Fic: Truth *complete* 1 of 3
Truth
Part One: If I gave you the truth, would it keep you alive?
"Unscheduled off-world activation!" The fellow Canadian whose name Rodney had never bothered to learn stared at his screen in confusion. "It's Colonel Sheppard's IDC."
"How about... no?" John waved at the guy, as if to make sure he knew there was only one John Sheppard on this mission.
"He's right, Colonel." Rodney double-checked the sixteen character pass code. "What the..."
"There are six extra numbers."
"I know." Rodney stared at the numbers for a minute then looked to Elizabeth. "Lower the shield."
"Rodney, that is not John-"
"It's my ATM pin. There's no one in this galaxy that knows that number. Elizabeth, we both know the Gate isn't just used for travel between worlds."
Elizabeth could feel the headache starting, the one she affectionately called Gate Team One. "You think there's an alternate team on the other side of that horizon?"
"We live in the lost city of Atlantis on a planet in the Pegasus galaxy. I'm saying that's more likely than someone miraculously guessing the Colonel's IDC and my six digit, randomly generated pin code." Rodney knew stranger things had happened. Like finding your mission leader frozen in the basement. And that was just in this galaxy. Half of SG-1's mission reports read like a sci-fi TV show. They ran into alternate realities and time travelers on a yearly basis.
Oh, this was going to be a fun headache. "Major Lorne, get a security team in here. We're dropping the shield."
John grabbed Rodney by the elbow. "You don't think that's actually us, do you?"
"Us or a reasonable facsimile of us from another reality." Or robotic clones, but Rodney didn't think John was ready to hear some of the really unusual things that had happened at the SGC in the early years. If the Asgard freaked him out…
"Wonderful." It was a full time job keeping up with one Rodney. He didn't know what he was going to do with two.
Eight fully armed Marines formed a horseshoe around the gate and in the fifteen seconds between them taking position and the shield being dropped, Rodney ran half a dozen different scenarios through his mind: Alternate universes, time travelers, a Genii plot (the last of which was really unlikely, or Rodney would have brought it up before telling them to open the iris). None of them included John Sheppard walking through the gate alone, gray streaking his hair, glasses perched on his nose, and carrying a laptop case.
He took three steps forward, got out of the way of the kawoosh, and raised his hands in a sign of submission. "Nick."
Lorne hesitated for just a moment, before he stepped forward and started searching their visitor. No one on Atlantis called him Nick. Hell, he didn't think anyone here even knew his first name. "Any weapons?"
"All I brought was my computer and some personal stuff. Oh, and snacks. I have your Swedish Fish." Indeed, in the laptop bag there were some pictures and some junk food, including a paper sack of Swedish Fish.
"I don't like Swedish Fish."
"I think you mentioned something about needing them to trade for sexual favors." His voice dropped to a whisper, their temporal visitor grinned.
"Right." Nick pocketed the fish. "He's clean."
At that, the Marines lowered their weapons and the future John walked past them, stumbling more than a little, to where his current self, Rodney, and Elizabeth were standing, staring. Ignoring himself, John pushed his laptop bag into Rodney's arms. "Take care of that." Then he threw up on Elizabeth’s shoes and passed out.
---------------
"I threw up on Elizabeth." John was pretty sure that he'd never been more embarrassed.
"It wasn't actually you, Colonel." Rodney would admit that the look on Elizabeth's face had been priceless, though. “If he even is you.”
"He is." Carson tapped his test results. "Ten years older, but I believe naturally, and somewhat the worse for wear."
"I'm amazed you even made it to forty five, Colonel Suicide-Run." And Rodney actually was amazed. The likelihood of losing John, at any moment, kept Rodney awake more often than he'd admit.
There was a slight groan and the man in the bed opened his eyes. "I hurt too much to be dead." He sat up shakily. "Tell me it's late 2005."
"It's late 2005." Carson pulled a pen light from his jacket and peered into John's eyes. "Your pupils..."
"I'm dying." John said it with absolute certainty and a seeming lack of care.
"You're what?" John Sheppard had suspected he’d never live to collect his pension, but it was supposed to be a sudden thing, like maybe in an explosion, or from a battle wound gained in yet another pointless skirmish with the Genni, or from having his life drained to nothing by the Wraith, or, hell, maybe from the venomous bite of a not-snake on their next mission to PX-something-something. That he made it to thirty-five had more to do with sheer dumb luck and the lack of any large-scale military conflict in the eighties and nineties than any true desire to grow old on his part. He was, in the end, his father's son. He was going to end up a used up old soldier.
"Dying. I'm dying." He sat up in bed. "Or so you tell me, Carson, over and over again. As often as you can. To try and talk me out of my fool's errand."
"Fool's errand?" Rodney sidled up a chair to their guest's bed.
"To save the city." John met his past self's eyes. "I lost her, and it’s killing me. Literally."
"Yeah?" His future self was staring at Rodney like he was water in the desert, and suddenly John couldn't stand this for another second.
“Get out,” his other self said, with more kindness than John would have given himself credit for. "You're head's about to explode. Go and run. Rodney can help me save the world."
Apparently, he knew himself too well. "He's good at that." John forced himself to show some restraint. He gave Carson a nod and walked calmly out the door, said hello to the marines standing guard at the door, walked calmly around the corner of the hallway out of sight and ran.
---------------
John was only too glad to get out of the infirmary. Looking at himself in a mirror was a task these days. Looking himself in the eye was a little out of reach. He tracked down Ronon using the internal scanners and joined him on what probably wasn't his first lap around Atlantis' central spire.
They ran in silence, and John was glad. He had no interest in knowing his own future. He had apparently outlived his City and that was one of his worst nightmares.
He was not, despite rumors to the contrary, a clone of Jack O'Neill. The General already had a clone, and, as far as John knew, he was alive and well back on Earth, a college student majoring in history and languages. And if O’Neill Jr. had decided to live out his second life as Dr. Daniel Jackson to avoid competing with his own myth, John didn’t know how anyone could expect it of him. John, unlike O’Neill, would probably never save Earth, except in the round about way of not letting the Wraith through the gate. John was happy to stay far away from the planet of his birth, with the best brains Earth could spare, in a city that welcomed him with open arms.
He knows she's not alive, not in any real way. He knows her 'affection' for him is simply a result of the extraordinary strength of his ATA gene. He knows that Atlantis is not a woman, that she’s not sentient, that she doesn’t love him -but he loves her all the same. He doesn't want to outlive her, and he doesn't want to see her sink back below the ocean, forever. He doesn’t want to see her die.
John stopped running and sank to his heels. Ronon stopped in his tracks, and turned back. "You okay?" When John didn't answer, Ronon dropped to the floor and sat beside his taskmaster in silence.
---------------
When Carson was finally done poking and prodding and left them alone, John spoke. “Go ahead and ask, before you implode.”
"I'm dead. Right? I'm dead. That's why I didn't come with you." That was the only explanation. Rodney just hoped he hadn’t drown again. John's fondness for suicide missions against orders aside, there was no way the people in charge would have sent John alone if there was any other way.
"Three months ago, from the same thing that’s killing me." John leaned back on the pillows. "Which I still haven't forgiven you for, by the way. I had to proof the math for this little trip all by myself."
"The SGC couldn't find anyone to help you?" John gave Rodney his patent smirk. "Never mind. We were doing this on our own." Rodney knew they’d both do anything for Atlantis. They’d already given each other up for her, why not what ever time they had left?
"The City was deemed an acceptable loss. She took the enemy with her. You and I thought that was a crock of shit, even before we started getting sick." John pulled his laptop bag off the bedside table and took out what looked like the kind of necklace teenage hippies wore.
"From what?" Why was John screwing around with jewelry at a time like this?
"We interfaced with Atlantis. The human brain isn't meant to do that." John twisted the charm and Rodney took a closer look. It was a blue crystal dangling from a gold chain. After a minute, John let go of the chain and the crystal stayed suspended in mid air. "After that, the City had to take over some of our neurological maintenance. Not a problem when you're in the control chair for an hour or two a day. Big problem when the one thing keeping you alive is rusting on the sea floor."
"We..." There was something flickering around the charm. "What is that?"
It was a hologram. A beautiful, life sized busty, blonde hologram, dressed in the gray uniform the civilians wore inside the city, now wearing the necklace. "This, my friend, is Ananke and this little crystal is her portable storage and power supply. Ananke, are you cohesive?"
The image flickered for a few more moments, before becoming solid. "I am, John." Her image was floating in midair and she seemed to walk down an invisible set of stairs until she was standing on the floor. She was, Rodney noted absently, slightly above the normal height for a woman, and slightly below the normal weight. He was still analyzing the technology that would have gone into creating her when she reached out and touched Rodney's face. "Rodney. It is good to see you again.”
"Yes, yes, I'm sure." Rodney couldn't help flinching. She felt real, warm and soft. It was deceptive. If you didn’t see her materialize, you’d think she was real. An ethereal beauty but a real woman.
The hologram looked hurt, but dropped her hand. "I disturb you. I understand."
"Sweetheart, could you link up with the city? I've got a lot of work to do." John linked fingers with the hologram and squeezed her hand. "Pull up the ZPM curves and we'll see what we can do about their power bleed."
The hologram flickered out of sight and Rodney stared at the spot where she'd been. "Sex toy?"
"3-d personal tactile holographic mainframe interface."
"So, sex toy."
"Fine. Yes, a sex toy. Radek overwrote her basic programming, but she's still a bit... affectionate."
"Affectionate, right." He was surprised Ananke hadn't kissed John goodbye, if she kissed. If she’d been designing as a holographic call girl, she probably didn’t. Rodney wondered if he could get a look at her code, to see how interactive she really was.
"Don't be jealous." John reached out and grabbed Rodney by the wrist. "She's just a machine. You, you're flesh and blood. Flesh and blood I watched die. All we did, everything we gave up? It came down to nothing, Rodney." Rodney absently noticed that there were small, half moon shaped scars on John's forearm. He recognized the shape. When you dug your fingernails into skin, they made those marks, but to do it deeply enough to scar… John hadn’t done that to himself. "Atlantis sank to the bottom of the ocean and you died screaming. Cracked the ulna in my wrist while you did it."
'Everything we gave up.' That was a loaded sentence. Rodney tried to uncurl John's fingers from his wrist. They didn’t do casual touching anymore, not since they’d stopped the not-so-casual touching. "What Happened?"
"I'd be interested to know that myself." They hadn't noticed the door to the infirmary door quietly snick open, or Elizabeth's presence.
"A new enemy, the Grue. What Happened was a kind of domino effect, one small thing that ruined everything. If I can find what causes the entropy, we won't lose the city." John still hadn't let go of Rodney's arm and Rodney, for the moment at least, had given up on trying to pry him off. "All your plans, Elizabeth. All gone to waste."
"The city was destroyed." She'd hoped that somehow, it was something else. That maybe it had been the death of a person that had sent him back, but Elizabeth supposed she had known, somewhere inside, that John wouldn't have done this for one person. "How, John?"
He shook his head. "Too much knowledge about the future isn't good for you, Elizabeth. There are some things coming that I have to let happen, even if they aren’t nice things."
"What can we do to help?" Elizabeth knew the way they’d lost the City was probably violent and messy, if John wouldn't tell her. She’d try and wring it out of him later.
"I'll need Radek." Out of the corner of his eye, John could see Rodney's look of confusion and cut off the coming rant. "He's an engineer, underneath all the physics. What I'll be doing to the power systems isn't that complex, we don't need to steal Rodney away from his field work. Besides, they're Radek's designs."
"Of course." Elizabeth's eyes were on the grip John had on Rodney. "Afraid he's going to escape?"
"Something like that." John forced himself to let go. "You know Rodney. Turn your back on him and he gets shot, gets stabbed, dies of a degenerative brain disorder..."
"I see." Her A-team was inseparable. Who knew what had happened to Teyla and Ronon, but they'd obviously lost Rodney, if John had been sent alone. "If there's anything I can do, John…."
"I know where to find you." John looked at the clock. "If I can get our kindly Scot to let me go, I need to get down to the labs and help Radek."
"You haven't called him yet." John had said he had the same degenerative brain disorder that Rodney's future self died of. Maybe it affected the memory first.
"I don't have to. Ananke will have gone to see him already."
---------------
Radek reached for his coffee mug and found it empty. He stared forlornly at the bottom of the mug then set it back down. Rodney had been out of the lab for a few hours, so there was possibly coffee still in the carafe, but it would be cold and even if it wasn't, the pot was all the way across the room. If he waited, Rodney would come back and make a fresh pot, then Radek wouldn't have to move and leave the power curves. Even if he couldn’t get Rodney to actually bring him coffee, which, Radek knew was a one in a million chance, he at least wouldn’t have to make it.
He went back to his work, until the sound of glass clinking on ceramic distracted him. Someone was pouring coffee into his cup. "One sugar, muj miley?"
"Yes, please, Krista. Packets are in-" For a moment, he'd forgotten where he was. That voice, it sounded so like his wife's. She'd said that exact thing, so many times, just like that. But Krista was dead. He'd buried her the month before Jack O'Neill had found the way station in Antarctica. Radek slowly raised his eyes from the screen. There was a blond woman putting sugar in his coffee. He'd never seen her before, and Radek prided himself on knowing everyone. With Rodney running around off-world, Radek ran the labs day to day. He made an honest effort to learn their people's names, and he definitely knew their faces. "You do not belong here."
"Doctor Sheppard will need you in the ZPM room shortly, after he is released from the infirmary." She set the paper packet beside the cup, the little strip of paper she'd torn off tucked inside the larger piece, just like Krista had always done, then stirred the coffee so the sugar didn't settle on the bottom.
"Who are you?" She set the spoon down on the packet, so the coffee from the spoon wouldn't leave a puddle on the table. When he'd had to type his papers on a typewriter, he'd lost more than one page to coffee stains. Krista had put a stop to that. In Czechoslovakia, she'd used a plate, but in America, the little paper packets were handy and disposable.
"I am yours." She pressed the cup into his hands. "I've missed you, Radek."
His hands were numb around the coffee cup. This was a cruel joke. His wife was dead, and she had looked nothing like this... this blond bombshell that looked like she'd walked out of Rodney's fantasies. "Who are you?"
"The Alterrans named me Ananke, and that is what the Lantians called me as well." The woman sat beside him. "I am the AI holographic mainframe interface. You found me, overlaid my original design with something more... human. Something familiar."
The gate activation. She'd come with the other Sheppard, from the future. "Why would I do such a thing?"
"For Atlantis. The city was designed to interact with the Alterrans. They all possessed what you call the ATA gene. But among the Lantians, the natural gene was rare and the artificial gene doesn't always take. You got sick of being ignored, while Atlantis bowed and scraped for Doctors Sheppard and McKay."
"Colonel. Colonel Sheppard." An alternate reality, then. The man who'd come through the gate must have been from an alternate reality and not from the future.
"Not anymore." The stranger, Ananke, that was what she'd called herself, squeezed his knee. "Drink your coffee, Radek. John will need us soon."
---------------
It took a while to convince Carson that there was nothing he could do for John, and that there was no reason to keep him cooped up in the infirmary when there was work he should be getting on with. Radek was already with the ZPM, and the power consumption rates for the past six months were up on the monitor. John could see his hands shake a little when he lifted them from the keyboard.
"She came to see you."
"Yes." The ceramic cup was in pieces on the floor and coffee covered one wall which, luckily, had no circuitry exposed.
"I couldn't have stopped her, even if I'd tried. She loves you."
"She is machine. Machine I make to act like my dead wife, yes?" Radek pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger. "I am dead in your future, or I would have made this journey with you. I think I am glad I am dead."
"It wasn't like that. She's not a... sex toy. The original interface was degraded. You couldn't interact with it." How must it have seemed to Radek, to see Ananke's body language with out any clue why he'd done it? "There was no time to build a new overlay so you used a hologram template from the entertainment database. The generator program worked like it was meant to. It programmed all the subtle cues you wanted in a woman, all those little things Krista did. You could never quite weed out the framework that made her love you, there wasn't enough time."
"It is no less disturbing." She'd gone away when he'd started to cry. Radek was grateful for that. "You have a program for improving power usage?"
"Afraid it's not that easy, Radek. Got a soldering iron?"
---------------
"You are distracted." Teyla loomed above him, a concerned look on her face. "And possibly concussed. Should I call Dr. Beckett?"
"M'fine." John thought about getting up, then decided not to. He'd just lay here, humiliated, for a while. He’d gotten used to Teyla beating him, but she usually had to at least try.
"You are not fine." Teyla dropped into sitting position beside him and folded her sticks in her lap. "I have dropped you four times, and you ran yourself into the ground this afternoon."
"Let me guess. A little Setedan told you." John folded his arms behind his head. "It's our... guest. Carson says he's me, but he's not. Have you seen him yet?"
"I have not." Or at least, she had seen nothing but the bottoms of his shoes. "He has been working with Dr. Zelenka."
"There was no rank on his collar, and he was wearing glasses. Glasses! I'm a pilot, Teyla, and a soldier. That guy... he's soft."
"You are not made of stone, Colonel." She was tempted to peer under his eyelids. Maybe she'd hit him too hard.
"I'm not him either." There were only two reasons John could think of why he'd resign his commission and go back to academia. One: They'd forced him to abandon the city, and he'd done something to torpedo his career. Two: He'd done something equally stupid with Rodney, and they'd forced him to resign or even court martialed him. "I should not be the sole survivor of this foursome, Teyla. And he came alone, so I must be."
Teyla gave a small mental sigh. Only John Sheppard would feel guilty about the deaths of three people still living. "This is a war. We are soldiers."
"He's not."
"Perhaps you should ask why." He would not, Teyla knew that. They would have to do it for him.
Part Two: Just a word of advice you can heed if you like
"Rodney, is the future counterpart of my chief military officer fixing the plumbing?" Elizabeth was a diplomat, not a plumber, but she'd seen her father put in a new bathroom once and it looked like John was putting common household copper piping into the ZPM console.
"I have no idea." Rodney hit the comm. "Radek, what the hell are the two of you doing?"
"Leaky pipes in ZPM console. We are losing two percent of power to ten thousand year old pipes." Radek slid out from underneath the console. "John brought schematics. We will be done tomorrow."
"I know you boys are busy," Elizabeth cut in. "But you've been under there for six hours."
"Really?" John looked at the strange watch that Carson swore was welded on but that John had removed easily for his x-rays. "I think it's time for a break, Radek."
Radek slid his Cold Heat back into his pocket and started to pack up. "She will come back."
"Can't stop her."
"I will learn to live with it."
---------------
The purple creature from PK-83412 made really good steaks. John hadn't have one in almost two years, so when he'd seen that the mess was serving them, he'd gladly taken a helping, along with the blue potatoes they grew on the mainland. He was just cutting in when the two seats across from him were taken. "Checking up on me?"
"We would be remiss not to." Teyla gave him her diplomat's smile.
"You're upsetting Sheppard." Ronon stole a potato off John's plate. "We want you to stop."
"I've been here twelve hours! I said less than ten sentences to the man." John pointed his fork at Ronon. "Get your own, Dex. I stood in line fifteen minutes for these."
"You never call me Dex." Ronon bit into what the Americans called a French fry but one of the Frenchmen had told him was actually a Dutch dish.
"I'm not a soldier anymore, you're not under my command." John, deciding his food was probably safe for the moment, set down his fork. "Let me guess. He wants to know why I resigned my commission."
"I think the glasses bother him more." Ronon studied this version of his taskmaster. Aside for the gray hair and wrinkles, he seemed to be in passable condition. He'd seen older soldiers in worse shape, but who knew how the humans ran their military? They seemed to have all sorts of bizarre rules of conduct.
"I'm still a pilot, if that's the problem, just not for the Air Force." John, who had been scanning the room and seemed to have found who he was looking for, reached down below the table and retrieved his bag. "But that's not what's bothering him, is it? He wants to know why I'm alive when the rest of you are dead."
"He does seem to be dwelling on it." Teyla watched John as he dug around in his bag. He finally unearthed what he was looking for: a small round metal tin, with foreign writing on it.
"That's because you're not dead." John twisted the tin open and sniffed. "Either of you, as far as I know. Haven't made the trip to Pegasus in six months. When the expedition pulled out of this galaxy, you both stayed behind. To quote, 'Earth is a nice place to visit, John, but we have no desire to live there.' I understood. I didn't want to go either. 'Scuse me." Taking the tin with him, John walked over to the table where a few of the scientists sat.
"Dr. Kasanagi." John slid in beside the quiet Japanese scientist. "I have something for you."
Miko blinked at him a few times. Everyone knew about their visitor, but he'd spent most of the day cooped up with Dr. Zelenka. "For me?"
He extended the tin to her. "For you. Thank you for everything you did for me, Miko."
"Did for you?" Miko opened the tin and smelled, then sniffed again as if she couldn't believe her nose. "Matcha. From home." They had tea here, and she’d brought some as well, but the good stuff was long gone and it was hard to get more.
He patted her arm, then went back to Ronon and Teyla. "As I was saying. You're not dead, and I did my damnedest to keep Rodney alive long enough to come with me, but I'm not a doctor. I'm an engineer." He picked up his fork again. "I've missed you guys, by the way. Been a long year since we lost the City, cooped up in the Mountain. Never thought I'd think of Tokyo as uncrowded."
"You still have not told us why you left your military." Teyla noticed he'd dodged the question.
"You're right, I haven't." John took a bite of his dinner and let the alien taste settle on his tongue. "And I'm not going to. I'm here to save Atlantis, not disrupt the time line. I've already changed too many things. The next ten years are going to be different just because I'm here and I want them to be different in good ways.”
"Sheppard,"
"No." John pointed his fork at Ronon again. "I liked my life, until we lost Atlantis. I had a nice apartment, a cat, and they let me build and pilot experimental space craft. You know, we'd been to another galaxy before we set foot on Mars." They gave him blank looks. "The planet next door. Imagine never having gone to the planet next door."
"Humans are strange." Ronon stole another fry.
"I've missed you, Dex, but steal anymore of my food and I'm stabbing you with my fork." John went to work on his steak. "Are you done interrogating me?"
"For now." Teyla stood, that diplomat's smile on her lips again. "Come. We will get you some greasy potatoes of your own, Ronon, before our visitor becomes violent."
---------------
At about 3 am, John woke up out of a sound sleep to find a woman standing over his bed. He was very proud of himself for not shouting and in the same instant he reached for the pistol he kept in the headboard. "I have removed your weapon, John."
"Really. Well, wasn't that considerate." The knife under the mattress was gone too. He slowly sat up. It wasn't everyday he woke up to find an attractive woman he didn't know standing over him, but it wasn't the first time. "And you would be?"
"Ananke, AI tactile holographic mainframe interface. I wished to observe you as you were in 2005." Ananke produced his pistol from the thigh holster she wore, but when he checked it, there was no clip in it. "You could not harm me, but the damage to the walls would be troublesome to repair."
"Right." An artificial intelligence, walking around in a holographic shell, who had wanted to watch him sleep. Creepy, very creepy. "Do we know each other?"
"Yes." She placed the clip at his feet. "You and Radek retrieved me from the mainframe before the city sank. You refused to leave without taking some part of it with you."
"So... you're the living, sentient embodiment of Atlantis. Did you chose this form?" God, he was never going to live this down if Atlantis thought this was what he was looking for in a woman.
"The physical body you see is that of the Alterran's top female adult entertainer. It was redundantly stored and easy to retrieve." Ananke seemed to be staring at his form beneath the blankets, twisting the crystal on the necklace she wore. "I don't suppose you'd allow me to observe your current physical form, for comparison?"
"Naked?" The hologram nodded. "How about no? Why are you even here? Won't my evil twin miss you?" No way was he getting naked for the creepy hologram. In fact, he was getting her out of here as soon as possible. Apparently, his taste in company had changed a bit.
"John asked me to entertain myself this evening. He has other plans."
---------------
The door chime dragged Rodney's attention from the new power usage curves. Those new copper pipes really had made a difference, although Rodney wasn't sure how yet. "Whoever it is, go away!"
The door slid open, despite the multilayer locks he had on it. Atlantis would only do that for John, but there were two of them now. Rodney turned around in his chair. "Doctor Sheppard, I presume." John didn't say a word, but the door slid shut and Rodney heard the manual lock click as it relocked. "Can I do something for you?"
John strode across the room and pulled Rodney to his feet, then pushed him against the wall. "No talking."
"Hey!" But then Rodney didn't have much to say, because this stranger (and he was a stranger, no matter how much he looked like Colonel Sheppard) was kissing him like they'd been lovers for years - and for all Rodney knew, maybe they had. After the twenty seconds it took to get over the shock enough to calculate exactly how much of a bad idea this was, Rodney shoved John away. "What is the matter with you?"
"I'm trying to get you into bed." John was still standing too close and his arms were still looped around Rodney's waist. "You're not making it very easy for me."
"With good reason! Do you remember the conversation we had about why this was a bad, horrible, dangerous idea?" Rodney did, the two of them sprawled across Rodney's bed, the last night they'd spent on Earth before boarding the Daedalus. "Setting aside the fact that you were having an affair with a man, which, given the nature of this project, they probably wouldn't kick you out for, top-secret knowledge and revenge being what it is, you were fraternizing with a member of your gate team!"
"I'm a civilian, and seeing as how I'm existing outside of time, I think I'm outside the chain of command." John traced the line of Rodney's jaw. "Now, don't tell me you don't want to have sex with me, because I know you’d be lying. I've got less a month to live, Rodney, and I'll spend a chunk of that time stark raving mad. Are you really going to tell me to leave?"
"I should." Rodney let his head fall back and hit the wall. "Why are you doing this?"
"What?" John leaned in a little closer and dropped a line of kisses down Rodney's neck. "You really thought it was over? That I was just going to forget about you, settle down with the first non-Ascended woman to catch my eye? Didn't work that way. You look, sound," John nuzzled behind Rodney's ear, "and smell a lot like someone I spent the better part of the past ten years sleeping with. I have less than a month to live, I gave up my life and my entire world to come and save you and the city. Now, you don't have to provide a dying man with some small comfort during his last few days. Just say the word and I'll go knock on Ronon's door."
"That's... actually disturbingly hot." Rodney let John's hand drop and tilted his neck to the left, to give John better access. "But don't go anywhere. As you probably know, I'm undersexed and easy."
"We'll work on the first part," John's hand was starting to undo Rodney's belt. "But believe me, Rodney, the second thing? That's the part of the charm."
---------------
"Elizabeth." The future John flung himself into one of the chairs in her office. "Don't send them. Send another team later."
"Can you tell me why?" Gate Team One was set to deploy in ten minutes. She didn't have time to play 'Guess the Future.'
"If you send them through the gate, they're going to be gone a long time. They'll find Ford and then they'll be captured, first by Ford and his motley crew, then by the Wraith. Teyla and Ronon will end up hooked on the enzyme and Rodney will nearly give himself a stroke trying to escape after we were forced to leave him behind. But..." John leaned forward, hands braced on her desk. "But, they'll start what amounts to a civil war and destroy two hive ships."
Wonderful. Just wonderful. "What happens if I don't send them?"
"In the end, the infighting keeps the Wraith busy for a few years, but they have to eat, Elizabeth. They always stopped killing each other long enough to eat." John sat back in his chair, the stylus from her tablet somehow in his hand. "There'll be other chances to start the in fight. We're 98% sure Ford dies on the hive ship and what Rodney does fundamentally weakens his constitution, which is why I outlived him even though I had a deeper connection to the city. Think fast, Elizabeth. They deploy in about eight minutes."
Elizabeth rubbed at her temples. There was that headache again. "John, so help me. If the Wraith show up two weeks from now, I'm sending you up to start my civil war."
"Knew I could count on you, Elizabeth." If nothing else, even if he failed completely, next time he went back in time Rodney would be with him and he wouldn't do what he'd done last night.
---------------
"You're late." John was checking his pack when Ronon strolled in, five minutes before they were scheduled to leave.
"Am not." He dropped onto the bench beside Rodney. He sniffed once, did a double take, then clapped Rodney on the back and said something in Setedan that Rodney really hoped had been mistranslated.
"I'm sorry, did you just say, congratulations on bagging an officer?" John couldn’t believe his ears and his hands froze, halfway through tying a knot.
Teyla looked like she was stifling a laugh and Rodney looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. "That isn't a traditional saying on your world?"
"No, it's not." John let the stings fall from his fingers. "So. The other plans that sent the porn-star AI to my room last night? That would be you, Rodney?"
"Apparently, and how do you do that?" He shot Ronon an exasperated look. "It's not like I didn't shower!"
"Perhaps this is a discussion best kept for another time?" Teyla had the strong desire to smack Rodney across the head. What had possessed him to sleep with John's future counterpart? No, never mind. Men were men, no matter what their race.
"No, now's good. Christ, Rodney, what the hell were you thinking?" It hurt, why did it hurt? What they'd had, those weeks, it wasn't supposed to have meant anything. John didn't let anyone get that close, not anymore.
"Gee, Colonel, I don't know. Maybe that someone who looks a hell of a lot like you was pushing me against the wall and-"
Teyla clapped a hand over Rodney's mouth. "Rodney, this is not the time or the place for this. We must prepare to go into the field."
John touched his earpiece. "Copy, Elizabeth. We're not going anywhere." The look he leveled at Rodney was a combination of hurt and barely concealed anger. "What Happened to 'the worst idea we ever had'?"
"He's not you, Colonel." Rodney threw his pack in his locker and marched out of the departure room without another word.
John stood frozen in place for a minute, until they all heard the transporter at the end of the hall initialize, then he calmly put his things away and walked out. Only another warrior could see the tension he carried everywhere.
"Wrong Sheppard." Ronon nodded to himself. "He's going to kill me, isn't he?"
"It is a distinct possibility, but I am more concerned with the other repercussions of what just occurred." Teyla lay back on the bench and stared at the ceiling. "The Colonel and Doctor McKay were in a relationship, prior to re-establishing contact with their home world."
"I thought they were just sex-blind." It had been a condition common enough among academics and soldiers on Seteda. Professionals trained to match people with opposing obsessive traits paired them off to ensure every able-bodied citizen had a partner and reproduced, especially when these two functions had to be performed by different people.
"The Colonel's people forbid fraternizing between comrades." As John had explained it to her while very drunk one evening, that was actually a bigger issue than the violation of America's sexual mores.
"That's stupid."
"It is indeed."
---------------
The door to the quarters they'd given him slammed open then shut. John hadn't heard a door slam in Atlantis since, well ever. There was only one person it could be. "Hello, John."
"You slept with my scientist!" The man he'd been a decade ago was livid.
"No, I slept with a scientist you gave up claim to six months ago."
His evil twin had a point. "You know what I mean." John wanted to hit something. Preferably that smug bastard with his face.
"Let me guess. You had the ah-ha moment, even without Aidan. All those years of not caring, of keeping everyone at arms length, of trying not to get attached to another Natasha, gone down the tubes. Congratulations, John. You're no longer the cold detached bastard everyone left. You actually care." He shoved a chair in his younger self's direction. "Sit down."
"I don't want to sit, I want you to keep those callous-free hands off my physicist!" John kicked the chair over. "Why? Just tell me the truth."
"Why did I have sex with Rodney, or why is it Doctor and not General Sheppard?" Said Doctor put the chair back on its feet.
"The second thing." John sat down in the chair as if he were being forced at gunpoint. "Then the first thing."
"Why does it matter?"
"We walked away and never looked back. I want to know why I looked back." He'd joined the Air Force to forget about the years he'd spent in academia. He hadn't done any math not needed to fly an airplane in almost a decade, and he hadn't engineered any thing more complicated than a house of cards in just as long.
"If I told you we'd been discharged for our relationship with Rodney, what would you do? Transfer him off the team? Find a girlfriend?" The older man reached out and put a hand on John's shoulder. "Wouldn't change a thing. One day, you'd still wake up next to him."
"Were we? Answer me!" John knocked the hand away.
"No. I resigned in protest of a military operation. Feel better?"
Okay, now John felt like an ass. "A little."
"As for why I slept with Rodney... You aren't. Yet. Why should both of us suffer?" He gave John the grin that had always given their COs fits. John suddenly got why.
"Can I trust you?" John trusted his own judgment but this man was ten years and a million decisions away from him.
"You can trust I will do whatever is necessary to save Atlantis."
Well, wasn't that comforting. Not.
---------------
Elizabeth, who often wandered the corridors when she couldn't sleep, found John - the future John - sitting at the computer console, an arm thrown around the blond woman seated beside him. "Doctor Sheppard?"
"Evening, Elizabeth." John didn't look up from the screen. "You can call me John, you know."
"Fine. John, are you going to introduce us?"
The woman extended a hand to Elizabeth. "Ananke, AI tactile holographic mainframe interface."
"Hello." Elizabeth shook the hand and decided not to ask why their mainframe interface looked like a playboy bunny. "It's almost dawn."
"I am not in need of rest and John refuses to return to his quarters. I am ensuring that he does not accidentally harm the city." The AI gave John a long look that spoke volumes. Elizabeth could tell they'd had this argument before, probably often.
"We're trying to find the pressure point, what causes the eventually destruction of the City. Unlike some people, who'll live forever unless her creator deletes her out of spite," And this time it was John staring at the AI, "I have a limited time frame. I have about three days before organ failure and insanity sets in, and then I'm going to die a slow and painful death."
"You don't sound very upset."
"I've known for almost a year this was coming." Death and John Sheppard were old friends. This isn't the way he'd always thought he'd go out, but it was a good a way as any, dying for the city.
"Gate Team Six found some interesting garbage on that planet you told me not to send Major Sheppard's team to. Empty vials of what Carson tells me was the Wraith enzyme." He'd been right. Elizabeth could only imagine the chaos that must have reigned with her A-team missing. "Is there anything else coming up?" Any other worlds she should avoid, any lives she could save?
"Nothing I can let you interfere with, Elizabeth. If the Civil War starts a few months later, no big deal, but somethings, somethings you just have to let happen." John flexed his right hand. "You can just... fix them a little."
If Elizabeth had paid very a careful attention to the scene before her, she would have noticed John's left hand in a tight, white knuckle grip on Ananke's arm and his pupils dilated from pain.
---------------
He left John asleep, but when Rodney came back, fully outfitted to go on their next mission, John was awake. "I can't believe *I'm* saying this, but don't you ever sleep?"
"I'll sleep when I'm dead." By not having their little adventure with Ford, the weeks they'd spent with him had disappeared from the mission rosters and the time line of future events had been bumped up. Gate Team One was on their way to their next mission. "Have fun looking for a ZPM."
"Do we find one?" Rodney stood at the foot of the bed and took a moment to enjoy having John naked in his bed again, even if it wasn’t exactly the John he wanted.
"Finding a ZPM is the easy part. Keeping it is a little trickier." John rolled over so that he was lying on his back. "Rodney, you have to go with him."
"What?"
"You have to go with him." John reached down and snagged Rodney's pack from beneath the bed, then tossed it to him. "Just this once, Rodney, do as I tell you."
Chapters 3 and 4