Chapter 30: Puddlejumper

Alex stretched out carefully before the workout, paying special attention to his back. Dr. Beckett had cleared him to return to light sparring once the stitches were out – but anything more strenuous was going to have to wait another several weeks. Training with Ronon was still on hold for the immediate future. All things considered though he was bouncing back remarkably quickly.

"You coming for the jog in the morning?" Greg asked, plopping down on the mats next to him, and doing his own stretches.

Alex couldn't help but groan into the stretch at the thought of running – sprinting, with the way some of the Marines moved – in the morning. "Nah, don't want to hold you back." His pace was still a light jog, not a true run. "I'll try to coax Dr. Z into going out though." In the past month, the Marines had made it their personal mission to get all the science staff into proper fighting shape, and had dragged Alex right into that group as well. Only the science staff already on active teams were exempt from the nagging – and there were only about a dozen of those.

Greg just hummed, taking his time with his stretch. "New rotations came out for the new year. We'll get Ronon in the latter half of January, and then Teyla at the beginning of February. You should be cleared by then, right?"

"Should be." He certainly hoped so. End of January would easily be eight weeks out. If Dr. Beckett strung it out much longer than that, Alex was pretty sure he was going to lose his mind. He already felt better. Not even a left-over twinge of pain.

Also, he had to admit, he was curious to find out exactly what Ronon had planned. After all, the Tursksama training was supposed to be one-on-one. The group training with the Marines was bound to be entirely different – not in the least because most of the Marines seemed to idolize his fighting skills.

Alex pushed up to his knees to start stretching his hips, and glanced over at Greg. "So, tell me, dear taskmaster, what torture do you have planned for today?"

Greg just grinned at him. "Blocks, blocks, and more blocks. And maybe we'll throw in a hold or two for variety."

Blocks and holds, the bread and butter of his training these days. He supposed he should probably be grateful he could even take part in training…

About the only thing the Ancient language had going for it was its near letter to letter transcription with English and the uncanny resemblance to Latin. Well, Latin by a speaker that only had a vague idea of what Latin was. Some words seemed to be almost direct translations, whereas others were definitely false cognates.

It was enough to give Alex a headache, even after nearly eight weeks of trawling through the translations and rubrics. At this point, he could probably pen a blunt letter about someone killing his chickens, but the technobabble that he really needed to understand was still outside of his grasp.

It didn't help that the linguists in general were more focused on improving reading and pronunciation skills, than on comprehension. Actually understanding what he was reading was supposed to come with their next course.

He could navigate the city. Read the clocks. Understand the blaring warning labels on certain labs. But any attempts at understanding the further logs left behind by the Ancients that explained what one simple little device was supposed to do? Nothing.

He let his head thump against the desk, face all but mashing into the pages of notes he had taken. He would've taken an entire afternoon of running equations, but Dr. Z had kicked him out to go work with Rodney on some sort of mainframe updates in the chair room. Which, he had been told in no uncertain terms, he would not be getting within thirty feet of.

"Going that well?"

Alex jerked his head up, page of notes sticking to his face, to see Sheppard slouching in the doorway. Of course, someone would come by during his moment of weakness.

Sheppard just smirked, crossed the room, and picked up the device that had been the bane of Alex's existence for the past… six hours. Rodney had thrown it at him, telling him to figure it out. The or else was implied.

"Ooh, you must've got Rodney on a bad day," Sheppard said, turning the device over in his hands. It obediently lit up – and so far, that was the only thing Alex could figure out that it did – and turned a pale blue color. "It's his not-so-subtle way of telling people to disappear."

Alex pealed the pages off his face, before shuffling them back into a semblance of order. "Kicked out for the day." And likely for the rest of the week, if Dr. Z's distracted mumblings were to be believed. "Supposed to be brushing up on my Ancient. Which would be great, if I had anything to brush up on."

"Dr. Lindsey—?"

"Taught me the basics. Alphabet, direct translation, and then threw a Latin dictionary at me and said I'd have to work through the first couple of months myself."

Sheppard set the device back down on the table, then poked through the books and papers, like he was looking for something specific. "She never gave you the conjugation charts, did she?"

Alex blew out a long breath. "No." After so many weeks, he had just assumed that those didn't exist.

"Right," He clapped his hands together, then motioned Alex out of the room. "I'll get someone to send that down tomorrow. Right now, you and I have an appointment."

Warily, Alex pushed his notes and books together, and shoved them into the desk drawer that Dr. Z had cleared out for him. "An appointment?"

"Lieutenant Simmons so helpfully brought it to my attention that you seem to have weapons training – and I know you do." He smirked in Alex's direction. "So, since Rodney and Zelenka are otherwise occupied, we're going to start day one of weapons qualifications."

Alex wasn't about to get his hopes up. But it almost sounded like it could be fun. "And Dr. Beckett cleared this?" Because he knew better than to try to sneak something around Dr. Beckett's back. If it was something he wasn't supposed to be doing, Dr. Beckett would inevitably find out.

Sheppard seemed to be bouncing on his toes, nervous energy ready to get out of the lab. "Never said anything about actually firing anything today. And if it comes to that, he's cleared you for handguns."

Alex locked the drawer and followed Sheppard out of the lab and down the hall to the transporters. Sheppard hit one of the symbols that Alex hadn't yet bothered to decipher, that took them across the city.

"There's no direct transporter activated," Sheppard said, as they stepped back out into the hall. "Safety feature, I suppose. Main armory is on the other side of the base, so go figure."

The halls looked fairly identical to everywhere else in the city. Alex glanced up and down the empty hall, cataloging it right next to every other hall he hadn't yet figured out, then trotted along behind Sheppard.

"I figure this should keep you busy for a couple of days," He pressed a palm to one of the door sensors, before waving Alex inside. "And with the Daedalus due to arrive in a little over a month, most everyone is taking the time to do inventory and get those last supply requests in before the next dial out – so no audience."

It was a reasonably sized room – though Alex doubted that its original use had been as a firing range. There was, however, a sense of walking into a room with very strange… acoustics. Targets were set up at one end, with several tables and marked off areas for shooting from. In some ways, rather rudimentary, but Alex suspected it worked well.

It had to have, considering the expedition had been out here for several years.

Sheppard walked across the room, pressed his hand to a spot on the wall, then punched in a code. A moment later, a section of the wall slid out, revealing a tray of guns. He grabbed it, motioning Alex over toward one of the tables. He laid them out, in increasing size.

None were particularly familiar to Alex, but… surely some things just carried over from gun to gun. The shooting aspect, at least.

"These are the ones that we use here on the city the most," Sheppard said, before picking up the smallest of the batch. "M9, pretty much everyone on the city has qualified with it at one point or another. Probably… 50% of the scientists actively carry, but not everyone has the highest accuracy." He pulled it apart with a few deft motions, ensuring that the weapon was clear, before sliding everything back into place. "Not the greatest when you're up against a Wraith, but certainly better than nothing. You'll probably empty your entire clip and then have to start running."

Right.

Because there were other, bigger and scarier things out in the world – worlds? – that he could be shooting at. Not just other humans who wanted him dead.

"Not that you had better be meeting any Wraith anytime soon," Sheppard squinted at Alex. As if he asked for trouble that came his way. "When you graduate up to a larger gun, P-90s are the go-to. You'll see some others around here, but… 90% of what we get from the SGC are P-90s and the Master Sergeant has stockpiled enough ammo that we can probably make it through a full year if we get cut off from earth."

And sadly, that wasn't an entirely impossible possibility.

"So, first things first," He handed the M9 over to Alex, who weighed it experimentally in his hands. It felt familiar. "Disassembly and reassembly—"

Alex let his hands glide through clearing the gun, replicating the movements he had seen Sheppard make, and then let instinct guide him. While it might not be exactly what he had learned on with SCORPIA, Uncle Ian had trained him on a lot of different handguns. One of them had to be similar…

"—and clearly, we don't need that first lesson." Sheppard sounded bemused, before pulling one of the chairs over, and dropping down into it. "Alright, wonder boy, give it a good clean and see if you can get all the pieces back together."

Alex just grinned and started wiping the pieces down. This, at least, was something he was good at.

Sheppard let out a low whistle as he went and retrieved the latest of Alex's targets. "You missed one."

Alex grimaced, because that may have been on purpose. Slipping back into the instinctive shooting drilled into him by SCORPIA had been like putting on an old shoe. Comfortable. Familiar. Something he was not comfortable with at all.

Sheppard set the target down, on top of the other five targets they had already gone through. "Six misses out of forty shots." He shook his head in disbelief. "Right, I'm going to make the decision that you pass handgun qualifications. We'll see about getting you registered properly tomorrow."

Taking that to mean that they were done for the day – no way was he going to try shooting the P-90 – Alex started putting things back together and away on the tray. While certainly there were some commonalities among handguns – point and shoot, most of the time – there were other quirks. And he had appreciated Sheppard's critiques. While it hadn't really changed the accuracy of his shooting, it had certainly helped it feel more natural.

"And you learned all that in, what, a summer?" Sheppard asked, crumpling up the targets before shoving them into the waste bin.

Alex shrugged. He hadn't exactly gotten into the details of where he had learned to shoot so well. Just that the… opportunity had arisen. "My uncle taught me a lot before he died, too." It was the truth, after all. Alex had many a fond memory of going down to the range with Ian, especially while they were traveling abroad – always new guns to try out, after all.

"Your uncle who was a spy."

He shrugged again, because, well. It was the truth. Sort of.

"Huh," Sheppard shook his head. "And all I ever got from my uncles were critiques on my riding posture."

"Riding posture?"

Sheppard waved it off. "My family raised horses growing up." As if that explained everything. He tucked everything neatly back inside the shelf in the wall, sliding it shut with a nudge from his knee. "Now, that takes care of just about everything on the pre-off-world excursion check list."

Alex raised an eyebrow, because this was the first he was hearing about that.

"All that leaves is jumper training." He squinted at Alex, before running a hand through his hair. "You're a bit young to be piloting solo, but emergencies happen, so best be prepared." He paused, seeming to remember that Alex was just merely following him around. "You got anywhere else you need to be?"

"Dr. Z kicked me out, remember?"

"Perfect!" Then he was off at a trot again, leaving the shooting range behind and making rapid progress through the halls of the city. He didn't immediately take the closest transporter, which struck Alex as a little odd. And annoying.

Because really, Sheppard had a ground eating pace and Alex was still trying to get back to his normal pace.

A few quick turns, some through what looked to be abandoned laboratories where Alex desperately kept himself from even thinking the word on, and they broke out onto one of the exterior walkways. Alex paused, taking in the view of the ocean – all that was visible for miles around.

They really were at sea.

He had known, of course. It was impossible to miss from the overhead views in the towers.

But out here… the wind in his hair, the salt on the breeze. It felt almost like he was back on the shores in San Francisco.

"Nice, isn't it?" Sheppard asked, circling back to where Alex had paused. "Unfortunately, there's not any good surfing out here." He motioned for Alex to follow him a bit further out onto the pier, before picking what seemed like a random spot and leaning against it, looking out over the ocean. "But I do sometimes wish we had living quarters that were a little closer to the surface."

Alex joined him against the railing, looking down into the depths. There weren't any signs of teaming wildlife, no fishes circling underneath. Just deep, blue waters.

"The first planet we were on, had these whales," He spread his arms out, as if to gesture the size. "Big whales. It was great. Well… when they weren't killing us with their echolocation. But Rodney liked to talk with them. They couldn't come with us when we moved the city. This place is pretty much uninhabited."

There was no sound except for the gentle lap of the waves against the edge of the city.

Alex studied the profile of Sheppard's face for a long moment. "Are we avoiding something?" Because, really, he doubted that the military commander of Atlantis had the time to just sit by the water's edge and reminisce with a teenager.

The corner of Sheppard's mouth curled and he turned to look fully at Alex. "You don't miss anything, do you?"

Alex resisted the urge to cross his arms at the man.

"So," Sheppard turned back to the ocean. "Was your uncle an assassin?"

"What? No!" Alex felt horrified at that accusation. But he also knew there was a possibility it was the truth.

"You were trained by an assassin, then."

It was so matter of fact that Alex wasn't sure how to respond, except by gaping at him.

It was enough of a response. "Huh, wasn't expecting that one to stick so quickly."

"But—how—"

"You should've missed a couple more of those shots."

Alex dropped his shoulders. Of course. Training won out.

"Oh, don't worry. I doubt anyone else would have noticed." He leaned over the edge of the railing, almost as if he were thinking about going in. He picked something off the wall and chucked it into the water. There was a slight crackle to the water as it hit.

"What was—"

"Oceanic wildlife native to this ocean that produces a micro electromagnetic pulse upon sudden deceleration that disables a specific range of frequencies commonly used in eavesdropping devices." He turned to Alex with a grin. "I like to call them Electro Booms, but Dr. Carmichael didn't appreciate it."

Moments like these reminded Alex that really, to get to the position of head military commander, Sheppard was a lot smarter than he acted sometimes. "And… you brought me all the way out here to show me that?"

"No, I'm establishing precedent."

Precedent.

Precedent of what?

Alex just kept watching the ocean, figuring that Sheppard was going to get around to his point sometime.

"There are no cameras out here. Well, aside from the ones pointing at the doorway," He jerked his head toward the set of doors they had come out through. "The Electro Boom will take care of anything else in the area that might cause… problems. And as long as we establish precedent, anyone reviewing cameras will think nothing of your accompanying me out to the piers."

"And we need precedent…"

"Couple of reasons. I'm going to be completely honest and admit that Atlantis is a complete mess right now. We've had more personnel issues since returning from Earth than anticipated. The zat situation is throwing the SGC into chaos, meaning they won't be much help out here. As much as O'Neill pretends to be, not even he is omniscient. And as much as it pains me to say, you need to be informed just as much as the other command staff about what is going on. If the Trust make a move, you're going to be directly impacted here on Atlantis – perhaps more so than everyone else."

"Because they want to snake me." He still shuddered at the thought of that. At how close they had gotten, too. If he hadn't fought back for that short amount of time… Colonel Stadler would have found exactly what he thought he had.

"Yeah." Sheppard bit off the word, frustration evident in his voice. "And unfortunately, your existence is rubbing Woolsey the wrong way. He would gladly send you back to O'Neill, because he sees you as a threat from the IOA."

"Wait, from the IOA?" Alex had nothing to do with that group. And he doubted he ever would. They were, of course, trying to keep the IOA from even knowing he existed.

"He thinks you're a spy."

Alex snorted, then leaned over to rest his head on the railing. "Fuck me. Can't get away from that."

"Well… and if he gets wind of what our next plans are, it'll probably cement it."

Alex stood up straight at that. "Next plans?"

"You're helping with training. That won't start until the new year, but… we're going to keep that little gem from him as long as possible. Just don't get caught." He slanted a grin in Alex's direction, before falling serious again. "What do you know about Dr. Carmichael?"

"Carmichael?" He wasn't exactly someone Alex had interacted with. One of the biologists, and they notably stayed far away from Zelenka and Rodney's labs. Rodney was known for calling them a rather useless science at times. "Not much."

"Have you ever interacted with him?"

"Aside from passing in the halls, no?" He wracked his brain, but was pretty sure he only knew Carmichael from reputation – a hothead that butted heads with Rodney whenever they got too close. So, the rest of the science teams did a pretty good job at keeping them separate. Alex wasn't even sure he could pick Carmichael out from a crowd.

"And you've heard nothing about him recently?"

Alex thought for a long moment, before shaking his head. Carmichael just never crossed his path.

"Well…" Sheppard drew out the word, before slouching ever so slightly against the railing. "I guess that means our communications lockdown on him has been a success. He wiped the database videos the night of your… altercation with Jamison, despite having no known motive. And it's further complicated as he used Woolsey's credentials."

Alex blew out a long breath. He had vague memories of someone mentioning lost security files. But now, nearly a full month later… "And you just found him?"

"No," Sheppard shook his head. "We rounded him up a little over a week ago, but it's been hard to keep Woolsey from finding out. We haven't found a motive and can't risk dialing the SGC again out of sequence." He straightened up, looking over at Alex. "Look, the point of all this is, you're going to need to stick close to Lieutenant Simmons for the time being. I know the point of the sub cue was to give you a little more freedom, but if you end up in the wrong place at the wrong time… it's not going to end well. Either someone's going to try to kill you again or someone's going to try to set you up for something. I know Carmichael wasn't working alone."

Alex grimaced. So, basically, no improvement over San Francisco, because unknowns were apparently still trying to kill him. "And Woolsey's a suspect too."

"Unfortunately." Sheppard pushed back from the railing, and motioned Alex further down the piers, toward another set of doors. "I'll try to do better about keeping you in the loop."

Alex turned the words, the warnings, over in his head as he followed Sheppard back inside and to the transporter. He seemed like he was genuinely trying. And well, sometimes it seemed that was all Alex could ask for. For someone to just do their best at keeping him safe – and making him aware when those safeguards might be falling.

Though he would have liked Atlantis to be the safe utopia it had been pitched to him as, he knew it wasn't reality.

There were aliens in this galaxy that wanted him dead just for being a human, after all. But then, they wanted all humans dead, so… perhaps that wasn't a good comparison.

And no matter where he went, there would be infighting, and disagreement, and bad apples. He supposed to only current advantage was that there were no snakes here yet. And Sheppard was on his side.

"Next data transfer is in a week, so hopefully we'll have more answers by then." Then, like a switch flipped, Sheppard turned back into the laid-back and relaxed colonel Alex was used to seeing. "Come on, jumper bay is just through this next transporter."

They passed back through to the inner halls and Sheppard paused at the threshold, with his hand to his ear.

"Copy that. Two minutes." He slanted a grin in Alex's direction. "You ever seen the chair room?"

To say Rodney was less than pleased to see Alex tagging along with Sheppard would've been an understatement. He had distinctly snapped off a, "Don't touch anything!" before pulling Sheppard into whatever crisis had paged them in the first place.

And while he knew better than to touch anything, Alex couldn't help but drift closer to the chair in the middle of the room that glowed blue. A warm, inviting blue, if blue could be considered warm. The hum under his skin was almost impossible to ignore, urging him forward.

Just to touch.

To learn.

And—

Good lord.

Alex jerked himself back and tried to focus on whatever it was that Dr. Z was doing. Because he knew better than to get entranced by alien technology. He just wasn't quite used to there being one so insistent.

"—and can you please fix it!" Rodney threw up his hands, before shoving Sheppard in the direction of the chair.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Sheppard said, before dropping into the chair. His hands dropped onto the arm rests and in one smooth motion, the entire thing lit up an even brighter shade of blue and reclined. "This better not take too long. I have plans."

The hum underneath Alex's skin and in his ears deceased and he almost slumped in relief. Clearly whatever had been activated was mitigated by Sheppard just using the chair.

"Atlantis only lets a few access the subroutines," Dr. Z said quietly, sliding up next to Alex. "Rodney likes to pretend he can get the city to do whatever he wants, but really, the colonel does a lot of the heavy lifting."

Alex snorted. "I take it Rodney expected it to just… work?"

Dr. Z has a mischievous expression on his face. "Or excuse to get colonel to sweet talk the city into cooperating."

It only took a couple of minutes before Sheppard was once again powering down the chair and let it slide back into standby. This time, the incessant hum didn't return, so Alex suspected that whatever hand wavy magic Sheppard did in making the city cooperate, had also made it slide out of the alert.

Perhaps it had been alerting all along.

"Is that all?" Sheppard asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"Yes, yes. Go… do something more important than ensuring the life support systems are working." Rodney was already deep into whatever was scrolling across his screen and Dr. Z gave Alex a rueful smile, before returning to his own work.

Sheppard clapped Alex on the shoulder, before tugging him out of the room. "Better to get out before they find something else for us to do," he whispered.

They headed down the hall, into yet another of the transporters, and then ended up on another side of the city. Alex glanced up and down the hall, looking for any sign that might differentiate it - he hadn't been fast enough to get a read on where, exactly Sheppard had taken them - but there wasn't anything visible.

Perhaps he needed to campaign for better signage.

Sheppard led him into a large room that housed a number of… cylindrical silver objects. Bigger than any cars or transports he had ever seen. No wheels, no wings, nothing that gave any sense for how an object that size could move about.

Sheppard seemingly picked one at random – knowing him, it was probably his favorite – and pressed a hand against the side. A moment later, the door on the back of it lowered. "Welcome to Puddlejumper One." He waved Alex to the inside, shutting the hatch behind them.

Alex could feel the hum all around him, sightly louder than the background of the city. It wasn't quite begging him to do something, but that was probably because Sheppard already had it occupied – pulling up diagrams and options, and turning the thing on in general.

"Have a seat," Sheppard slipped into what was probably the pilot's chair, but waved at the one next to it. With a whole dashboard of flashy buttons to push.

Alex sat down and very carefully did not touch anything. He had had enough lectures from Dr. Z and Rodney.

"Command, this is 'Jumper One. I'm taking this one out for some maneuvers."

"Copy that, 'Jumper One."

"Oh, and someone tell Major Lorne to hold down the fort for a bit." There was a teasing tone to Sheppard's voice as he set the 'jumper into motion.

"Safe flight, sir." That was undoubtedly Lorne's voice. Sheppard just chuckled, hit a button on the dash, and then pulled up abruptly. The room flashed by them quickly, as they rose up and out, until they broke through the edge and were hovering over Atlantis.

"Whoa…" It didn't feel like they were flying. Didn't feel like they were moving. Alex watched out the front as Sheppard flew them around the main central spire, before dipping out around some of the more low-lying towers.

Sheppard made a dive and Alex instinctively grabbed onto the edges of the chair, bracing for the impact—that never came. The 'jumper glided over the very top of the water, just a hint of spray out of the furthest edges of the windscreen.

"Inertial dampers take all the fun out of it," Sheppard said, as he pulled the 'jumper in a tight circle, before streaking across the ocean with Atlantis behind them. "But then, we'd probably both be smashed flat as a pancake."

He pulled up an overlay on the windscreen and while Alex couldn't decipher what it all meant, he had gotten pretty good at reading and recognizing numbers.

"Three thousand…?" There was a word he couldn't quite decipher, so it was probably a noun of some sort.

"Eh, roughly equivalent to two thousand miles per hours. Give or take a couple hundred." He increased the speed – Alex could hear the increased, almost pleased, hum in tandem with it – and the numbers ticked higher. "Congratulations, you are now experiencing Mach 3. Probably the youngest earth human to experience it, too."

Alex snorted. "I'll be sure to put it on my resume." He leaned forward, trying to get a better view of the dashboard. Most buttons only had one symbol, not an entire word. There was a triangle of shapes in between the seats with what looked like the symbols for the stargate. Yet another thing Dr. Z had drilled into his head – the gate address for Atlantis and the Alpha site.

"Wanna give it a try?"

Alex glanced up. "What? How?"

"Well, to be honest, the control stick is a little more for show than anything else." Sheppard dropped his hands and, despite the fact the stick definitely veered off course, the 'jumper stayed flying straight. "It's all a mental interface, but Rodney gets a little… antsy when it seems like someone isn't steering this thing."

Right. Mental interface, just like everything else the Ancients did. Because visual input was just a little too simple. The first few times it had seemed fascinating, but honestly, Alex would have killed for a general instruction manual at this point. "So, what… I just think at it?"

"Well, you've got to take control first." He grinned at Alex's wary expression. "Look, just—Give me your hand." Sheppard pressed Alex's hand against a blank section on the console. "Feel that? Right now, it's outside of your control. And you can't think on, because well, it's already on. But you can, metaphorically, take the controls."

It was a nebulous feeling. Like water slipping through his fingers. Both there and not. He couldn't actually grasp anything, couldn't actually take anything, but he could… pretend. Feel the contented hum of the Ancient equipment as he connected with it and took—

The 'jumper all but shuddered under his touch and veered suddenly to the left.

Control was wrested out of his grip and it settled into a stable flight pattern once again.

"Right, maybe a little gentler this time," Sheppard said, seeming completely unfazed.

"But we just—"

"We are at least 10,000 feet in the air. Short of you knocking me out, I'll be able to get this 'jumper back under control before we even get close to crashing."

Alex swallowed nervously. "You know, maybe we should have started out on the ground."

"So you could accidentally blow up the jumper bay? I don't think so. Now," Sheppard pressed his hand against the console once more. "Find it again, just don't… jerk it."

Slow.

Gentle.

Smooth.

Alex took a deep breath, forced himself not to close his eyes and instead watched the steady count of their altitude and speed. They didn't need to go any higher or faster. It was just right, right here.

There was the water dripping sensation once again.

But really, it didn't need to drip through. It just needed to pool.

No faster.

No slower.

Just right.

Perhaps a small turn to the right…

It didn't feel any different, but Alex knew it was different.

"Good job," Sheppard said, quietly, releasing Alex's hand. In a flash, a projected trajectory appeared on the windscreen. "Now, see how well you can follow the line."

Alex swallowed, afraid that if he thought too hard, they would go plummeting out of the sky. Again.

There was a decrease in altitude and a long banking turn that would bring them back facing toward Atlantis. Easier said than done, because it required more power to make the turn without losing even more altitude.

But it was like dials he could control. Just cups filled with water, rather than knobs to turn. The more it filled, the faster he went. Up. Down. Left. Right. Just different cups. Different amounts to control.

"Huh, I suppose that works." Sheppard sounded amused.

It was harder than it looked to fly a straight course. It required small increases, small decreases that Alex wasn't quite sure his mental analogy was prepared for.

For the most part, it worked though.

Until it didn't.

Something flashed in his peripheral vision and when Alex flinched, the 'jumper flinched as well. The cups were turned over, energy, power, momentum, lost.

And they were falling.

He couldn't feel it, but he had enough residual connection to know that they were falling.

He tried to find the water, but it was gone.

"Alright, perfect analogy until you get startled."

They weren't falling anymore, had resumed their straightforward trajectory.

Sheppard had wrested control back and had his hands lightly resting on the control stick.

Alex wasn't sure how he looked so calm, because Alex was pretty sure his heart was about to jump out of his chest. They had just been plummeting to their deaths, after all.

"Jumper One, everything okay out there? We picked up some anomalies on your tracker."

"Just testing out some of the emergency systems, command. Systems normal." He cast a glance in Alex's direction before continuing. "Going to check out structural stability on the west towers, now."

"Copy that, sir."

Alex's fingers were still gripping the sides of his chair uselessly, still waiting for his heartbeat to calm back down to a reasonable rate. Easier said than done.

"And this is why I make sure to clear anyone that could possibly be flying one of these 'jumpers. Everyone's going to respond in a different way – air force are trained to lock in, Marines tend to loosen up, and the scientists… well, they're all over the board." He turned to face Alex fully, clearly splitting his concentration between flying and talking to Alex. "You will never be the first resort to fly these when you go off world. There will be backups, and hopefully backups to those backups. But things go wrong, people get incapacitated. The best you can do is be prepared. So, grab those controls one more time, use a different analogy. Water is too nebulous."

Alex's eyes widened at that. "Who said anything about water?"

Sheppard gave him a look. "You mumble to yourself when you've got new Ancient technology."

Alex flushed. Did not.

"Look, you like math, right? Just… come at it from an equation perspective. Start simple work your way up." He flashed Alex a reassuring smile. "Regain control, then you can return control. Simple."

Simple. Right.

Alex took a deep breath and refocused. If Sheppard made it sound so easy…

He could do it. He just had to concentrate.

A/N: Have some fun Alex/Sheppard interactions. A lot of it. This was supposed to be out yesterday, but… life. Enjoy it over the rest of the weekend, I guess!