And here goes the last chapter...
Again, a great many thanks to the awesome AAEdmonds, she really put a lot of work into this and should be worshipped.

Three

"Attention, Colonel Sheppard requested immediately in the Brig. Repeat- Attention, Colonel Sheppard requested immediately in the Brig!"

John swallowed the last bite of what passed as food in the mess hall and tapped his earpiece. "This is Sheppard, what's going on?"

"Sir, I think the Wraith is...well, is dying."

"He's been dying since it was known to him Atlantis wouldn't be making the damned return trip to the Pegasus!" Instantly Sheppard felt a stab of guilt for snapping so harshly at the young Marine who couldn't change the whole situation any more than he could, which frustrated him even moreso. It was certainly most unbecoming, especially as a superior officer, to take his anger regarding Todd's quandary out on the man. John rubbed his temples, both in a vain attempt to ward off the migraine he knew was coming and trying to contemplate the best way to give an apology without losing face. However, it seemed the Marine had thicker skin than John had assumed as the outburst was ignored completely.

"I realize that, sir. What I mean is, well, it appears as if he is taking his actual, literal last breaths."

"What?!" John had subconsciously dreaded this moment and he had no idea what the hell to do about it. He ran from the mess hall as if the devil were on his heels, instantly calculating the quicker route to the brig while hoping that no distracted scientists stepped into the hallway in front of him because there was no way he would be able to stop. Yet even as he raced towards the brig, something inside of him screamed bloody murder for him to just turn around, lock himself up in his room and ignore what was going on.

Sheppard's earpiece came to life once more, "Sir? You know how bugs turn on their back and pull their legs in when they die?" the Marine's explanation continued, even though John's last exclamation hadn't exactly been a call for any elaboration. "Well sir, he's not doing that exactly, he's more laying on his side with his arms and legs drawn in, kind of like a fetus, but I still can't shake the feeling that it's basically the same thing..."

"I'm almost there!" The transporter doors barely had time to open as John squeezed through them and shot towards the brig door, not stopping to listen if the Marine had any further observations, he simply brushed past him and burst into the cell. On the bed against the far wall, Todd the Wraith lay. He had indeed curled up on his side and that stopped John dead in his tracks, leaving him briefly frozen both in motion and thought as the sight just seemed so impossible. John had never imagined seeing a Wraith like that, least of all Todd. He steadily crept forward, his eyes certainly seeing but his brain not quite able to process the situation, his pounding heartbeat thundering in his ears not even registering.

Todd lay on his left side facing the door, his head nestled into the palm of his left hand while his feeding hand lay balled up in a loose fist close to his mouth. His eyes were closed, and John nearly panicked believing death had come for the Wraith prior to his arrival if it weren't for a tiny white lock of hair that moved ever so gently following an exhale. His elbows were tightly tucked towards his torso, his knees bent sharply and were drawn up too, but not touching his chest as his arms were in the way. Yet it didn't seem that pain or suffering had caused this position. The Wraith's face expressed nothing but serenity and peace and that was probably why, despite having curled his towering, proud form into such a remarkably small ball, Todd did not look pathetic or feeble at all. The eerily calm expression on his face gave the impression that he had simply finished a full cycle, that he had gone from his birth to the closest thing to a natural death a Wraith could experience.

"John Sheppard..." John jumped as Todd rasped, once sharp, yellow eyes slowly opening to reveal that they were cloudy and staring into nothing at all. John's mouth opened but he could not form words, shock and distress coloring his features as a quiet, "Uh..." left him. A rusty chuckle met John's reaction and the Wraith continued, everything but mouth still as if frozen in time. "Friend and food, both there, both there. Does this make it easier or harder, I wonder? No, I cannot decide. I used to be able to decide, conclude, determine, so much so often...but now, now no more, now no more..."

There was something seeping into Todd's voice that Sheppard really didn't like. It was an absent-mindedness, a delirium even. It whispered that death was stalking in slowly, beginning by dismantling that old and cunning mind. John tried in vain to ignore it.

But what was even worse was the noun that Todd had used to describe him. He simply could not ignore that, after it left Todd's lips it hit John like a kick to the stomach, wherein it remained as a heavy stone in his gut. It could not be, how could the Wraith believe that? Especially right now, as John just sat by allowing Todd to slowly succumb to starvation? How could a friend sit idly by and allow for such a transgression to occur?

"I..." John was truly at a loss. What could he do now? What could he say?

"But one final decision, perhaps?" Todd talked on like Sheppard had never attempted to speak. "Could I decide to pass wearing my own clothing?" His feeding hand slowly moved to pluck at the cuff of the grey jump suit that he had been forced to wear, no one trusting that all of his weaponry and possible weaponry could be entirely removed from the clever Wraith's attire. "These are so very human, but I am Wraith. I am Wraith..."

And a Wraith will always die as Wraith and Wraith only, never as anything less.

John swallowed with difficulty, the atmosphere in the cell felt oppressing as the moment he'd been dreading seemed to finally have come.

"I'll get them, I'll be right back, you just wait a minute, I'll be right back..." He darted out of the brig, towards the storage room down the hall where Todd's clothing had been kept. Briefly John wondered if he would find the Wraith dead upon his return, that perhaps Todd had made his last decision deeming that the absence of a friend during his passing would be more bearable than food so close to him when he was starving to death.

As he stepped back into the brig, John was once again frozen in thought and motion as Todd unfolded his curled up body, rising to his feet in an oddly mechanic yet fluid motion that had John step back at the last moment, the hair on his neck up. The scene looked like a body rising out of nothing but its owner's sheer stubbornness, a marionette pulled up by strings made from the strength of mind only. The Colonel had a feeling that the latter explained it perfectly. Todd put every zombie, mummy and even every ghost to shame as he slowly held his hand out in a way that might as well be beckoning for John's soul, rather than his what-they-hoped-was-livestock-leather coat. Eyes that appeared to have seen nothing mere minutes ago now had focus and clarity that bore straight through John's head as their eyes met, and the fact that Todd was one of the deadliest creatures mankind had encountered had never before been so crystal clear to him.

Standing tall, proud and ever stoic when he should not, when he could not, when it was nigh impossible, Todd gently took his clothing from Sheppard's outstretched arms. The Colonel saw fit to give the Wraith at least a small amount of privacy by turning his back to him. He felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck and all instincts screamed at him not to turn his back to a hungry Wraith but he needed a moment to ground himself and that was best possible when not looking at the eerie picture that had him want to bolt like a spooked horse.

After a few tense moments there was a rustling behind him and finally a quiet, "I give my thanks to you, John Sheppard."

When John turned back around Todd had already, with alien quickness and unsettlingly quietness, curled up on the bed again, as if he had never risen to fulfil the last task he had set out for himself. John took several steps towards bed, watching the Wraith close his weary eyes, "You're welcome." John was barely able to get the words out but he truly meant it. It was all he could do.

"Sheppard!" The Colonel's brain did not register McKay over his earpiece, he was too busy watching as Todd took one more breath and then one more. Each exhale was growing agonizingly slower and the time before each inhale was growing longer, so much so that John was certain each breath was the last even if he couldn't bring himself to hope that it finally would be. His hand had drifted to the butt of his pistol, finger resting at the side of the trigger for several minutes, perhaps longer. He could put an end to this needless suffering but he selfishly wanted Todd to live. He could not accept that it was over already, he simply refused to accept it. Always trying to save everyone and everything. Bits of memories from Afghanistan flitted into his thoughts briefly before more solid memories from the many missions in Pegasus. Suddenly he felt the need to turn the barrel of his pistol towards himself for his inability to bring everyone home that had gone out with him.

"Sheppard?" "

"Sheppard!"

"JOHN!"

"WHAT?!" he snapped, his hand clamped on his gun, with one half of his brain still wondering how in the hell the death of one Wraith could bring such inner turmoil like it had while the other half told him that there were still people that relied on him, even needed him, such as the obnoxious scientist screaming in his ear.

"John! She's going back! The city will be cleared to lift off within the next day!" McKay's overly-caffeinated gleeful excitement had clashed so heavily with his pensive and somber mood it left him dazzled and confused for a moment. "Wait...what?"

"Atlantis is going back to Pegasus! In less than. Twenty. Four. HOURS! Start packing, Colonel!"

The familiar, exasperated tone drove it home. For a brief moment he was flooded with as much enthusiasm as McKay had been. Until he remembered where he was. At the side of yet another friend in their death bed.

"McKay! I need you to get a stasis pod ready, RIGHT NOW!"

"Huh? Wha-"

Sheppard had to drive it home to the astrophysicist hard and fast, "If Atlantis goes back Todd goes with us, his chance of survival goes from zero at the hands of the bastards of the IOA to whatever we NEED to do to help! Get that pod ready YESTERDAY, McKay!"

He knew that McKay understood the harshness in his tone near the end of the order required the utmost urgency and was nothing to balk at, so Sheppard wasted no time waiting for a response from Rodney as he shook the Wraith's shoulder with one hand while tapping is earpiece with his other, switching it to city-wide, not having the patience to go through various channels to get what was needed. He spoke as quick as he could without jumbling the words, "Attention! This is Colonel Sheppard, I Doctors Beckett and Keller to the stasis room right now! I repeat, I need Doctors Beckett and Keller in the stasis chamber room, not STAT, NOW!" In mere moments, thoughts that had been hopelessly jumbled were instantaneously crystal clear again. He had a task, he had a very real chance to save someone and damned if he would let it slip through his fingers. "Todd! Todd, come on! Did you hear? Atlantis is going back to Pegasus! You're going home, you've just have to stay with me and make it to a stasis pod, come on now!"

Todd neither moved nor reacted in any way that showed he was conscious. A slow, raggedy breath told John that the Wraith still lived but by how much he was unsure. "Come on!" He rolled Todd onto his back and shook him as his voice raised, refusing to sound pleading and refusing to accept that the Wraith's time was up. Todd had just managed to put his clothes back on so he could get to the stasis chamber room, right? Or...did that action truly burn what energy he had left? He cursed at the vain Wraith. "Just to the damn stasis pod, get up and get your green ass moving!"

There was still no reaction and he was about to tap his radio and order a stretcher to the brig when Todd's lips barely parted, "It is too late, John Sheppard. You may give that which is left of me to the stars..." It was barely a whisper, and it hit John like a bucket of freezing cold water, almost annihilating the little fire of hope that had sparked within him. Almost.

"Oh, no! The hell we will!" He didn't have the slightest clue concerning Wraith burial rituals, if there were even such things among a race that seemed eternal, but his gut told him that Todd's words where equivalent to, "You can now throw me into the pit that is to be my grave."

He knelt next to the bed and pulled at his shirt, the collar ripping open and two buttons flew off in opposite directions as Todd shakily exhaled one last time. "You are gonna make it, do you hear me? You will make it and you will owe me a damn lot, you remember what I told you? We don't leave people behind, Todd! You will help us make Pegasus a better place!" He grabbed the Wraith's feeding hand. "Ten years, Todd, ten years! Maybe fifteen. And you're gonna give them back, you hear me! Todd, dammit!" But waiting for an answer was wasting precious little time. He turned to the guards that had rushed in as he had knelt by the bed and grabbed the Wraith's hand. "If I look more than fifteen years older and he doesn't stop shoot him, but not before that, do you understand? That's a direct order, Marines!"

"But sir-"

Their protests mingled with his own scream and the roar of a feeding Wraith.

A cacophony of sound and pain whirled around him like a hurricane, threatening to kill him. In some ways it was worse than the hunger pain he had experienced in Todd's mind but in other ways it paled in comparison against that burning. And then, as soon as it began, it was over. He was suddenly aware that he was panting and crumbling from his knees down to all fours, but the hand that he had pressed to his chest yanked out of his loose grip and grabbed his shoulder to hold him up. As his gaze shifted up again, yellow, reptile eyes found his and looked at him with so much confusion, he laughed. It was a weak, raspy sound but it confused Todd even more so and that made it even better. "You're the one who called me friend first, now deal with the consequences!" he managed to croak out to the bewildered alien.

The Wraith cocked his head to the side, then, slowly, a familiar and even welcomed at this point, sharp-toothed, predatory grin spreading on his face. "Did I now? I must have been...delusional."

"Maybe. Does that mean you take it back?" For a moment, John dreaded the answer, fearing that he had fallen into a trap, had fallen for the deceptions of an ancient creature that thought compassion was a weakness to be exploited and had expertly maneuvered him right where it wanted him.

Todd let go of his shoulder and stood, looming over Sheppard's kneeling form as rifles clicked and were readied for fire. He held out his right hand, a gesture completely innocent coming from a human, nothing but an offer to help John up. But, the blood still on his slitted palm betrayed that innocence. This was by no means a human, this was a Wraith. One so old with a lifespan that may very well predate Earth's earliest cultures, one that now looked down at him, measuring him with the experience of at least ten thousand years.

"That depends, John Sheppard. Will you offer me the very same trust I am ready to offer you?"

John's gaze never left the Todd's, tried to judge the situation with the few years he had lived. Could he trust this one?

Thoughts of all their shared encounters flew through John's mind. The first being the events in Kolya's cells. Todd had kept his word then and not killed him. The second among those ruins the Seer had warned them of. Todd had asked them to come unarmed, they had not and had taken him as their prisoner. Would following events have gone differently had they not done that? Would Todd have trusted Sheppard's word when he said they were not responsible for activating the Attero Device? Would Todd have given them his entire plan concerning Teyla as his Queen? Would he have trusted them and not misused their trust in turn?

So many ifs because of one Wraith. So many possibilities, so many outcomes.

John took a deep breath and clasped his hand firmly around the deadly one still offered by Todd. "I don't take well to betrayal."

To John's surprise, Todd carefully pulled him up, both now on the same level in an oddly symbolic way. "Nor do I."

For a moment they just looked at each other, then John grinned a devil's grin and the Wraith offered his shark like equivalent. They let go of each others hands, an agreement made.

"What direction is the stasis chamber room?" Todd asked, turning towards the door. "We must hurry. Those ten years, while much to you, are very few for this famished body."

"This way." An odd sense of déjà vu in John's aching bones had him grin despite the pain that came with the sudden ageing. This time, it was him who led the way as he grabbed Todd by the upper arm to discourage people from shooting the Wraith. What could have seemed like a chase turned into something that left people frozen in their tracks, staring, mouths dropping open in surprise and confusion as one aged John Sheppard rushed past them towing along a Wraith dressed in full battle gear who wasn't making any moves to shake the Colonel off of his arm and suck the remaining years out of him. No, the Wraith followed, the both of them seeming to have the same goal.

And Sheppard just knew Woolsey would scream himself hoarse over this.

They barged into the stasis room, scaring the doctors already there.

"What in the hell have you done?!" McKay yelled as he caught up to John's aged appearance.

"Had to give him a jump start." He pointed his thumb at Todd who had made his way to Beckett, looking over the freaked out Scot's shoulder to assess the data he was feeding to the stasis pod.

"You WHAT?!"

"I'm fine, Rodney."

"Are you sure? I should check you over..." Jennifer made to come to him but John shook his head.

"I can wait 'til you've frozen Todd, but Todd can't wait 'til you've checked me."

"He looks fine to me..." Rodney grumbled. "He's moving around, isn't he?"

"I don't give a shit about how his condition looks, I swear he moved his already dead body just to put his fancy coat back on," John answered him.

"Already dead?!" Rodney squeaked.

"Sure as hell looked like it." He shuddered as Todd flashed him a grin and McKay looked like he wanted to gag. "Hey, are you done there or not?"

"We'll have to make some adjustments to the pod to account for his species, but I think he'll be just dandy..." Beckett didn't look up from his work, though he protested as Todd pushed him to the side, typing a few command lines of his own into the coding of the machine.

"Forgive me, but you are taking time I do not have. I know the needs of my species best, do I not?"

Beckett's protest died instantly and he instead leaned in, reading along as Todd typed, his early fear lost in medical curiosity and discovery. The Wraith didn't have to alter too many parameters, though. Quickly done with his work, he stepped up next to the opened pod and turned around to face Sheppard.

"I do hope I will not wake strapped down to an examination table..."

"You owe me some years, remember? You'll find your green ass on some remote planet where you can call your buddies. As soon as you've done your thing, I expect those back, or else I'll have to start charging you interest." John rolled his eyes.

Todd threw him a gaze rich with newly formed trust that still confused John, but made him nod in determination. Only then did the Wraith walk the final steps into the pod and turned to face them. His yellow eyes briefly made contact with the handful of people gathered in the room before slowly drifting shut as Todd resigned his fate once more to the humans. Beckett pressed a few keys and the stasis pod door closed, the Lantean device quickly beginning the process of cryogenically freezing a being.

By the way, John Sheppard... I believe that a friend should know how to address a friend...

And even before the surprise about this sudden and alarmingly direct contact of mind was over, John Sheppard knew the name of a Wraith.