain outside.

"And the beach," John agreed.

The uncomfortable silence soon returned, and John still didn't know what to say to break it. His team were looking at him intently, almost as if they were afraid he would disappear, but something about that didn't make sense. The words from his nightmare still hadn't left him, and he wondered if that meant that he knew deep down that they were true.

Not worth it...

Not wanted...

If they cared so much, why the hell hadn't they come back for him sooner…?

Please don't leave me…

John decided to bite the bullet and just ask.

"Guys, uh, not that I don't, you know, appreciate you being here and all," John began, "But what the hell took you so long?"

The silence that followed was almost painful.

John chose not the look any of his friends in the eye, afraid of what he might see if he did.

Not worth it...

Suddenly Jett, who had been watching the interactions with mild curiosity up until now, finally shrugged himself away from Teyla's gentle hand and lumbered over to John's position on the floor. Then the dog dropped beside John, and once he was comfortable again, burrowed his furry head into John's side until the man began to stroke him. John smiled.

"Thanks, buddy…" he muttered.

This time the silence that followed was a little less uncomfortable, but Teyla broke it anyway.

"We've been looking for you all this time, John," Teyla said softly. "We never stopped looking, not even for one moment, but we had feared…"

"That I'd already be dead," John finished bluntly. Jett jerked slightly at the harsh words coming from his master, but John calmed him with another stroke behind his ears. John knew he was being hard on his friends, but he also knew that what he was saying was right. The truth was, but for a hell of a lot of luck, he would have been dead within the first few hours of being abandoned by his friends…

"We're very glad that you are not," Teyla told him quietly.

She seemed to be telling the truth, but John still struggled to believe it. The Teyla from his nightmares crossed his vision for a moment, and her words rang in her ears.

"Why would we come back for you? Your father is right; you're not worth it, John."

"How'd you do it?" Ronon asked suddenly, and John knew instinctively that he wasn't asking for the ins and outs of what he had done to survive in the last few weeks. He was asking how…

"If you're going through hell, keep going," John muttered almost absently. Rodney looked up at him in surprise. John shrugged. "Winston Churchill. Figured the same might applied to someone in hell as well. Probably the only reason I'm still around."

Even that hadn't been enough really. John remembered how close he'd come to dying, and he also remembered how...relieved he'd been. Dying really hadn't been all that bad in the grand scheme of things...

"Sheppard, look," Rodney began awkwardly. "You've got to know; we didn't mean to leave you here. We were…drugged, we think. We definitely didn't know what we were doing. We…well, as soon as we worked out what had happened, we started to look for you. Haven't stopped actually…until now, for obvious reasons of course – "

"What Rodney is trying to say, John," Teyla interjected, shooting a look over to the bumbling scientist, "Is that we are sorry for any harm we caused you, whether we had control over our actions or not."

"Look," John said, weakly raising a hand to stall any further apologies from his team. "I'm not going to lie and say it was a nice feeling being left by you guys, but I know it wasn't…you doing it. So you don't need to apologise. Anyway, you came back for me."

But even as he said that, his mind niggled at him, the nightmare still fresh; still real...

Not worth it...

Not wanted...

"Yeah, about that," Rodney began. "Uh, well, we did originally plan to fly in and save your sorry ass from the hounds of hell that apparently live on this planet too…"

John had a bad feeling all of a sudden. "But…?"

"But we might have...crashed here instead," Rodney said quickly.

"Crashed?"

"Yeah," Rodney replied uncertainly. "It wasn't part of the plan, obviously."

"You crashed one of my jumpers?" Sheppard asked. He wondered why he was fixated on that one particular fact when clearly there were more pressing issues. Maybe he still didn't want to know more…

"Yeah."

"And…?" Sheppard prompted reluctantly. "I'm sensing there's more?"

"Maybe…"

"Rodney…"

"The Daedalus is in orbit, but our communications went out when we crashed, so they haven't got any way to know that we're okay. And since we agreed that they wouldn't send any more people down if we lost contact, help won't be coming any time soon."

"Spell it out for me, Rodney."

Rodney held his gaze. "For the foreseeable future, we're stuck here, Sheppard. Just like you."

A/N - Well, how was it? You didn't think it was going to be easy, did you? I realise that John's thoughts probably seem to be all over the place in this chapter, but that was deliberate on my part. He'swoken up from a nightmare to find that the subjects of his nightmare are right in front of him. That's not an easy situation for anyone, especially someone who was expecting to die not all that long ago. I hope that it makes sense, anyway. If not, let me know! The next chapter hopefully won't take too long, but I know better than to promise anything. For now, and until next time (whenever that might be), thanks for reading!