It All Comes Round Again (Virus'verse 1, 1/1)
Title: It All Comes Round Again
Author: somehowunbroken
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: Lorne/Sheppard past, only briefly mentioned.
Word count: 9,336
Rating/warnings: R/slash (not explicit), violence, and adult situations. And language, because Evan has a potty mouth.
Disclaimer: The 'verse is mine, but nothing that lives there is.
Notes: This is the first installment in an AU that has been frantically trying to write itself through me for months. It finally burst out when I wrote the fourth installment for a prompt challenge, so I went back and started from the beginning when I finished the fourth part. This is the first in what I'm terming the Virus'verse. It's less gross than it sounds from the description, but I can't really think of anything else. I am, however, open to suggestions.
Summary: 'There was a new strain of what the geneticists were calling "the virus," more potent than before. From what they could gather, it had a much higher mortality rate, but the successes were much more advanced than they had been in the past - faster, stronger, somewhat more human-looking, though John wasn't sure how much that would help. They were bound to be noticeable.'
John was running.
As he did so, he reflected on a few things. First and foremost was his love of running, the absolute joy he felt as he put foot to pavement and felt the wind hit his face, mile after long mile. It was as close as he'd ever get to flying again.
The second reflection, and it was only second by a hair's breadth, was spared for the woman chasing after him, easily keeping stride. John checked over his shoulder again - fuck, still there - and scowled. She hadn't even broken a sweat. She wasn't even trying.
The third reflection was that, in the unlikely event of John's own survival, Evan was going to be pissed.
-0-
John had a peculiar job, and even though he couldn't really tell people what he did for a living, he loved every second of it.
He'd been in the Air Force, joined up straight out of high school, and had risen decently enough through the ranks. Six years ago, right after he'd made Major, he'd been recruited by a branch of the government that didn't officially exist to do a job that they wouldn't really label. John had done his time in Special Ops; not long, but enough time to know that there were some things that you couldn't know about until you agreed to do them. John had shrugged and agreed.
He quickly found himself underground, under a mountain that had always just been NORAD but was, apparently, a lot more. His skin itched to think of the mountain now, of all those tons of rock and earth just waiting to rain down on what lay below, blocking the depths from the sky.
The unofficial branch of the government turned out to have a name, after all: it was the Service of Genetic Control, or SGC for short.
John became a mutant hunter.
-0-
The woman ran after him, long legs seeming nearly casual in their drive to keep up with him. He poured on the speed and reviewed his options. Outrunning her was clearly not among them; she could catch him now, if she really wanted to, and she'd outlast him for sure. He was already starting to get tired.
Option two was probably also out, he thought. It involved being in a public place and hoping she wasn't insane enough to try anything there. He figured she probably was.
That left option three, John decided, and he hoped, prayed, that Evan's little hunch was right as he ran for the side of the bridge and leapt into the water below.
-0-
The SGC had kept him busy, busier than he'd ever been in his entire life. John returned home at the end of each day exhausted, wrung dry from the physically taxing life that was his job. He spent his time tracking down leads, finding cells, hunting other operatives, and generally ended up running for his life at least twice a week. And then there was the paperwork.
John had said something, offhand, to a sergeant at the SGC, a guy named Harriman whose sole job in life seemed to be making other people's lives easier. When John returned to work two days later - it had been a run-for-your-life day, and they usually gave him a day to recover after that - he found a young man, dressed in military BDUs, sitting on the chair in his office.
"Can I help you?" John had asked, giving the guy a once-over. Not as young as he'd originally thought, he decided, noting the weary lines around the man's face. He was probably only a little younger than John's own age.
"Apparently I'm here to help you," the guy had shrugged.
And so John had met Evan.
-0-
John surfaced in the Las Vegas Bay, glad that he lived in Nevada and the temperature was still over seventy degrees in November. He didn't want to pause, to check and see if the woman was still after him, but figured that it was worth the risk; he swam slower than he ran, especially fully dressed, but figured the woman probably didn't have the same problem. It would be nice to know if he was going to be drowned today or if he'd just have to face swimming to shore.
He glanced in the water around himself, looking farther and farther out but seeing no sign of the woman. He treaded water, looking up at the bridge he'd flung himself from. She stood at the edge, leaning over, and she waited until he caught her eye to snarl at him. She turned and stalked away.
John breathed a mental sigh of relief as he headed to shore. It was going to be a long swim.
-0-
Evan had taken over the paperwork, for which John could have kissed him, and tagged along on most of the running around, for which John was just grateful. They started an easy friendship, hung out after work with pizza and beer and various sporting events that John recorded. They talked about everything from the games to their jobs to Evan's family back in California and John's in North Carolina. It was relaxing to not have to pretend, to not have to make shit up about where they worked, what they did every day, why half the time they came home looking like they'd been in a bar fight or had to crawl through sewers (though the easy answer for that was almost always that those events had indeed occurred).
They never talked about women. It was pretty much a mutual realization that neither addressed explicitly when they ran into each other on a night off in the same bar. A nod, a smirk, and that was it.
They decided a year after meeting that they should just get it over with and blew each other on the couch in John's apartment after the Carolina-NC State game. They decided soon after that it was the beer and John's over-enthusiasm for his team winning and stayed friends, sans benefits.
A year after that, they figured that splitting the rent and utilities would just be easier, since Evan spent half of his time sprawled across John's couch anyway, and they found a place just outside of Colorado Springs that suited them just fine.
Three months later, everything got blown to hell in a handbasket.
-0-
John pulled himself up onto what laughingly passed for a beach and sprawled in the mud. He didn't move for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of not being in mortal peril, before he reached down to the pocket he'd had Teyla sew into his vest and pulled out a cell phone. It was waterproof.
"We've had about enough of you ruining expensive technology," McKay had snapped at him after one too many run-ins with rain showers and lakes and that one time with the sprinkler. "Try not to get this one blown up. It should last through pretty much anything else."
John shook it out now, flipped it open, and hit the first speed dial. It hadn't even rung all the way through once before he heard it connect. "You're not dead."
"Almost," John acknowledged. "You were right about the water, by the way. Thanks for sharing that little tidbit."
"Of course I was right about the water," Evan said, without any trace of false modesty. "You ever seen those fuckers out in the rain?"
Evan was possibly the only person John knew who swore more than he did. "Nope," he replied instead. "Look, I have a problem."
"One?" Evan sighed. "John, you have more problems than McKay has shit he doesn't know what to do with."
"Hey!" John heard distantly. "I'll have you know that I…"
McKay's voice stopped abruptly with a bang. John figured that Evan had either closed the door or shot the man. Probably the first; Evan had seemingly endless patience with everyone but John.
"Two problems," John amended. "Two immediate problems." He heard Evan sigh again and went on. "One, I'm lying in a puddle of mud somewhere along the Las Vegas Bay, and I'm gonna need transpo and clothing. Two," and here he hesitated, because Evan was Not Going To Be Happy. "Um, she made me."
The silence was deafening.
-0-
The SGC's main purpose in life was to "tale care of the mutant issue," which always made John laugh, wondering if that made him one of the X-Men or one of the jackasses who hunted them. Evan, for his part, rolled his eyes when John brought it up and advised him not to think about it.
They got the new assignment around the same time as they became roommates. There was a new strain of what the geneticists were calling "the virus," more potent than before. From what they could gather, it had a much higher mortality rate, but the successes were much more advanced than they had been in the past - faster, stronger, somewhat more human-looking, though John wasn't sure how much that would help. They were bound to be noticeable.
The problem with the virus was that most of the cells they were after took it willingly. They'd formed a cult of a sort, though they didn't worship any sort of god or anything. No, they worshipped themselves and the power they cultivated. The virus changed them, made them strong and fast and powerful, but it paled and curdled their skin until it was pale green, pulled their hair to white, and yellowed their eyes. They'd been codenamed Wraith; apparently someone up the food chain had decided they looked like they were wasting away or some shit, and the name had stuck.
John and Evan were Wraith hunters. They were good at it; they'd worked out a system, taking their prisoners in when they could and quietly (or loudly, sometimes loudly was the only way) dispatching individuals when they couldn't. There was no cure for the virus, but the scientists were hopeful, so they kept the captured Wraith locked in cells deep under the mountain.
The new assignment was Wraith-related, of course, but it was more specifically targeted at the cell that had developed the new strain, which made it tangentially more dangerous. Their job was to observe, to report, and to decide what action to take.
It was the cause of strain in John and Evan's friendship. John was of the opinion that they should just blow the fuckers up; Evan thought they should wait, bide their time, figure out a way to get a sample of the virus so they could bring it back to the geneticists, who would love nothing more in life. It was the Holy Grail of their jobs, to bring in a fresh sample of the virus.
In the end, Evan won out, if only because General Hammond nearly had a heart attack when John requested so much C4 and backup. They spent three months skirting the edges of the cell, getting John into position, posing as a new recruit looking to get himself turned.
It wasn't supposed to actually happen, of course, and Evan made a mental note never to trust John again when the other man said he had a plan but refused to reveal it.
"Making shit up as you go along is not a fucking plan, Sheppard," Evan hissed into the air. He was nestled in the room they'd rented across the street from the cell's headquarters. It gave a decent view into the operations, if one knew how and where to look, and if one was named Evan Lorne, one made it his job to irk the scientists until they gave him all sorts of cool shit with which to do so. Evan used some of that now, raising a set of binoculars towards the wall behind which John was being held.
"Cool," Evan grinned, momentarily forgetting that his friend was in a world of trouble and just reveling in the fact that the binocs could indeed detect heat signatures through solid concrete. He made a mental note to tell McKay that they worked and turned his attention back to the room.
John was sitting pretty close to the wall, his right side to Evan, and he was very, very still. There were four Wraith that Evan could make out in the room with him, six more outside, and he knew from personal experience that a few more would doubtless be hanging around the building. There were between twelve and eighteen Wraith, Evan decided, and John - fucking John - was trapped in a roomful of them.
One of the few things that they knew about the Wraith was that they had ridiculously low body temperatures. Evan's own body temperature tended to run low, more towards 96.8 than the average 98.6, but the Wraith operated at around 80 degrees. They showed up markedly differently in the viewscreen than John did, sedate orange blurs around John's bright red flare.
One of the Wraith stepped closer to John, and he could see it touching his friend. For his part, John didn't flinch away, didn't move, and the Wraith suddenly made a grasping motion at John's chest and pulled back at an inhuman speed. Evan assumed she had pulled his shirt open.
Evan swore a litany under his breath, hoping that the extraction team was closer than they said they were, or John was going to die in there.
-0-
Evan had hung up without another word, and John just laid back in his mud puddle, contemplating drowning himself anyway.
Twenty minutes later Evan's Jeep pulled up near John, who stood and walked toward the vehicle. Evan handed a bag through the roll cage and pointedly ignored John's offered greeting. John sighed and walked around the back of the Jeep, shucking his clothing as he went.
There was a towel in the bag as well as a few bottles of water, so John figured that Teyla had packed it. Evan would have left those out on purpose just to make John endure the drive back to Atlantis with mud in his hair and down his neck and… well, he was still going to be muddy this way, but he could at least get the worst of it off.
He walked to the passenger's side a few minutes later, in clean clothes and somewhat less muddy. He threw the bag into the back seat and climbed up.
"Sorry," John offered, and Evan just glared.
The drive back to Atlantis was made in silence. John let Evan have his space; after all, John had just blown six months of undercover work, and all of Evan's careful planning and manipulation and pulling of strings and John honestly wasn't sure what else - the man had a markedly scary gift for organization and more favors available to call in than a man his age should have - and it was all now for nothing.
When they stopped in Atlantis, John shrugged mentally and hopped out of the Jeep, grabbing the bag from the backseat and heading to his quarters. Evan would find him when he wanted to talk. Or yell. Probably the yelling would come first.
"John," Evan said when John had reached the door that led from the garage area to the main area of the compound. John stopped and turned back to his friend, and saw that Evan was still sitting in the driver's seat, still buckled in. His hands were clenching the wheel and he was staring at the wall. "How close was it?"
John thought back, surveyed, considered lying, and shrugged. Evan, of all people, deserved the truth. "Close," he said simply, raising a hand to his chest in an unconscious gesture. "Not as close as last time, but close."
Evan nodded, hands still gripping the steering wheel, still staring straight ahead. John waited another moment in silence before heading of to shower.
-0-
By the time the extraction team was in place, Evan had watched the same Wraith approach John five more times. Each time, it would reach forward and touch him, and each time, John would sit placidly, letting it all play out. Evan would have thought John unconscious if he hadn't noticed the other man's squirming when the Wraith left the room.
"Alpha team in position," Evan heard through his earpiece. He'd recognize Colonel O'Neill's voice pretty much anywhere, and the older man's presence calmed Evan somewhat. His team was the premier of the SGC; an unorthodox collection, to be sure, but they were fucking good at what they did.
"Beta team in position." Lieutenant Ford was a good Marine, also good at what he did, and Evan felt a little better knowing that he was leading half of the rescue squad. He counted in his head again and peered through the binocs.
"Lorne in position," he said. "You've got ten that I can see in range. None in with Sheppard right now, but they've been in and out."
"Copy," O'Neill's voice crackled in his ear. "Keep your eyes peeled, Major, and let us know if the situation changes."
"Copy," Evan said, and the radios fell silent.
Evan watched the ground for a few moments, binocs switched into their regular viewing mode, noting the shadows that darted in and out of the building. Some he recognized - Dex's huge frame would be hard to miss, and where he went, Emmagan followed like a shadow - but Evan didn't see Ford, their leader, or McKay, the gruff, egotistical scientist that Ford insisted made the team better. "Rounds us out," he'd said once, grinning, and Evan could only shake his head and grin back.
He didn't see the Alpha team enter, figured he wouldn't, that they'd go in the other side.
"It's times like this," Evan muttered as he swept his view back to John's room and switched the binocs back over to thermal imaging, "that I wonder how you ever got your ass promoted to light bird, Sheppard."
Evan froze.
"Motherfucking shit-eating son of a cocksucking whore," he exclaimed a split-second later, reaching up to tap on his radio. "Colonel!"
"That was impressive, Lorne," O'Neill's voice immediately rang back. He heard Dex snigger into his own mic. Belatedly, Lorne remembered that he had left his radio on and had therefore transmitted that entire outburst.
"Um, sorry, sir," Evan said, eyes still glued to his viewscreen.
"I'm assuming there was some sort of something that happened to provoke that kind of response," O'Neill said casually, and Evan heard a brief blast of gunfire. "Unless, of course, you were just practicing."
"I live with Sheppard," Evan drawled into the mic. "I get enough practice. Look, how close are you?"
"Six floors down," Colonel Carter rang in his ear. "East side."
"We are four floors below Colonel Sheppard," Emmagan's voice came next, calm as ever. "West side of the building."
"Christ," O'Neill came through. "In a hurry much?"
"Yes," Ford's voice clipped back. "I think Sheppard would prefer it if we hauled ass. Sir," he added belatedly. Evan could feel O'Neill's grin over the mic.
"By all means, let's haul ass, then," he said cheerily, and Evan heard the gunfire ring out again. "What's the situation, Major?"
"A bunch of Wraith just ran in the room," Evan reported, sweeping the binocs around so he could get a clear view. "Nine. There's one really close to Sheppard; it's holding something, but I can't tell what it is-"
"Of course you can't," McKay's sour voice rang through the headset. "They're heat-vision and night-vision specific, Major. I may be a genius, but I still haven't perfected X-ray vision."
"It's a knife," Evan said when McKay finished, putting the pieces together in his head. "The virus is on it. Oh, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck."
Evan could only watch in horror as, through hues of green and orange and brilliant, fiery red, the Wraith brought the poisoned knife to Sheppard's chest and sliced a line from his collarbone to a spot beneath his heart.
-0-
John heard a knock on his door hours later and called "Come in" before asking who it was, figuring Evan was dropping by to lambast him about his monumental fuckup.
Instead, Teyla walked inside, closing the door behind her and walking forward. "Colonel," she acknowledged, and John rolled his eyes even as he sat up on his bed and gestured towards the chair.
"Haven't been a colonel in three years, Teyla," he said with a voice that reminded her of how many times they'd had this particular conversation. "John."
Teyla smiled, and John realized that it was just banter; she was trying to put him at ease. Realizing the fact just made him more nervous.
"What's up?" he asked, trying to hide his discomfort. Teyla, being Teyla, saw right through it.
"He worries about you," Teyla said simply. "When you did not check in the second time, he went looking for you. He found your car outside the warehouse and your stunner down the street. He thought -" She broke for a moment, meeting his eyes. "We all thought you were gone, John."
John shifted up from the bed, leaning over to catch Teyla's hand in his own. "Hey, I'm fine," he said softly. "It's all good, no harm done, other than my laundry." He grinned, trying to lighten the mod, but Teyla's return smile was tired.
"You are his best friend, John," Teyla reminded him, as if he'd forgotten that somehow. "You and I both know that whatever happened today should have happened differently. I know," she said, forestalling his comment with a raised hand. "Circumstances change actions, and you made the decisions that you felt you had to make in the field. I would just like you to consider that, perhaps, your decisions affect others more than they may affect you."
With that, she stood and left, leaving John speechless on his bed. Ah, fuck.
John found himself outside Evan's quarters, two doors down from his own, less than fifteen minutes later. He'd thought about what Teyla said, thought about the drive back from the Bay, thought about the only thing Evan had said - how close was it? - and the look on the other man's face as he'd replied. Close.
He raised his hand and knocked. The door swung forward silently with the movement, and John peered inside. All the lights were off, and he could see Evan's vague outline in the bed. John shook his head and reached for the door, smiling slightly, turning to close it quietly behind himself, when he heard Evan speak.
"Don't bother. I'm awake."
John took a deep breath, walked into Evan's quarters, and closed the door behind him.
-0-
John's problem was that he didn't have a Plan B.
Well, that wasn't his only problem, and it wouldn't even have been a damn problem if Plan A had worked out like it should've. But Plan A had gone out the window when Irina had pulled out the knife the first time, and he was now lamenting his Plan-B-lessness.
The knife had been used to meticulously remove all of his clothing, and he sat still on the chair, wondering idly how she'd figured out that he had been playing her as she slid the flat of the blade down his right arm. John knew that by now, Evan would have figured out something was up and called for the extraction teams. He tried to sit calmly and just wait. He could wait, he could be patient, because the one thing he couldn't do was get the fuck out of Dodge, because he was tied to the chair, which was tied to the wall.
The first burst of gunfire sent the Wraith running from the room and had John grinning like a loon. They were here, or they were close; John wondered who they'd sent. He was sure that Ford's team would be there, probably as backup, because the kid was good but he was still a kid. Who would be leading the charge to save his naked ass?
John just hoped it wasn't Dixon. That man was fuckall insane, even by John's standards, and considering his current condition (naked, tied to a chair, surrounded by Wraith) that was saying something.
He heard the shouting drawing closer and realized with a sense of detachment that it wasn't human screaming, nor was it the Wraith death-screech that kinda sounded like music by now. Nope, this was the other kind of Wraith noise, the angry one that promised pain to the first thing that crossed its path.
John closed his eyes as the source of the sound entered the room. Irina. Shit.
She smiled at him maliciously as she walked toward him. "I had hoped this would last longer," she said, leaning down until her chest was pressed against John's. "Make you writhe and moan and beg."
"Well, that's… flattering," John said, not even bothering to hide the shudder that flew through his body. "You're not really my type, though." He let his eyes flicker over to the door, where more Wraith had poured in. He focused on one of the men, a tall, broad-shouldered freakshow, and forced his trademark smirk onto his face as he trailed his eyes up and down. "Switch with him and we can negotiate on the begging."
Irina's eyebrow rose. "Really now?" she purred, and without being summoned, Freakshow walked towards them. John's eyes widened infinitesimally, but Irina noticed and laughed. "I thought you might be bluffing."
John shrugged. "Nah. I've got a guy waiting at home, and I don't think he'd be very happy with me grabbing a little something on the side." He slid his eyes back to Irina. "You really aren't anywhere near my type, Irina."
She pulled back and slapped him hard. John let his face rock back with the blow, forcing the smile back though he was sure the effect was lessened somewhat by the blood seeping from the cut she'd opened with her backhand.
"You do not have permission to use my name," she seethed, and Freakshow stepped a little closer, grabbing Irina by the wrist and muttering something to her. She calmed considerably at whatever it was he said, smiled nastily at John, and left the room.
"Um," John tried, backpedaling like crazy because there was no fucking way he was doing a Wraith. "Listen, thanks for he rescue and all, but-"
Freakshow slapped him, exactly as Irina had done, and John felt the cut on his cheek open a little wider, bleed a little more persistently. Irina returned, holding the knife again, and John could see the thin green liquid coating the slick silver surface.
The virus. Today, John decided, sucked.
John schooled his features as he raised his gaze from the knife to Irina's face, which was contorted with glee. She walked calmly towards him and raised the knife to his chest, pressing it just below his collarbone on the right. She leaned in closely again and whispered in his ear.
"There is no saving you now," she said, and she sliced.
-0-
"I'm sorry," John said as he sat in the chair by Evan's bed.
"Do you even know what you're apologizing for?" Evan asked matter-of-factly. John shifted in his seat, already uncomfortable.
"For freaking you out," he said as simply as he could. "And for fucking up your plans."
"Damn it, John." Evan sat up and hit one of the lights, throwing the room into a dim haze. "I don't fucking care about the plans. Shit happens. Plans blow themselves to hell. We couldn't know that she'd figure it out."
"Yeah," John said, staring resolutely art a point just over Evan's shoulder. "I know that." He paused. "Still sorry."
"Do you have any idea what was going through my mind when I pulled up at the warehouse?" Evan's voice is low, and John flashes back to a corridor he can barely remember, the only other time he's ever heard Evan this close to cracking. Don't die on me. Don't you dare fucking die on me, John.
"I can probably guess," he said, recalling what Teyla had told him - his car outside, his stunner down the street, him nowhere to be found, the cell…
"I thought you were dead!" Evan burst out, loud and angry. He stood from the bed and started to pace around the room. "I thought I'd sent you in there with no backup, brilliant fucking plan of mine, and I thought I got you killed!"
John blinked. "Wait, you're not mad at yourself, are you?" he clarified, wondering at the sheer absurdity of it. "Because this? This is totally not your fault, Evan."
Evan stared at him, hard eyes glinting in the dim light. "Of course it is," he said harshly. "You wanted backup to go in there. I'm the one who said no, has to just be you. If you had died out there -"
"I didn't," John reminded him, poking Evan in the side to prove that, yeah, he was still present.
"You could have," Evan insisted. John rolled his eyes.
"And if someone else had been with me today, they would have died," John said levelly. "Shit changed up pretty fast out there today, Evan. I was pretty much winging it from the second she told me she knew who I was. I might have made it, might have died, but anyone else with me would've been infected the second they walked through that door with me." He stared into Evan's face, willing the younger man to listen, to hear. "So yeah, I might have survived, but would you rather Ronon be dead? Teyla?"
Evan closed his eyes, breathing harshly as his nostrils flared. He sat suddenly on the bed. "Fuck. No. Of course not." He breathed in. "I just kept remembering - the last time one of my plans blew up so spectacularly, you got a new hole in your chest."
"Got away easy this time."
All the fight was gone from Evan's voice. "Shit, John. Just.. fuck."
"Yeah," John agreed. "That pretty much describes it."
-0-
Evan was already running down the stairs, two at a time, when O'Neill's voice rang over the headset. "Got him," he reported, but his voice didn't sound happy. "Lorne, get your ass over here, he wants to know where you are."
Evan ran out of swears by the time he hit the third floor and switched fluidly into Arabic. By the time he was running out the door, he was into Swahili. He skidded to a stop next to John, laying on the floor of the stairwell between the third and fourth stories of the building, finishing up with the last of his Japanese.
"..bakayaro," he said with feeling. John was wearing a pair of pants that clearly weren't his - too long - but nothing else. As Evan glanced around, he noticed Dex pulling his coat a little tighter around his waist. He flashed a smile at the larger man, meaning it to be grateful but unsure if the message was quite delivered how he'd intended.
"John," he said, looking down again. John's eyes opened, and Evan could see the haze in them that signaled that John was in a lot of pain.
"Evan," John said, voice raspy. "That is not a nice word."
"Yeah, well," Evan said, reaching his hand out hesitantly, hovering over the slice in John's chest that hadn't been there this morning. "Was meant for the fucker that did this."
"She's dead," someone said. Jackson, Evan thought, but couldn't be sure, because John was grabbing his arm and tugging weakly, and Evan was trying to listen.
"You're my best friend," John gasped out, and Evan stared in horror. No fucking way was this happening. John was not dying on him. No. "Just wanted you to know." John let go and Evan grabbed him by the shoulders, hauling him upright.
"Yeah, well, you know what, Sheppard?" he growled into John's ear. "You're my best friend, too, and fuck if I'm going to let some bakayaro puta Wraith kill you in a damn warehouse." Evan shook John's shoulders. "John," he said, and okay, he didn't really sound that desperate, did he? Except he was, he would, if it would keep John here. He shook his shoulders harder, and John's head swayed back and forth. "Don't die on me. Don't you dare fucking die on me, John."
John's eyes stayed open, just barely, and he sighed out, "Carson?" before they closed all the way.
Too many hands pulled Evan back as he fought to stay there, sitting by John, because damn it to hell, if John was going to die in this dingy corridor, he fucking wasn't going to do it alone.
"Relax, kid," someone growled into his ear. O'Neill, Evan thought, as he realized that, for the second time in about half an hour, he'd blurted a message meant for his mind only out into the open for all to hear. Only this time he didn't care. "Beckett's here. Sheppard's going to be fine."
-0-
"We good?" John asked a while later, and Evan nodded. "Good. Let's go see what Stackhouse pitched together today. I'm starving." He stood and dragged Evan off the bed, not listening to the other man's protests, pausing only long enough for Evan to shove on a pair of shoes as they walked to the door.
They sat at the table in the commissary, eating what turned out to be a surprisingly good if surprisingly colored stew. Adam Stackhouse sat near the foot of the table, eagerly slurping the broth from his spoon.
"Adam," John asked, raising his voice a little, "what the fuck is this?"
Adam turned at looked back at John. "Stew!" he called back cheerily, slurping more obnoxiously from his spoon.
"Christ," Evan said, staring into his bowl. The stew had meat and vegetables in it, and would have looked like - well, stew - if it weren't for the bright yellow broth.
Bright. Yellow.
"What makes it this color?" McKay demanded as he poked the liquid with his spoon. "Because, as I'm sure I've told you on many occasions, I'm deathly allergic to-"
"Citrus," filled in four different people - the four, Evan noted, who rotated through kitchen duty.
"Just eat it, McKay," Adam replied, grinning. "It's not going to kill you, I promise. And I have an Epipen, just in case." He grinned and returned to his slurping as McKay shot him a nasty glare.
Teyla was the first to lift her spoon. She glanced down at Adam before lifting it to her mouth. The rest of the table watched as she chewed thoughtfully. A large smile broke on her face and she eagerly dug in for more.
"It is wonderful," she said unnecessarily; the expression on her face had eased everyone down enough to try it.
Conversation steadily thrummed around the table as the Lanteans ate. As the stew pot emptied, talk turned to the day's events.
"What happened?" someone - maybe Cadman, John thought - eventually asked. John shrugged.
"She figured it out," he said. "Don't know how, don't know when, but she knew who I was. What I was doing there."
"Damn." Adam's neighbor, James Markham, broke the silence that followed the statement. "And you didn't have any backup."
Evan elbowed John, who rolled his eyes and opened his mouth, but Teyla beat him to the punch.
"It is good that John was alone, James," she said and John smirked at his best friend. "If someone had been with John when she decided to reveal her knowledge, she would have killed that person, just to spite John." Teyla took a calm bite of her stew.
John shot a look at Evan, who had relaxed a little. John figured that hearing the same words twice - and once from Teyla, who wouldn't have said it if she didn't absolutely believe it - was probably soothing those ruffled feathers.
-0-
O'Neill was as good as his word. John lived.
The issue was that nobody seemed to know why he'd lived. By all accounts, he should either be dead or be a Wraith. The only difference between John three days ago, Evan reflected as he studied his best friend as the other man slept in the infirmary, was that John had a strange streak down his chest, a raised pink ridge with slight blue lines emanating from it.
Beckett had drawn what seemed to Evan to be gallons of blood from John, running it through this device and that one, testing it for everything from A to Z, plus a few that Evan was pretty sure the doctor made up on the spot.
"We've got an idea," the doctor said on John's fifth day of hospitalization. They weren't letting him out until they knew what the fuck was different about him. Apparently, if John was immune to the virus, it opened up a whole realm of possibilities in regards to treatment, even a possible immunization. Evan generally tuned it out when more than one scientist showed up to visit John's bedside.
"Really?" John's eyes had returned to their normal state of clarity. The pain had receded, and John said that the mark on his chest has already healed over. Evan had checked while John was sleeping, and it seemed to be true, for the most part. The little blue lines were still present, but other than that, the slash looked like it had been delivered years ago, not days.
"Well…" Beckett hesitated. "Yes and no," he said, opening the folder in his hands.
John groaned. "Carson. The answer to a yes or no question is either 'yes' or 'no.' It can't be both."
Beckett grinned. "You have what we're calling the ATA gene," he said slowly, pulling the top paper from the file and handing it to John. "See, this is the result of your bloodwork. This line here," he said, pointing to a squiggle on the page, "means that you tested positive. It's not in many people's blood, Colonel."
John frowned. "So when Irina cut me, she gave me some sort of extra gene?" he tried, but Beckett shook his head.
"This is from an old blood sample, Colonel," he said, tapping the sheet in John's hands. "There's nothing new in your blood. It's exactly the same now as it was last week. You've always had the ATA gene in there; we just never knew exactly what it was for."
Evan frowned now too. "Sorry to butt in, Doc, but why does it matter if there's some extra sequence in his junk DNA?"
John threw Evan a glance that he correctly interpreted as my DNA is not junk! before turning to Beckett. "Yeah. What he said."
Beckett began to get the slightly manic look that signaled he was about to get very excited about something. "We believe that this gene makes you immune to the virus," he said in a rush, jabbing the paper in front of John again. "All of the tests we've run - we have a sample of the virus, you know, she wiped the knife on your chest before she left."
John winced. That had been an original mission objective, Evan reminded himself, and it was clear from the look on John's face that he was thinking the same thing.
Beckett kept going. "Anyway, we tested it with your blood and various other samples, both with and without the gene," Beckett went on. "In every single case, the blood samples from those with the ATA gene reacted to the virus as if it were a bad drug of some sort. There was sickness, but it was fought off, and at the end of the day the blood was normal." His eyes were sparkling now. "With ATA negative blood, every sample tested positive for the virus after the incubation period."
"I'm immune to the Wraith drug," John said, rolling the idea around in his head.
"Essentially, yes," Beckett gushed out, flipping through his papers like a madman. "As am I, apparently." He seemed to remember that Evan
was there for the first time since beginning his monologue. "You are, as well, Major."
Evan grinned. "Cool."
John moved around in the bed. "So when can I get out of here?" he asked, and Beckett's face shifted uncomfortably.
"Well, lad…" he trailed off, and John groaned again. Evan winced in sympathy; when Beckett started calling you "lad", it was going to be followed by something unpleasant.
General Hammond swooped in a moment later, and Beckett's face broke into a relieved smile. "General, I'll just leave you it then," he said, backing out before anyone could protest.
Evan threw a salute at the General, who nodded distractedly and sat down. "Major. I'd like a word with the Colonel, please."
Evan, who knew a dismissal when he heard it, nodded. "Sir," he said to the General, then looked at John, jerking his head to the door. I'll be close.
-0-
"I have a theory," McKay announced as he set his tray next to John's the next day in the commissary.
"That it's a demon?" Cadman said innocently, and everyone at the table save McKay snickered. He ignored whatever pop culture reference had just gone over his head and continued.
"Well, I'm not sure I've ever connected 'Wraith' to 'demon' before, but I guess it's not that far of a logical leap." He frowned. "That could work, actually."
He paused for a moment, staring at the ceiling with his mouth slightly open for a few minutes until John leaned over and poked him hard in the ribs. McKay glared at John before picking up his sandwich and taking a bite.
Chew, swallow. "So I'm thinking that the Wraith who was chasing you knew Irina pretty well." Bite.
John blinked as if he were talking to a stubborn child. "That's why we targeted her, McKay. We know their cells ran together."
Swallow. "No, I mean I think they knew each other." He brought the sandwich back up and clarified, "When they were still people," before taking another bite.
Evan watched with a sort of fascination. He and McKay were never going to be the best of friends, but he liked the other man well enough. McKay and John, though, had some sort of weird bond, some timing thing that let McKay eat his lunch and have a conversation with John without pausing either.
"Before?" John was saying, and Evan tuned back in. This was new.
Swallow. "Yeah. Look at this." Bite, chew. McKay pulled a handheld computer from somewhere and tossed it to John, who stared at the display. Swallow. "Right is Irina, left is our mystery woman."
Evan leaned over to look at the images displayed on the screen, and John tilted it so Evan could see easier.
"Well, fuck," Evan said, looking at the designs. They were nearly identical; the mystery woman's had an extra line on one side, but the markings were otherwise the same.
"Yeah," came McKay's voice. "I mean, it could just be a cell thing, like they made them similar to show that their clans worked together or something, but I think it's related to them knowing each other before they were, you know." He waved his hands in circles in the air. "Changed."
"That's good," John said, still staring at the markings on the screen. "Yeah, they get the markings done soon after they turn, so it makes sense that they'd known each other before." He turned to Evan, but Evan beat him to it.
"We need to figure out Irina's human identity," Evan said, turning to Adam and James, who nodded. Adam had a lot of computer experience, and James had a lot of contacts who wouldn't ask too many questions. He turned to Teyla next. "Can you find her?" His hand jabbed towards the left of the screen.
Teyla frowned. "I can try."
Ronon grunted. "I'm with her." Evan nodded. He'd figured as much.
Evan looked back at the screen. "We need another in," he said, pointedly not looking at John. Cadman perked up, but Evan shook his head. "She won't trust another woman, Cadman, you know that. Challenging the authority of the cell's leadership, blah, blah, blah." Cadman slumped back down in her seat but nodded.
John was narrowing his eyes at Evan. "No," he said slowly, already having put two and two together. "Absolutely fucking no goddamned way."
"That doesn't even make sense," Evan pointed out mildly. "And yeah, John, it's me. Look," he said, going on the offensive right away. "I'm immune, remember? You're out, McKay is needed here, Adam and James already have shit on their plates. I know you're not gonna ask Carson." John shook his head. "That leaves me."
"Then we're finding you another way in," John decided. "She'll be suspicious of someone in my shoes already anyway, might try to kill you just to be sure." He frowned, staring into the distance, mulling over the intel he'd gathered over the past six months. Suddenly, a grin flashed across his features.
"How do you feel about blackjack?"
-0-
General Hammond walked briskly out of John's room half an hour later and Evan, after tossing him a somewhat haphazard salute, tried to act like he wasn't rushing back to his best friend's bedside.
John's face was perfectly blank.
"John?" Evan asked cautiously. John wasn't necessarily an open guy, but this looked like a mask made out of John's face, with John-colored eyes, but it nothing was there. Evan sat down on the edge of the bed, knowing that the nurses were going to come screaming bloody murder in a few minutes. "John."
Still John stared straight ahead, looking through Evan, and Evan glanced down, away from John's face for a minute. He noticed that John's hands were clenching the bedsheets so hard that he'd pulled a hole through them.
"John." He tried or the sharp, direct, approach. Still nothing. "Colonel!"
Finally, the mask broke, and John's eyes flickered to Evan. "No," he barked out.
Evan blinked, confused. "John," he tried again, "what happened? What did Hammond say?"
"I have two options," John said, and his voice was steady, calm, and Evan knew that John was about three minutes away from tearing something limb from limb. Ignoring his sense of self-preservation, Evan leaned forward a little.
"Options for what?" Evan tried to keep his voice soft, like he'd use to talk to a spooked animal - low and gentle, but firm.
"My future," John said, and the smile he gave was a twisted snarl, a grimace. "I can either sit here and let them poke and prod me for the rest of my natural life in exchange for a desk job, or I can take an early retirement by way of an honorable discharge."
Evan sat back, stunned. "They're kicking you out?" he asked, disbelievingly. "Because you got stabbed?"
"No," John said, that sick little smile still tightly in place, his voice still even. "They're giving me a choice. I can kick myself out, or they can make my life a living hell, because I got stabbed and instead of just getting a neat scar or dying or something convenient, I got the bonus spider leg tattoos."
Sometimes Evan didn't respond to John's comments because he didn't want to, or felt that his answers would just piss John off or encourage him or something. Never in the years he'd known John had he honestly not known what to say.
"I'm taking door number two, in case you were wondering," John said, and he finally looked at Evan, full on. "Hammond said they'd promote me first, full bird, give me the shiny new wings and the pay raise." He snorted. "So I can collect an extra fifty bucks a month or whatever."
Evan's mouth was working open and shut as he processed the information. He felt a headache starting at the back of his neck and resolutely pushed it back. "You seem remarkably calm about this," he finally managed.
"Oh, no," John said, giving Evan a charming smile belied by hazel eyes that would incinerate ice. "I'm so pissed off that I can't see straight. But I have a plan."
"A plan," Evan echoed weakly. He hoped it wasn't some sort of giant fuck you to the Air Force, a revenge thing, except he hoped that it was. He knew that whatever the plan was, he'd end up a big part of it.
"Yeah. Want to hear?"
-0-
Evan decided that he hated cards and he hated this idea, but more than that, he hated the Wraith, which was pretty much the only reason he hadn't backed out.
The plan had taken some finagling the likes of which John had never done before. He'd actually brought Teyla with him when he went wherever it was that he had gone; she was a much better negotiator than he was, and she knew how to shut him up if he started to go south. But things had gone well, and Evan would be installed at Avalon, a somewhat sedate casino, as a blackjack dealer four nights a week. He started Monday.
Evan, it turned out, sucked at gambling.
"I'm sorry," he groused as John patiently explained the concepts of the game to him again. "It's not the rules I suck at. It's the counting and the keeping track of the money and all the shit that goes with the rules that I suck at."
John leveled a glare at him. "You can count," he said with relative certainty. "You made it past the first grade. Fuck, Evan, you were a Major in the Air Force. There's gotta be an ability to count in there somewhere."
Evan didn't bother to glare back. John was right, this should be chickenshit easy, but he could not get a handle on everything he needed to master.
John thought for a minute before speaking again, "Okay, forget the counting thing for a little while. The tells you can get. It's just lie detecting." Evan nodded slowly; he was decent at reading body language.
John smiled. "Practice." He held up a card, its back to Evan, and glanced at it. "Seven," he said smoothly.
"Bullshit," Evan said automatically. John gave a full-out grin and tossed the ten of clubs at him.
Three excruciating hours later, Evan was able to play true-or-false with about a ninety percent success rate with John, Adam, and Teyla. Teyla was the hardest to read, but then, he suspected that's why John had brought her in; it wasn't like the Wraith were going to be any easier to decipher.
Finally, John nodded, satisfied, and Teyla smiled as she held the last card out, preparing to toss it on top of the pile. John grabbed her wrist, looking at Evan. He cocked his head to the side. "What card is it?" Evan glanced at the stack of cards, predicted and discarded, then at the back of the card in Teyla's hand.
"Six of clubs," he said, and as Teyla let the card fall, he saw John's triumphant smirk.
-0-
Evan handed his letter of resignation in the next day. He'd put in his twenty, if only just; he could get out now and leave all this crazy fucking hell behind him. Go back to California, visit his sister and her kids, get a fucking dog. He could be done with this.
Evan refused to be part of an organization that was slighting his best friend for having the dumb luck of not dying from what should have been a fatal injury. No, not slighting him; they were, quite literally, rubbing John's face in the fact that he hadn't bothered to up and croak when the Air Force thought he should. They were afraid of him, of what he might become, that he'd be out hunting Wraith one day and suddenly decide to join up. They wanted John tethered to the base, or they wanted him out of the way. It made Evan's stomach curl. He wanted out.
Except he knew, even as the thoughts flashed through his mind, that he might be done with the Air Force, but he was far from done with this. John's plan might be fuckall crazy, but it could work. Would work.
General Hammond looked more tired than Evan had ever seen before. "Are you sure, son?" he asked as Evan handed him the letter. Evan just handed him an additional envelope; inside, Hammond would find all of the requisite paperwork, signed and dated, with Post-It flags where Hammond needed to add his own signature.
"Major Lorne," he called as Evan left his office. "For the record, this wasn't my idea, nor was it my decision, and I do believe that they're making a mistake." He looked straight into Evan's eves. "I'm proud of you, son. Stand up for what you believe in."
Evan left the office shaking. That certainly wasn't the dressing-down he'd been expecting. He stood for a moment in the hallway, gathering himself, before he headed to the office he had shared with John.
John was already there, shoving items indiscriminately into boxes. Evan just stood in the doorway, noting the angle of John's back, the brisk efficiency with which he was clearing his mark from the SGC. Evan walked in and started tossing his own things in beside John's.
John's hands stilled. He was staring down into the box. "You didn't have to."
"Two things," Evan said, opening a desk drawer and finding John's candy stash. "Strike that, three things. One, I wanted to. Your plan is much better than the shit they've got going on down here. Two, yes I did have to. Hammond…" Evan had to clear his throat. "Wasn't his call. Said he thought I was making the right choice." Evan let the words sink in and thought he saw some of the tension drain from John's shoulders. "And three, you were holding out on me." He tossed a bar of chocolate into the box in front of John. John finally snickered.
"That's the 'bribe McKay into giving me new, shiny things to play with' stash," John said, reaching for the drawer and dumping into the box in front of him. "You've gotten your fair share out of it, trust me."
Evan grinned as they packed up their office. It was quick work; neither man wanted to stick around, nor did either have much to take with them. Evan went to clear out their lockers while John pulled the last of their things from the labs. They met topside when they had finished with their individual tasks.
-0-
"So," Evan said, "what now?"
John slid his sunglasses onto his face as they stood outside later that day. "Now," he said, "we wing it."
---
Note: That's not a polite word in Japanese. I'd not repeat it if I were you. You'll for sure get thrown out of the sushi place. And yes, in its second use it's followed by Spanish. Lorne knows his languages, or at least how to swear in them fluently enough.
The "pop culture reference" that McKay misses is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's musical episode. The first lines of the song are: "I've got a feeling/that it's a demon/a dancing demon/no, something isn't right there." I feel like Cadman would have shared that tidbit.
Next installment: The Space Between. We get to see what happens between the two stories we learned here. What's Atlantis? How did everyone end up there if John and Evan are the only ones who left? What kind of new languages will Evan have to learn to swear in? Coming your way in (hopefully) not too long!
(The other part of this that's posted, Falling Into Things Left and Right, is technically the fourth part of the story, but it was finished first, and is set after the Wraith Queen arc in this story. Feel free to ignore it till The Space Between and Waiting is the Hardest Part are finished, or to read them out of order.)
Author: somehowunbroken
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: Lorne/Sheppard past, only briefly mentioned.
Word count: 9,336
Rating/warnings: R/slash (not explicit), violence, and adult situations. And language, because Evan has a potty mouth.
Disclaimer: The 'verse is mine, but nothing that lives there is.
Notes: This is the first installment in an AU that has been frantically trying to write itself through me for months. It finally burst out when I wrote the fourth installment for a prompt challenge, so I went back and started from the beginning when I finished the fourth part. This is the first in what I'm terming the Virus'verse. It's less gross than it sounds from the description, but I can't really think of anything else. I am, however, open to suggestions.
Summary: 'There was a new strain of what the geneticists were calling "the virus," more potent than before. From what they could gather, it had a much higher mortality rate, but the successes were much more advanced than they had been in the past - faster, stronger, somewhat more human-looking, though John wasn't sure how much that would help. They were bound to be noticeable.'
John was running.
As he did so, he reflected on a few things. First and foremost was his love of running, the absolute joy he felt as he put foot to pavement and felt the wind hit his face, mile after long mile. It was as close as he'd ever get to flying again.
The second reflection, and it was only second by a hair's breadth, was spared for the woman chasing after him, easily keeping stride. John checked over his shoulder again - fuck, still there - and scowled. She hadn't even broken a sweat. She wasn't even trying.
The third reflection was that, in the unlikely event of John's own survival, Evan was going to be pissed.
-0-
John had a peculiar job, and even though he couldn't really tell people what he did for a living, he loved every second of it.
He'd been in the Air Force, joined up straight out of high school, and had risen decently enough through the ranks. Six years ago, right after he'd made Major, he'd been recruited by a branch of the government that didn't officially exist to do a job that they wouldn't really label. John had done his time in Special Ops; not long, but enough time to know that there were some things that you couldn't know about until you agreed to do them. John had shrugged and agreed.
He quickly found himself underground, under a mountain that had always just been NORAD but was, apparently, a lot more. His skin itched to think of the mountain now, of all those tons of rock and earth just waiting to rain down on what lay below, blocking the depths from the sky.
The unofficial branch of the government turned out to have a name, after all: it was the Service of Genetic Control, or SGC for short.
John became a mutant hunter.
-0-
The woman ran after him, long legs seeming nearly casual in their drive to keep up with him. He poured on the speed and reviewed his options. Outrunning her was clearly not among them; she could catch him now, if she really wanted to, and she'd outlast him for sure. He was already starting to get tired.
Option two was probably also out, he thought. It involved being in a public place and hoping she wasn't insane enough to try anything there. He figured she probably was.
That left option three, John decided, and he hoped, prayed, that Evan's little hunch was right as he ran for the side of the bridge and leapt into the water below.
-0-
The SGC had kept him busy, busier than he'd ever been in his entire life. John returned home at the end of each day exhausted, wrung dry from the physically taxing life that was his job. He spent his time tracking down leads, finding cells, hunting other operatives, and generally ended up running for his life at least twice a week. And then there was the paperwork.
John had said something, offhand, to a sergeant at the SGC, a guy named Harriman whose sole job in life seemed to be making other people's lives easier. When John returned to work two days later - it had been a run-for-your-life day, and they usually gave him a day to recover after that - he found a young man, dressed in military BDUs, sitting on the chair in his office.
"Can I help you?" John had asked, giving the guy a once-over. Not as young as he'd originally thought, he decided, noting the weary lines around the man's face. He was probably only a little younger than John's own age.
"Apparently I'm here to help you," the guy had shrugged.
And so John had met Evan.
-0-
John surfaced in the Las Vegas Bay, glad that he lived in Nevada and the temperature was still over seventy degrees in November. He didn't want to pause, to check and see if the woman was still after him, but figured that it was worth the risk; he swam slower than he ran, especially fully dressed, but figured the woman probably didn't have the same problem. It would be nice to know if he was going to be drowned today or if he'd just have to face swimming to shore.
He glanced in the water around himself, looking farther and farther out but seeing no sign of the woman. He treaded water, looking up at the bridge he'd flung himself from. She stood at the edge, leaning over, and she waited until he caught her eye to snarl at him. She turned and stalked away.
John breathed a mental sigh of relief as he headed to shore. It was going to be a long swim.
-0-
Evan had taken over the paperwork, for which John could have kissed him, and tagged along on most of the running around, for which John was just grateful. They started an easy friendship, hung out after work with pizza and beer and various sporting events that John recorded. They talked about everything from the games to their jobs to Evan's family back in California and John's in North Carolina. It was relaxing to not have to pretend, to not have to make shit up about where they worked, what they did every day, why half the time they came home looking like they'd been in a bar fight or had to crawl through sewers (though the easy answer for that was almost always that those events had indeed occurred).
They never talked about women. It was pretty much a mutual realization that neither addressed explicitly when they ran into each other on a night off in the same bar. A nod, a smirk, and that was it.
They decided a year after meeting that they should just get it over with and blew each other on the couch in John's apartment after the Carolina-NC State game. They decided soon after that it was the beer and John's over-enthusiasm for his team winning and stayed friends, sans benefits.
A year after that, they figured that splitting the rent and utilities would just be easier, since Evan spent half of his time sprawled across John's couch anyway, and they found a place just outside of Colorado Springs that suited them just fine.
Three months later, everything got blown to hell in a handbasket.
-0-
John pulled himself up onto what laughingly passed for a beach and sprawled in the mud. He didn't move for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of not being in mortal peril, before he reached down to the pocket he'd had Teyla sew into his vest and pulled out a cell phone. It was waterproof.
"We've had about enough of you ruining expensive technology," McKay had snapped at him after one too many run-ins with rain showers and lakes and that one time with the sprinkler. "Try not to get this one blown up. It should last through pretty much anything else."
John shook it out now, flipped it open, and hit the first speed dial. It hadn't even rung all the way through once before he heard it connect. "You're not dead."
"Almost," John acknowledged. "You were right about the water, by the way. Thanks for sharing that little tidbit."
"Of course I was right about the water," Evan said, without any trace of false modesty. "You ever seen those fuckers out in the rain?"
Evan was possibly the only person John knew who swore more than he did. "Nope," he replied instead. "Look, I have a problem."
"One?" Evan sighed. "John, you have more problems than McKay has shit he doesn't know what to do with."
"Hey!" John heard distantly. "I'll have you know that I…"
McKay's voice stopped abruptly with a bang. John figured that Evan had either closed the door or shot the man. Probably the first; Evan had seemingly endless patience with everyone but John.
"Two problems," John amended. "Two immediate problems." He heard Evan sigh again and went on. "One, I'm lying in a puddle of mud somewhere along the Las Vegas Bay, and I'm gonna need transpo and clothing. Two," and here he hesitated, because Evan was Not Going To Be Happy. "Um, she made me."
The silence was deafening.
-0-
The SGC's main purpose in life was to "tale care of the mutant issue," which always made John laugh, wondering if that made him one of the X-Men or one of the jackasses who hunted them. Evan, for his part, rolled his eyes when John brought it up and advised him not to think about it.
They got the new assignment around the same time as they became roommates. There was a new strain of what the geneticists were calling "the virus," more potent than before. From what they could gather, it had a much higher mortality rate, but the successes were much more advanced than they had been in the past - faster, stronger, somewhat more human-looking, though John wasn't sure how much that would help. They were bound to be noticeable.
The problem with the virus was that most of the cells they were after took it willingly. They'd formed a cult of a sort, though they didn't worship any sort of god or anything. No, they worshipped themselves and the power they cultivated. The virus changed them, made them strong and fast and powerful, but it paled and curdled their skin until it was pale green, pulled their hair to white, and yellowed their eyes. They'd been codenamed Wraith; apparently someone up the food chain had decided they looked like they were wasting away or some shit, and the name had stuck.
John and Evan were Wraith hunters. They were good at it; they'd worked out a system, taking their prisoners in when they could and quietly (or loudly, sometimes loudly was the only way) dispatching individuals when they couldn't. There was no cure for the virus, but the scientists were hopeful, so they kept the captured Wraith locked in cells deep under the mountain.
The new assignment was Wraith-related, of course, but it was more specifically targeted at the cell that had developed the new strain, which made it tangentially more dangerous. Their job was to observe, to report, and to decide what action to take.
It was the cause of strain in John and Evan's friendship. John was of the opinion that they should just blow the fuckers up; Evan thought they should wait, bide their time, figure out a way to get a sample of the virus so they could bring it back to the geneticists, who would love nothing more in life. It was the Holy Grail of their jobs, to bring in a fresh sample of the virus.
In the end, Evan won out, if only because General Hammond nearly had a heart attack when John requested so much C4 and backup. They spent three months skirting the edges of the cell, getting John into position, posing as a new recruit looking to get himself turned.
It wasn't supposed to actually happen, of course, and Evan made a mental note never to trust John again when the other man said he had a plan but refused to reveal it.
"Making shit up as you go along is not a fucking plan, Sheppard," Evan hissed into the air. He was nestled in the room they'd rented across the street from the cell's headquarters. It gave a decent view into the operations, if one knew how and where to look, and if one was named Evan Lorne, one made it his job to irk the scientists until they gave him all sorts of cool shit with which to do so. Evan used some of that now, raising a set of binoculars towards the wall behind which John was being held.
"Cool," Evan grinned, momentarily forgetting that his friend was in a world of trouble and just reveling in the fact that the binocs could indeed detect heat signatures through solid concrete. He made a mental note to tell McKay that they worked and turned his attention back to the room.
John was sitting pretty close to the wall, his right side to Evan, and he was very, very still. There were four Wraith that Evan could make out in the room with him, six more outside, and he knew from personal experience that a few more would doubtless be hanging around the building. There were between twelve and eighteen Wraith, Evan decided, and John - fucking John - was trapped in a roomful of them.
One of the few things that they knew about the Wraith was that they had ridiculously low body temperatures. Evan's own body temperature tended to run low, more towards 96.8 than the average 98.6, but the Wraith operated at around 80 degrees. They showed up markedly differently in the viewscreen than John did, sedate orange blurs around John's bright red flare.
One of the Wraith stepped closer to John, and he could see it touching his friend. For his part, John didn't flinch away, didn't move, and the Wraith suddenly made a grasping motion at John's chest and pulled back at an inhuman speed. Evan assumed she had pulled his shirt open.
Evan swore a litany under his breath, hoping that the extraction team was closer than they said they were, or John was going to die in there.
-0-
Evan had hung up without another word, and John just laid back in his mud puddle, contemplating drowning himself anyway.
Twenty minutes later Evan's Jeep pulled up near John, who stood and walked toward the vehicle. Evan handed a bag through the roll cage and pointedly ignored John's offered greeting. John sighed and walked around the back of the Jeep, shucking his clothing as he went.
There was a towel in the bag as well as a few bottles of water, so John figured that Teyla had packed it. Evan would have left those out on purpose just to make John endure the drive back to Atlantis with mud in his hair and down his neck and… well, he was still going to be muddy this way, but he could at least get the worst of it off.
He walked to the passenger's side a few minutes later, in clean clothes and somewhat less muddy. He threw the bag into the back seat and climbed up.
"Sorry," John offered, and Evan just glared.
The drive back to Atlantis was made in silence. John let Evan have his space; after all, John had just blown six months of undercover work, and all of Evan's careful planning and manipulation and pulling of strings and John honestly wasn't sure what else - the man had a markedly scary gift for organization and more favors available to call in than a man his age should have - and it was all now for nothing.
When they stopped in Atlantis, John shrugged mentally and hopped out of the Jeep, grabbing the bag from the backseat and heading to his quarters. Evan would find him when he wanted to talk. Or yell. Probably the yelling would come first.
"John," Evan said when John had reached the door that led from the garage area to the main area of the compound. John stopped and turned back to his friend, and saw that Evan was still sitting in the driver's seat, still buckled in. His hands were clenching the wheel and he was staring at the wall. "How close was it?"
John thought back, surveyed, considered lying, and shrugged. Evan, of all people, deserved the truth. "Close," he said simply, raising a hand to his chest in an unconscious gesture. "Not as close as last time, but close."
Evan nodded, hands still gripping the steering wheel, still staring straight ahead. John waited another moment in silence before heading of to shower.
-0-
By the time the extraction team was in place, Evan had watched the same Wraith approach John five more times. Each time, it would reach forward and touch him, and each time, John would sit placidly, letting it all play out. Evan would have thought John unconscious if he hadn't noticed the other man's squirming when the Wraith left the room.
"Alpha team in position," Evan heard through his earpiece. He'd recognize Colonel O'Neill's voice pretty much anywhere, and the older man's presence calmed Evan somewhat. His team was the premier of the SGC; an unorthodox collection, to be sure, but they were fucking good at what they did.
"Beta team in position." Lieutenant Ford was a good Marine, also good at what he did, and Evan felt a little better knowing that he was leading half of the rescue squad. He counted in his head again and peered through the binocs.
"Lorne in position," he said. "You've got ten that I can see in range. None in with Sheppard right now, but they've been in and out."
"Copy," O'Neill's voice crackled in his ear. "Keep your eyes peeled, Major, and let us know if the situation changes."
"Copy," Evan said, and the radios fell silent.
Evan watched the ground for a few moments, binocs switched into their regular viewing mode, noting the shadows that darted in and out of the building. Some he recognized - Dex's huge frame would be hard to miss, and where he went, Emmagan followed like a shadow - but Evan didn't see Ford, their leader, or McKay, the gruff, egotistical scientist that Ford insisted made the team better. "Rounds us out," he'd said once, grinning, and Evan could only shake his head and grin back.
He didn't see the Alpha team enter, figured he wouldn't, that they'd go in the other side.
"It's times like this," Evan muttered as he swept his view back to John's room and switched the binocs back over to thermal imaging, "that I wonder how you ever got your ass promoted to light bird, Sheppard."
Evan froze.
"Motherfucking shit-eating son of a cocksucking whore," he exclaimed a split-second later, reaching up to tap on his radio. "Colonel!"
"That was impressive, Lorne," O'Neill's voice immediately rang back. He heard Dex snigger into his own mic. Belatedly, Lorne remembered that he had left his radio on and had therefore transmitted that entire outburst.
"Um, sorry, sir," Evan said, eyes still glued to his viewscreen.
"I'm assuming there was some sort of something that happened to provoke that kind of response," O'Neill said casually, and Evan heard a brief blast of gunfire. "Unless, of course, you were just practicing."
"I live with Sheppard," Evan drawled into the mic. "I get enough practice. Look, how close are you?"
"Six floors down," Colonel Carter rang in his ear. "East side."
"We are four floors below Colonel Sheppard," Emmagan's voice came next, calm as ever. "West side of the building."
"Christ," O'Neill came through. "In a hurry much?"
"Yes," Ford's voice clipped back. "I think Sheppard would prefer it if we hauled ass. Sir," he added belatedly. Evan could feel O'Neill's grin over the mic.
"By all means, let's haul ass, then," he said cheerily, and Evan heard the gunfire ring out again. "What's the situation, Major?"
"A bunch of Wraith just ran in the room," Evan reported, sweeping the binocs around so he could get a clear view. "Nine. There's one really close to Sheppard; it's holding something, but I can't tell what it is-"
"Of course you can't," McKay's sour voice rang through the headset. "They're heat-vision and night-vision specific, Major. I may be a genius, but I still haven't perfected X-ray vision."
"It's a knife," Evan said when McKay finished, putting the pieces together in his head. "The virus is on it. Oh, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck."
Evan could only watch in horror as, through hues of green and orange and brilliant, fiery red, the Wraith brought the poisoned knife to Sheppard's chest and sliced a line from his collarbone to a spot beneath his heart.
-0-
John heard a knock on his door hours later and called "Come in" before asking who it was, figuring Evan was dropping by to lambast him about his monumental fuckup.
Instead, Teyla walked inside, closing the door behind her and walking forward. "Colonel," she acknowledged, and John rolled his eyes even as he sat up on his bed and gestured towards the chair.
"Haven't been a colonel in three years, Teyla," he said with a voice that reminded her of how many times they'd had this particular conversation. "John."
Teyla smiled, and John realized that it was just banter; she was trying to put him at ease. Realizing the fact just made him more nervous.
"What's up?" he asked, trying to hide his discomfort. Teyla, being Teyla, saw right through it.
"He worries about you," Teyla said simply. "When you did not check in the second time, he went looking for you. He found your car outside the warehouse and your stunner down the street. He thought -" She broke for a moment, meeting his eyes. "We all thought you were gone, John."
John shifted up from the bed, leaning over to catch Teyla's hand in his own. "Hey, I'm fine," he said softly. "It's all good, no harm done, other than my laundry." He grinned, trying to lighten the mod, but Teyla's return smile was tired.
"You are his best friend, John," Teyla reminded him, as if he'd forgotten that somehow. "You and I both know that whatever happened today should have happened differently. I know," she said, forestalling his comment with a raised hand. "Circumstances change actions, and you made the decisions that you felt you had to make in the field. I would just like you to consider that, perhaps, your decisions affect others more than they may affect you."
With that, she stood and left, leaving John speechless on his bed. Ah, fuck.
John found himself outside Evan's quarters, two doors down from his own, less than fifteen minutes later. He'd thought about what Teyla said, thought about the drive back from the Bay, thought about the only thing Evan had said - how close was it? - and the look on the other man's face as he'd replied. Close.
He raised his hand and knocked. The door swung forward silently with the movement, and John peered inside. All the lights were off, and he could see Evan's vague outline in the bed. John shook his head and reached for the door, smiling slightly, turning to close it quietly behind himself, when he heard Evan speak.
"Don't bother. I'm awake."
John took a deep breath, walked into Evan's quarters, and closed the door behind him.
-0-
John's problem was that he didn't have a Plan B.
Well, that wasn't his only problem, and it wouldn't even have been a damn problem if Plan A had worked out like it should've. But Plan A had gone out the window when Irina had pulled out the knife the first time, and he was now lamenting his Plan-B-lessness.
The knife had been used to meticulously remove all of his clothing, and he sat still on the chair, wondering idly how she'd figured out that he had been playing her as she slid the flat of the blade down his right arm. John knew that by now, Evan would have figured out something was up and called for the extraction teams. He tried to sit calmly and just wait. He could wait, he could be patient, because the one thing he couldn't do was get the fuck out of Dodge, because he was tied to the chair, which was tied to the wall.
The first burst of gunfire sent the Wraith running from the room and had John grinning like a loon. They were here, or they were close; John wondered who they'd sent. He was sure that Ford's team would be there, probably as backup, because the kid was good but he was still a kid. Who would be leading the charge to save his naked ass?
John just hoped it wasn't Dixon. That man was fuckall insane, even by John's standards, and considering his current condition (naked, tied to a chair, surrounded by Wraith) that was saying something.
He heard the shouting drawing closer and realized with a sense of detachment that it wasn't human screaming, nor was it the Wraith death-screech that kinda sounded like music by now. Nope, this was the other kind of Wraith noise, the angry one that promised pain to the first thing that crossed its path.
John closed his eyes as the source of the sound entered the room. Irina. Shit.
She smiled at him maliciously as she walked toward him. "I had hoped this would last longer," she said, leaning down until her chest was pressed against John's. "Make you writhe and moan and beg."
"Well, that's… flattering," John said, not even bothering to hide the shudder that flew through his body. "You're not really my type, though." He let his eyes flicker over to the door, where more Wraith had poured in. He focused on one of the men, a tall, broad-shouldered freakshow, and forced his trademark smirk onto his face as he trailed his eyes up and down. "Switch with him and we can negotiate on the begging."
Irina's eyebrow rose. "Really now?" she purred, and without being summoned, Freakshow walked towards them. John's eyes widened infinitesimally, but Irina noticed and laughed. "I thought you might be bluffing."
John shrugged. "Nah. I've got a guy waiting at home, and I don't think he'd be very happy with me grabbing a little something on the side." He slid his eyes back to Irina. "You really aren't anywhere near my type, Irina."
She pulled back and slapped him hard. John let his face rock back with the blow, forcing the smile back though he was sure the effect was lessened somewhat by the blood seeping from the cut she'd opened with her backhand.
"You do not have permission to use my name," she seethed, and Freakshow stepped a little closer, grabbing Irina by the wrist and muttering something to her. She calmed considerably at whatever it was he said, smiled nastily at John, and left the room.
"Um," John tried, backpedaling like crazy because there was no fucking way he was doing a Wraith. "Listen, thanks for he rescue and all, but-"
Freakshow slapped him, exactly as Irina had done, and John felt the cut on his cheek open a little wider, bleed a little more persistently. Irina returned, holding the knife again, and John could see the thin green liquid coating the slick silver surface.
The virus. Today, John decided, sucked.
John schooled his features as he raised his gaze from the knife to Irina's face, which was contorted with glee. She walked calmly towards him and raised the knife to his chest, pressing it just below his collarbone on the right. She leaned in closely again and whispered in his ear.
"There is no saving you now," she said, and she sliced.
-0-
"I'm sorry," John said as he sat in the chair by Evan's bed.
"Do you even know what you're apologizing for?" Evan asked matter-of-factly. John shifted in his seat, already uncomfortable.
"For freaking you out," he said as simply as he could. "And for fucking up your plans."
"Damn it, John." Evan sat up and hit one of the lights, throwing the room into a dim haze. "I don't fucking care about the plans. Shit happens. Plans blow themselves to hell. We couldn't know that she'd figure it out."
"Yeah," John said, staring resolutely art a point just over Evan's shoulder. "I know that." He paused. "Still sorry."
"Do you have any idea what was going through my mind when I pulled up at the warehouse?" Evan's voice is low, and John flashes back to a corridor he can barely remember, the only other time he's ever heard Evan this close to cracking. Don't die on me. Don't you dare fucking die on me, John.
"I can probably guess," he said, recalling what Teyla had told him - his car outside, his stunner down the street, him nowhere to be found, the cell…
"I thought you were dead!" Evan burst out, loud and angry. He stood from the bed and started to pace around the room. "I thought I'd sent you in there with no backup, brilliant fucking plan of mine, and I thought I got you killed!"
John blinked. "Wait, you're not mad at yourself, are you?" he clarified, wondering at the sheer absurdity of it. "Because this? This is totally not your fault, Evan."
Evan stared at him, hard eyes glinting in the dim light. "Of course it is," he said harshly. "You wanted backup to go in there. I'm the one who said no, has to just be you. If you had died out there -"
"I didn't," John reminded him, poking Evan in the side to prove that, yeah, he was still present.
"You could have," Evan insisted. John rolled his eyes.
"And if someone else had been with me today, they would have died," John said levelly. "Shit changed up pretty fast out there today, Evan. I was pretty much winging it from the second she told me she knew who I was. I might have made it, might have died, but anyone else with me would've been infected the second they walked through that door with me." He stared into Evan's face, willing the younger man to listen, to hear. "So yeah, I might have survived, but would you rather Ronon be dead? Teyla?"
Evan closed his eyes, breathing harshly as his nostrils flared. He sat suddenly on the bed. "Fuck. No. Of course not." He breathed in. "I just kept remembering - the last time one of my plans blew up so spectacularly, you got a new hole in your chest."
"Got away easy this time."
All the fight was gone from Evan's voice. "Shit, John. Just.. fuck."
"Yeah," John agreed. "That pretty much describes it."
-0-
Evan was already running down the stairs, two at a time, when O'Neill's voice rang over the headset. "Got him," he reported, but his voice didn't sound happy. "Lorne, get your ass over here, he wants to know where you are."
Evan ran out of swears by the time he hit the third floor and switched fluidly into Arabic. By the time he was running out the door, he was into Swahili. He skidded to a stop next to John, laying on the floor of the stairwell between the third and fourth stories of the building, finishing up with the last of his Japanese.
"..bakayaro," he said with feeling. John was wearing a pair of pants that clearly weren't his - too long - but nothing else. As Evan glanced around, he noticed Dex pulling his coat a little tighter around his waist. He flashed a smile at the larger man, meaning it to be grateful but unsure if the message was quite delivered how he'd intended.
"John," he said, looking down again. John's eyes opened, and Evan could see the haze in them that signaled that John was in a lot of pain.
"Evan," John said, voice raspy. "That is not a nice word."
"Yeah, well," Evan said, reaching his hand out hesitantly, hovering over the slice in John's chest that hadn't been there this morning. "Was meant for the fucker that did this."
"She's dead," someone said. Jackson, Evan thought, but couldn't be sure, because John was grabbing his arm and tugging weakly, and Evan was trying to listen.
"You're my best friend," John gasped out, and Evan stared in horror. No fucking way was this happening. John was not dying on him. No. "Just wanted you to know." John let go and Evan grabbed him by the shoulders, hauling him upright.
"Yeah, well, you know what, Sheppard?" he growled into John's ear. "You're my best friend, too, and fuck if I'm going to let some bakayaro puta Wraith kill you in a damn warehouse." Evan shook John's shoulders. "John," he said, and okay, he didn't really sound that desperate, did he? Except he was, he would, if it would keep John here. He shook his shoulders harder, and John's head swayed back and forth. "Don't die on me. Don't you dare fucking die on me, John."
John's eyes stayed open, just barely, and he sighed out, "Carson?" before they closed all the way.
Too many hands pulled Evan back as he fought to stay there, sitting by John, because damn it to hell, if John was going to die in this dingy corridor, he fucking wasn't going to do it alone.
"Relax, kid," someone growled into his ear. O'Neill, Evan thought, as he realized that, for the second time in about half an hour, he'd blurted a message meant for his mind only out into the open for all to hear. Only this time he didn't care. "Beckett's here. Sheppard's going to be fine."
-0-
"We good?" John asked a while later, and Evan nodded. "Good. Let's go see what Stackhouse pitched together today. I'm starving." He stood and dragged Evan off the bed, not listening to the other man's protests, pausing only long enough for Evan to shove on a pair of shoes as they walked to the door.
They sat at the table in the commissary, eating what turned out to be a surprisingly good if surprisingly colored stew. Adam Stackhouse sat near the foot of the table, eagerly slurping the broth from his spoon.
"Adam," John asked, raising his voice a little, "what the fuck is this?"
Adam turned at looked back at John. "Stew!" he called back cheerily, slurping more obnoxiously from his spoon.
"Christ," Evan said, staring into his bowl. The stew had meat and vegetables in it, and would have looked like - well, stew - if it weren't for the bright yellow broth.
Bright. Yellow.
"What makes it this color?" McKay demanded as he poked the liquid with his spoon. "Because, as I'm sure I've told you on many occasions, I'm deathly allergic to-"
"Citrus," filled in four different people - the four, Evan noted, who rotated through kitchen duty.
"Just eat it, McKay," Adam replied, grinning. "It's not going to kill you, I promise. And I have an Epipen, just in case." He grinned and returned to his slurping as McKay shot him a nasty glare.
Teyla was the first to lift her spoon. She glanced down at Adam before lifting it to her mouth. The rest of the table watched as she chewed thoughtfully. A large smile broke on her face and she eagerly dug in for more.
"It is wonderful," she said unnecessarily; the expression on her face had eased everyone down enough to try it.
Conversation steadily thrummed around the table as the Lanteans ate. As the stew pot emptied, talk turned to the day's events.
"What happened?" someone - maybe Cadman, John thought - eventually asked. John shrugged.
"She figured it out," he said. "Don't know how, don't know when, but she knew who I was. What I was doing there."
"Damn." Adam's neighbor, James Markham, broke the silence that followed the statement. "And you didn't have any backup."
Evan elbowed John, who rolled his eyes and opened his mouth, but Teyla beat him to the punch.
"It is good that John was alone, James," she said and John smirked at his best friend. "If someone had been with John when she decided to reveal her knowledge, she would have killed that person, just to spite John." Teyla took a calm bite of her stew.
John shot a look at Evan, who had relaxed a little. John figured that hearing the same words twice - and once from Teyla, who wouldn't have said it if she didn't absolutely believe it - was probably soothing those ruffled feathers.
-0-
O'Neill was as good as his word. John lived.
The issue was that nobody seemed to know why he'd lived. By all accounts, he should either be dead or be a Wraith. The only difference between John three days ago, Evan reflected as he studied his best friend as the other man slept in the infirmary, was that John had a strange streak down his chest, a raised pink ridge with slight blue lines emanating from it.
Beckett had drawn what seemed to Evan to be gallons of blood from John, running it through this device and that one, testing it for everything from A to Z, plus a few that Evan was pretty sure the doctor made up on the spot.
"We've got an idea," the doctor said on John's fifth day of hospitalization. They weren't letting him out until they knew what the fuck was different about him. Apparently, if John was immune to the virus, it opened up a whole realm of possibilities in regards to treatment, even a possible immunization. Evan generally tuned it out when more than one scientist showed up to visit John's bedside.
"Really?" John's eyes had returned to their normal state of clarity. The pain had receded, and John said that the mark on his chest has already healed over. Evan had checked while John was sleeping, and it seemed to be true, for the most part. The little blue lines were still present, but other than that, the slash looked like it had been delivered years ago, not days.
"Well…" Beckett hesitated. "Yes and no," he said, opening the folder in his hands.
John groaned. "Carson. The answer to a yes or no question is either 'yes' or 'no.' It can't be both."
Beckett grinned. "You have what we're calling the ATA gene," he said slowly, pulling the top paper from the file and handing it to John. "See, this is the result of your bloodwork. This line here," he said, pointing to a squiggle on the page, "means that you tested positive. It's not in many people's blood, Colonel."
John frowned. "So when Irina cut me, she gave me some sort of extra gene?" he tried, but Beckett shook his head.
"This is from an old blood sample, Colonel," he said, tapping the sheet in John's hands. "There's nothing new in your blood. It's exactly the same now as it was last week. You've always had the ATA gene in there; we just never knew exactly what it was for."
Evan frowned now too. "Sorry to butt in, Doc, but why does it matter if there's some extra sequence in his junk DNA?"
John threw Evan a glance that he correctly interpreted as my DNA is not junk! before turning to Beckett. "Yeah. What he said."
Beckett began to get the slightly manic look that signaled he was about to get very excited about something. "We believe that this gene makes you immune to the virus," he said in a rush, jabbing the paper in front of John again. "All of the tests we've run - we have a sample of the virus, you know, she wiped the knife on your chest before she left."
John winced. That had been an original mission objective, Evan reminded himself, and it was clear from the look on John's face that he was thinking the same thing.
Beckett kept going. "Anyway, we tested it with your blood and various other samples, both with and without the gene," Beckett went on. "In every single case, the blood samples from those with the ATA gene reacted to the virus as if it were a bad drug of some sort. There was sickness, but it was fought off, and at the end of the day the blood was normal." His eyes were sparkling now. "With ATA negative blood, every sample tested positive for the virus after the incubation period."
"I'm immune to the Wraith drug," John said, rolling the idea around in his head.
"Essentially, yes," Beckett gushed out, flipping through his papers like a madman. "As am I, apparently." He seemed to remember that Evan
was there for the first time since beginning his monologue. "You are, as well, Major."
Evan grinned. "Cool."
John moved around in the bed. "So when can I get out of here?" he asked, and Beckett's face shifted uncomfortably.
"Well, lad…" he trailed off, and John groaned again. Evan winced in sympathy; when Beckett started calling you "lad", it was going to be followed by something unpleasant.
General Hammond swooped in a moment later, and Beckett's face broke into a relieved smile. "General, I'll just leave you it then," he said, backing out before anyone could protest.
Evan threw a salute at the General, who nodded distractedly and sat down. "Major. I'd like a word with the Colonel, please."
Evan, who knew a dismissal when he heard it, nodded. "Sir," he said to the General, then looked at John, jerking his head to the door. I'll be close.
-0-
"I have a theory," McKay announced as he set his tray next to John's the next day in the commissary.
"That it's a demon?" Cadman said innocently, and everyone at the table save McKay snickered. He ignored whatever pop culture reference had just gone over his head and continued.
"Well, I'm not sure I've ever connected 'Wraith' to 'demon' before, but I guess it's not that far of a logical leap." He frowned. "That could work, actually."
He paused for a moment, staring at the ceiling with his mouth slightly open for a few minutes until John leaned over and poked him hard in the ribs. McKay glared at John before picking up his sandwich and taking a bite.
Chew, swallow. "So I'm thinking that the Wraith who was chasing you knew Irina pretty well." Bite.
John blinked as if he were talking to a stubborn child. "That's why we targeted her, McKay. We know their cells ran together."
Swallow. "No, I mean I think they knew each other." He brought the sandwich back up and clarified, "When they were still people," before taking another bite.
Evan watched with a sort of fascination. He and McKay were never going to be the best of friends, but he liked the other man well enough. McKay and John, though, had some sort of weird bond, some timing thing that let McKay eat his lunch and have a conversation with John without pausing either.
"Before?" John was saying, and Evan tuned back in. This was new.
Swallow. "Yeah. Look at this." Bite, chew. McKay pulled a handheld computer from somewhere and tossed it to John, who stared at the display. Swallow. "Right is Irina, left is our mystery woman."
Evan leaned over to look at the images displayed on the screen, and John tilted it so Evan could see easier.
"Well, fuck," Evan said, looking at the designs. They were nearly identical; the mystery woman's had an extra line on one side, but the markings were otherwise the same.
"Yeah," came McKay's voice. "I mean, it could just be a cell thing, like they made them similar to show that their clans worked together or something, but I think it's related to them knowing each other before they were, you know." He waved his hands in circles in the air. "Changed."
"That's good," John said, still staring at the markings on the screen. "Yeah, they get the markings done soon after they turn, so it makes sense that they'd known each other before." He turned to Evan, but Evan beat him to it.
"We need to figure out Irina's human identity," Evan said, turning to Adam and James, who nodded. Adam had a lot of computer experience, and James had a lot of contacts who wouldn't ask too many questions. He turned to Teyla next. "Can you find her?" His hand jabbed towards the left of the screen.
Teyla frowned. "I can try."
Ronon grunted. "I'm with her." Evan nodded. He'd figured as much.
Evan looked back at the screen. "We need another in," he said, pointedly not looking at John. Cadman perked up, but Evan shook his head. "She won't trust another woman, Cadman, you know that. Challenging the authority of the cell's leadership, blah, blah, blah." Cadman slumped back down in her seat but nodded.
John was narrowing his eyes at Evan. "No," he said slowly, already having put two and two together. "Absolutely fucking no goddamned way."
"That doesn't even make sense," Evan pointed out mildly. "And yeah, John, it's me. Look," he said, going on the offensive right away. "I'm immune, remember? You're out, McKay is needed here, Adam and James already have shit on their plates. I know you're not gonna ask Carson." John shook his head. "That leaves me."
"Then we're finding you another way in," John decided. "She'll be suspicious of someone in my shoes already anyway, might try to kill you just to be sure." He frowned, staring into the distance, mulling over the intel he'd gathered over the past six months. Suddenly, a grin flashed across his features.
"How do you feel about blackjack?"
-0-
General Hammond walked briskly out of John's room half an hour later and Evan, after tossing him a somewhat haphazard salute, tried to act like he wasn't rushing back to his best friend's bedside.
John's face was perfectly blank.
"John?" Evan asked cautiously. John wasn't necessarily an open guy, but this looked like a mask made out of John's face, with John-colored eyes, but it nothing was there. Evan sat down on the edge of the bed, knowing that the nurses were going to come screaming bloody murder in a few minutes. "John."
Still John stared straight ahead, looking through Evan, and Evan glanced down, away from John's face for a minute. He noticed that John's hands were clenching the bedsheets so hard that he'd pulled a hole through them.
"John." He tried or the sharp, direct, approach. Still nothing. "Colonel!"
Finally, the mask broke, and John's eyes flickered to Evan. "No," he barked out.
Evan blinked, confused. "John," he tried again, "what happened? What did Hammond say?"
"I have two options," John said, and his voice was steady, calm, and Evan knew that John was about three minutes away from tearing something limb from limb. Ignoring his sense of self-preservation, Evan leaned forward a little.
"Options for what?" Evan tried to keep his voice soft, like he'd use to talk to a spooked animal - low and gentle, but firm.
"My future," John said, and the smile he gave was a twisted snarl, a grimace. "I can either sit here and let them poke and prod me for the rest of my natural life in exchange for a desk job, or I can take an early retirement by way of an honorable discharge."
Evan sat back, stunned. "They're kicking you out?" he asked, disbelievingly. "Because you got stabbed?"
"No," John said, that sick little smile still tightly in place, his voice still even. "They're giving me a choice. I can kick myself out, or they can make my life a living hell, because I got stabbed and instead of just getting a neat scar or dying or something convenient, I got the bonus spider leg tattoos."
Sometimes Evan didn't respond to John's comments because he didn't want to, or felt that his answers would just piss John off or encourage him or something. Never in the years he'd known John had he honestly not known what to say.
"I'm taking door number two, in case you were wondering," John said, and he finally looked at Evan, full on. "Hammond said they'd promote me first, full bird, give me the shiny new wings and the pay raise." He snorted. "So I can collect an extra fifty bucks a month or whatever."
Evan's mouth was working open and shut as he processed the information. He felt a headache starting at the back of his neck and resolutely pushed it back. "You seem remarkably calm about this," he finally managed.
"Oh, no," John said, giving Evan a charming smile belied by hazel eyes that would incinerate ice. "I'm so pissed off that I can't see straight. But I have a plan."
"A plan," Evan echoed weakly. He hoped it wasn't some sort of giant fuck you to the Air Force, a revenge thing, except he hoped that it was. He knew that whatever the plan was, he'd end up a big part of it.
"Yeah. Want to hear?"
-0-
Evan decided that he hated cards and he hated this idea, but more than that, he hated the Wraith, which was pretty much the only reason he hadn't backed out.
The plan had taken some finagling the likes of which John had never done before. He'd actually brought Teyla with him when he went wherever it was that he had gone; she was a much better negotiator than he was, and she knew how to shut him up if he started to go south. But things had gone well, and Evan would be installed at Avalon, a somewhat sedate casino, as a blackjack dealer four nights a week. He started Monday.
Evan, it turned out, sucked at gambling.
"I'm sorry," he groused as John patiently explained the concepts of the game to him again. "It's not the rules I suck at. It's the counting and the keeping track of the money and all the shit that goes with the rules that I suck at."
John leveled a glare at him. "You can count," he said with relative certainty. "You made it past the first grade. Fuck, Evan, you were a Major in the Air Force. There's gotta be an ability to count in there somewhere."
Evan didn't bother to glare back. John was right, this should be chickenshit easy, but he could not get a handle on everything he needed to master.
John thought for a minute before speaking again, "Okay, forget the counting thing for a little while. The tells you can get. It's just lie detecting." Evan nodded slowly; he was decent at reading body language.
John smiled. "Practice." He held up a card, its back to Evan, and glanced at it. "Seven," he said smoothly.
"Bullshit," Evan said automatically. John gave a full-out grin and tossed the ten of clubs at him.
Three excruciating hours later, Evan was able to play true-or-false with about a ninety percent success rate with John, Adam, and Teyla. Teyla was the hardest to read, but then, he suspected that's why John had brought her in; it wasn't like the Wraith were going to be any easier to decipher.
Finally, John nodded, satisfied, and Teyla smiled as she held the last card out, preparing to toss it on top of the pile. John grabbed her wrist, looking at Evan. He cocked his head to the side. "What card is it?" Evan glanced at the stack of cards, predicted and discarded, then at the back of the card in Teyla's hand.
"Six of clubs," he said, and as Teyla let the card fall, he saw John's triumphant smirk.
-0-
Evan handed his letter of resignation in the next day. He'd put in his twenty, if only just; he could get out now and leave all this crazy fucking hell behind him. Go back to California, visit his sister and her kids, get a fucking dog. He could be done with this.
Evan refused to be part of an organization that was slighting his best friend for having the dumb luck of not dying from what should have been a fatal injury. No, not slighting him; they were, quite literally, rubbing John's face in the fact that he hadn't bothered to up and croak when the Air Force thought he should. They were afraid of him, of what he might become, that he'd be out hunting Wraith one day and suddenly decide to join up. They wanted John tethered to the base, or they wanted him out of the way. It made Evan's stomach curl. He wanted out.
Except he knew, even as the thoughts flashed through his mind, that he might be done with the Air Force, but he was far from done with this. John's plan might be fuckall crazy, but it could work. Would work.
General Hammond looked more tired than Evan had ever seen before. "Are you sure, son?" he asked as Evan handed him the letter. Evan just handed him an additional envelope; inside, Hammond would find all of the requisite paperwork, signed and dated, with Post-It flags where Hammond needed to add his own signature.
"Major Lorne," he called as Evan left his office. "For the record, this wasn't my idea, nor was it my decision, and I do believe that they're making a mistake." He looked straight into Evan's eves. "I'm proud of you, son. Stand up for what you believe in."
Evan left the office shaking. That certainly wasn't the dressing-down he'd been expecting. He stood for a moment in the hallway, gathering himself, before he headed to the office he had shared with John.
John was already there, shoving items indiscriminately into boxes. Evan just stood in the doorway, noting the angle of John's back, the brisk efficiency with which he was clearing his mark from the SGC. Evan walked in and started tossing his own things in beside John's.
John's hands stilled. He was staring down into the box. "You didn't have to."
"Two things," Evan said, opening a desk drawer and finding John's candy stash. "Strike that, three things. One, I wanted to. Your plan is much better than the shit they've got going on down here. Two, yes I did have to. Hammond…" Evan had to clear his throat. "Wasn't his call. Said he thought I was making the right choice." Evan let the words sink in and thought he saw some of the tension drain from John's shoulders. "And three, you were holding out on me." He tossed a bar of chocolate into the box in front of John. John finally snickered.
"That's the 'bribe McKay into giving me new, shiny things to play with' stash," John said, reaching for the drawer and dumping into the box in front of him. "You've gotten your fair share out of it, trust me."
Evan grinned as they packed up their office. It was quick work; neither man wanted to stick around, nor did either have much to take with them. Evan went to clear out their lockers while John pulled the last of their things from the labs. They met topside when they had finished with their individual tasks.
-0-
"So," Evan said, "what now?"
John slid his sunglasses onto his face as they stood outside later that day. "Now," he said, "we wing it."
---
Note: That's not a polite word in Japanese. I'd not repeat it if I were you. You'll for sure get thrown out of the sushi place. And yes, in its second use it's followed by Spanish. Lorne knows his languages, or at least how to swear in them fluently enough.
The "pop culture reference" that McKay misses is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's musical episode. The first lines of the song are: "I've got a feeling/that it's a demon/a dancing demon/no, something isn't right there." I feel like Cadman would have shared that tidbit.
Next installment: The Space Between. We get to see what happens between the two stories we learned here. What's Atlantis? How did everyone end up there if John and Evan are the only ones who left? What kind of new languages will Evan have to learn to swear in? Coming your way in (hopefully) not too long!
(The other part of this that's posted, Falling Into Things Left and Right, is technically the fourth part of the story, but it was finished first, and is set after the Wraith Queen arc in this story. Feel free to ignore it till The Space Between and Waiting is the Hardest Part are finished, or to read them out of order.)