legion the things i would give to oblivion

John separated everything on his plate and slid half of it onto Rodney's without thinking about it. Sunday afternoon in the suburbs. They were sitting in the shaded portion of Jeannie McKay Miller's backyard while her husband Kaleb barbequed. Her kids were tearing around the perfect green lawn, playing with a water hose and one of those blue plastic Slip-n-Slides, splashing and screaming at the top of their lungs.
The screams were getting to him, making his head pound. He wished vaguely for his sunglasses. He must have left them in Atlant—Don't go there, don't go there.

He shut his eyes then snapped them open as Rodney caught his wrist and squeezed.

"Stop it," Rodney hissed. He tipped his plate and pushed the hotdog and baked beans and salad off and back onto John's. "Just stop it."

John stared at the food and flinched.

"You think I didn't know what you were doing?" Rodney said in an undertone. He smiled when Jeannie looked at the two of them in concern. John forced a fake smile, too. Rodney still held his wrist, big hand grinding the bones together hard enough to bruise. "You selfish bastard."

John said softly, "You needed it. We weren't going to make it if you slipped into a coma."

"So you thought, what, you'd make sure I stayed around long enough to watch my best friend starve himself to death for me?"

"I'm still here."

Rodney let go of his wrist, staring at John. Jeannie and her husband were both watching them now, sensing something was wrong. Like they hadn't guessed that the minute they opened their front door and saw Rodney and John washed up on their step like refugees from the storm.

"No, you're not," Rodney said, "you're still there."

~*~
The Daedalus flashed into existence midway inside the Atlantis system like an angel with a terrible swift sword as John's mouth still shaped what he'd considered his last words. A hundred darts and one ancillary Wraith cruiser abandoned the attack on Atlantis to streak toward the ship. John took one look at that on the heads up display, then tore into the rear of the Jumper, releasing the tie downs holding the Genii device in place. Maybe, just maybe, he could get out of this alive. One chance, but that was all he needed. Rodney and Zelenka had done a good job turning the primitive, low-yield nukes into command detonated devices. The one in the bay didn't have to be inside the Jumper to go off. Three minutes later, he flew the Jumper at a full speed arc toward one of the Hive ships, opened the bay at his closest approach and jettisoned the Genii nuke on a course for its target, hurling the Jumper away on a twisting, wild evasion course afterward and yelling on the radio to Elizabeth to trigger it.

Soundless white light burned through his closed eyelids a moment later, followed by a fierce hail of debris from the wreckage of the Hive ship impacting the Jumper. The inertial dampers failed along with the main propulsion systems. John was flung around the flight cabin, but the shields and comms held out and he was left bruised but alive.

He listened as Atlantis greeted the Daedalus.

Seven long hours later, after the Daedalus destroyed the last Hive ship, they picked him up and brought him home to Atlantis.

Rodney gave him the dirtiest look imaginable as John walked in behind Col. Caldwell, mouthing 'So long, Rodney,' at him and John knew that once he had his second wind Rodney was going to make him pay and pay for running out like that. John didn't care, still high on surviving and the news that Teyla and Ford had both been found.

The euphoria only lasted until they sat down and faced the casualty lists, the names of people John had known and worked side by side with for a year and the Marines he'd never had a chance to know at all.
~*~

They drove south down the Pacific Coast Highway in a red convertible Mustang John had picked out. Rodney refused to get back in anything not driven or flown by him or John. John didn't care what they did as long as they kept moving.

Some place past Monterey, he let Rodney take over driving. He pushed the passenger seat back and tried to doze. The sun felt warm on his face. He'd missed that, something so simple, been trapped too long in Atlantis and again under the Mountain for the last six weeks.

The growl of the Mustang's engine—which could have used a tune up—masked the sound of the breakers crashing against the coastline.

He kept his eyes shut when Rodney stopped for gas, pretending to be asleep. He could feel Rodney's eyes on him, on his bare arm where it rested on the frame of the Mustang's door, on the scars left by the IVs Beckett had put in. He wasn't going to hide them under long sleeves the way Rodney did.

After a while, Rodney got out and pumped the gas. The sharp petroleum reek made John wrinkle his nose. He'd forgotten how ugly internal combustion smelled.

He'd begun digging his fingernails into the weather-stripping along the passenger door's window glass when Rodney finally came back. The feather brush of Rodney's fingertips along his temples as Rodney eased a pair of sunglasses over his eyes made him open them.

The blue-green tint startled him, reminding him of the light in—

John jerked them off.

Rodney sat back in the driver's seat. "Sorry. You looked like the glare was giving you a headache." His expression closed off and he pressed his lips into a thin, lopsided line as though to stop any other words.

John played with the earpieces for a second, looking at them rather than Rodney. "Yeah," he said and put them back on. "It was. Thanks."

Rodney gave him an unreadable look then started car. His hands were white knuckled on the steering wheel.

John brushed his hand over Rodney's shoulder. "Put your seat belt on."

"Yes, mother," Rodney complained as he braked the Mustang and fumbled the belt on.

"Don't—"

"I'm trying, damn it. You could too, you know."

John let his hand fall away and stared out the passenger window.

"I'm sorry I can‘t just forget, okay?"
~*~

The problem was the ZPM the Daedalus had brought with them. There was power to activate the city and the shield for just over a year if that's all they did. Less if they used the active defenses. Much, much less if they used it to dial Earth with the Stargate.

Col. Caldwell's answer was straight from Stargate Command: they would evacuate the expedition's survivors on the Daedalus after activating the shield and sinking Atlantis again. They would return through the Stargate once they had found another power source. Rodney could program the gate shield to stop anyone without a release code from dialing in.

It had to work because they knew there were other Wraith Hive ships out there. Sooner or later they would come back and the Daedalus couldn't stand against them all.

~*~

Rodney wanted to meet some mathematician because he had just published a paper on something that sounded like the same mathematics the Ancients had used. They flew into Travis AFB on a military transport and an Airman drove them from there, navigating the six lanes of south bound traffic through hills gone summer gold, over the Carquinez Bridge and alongside the Bay as they passed the Berkeley exits. The air changed in the time it took to roll down one hill, from the Central Valley's heat to sea cool. A haze of fog hung on the water of the bay, obscuring the Golden Gate.

Stanford was the same, California bright, and alien at the same time.

The kid's name was Charlie, a roman-nosed dreamer with wild curly hair who was neither impressed nor intimidated by the official ID John and Rodney showed him. They followed him from his classroom to his office—okay, he wasn't really a kid, but John and Rodney had a good ten years on him—where Rodney started trying to recruit him for the program and John stared moodily out the south facing window.

There were people on the walkways and people on the grass and more people in the cars on the streets that he could glimpse between buildings. More people than John could remember seeing put all together in two years. The entire Pegasus Galaxy had been empty, hunted out, in comparison to Earth.

"Excuse me, but both of you look like POWs or something, so I'm not exactly enthusiastic about joining up," Charlie said, catching John's attention.

Rodney gave him a look. "A little help here, Colonel?"

John pulled his hands out of his jean's pockets and held them up. "What?" he said. "You look like shit."

"And you look worse," Rodney snapped.

John shrugged. He didn't care if Charlie went to work for the Stargate Program or went on teaching or decided to run away to Baja and live as a beach bum. Except the latter two weren't as likely to get Charlie killed in some new and innovative alien way. His eyes caught on the white board turned away from the office door and the equations written over half it. It was a complex problem, obviously only half worked out, probably something Charlie worked on between classes on his own time. Interested despite himself—it was math and Rodney had long ago broke him of his habit of hiding his pleasure in it—John took a step forward.

A semi-transparent display seemed to appear before his eyes, flickering green symbols cascading down in a rain of Ancient mathematics. The database in his memory generated it. Behind his eyes, it clicked on and began translating terms. No one else would see anything.

The first time it happened he'd thought he was hallucinating.

His hands began trembling.

Compelled despite himself, he plucked up a marker from the lip of the white board and began writing down the solution followed by the proofs. He was only tangentially aware of Rodney and Charlie standing behind him at some point. Charlie was muttering, "Oh my God, oh my God, that's it. That's it."

Reality snapped back when he finished. The display disappeared from his head. "Solete," he said in Ancient and let the marker drop from his stiff fingers.

He let Rodney guide him away from the board to a chair and dropped into it. He ended up with his head between his knees, hoping he wasn't about to puke. Rodney crouched beside him, one hand resting warm and heavy on his back, slowly running up and down his spine, rucking up the loose fabric of his shirt.

"John?"

He flailed out with one hand blindly, nearly hitting Rodney's nose, before Rodney caught it in his free hand.

"It's still there," he choked out.

Rodney folded their fingers together.

"But you're okay."

John nodded and sat up. He didn't let go of Rodney's hand, not caring what Charlie saw or thought.

Sure enough, Charlie was leaning against his desk, arms folded, watching them. "There's a million dollar prize for the first person who solves that, you know," he said. "No one's done it in the last fifteen years. I've been working on it for the last three. You just…did it like it was obvious as two plus two. What are you doing in the Air Force? Why aren't you—"

"You can have the money. I don't care."

"O'Neill isn't going to be thrilled by any publicity," Rodney said. John dropped his head. Rodney squeezed his hand.

"I don't want the stupid money!" Charlie yelled. He threw up his hands and glared at John and Rodney. "I can't believe you came in here and just did that. What the hell do you need me for if you can do that, anyway?"

"Because I‘m a pilot," John said tiredly. "Because it‘s not me." On his back, Rodney's hand curled into a fist. "I just see things differently sometimes."

"Yeah, right."

Charlie stared at the solved equation.

"What's your name again?"

"Colonel John Sheppard, US Air Force," Rodney said when John didn't answer.

"I'll credit you," Charlie said.

John just shook his head. "I really don't care."

Charlie shook his head. "You really don't. —Want some coffee?"

"We'd kill for coffee," Rodney said.

"It sucks here."

"Believe me, any coffee is great," Rodney declared enthusiastically. He tugged John to his feet.

"Lead on. Where is it?"
~*~

Rodney and Zelenka installed the ZPM with the reverence of men handling a holy artifact, while Elizabeth and John worked with Caldwell to organize the evacuation. Everything in the city had to be shut down properly before they sank her again. The news that John had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in absentia barely registered. A sense of melancholy pervaded the city.

They were running.

John put Ford in charge of liaising with Caldwell on board the Daedalus and they began shuttling people up to where the big ship orbited. Caldwell's crew were busy repairing the damage the Hive ship had done and clearing space for the Atlantis people. There was little time for contemplation.

For almost two weeks, they worked steadily, knowing the odds against any of them returning, until only a skeleton crew remained in the city.

Too long.

~*~

John stepped out of the infirmary and realized he didn't have any destination; he‘d been too intent on persuading the doctors to release him to think about it.

He stood in a corridor that seemed to telescope vertiginously out to an infinite vanishing point, frozen and disconnected, none of it feeling real, his hands wanting to shake. If anyone saw him now, they'd know he was a basket case. Not from his uniform, he'd dressed in the blue BDUs the SGC wore on base and a black T-shirt that still hung on him even after two weeks of IVs and vitamins and nurses competing to do everything but force feed him every hour, but because he couldn't even decide which direction to turn.

All it would take would be one look in his eyes, he knew. He had to bury it, smother it, push it down and pretend he didn't hear the screaming in his dreams. He had to make his eyes lie along with his mouth.

He'd lied to the psychologist they'd brought in to talk to him and Rodney. He knew the drill. He'd had the same therapy sessions after Afghanistan, knew exactly what McKenzie had wanted to hear and gave it to him so he could get what he wanted: out.

He had ID that said he belonged to the SGC now.

The new pips were pinned to his gray and black Atlantis expedition jacket: the one he'd worn on off world missions, with its dark, missing patches and bloodstains.

He didn't know where McKay had got to after being released the day before and that disturbed him, because Rodney—Rodney was all he had left. It felt like someone had amputated a limb.

The interface with Atlantis was gone. He couldn't locate anyone with just a thought. There might be a few Ancient devices on base he could initialize, but there were no Jumpers to fly, no AI that threaded information from a thousand systems and sensors through his mind. He was crippled.

John took a deep breath. There was still Rodney. He wouldn't let himself think about Atlantis. Rodney was all he needed.

He wanted out of this tomb under the mountain. He needed to move.

~*~

Two days before final shutdown, two Hive ships and their attendant cruisers and darts exited hyperspace into the system in a shower of radiation. For one critical moment, they were masked from the Daedalus', as its orbit took it around the planet's far side.

Zelenka and Rodney were in the gate room, installing the lock that would raise the shield if anyone dialed in without an SGC identification and code release. John was in the Jumper bay, doing flight prep, while Stackhouse and Teyla did a final sweep of the city. In the control room, Beckett and Kusanagi were assisting Weir, stripping hard drives from the last laptops interfaced with Atlantis's systems. Mikalovic, one of the Daedalus' pilots, was taking the penultimate group of scientists up to the ship.

Long range sensors were already shut down to conserve power. Their first warning came from the Mikalovic's Jumper as it arced up past the near side atmosphere.

Hive ships.

Her transmission broke off mid-word.

Incom—

John's first instinct had been to take the Jumper up, but Elizabeth's calm voice was in his ear, directing him to report with Rodney to the chair room and engage the city shields. Atlantis shook under fire from the first wave of darts.

John ran.

~*~

O'Neill mentioned the promotion to full bird colonel after the final debriefing and handed over the new insignia during an elaborately casual visit to the infirmary. They were still confined there on doctor's orders.

O'Neill cocked his head and watched John and Rodney both as he said, "I suppose you kids will want some time off, now that you're home."

Rodney had glanced up from his dinner and given him a disbelieving look.

"Does this look like Canada?" he demanded around a mouthful of poached egg. "No? Amazing. Not that I actually have any reason to go back there, because my sister was in LA the last time she wrote me and my parents? Just no." He finished wistfully. "I'd kind of like to see Jeannie again."

"So you'll go to LA. The USAF will even fly you there," O'Neill said. "What about you, Col. Sheppard? Where's home?"

Atlantis.

"Nowhere," he said with shrug. "I was stationed at McMurdo for eleven months before, remember?"

Before they sent him to Atlantis, the only place that had ever felt like home.

O'Neill gave him a sharp look, one that told John that he knew there was more than had been said, but let it go with a casual shrug. "You get McKenzie and Warner to clear you and I'll set up official leave for you."

~*~

Every light in the city died as John reached the chair room. The door snapped shut behind him with a guillotine crunch. Blue-green light from the emergency generators illuminated Rodney and Zelenka bent on the task of bringing the ZPM they'd been waiting to activate online in the place of the last naquadah generator. Blood was running from Zelenka's nose, unnoticed. There was no time to wonder what had happened to him.

Rodney checked each attachment by touch, holding a penlight in his mouth. He barely acknowledged John, intent, nodding as John turned his P90's attached light on to the ZPM.

Rodney pulled his hands away and stared. One crystal waited to fill its slot.

Atlantis physically rocked as another barrage hit. Heavy energy beams fired from orbit, John thought. The noise of explosions topside overwhelmed everything else. John braced one hand on the quiescent control chair.

Zelenka spat something in Czech, blood dripping on the console before him. He wiped it away with cuff of his shirt. He poised his hand over the activation control.

Rodney set his hand on the last crystal. He held the other up with three fingers extended. Zelenka locked his eyes on that hand.

Elizabeth's calm voice charted the situation through John's radio earpiece.

Air cover launching from Daedalus now.

One finger curled down.

Second dart wave approaching in 49 seconds. Mark.

Two fingers.

The Daedalus has engaged one of the Hive ships and is leaving orbit. Gentleman, if you can do something, do it now."

Rodney pointed his third finger like a gun. Zelenka slapped his hand down on the switch. A white glow pulsed from the ZPM. John felt the power flood through Atlantis's systems and staggered, amazed by the difference. He hadn't understood how crippled the city was before.

Rodney grabbed his shoulders, yelling at him, but John couldn't hear. He felt his friend shove him into the chair.

The interface engaged completely for the first time, recognizing an individual with a near full compliment of naturally occurring Ancient genes. It accepted John's directives to recognize Rodney, despite the artificial gene, as a citizen, along with Beckett and Kusanagi. The AI wouldn't accept anyone without the gene except as protected individuals. John held onto his identity long enough to do that much for Teyla and Weir, Stackhouse and Zelenka.

He thought: shields.

Personal defense shields snapped in place around citizens and protected designates.

He thought: defense.

Artificial lightning ran through the corridors and balconies of the city, incinerating the invading Wraith.

The main shield went online, darts smashing against it in blooms of red-orange fire.

And then—

Then—

The Atlantis database downloaded into his brain.

He screamed.

He was the city.

~*~

The nurse had no idea what John had just told her to do with her tray of jello and broth, but a soft, embarrassed cough from the doorway indicated the blue eyed man there did. Earnest expression, glasses, short dark blond hair, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his BDUs…John placed him after a moment. He'd met Dr. Daniel Jackson in Antarctica and again later before the expedition embarked through the gate.

He'd guessed the man wanted to go, too. Maybe he'd thought better of that ambition now.

"You're awake," Jackson said inanely. He winced immediately, catching John's look of disgust. "I mean, obviously. I've been here a couple of times before, with Sam and Jack, uhm, General O'Neill, but the doctors still had you and Dr. McKay under sedation. I'm sorry, I'm babbling."

John shrugged.

In the next bed over, Rodney shifted and snuffled in his sleep. He'd finished his breakfast enthusiastically and fallen right back asleep. John found the soft, familiar sounds Rodney made in his sleep the only comfort he had in the dead gray concrete confines of the SGC, so different from Atlantis' stained glass and light.

Jackson picked up a straight chair and walked it over to John's bedside, sitting down astride it. Light glinted off the lenses of his glasses. He folded his arms over the back and smiled disarmingly.

"Jack thinks you're speaking Ancient to be a dick."

John looked at him. He was too empty to play games.

Rodney whimpered in his sleep, starting to thrash, his hands catching and tangling in the scratchy military issue blanket drawn up over his chest. John's gaze snapped to him.

"You and Dr. McKay," Jackson clarified. "I don't."

He closed his eyes, hoping Jackson would go away. The last thing he wanted was to talk to anyone. His nerves still jangled like a junkie's. The gate room alarms had him awake and searching for a weapon each time they sounded. Sometimes he thought he could feel the Stargate operating, the wormhole forming in its ring. An illusion, a ghost of the interface.

"Col. Sheppard, I don't even know if you remember me."

John nodded, giving in and watching Jackson take off his glasses and clean them on the tail of his T-shirt, distantly amused by the frown of concentration creasing Jackson's brow.

"I just wanted to say…" Jackson looked away. "I know what it's like to lose someone…special. And I do speak Ancient."

He was talking about Teyla. John felt himself shut down. He turned his face away.

"Okay, obviously you don't want to talk about it."

Rodney's whimpers had become words, a mishmash of Ancient and English. "The Wraith. Stop the ship. Everyone—all of them." John flicked a glance toward Jackson, then dismissed him as irrelevant. The nightmare they shared, of choices made, had hold of Rodney. He fumbled and found the release that took down the rails at the side of the bed.

"Oh, Warner will have a fit if you do that," Jackson protested.

John ignored him. He jerked the IV out ruthlessly and scrabbled his way to the edge of the bed. Rodney fought the sheets and blanket desperately, head whipping from side to side.

"John?" Rodney called out. "John? John?"

John stumbled across the space between their beds and caught the rail to hold himself up. When his head stopped spinning, he untangled the blanket from Rodney's hands and caught them in his.

"McKay," he murmured. He tightened his fingers around Rodney's, stroking the strong knuckles with his thumbs. "McKay." His voice cracked. "Rodney." His legs didn't want to hold him up so he braced his hip against the side of the bed.

Rodney tensed subtly then his eyes snapped open. He was pale and stubbly, sweat gleamed at the hollow of his throat, and his eyes were dilated. His hands twisted in John's then tightened desperately.

"John."

Still holding Rodney's hands, John leaned over him.

"Here?" Rodney squeaked.

John rested his forehead against Rodney's, hoping some of the elusive peace he'd felt when Teyla shared her people's custom with him would return. The position made his back ache and the cold bed rail dug into the hollow under his ribs. But he could feel Rodney's breath warm against his face.

He wanted to crawl into the bed next to Rodney and hold onto the only good thing, the only real thing he had left.

~*~

Rodney physically pulled John's body out of the command chair twenty-seven hours later, screaming at him, screaming at Beckett to do something, doing chest compressions on John the entire time, while John tried to remember having a finite body made of flesh and the limits it imposed.

Beckett pumped a needle full of adrenaline into him and he began to shake, heart beating again, the scream lost and still in his throat, trying to tell them, the words tumbling out in a language they didn't even know. English and Ancient and math intertwined in his overloaded brain until he couldn't sort any of it.

Atlantis shrieked, taking fire and damage again. Entire sectors blanked out of the map in John's mind, no longer responding. Destroyed. He tried to get back to the chair.

But Rodney wrapped his arms around John, held him, and he was too weak to fight free. John shouted, pointing at the chair, and Rodney figured it out—that John was yelling in Ancient, that the shield and the weapons wouldn't operate without someone in the chair all the time because the city AI was forbidden to operate without a citizen in the interface.

Then he let Teyla take over holding John down and walked past Beckett to the chair, like a man to his execution, telling him to be ready if it affected him like it had John, before sitting down.

Teyla's strong arms tightened around John. He went still and watched.

Rodney stiffened in the chair, his spine arching, eyes opened blind and dilated, mouth wide and soundless. Blue light through the lattice of metal behind Rodney's head washed away all human color. Beckett made an abortive move toward him then stopped.

The interface whispered that citizen designate McKay had secondary operator status in the system.

Sufficient.

The sound Rodney made, like an animal in a trap, crawled through John's bones.

John saw all the others gathered in the unlit edges of the room, faces sharp and shadowed, blue-green ghosts of the Ancients who had come to the room in ever dwindling numbers to take their shifts in the chair. Fragments of memory from the others who had inhabited the interface flickered through his mind, past and present reduced to stored data and constant calculations.

Only a fraction of even the Ancient population had been able to interface with the city completely. Most of them had merely been operators, entering commands through the chair. John's genes let him do much, much more and Rodney, thanks to Carson's therapy, had an artificial version of John's gene, strong enough sweep him into the eye of Atlantis.

Elizabeth, pale and drawn taut, moved onto the lit flooring and wrapped her hand around Rodney's wrist, drawing his attention back to the physical. She asked for the city's status.

A display graphing ZPM power consumption, provided unprompted by the still active interface, appeared behind John's eyes as the city shield re-initialized. The same thing glowed in holograph form above Rodney in the command chair, visible for Elizabeth.

John rolled over and hid his face against Teyla's stomach. It made no difference. The database was in his head and the interface was permanent.

Long range sensors showed one Hive ship still in orbit, pouring fire down through the atmosphere, busy devastating the entire biome of the planet. The grass lands of the landmass were burning over thousands and thousands of miles under a blackened sky. Each time the energy weapons touched the ocean, it boiled, clouds of superheated steam billowing upward from the water.

John made a ragged sound. Teyla stroked the back of his head, trying to comfort him when there was none. He wrapped his arms around her waist and let the tears seep from under his closed eyelids, pressed against her where no one could see.

A probability matrix unfurled through his thoughts showing that the planet's ecology might survive if the bombardment stopped immediately. The outcome changed second by second, counting down to complete ecological failure. Species disappeared from the balance, one by one, each extinction accelerating the cascade effect. Massive die outs became inevitable as the system pendulumed out of balance. Complexity gave way to simplicity, evolution reversed, until a single cell fed on the high mineral content of the water near a lava vent under the ocean.

Until even the water burned with poison and nothing survived.

Time ticked past the point of no return; system failure became assured.

John pushed at the interface, reached into the database still integrating into his brain, desperate for some hope.

Time from bio-seed to self sustaining ecology—

Reset.

The Hive ship remained in orbit.

Factor increased background radiation—

Still strafed the planet with punishing fire.

Factor loss of planetary magnetic field—

Beyond the ecliptic, the Daedalus sparred with the second Hive ship, while Wraith cruisers harvested asteroids from the seventh planet's rings.

Factor loss of atmospheric envelope under kinetic bombardment—

Reset.

Reset.

Reset.

Ultimate system failure. A dead rock in a dead system, destined to remain so forever.

~*~

"Close the iris, close the iris!" Rodney shouted hoarsely.

John knelt on the ramp, still holding his empty pistol. The metal grate bit into his knees. Teyla's head rested against his chest, body sprawled on the ramp.

"Do it," General O'Neill ordered from the control room.

John lifted his head and turned it stiffly to stare at Rodney. There was still 23 seconds on the clock in his head, though the interface had dropped out the instant he stepped into the wormhole.

The metal iris that guarded the SGC's gate spiraled closed. Pulsing red lights dyed the gray concrete room with bloody light while sirens rang through the corridors under the mountain. John's breath rasped in his throat. He could feel the weight of it, an entire mountain, a world, pressing down on him.

"Zelenka?" he croaked.

Rodney shook his head. "Wraith."

Still, they waited for the terrible sound of a body hitting the iris. Teyla's body lay limp and warm over John's thighs, long tangled hair wet with blood. Her eyes were open.

Five, John mouthed.

Rodney nodded.

Four.

Three.

Something hit the iris. The Marines still aiming rifles at them jumped. John hoped it had been a Wraith.

Two.

"One," he said.

"Down!" Rodney yelled, throwing himself over John.

In a wrecked city , in another galaxy, the self-destruct they'd designed used the last remaining energy in their ZPM to trigger an overload in the engaged Stargate, starting a naquadah reaction. For a nanosecond, as it detonated, the heart of a sun poured plasma through the open wormhole. It hit the iris as the Atlantis Stargate overloaded.

Light pushed around the pieces of the iris and a single section blew out, spearing through the blast door and reinforced glass, through the control room behind that, through a computer, a reinforced concrete wall and into a conference room to lodge like a quivering spear under a framed picture of President Hayes.

The wormhole collapsed before the plasma pouring through it could do more than melt the edges of the pieces of iris exposed by the weak section.

O'Neill stormed into the gate room, pushing past the Marines uncertainly guarding John and Rodney. Col. Carter followed him in.

Rodney climbed off John.

"McKay?" Carter exclaimed.

Rodney ignored her in favor of prying John's pistol out of his fingers and tossing it away. John let him do it. He wasn't Gaul.

Besides, it was empty.

"Holy Hannah, McKay, what happened to you?" Carter asked.

"Never mind that. What the hell happened just now!?" O'Neill demanded.

"We blew the Stargate up," Rodney said in Ancient.

"Col. Sheppard?" O'Neill said.

John ignored him, turning back to Teyla's body, trying to mend her undignified sprawl, arranging limp, still warm limbs.

Rodney pulled him away from her, wrapping his arms around John. John didn't fight him. He let his head hang.

"I'm done," he said.

"I know," Rodney replied.

~*~

Beckett had the stronger gene than Kusanagi, but he could sense the interface and it scared him. He could get the shield up and maintain that, nothing more. He had hated using the chair even before the ZPM. Kusanagi took her shifts reluctantly, frightened by the effect the chair had on Rodney and John, but the AI responded to her like a dog, obeying commands and nothing more. Neither of them had any trouble getting out of it.

It should have been six hour shifts for all of them, but sometimes they couldn't afford the gap in their defenses created by switching operators. Caught in the interface, John never felt Beckett hook him up to an IV.

Five days into the second siege, they'd all made unofficial camp in the chair room, with blankets and bedrolls laid out in the corners. The control room had taken a hit during the time the shield came down. Without the control room's equipment it was easier to keep up through whoever had the chair.

John accompanied Elizabeth to the tower once, wincing at the burn marked walls, the broken windows and the view of Atlantis before them, shattered towers and smoke still rising under the sunless sky. A raw wind pushed inside, reeking of overheated metal, the fires still burning in the damaged parts of the city, and the dead, heaving ocean that surrounded them. Outside the shield, lightning threaded through seething black clouds, arcing downward, actinic flashes of purple and electric green reflecting from the glass on the floor.

The Stargate remained undamaged, but the controls were wreckage.

Rodney and Zelenka's locked shield shimmered in the empty ring. No one could dial in. There would be no help there.

Above them, the shield dome pulsed blinding white from the impact of another energy beam. Elizabeth turned her face away, the bones beneath her skin etched in the instant of the glare.

He checked the Jumper bay to reassure himself the sensors didn't lie: the Jumpers were still there. Number Four still waited with its hatch open to fly them up to the Daedalus. John shut it down. Methodically, going down the checklist, while Elizabeth waited silently.

John tried not to speak at all, disturbed when only Rodney and Elizabeth understood. He was forgetting English. Every time he came out of the chair it took longer to remember. Beckett was the worst, with the pity is his eyes. Stackhouse and Teyla just accepted it as another inexplicable reality, Zelenka looked curious, but Beckett muttered about brain damage and traumatic psychosis and worried.

They went back to the chair room and ate MREs from the two cases retrieved by Zelenka and Stackhouse from the mess. They ate sitting on the floor, mostly silent, while Kusanagi projected a holograph image of sensor readings from beyond the ecliptic.

The Daedalus was still out there, caught in a cut throat fight with the Wraith in what they'd universally dubbed Hive ship Four, the count beginning with the one that cost them Peter Grodin.

Kusanagi was improving her control. She'd had them back in touch with Caldwell's command. Elizabeth assured him they were secure—for the moment.

The Wraith were eerily silent or using tech the sensors didn't recognize.

Kusanagi had even found a way to tap the Daedalus' internal communications. She put it on audio and they all listened despite themselves, watching icons on the hologram display.

Hull breach in Engineering Two. Emergency Repair Crew report to—

Transient, transient.

That's a new one.

John sat next to Rodney, color washing over his unshaven face from the hologram, chewing his meatloaf and mashed potatoes without tasting it. Without discussing it, he switched his vanilla cookies for the lemon pound cake that came with Rodney's MRE.

Brace for impact.

Rerouting power from gravitic generators in Decks Six, Eight and Nine. Please comply with freefall combat protocol.

Here they come again.

Transient, transient—oh god.

A line of orange lights—missiles maybe—stretched from Hive ship Four toward the Daedalus. When they touched it, the hologram fuzzed white briefly, sensors overloaded. A graph appeared beside the blurred icons. Radiation levels spiked lethally.

John held his breath.

The audio continued, flat and toneless, desperation smothered beneath fatalistic professionalism.

Fire control to Deck Five, Fire control to Deck Five, Section Charlie Gamma, repeat Section Charlie Gamma. We have casualties—

Lateral control not responding. Rerouting control through Life Support. Three minutes.

Elizabeth sat with her hands limp on her lap, face upturned. A strobe flash of light washed out the hologram for an instant, another impact on the city shield, coming through the door Zelenka had jury-rigged into staying open.

Rodney stuffed the last cookie into his mouth. He headed for the chair, talking fast with his mouth still full, crumbs on his blue shirt, telling Kusanagi to get out, it was his turn. The Wraith had a rhythm to their attacks and it would be another two minutes before they fired on Atlantis again. Time enough to change over.

Kusanagi gave up the chair gratefully. The hologram winked out, the lights died and Atlantis heaved under their feet, buffeted by an ocean whipped under the power of the planet wide storm.

Rodney twitched weakly as he sat down. His fingers pressed down against the arm rests. The AI recognized him now and responded faster. The hologram of the battle beyond the seventh planet rematerialized above the chair, rotating on two axes.

The Daedalus maneuvered sluggishly. Hive ship Four seemed to wallow in place, but it kept firing.

We're losing containment on Reactor Two—

Jettison it.

We can't vent all of Engineering Two to vacuum! There are still—

The display offered a cascading side bar, graphing how much atmosphere streamed out of the Daedalus as its airlocks opened.

Zelenka's mouth hung open. Then he closed it and reached up under his glasses, wiping at his eyes.

John looked down at his hands, stirring the cold food still left. Someone murmured ‘God' very softly. That scar on his knuckle, he didn't even recognize it. Just something that had happened since passing through the Stargate, so inconsequential he hadn't even registered it. If they'd lost reactor containment they might have been dead already…

Stackhouse began cursing. John jerked his gaze back up.

Hive ship Five was moving out of orbit on a course plotted to intercept the Daedalus in a pincer movement.

Elizabeth asked Rodney if he could warn them.

The voices from the Daedalus acknowledged, some nameless Airman handling communications with the preternatural calm of the heavily drugged or utterly exhausted.

So much for the cavalry coming to the rescue, Atlantis.

John thought he might have liked serving under Caldwell.

Don't suppose there's anything you can do for us?

The interface whispered of long range weapons, of something like a drone missile but powerful enough to destroy both Hive ships if they were in proximity. Almost apologetically, the AI showed him how much power it would cost their ZPM, losing them six months shield time and the shield would have to come down to fire it.

Rodney readied it anyway.

Transient, transient.

Fire on Deck Six. We have fire on Deck Six—

Static dissolving into chaos.

—dic to the bridge. We need a medical team on the bridge, Col. Caldwell is—

—weapons lock on the target. Firing—

—assuming command—

—die, you mother—

—coolant loss means it will overload in three point nine—

Hive ship Four's icon overlapped the Daedalus. Hive ship Five approached. John checked the key. They were too damn close, within ramming distance in the parlance of an ocean going navy. Had Caldwell meant to go kamikaze?

This is Major Wallace. Prepare for hyperspace jump.

Daedalus, if you hyperspace jump, the Wraith will track your power signature back to your galaxy.

If they board us, they'll take the coordinates off our navigation computers. These are your people I'm trying to save, Atlantis. I'm sorry. We‘ll take our chances. Wallace out.

I'm sorry too.

The sound of the storm wind screaming through Atlantis' ruins alerted the others the shield had dropped. Beckett asked what was happening.

A missile bunker in Pier Six irised open, the launcher telescoping upward, a fragile appearing needle stabbing beyond the apex of the city shield.

—abandon them!

Get Lt. Ford off the bridge—

Hive ship Five's icon touched the other two on the display circling over Rodney lying in the command chair.

Rodney fired the Ancient's offensive weapon, sending it up through the atmosphere and across half the Atlantis solar system in a single breath. The city groaned and sirens wailed through its corridors.

Zelenka ran to the laptop still tapped into the command chair's systems, typing commands, shouting that they'd just lost half the ZPM's charge.

John was on his feet and tackling Zelenka before he could do more than tug on Rodney's arm.

A superheated chain reaction began above the storm in the aftermath of the weapon's launch. Automatic warnings began repeating through the city's comms. The atmosphere was shredding, boiling off the planet as its magnetic field reversed and disappeared entirely. Airlocks and force fields snapped closed, maintaining breathable air in their section of Atlantis. Life Support was activated, adding a new drain on the steadily depleting ZPM.

Rodney reactivated the city shield, easing some of the unimaginable stresses affecting Atlantis as the planet's air was stripped off. In another day, as the last of the atmosphere disappeared and the oceans boiled away into vacuum, the winds would die and the temperature would drop as the planet slowly froze to the core.

Elizabeth demanded to know what had just happened. John rolled off Zelenka. He let the Czech explain while he went to the chair and sank down on the floor beside it, leaning his cheek against the cold metal of the arm. The Ancients had never used that weapon; they'd known what it would do to the planet. Rodney had known too, but he'd known what John had seen: Atlantis' planet was already dying.

Beckett began shouting, pointing at the hologram that showed the weapon speeding toward its target: two Hive ships and the Daedalus. Teyla and Stackhouse placed themselves between the control chair, John, Rodney and everyone else.

Kusanagi just stared up, tears running down her face, the light from the three ship icons reflecting off her cheeks until they all winked out at once.

The Daedalus died in silence.

Teyla and John took Rodney's hands and pulled him down into the three sets of bedding they'd put together in a corner of the chair room when Beckett took over his shift five hours later. Shell shocked and wounded by the words Beckett had been yelling for hours, Rodney didn't protest as they drew him down into the blankets, into their arms, and held him, offering the oldest of human comforts with their bodies.

They never slept separately again. When it became something more, when Teyla straddled Rodney and brought John's hand to her breast as Rodney's hands tightened in John's hair, pulling him closer, until they could taste each other's breath and it seemed as necessary as a heartbeat to kiss, there were never any words. With Teyla between them, they could pretend it wasn't what it was. Anything to keep their demons at bay.

The others politely turned their faces away.

~*~

Carter beat O'Neill to the control room when the Stargate activated. He had to dodge a security team sprinting for the gate room before bolting up the stairs two at a time—knees protesting every step he skipped—alarms blaring loud enough to blow an eardrum out. She was already bent over a computer as he arrived, fingers flying over the keyboard, red emergency lights glinting off flyaway blond hair. He took in the Gate through observation window, still spinning as it locked onto another chevron, then braced a hand on the console next to her and asked, "Okay, what do we have?"

Two seats down, Harriman said, "An unscheduled off world activation, sir."

"I know that."

Daniel arrived in a breathless flurry, trying to buckle his side arm on and push up his glasses at the same time.

"Jack?"

"SG-6 is the only team off world at the moment, sir," Carter said. Her fingers were a blur on the keyboard. "They aren't scheduled to report back for another six hours."

"I know that, too," Jack said.

"Seventh chevron locked," Harriman announced.

Jack waited for the telltale kawoosh of the wormhole forming. The gate ring kept spinning.

"Oh, that's not good, I'm thinking."

Daniel was staring at the ring as an eighth and final chevron locked. "Atlantis," he said. "Jack, it has to be Atlantis dialing in."

Carter looked at her computer screen.

"It's been over six months, sir," she said. "The Daedalus should have been back here by now. We can't assume that anyone dialing from outside the galaxy is friendly."

"Yeah, I get that, Carter," Jack said. He stared at the closed iris. Below the ramp, the Marine squad he‘d encountered in the corridor stood with their weapons drawn and aimed at it. "Are we getting an IDC?"

Carter looked up from her screen. She looked unhappy.

"Nothing."

Daniel opened his mouth and Jack held up his hand, stopping whatever words he would have used to convince Jack.

"Harriman. Send a transmission telling whoever's at the other end of the wormhole to identify themselves," he ordered.

"Yes, sir."

The familiar thump of a body hitting the iris made them all flinch. A second followed it. Harriman's fingers stumbled on his keyboard.

"For God's sake, Jack," Daniel appealed. "Two people just died—"

"Sir!" Harriman shouted. "Receiving IDC. It's Dr. Weir's code—"

"Open the iris," Jack snapped.

Carter looked pained and Daniel had his blank face on, but Jack couldn't second guess himself. He was the general now. That meant making the decisions that cost people lives and carrying the weight afterward.

The iris spiraled open, revealing the gentle blue ripple of the event horizon. Its light washed over the taut faces of the Marines below.

A minute passed, everyone waiting.

Two—no, three—figures stumbled backward through the gate. They went down as they cleared it. Jack waited for the gate to disgorge anyone else but no one came.

One of the figures on the gate ramp was a body, cradled to the chest of a dark haired, starvation gaunt man.

"That's Lt. Col. Sheppard," Daniel said.

Sheppard bent over the woman's body, covered in her blood, a Beretta still in his hand.

The second man staggered and faced the control room.

"Close the iris," he shouted, "close the iris!"

"Do it," Jack ordered. He spun on his heel and headed down to the gate room. "Daniel, Carter, with me. I want some answers."

~*~

Kusanagi was in the chair when Elizabeth told them not to lose hope; the Daedalus would come back for them.

"She's snapped," Rodney declared, looking angry and betrayed. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "No one's coming, Elizabeth! The Daedalus is gone. It's not coming back because I killed them all!"

"Rodney?" Elizabeth asked, sounding puzzled.

Rodney let her go and stepped back. "Damn it."

John stared at Elizabeth, feeling dazed and stunned himself. He felt a spurt of anger. Why should she be allowed this escape the rest of them were denied? Why shouldn't she? he asked himself savagely. They were all cracking. It let her hope, something he'd given up on.

"That's enough, Rodney!" Beckett shouted at him. "I'll sedate you if I have to."

"The hell you will!"

Teyla glared at John, but he didn't move. It was Teyla who pulled Rodney away before he could swing at Beckett. John rubbed the back of his neck and instead addressed Beckett. "Look, is there anything you can do—?"

Beckett's shoulders slumped. "You know I'll do what I can."

John nodded, following Beckett's gaze.

"Right."

Elizabeth looked bewildered and frightened. Zelenka began talking to her in a gentle, soothing voice. Beckett joined them, pointedly turning his back on Rodney.

"Can the situation get any better?" Rodney snarled when John joined him and Teyla.

"You're not helping," Teyla said impatiently.

"Well, feel free to suggest a better reaction."

"Rodney —" John said.

Teyla walked away and sat down with Stackhouse.

Beckett and Zelenka took over Elizabeth's care after that, one of them always with her.

They each had their ritual.

Elizabeth ate with Beckett and Zelenka, eating the single meal as slowly as possible, sharing a cup of tea heated over one of the flameless heaters with Beckett, if tea was included in the beverage packet. Both men talked to her quietly, gently trying to keep her with them.

Stackhouse ate his ration when he woke up, methodically, a man stoking up on the only fuel he'd have for the day. John would wake and watch him sometimes and sometimes roll away and push his face against Teyla or Rodney in the tangle of blankets. A semi-starvation diet killed the libido pretty thoroughly, but he still wanted the feel of them, to hear the sound of their heartbeats under his ear, more important than the hollow inside.

Kusanagi kept her ration until the end of the day, eating alone, carrying it with her and fingering the MRE bag all day. It made Rodney irritated and angry until the day she didn't get out of the chair.

John took the chair and restored the shields while Beckett tried to start her heart again, but it was no use. She'd been carrying around the same MRE bag for a week, just pretending to eat, and her system had just quit between the starvation and the amphetamines they had started using around the time four more Wraith ships appeared in orbit. They couldn't get anything to stay working in the city without an operator in the chair, something in the automated systems had been damaged beyond repair.

They covered her face with a blanket and carried her to the edge of the area they still maintained atmosphere in, laid her out on a balcony that over looked a small room whose purpose they'd never understood—a place for the recital of poetry or political speech, the city database in John's head provided—and withdrew.

John had chair shift that day; without Kusanagi it was one on and two off, taking over after Rodney and handing over to Beckett, so that he could sit beside Rodney and make sure he had enough to eat, not even bothering to hide that he was pushing half his food onto Rodney's plate after the first time, when Rodney tried to stop him and he stared him down, silently promising to throw it away if Rodney didn't eat it. 'You'll kill yourself like that,' Beckett told him and John had shrugged. Rodney needed the food more than he did and they weren't doing anything that physically demanding. It didn't matter, he didn't care anyway, it was something he could do at least, to take care of someone, because he'd failed so miserably otherwise. It actually got easier after a while and Teyla insisted on sharing too, insisting she was smaller and needed less anyway.

After Stackhouse and Zelenka had set Kusanagi's body down, Weir woke up enough to say a prayer over her before they retreated. John watched through the city sensors and once they were all safe beyond another airlock, he vented the section. The blanket slipped off her face as the atmosphere swirled out. Ice crystals formed on her eyelashes and her mouth as she seemed to desiccate in the freezing vacuum. It was eerily like looking at one of the mummified victims of the Wraith.

"At least I don't drown this time," Rodney whispered in the dark, days later, dragging his thumb across John's lips. "What the hell are we doing? I mean, what, this place is coming down around our heads, it's all over, we lost. Why are we still here?"

"Elizabeth—"

"Isn't the one dying day by day in that chair."

Elizabeth had shut their fate out of her mind.

"I know," John murmured against Rodney's throat. He smelled sour and afraid and John knew he smelled worse, of fear-sweat and ketones. "We‘ll get out of this, we'll find something in the database… You'll think of something." Rodney didn't believe it and he didn't either. He pressed a kiss against the angle of Rodney's jaw. "You're our genius."

"Right, right, genius." He combed his fingers through John's too long hair, brittle strands breaking under his fingers, before running his hand down John's back, bumping slowly over the vertebrae. "I keep telling all of you that."

"You do."

"You laugh, but you'll see."

"I believe you."

Teyla whimpered in her sleep and they both froze. Sleep was still an escape sometimes. They didn't want to wake her.

Rodney's hand picked up its interrupted journey.

"What are you doing, counting?" John whispered, amused by the thought.

"Mmm."

Thinking then. John recognized the distracted sound Rodney made.

John slid closer to him, trying to find a position that didn't grind bone against bone. Teyla murmured and worked her way closer, still asleep, until she pressed against his back, trapping Rodney's hand, one leg slipping between John's, her hand on his hip.

"Go back to sleep," Rodney told him.

"You're still thinking," John complained.

"Yes, that's what I do. Go to sleep."

"Okay."

Rodney walked John back to their blankets when Beckett took over the next day. John had to lean against him to stay on his feet. He couldn't concentrate enough to protest when Rodney opened up his MRE and told him to eat. Not even half way through, he couldn't eat any more. Instead he slumped against Rodney's shoulder and murmured a fragment of poetry the interface had offered up, speaking in Ancient again, before he fell asleep.

Waking was so hard, he didn't want to, wanted to sink back down with his head still pillowed on Rodney's thigh, Rodney's hand resting on his cheek. He forced himself to wakefulness, listening with his eyes still closed.

"Twenty-three days."

It wouldn't even be that long if they still had Kusanagi. Twenty-three days until the last MREs from the two pallets left behind in the mess during the evacuation were gone. They could have made them last longer. At first they'd eaten three every day, until Zelenka pointed out that there would be nothing more, no trade from other planets, no supplies from Earth. They began rationing after that, over Elizabeth and Beckett's objections. Beckett's reasons were medically sound, it wasn't that much better to draw it out, but Elizabeth just seemed to believe there would be some rescue that would make rationing unnecessary. They should have realized she had a problem then.

"We can't stay here," Rodney went on. He was petting John as he spoke. His fingers lingered at John's temple, stroking with that gentleness so at odds with his abrasive nature.

Zelenka coughed. "This is not new."

"We have to divert power from the shield and open the Stargate back to Earth."

"You'll drain the ZPM."

"It doesn't matter," Rodney snapped. "There won't be anyone left to keep the shield up in another month anyway. Look at us." His voice dropped. His hand moved over John's hair. "Look at us."

"Rodney," Zelenka said quietly, kindly, "we cannot dial out. The control room is wrecked."

"Puddle Jumper," John murmured, except he used the Ancient word for ‘gate ship'.

"John?"

He levered himself up and explained. "We can dial from Jumper Four." He looked at Zelenka then Teyla and Stackhouse. "It's still in the Bay."

"My God, he's right," Rodney said. He snapped his mouth shut. "We're all idiots. We can even use the engines to power life support in the control room after we switch the ZPM to the Stargate."

"We can't just leave the city, though," Stackhouse said shyly.

John nodded at him.

Rodney waved a hand. "Absolutely not. The Wraith could salvage too much from what's here, even with the damage. We'll wipe the data core and overload the Stargate. A naquadah explosion sufficiently large will destroy the entire city."

John shook his head. No. But he couldn't speak. He couldn't tell Rodney he was wrong, because he wasn't.

They couldn't leave Atlantis to the Wraith.

~*~

Zelenka briefed Beckett on the plan after Rodney took his shift. They began preparations the next day.

Five days later, John had moved Jumper Four into the gate room, Zelenka had hot wired its generators to power up a force field that maintained atmosphere in the control and gate rooms despite the blown out windows, and Rodney had retrieved the crystal they'd needed to dial Earth.

Surfing the interface one last time, John stretched himself across the city, aching for all the dead places. Through a relay from the Jumper's interior sensors, he watched Rodney enter the program he'd written to overload the Stargate after they'd dialed.

He overrode the city safety protocols as the AI tried to block the program.

Zelenka fussed with the jury-rigged connections. Beckett kept Elizabeth distracted, telling a story about daffodils, haggis and hang-gliding that had her giggling. Stackhouse had taken up a guard position on one of the balconies near the stairs.

Rodney looked up into the sensor eye as though he sensed John's attention through the interface.

"Okay," he said, "okay. That's as it as it's going to get." He switched on his radio. "Teyla? Get ready to get John up here. We're ready to do this."

"I'm ready," she replied.

"Good. Ready. We're all ready. Okay." He scrubbed both hands through his hair, making it stand up in brown clumps. "Oh God. This has got to work. Right, yes, of course it will work. Because it has to."

Beckett had Elizabeth standing outside the danger zone of the opening Stargate. She looked more alert than she had in months.

A last scan with the long range sensors found the Wraith cruiser that had been stationed in the system still in orbit but on the far side of the planet.

John calculated they'd have four minutes before the cruiser registered the shield's failure and launched a dart attack.

Teyla touched his arm.

He blinked his eyes open. He was better at that now. He could ride the interface and operate his body at the same time.

"Rodney says they are ready."

"I know."

"Teyla?"

She spoke into her radio headset, "Yes?"

"Tell John now."

"I heard him," John said.

He concentrated, shutting down the shield and shunting the ZPM's energy into the makeshift conduits Rodney and Zelenka had created. As an afterthought, he launched a self-destruct virus in the city data core.

"It's working!" McKay shouted. "Get to the gate room as fast as you can."

John was already on his feet, adrenaline pumping as he and Teyla raced out of the chair room, the lights dying behind them as they ran.

The air in the corridors had begun to thin, whistling out a thousand breaches without the force fields to reinforce the door seals. Lights were failing. Any moisture in the air began to crystallize into ice. Cold bit at their faces and hands. John remembered the sensation from Antarctica; feet going numb, bare skin aching, the air burning in his lungs as he ran.

John and Teyla arrived at the gate room gasping, trying to draw enough oxygen out of the thinning air. There was frost in Teyla‘s hair, ice on John's eyelashes.

The last set of doors slammed shut behind them.

John staggered forward and braced his hands against a balcony rail. Rodney was below, visible inside Jumper Four. He raised his eyes and saw John.

"Dial it!" John shouted.

Beckett was still down there, too. He had Elizabeth's arm in his hand. Beside them, Zelenka bent over one of the last laptops. Sensor data relayed from the Jumper scrolled down its screen.

Zelenka jerked his head up.

"They're coming!"

He jerked around and pointed toward the sky outside. A Wraith dart streaked through the remaining towers on a scouting run.

The Stargate seemed to hesitate, sparks of light running over the ring, randomly lighting chevrons without locking them. Almost reluctantly, it began to activate.

Elizabeth was frowning at the gate.

"We're going home, Elizabeth," Beckett promised her.

The eighth chevron flashed blue and locked. A quicksilver billow washed out into the gate room, then stabilized.

Rodney jogged out the back of the Jumper's hatch. He grinned, pleased with himself for pulling off the impossible again and gave John a thumb's up. John grinned back despite himself.

"You did it, lad," Beckett said.

"Of course," Rodney said.

The first weapons fire hit the doors, making them shudder, and sobering them all.

"Come on, let's go," John said to Teyla and Stackhouse. The serene hum of the operating gate waited for them counterpointed by the erratic cracks of something being fired at the control room's doors.

The interface, dissolving as the data core failed, murmured that they had two minutes forty three seconds before the ZPM overloaded the Stargate.

A chunk of door melted in a sizzling mess. Stackhouse began firing through the hole. More holes opened in the doors. Pale hands locked around the edges, physically prying at the doors to open them.

John raised his P90 to his shoulder and joined Stackhouse firing at the Wraith. He aimed at the hands. Even if bullets didn't stop Wraith, it had to hurt and slow them down. Teyla pulled their last stunner off her back and fired it.

"Radek, get to the gate," Rodney shouted. He pushed Zelenka's shoulder.

"No, no, we have forgotten something," Zelenka yelled back.

"Worry about it latter, man," Beckett told him. He took Elizabeth's arm and urged her toward to Stargate.

"Get down here!" Rodney shouted at John and the other two.

Beckett brushed the rippling event horizon with his free hand. He looked terrified and determined. Elizabeth twisted in his grip. She tried to pry his hand off her bicep.

"Stop!" Zelenka yelled. "Wait, the IDC, we have to send—"

"There's no bloody time!" Beckett shouted. He flinched and looked up at the upper level as Stackhouse cried out.

Rodney stared at the wormhole. "My God, my God, we forgot the IDC. They know about the Wraith, they'll never open the iris— "

"They will," Beckett insisted.

"No, no," Zelenka said, shaking his head.

"We'll take our chances then!" Beckett shouted. He stepped into the event horizon, dragging Elizabeth behind him. She kept trying to pull away, but Beckett had strength and weight on his side. Rodney lunged forward, trying to catch her and pull her free of Beckett, but his hand missed.

She twisted as she fell into the wormhole, looking back at them.

"In my desk!" Elizabeth shouted.

The event horizon closed around her. Rodney stumbled and dropped to his knees, almost falling through the event horizon, too.

Zelenka sprinted away.

"Radek!"

John slapped another clip into his P90. From the corner of his eye he saw Zelenka dart up the stairs and past him. "What the hell?" He spun and began firing cover for the scientist running through wreckage of the control consoles. "Zelenka?"

A stunner blast missed him, passing close enough he felt the tingle of its energy against his cheek. Teyla pushed him toward the cover of one of the consoles. They were being forced back. Two drones were through the doors now. John aimed for the energy modules along the underside of the stunners they held. A direct hit would blow up the stunner in the drone's hands.

It worked. A spark flashed off one of the stunners then it began to emit an ear piercing whine before exploding, throwing pieces of one Wraith drone as far as the Stargate. John and Teyla cringed back behind the meager cover of one of sensor consoles. Across from them, on the other side of the wide stairs goings down to the gate room floor, Stackhouse crouched in a similar position. He popped up and began firing into the doorway at the explosion dazed Wraith.

John turned, trying to find Zelenka.

"John!"

Bullets sparked off the broken consoles behind him. Not a P90, a Beretta, he identified. They were close. John jerked back into cover, twisting around to spot Rodney firing his pistol from down below.

John yelled in outrage, "Are you trying to kill me?"

Rodney ignored him, emptying the clip in his Beretta. John found the target with a sick feeling. One of the Wraith had made it past the doors and was within arms' reach. He emptied his last clip into it.

Teyla was still firing at the doorway along with Stackhouse.

"Forget it, they're in!"

John grabbed the neck of Teyla's vest and pulled her toward the stairs. Stackhouse still provided cover fire.

"Rodney!" Zelenka screamed, running out of Elizabeth's office and straight to the balcony without any care. "Catch!" He threw a small object.

Rodney dropped his empty Beretta and caught the IDC cupped in both hands.

"Move, move, move!" John ordered, running down the stairs. "Stackhouse! Now!"

Teyla stopped halfway down the stairs and began firing her stunner again. Rodney fumbled with the IDC and activated it. White hair flashed on the upper level. Zelenka screamed.

John skidded to a stop beside Rodney. He unholstered his side arm and began firing at the drones appearing at the top of the stairs.

Stackhouse's P90 went silent.

No. Jesus, they were losing everybody.

"Fifty six seconds to overload!" Rodney shouted. Stray light like lightning played over the gate. Heat was coming off it, too; dizzying, sear your skin heat.

He searched the upper level for a glimpse of Stackhouse or Zelenka. Found it as a Wraith pulled Stackhouse's body out onto the stairs. Cat pupiled eyes found John's and the Wraith smiled. It dropped Stackhouse on the stairs, sank to its knees and slammed its hand down on his chest.

Teyla fired on it again and again as John shook Rodney's hands off and pulled the trigger on his pistol. He started to go back, but stopped. Stackhouse was dead, the Wraith fallen over him.

Everything stopped as another Wraith stepped onto the stairs. John and Rodney stared up at this one, recognizing from the flowing coat and groomed hair that he was more than another drone. It stopped at the first step. John released the Beretta's clip and reloaded blindly.

Teyla dropped the stunner. Her hands clamped to her head and she screamed. Her legs folded under her and she fell, rolling down the last steps.

"Run."

"John, please, we have to—"

"Run and show us where to hunt," the Wraith said. "We will follow."

John raised his pistol, aiming between the Wraith's eyes.

Teyla moaned and staggered to her feet. She turned. Only the instincts she'd drilled into him sparring saved him from the blow she tried to deliver. Her face had contorted into a sneering mask. John recognized it in the split second before it all fell together in his brain: the Wraith had exerted control through the genes Teyla shared with them.

He dodged her second blow.

He didn't know how far the link between the Hive mind and Teyla could stretch. It had operated over interstellar distances. Maybe it could stretch further, across galaxies. He parried her third blow. He couldn't do this. He had to do this.

If they took her through the Stargate to Earth, the Wraith might be able to follow, tracking her mind through the distance, moving their ships in and out of hyperspace like hunters on a trail of blood.

Fuck.

He shot her.

He tried to bring the Beretta up, to make it quick, to make it clean, but she was attacking again and the pistol was trapped between them when he pulled the trigger.

Three bullets to the torso as she closed her attack, up under her ribs where the Kevlar offered no protection. She jerked and fell forward, into John. He caught her in his arms. Her brown eyes widened and cleared.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Rodney pulled John backward through the Stargate, still clutching her body to him.

He almost hoped the iris was closed.