Tables Turned
Title: Tables Turned
Author: Tzzzz
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay preslash
Genre: mpreg
Summary: John has been acting strange recently, but Teyla never imagined the reason.
Something had been wrong all week, of that, Teyla was certain. The exact problem was much more difficult to place, most likely because John was at the heart of whatever it was. Even after three and a half years living with him in her life, Teyla could never tell if they ways of the Earth people were so strange as to be unintelligible to her, or if that was just John and Rodney.
Ordinarily, she would attribute the whole thing to illness. He had missed most of the Lucius Lavin debacle due to a stomach bug, and just last week interrupted a sparring match with Ronon because he was not feeling well. John was stubborn and cranky whenever sick or injured, but this went beyond that. Never particularly present, he seemed to be slipping away, avoiding her eyes, avoiding Rodney, even avoiding Ronon, who while not always the most enjoyable of companions, had a skill at not talking about what needed to be said second only to John himself.
John had been distant the entire briefing. Not simply drawing images of Earth fighter planes or poking Rodney under the table as usual, but staring at the wall as though he did not care about the latest battle plans for replicator evacuation when he himself had been the one to come up with them. Teyla sat a bit straighter in her chair, her body humming with the sense that something bad was about to happen, though it was only a meeting and the people around her seemed calm.
Except John, of course, whose white-knuckled grip on his chair seemed to worry no one but Teyla. She expected Ronon and Rodney to be oblivious, of course, but not Elizabeth. And yet, the one Earth person who seemed the most familiar and empathetic to Teyla, did not spare John's strange behavior a glance.
"Well, that concludes our meeting." Elizabeth eyes, however, gave the impression that they were far from finished, halting Ronon and Rodney in their tracks the second they moved to leave. "However, I believe Colonel Sheppard has something to share with you." She nodded to him once, formally, before gathering her things and quickly leaving them alone.
Rodney chose that moment to at last pick up on John's strange tension. "Oh my god. Are you dying? Am I dying? Are we being sent back to Earth? Please tell me we're not, because even though I really, really miss Starbucks and also, strangely, fresh kiwis, I don't think I can take another "managerial" position back at Area 51. I mean, last time was bad enough. Sure, they practically worshiped me, but what's it worth if you're only going to be worshipped by morons?"
Rodney's panic seemed to kick John out of his nervous stupor and focus him in a way that nothing but Rodney in a death spiral seemed to be able to.
"Relax, McKay, nobody is going anywhere." He took a deep breath, not meeting any of their gazes, no matter how much Teyla wanted him to. "Under section 43 of the UCMJ, I'm required to inform my superior officer, my second in command, and those who I can reasonably anticipate serving in combat with within seven days of finding out, so, um, here it goes: I'm gestating."
Rodney had been looking shocked from the second John started speaking, but it was Ronon who asked, "You're what?"
Rodney rolled his eyes, "For those uncivilized cretins on whom nuance is entirely lost, he's pregnant, for god's sake." He glared at Ronon, but even Rodney's considerable anger couldn't wipe away the look of hurt beneath it. It was one of those days, in which Teyla would once again be mystified by John and Rodney's relationship, or lack thereof.
"I'm not pregnant and I won't be. Just gestating. Now, I'm required to name a proxy if I want to keep going on missions, and as much as I hate to do this, it's going to be you, McKay. Though since I don't plan on incubating the thing, that doesn't really mean much."
"But, you'll need someone for the birthing process even if you don't," Rodney protested. Teyla had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. The few movies involving male pregnancies she had attended at movie night were all comedies or romantic dramas that only dealt with urban couples and their misadventures. Now that she thought about it, John had been conspicuously absent from all of them.
"I've dealt with that before," John snapped. "It won't be a problem."
"Dealt with what before?" Ronon asked. He'd been absent from those movies as well. "I didn't know men could get pregnant." Teyla believed that, though how Ronon could have lived among the Earth people for a year and a half without hearing about it seemed almost a miracle.
"Well, on our planet they can. Dr. Weir also told me to tell you that you can go ask Carson if you have any questions, since this whole thing is new to you. You don't need to, because I won't be getting beyond the gestating phase, but I get it if you're curious."
He stood up then, retreating as was his way. He didn't look any different, Teyla observed, but that didn't mean he wasn't any different. He was carrying a child, how could he not be?
"I do not understand," Teyla addressed Rodney after John had already gone. "What does he mean? He is asking us not to worry about him when he is pregnant as though it is not important. Will it not, at some point, interfere with his duties?" Teyla's own people continued to work and be active in the community right up until their last month, but that did not mean it was something they trivialized either.
"Because he's an idiot. It will interfere with his duties if he goes into labor out in the field, whatever he says about having done it before. But it's not important because he doesn't intend to keep it. He'll probably keep his pouch slit bound, so when the neonate is expelled, it won't have anywhere to go. It's just not particularly humane. In my country a carrying male seeking to interrupt expels the neonate into a chamber of sedative gas rather than making it struggle needlessly to satisfy their ridiculous "natural birth" laws."
"So he intends to kill it?" That did not sound like John. Not at all, after all the times he had told her to leave no man behind.
"You can't kill something that's not alive yet," was Rodney's reply, though his voice caught on something invisible - a pain that Teyla had always sensed in him, but had never been able to identify.
"But, it is alive!" Teyla had been paying attention during those movies, while the expectant parents held hands and watched the neonate crawl its way up its father's body and into the pouch, rapt with worry and wonder. Surely anything with that kind of strength and will to make such a journey already had the spark of life in it.
"No," Rodney replied wearily. Apparently this was an old debate, and Teyla was late to the table. "To our people, it's not. Ask one of the anthropologists. They do whole studies on that sort of thing."
"But surely John could not be so callus, regardless of the traditions of your people." Teyla had been trading since she was a child. She was very familiar with all different cultures, taboos, rituals, and had long learned not to hold others up to the same standards of morality as her people, and yet this still bothered her. Not because of the implications of how the Earth people valued life, but because it was John. "Why would he do this?"
Rodney sighed. "I don't claim to understand Sheppard. I may be a genius, but god only knows what goes on under that crazy hair of his. But if I had to guess. Well, Sheppard isn't just a carrier. He's an imperial carrier from a well-known noble family, so of course he's expected to carry on the family name. He wasn't happy at the SGC. My guess is that he'd planned to take the golden parachute out of his family's military obligation and settle down. But now that we're back in Atlantis, he can't let it survive and pull him from the mission. That would certainly satisfy his natural affinity for martyrdom. It's also a distinct possibility that he doesn't want a child with the donor, um, whoever that may be." Rodney's voice cracked on the last part.
"Rodney, are you saying that you're--"
Rodney's hysterical laugh startled Teyla for a second. "Are you asking if I'm Sheppard's baby-deedee?"
"Are you?"
"No." Rodney sounded so heartbroken that Teyla wanted to reach out to him, but she knew well from experience that Rodney would not welcome it.
"But you know who is?"
"I'm not his keeper! I certainly don't have the time to keep track of Sheppard's various conquests. Now, if there are no more questions, I'm a very busy man."
"But how does it get out?" Ronon grumbled. Teyla had almost forgotten he was still there.
"That's it, I am not giving the kangaroos and the bees talk to the two of you. Go traumatize Carson instead!"
***
Carson was not very helpful. He had explained the Z chromosome and how the Ancients had used it to ensure that the ATA gene stayed in the population, and about noble lineage and how people like John with two Z chromosomes were very valuable, since they produced heirs and ensured that any children they had were also able to produce heirs. Apparently it was called imperial since such males were unable to produce sperm and therefore when married off, would only produce children that would take their family name. Because Earth children took the family name of whoever birthed them, such births created an "empire" of rulers with the same name.
The whole concept was lost on Teyla, because in Pegasus the Wraith culled with no discrimination and in such numbers that rule by bloodline seemed the epitome of absurdity. And yet with all his enthusiasm for history and genetics, Carson could not explain why John's child would not be valuable, only to say that many male carriers lost their neonates before they were safe in the pouch so they believed that it would simply be too painful to start loving them as though they were a life before then.
But when had John ever shied away from anything painful or dangerous?
Teyla made her way carefully to his quarters.
When John opened the door, he was shirtless, what Teyla had once thought was a scar now a raw-looking slash across his abdomen. Teyla gasped at the sight of it.
"Sorry," John remarked. "It's pretty sensitive." But he pulled out a roll of bandages, wrapping the slit lightly before pulling on his shirt. "Carson didn't explain that part, I guess."
"He explained many things, but not why you would kill your own child because he or she would be a nuisance to you." She hadn't intended to address him with such anger, but here she was. She'd been to Earth and seen the sheer number of people there. Perhaps they could afford to choose when to bear children and when not to, but this was something else entirely.
"It's not that, Teyla. This was a mistake. I made a really stupid mistake and someone has to fix it. And I'm the guy."
"The guy who will bind up the only place of safety his child has and let it die struggling as it tries to reach it?"
"No, the guy who fixes his mistakes and everybody else's. If I incubate it, they'll send me back to Earth, to my family. I'm needed here."
"Your child needs you too!" Teyla couldn't be sure why this was so important to her. Yes, it was another life, but it had to be more than that. John was her leader, and she would follow him to the ends of the universe. She had to be able to follow him for the sake of her people and the rest of the people in this galaxy. But she was too smart and too proud to follow someone who she could not put her faith in. John had no right to make her doubt him. "You know that," she begged. "Whatever your people say, you must know it."
John sat very still, refusing to look at her even now. "I already had my chance to be the perfect little imperial, with the husband and the family fortune and the 3.5 perfect little royal carriers for children. I fucked it up and now I'm here and at least I can say I'm happy."
"You can have a second chance. John, it's never too late. You can have a family and you can be happy too." Once, long ago, when they met she'd felt a spark of lust just looking at John and his intense eyes and delicate skin. Then months after he'd woken the Wraith, she met him on a balcony, the stars sparkling above him and he kissed her with such tenderness only to pull away and tell her that he could not. He was not what she thought he was.
Now, she has had many other conquests, and if this thing with Kanaan turnned out to be all she'd hoped for, then she would have to thank John for turning her down. She'd long moved on from John and what little he had to give, but there was a part of her that couldn't help but feel as though she were still trapped in the moment, with John holding her close at the same time he was pushing her away. "You want it," she whispered. "You're just scared of doing what it takes to have it."
"Look, imperials on my planet have been fighting war and carrying children since the beginning of our history. Hell, Alexander the Great captured Babylon with a child beneath his armor. It's not that."
"Then what is it?"
John sighed. "I made a choice between protecting my child and protecting the people I care about before." From the way things turned out, it was obvious who he chose. "I don't think, if I had to make that choice now, I could do it again. It's better that it doesn't come to that."
Teyla wanted to ask him what happened, but the memory was clearly painful. John could not handle so much "sharing" in a year, let alone a single day. Was it a fair price to trade her faith in John for putting him in a position where he would have to make such a choice between protecting a child of his and protecting his team? Could she follow him if she knew he had other priorities? She wasn't sure.
"John, if you want this child, then you may step down from leadership of the team for the time it takes to "incubate" it, as your people say. Rodney and Ronon and I will manage."
"But who will take care of you?" he looked absolutely bewildered at the thought.
"Ronon and I were quite capable of surviving in this galaxy long before you came along. And we will keep a close watch on Rodney for just a few months. We love you and we are better for having you fight at our side, but we will survive. Let us take care of you this time."
She reached out a hand for him, hoping with all her heart that he would take it.
The Prequel
Author: Tzzzz
Rating: PG13
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay preslash
Genre: mpreg
Summary: John has been acting strange recently, but Teyla never imagined the reason.
Something had been wrong all week, of that, Teyla was certain. The exact problem was much more difficult to place, most likely because John was at the heart of whatever it was. Even after three and a half years living with him in her life, Teyla could never tell if they ways of the Earth people were so strange as to be unintelligible to her, or if that was just John and Rodney.
Ordinarily, she would attribute the whole thing to illness. He had missed most of the Lucius Lavin debacle due to a stomach bug, and just last week interrupted a sparring match with Ronon because he was not feeling well. John was stubborn and cranky whenever sick or injured, but this went beyond that. Never particularly present, he seemed to be slipping away, avoiding her eyes, avoiding Rodney, even avoiding Ronon, who while not always the most enjoyable of companions, had a skill at not talking about what needed to be said second only to John himself.
John had been distant the entire briefing. Not simply drawing images of Earth fighter planes or poking Rodney under the table as usual, but staring at the wall as though he did not care about the latest battle plans for replicator evacuation when he himself had been the one to come up with them. Teyla sat a bit straighter in her chair, her body humming with the sense that something bad was about to happen, though it was only a meeting and the people around her seemed calm.
Except John, of course, whose white-knuckled grip on his chair seemed to worry no one but Teyla. She expected Ronon and Rodney to be oblivious, of course, but not Elizabeth. And yet, the one Earth person who seemed the most familiar and empathetic to Teyla, did not spare John's strange behavior a glance.
"Well, that concludes our meeting." Elizabeth eyes, however, gave the impression that they were far from finished, halting Ronon and Rodney in their tracks the second they moved to leave. "However, I believe Colonel Sheppard has something to share with you." She nodded to him once, formally, before gathering her things and quickly leaving them alone.
Rodney chose that moment to at last pick up on John's strange tension. "Oh my god. Are you dying? Am I dying? Are we being sent back to Earth? Please tell me we're not, because even though I really, really miss Starbucks and also, strangely, fresh kiwis, I don't think I can take another "managerial" position back at Area 51. I mean, last time was bad enough. Sure, they practically worshiped me, but what's it worth if you're only going to be worshipped by morons?"
Rodney's panic seemed to kick John out of his nervous stupor and focus him in a way that nothing but Rodney in a death spiral seemed to be able to.
"Relax, McKay, nobody is going anywhere." He took a deep breath, not meeting any of their gazes, no matter how much Teyla wanted him to. "Under section 43 of the UCMJ, I'm required to inform my superior officer, my second in command, and those who I can reasonably anticipate serving in combat with within seven days of finding out, so, um, here it goes: I'm gestating."
Rodney had been looking shocked from the second John started speaking, but it was Ronon who asked, "You're what?"
Rodney rolled his eyes, "For those uncivilized cretins on whom nuance is entirely lost, he's pregnant, for god's sake." He glared at Ronon, but even Rodney's considerable anger couldn't wipe away the look of hurt beneath it. It was one of those days, in which Teyla would once again be mystified by John and Rodney's relationship, or lack thereof.
"I'm not pregnant and I won't be. Just gestating. Now, I'm required to name a proxy if I want to keep going on missions, and as much as I hate to do this, it's going to be you, McKay. Though since I don't plan on incubating the thing, that doesn't really mean much."
"But, you'll need someone for the birthing process even if you don't," Rodney protested. Teyla had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. The few movies involving male pregnancies she had attended at movie night were all comedies or romantic dramas that only dealt with urban couples and their misadventures. Now that she thought about it, John had been conspicuously absent from all of them.
"I've dealt with that before," John snapped. "It won't be a problem."
"Dealt with what before?" Ronon asked. He'd been absent from those movies as well. "I didn't know men could get pregnant." Teyla believed that, though how Ronon could have lived among the Earth people for a year and a half without hearing about it seemed almost a miracle.
"Well, on our planet they can. Dr. Weir also told me to tell you that you can go ask Carson if you have any questions, since this whole thing is new to you. You don't need to, because I won't be getting beyond the gestating phase, but I get it if you're curious."
He stood up then, retreating as was his way. He didn't look any different, Teyla observed, but that didn't mean he wasn't any different. He was carrying a child, how could he not be?
"I do not understand," Teyla addressed Rodney after John had already gone. "What does he mean? He is asking us not to worry about him when he is pregnant as though it is not important. Will it not, at some point, interfere with his duties?" Teyla's own people continued to work and be active in the community right up until their last month, but that did not mean it was something they trivialized either.
"Because he's an idiot. It will interfere with his duties if he goes into labor out in the field, whatever he says about having done it before. But it's not important because he doesn't intend to keep it. He'll probably keep his pouch slit bound, so when the neonate is expelled, it won't have anywhere to go. It's just not particularly humane. In my country a carrying male seeking to interrupt expels the neonate into a chamber of sedative gas rather than making it struggle needlessly to satisfy their ridiculous "natural birth" laws."
"So he intends to kill it?" That did not sound like John. Not at all, after all the times he had told her to leave no man behind.
"You can't kill something that's not alive yet," was Rodney's reply, though his voice caught on something invisible - a pain that Teyla had always sensed in him, but had never been able to identify.
"But, it is alive!" Teyla had been paying attention during those movies, while the expectant parents held hands and watched the neonate crawl its way up its father's body and into the pouch, rapt with worry and wonder. Surely anything with that kind of strength and will to make such a journey already had the spark of life in it.
"No," Rodney replied wearily. Apparently this was an old debate, and Teyla was late to the table. "To our people, it's not. Ask one of the anthropologists. They do whole studies on that sort of thing."
"But surely John could not be so callus, regardless of the traditions of your people." Teyla had been trading since she was a child. She was very familiar with all different cultures, taboos, rituals, and had long learned not to hold others up to the same standards of morality as her people, and yet this still bothered her. Not because of the implications of how the Earth people valued life, but because it was John. "Why would he do this?"
Rodney sighed. "I don't claim to understand Sheppard. I may be a genius, but god only knows what goes on under that crazy hair of his. But if I had to guess. Well, Sheppard isn't just a carrier. He's an imperial carrier from a well-known noble family, so of course he's expected to carry on the family name. He wasn't happy at the SGC. My guess is that he'd planned to take the golden parachute out of his family's military obligation and settle down. But now that we're back in Atlantis, he can't let it survive and pull him from the mission. That would certainly satisfy his natural affinity for martyrdom. It's also a distinct possibility that he doesn't want a child with the donor, um, whoever that may be." Rodney's voice cracked on the last part.
"Rodney, are you saying that you're--"
Rodney's hysterical laugh startled Teyla for a second. "Are you asking if I'm Sheppard's baby-deedee?"
"Are you?"
"No." Rodney sounded so heartbroken that Teyla wanted to reach out to him, but she knew well from experience that Rodney would not welcome it.
"But you know who is?"
"I'm not his keeper! I certainly don't have the time to keep track of Sheppard's various conquests. Now, if there are no more questions, I'm a very busy man."
"But how does it get out?" Ronon grumbled. Teyla had almost forgotten he was still there.
"That's it, I am not giving the kangaroos and the bees talk to the two of you. Go traumatize Carson instead!"
***
Carson was not very helpful. He had explained the Z chromosome and how the Ancients had used it to ensure that the ATA gene stayed in the population, and about noble lineage and how people like John with two Z chromosomes were very valuable, since they produced heirs and ensured that any children they had were also able to produce heirs. Apparently it was called imperial since such males were unable to produce sperm and therefore when married off, would only produce children that would take their family name. Because Earth children took the family name of whoever birthed them, such births created an "empire" of rulers with the same name.
The whole concept was lost on Teyla, because in Pegasus the Wraith culled with no discrimination and in such numbers that rule by bloodline seemed the epitome of absurdity. And yet with all his enthusiasm for history and genetics, Carson could not explain why John's child would not be valuable, only to say that many male carriers lost their neonates before they were safe in the pouch so they believed that it would simply be too painful to start loving them as though they were a life before then.
But when had John ever shied away from anything painful or dangerous?
Teyla made her way carefully to his quarters.
When John opened the door, he was shirtless, what Teyla had once thought was a scar now a raw-looking slash across his abdomen. Teyla gasped at the sight of it.
"Sorry," John remarked. "It's pretty sensitive." But he pulled out a roll of bandages, wrapping the slit lightly before pulling on his shirt. "Carson didn't explain that part, I guess."
"He explained many things, but not why you would kill your own child because he or she would be a nuisance to you." She hadn't intended to address him with such anger, but here she was. She'd been to Earth and seen the sheer number of people there. Perhaps they could afford to choose when to bear children and when not to, but this was something else entirely.
"It's not that, Teyla. This was a mistake. I made a really stupid mistake and someone has to fix it. And I'm the guy."
"The guy who will bind up the only place of safety his child has and let it die struggling as it tries to reach it?"
"No, the guy who fixes his mistakes and everybody else's. If I incubate it, they'll send me back to Earth, to my family. I'm needed here."
"Your child needs you too!" Teyla couldn't be sure why this was so important to her. Yes, it was another life, but it had to be more than that. John was her leader, and she would follow him to the ends of the universe. She had to be able to follow him for the sake of her people and the rest of the people in this galaxy. But she was too smart and too proud to follow someone who she could not put her faith in. John had no right to make her doubt him. "You know that," she begged. "Whatever your people say, you must know it."
John sat very still, refusing to look at her even now. "I already had my chance to be the perfect little imperial, with the husband and the family fortune and the 3.5 perfect little royal carriers for children. I fucked it up and now I'm here and at least I can say I'm happy."
"You can have a second chance. John, it's never too late. You can have a family and you can be happy too." Once, long ago, when they met she'd felt a spark of lust just looking at John and his intense eyes and delicate skin. Then months after he'd woken the Wraith, she met him on a balcony, the stars sparkling above him and he kissed her with such tenderness only to pull away and tell her that he could not. He was not what she thought he was.
Now, she has had many other conquests, and if this thing with Kanaan turnned out to be all she'd hoped for, then she would have to thank John for turning her down. She'd long moved on from John and what little he had to give, but there was a part of her that couldn't help but feel as though she were still trapped in the moment, with John holding her close at the same time he was pushing her away. "You want it," she whispered. "You're just scared of doing what it takes to have it."
"Look, imperials on my planet have been fighting war and carrying children since the beginning of our history. Hell, Alexander the Great captured Babylon with a child beneath his armor. It's not that."
"Then what is it?"
John sighed. "I made a choice between protecting my child and protecting the people I care about before." From the way things turned out, it was obvious who he chose. "I don't think, if I had to make that choice now, I could do it again. It's better that it doesn't come to that."
Teyla wanted to ask him what happened, but the memory was clearly painful. John could not handle so much "sharing" in a year, let alone a single day. Was it a fair price to trade her faith in John for putting him in a position where he would have to make such a choice between protecting a child of his and protecting his team? Could she follow him if she knew he had other priorities? She wasn't sure.
"John, if you want this child, then you may step down from leadership of the team for the time it takes to "incubate" it, as your people say. Rodney and Ronon and I will manage."
"But who will take care of you?" he looked absolutely bewildered at the thought.
"Ronon and I were quite capable of surviving in this galaxy long before you came along. And we will keep a close watch on Rodney for just a few months. We love you and we are better for having you fight at our side, but we will survive. Let us take care of you this time."
She reached out a hand for him, hoping with all her heart that he would take it.
The Prequel