A/N - me, a swan? Ah, go on! LOL

oooOOOooo

Jaan woke up dead today. There was no other explanation. He was floating, sprawled out on his back on a fluffy cloud. In his mind's eye, it was white and airy and perfect, not dark and downcast and ragged like he was. He found himself yielding to it, nestling in. And - nothing hurt him! Wow. It was just too wonderful to be true, though he knew it wouldn't last. Life wasn't like that, and somehow he doubted death was, either.

He usually slept in a crouch with his wings wrapped about him protectively, or in warmer weather, flat out on his belly, his wings draped about him loosely like a tossed blanket or even spread out if he happened to drop his guard in his sleep, but he never, ever slept on his back. Uh, except for just the once or twice when he'd made himself a bed of his own shed feathers stuffed inside a washed-up sack that'd once been filled with shipwrecked gourds. Those he turned into containers for drinking water, food and other supplies.

He'd slept well for months on that pristine beach beneath the stars, back when he was a beloved pet to a spoiled little seal pup; a prince. He wondered what happened to the kid after war broke out. He doubted his so-called royalty had served him well. There was no point in being special.

Special meant different.

Different meant drawing attention.

Drawing attention meant hurt.

He wished he knew what happened to Grrshilk and the other little seal kids, especially Princess Gwala, whom he'd come to know and love. The adults, not so much. They could rot for all he cared.

When he wasn't being beaten at first light into miserable awareness, he would simply wake up to a dayful of pain. Right now, he could feel - nothing at all. So this was what being dead felt like. He felt an overall lethargy, a numbness. His head was a little fuzzy, but that was okay. He could live with that. Or was it die? Still he followed his usual waking routine. It was ingrained after all. Was the afterlife really merely an extension of life? If it was, it was a damn nasty-assed trick.

Without opening his eyes, he tested his wrists and ankles. Right arm - check. Left arm - there was something there, maybe a chain. Aw, crap. Left leg - check. Right leg - check. He bunched the muscles between his shoulder blades, and felt a familiar tug. His wings were still there. Holy...

He tried to flex his flight feathers. Weird. They were there, but their movement was hampered. He guessed even heavenly clouds didn't always have the right give in them. But what of his left arm? Dare he take a peek, and risk his new owners knowing he was pretty much on the verge of wakefulness? But he was dead, wasn't he? Damn! This was downright problematic!

Jaan wriggled, checking over the rest of his body. Okay. Okay. So, his lower half was under a soft sheet. Great. So far, so good. Back to his left arm then. He drew in a slow, deep breath. He gingerly twisted his left wrist, first one way, then the other. He wriggled his fingers. Yep, his hand was still there. There was something sharp digging into the back of it, and a casement of some sort around his middle finger.

He struggled to control his breathing. He didn't want his latest owners to know he was remotely awake until he'd taken full stock of himself. Yep, if he was breathing, it meant he wasn't dead yet. That would totally suck ass and then some.

Jaan scrabbled his right hand against the cloud or whatever the freakin' hell it was. There was a familiar crunching sound beneath the fabric. Feathers. His? He was back with the seals of Mardol. Huh. He prayed their pointless war was over, and that they were in a magnanimous mood. He didn't get the infighting. Never did, never would. Seal, sea lion, walrus. Meh. Like he cared. They didn't all look the same, but he'd always wanted to tell them just that. Maybe now he'd get his chance. This time, he would insult them all every which way he could; their parentage, their sealhood, including the size of their flippers, which correlated with the inadequacy of their genitalia, and get them to kill him. There was no way he could go on like this. Not after…

Oh, holy f-

…the circus! Last he remembered, the roof had just caved in. He'd thought the place to be rock solid. He guessed those moles did, too. Talk about complacent. Jaan couldn't recall the outcome. Had he saved the vet? Karrowin? At least that. The stars had been within reach, but he'd forgone his own freedom to protect her.

So, what of him? Dare he ever open his eyes again? Was this some heavenly cloud, or an earthly sackful of feathers? There was only one way to find out.

Move it, Jaan!

He steeled himself, and peeked out through his eyelashes. Shoot, he could barely see. Yep, drugged. So what else was new? As soon as he could make out what creatures he was currently forced to deal with, he vowed to push their buttons big time, however many candles it took. Right now, he'd settle for being co-operative, get his bearings, work his way up to being fully dead before day's end. He'd already made it half way to oblivion, so why quit now?

What he opened his ears and eyes to was beyond belief. And this time, it was his own sordid mind responsible for his own torment. Did torture hold no bounds, that now he inflicted it upon himself during waking moments? This was worse than when he'd imagined his left hand being chomped off by the nastiest shark of them all.

Kolya.

He couldn't help but scream.

You torture yourself every day, Jaan…

oooOOOooo

"He's awake!"

"I'm not bloody surprised, Rodney, with you shrieking at the poor beggar like that. Kindly turn it down a notch or two, would you? To just below boiling point? Good man."

Carson Beckett knew Sod's Law aka Murphy's Law well. He would argue with Rodney McKay that it was truly the most immutable law of physics governing bloody well just about everything, but the daft man would rattle on about wormhole this and voodoo that pretty much ten to the dozen as if he weren't present even in the same building as Rodney, least of all in the same room.

Well, if empirical evidence were even remotely plausible in this instance, Sod's Law wickedly chose Rodney as the rescue team member to be there just as his latest patient woke. The poor lad was thrashing, wide-eyed. He was clearly utterly terrified.

"Aagh! No! I… I… "

"Calm down, son! You're fine! Or, you soon will be. Please, I'm a doctor!"

"Whuh? Not… a vet… then?"

"Och, no, laddie. Though I wouldn't ever turn down any living creature." Carson winced. Bad choice of words. It was meant to be reassuring, but at the way his patient turned his face away, and appeared to close down and clam up, he realized he'd most likely totally missed the mark. He wished Elizabeth were here. He tapped his earpiece.

"Doctor Weir to the infirmary. Our patient is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed." Carson winced once more. Sometimes his random attacks of foot-in-mouth disease were worse than Rodney's hourly bouts. Speaking of whom, he had a certain someone to chase off, which he did with alacrity.

"Ow! You pinched me!"

"Shut it!"

"Patient abuse!"

"So sue me, already. And right now, Rodney, oddly enough, you're not actually a patient, you're merely a visitor. Be off with you now then!" Carson still found himself scanning him broadly, and smiling fondly after him as he scuttled out the door like a goosed crab on a caffeine high.

He turned to his one and only patient. His latest. He now had to school his face to one of professional concern. He'd never had to tend a rescued captive with this level of chronic abuse. He'd heard over the months via their new, few and far-between allies in this galaxy of the poor wee lad who'd been missing from his home for two bloody decades. Over half his life, according to their sparse records. This was - now what did they call him - some such with two syllables. He consulted his chart, and frowned. He didn't attempt to pronounce it. Wouldn't. Too bloody Star Trek or Lord Of The Rings for his liking.

Since his arrival, he and his fellow Earthlings had all coolly called the poor beggar 'John'. Fair enough. The lad originated from a sheepherding clan as they called it hereabouts, which brought about no end of sick jokes and stick from Rodney, despite his attempts to salvage the situation by calling them shepherds. For want of a better name, they'd listed the lad as John Sheppard at Doctor Weir's suggestion. It was fitting enough, he supposed, until they actually located his people, and in the meantime, it gave a solid name to the face.

John Sheppard. Since his well dramatic arrival last evening, Atlantis was abuzz if not aglow, and his name had been on everyone's lips from dawn till dusk. Atlantis herself hummed. From the moment they'd brought him over the threshold, the city had become alive. Before that, she'd been a mere shell of a dwelling, just somewhere to take shelter from the elements, a roof over their heads, all her secrets stubbornly held back, clutched a memory to her breast so to speak as she spied the horizon through a telescope from her bedroom window, her long lost lover drowned at sea, never acknowledging that she might yet be a widow; a ghost. He was sorely tempted to call her Mrs Muir.

Right now then, there was heat and light and running water including toilets that flushed on a whim, and lovely, warm, non-intermittent showers, not to mention access to Ancient databases. Altantis was no longer a campsite. There was also a very welcome vibrancy, a certain vigor to daily life, a joy in every step, and they all now possessed just about almost everything they could ever have hoped for on this groundbreaking expedition to another galaxy. But the man who had unwittingly instigated it all perhaps even with the naivete of a child lay broken before him. Carson had thought he'd seen it all. Until now.

Elizabeth Weir fluttered in, in that jolly-hockeysticks, hurry-slowly demeanor of hers. Festina lente, he recalled from his schoolboy Latin. No wonder she was stick thin and sinuous. She clearly used up all her expendable energy juggling her calm, fluid grace with her propensity for striving against being untempered, highly strung, like a precocious, unbroken thoroughbred.

Elizabeth glanced at Carson, and he nodded. She wasted no time thereafter, reaching their poorly charge's bedside within seconds. John Sheppard had been stabilized, and now seemed alert enough, though his eyes looked glazed if not panicked and defensive. Carson would recheck his vitals shortly. Meanwhile, he'd let Elizabeth do her job, play the diplomat; work her magic. Maybe she could even calm him down, reassure him. He sensed a long road ahead.

Carson took himself off to read some ratty old Sunday newspaper he'd wrapped something or other in like fish and chips. The mundaneness of it anchored him. The fanciful side of him caused him to imagine two bottles of gold-top milk delivered on Atlantis's doorstep, with tiny, plain little sparrows pecking holes into the tops and taking their fill o' cream, and some desultory, tuneless whistle of the number one slot in the Top Ten as the post popped through the obligatory brass letterbox of Atlantis's perfect ticky-tacky front door.

Carson sighed. Those carefree days were long gone, and he knew without a doubt he'd never get them back. Not this side of life.

oooOOOooo

"John."

"Whuh?"

"I apologize for my familiarity. We know you in fact to be… Jo'uhn of the Shepherd Clan, listed as missing from - " She'd forgotten her paperwork. Shit. By which, of course, she meant shoot. "For a terribly long while." She fumbled, and rolled her right hand, and stressed over channeling Doctor Rodney McKay for the umpteenth time that day. "John is a… beloved name from our homeworld, and we easily resort to it. Take it as a term of endearment. Uhm, welcome to Atlantis." She rolled a limp-wristed hand, then stuffed both hands in her pockets.

"You… know me? Know of me?"

The man she'd just so casually named John like some pitiful rescue dog scanned her features earnestly. She felt more than a little guilty putting on her benign ambassadorial face, but it was for the best. For him. And, God help her, for the expedition as a whole. They couldn't afford to lose him. Not now, and certainly not to sheep herding. But given his clearly horrific past, how could she put across that he had intrinsic value as a human being, and was not merely being used as a tool for their own purportedly non-nefarious purposes? He'd been a slave, a servant, a circus act. For over twenty years.

Elizabeth gathered herself. And continued.

"Yes, John. We know you. Of you. Not you yourself per se, of course. Since our arrival here several… moons ago, we have managed to garner a list of the missing. We do search and rescue as well as outreach. You are our second major rescue. Our first was one Ronon Dex, a Satedan. He in turn was on your rescue team. Rescue. It's... what we do." She was uncertain as to why she felt the need to repeat herself. "So far, we have touched base with the Athosians, who - "

She didn't want to mention the Wraith. Not yet.

" - needed somewhere new and wholesome in which to thrive."

The man nodded slowly even as his eyes rolled back in his head. Despite that, Elizabeth realized she'd hit home. She scanned him from head to toe. It was hard not to stare at his appalling injuries. Doctor Beckett had done his usual exemplary job. This man, this lost soul they so casually deigned to call John Sheppard as if it was their God-given right to bandy names was covered in bright, ragged red sutures over seventy five percent of his body, but at least his skin now glowed, finally, though he still looked a little pale.

She struggled not to stare at his wings. It was beyond incredible, almost too far-fetched. They were dark, almost black. What was left of them. This John Sheppard held so much promise. He was quite possibly as close as they could get to being a full Ancient.

Whether black, white, brown, red, yellow, pink or even glow-in-the-dark, the Tau'ri possessed brilliant white wings to a man. And woman. Oh, sure, there was always the occasional off-white, apple-white, rose-white and even snow-white aka blue-white depending on whether you were American or Canadian, though she hardly remembered which way around it was, neither did she care. Carson Beckett had black tips to all his lovely blue-white feathers making him an instant hit with many of the women on the expedition. What with his bright blue eyes, dimples and delightful demeanor, the man was a winner. He'd been the one to discover and develop the ATA gene, plus the apparent correlation between that and wing color, however subtle. His findings had been enough to kickstart the expedition, gather gene bearers, inoculate the prevalent Non, which was successful in just under fifty percent, merely causing the tips of their flight feathers to grizzle a bit. Blink and you'd pretty much miss it. Like Rodney's. His wings were, what they called in the trade, 'dirty blond'.

It was like the before and after of a laundry detergent commercial only in reverse. A standard joke, designed to offset any sense of failure. But nothing could awaken Atlantis despite their fullest attention and devotion, and they'd already been there for several months.

All it took in the end was a single, almost black feather, fluttering benignly to the floor.

Their precious charge, John Sheppard, was recuperating on the thickest eiderdown they could appropriate. It was either that or suspension on a water bed. They'd all discussed it, and opted for the eiderdown, suspecting he might need the comfort of it, given the wretched state in which they'd found him.

John Sheppard. She repeated his name again and again in her head. It flowed. She almost prayed - no, actually prayed! - he didn't revert to being Jo'uhn of some clan of sheep herders. If she repeated it long enough, there was a chance his name would become concrete, written in stone. Significant.

John Sheppard. John Sheppard. John Sheppard. She'd said it three times like Bloody Mary.

Elizabeth realized John Sheppard had floated off somewhere, hopefully somewhere restful and healing. She couldn't help but watch his right hand as it twisted into the fabric even as he dozed. He frowned in his sleep, and even pouted and whimpered like a little boy recovering from some standard childhood illness under the watchful eyes of concerned parents. It brought a lump to her throat.

She'd read the reports, seen the before shots. The evidence via preliminary reports was overwhelming. He'd been treated like an animal for over half his life, sorely abused and maltreated, tossed from pillar to post; sold on. But when she saw the actual photographic evidence of the straits in which they'd found him, one partially severed wing draped over another sentient being not of their kind, it brought tears to her eyes. She would have to thank Lorne later for having the presence of mind to take an evidential snapshot.

There was something truly special about John, and it was not just his uniquely strong ATA gene. This was going to be an exceptionally tough one to handle, perhaps even one of her toughest assignments to date. And to think she once thought heading an expedition to another galaxy would be taxing. When it came right down to it, it was dealing with people, but that was what politics was all about; the root of the word itself.

John Sheppard groaned, and cried out, arching his back, digging his head and heels, and even banging his fists into the softness of the eiderdown.

"Pl-ease d-don't do that… again," he whispered, his face contorting, his eyes closed the while, and his skin glistening with sweat. "I... I... "

"Oh, my God. Carson. Doctor Beckett!"

Elizabeth was ushered out of the ward. The staff was upon John in an instant. Did nurses come in flurries, flocks, gaggles, lightning flashes or Volkswagen loads?

She spied another dark feather on the infirmary floor and, before anyone could berate her for being a ghoul, she snatched it up, tucked it down the front of her shirt for safekeeping, and scurried back to her office, not once looking over her shoulder, though ghostly fingers dispensing endless prickly goosebumps played freely up and down her neck like a cello virtuoso.

She startled as the ambient light first brightened then dimmed with her passage. She rummaged down her front, then pulled out the feather once she reached some annexe. The lighting flared far beyond normal wattage, almost like a distress signal or even fireworks against a night sky.

Elizabeth tucked the feather back into her shirt, and pulled her collar tight. She shuddered, and rubbed the back of her neck. As the lighting flickered like a guttering candle then sputtered out in her wake, she wondered what power this John Sheppard held over Atlantis, or even she over him.

oooOOOooo