three fates

Atropos

Atlantis
Pegasus Galaxy
2005

"And you believe you can finish their work? You think you can solve something the Ancients failed at?"

"Yes! The Ancients weren't any smarter than us. They just knew more."

"But they couldn't make it wo – "

"Because they ran out of time!"

"Colonel?"

"I agree with McKay."

"Why?"

"Because if we can't beat what the Ancients did, we can't beat the Wraith."

"All right."

"You won't regret this. Trust me. All it will take is the Colonel and me –"

"And me. I'm coming with you."

"Elizabeth – "

"Colonel. Dr. McKay isn't military. He doesn't answer to you. He answers to me."

"Look, you won't be sorry, I swear."


Doranda System
Pegasus Galaxy
2005

The weapon wasn't firing anymore. Elizabeth dug her fingers into the back of the co-pilot's seat in the jumper and felt a moment of hope. That had to be a good sign. She refused to think about the alternative.

"Dial the gate," Sheppard told Rodney in a tight voice.

Rodney didn't look at him, just followed the order, and Elizabeth immediately knew something was still very, very wrong. The triangles with the Pegasus gate symbols lit a warm yellow beneath his hands. Hands that were shaking, and she'd never seen that; for all Rodney moved and used his hands constantly, they were always sure and steady.

Sheppard's expression was set and intent; he was completely focused on flying the jumper, no longer taking evasive action, just pushing its velocity to the maximum. They were arrowing toward the distant blue speck of the orbital stargate at a breakneck speed that would stress the inertial dampeners to their limits when they arrived in Atlantis.

Rodney's hands jittered over the co-pilot's controls, bringing up three different heads-up displays. Elizabeth couldn't make any sense of them. One showed a red-line spiking higher and higher, the graph frantically resizing itself to accommodate its continuous rise. The second showed a blue-white sphere expanding, swallowing lines that symbolized the orbits of planets, almost reaching the dot that was their jumper, and the stargate. The third was just a cascade of numbers. Sheppard's eyes lit on that one and he grimaced.

Elizabeth tightened her hand on the chair back again, alarmed as she actually felt the jumper buffeted through the dampeners. She realized Sheppard was struggling to keep them on a straight course. Rodney's hands were locked tight, white-knuckled, on the arms of the co-pilot's seat.

The red-line display topped out and an alarm began wailing through the jumper.

"Elizabeth," Sheppard said tonelessly, "radio Atlantis."

She reached up and activated the radio headset she wore as regularly as shoes, switching to the command channel.

"Atlantis, this is Weir. Respond."

"Dr. Weir, this is Atlantis Control."

Edwards' voice was lighter than Grodin's had been. He'd moved into first shift smoothly and projected a similar air of competency, but she never stopped expecting to hear Peter.

"Disengage the shield," Elizabeth said with forced calm. The alarm still screamed through the jumper cockpit. "Jumper One is inbound. I don't think we have much time." She breathed deeply when she heard her voice edged higher with the terror she felt clawing its way inside of her and steeled it into a calm she didn't feel. "There was a problem with the second test. Dr. Zelenka appears to have been correct."

"I'm sure he'll be thrilled when he realizes exactly what being right means in this case," Rodney snarled under his breath. He was watching the second display. The blue sphere had turned sullen red and was rapidly collapsing back to Doranda. Faster than it had expanded.

"Shut up, McKay," Sheppard snapped.

"Jumper One is cleared through the stargate. Shield down."

The jumper angled over, lining up with the quicksilver blue of the open stargate.

Rodney's mouth opened, but no words followed. His eyes focused on the display and widened.

A stream of light traced across the display, an arm reaching from the Dorandan primary to the planet.

"What is that?" Elizabeth asked.

"Solar plasma," Rodney replied quietly.

"Rodney, what have you done?"

He raised his head.

"You didn't," Sheppard yelled. "You bastard, tell me you didn't!"

Rodney's mouth worked and his eyes were wide, blinded with something so horrible Elizabeth felt sick herself. It went beyond panic.

"Oh, God."

Fierce white light filled the jumper cockpit. Sheppard threw up his arm. Elizabeth lost her footing and fell back as the jumper seemed to lurch in space before sliding into the stargate.

Her last sight was of Rodney, his face bleached bone white, his mouth and eyes black holes full of absolute despair.


It was the worst trip through a stargate Elizabeth had ever experienced, including stepping between the Milky Way and Pegasus the first time. Normal stargate travel didn't include awareness. She cupped her hand over her mouth, fighting the need to throw up. She'd always experienced the Pegasus Galaxy wormholes as a synesthetic roller coaster ride, an infinite green instant that was over even as she braced herself for it.

She had felt it this time. She'd been a tearing stream of dissociated atoms and consciousness ripped apart, shot through with searing plasma, crimson sparks flaring through a body that was so elongated it neither began nor ended.

She'd tasted time.

Still holding her hand over her mouth, trying to catch a breath that had never been lost, she looked up as the jumper wavered. Looked out the front port, expecting to see the gate room, the lit steps, the stained glass, the marines standing guard, Col. Caldwell, perhaps, glaring down from the control room level.

"What the hell – ?" John exclaimed. He looked green, lit by the jumper's interior lights. His hand shook on the stick, the only time Elizabeth had ever seen him less than sure in flight. He was staring out the front port, too.

Into the thick, cloying darkness of walls and caves and oceanic depths.

"McKay," John said, his voice gritty with anger.

Rodney had bowed over, a smooth curve of blue-clad back, his face buried in his hands.  He raised his head and looked. "I don't understand," he whispered. "I dialed Atlantis. The effect shouldn't reach that far for days. Weeks."

Elizabeth swallowed hard and suggested, "All right, let's focus. The jumper has exterior lighting, right?"

"Yeah," John said.

The lights came on. All three of them caught their breaths.

They were in Atlantis. A sleeping Atlantis, without any sign of the expedition in the gate room. Elizabeth recognized the dust covers they'd swept off consoles when they first arrived.

"Where is everybody?" John murmured. His face had the dangerously set expression Elizabeth had only glimpsed a few times; notably, when he shot Acastus Kolya. Narrowed, dark eyes settled on Rodney.

Rodney just shook his head. "What? I have no idea. This is – this is – I don't know, Colonel. I do not know." He turned his eyes back to the front port.

John surveyed the darkened, empty gate room again. His hands moved over the jumper's controls, smooth and sure again, and it settled soundless to the floor. "Time to find out what's going on here," he said. He rose and settled the P90 lower on its sling, closer to his hand.

"I don't think you should go out there alone," Elizabeth said.

"And I don't think you or McKay are in any shape to come with me," John replied. His gaze moved over Rodney, who still looked blindly out the front port.

"I don't like it."

John's eyebrows went up, telegraphing wordless incredulity.

"Uh huh."

"Then be careful," Elizabeth insisted. She followed him into the rear compartment.

"It's Atlantis," he said. He grinned at her. "What's going to happen?"

It was supposed to be that cocky grin, she knew, the one that had at times either infuriated or shored her up, but it was a terrible failure and it faded from his features fast. John was as rocked as she was, as Rodney was, and forcing himself forward anyway.

"Exactly," Elizabeth snapped. Because they both knew Atlantis had never been safe and certainly didn't appear to be now.

"Well, we can't stay in the jumper forever."

Elizabeth folded her arms. She couldn't stop him without marshaling better arguments and right now, she didn't have any, apart from the feeling of wrong, wrong, wrong that had settled in her stomach. John rummaged in an overhead compartment and pulled down a heavy case. He opened it and drew out a pistol. Took out the clip, checked the action, narrow fingers moving over it expertly. He loaded the clip again, checked the safety again, and offered it to her, grip first.

"John – "

"Just in case."

Reluctantly, she accepted the handgun, surprised by its weight as always, surprised that it didn't feel colder. She'd been a gun control supporter all her life. Just the feel of the Beretta made her ill at ease.

He nodded back toward Rodney, who had dropped his face into his hands again, and had begun to shake.

"He's in shock."

"I know."

He wiped at his face, just a thoughtless movement, but it betrayed for an instant all the fractures he kept hidden. "Just stay with him," he said quietly. "I won't go far."

"Okay."

John looked at her for another long moment, "Hey, no worries," and walked toward the back of the jumper. He switched the P90's targeting light on and raised it into ready position. The ramp dropped open with a clank that echoed.

Elizabeth retreated to the cabin of the jumper. She set the pistol in the pilot's seat, then set her hand on Rodney's broad shoulder, needing the contact with something human and alive as much as Rodney needed whatever comfort she could provide.

Outside, John quartered the gate room, searching for any threats, then started up the stairs.

Elizabeth caught her breath.

The step lit. It lit, and each one after it, as John walked up. It wasn't just the steps. Lights everywhere were coming up, blazing into life, a hundred times brighter than the first time they'd set foot in Atlantis.

"My God," she whispered.

Rodney looked up, blinked dazedly and said:

"It knows him."

~*~

Home.

John paused at the first landing and turned in a slow circle. He raised his eyes to the window that dominated the stairs, the stained glass still dark, and pulled in a breath at the vista beyond.
Lights sparked to life in the towers and spires of the city, their brilliance shining off the shield domed above the city. Beyond the shield, shining like night's black mirror, was the deep.

They were underwater again.

He stared up, caught by the same wonder he'd felt the first time, amazed, feeling like he'd finally found his place when he'd been lost all his life. The rightness of it hummed through his veins and soothed his worries and suspicions. He thought he could almost hear the city whispering welcome, welcome.

The P90 dangled from its strap, half-forgotten.

The lights at one of the transporters brightened, calling to him, and he started toward the doors.

"John?"

The crackling transmission through his radio ear piece drew him up. He shook his head. He switched on his transmitter.

"I'm here."

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he said softly. He could still feel the humming rightness inside, lulling and promising, smoothing the edges of his worry and anger. Telling him he belonged here; he'd come home again. "Yeah, I'm good."

"Have you found anything?"

"Not yet. Looks like no one's home."

"See if you can access the control consoles," Rodney said.

"No laptop or translators here," John replied.

He loped up the second flight of stairs to the control room level anyway and swept a dust sheet off the main console.

"Play dumb some other time, Colonel," Rodney snapped. He almost sounded normal, but not. Still in shock, John knew, just like he was. "You've picked up more Ancient than anyone besides the linguists. You're looking for numbers anyway. The city has an internal dating system. It will indicate how long it has been powered down. There will be a log. It should offer some explanation of what has happened."

John brushed his hand over the console and it lit. The main screen behind him activated and swirled with color that resolved into numbers. He stared at them until something clicked behind his eyes and they made sense. He read them again to be sure. Such a long, lonely time in the dark, sleeping and waiting, but he'd finally come and there was life again.

He unsnapped the P90 and set it down. He needed both hands to work the console, shape the chords, so that the hum became music as he read the main city operations log.

"Sheppard? Sheppard!"

"What!?" he snapped, jolted by Rodney's shout in his ear.

"You've been quiet for twenty minutes, John," Elizabeth said.

He shook his head. It couldn't have been that long. He checked his watch. It had been.

"Yeah. Sorry. McKay? I think you need to get up here and look at this."

"What is it?"

"According to what I'm reading, the city's been shut down and underwater for about nine hundred sixty-three years."

"What? That's not possible. We left yester – " Rodney's voice had been rising toward hysteria, but it cut off. That meant he'd thought of something important enough to derail his usual doom and panic response. He came back on the radio sounding detached and strangely calm. "I'm coming up there."

"Good idea."

John picked up the P90, clipping it back onto the carry sling. He paused, frowning. What had possessed him to put it down in a potentially hostile situation? Nothing except his instinct that he was in no danger. Stupid. No use taking chances. He tapped his radio transmitter again.

"Elizabeth, you'd better stay with the jumper."

"And do what, John? Twiddle my thumbs? I'm coming with Rodney. I can at least translate."

He opened his mouth to protest and stopped. He didn't mind Rodney joining him, but he didn't want Elizabeth in the control room. It felt wrong. It made no sense.

"Okey-dokey," he said with forced casualness.

In the back of his head, he still felt it, the city singing, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Home.

~*~

He looked at the data again. Incredible. He'd figured it out in the jumper, before he and Elizabeth had joined Sheppard in the control room, but he'd wanted to confirm it. It hadn't changed. Wasn't going to change, but he was still looking at the screen, because as long as he did that, he didn't have to look at Sheppard or Elizabeth. He wasn't sure he could survive what he'd see on their faces. Not once he told them.

It wasn't his own words that kept beating in his head. It was Sheppard's: You didn't. You didn't. You didn't. Tell me you didn't. Faster and faster, tell me you didn't, louder and louder, tell me you didn't, like a roller coaster ride to hell. Tell me, his heart raced, tell me, and his lungs couldn't pull in any air, you didn't, his palms were sweating, tell, but his skin was too cold, me, too tight, and his stomach dropped and twisted violently: you didn't, didn'tdidn'tdidn't. He was going to be sick right here in the control room if he didn't, didn'tdidn'tdidn't, stop it. He braced his hand against the edge of the console and concentrated on pulling in air that tasted of ozone and salt. Breathe, he told himself, don't think. The lighted crystals blurred and juddered through his watering eyes.

"Rodney?" Elizabeth managed to inject concern and a question both in just his name.

He waited but Sheppard didn't ask anything. Sheppard probably didn't care if he was all right, because Sheppard had figured it out. Oh God. No, if Sheppard had figured it out, he would have done something, said something. Rodney let his head drop forward.

Elizabeth said his name again, sharper. He jerked upright. His fingers left dark, sweaty marks on the console.

"What? What?"

You didn't. Tell me you didn't.

"Do you know what's happened?"

He forced himself to turn and look at her. He opened his mouth, but it was too dry to speak. He could barely swallow. He didn't know how he was going to explain. He tried again.

"I – yes. I know." It felt like his entire face was being dragged down. He wondered if he wasn't having a stroke. That would be… He would deserve it.  

Tell me you didn't.

"I – " He stopped and stared at Sheppard.

"Rodney?" Elizabeth prompted.

"Colonel?" he said quietly. Miserably.  

Elizabeth turned and looked at Sheppard.

Sheppard wasn't even listening to them. He was leaning his hip against another console halfway across the control room, his head tipped to the side. He'd set his P90 down. His eyes were unfocused, half-closed.

Elizabeth crossed the room and touched his arm.

Sheppard's attention snapped back to them; he tensed and looked at them both warily. His hand moved to the P90. Rodney thought he'd infinitely preferred Sheppard's abstraction to this sharp-eyed attention. He wished he could look away.

"Still with us, Colonel?"

Like a rat in a cage, running and running on a wheel and going nowhere, play the role, pretend to be all right, sarcasm is always good, don't let them see you're not certain.  Batter and insult and push, push, push, but don't think anymore about – you didn't, you didn't – because God, oh, God you did. Just don't think about it, concentrate on Sheppard, on Elizabeth, on now, and not the wild, wheezing panic of knowing. Because Elizabeth and Sheppard don't know yet, and you have to keep them at a distance, because when they do, they'll turn on you.

Sheppard's eyebrows rose. "Looks like it." He even sounded tired. Rodney could see him pulling himself back into the present from wherever his mind had strayed, drawing on energy that wasn't really there.

This had to be happening to someone else, not to Rodney McKay. This wasn't him, standing in the darkened control room of Atlantis of the past, and he could handle it if he just kept it like that. Far away, beyond thick, muffling glass walls and his old friend disdain. Weren't they stupid for not figuring it all out themselves? If only they never would ...

"You want to explain, McKay?"

"We're nine thousand years or so in our past."

Blurt it out and his voice was quavering. Don't think, just tell them.  Concentrate on the little, tiny details. On the loose thread in the stitching of Sheppard's T-shirt collar, on the glint of Elizabeth's necklace – she always wore that, wonder who gave it to her? – on the blood pounding in his temples, a thump thump thump like the drum beat from the Dead March, Danny Deever. Oh God. Look at Sheppard, look at Elizabeth.

"I don't understand," Elizabeth said. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "How could this happen?"

Don't look, look away, and it won't be real just yet. Not yet. Not until you've confessed all of what it means.

Sheppard noticed Elizabeth shivering, too. He shrugged off his tac vest, stripped off his jacket and handed it to Elizabeth. "Here."

Rodney winced. It wouldn't have occurred to him to give Elizabeth his jacket. He might have tried to readjust the environmental controls or complained for both of them, but the simple gentlemanly gesture always escaped him. He couldn't offer Sheppard his jacket either, though Sheppard was now in that thin black shirt he favored and Rodney knew from off-planet missions that Sheppard was miserable in the cold. He never complained, but Rodney had noticed.

"Thank you, John," Elizabeth said.

Sheppard nodded, looking distracted again. It softened the intent lines of his face, but it frightened Rodney. Sheppard's focus didn't normally drift. Rodney's didn't, either, but his mind kept skittering off on tangents.

The hum of the city, that Rodney had felt since he'd stepped out of the jumper, grew deeper. The ozone scent grew sharper. A warm draft of air swirled through the chilled control room. The city breathed.  On the Daedalus, always aware of the thin skin between their lives and vacuum, Rodney had first understood that, listening to the fans and the re-circulators in the dark of his cramped cabin bed. Atlantis breathed, pushing air through ventilation shafts and filters, warming and cooling, balancing the atmosphere perfectly for them. Warming it because Sheppard was cold, he thought, and wondered if Sheppard even knew how closely they were entwined.

"So if we moseyed down to the stasis room, we'd find Elizabeth in one of those pods?"

"Right next to the DeLorean," Rodney snapped, but it lacked his usual venom. He scrubbed at his face. His heart was still racing out of control. He was going to lose this, too, the comfortable mockery, the way Sheppard deliberately set up the opportunities for a good insult and enjoyed the results. But he had to go on. "Of course not. We've created, albeit inadvertently, a third timeline, exactly as Elizabeth created a second one – ours – by extending the lifespan of the ZPMs and persuading the Ancients to set up a failsafe program to raise the city."

Sheppard frowned.

"We're using power right now, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"No failsafe, no one to maintain the ZPMs, the city's going to be in worse shape than when the first timeline's expedition arrived," Elizabeth said, voice distant as though marveling at a picture. For a brief moment, Rodney hated her for understanding what so many others wouldn't have grasped.

"We've doomed ourselves – ourselves in this future – this timeline's versions of us," Rodney added. "Just by being here. Now."

Elizabeth paled further. She knew, even if she didn't know the full extent. "What exactly happened?" she asked and he could see her fighting for control. The question was rhetorical. It held the terrible gentleness that asked him to admit what he'd done.

"But how did we… what happened?" she asked again.

Rodney straightened his back. He squared his shoulders and laced his fingers together behind his back, where Sheppard and Elizabeth wouldn't see.

"According the SGC's records, a wormhole intersecting with a solar flare resulted in SG-1 returning to the stargate in 1969. Furthermore, in an attempt to return to our own time, SG-1 dialed home in coincidence with another solar flare only to arrive ten years into their future. They were able to return, obviously, but that isn't the point."

"Maybe you could get to the point," Sheppard said. "Sometime soon."

"Right. Right. When we – when I – lost control of Arcturus, it, well, it ripped a hole in our universe. It started a chain reaction that began expanding and at the same time pulling in matter. Including solar plasma from the Dorandan primary," Rodney explained.

Elizabeth looked at him blankly; Rodney couldn't guess if she grasped what he'd said or not. Sheppard's face showed he did understand.

"I believe when we dialed the gate, the wormhole was destabilized in a manner similar to what SG-1 experienced, on a vastly greater scale, resulting in our temporal dislocation."

Rodney licked his lips and waited.

"Then we could just as easily been tossed forward ten thousand years?" Elizabeth asked.

"Nine thousand thirty-seven," Sheppard said.

"And no," Rodney added.

Sheppard glared at him.

Elizabeth looked back and forth between them. "Why?"

Rodney raised his chin and answered. "Domino effect."

"There's no there then, in the future," Sheppard said. His hazel eyes never left Rodney. "There's no universe. That hole just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and smaller and smaller, until everything is gone, and there is no universe. Right, Rodney?" He drawled out Rodney's name with the same disdain that imbued his voice whenever he mentioned Kolya. It cut deep, just the way Rodney had known it would.

The panic went away. There was nothing left to panic over, he knew. All gone. All that was left was a scream boiling up from his soul, the litany of his personal blasphemy, an entreaty to a deity he never believed in. Oh God, oh God, but if such a God existed, that let one man destroy everything in creation, then there could never be mercy from that quarter.

"Right," he replied. His voice cracked. "I destroyed our universe."

"No one destroys the universe, Rodney," Elizabeth said, very reasonably.

"McKay does."

"You can't be serious." Elizabeth looked around the control room. "That isn't possible."

"It's possible," Rodney said.

"And you knew?"

He watched Elizabeth's hands curl into fists. Her mouth thinned furiously. Her voice would begin rising next, until it cut through the cloudy numbness Rodney had been holding around his thoughts. It would cut through and he would hear the hate and see the look in Sheppard's eyes and everything he was would just bleed out onto the floor.

Somehow, he answered anyway, keeping his voice flat and nearly normal. He twisted his fingers against each other, feeling bones threaten to crack inside his hands. "That the possibility – the infinitely small possibility – existed? Yes."

"Are you insane? How could you?" Elizabeth shouted. "What have you done?"

"The chance of what happened happening was so statistically improbable as to be nonexistent."

"But it existed!"

"Of course, it existed," Rodney said. "Elizabeth, it was in the briefing."

"Hidden inside a bunch of numbers you knew she wouldn't read," Sheppard said.

"Yes," he admitted.

"My God," Elizabeth said, shaking her head, "Everyone… everything." She pressed her palm over her mouth, visibly, obviously, fighting nausea. She swayed and pressed her eyes shut, but then she seemed to get her bearings again, collect her emotions and put them away. Watching her grapple for control like that was frightening, because Elizabeth never lost control. He had always admired that. He still did, right then envying her ability to lock everything down, because he wanted to do that, too.

"If we hadn't been knocked into the past, we'd be in Atlantis, waiting for the end," Rodney stated. "Or gone already."

When she spoke again, her face was a façade of forced calm and determination. "How do we fix it?"

He looked Elizabeth helplessly. "We don't. We can't."

"That's not good enough, Rodney. We have to do something." When he didn't say anything, Elizabeth started toward him. Rodney waited where he was.

"Elizabeth," Sheppard said, his voice tight and angry. "Stop."

"No," she snapped and her hand came up, slapping Rodney's face with all her strength. The inside of his cheek caught against a tooth and he tasted blood.

"Elizabeth," Sheppard said again. He came across the room with deceptive speed and caught her arm before she could hit Rodney again.

"Let her," Rodney blurted.

Sheppard gave him a burning glance.

"Let go, John," Elizabeth said.

He released her wrist and stepped back. "Just… stop."

Elizabeth turned away from them both.

"Elizabeth – "

Sheppard touched her shoulder tentatively, apparently as aware of the fractures in Elizabeth's usually so strong façade as Rodney was, but Elizabeth shrugged him away. "Don't touch me."

Rodney stared at the main display screen, probing the cut in his mouth with his tongue, focusing on the pain, bright and small and completely his.

Sheppard turned and looked at him. Rodney could see him shutting down, shutting everything and everyone out. He hadn't realized before, that he'd always been inside the walls Sheppard kept up around himself. Before.  

Sheppard didn't say anything.

Rodney looked back at him, unblinking, but didn't let himself see more than a blur of pallor and darkness, colors bleeding into each other. He didn't let himself see the wounds behind Sheppard's eyes, because he was already breaking. His eyes began to burn, but he didn't close them until he heard Sheppard walk away.

Then there were just the sounds of Elizabeth breathing, and the city humming against his nerves, until Elizabeth went away, too. He glimpsed her face as she walked by him, despite himself, and it was set, hard and unforgiving as chiseled marble.

He didn't need them there. He could still hear them.

What have you done?

Over and over.

Tell me you didn't.

He didn't remember leaving the control room, but he stumbled to a stop on the stairs when his knees gave in to the quaking shudders running through his body. He sank down and stared at nothing. Nothing.

"Oh God."

~*~

She found him on the gate room steps, staring at the jumper still sitting in front of the ring, after she'd spent hours inside the jumper, trying to formulate some kind of plan.

She handed him a Powerbar from the jumper's emergency supplies and brusquely ordered him to eat it. He obeyed.

Rodney's eyes were almost dead, but the blue held a manic gleam, as though he wanted to do nothing more than laugh and laugh until it killed him. She didn't blame him and yet she did. She wanted to tell him to behave like a normal person, but couldn't find a single thing a normal person would have done under the circumstances. She hated him and worried at the same time. They had destroyed the universe. There was no rational way to handle that.

She remembered the look on his face: the horrified disbelief, the panic so deep that it had left him frozen and nearly wordless. There had been only that small, horror-struck: "Oh, God." The look on his face in the jumper, not in the control room when he told her and John – though that had been bad enough.

She tapped the radio transmitter on and called John. He didn't answer but the nearest transporter opened shortly and he appeared. He didn't speak and he didn't look at Rodney.

Elizabeth told them she thought they should use the same living quarters they'd occupied before. Rodney nodded. John shrugged. She couldn't think of anything else to say and stared at them both. After a while, John straightened up and boarded the jumper. He emptied all their supplies onto the floor and left them there. The ceiling above the gate room opened and the jumper rose into the bay, leaving the space before the gate bare except for that pitiful pile of gear and food.

~*~

Elizabeth pretended to sleep, supine on her narrow bed, hands folded over her breastbone, laid out like a saint on a tomb, except her eyes were wide open. She had locked her door open, unable to bear the crypt-like darkness and silence of her room without the promise of escape. Buried under the sea, there wasn't even the lap of the waves to lull her, just the oppressive thrum of the shield. She imagined it failing, all of Atlantis drowning, the cold wash of water filling her lungs. She thought she was already drowning, helpless and adrift from her own time and place.

Feeling sorry for herself was what she was doing, she knew, but she couldn't summon the will to push away the fancies and the self-pity yet.

A wordless scream knifed through the silence and catapulted her upright.

The screaming brought Elizabeth to her feet and out the door, the sound rising and falling and echoing up and down the hollow corridors. She ran barefoot down the hall and saw John, pale and shirtless, disappear through the dim doorway into Rodney's room. She waited for the sound of his voice, but there was just that keening, awful sound from Rodney, that made her want to clap her hands over her ears.

She walked into the room, ready to do something, anything to make those screams stop, wondering why John wasn't saying anything. Three steps in, she stopped, feeling like an intruder. She watched him catch Rodney's wrists in his hands as Rodney clawed at something only he saw, holding them and pulling Rodney up against him, rocking wordlessly, until the keening just stopped, abruptly as it had begun.

It took a deep breath and curling her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms, to center herself, but she squared her shoulders and readied herself to speak. Rodney was still her responsibility. So was John. She couldn't indulge in tears. Still, any words caught in her throat.

John looked up and saw her, but said nothing. Elizabeth's feet were cold and she still felt the city looming, huge and heavy, making her nerves crawl. John's eyes were dark hollows and unreadable. She waited for him to nod, to speak, to gesture for her to join them, but he only stared until Elizabeth couldn't bear it.

"Is – "

Rodney reacted, flinching when she spoke. She would have touched his back, just lightly, as she'd done more than once before, but the memory of the slap lingered too strongly between them, in the way John angled himself into the space between them. Feeling painfully helpless, she watched as John pulled Rodney closer, warned away by his silent head shake.

She waited until Rodney sank into a miserable half-doze and retreated into the hall with John.

When she would have spoken to him, he held up his hand between them, and she gave up for the moment. Rodney might accept comfort. John never had or would. She would try to talk to him tomorrow.

~*~

That first day, she felt paralyzed. Couldn't do anything but move mechanically and think, play everything over and over in her mind while the looming darkness of Atlantis and the knowledge of thousands of feet of water above her made her skin crawl.

The universe, everything, all the planets, all the stars, billions of lives – lost. So many cultures – gone.

Her family – gone. Her parents, her brother, her aunt Alison and her cousin Marguerite. Simon. Her house and the old rocking chair she had inherited from her grandmother. Her dog, Sedge.

Sunset over the mountains and fog in the valleys. Christmas. Chinese food. Flowers. Bach. Einstein. Kant. Michelangelo. Nothing left but what was in her own memory.

The Taj Mahal where Simon had first told her he loved her. The sinking sun had set the beautiful building and the lake before it on golden fire. She had laughed at his sentimentality, while Simon chided her for being unable to relax and be romantic instead of a hard-nosed diplomat, but he had laughed, too. They had kissed, still laughing. In memory, she could almost feel the humidity and relive the scent of flowers that had later filled their hotel room.

She had let him tell her he loved her, but she had never told him what he wanted to hear. Couldn't tell him now, because he had moved on. No more moving on now, and she mourned every lost opportunity, every wasted moment of her past.

Sorrow morphed into questions morphed into horror and disgust over what Rodney had done. What she hadn't stopped him from doing. But one look at him showed her that he didn't need disdain and resentment. Rodney knew what he'd done and what it had cost. Knew it better than anyone else ever would, including herself and John.

The worst knowledge was that of culpability. It was his fault – simple and complicated as that – his hand that had tipped the first stone in the chain. Her hand that hadn't stopped his. The truth was undeniable: the one not stopping the events was just as guilty as the one starting them. Maybe even more so because he had seen it coming. Every single wiped out existence was on their conscience.

If she sometimes believed she could hear the screams of her people on Atlantis as the darkness took them, it had to be a thousand times worse for Rodney. She wondered why he hadn't gone mad yet. She watched him carefully for the signs, seeing only some she recognized from Marguerite's breakdown in college. Marguerite had suffered from schizophrenia though, while Rodney was suffering from reality.

She wasn't ready to feel pity for him, because she had none for herself. Pity might come later, maybe one day even the need to comfort him and reach out and be reached out for, but not yet.

They all deserved to live with what they had done.

She was being cruel, she knew it, and it pained her. Elizabeth had been many things in her life: cold, calculating, stubborn, level-headed, dismissive – but never cruel. She didn't want to start now that her integrity was the only thing she had left.

She couldn't handle this like John and Rodney were – or rather, weren't. She wasn't going to give up. At least, one of them had to be strong if they didn't plan on dying here.

She recognized the signs of depression developing in John as well as Rodney as the days passed. Self-imposed isolation, a lack of appetite or care for appearance. Silence. He showered, but he hadn't shaved since their arrival. Rodney didn't do that much and she'd begun to think she'd have to make him clean up the way she made him eat. He couldn't be bothered to even brush his teeth and his breath smelled sick.

Elizabeth understood that reaction, even when all she could think of was getting clean. She stood under the shower sometimes for close to an hour, scrubbing at her skin like Lady MacBeth, until it was red and raw. It never made her feel clean, never washed away anything. She couldn't wash away the memories plaguing her. She tried, knowing it wouldn't work, hiding in the shower, in the comfort of warm water and steam and illusory safety. She wished she could just close her eyes and cry, but the tears wouldn't come. All her tears were gone, dried up by the desert inside.

There was too much in Atlantis that reminded her of every single mistake she had ever made. If she didn't find a way to handle the memories, they would eat her alive, slow and from the inside, send her down the same path Marguerite had gone: tortured by delusions until she couldn't stand it anymore and tried to kill herself. Her family had never spoken about it, but Elizabeth remembered watching her cousin change from a lively and beautiful young woman into a thin shell of who she used to be, tortured by paranoia, flinching whenever someone touched her or spoke to her. Marguerite had been haunted by the voices only she heard.

Marguerite had been so smart, she'd been aware of her own degeneration, but helpless to fight it. She couldn't shut the voices up, couldn't shut them out, even knowing they weren't real – until they became as real to her as the reality everyone else experienced. She'd seen Marguerite flinch and listen to what only she heard. Now she had to watch Rodney cringe, his eyes darting to and away from something Elizabeth couldn't see.

She could guess, though, with Rodney. She had no clue to John's demons. Whatever form they took, he kept to himself, pulling away from her and Rodney. That he was haunted too, she had no doubt.

She started searching the city for food supplies the next night, while John sat silently with Rodney, after the screaming.

~*~

The next night and the next night were horrifying repeats, Rodney's screams an eerie counterpoint to his utter silence during the day. John sprinted breathless and half-panicked to Rodney's room each night, almost grateful to be released from his own wide awake nightmares.

Elizabeth hung back outside his door, looking in, then left. It was selfish, but John was glad she wasn't interfering. He'd made it clear she wasn't welcome, without admitting he needed the comfort of holding on to Rodney, too, no matter how he acted during the arbitrary hours of their 'days'. The light never changed and it was all too easy to lose track; day and night were conventions supported by their watches and nothing more.

He'd never felt this isolated, this lost, and holding onto Rodney felt better than it had any right to under any circumstances. The constant, low grade tingle at the back of his mind kept him distracted and uneasy all the time. It felt too good, too natural, and set his instincts, at war with each other. Everything in him responded to the city and wanted to trust it, while his mind insisted just feeling like that meant something was wrong. He couldn't rest by himself. It pricked at him, urging him to do something, but he didn't know what. It sent him wandering through Atlantis during the interminable hours.

He had no explanation for his need to keep Elizabeth at bay. It wasn't anything she'd done. He was reacting to nothing. It was sleep deprivation – he was probably getting less than Rodney, lying awake, waiting for the screaming to begin. He wished he could just lie down next to Rodney, just be within reach of another living person, but there was no excuse. Atlantis had echoed hollowly at times with over two hundred personnel inhabiting her, with just two of them there was so much space they needn't ever encounter each other again.

It felt like they were washed up here. Human flotsam, with no purpose or reason for their survival and no will to find one.

Elizabeth was waiting in the corridor on the third night, when John finally walked out of Rodney's room. She'd been there the previous night, too, ready to take John's place if he couldn't help Rodney. It irritated him. He knew she'd try to talk to Rodney, make him talk, while John couldn't. He wasn't ready to talk about anything himself.

"Is he okay?" she asked.

"Not by any definition."

"Are you?"

He shrugged. It was a stupid question. She knew he wasn't. Neither was she. If this hadn't messed her up, then she was insane. He didn't say any of that. He lied without bothering to sound truthful.

"I'm fine."

She nodded.

"Of course you are."

John gave her a wary look. She hadn't sounded sarcastic, but she couldn't really believe that, could she?  She was just willing to go along with his pretense for now. He didn't look forward to when she stopped, when she started pushing for him to start thinking and doing again. She was going to pull rank and he was going to blow up.

"We have to take care of each other now."

"Sure," he drawled.

Because he'd done such a good job taking care of his people up to now. He missed Teyla and Ronon with a physical ache, the way an amputee must miss a limb. With them, with Rodney, the team had felt invincible, a whole, and without them what did he have to offer?  He couldn't help himself, so how could he help anyone else?  

She walked away, carrying a flashlight and her PDA, and he didn't care enough to ask where she was going. He watched her back recede until she turned a corner, then went back into Rodney's room.

~*~

They were there all of the time – flashes, pictures, memories, ghosts – torture.

Rodney tried to let the steady thrum of Atlantis become his heartbeat, his thought-stream, his breath, but failed miserably, every time.

They were everywhere, everywhere he looked: his ghosts. Some of them saw him, some of them spoke to him, raged and screamed and wept soundlessly. Some of them were oblivious; they didn't know what he'd done. None of them ever heard him. They were dead. He knew they were dead; he'd killed them.

He wanted to run, to scream, to slam his head against the nearest wall until his brain shut down, but instead, he forced himself to lie or sit still, to stare and endure the images his mind dragged up.

Familiar faces, strangers' faces he'd seen even once, people he'd never known, all jumbled together, enemies, lovers, the people who had become his family, he saw them one after the other. His penance was to see them everywhere.

The ones who might have known it was coming, the ones who never knew why, they were all on his conscience.

Miko bent over a journal in the mess hall. Major Lorne perched on the edge of a conference table, listening to a briefing. Simpson at a departmental meeting, rolling her eyes at Kavanagh during one of his interminable monologues. Louise Biro cheerfully telling a Marine she was better with dead bodies as she bandaged him up. Bates, Stackhouse, Corrigan, Collins, Edwards, Caldwell, Novak… Wiped away. Had any of them screamed? He was screaming for them every night, but it would never be enough.

Radek staring at the data-readouts with wide eyes, pushing his glasses up with one finger to study the computer better, seeing but not believing. Clever Radek might have had time to understand and curse the day Rodney McKay was born, to tell the others, before he was just… gone.

Did Earth see it coming, did Atlantis have time to warn them of the end?  His imagination conjured more faces to condemn him. Carter, Jackson, O'Neill, Teal'c – they must have wished they'd killed him instead of sending him to Siberia. Svetlana Markova, smoke trickling from her nostrils, dark eyes snapping with Slavic temper, Siler, Harriman, his neighbor, his first math professor, Lam, Mitchell, Paul Davis, the scientists he'd worked with at Groom Lake ... Oh God, all wiped out of existence, never was, never will be, gone into the nothingness, unraveled, erased, undone.

Gone.

Ronon, Teyla, Ford, Carson…

Rodney blinked back tears and stared at the tiled ceiling.

Ronon would have listened silently, shrugged, and walked away. Out of all of them, Ronon would be the least surprised; the Wraith had taught him to expect death every day. No screams of outrage or denial from him.

Teyla wouldn't fall apart. No screams, no tears, just that quiet acceptance that characterized her. Maybe she'd bowed her head and recited one of her people's prayers to the Ancestors, but she would have faced the end eyes open wide. Rodney saw her haloed in the light pouring through Atlantis' stained windows from the dying sun. Haloed in red fire, brief brightness, then…

Gone.

Gone into nothingness. Non-existence, never existence.

He pictured Ford, lost somewhere they'd never reached, looking up to the sky through that darkened eye, from his darkened soul, without comprehension, alone, then no more.

Carson… Carson wouldn't have understood what was happening until it was too late, and Rodney felt glad for him, for that, for the other man's naiveté. It was a small consolation that Carson wouldn't have grasped the enormity, that he had died quickly, never understood that everything, everything he had ever thought about his life and its point and his future would be gone, too.

Gone. No longer. No future, no past. Gone.

Jeannie.

Rodney tried to suppress the picture of Earth, caught as the sun flared unimaginably brighter for an instant, seared the solar system, stripped planets to atoms in its last agony. He held his eyes open and told himself that would be better. Better than the long slow heat death of the universe, when the stars all consumed their fuel and fell into themselves, when planets grew cold and dark and dead. Better to burn than to smolder, to molder, to rot… my love hath no decay, even to dust, there were no worms to squirm their way in and out, no corpse nor maggots to feast. No flies; the buzz in his brain was insanity, laughing because he'd cured the common cold and cancer and the Wraith, the Goa'uld, the Ori, none of them were any threat now. Laughing, but it sounded like screaming. Screaming with laughter, he'd heard that somewhere, some time, some when…

Better, much better, to never see it coming. But no, no, that was a rationalization.

The end was too much for anyone to grasp, but he did; Rodney could see it all and his hand that tipped the domino, the cascade of events.

Gone. Jeannie.

What was left was silence. Silence and knowledge. All his ghosts, his accusers, all around him.

He had always wondered how it would feel to know too much. Whether it would be an elation, like flying blind but reaching out with more senses than you had before, understanding that there were no boundaries, that everything was connected and beautiful.

He knew too much now, and it was nothing like he had expected it to be. The knowledge was eating him up from inside, slowly gnawing at his mind, stripping away layer after layer until everything was raw and open and unable to resist the loop in his head, the nightmares, the horrors.

Teyla next to his bed, kissing him goodnight with half of her face missing, swirling into chaos and nothingness.

A Wraith, caressing him, trying to take his life-force but flinching back as though stung when it tried to feed. They couldn't feed off the destroyer. Even the Wraith abhorred him.

Jeannie, singing him a lullaby, her voice echoing in a vastness that couldn't produce an echo and yet it did, louder and louder, the familiar song twisting into a cacophony of screams of outrage and fear from billions of beings in the universe, until he woke and the screams tore free.

He couldn't breathe, couldn't stop his heart, but he was gasping, forcing his lungs to work even though he didn't know why, his body fighting and clawing for survival while his mind wanted nothing but to shut down, but he couldn't run away and he didn't deserve to die this easily and he couldn't, couldn't, couldn't. Behind the magnitude of what had happened, he was still hanging on to his life, his own, worthless, murderous, genocidal life. He wasn't strong enough to end it.

He wasn't in the nothingness that had taken the universe he destroyed and he felt a wild exhilaration about that, that he was still alive. Knowing that, despite everything that had happened, he was glad to be here with Elizabeth and Sheppard and that he hadn't died. It sickened him so much that his hand had been on the Beretta more than once – why hadn't they taken it away from him, Elizabeth and Sheppard, maybe they knew, maybe they wanted him to use it – but it had always trembled, never even released the safety. He hated himself, but not enough, and that made the loathing all the deeper, but still not effective enough.

~*~

John's idea of taking care of each other seemed to be keeping his radio headset on, though never answering it, and coming back to the same room at night. Elizabeth wasn't sure if he even ate every day; she had to remind Rodney, which was deeply frightening. Even so, the MREs from the jumper disappeared at an alarming rate.

It looked like John had given up too, when Rodney had imploded. Nothing else explained the way he walked the city alone, avoiding Rodney and her. She'd thought they had a better relationship than that. She'd been wrong. She couldn't read John and that chilled her.

So did his silence. He barely spoke to her and didn't speak to Rodney at all during the days.

Rodney sat and stared into an emptiness Elizabeth was terrified of seeing. She sat with him and talked at him, napped uneasily when she couldn't fight off sleep, because otherwise she was alone herself. She was profoundly afraid of what Rodney might do if she left him to his own devices. It was too easy to imagine finding him dead and her own screams ringing through the deserted city, unheard. Still, she resisted the urge to ask John to stay with them during the day, and confined her own explorations of the city to the nights.

They never discussed it, but after the first night, they fell into a routine. One of them watched Rodney all the time.

Elizabeth wanted to shake John, too, yell at him that he wasn't suffering alone, that Rodney wasn't the only one shattered and she needed someone, too, but she couldn't.

One look at Rodney told her he needed John far more than she did, stilled every urge she had to ask for comfort for herself. And even if it had been different, she wouldn't know how to ask for it in the first place. Rodney was traumatized and John was fractured, barely holding himself together by retreating from almost all contact. John's eyes weren't as empty as Rodney's, but they were dulled and cloudy as ice. John was frozen almost to the bone; cold, so cold, like the deep emptiness of space. He had nothing left beyond what he gave Rodney, nothing to offer her.

When she looked into the mirror in her room – her old, new, old room – she wondered if they saw the same emptiness in her eyes when they looked at her.

Ironically, the nights were easier to bear than the long, pointless days. She kept her door open to hear Rodney and John, to wait for the already familiar sound of Rodney, ripped from sleep by his nightmares. John would bolt past her room to Rodney's and she would follow. It was the same each time: Rodney clinging to John – eyes squeezed shut, shivering, sweating – in an embrace tight enough to bruise. At least, at night, John offered some comfort.

He wouldn't speak to Rodney, but he held on through the worst nightmares, and stayed until Rodney fell back asleep. The sweep of his hand down Rodney's back, the slow rock she doubted John was even aware of, spoke of a connection that still endured, despite everything.

Once she knew they were together, she would head out, continuing her futile search.

~*~

Desolation seemed to feed on itself. Desolation and desperation breeding frustration that boiled in a sick ball in her stomach, growing and growing with every day that passed, because she could do nothing. For an entire week, the city thwarted Elizabeth, turned her away, closed itself off from her. The frustration twisted into a simmering anger that turned toward the one the city did welcome. Damn him, anyway. John had no understanding of what it meant to not have the gene. Elizabeth hated him – it – hated it, hated the lack in herself.

She didn't hate John. No. But she was so very angry with him and Atlantis.

She was sick of John's damned sulking. The MREs in the jumper emergency kit were running out. When she tried to access the city mainframe to find out if there were any supplies still in existence, it refused her access. When she tried to use a transporter, it wouldn't work. She'd been so angry she'd tried dialing the gate. The entire control room had gone dead on her.

The gate had remained empty.

She'd wanted to shriek at the city and would have thrown something at the windows, if she'd had anything to throw. She'd ended up sitting on the steps, holding clenched fists against her temples and counting her breaths just to calm down. She'd missed Peter Grodin so badly in that moment, his calm, his dedication, his blessed sanity. Edwards was a good man, but he'd never taken Peter's place with her. The reminder took her breath away all over again.

When she could think again, she decided John had had enough time.

She waited in the hall outside Rodney's room, while John soothed Rodney through another bout of night terrors, until Rodney's breathing had settled into the steadiness of sleep and John slipped away. He was looking at the floor as he walked out and stopped when he saw her. She couldn't see him well enough to read his expression, but his body stiffened, which told her enough.

"John," she said. "We need to talk."

His eyes narrowed and he turned away. Dim green light slipped over the angles and hollows of his face. He'd lost weight. All three of them had. She darted forward before he could walk away and grabbed his wrist. He jerked free of her hand so fast she stumbled.

"Damn it, Colonel. You still answer to me – "

"No."

"What?"

He turned slowly and looked at her. Elizabeth took a step back. John was angry, reined in, always reined in, but burning with it, so it seemed to smoke off him.

"I said no. Elizabeth." Her name rolled off his tongue, edged with irony. "There's no Air Force, no SGC, no expedition, and no authority – get it? Just three people who fucked everything up." The words were low, but forceful.

"Three people who are going to starve to death if someone doesn't do something about getting us some supplies!" she shouted, losing her own temper.

He folded his arms.

"Why don't you do something?"

"I can't! I can't fly a jumper, I can't make anything here work!"

"So what the hell can you do, Elizabeth?" John asked silkily. "Talk?" His eyebrow rose. "Talk."

"John – "

"See, you're talking, but I'm not listening."

You never listen, John.

Elizabeth bit back a flood of words. He never listened when it was all she did. It was her job to listen and learn, to discern what people really meant from what they said. She was a negotiator, a diplomat, first, and then a leader. None of those were about just giving orders.

"What's wrong with you?"

Because something was wrong with John; she hadn't seen him this… this out of control before. She knew he had trust issues, but he had a handle on them, usually. This wasn't the time to indulge him, though, or try to heal whatever was damaged inside. She needed him functioning. She needed to shock him back to his old self.

He tipped his head. "Tell me you didn't just ask that."

"Spare me your sarcasm. I can see that you're feeling as bad as I do. But you're a commanding officer, John. You should know how to handle a situation like this. You've done it before, haven't you? Assumed command? Why don't you now that it really matters?

"I don't want the fucking command!"

"You're the one with the ATA gene, John. You're the one who can fly the jumper, use the command chair, right? It would make sense," Elizabeth pointed out, holding her breath, hoping she still knew him well enough to predict his response.

John shook his head. "No!" He ran his hand over his already wild hair and added bitterly, "What command, anyway? The three of us? That's a joke."

She closed her eyes against the pain of that reminder. Pushing down her grief left room for her mind to stray, to contemplate the differences between Atlantis that was and this one. It wouldn't cooperate with her. If Atlantis that was had been like this…

The potential stratification of Atlantis based on who had the ATA gene and who didn't would have become fact, even with the addition of those the gene therapy succeeded on. Given long enough, anyone without the gene would become something less. Second class citizens ... or not citizens at all, not – in the eyes of the Ancients – evolved enough. How long until those with the gene would have begun to think the same way?

But why was this Atlantis so… not hostile, but reluctant and uncooperative? The city had never been so unwelcoming before, and Elizabeth had to wonder if it was a result of being at full power. Could – would it have rejected most of the expedition the way it did her, if it hadn't been in hibernation when they arrived? Had it responded even then to John and obeyed because he did? Was it refusing because he was rebelling against her now?

Why was John suddenly having a problem with her authority now?

"Why are you so angry at me?"

"I'm not just angry at you."

"You said it yourself: I can't do anything. But you can. So do it," she insisted and saw his temper snap. Something in her words had done it. Good. They needed to lance the festering wounds between them. At least, she thought so, but the way John moved into her space, the way his face tightened into a mask of anger, told her she'd miscalculated.

"Because you could have stopped it!" John yelled.

She was instantly taken aback at the fury on his voice. "You're blaming me?"

John's voice dropped in volume, but not intensity. "You insisted on coming to Doranda with us for just that reason. You said. It was really about the power games though, wasn't it? You were afraid you'd lose control of Rodney, lose Arcturus, afraid I'd turn it over to Caldwell and the military. When Zelenka warned us, you knew Rodney wouldn't stop, you knew I would back him, and you let us go through with it because you wanted the power. That's bad enough. But when you knew it was going wrong, you still weren't willing to make the call, because if we'd disobeyed, you would have looked bad."

"You should know exactly how important appearance can be, Colonel," she snapped back. "You wouldn't even have your rank if it weren't for – "

"For you?" John leaned so close she felt his words as warmth against her face. "Don't think that makes me grateful, because all it means is you wanted someone who owed you in command of the military." His voice dropped to a bleak whisper. "Do you know why the brass wanted Caldwell and not me? Because they thought I was sleeping with you and you going over their heads, forcing them to promote me, just confirmed it for them. You're a great negotiator, you know how to talk the talk and play power games, but you're a lousy leader."

Elizabeth flushed red with humiliation and anger.

"And you're an insubordinate bastard that I couldn't trust to take orders unless I was right there!"

"You didn't give the damn order!"

"Like you have such an outstanding history of following my orders in a crunch." It was a low blow and she knew it. She didn't care.

"I said he asked me to trust him," John snapped. "I did. I'm not a genius. Rodney is. And he was part of my team. A team can't function if you don't trust and back up your people. That was my job."

"I backed you up. I even went to Doranda with you."

"After Col. Caldwell goaded you into trying to prove something."

"Stop it!"

Elizabeth and John both jerked around and saw Rodney leaning against the doorway into his room. He looked ghastly in the green light. His eyes were dilated and his voice, raw with screaming and awkward with words unused for too long, rasped and quivered. But he was looking at them, seeing them, and that was more than he'd done in weeks.

"Rodney," she exclaimed and stepped toward him, only to have him shy back.

"Both of you, please. Just stop it," Rodney said. "It was my fault. All my fault."

"Of course," John snapped. "Because it's always about Rodney McKay. Who else destroyed a universe?"

"Believe me, Colonel, I'd be happy to share the blame, but the truth is I used you. I knew exactly what arguments would convince you to back me on the second test. Everything I said to you when I asked you to trust me was calculated."

John stepped back from Elizabeth, angling his body toward Rodney, much of the anger dissolving out of him. What it left wasn't much better, just a weary bitterness that echoed of giving up.

"McKay… "

Rodney's mouth turned down.

"That's done it, hasn't it? Do you see now? What kind of – of friend does that?" He looked down.

"You really think I'm that stupid?" John asked quietly. He looked bleak. "I knew what you were doing then."

Rodney swallowed hard. "You asked me. You asked me what the worst case scenario was, and I made a joke of it."

John stared at him.

"Okay," he said at last. "All your fault." He brushed past Elizabeth. "Sweet dreams," he added as he walked away.

Rodney glanced at Elizabeth and then away. She was shaking.

"Rodney." She tried again. "Rodney, he'll – "

He stepped back and the door closed, leaving her outside in the hall, alone.

She thought of what she should have said, because she'd always been able to handle Rodney, save him from his social gaffs and arrogance, but this time it was too late.

She didn't know what to say to Rodney and she didn't know what to say to John.

She'd always thought she knew how to get through to John; he wasn't a man with a hunger for power, he didn't want her position as leader of the expedition. He kept himself under careful control and presented a smile to the world, and if she could appeal to his almost crippling sense of responsibility, he would come around. It had been clear from his files when she read them and working with him had only confirmed what kind of man he was, while at the same time proving the real John Sheppard was far more private than the appearance he cultivated. She'd fallen for the act though, along with everybody else, at least sometimes, forgotten the intransigent bastard who had torpedoed his career over his principles, who rebelled against any orders. How much control did it take for John to make himself obey when his first instinct was always to balk? She'd forgotten that John demanded as much from his superiors as he did from himself. If he considered that she was blaming only Rodney and not herself… Then he would act just this way.

Carry the weight.

Give the orders; take the blame. Something that was swirling in her head every minute of every day since they arrived here, but he didn't know that: She could have stopped the second test of Arcturus.

They were all three to blame.


Supplies got lower, low enough she had to start rationing and became frightened of what would happen when they ran out. All her searches for food in the sections of the city she could access were fruitless. She thought of the Wraith when her stomach growled and ached. Wondered if they felt the same after waking up from their sleep - always hungry, never properly nourished.

She gave up some of her rations when she had found Rodney in hypoglycemic shock, shivering and sweating on the floor, unable to remember his own name. That had frightened her more than the nightly screams, because in that very moment she was sure he was lost to them; brain damage inevitable. He came around after a hastily prepared glass of sugar water, after which she forced him to eat a whole MRE. Elizabeth swore to herself that she wasn't going to watch that again, helpless. She wasn't going to lose Rodney.

She needed assistance, but she went on her own, on long, futile trips that showed her just how limited her chances were. Transporters didn't work for her and without pre-initialized access to any of the computer terminals, the vastness of the city caused her to lose her way more than once. Corridors remained dark. Doors refused to open or opened on empty rooms almost randomly. The batteries in the flashlight she brought from the jumper's supplies dimmed and eventually died, curtailing her searches further.

Rodney still woke screaming, but now John stayed away. Elizabeth ran to his room and hovered in the doorway. John didn't come and Rodney huddled in his bed, shaking in the dark. She tried to go to him and he snarled at her to get out. He stopped staring into the distance during the days, at least, and started remembering to feed himself. He even showered and brushed his teeth, for which she was grateful. It seemed like she'd traded John's presence for a more aware and functional Rodney.

Her search for supplies in the city proved useless. She found kitchen facilities but they were bare, stripped and empty, no frozen or dried goods anywhere. It made sense, of course, she chided herself. The Ancients had left the city without any expectation of returning for thousands of years, so they had left it clean and empty. It made sense, but it felt deliberate, as if the city refused her, as though there were ghosts around every corner, mocking her efforts. The dark and the cold beyond the city shield seemed to hold something that watched through the walls and windows, that regarded three lost humans with hostile eyes.

Elizabeth stopped sleeping.

~*~

Elizabeth came and went, a presence just on the fringes of Rodney's consciousness, urging him to eat sometimes. Other times Sheppard was there, silent but present. Rodney wasn't certain if he was the one leaning on Sheppard or if Sheppard was leaning into him some nights. He didn't suppose it mattered much.

Neither Elizabeth nor Sheppard could make any of this more bearable, could stop the wheels in his head turning and turning. He didn't deserve their help. Didn't even deserve their presence, even without their friendship.
 
Deep, deep down, he felt stirrings of an altogether different fear – that they would abandon him, not dissolving and disappearing into nothingness, but simply leave, turning away in disgust or indifference. Even worse than that, that the despair eating him inside might take them too.

A new nightmare filled his nights when Sheppard withdrew even his presence in the dark.

Rodney dreamed of Elizabeth cutting Sheppard's throat, the image vivid in his mind, the bloody river of Sheppard's life pumping out, Sheppard's eyes wide and already empty. He could never stem that tide and he woke to the smell of the blood on his hands; his hoarse screams rang in his own ears when the rest of the nightmare manifested itself even in his waking mind. He imagined Elizabeth taking the Beretta and turning it against herself, her brain spraying the wall behind her in crimson and gray.

His stomach revolted and he rolled over the edge of the bed to the floor, onto his hands and knees, heaving and spitting the meager remains of a Powerbar, until nothing but bile and saliva came up. His eyes watered and his arms quivered as he gasped and gagged, throat burning, helpless, head hanging.

The hand on his shoulder shook him out of it for a second, and he was hoping for it to be Sheppard; Sheppard, whose contact he needed like the air to breathe these days, but when he looked up, he saw Elizabeth.

Saw blood and brain fiber.

Saw her hand cutting Sheppard's throat, leaving him twitching and twisting and fighting for breath that would no longer fill his lungs.

Elizabeth's hand on his shoulder was wet with Sheppard's blood until he blinked and everything blurred.

He shrugged her away.

"Get out."

"Rodney, you –"

"Get the fuck out of here."

He cleaned up the vomit before crawling back on the bed, willing his mind to stop but not sleep. He didn't even close his eyes, but his mind kept showing him the same thing anyway: his own hands, wet with the blood of the universe.

His ghosts waited in the corners and the shadows. They were patient.

~*~

On the fourth day after her confrontation with John, she locked her hand on Rodney's shoulder and shook, digging her fingers into the muscle painfully. John had been gone too long this time. "I need your help, Rodney. You have to stop this. You have to help me find John."

He tried to twitch away, but she wouldn't let go. Finally, Rodney asked rustily, "Why me?"

"Nothing works for me." How she hated admitting that.

He nodded at the admission. Then a frown creased his features. "Wait. Sheppard?"

"Isn't answering his radio, hasn't come back to his room. I think we need to find him, Rodney.You need to."

Rodney's breathing picked up. "Oh, no. No." He was unsteady on his feet, but moving, and moving for the transporter. Elizabeth followed him, laying a steadying hand against the small of his back.

~*~

John's wandering had brought him to the chair room three times. It wasn't coincidence. He wanted to sit down and feel what Atlantis was like with three fully powered ZPMs to work with, not half-crippled and half-powered.

It felt like the city itself wanted him there. His restless pacing was always accompanied by the hum of it accompanying him, doors opening, lights coming on, but it seemed like the lights were brighter when his feet turned toward the chair room and dimmed with disappointment if he went another way.

He didn't need to use the command chair. But he hadn't forgotten what Elizabeth said about supplies. They were going to have to trade for food; it would be a good idea to find out what Atlantis had to offer in the way of possible trade goods.

It would be better to concentrate on that than the sick ache inside.

He was still so angry it frightened him, so that he'd taken to staying away from Rodney and Elizabeth, because he couldn't bite back the words that wanted to burst out anymore. It felt like the day when he came home to his mother's note – Sorry, baby, I can't take you with me – on the refrigerator door, like setting his helo down at the base that afternoon in Afghanistan with nothing to show for a career in ruins but dead bodies, like the feel of a ring and a letter in an envelope he never bothered to open. It felt like losing everything all over again.

He'd trusted Rodney.

John closed his eyes.

Despite everything, if Rodney were to look him in the eye and declare he could fix everything, John would want to believe him. He would trust him, still. It hurt like hell to think Rodney had used that. It seemed like he'd always trusted Rodney, even in Antarctica, because everything Rodney felt and thought was right out there. Had seemed to be, John cautioned himself.

John preferred someone who called him an idiot to kind words and hidden agendas.

He'd thought Rodney didn't have any hidden agendas. He'd been a fool and that wasn't Rodney's fault, but his, all his. Everyone had pieces of themselves they kept private.

He had to stay away, had to ignore Rodney's nightmares, because he couldn't let himself lose control. He thought if he did, he'd be in the same state Rodney was, breaking apart inside, cut to pieces and bleeding out fast. How did you grieve for a universe?

Cold was better, cold was numb, cold was Antarctica, empty, open and alone.

The chair looked innocuous. John looked at it for a long time. Half the times he'd been in the room, before, the city had been blacked out, the corners filled with shadows, equipment scattered around the base. With the lights on, he could see the walls were almost terracotta colored, angular metal designs overlaying them, shapes almost like chevrons, fitted together, and seeming to contain some meaning he couldn't discern.

The chair was more of the strange mixture everything Ancient displayed:  a frame of precise curves and right angles supporting the silvery alloy of the seat. The arms and the back were solid crystal; the same, soapy-slick crystal that was used everywhere in Atlantis, in the jumpers and half the Ancient tech John had seen, only covered over with an organic or maybe fractal pattern of the alloy.

He'd never been afraid of the chair, not the one in Antarctica or this one, but it felt different now. John stared at it. They weren't identical, he realized. The one in Antarctica had been made or adjusted for someone shorter than him. The Atlantis command chair was proportioned exactly for him.

It was waiting for him.

John stepped onto the platform supporting it. The blue light that flared to life beneath his feet didn't even surprise him. He only hesitated for a moment, considering whether he should radio Elizabeth or even Rodney and tell them he was about to do this. There wasn't any reason. The command chair wasn't dangerous. Not to him.

He sat, placing his hands on the arms. The chair always looked hard and cold, but it wasn't. It molded itself to him exactly, sinking back into a position that supported his body perfectly.

The crystal behind him activated.

John caught his breath at the fluid ease with which the chair and the city responded to him. He thought about the information systems, asking for inventories, shield strength, weapons and status reports. The information flooded back faster than he could process, holographic displays lighting above him, the city hum rising, sharper and higher, peaking in a tone that cut through his thoughts as the lights flashed brighter and brighter. Too much, too fast, John thought and tried to slow it down, but couldn't. Something reached into his brain, poured in like a rain of quicksilver, clean and cold, but burning down all his nerves.

Joy and greeting ran through his mind and it wasn't his, wasn't human, but it knew him and loved him and it felt like flying as Atlantis threaded her way through his brain.

Who are you? he thought.

The name formed in his mind, plucked from his own memory, a gestalt of the consciousness that was meant to regulate Atlantis, that fitted itself to him as his DNA was fitted to it.

Atenë.

What do you want from me?

It all came too fast, a rush of Ancient, and he cried out, pain stabbing through his temples. He tried to lift his hands to his head and couldn't. He tried to scream and couldn't.

Stop. Please. Stop.

The remorse – he thought it was remorse, that was the closest human emotion he could assign to it – that followed was wordless, gentler and slower. The information overload receded, leaving John panting and limp, sweat-soaked, every limb shaking in reaction. He tried to get his eyes open, only to realize distantly they were open and burning, but he couldn't see the room, the input from Atlantis' systems usurping the pathways into his optic thalamus. Atlantis became his body, he could feel and hear and see with the city's sensors, draw on the data core like the information it held was his own memories. It was thrilling and terrifying.

Atenë was so eager to show him everything, to share all that she was, that John was rapidly losing track of himself. He tried to feel his own body and couldn't, couldn't discern fingers or toes. He didn't know if he was breathing and began to panic. Everything was so fast in Atenë's world, he didn't know how long he'd been merged with the crystal matrices that were her brain. He tried to tell her that if she'd usurped too much of his nervous system he was dying … or already dead.

The fear that flashed through them both at that made the entire city jolt. They bolted through its systems, rushing back to the chair room, finding the specific sensors that would show John's body.

He wondered what would happen to him if they were too late.

Would he be trapped in the matrices with Atenë or just fade away without his body to anchor his consciousness? When he'd shared with Chaya, she'd showed him so much, things he knew he couldn't remember consciously. Had she shown him how to ascend?  

John didn't know.

Panic hit him, but there, instantly, were statistics, probabilities, a living array of processes charting every function of his body down to the energy each cell was burning. Reassurance. Atenë caught him up again and carried him forward on the tide of information.

~*~

"Where is he?"

Rodney bent over the control room console, willing it to cooperate. Without a laptop or any translation program, he was working on the fly, guessing at the meanings of half the commands he gave the mainframe, following his instincts.

"Give me a minute," he muttered. His raw throat ached with every rasping word. His hands rattled over the controls – they wouldn't stop shaking – depressing one, deactivating another, the colored crystals lighting and fading under his touch. He assaulted the console with the desperation of something trapped and dying, frowning the entire time. He kept blinking to keep the sweat out of his eyes, unwilling to slow down even enough to wipe the perspiration away. He had to concentrate on the screen and not the shadows. He couldn't bring himself to sit in any of the chairs; his eyes insisted that Zhang and Edwards were already there.

A holographic schematic display of the city glowed to life in front of them.

"Got it," he said.

He pointed at a single life-sign glowing two towers away from the control tower. Realization of the significance of that tower hit him. "There." His voice cracked. "That's – " His voice disappeared entirely as the life-sign on the display flickered.

Lights all over the city pulsed, modulating between yellow and red. He knew, with nauseating certainty, that Sheppard was in the command chair. An atonal alarm began repeating, making Rodney's skin crawl with memories of the final, helpless moments of the first siege, when he'd watched another monitor and imagined Sheppard's death, torn to dust and memory soon to be lost, scattered across the cold, silent reaches. It reached through the haze of his own despair even now.

Sheppard was in trouble.

"Get the medical kit from the jumper!" he snapped and ran for the closest transporter. He thought he brushed by Bates' shade as he went.

The transporter door snapped open ahead of him, the destination schematic already displayed. Rodney spared a thought for the responsiveness of the city, then dismissed it. This Atlantis had ZPMs. That was all.

Every hall was brightly lit and thankfully empty. That was different enough to keep away any flashbacks as Rodney raced into the chair room. He skidded to a stop at the edge of the glowing platform.

He said, flat and calm as he could, "Elizabeth. Get that medical kit down here now."

"On my way." He could hear the thud of her boots and her breath speeding up through his earpiece. Then, a few seconds later, as though she only thought of asking now: "Can you give me some details? Tell me what to expect."

Sheppard's in the chair, he wanted to yell. The chair is in him. Silvery strands of metal twined over his hands and arms, running up under the sleeves of Sheppard's jacket. More of it curled over his shoulders, like hands, to hold him down. The part that made Rodney want to scream, though, were the delicate threads of it crawling over Sheppard's temples to the corners of his eyes, insinuated past the orbits. He imagined them creeping along the path of the optic nerve and into Sheppard's brain.

"Rodney? Rodney!?"

"Just hurry," he said and ignored Elizabeth's questions after that.

He couldn't actually imagine a way anything in the emergency kit could do any good, but it was what you did: you tried to do something with what you had. And you watched people die, because it was never good enough, never enough. He was frozen, watching Sheppard's body bow up and then shake in a soundless convulsion. He watched blood run red and wet from Sheppard's nostrils, watched it slip from his open mouth, watched him shake and couldn't move, any more than Sheppard could blink.

"Rodney, the transporters won't work for me! I'm going to have to walk. Do you have that much time?"

"Damn it …" Rodney squeezed his eyes shut. Couldn't the damn city cooperate for once? "Elizabeth, just stay there, I'll get the transporter working, I just need more time."

"Rodney, I can't do anything to help if I'm stuck."

"I know, I know, I'm trying to think of something!" He flexed his fingers, trying to trace, strictly in his mind, the command pathways he would need to rewrite to make the transporter operate independent of gene activation. He could do it, given enough time. There was never enough time … It should work anyway.

"Elizabeth, just get in the transporter. It will work."

"I'm trying it – "

"Elizabeth?"

"I'm locked in," she said, so much calmer than he would have been.

Elizabeth didn't have the gene. She was actually too healthy; her immune system had reacted to Beckett's gene therapy and fought it off like the infection it was.

She'd rejected Atlantis on a cellular level. Now it rejected her physically.

It didn't reject Sheppard. It embraced him so tightly it was going to kill him.

"I'm sorry, I can't … I've got to get Sheppard out here. Wait, just wait, okay?" he told her.

This was the end of the world, Rodney thought. The end of everything, beyond the despair of what he'd done already, he had to watch as Atlantis killed Sheppard. Elizabeth would never come, because somewhere in the city, it was killing her, too.

He would have stayed there, paralyzed by the sense of doom that had engulfed him since they arrived, except for the pink-tinged tears seeping from the corners of Sheppard's eyes. The hair at his temples was wet with them.

Rodney's feet were moving before he knew he'd made a decision. He was up onto the glowing platform, bent over Sheppard, his fingers moving over the metal holding down Sheppard's hands. He was afraid to touch the strands on his head. One jostle could be disastrous. The alloy looked cool, but felt warm: body temperature, Rodney thought.

"Sheppard," he whispered. "Can you come back? Can you shut it down?" He ducked his head, absently stroking his fingers over Sheppard's on the arm rest. "Can you hear me?"

The room lights flickered.

Rodney jerked his head.

"Was that you? Sheppard, if that was you, do it again!"

Rodney leaned closer, staring into blank hazel eyes, and held his breath. Sheppard's body had settled back into the chair, the seizures apparently over. The lights remained steady.

"Damn it, damn it, don't do this, you idiot," he said. His voice came and went, uneven and unsure. Would Sheppard even listen to him now, if he did hear? "Come on!"

"Rodney, talk to me. I can help." Her voice was too calm, he could hear the panic lurking under the surface. It was the last thing he needed now.

"Not now, Elizabeth."

Sheppard's pupils were contracted to pinpoints. Sheppard had such changeable eyes, sometimes dark, sometimes light; green one moment, gray or gold in the next. They were never blind, though; never empty like this. Rodney could map the ring of dark green around the edge of each iris, then a pale amber-green layer that darkened to golden-brown around the pupil. There were striations, spokes of gold, specks of brown and deeper green. Rodney stared into them and wanted only for them to narrow and fill with something, even if it was only the dark glitter of anger.

"Rodney, for God's sake, I know it's bad when you don't talk. Don't shut me out. What's happening? Is it John?"

Elizabeth's voice was escalating into impatience mixed with despair and he couldn't take the concern anymore. Rodney reached up and tapped his ear piece, turning her off.

"Come on, Sheppard," he said conversationally.Conversationally except for the crack and rise in his voice at the end."This is a shitty way to go, you know. You're always so disgustingly upbeat, telling everyone to keep trying, to not give up, you don't get to just lie back and die. It's absolutely unfair on all counts and I swear I will hound you into the afterlife if you do. I mean it. I'm willing to concede the existence of an afterlife, which means God or gods – and I don't mean the Goa'uld or the Ascended – just because I refuse to let you get away with this. I really hope you're listening to this and, hey, if you are, I'd like some kind of damned sign – "

The lights flicked off and on again.

Rodney stroked Sheppard's wrist and ignored Radek's phantom, shaking his head in disapproval and disappointment, in the corner.

~*~

The sensors showed another life-sign in the chair room. The individual possessed just enough altered cells with the proper DNA to pass the activation threshold.

Sound waves registered. Modulations from a human throat. Language. But not Atlantis' language, not the beautiful mathematics of Atenë's thoughts, not the language John knew as Ancient, nor the stripped-to-basics trade tongue the stargates inserted into the brains of each traveler, not even Wraith.  But he knew it, knew those morphemes, those structures, those rhythms.  

He concentrated on the chair room. There was another life form in the city, but it didn't speak to her or him, and he ignored it. Atenë had it secured in one of the transporter kiosks.

"Can you hear me?"

English, John thought, it was English. He listened harder, wanting it to make sense, wanting to translate for Atenë because she was there beside him, within him, breath and heartbeat and thought buoyed up by her.

They responded, brightening and dimming the lights, wanting the one talking to go on.

" – is a shitty way to go, you know. You're always so disgustingly upbeat, telling everyone to keep trying, to not give up, you don't get to just lie back and die. It's absolutely unfair on all counts and I swear I will hound you into the afterlife if you do – "

Memory shifted and Atenë showed him a picture, eyes full of worry in a face hollowed and bruised, much too pale.

John found the name in his own memories, along with a knot of emotions that stung and cut, so that he almost recoiled back into the computer's matrices. He remembered Doranda and after.

McKay.

" – afterlife, which means God or gods – and I don't mean the Goa'uld or the Ascended – just because I refuse to let you get away – "

McKay seemed to think John was dying. He didn't think he was, but he couldn't feel anything. Couldn't reconnect with his body, which scared the hell out of him. John pulled away from Atenë, listening to McKay, because Rodney always figured things out, he always came up with a way to save all of them. Or he had until – John shied away from the thought. He had to trust Rodney and he couldn't do it if he thought too much about what had happened.

He reached and flickered the lights again.

Flickered and breathed. He couldn't feel that breath that filled his lungs, but the scent rushed through his olfactory receptors, real and stunningly separate from the data input from Atenë: blood and sweat and the sharp reek of fear, a familiar acid musk that was half his own scent and half Rodney.

" – Sheppard – "

John latched onto the smell and fell back into his body, the link with Atenë severing so abruptly he screamed.

~*~

Rodney jerked his hand away from Sheppard.

The strands of alloy were sliding out of him. Rodney resisted to the urge to pry and tear at them, but grabbed Sheppard by the shoulders as the clamps released there. Sheppard was gasping for breath now, his entire body twitching. His hands flailed at Rodney's arms as the last silver threads withdrew. The instant they were out of Sheppard's eyes, Rodney jerked Sheppard upright and out of the chair.

Sheppard was a shuddering, dead-weight wreck and they both fell in a tangle of legs and arms.

The light in the chair crystal went out. Rodney pulled Sheppard around until he could see his face.

Sheppard's eyes were squeezed shut.

"Sheppard, Colonel, don't ever dare do that to me again," Rodney shouted at him.

Sheppard flinched at the close-in volume.

Rodney was two breaths from hysterics, much too loud, and he knew it.  He couldn't have another meltdown. Not until he knew Sheppard was all right. He tightened his hands on Sheppard's shoulders and resisted the urge to shake him.

"McKay?" Sheppard asked hoarsely. His eyes were still shut and Rodney could feel the trembling running through his body like aftershocks from whatever he'd experienced.

"Yes, of course, who else would it be? You scared – you took a ridiculous risk. Why did you use the chair and what the hell happened? That wasn't normal. It's never done anything like that. I thought you were dying."

Sheppard slitted his eyes open. They gleamed with excitement. Rodney felt a jolt of fear. What if whatever had just happened to Sheppard had affected him permanently?

"Look, what's your name?"

Sheppard blinked.

"Sheppard?" Rodney said, starting to worry even more.

"John." One corner of Sheppard's mouth quirked up in the beginning of a smirk. "Sheppard."

"Oh, but I just said that, didn't I? Well, what's my name?"

"Didn't I just say that? McKay."

Rodney puffed a relieved breath.

"Well, excuse me for being a little concerned that you might have fried your brain," he snapped.

Sheppard closed his eyes again and nodded loosely, then slumped against Rodney.

They were both still sprawled on the chair platform. One of Sheppard's elbows was digging into Rodney's ribs and his tailbone hurt from hitting the floor under Sheppard's extra weight. He still wasn't in a hurry to let go and Sheppard was limp against him, not pulling away. He let himself sit there just a little longer, letting some of the adrenaline leach away.

"What happened?" he asked finally. "Do you know?"

Sheppard finally pulled away from him and ended up sitting propped against the command chair, which Rodney found vastly disturbing. He wiped at his bloody nose with a hand that still wasn't steady and grimaced.

"Yeah, I know." Sheppard looked up from his blood-smeared hand and his eyes were full of wonder. "McKay, she's aware."

"Who, she?"

Sheppard waved. "Atlantis. She's awake and … incredible." His lips parted. "It was like I was in her mind and her mind is so much more than you could ever imagine."

"Atlantis," Rodney said slowly, wondering if Sheppard had suffered some sort of brain damage. Radek's shadow was back, poking curiously at the chair, snickering at Rodney. He tried not to look. Sheppard still needed him and that meant being sane again.

Sheppard reached up and stroked the chair arm. "Atlantis," Sheppard repeated. His voice was husky. "It's all math. God, it's so pure and clean."

"Wait," Rodney interrupted, sitting forward. "You're talking about an AI."

"Yeah, what did you think I was talking about?"

"I was revisiting the fried brains theory. There's really an AI? Why didn't it interact with us before?"

Sheppard pulled his knees up and rested his arms on them, letting his hands dangle. The bones at his wrists nearly poked through his skin. Little dots of blood ran up his arms until they disappeared under his sleeves.

"Before before or before since we got here?"

"Either." Rodney frowned.

"Atenë was asleep when we got here. This time. Before … " Sheppard swallowed. "I think she died when the city started shutting down peripherals to save power for the shield."

"Oh."

Rodney raised a finger. "But what about Elizabeth. The first one. Why didn't the city – what did you call the AI?"

"Atenë."

"Right. Why didn't the AI interact with Elizabeth?"

"She doesn't have the ATA gene." Sheppard's expression blanked. "Shit. Elizabeth."

"What? What?"

Rodney remembered he'd turned off his radio.

"She's in a locked-down transporter."

Rodney tapped on the radio. "Elizabeth?"

Nothing. He looked at Sheppard, but Sheppard's eyes were squeezed shut.

"Elizabeth?" Rodney tried again.

The sound of a breath exhaled like a sob came through his earpiece.

"Rodney?"

"Are you okay?"

She laughed and it sounded bad, really bad. "Can you get the transporter to open for her?" he asked Sheppard.

"I'm trying. If I used the chair – "

"No, no, no. I don't care how happy-friendly-wonderful Atenë is, you're not getting back into that chair," Rodney overrode him.

"Rodney, is John all right?"

"As he ever was," Rodney replied.

"Then get me out of here!"

He could hear her composure slipping. He turned off his mic long enough to ask, "Can you get the transporter to let her off at the living quarters?"

Sheppard reached up again and touched the arm of the chair, fingers moving over the silvery alloy. It rippled under his touch. Rodney's stomach lurched.

Sheppard opened his eyes and let his hand fall away and into his lap. "Yeah. I've got it."

"Elizabeth? The transporter should be all right now. Just get out when the doors open."

"What about John?"

"Colonel Sheppard seems to be okay."

"The doors are opening now. Thank you, Rodney. – Are you sure John is all right?"

"Yes. We'll be there soon, just try not to worry," Rodney said.

He looked at Sheppard, really looked at him, and thought if he got up and walked out of the room, Sheppard would sit back down in the command chair and never come back. At the same time, his heart picked up speed just imagining what they could learn from the AI. There was so much they'd never learned from the Ancients' database because they hadn't known what questions to ask. With an AI it would be utterly different.

If they'd had the AI, maybe he would never have … Then again, what if they had never gone to Doranda in the first place, never found the Arcturus Project?

Rodney looked past Sheppard to the command chair. He licked his lips.

"Sheppard."

Sheppard leaned his sweat-matted head against the chair.

"Yeah?"

"We could wipe the gate address and galactic coordinates for Doranda from the database."

Sheppard went still. Rodney didn't say trust me. He just let Sheppard think it out himself, didn't even suggest the corollary: that they could go back to Doranda in this time. He was half afraid Sheppard would refuse simply because Rodney had thought of it.

"We could," Sheppard said very slowly. Something dark and merciless flickered behind his eyes. His mouth stretched into a hard, feral smile. "We could do better than that, Rodney."

Rodney waited.

"We can go back and take that damned place apart," Sheppard declared.

Rodney nodded jerkily. He'd do whatever Sheppard wanted. At least, Sheppard was talking to him again, and he'd said we.

"Tonight," Sheppard said. He levered himself to his feet and stood, swaying, looking at Rodney hard and intent. Blood still smeared through the stubble on his chin, bright and frightening.

Rodney caught his breath and nodded. "Okay." This was the Sheppard who scared him, the one that could pull the trigger without hesitation.

"I've convinced Atenë to stop locking Elizabeth out of most of the systems. There are still things that have to be at least initialized by you or me and the jumpers will never work for her, but she'll be okay while we're gone."

"Shouldn't we take her with us?"

Sheppard hung his head briefly. "We don't really know what we'll find there. She'll be safer here."

Sheppard sounded so determined, Rodney didn't even consider arguing. He followed Sheppard out, but hesitated at the door, looking back at Radek, who waved him off impatiently, still poking at the command chair, all intent and excitement. Rodney blinked again and Radek was gone.

~*~

John glanced at Rodney as they stepped into a transporter. The destination schematic slid open, but neither of them activated it. He felt like hell, like crashing, every muscle in his body achy and exhausted. Rodney just looked like shit, pasty, unsteady. He'd cleaned up sometime in the last day, though: the beard was gone. His voice was still rough; maybe it always would be. John didn't know how long you had to scream until you did permanent damage, but Rodney's screams would echo through his head for the rest of his life.

It was just too damn much. He didn't want to think about any of it anymore. He didn't want to think about Atenë, either. If he did, he could almost feel the AI still in his mind, almost lose himself in the intricacies of the city, like he'd melt into alloy and crystal circuits if he didn't concentrate on staying in himself.

"You're talking to me again?" Rodney asked abruptly.

"I wasn't not – "

"Yes, you were."

John nodded and said, "It's hard, okay?"

Rodney didn't answer.

John was sure that Rodney's hands were shaking, his own still were; Rodney had shoved his in his pockets and slumped against the wall. The impulse to say something, to make Rodney look up and meet his eyes again, warred with his still simmering anger.

Every time he thought he had a handle on it, it came back to the realization that they had wiped out their universe. When he tried to sleep, it played against the back of his eyelids, the flare of light behind them as the rip began consuming Doranda's sun and the jumper threaded the eye of the stargate's needle. One second more and they would have been swept into nothingness, too.

If they had, they would never have known what they'd done. What Rodney had done, what he and Elizabeth had helped him do, what the Ancients had begun long before any of them were born.

He didn't blame Rodney alone, though he knew Rodney thought so.

He just didn't know how to live with it.

If he could just do something … Elizabeth wanted him to think about supplies and all he could think was it was pointless. But he'd latched onto the idea of going to Doranda like a lifeline. If they did this, then the fluke that had let them survive meant something. They could be more than ghosts of the future.

"We'll fix things," he said.

Rodney kept his gaze on the floor as he said, "Elizabeth will want to come with us." He flinched on the last word, as though he expected John to object to it.

John swallowed hard, grimacing at the taste of thick blood running down the back of his throat from his still bleeding nose. He slumped back against the wall opposite Rodney.

He looked away and said, "I know." He rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to loosen tight muscles.

John touched the icon for the transporter closest to their living quarters. The transporter's door slid shut and opened onto the familiar corridor. There was never time to feel their dissolution and reintegration, but John staggered, because for an instant, he was everywhere, spread through Atlantis, bodiless.

"Whoa," he murmured and Rodney's hand closed on his bicep, steadying him.

"Sheppard – "

"I'm okay."

"Oh, of course. You always go white and nearly fall on your face from what's essentially an elevator ride," Rodney snapped.

John locked his knees and whatever he'd felt dissolved into little more than a faint awareness of the city at the back of his mind, not much stronger than he'd always felt since first coming to Atlantis. Rodney's hand stayed on his arm. He let it. He didn't smile at the return of some of Rodney's normal attitude. He didn't, but for an instant he wanted to.

He wanted to go back to the way things had been between them before, the simple, comfortable friendship, but it wasn't that easy. If he was honest, it hadn't been easy for a while. The tension growing between them had simply been lost in all the other stresses.

There were things he couldn't afford. Things he never let himself even contemplate. Rodney was one of them, the same way Teyla became when she joined his team. Off limits, just like Elizabeth, because they had never needed that kind of trouble on top of all the other dangers they faced. He'd always been smart enough to avoid screwing up like that.

It was just one more thing he was not going to think about. He had a mission to plan. He was going to concentrate on that.

He shook off Rodney's hand. "I've got to clean up." He was more than a little ripe and suddenly couldn't stand himself.

"Figure out what supplies you'll need," he said as he walked away. "Then figure out what we've actually got." He didn't figure that was much, but the Arcturus facility probably had a self-destruct sequence Rodney could hack into.

"Fine, fine, sure," Rodney called. "I'll – I'll do that."

"Good," John said, ducking into his room as Elizabeth appeared at the door to hers.

"John?" she said.

He willed the doors to close behind him.

~*~

The look on Elizabeth's face when he exited the room fifteen minutes later made John regret the way he'd been treating her. She was paler than Rodney, stick thin and terribly brittle. He'd resented her ambushing him, but what choice had he left her? Rodney was a fractured mess and John had done what he always did: he'd bolted. Now he just felt guilty.

"See?" Rodney said as John walked into the hall, showered, shaved and back in control. The lights in the hall brightened subtly for him, John noticed. Atenë was watching. In retrospect, he was a little disturbed by what had happened with the command chair, but he still felt warm at the thought that the AI was looking out for him. The fleeting thought that the city already loved him more than his mother ever had he pushed away.

Elizabeth had stationed herself opposite his door. She had on her jacket, zipped to the throat, and clutched at her elbows with her hands. Her knuckles were white.

Rodney leaned against the wall next to John's door. John looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

Rodney waved a hand at Elizabeth. "She didn't believe me." He sounded simply disgusted, but John saw that Elizabeth's doubt hurt.   

John frowned. "Believe what?' he asked.

"That you're okay."

"What happened to you?" Elizabeth demanded, speaking over Rodney uncharacteristically. "Rodney said you're all right, but – "

"I am all right," John said softly. He caught Rodney's eye over Elizabeth's shoulder and mouthed, Go on.

"Rodney found me."

Rodney gave a jerky little nod and walked away fast, his step hesitating once as he detoured around something John didn't see. John hated the slump of his shoulders.

"It's okay," he said to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth leaned back against the wall. "No, no, it isn't," she murmured.

He wondered if she missed the comfort of being with someone. She never stepped outside the role of leader with anyone. She was calm and kind and concerned with everyone, because that was part of her command style. There was a difference between that and the personal. She had never wavered past the line, despite what she might feel inside. She still hadn't, even while he and Rodney were each doing their best to run away from the situation. He couldn't blame Rodney, but he knew he'd been unfair to her and knowing that had just made him angrier. He'd lashed out at her for being practical, for doing her job, because he felt like he'd failed at his.

He'd failed everybody. John's breath caught, an ache blooming in his chest so sharp it felt like a knife. All of them, all of them lost, except Rodney and Elizabeth. He missed Teyla and Ronon every time he thought of them.

"It will be," he promised, letting himself believe it, too. "We will be."

The heel of her fist hit the wall beside her. "You say that, but you weren't trapped in that transporter. I didn't know what was happening. Rodney stopped answering his radio." She slowed her words, breath hitching, and John felt an ache begin in his own throat. "The lights went out."

"It won't happen again," he said as comfortingly as he could. Once he and Rodney were back from Doranda, he'd use the command chair again and explain to Atenë how important Elizabeth was. He'd already made sure everything that didn't have to be operated with the gene was initialized for her. "It was a glitch. It's fixed."

Elizabeth slowly relaxed against the wall. Her eyes closed briefly. The light in the corridor wasn't kind. It etched new lines around her mouth, pinched and painted her face with exhaustion. She looked a decade older. Stress did that to people. John felt like he'd aged a century himself since coming to Pegasus.

"You scared the hell out of me. Both of you."

John hesitated, then acted. He caught her hand in his and held it. Her fingers locked into his in a hard, fierce grip, full of desperation she didn't let show on her face. He squeezed back carefully.

"Don't do that again," she said.

"Sorry," he said. He was. He always was when he acted like a prick, but by then it was always too late.

He recalled the time she'd hugged him in the gate room and he'd frozen up.

He'd thought about Elizabeth on more than one night. He'd stopped short of fantasizing, because he liked being able to look her in the eye at morning briefings, but she was beautiful and smart and he cared for her more than was wise, so he'd thought about being with her. Yet he'd never considered making any moves beyond some harmless flirting. He'd never held her, rarely touched her, and maintained a professional distance despite whatever rumors had run through the SGC.

Just holding her hand felt strangely intimate.

It felt like he'd been in a daze, a dim, powered-down mental setting since they'd returned to this empty Atlantis. It was about time he woke up and got his act together.

He repeated, "I am sorry."

Elizabeth lifted her head and met his eyes directly. "Are you?" she asked.

It wasn't like Chaya with Elizabeth. He respected Elizabeth. He hadn't even known Chaya. Everything he'd felt for Chaya had been a reaction imposed on him by physiology. Elizabeth was a friend, someone he knew as a good person, a decent person who cared about people and the big picture at the same time. Someone he lo – cared about already. It made a difference. He wasn't in love with her, but he did love her, he admitted to himself. And he'd been an asshole to her.

John had to catch his breath before answering hoarsely, "Yeah. For what I said the other night, too. We'll figure out something. I was trying to access the city, find out if there were any supplies we could use here, that's why I was in the chair room."

"You shouldn't have gone there alone."

"You're right. Next time, I'll have Rodney with me from the beginning. He did a good job, even though I scared him, too."

"Next time?" Elizabeth's eyes narrowed and she pulled her hand free of his.

He let her go without protest, but not without regret, though he was relieved at the same time. He focused on her words.

"Next time," John said and couldn't keep the anticipation out of his voice. "The city has an AI. I don't know what happened to her in our time, but she's here now and there's so much she showed me. It was amazing."

"You mean it did that to me on purpose?"

"No, she didn't realize." John noticed Elizabeth's shoulders. Too sharp, too thin, he noted. Loss of appetite was a sign of depression and they'd all been suffering from it. That was going to change. "It was just part of a security subroutine." He looked at her earnestly. "It's turned off now."

She let out an uneven breath and nodded acceptance. A small smile made its way onto her lips and John made himself smile back, even though he knew she'd likely misunderstood and thought the AI was shut down and not just the security protocol that dealt with non-ATA residents of the city. She was so pretty when she relaxed and wasn't worried. He couldn't bring himself to take that away from her for the sake of correcting her mistaken impression.

"Let's get Rodney and eat some of the MREs we still have," he said. "Okay?  We'll figure out where we should go to look for some supplies and the rest of it."

Doranda, he added to himself, silently.

~*~

She woke from a fitful half-drowse with the distinct feeling that something was wrong. Something subtly different in the sound of the city. Something missing.Her skin prickled along her arms, her breathing was too fast.

She was out of the bed before she had finished thinking about what was making her so uneasy. She picked up the Beretta John had given her when they arrived and carried it with her out of the room. Her subconscious knew – she couldn't hear John or Rodney. But Atlantis was humming. Humming louder and more distinctly, as though excited. The lights even flickered on for her.

She raced down the corridors, past the green bubbling conduits and darkened windows, up stairs that were chill under her bare feet, to the gate room, not knowing exactly why she was running, but following instinct.

The gate was active when she reached it, pouring bluish-white light into the otherwise darkened gate room. The roof to the jumper bay was open; she could feel the draft of air circulating on her bare arms, chilling her to the bone. The jumper, slowly descending, hummed quietly. Blue light gleamed off its dark, metallic curves.

Elizabeth tapped her earpiece. "John?"

There was no reply. The jumper eased lower, slowly rotating until the front viewport faced the control room balcony overlooking the gate room.

"John, where are you going?"

When his voice answered her, it was tired. "Go back to bed, Elizabeth. It's late."

Something in her flipped at his tone. It was probably supposed to be soothing, but it came across as nothing more than condescending.

"Where is Rodney?"

The jumper hovered in front of her now, and she could see both men in it, looking rumpled and tired beyond any measure; John hollow-eyed and Rodney pale and shaking. John met her eyes without flinching, though Rodney looked away, down at his instruments.

"Where are you going?" she demanded again, putting all of the authority she knew she no longer had into the question.

It was Rodney who answered, his voice so low that she barely heard the single word. "Doranda."

Elizabeth blinked, trying to absorb this. Doranda. They couldn't …

"Are you both insane? Wasn't what happened last time enough? Rodney, haven't you done enough damage?" She knew that she shouldn't continue, but it poured out in a jumble of words she no longer wished to hold back. "John. Are you so sick of your life that you're going to destroy the universe again, to let it take you with it?"

Rodney just lowered his head, his shoulders hunching. John's smile was a travesty of amusement.  This was the John who pulled the trigger, the one the Air Force had trained and Pegasus had broken and reforged, a man with a soul like watermarked steel. Had he just been waiting for Rodney to pull himself together enough to drag him back there again?

"You're going to try again?" she repeated, disgust pouring into her voice.

John's mouth quirked up a bit more, into a humorless smile. "Not quite."

"Then what? What?"

Rodney breathed deeply and lifted his head again, finally meeting her eyes. Even through the jumper window, she could see how difficult the simple act was for him now. She'd broken the trust between them as surely as he had. He fastened his gaze on her. "We're going to make sure it won't happen again."

The simple declaration was like a blow to the face. They meant to change the timeline. Elizabeth's hands clenched around the gate room railing.

The implication was clear, needed no time to think about. "Why didn't you tell me?"

John's gaze focused past her and his hands moved, preflighting the jumper the same way he would have a helicopter or a jet on Earth, not really engaged with her at all. His mind was already through the gate.

"John!" her voice rose to make herself heard over the jumper's hum.

"Didn't want to disobey orders again." He looked at her, grim and determined but apologetic too. "We have to do this."

Fear seared through her, her mind filled with pictures of them failing, dying, leaving her alone in the city, the last one, all alone, no chance of ever getting out of Atlantis, of the city coming for her. She had to pull herself together viciously, push those images aside.

"Who –" She took a deep breath and forced her voice to sound calm and strong. "Who said I wanted to stop you?"

John's gaze snapped back up from the jumper controls he had concentrated on again. "You don't?" It sounded disbelieving.

"It's the only reason for our survival," Elizabeth declared, struggling to let herself believe.

John met her gaze and gave a decisive nod. When she shifted her gaze to him, Rodney looked terrified but just as resolute. She knew the way his chin came up and suddenly a wave of affection flooded through her for both men, for their different but equal bravery.

"Just promise me you'll come back."

"We will," Rodney swore.

She saw John swallow hard. "Like McKay said," he said quietly.

His hands on the jumper controls moved. The jumper descended further, aligning with the gate.

The jumper moved, sliding smoothly into the event horizon. The gate stayed open for a while longer, then the rippling, watery surface vanished.

Elizabeth's knees gave way.

Hands still clutching the railing, her face pressed against the cool metal, she stared at the empty ring of the stargate while the gate room sank back into darkness around her. Atlantis stopped humming.

She was alone, as utterly alone as any human being had ever been, and the fear spilled through her, icy and overwhelming.

All she could do was wait.




Arcturus Weapons Installation
Doranda System
7032

Doranda is already a dead world when Sheppard and Rodney gate through to the system.

The planet is already dead, but it is there, along with the rest of the system, orbiting its blue-white primary, with an incredibly dense field of debris floating in the space around it. It's the remnants of the Wraith fleet they had seen before. The proximity alarm begins screeching as soon as the jumper exits the gate.

"What – ?" Rodney exclaims, and, "Shields, shields, shields," in a panicked chant.

"On it, McKay," Sheppard says and it's incredibly normal, incredibly welcome.

It isn't the big pieces Rodney's scared of. It's the little micro-meteorites. It all looks so innocent, like it's just floating there in space, but the truth is every piece is moving at speeds that will punch through the thin shell of a jumper like a bullet. The atmosphere of Doranda is a spark-bright lightshow from the constant shower of debris falling into the gravity well and burning up. In slightly less than ten thousand years – nine thousand thirty-seven – most of the smaller debris will have been destroyed on entry or its velocity will have taken it beyond Doranda into the empty space above the planetary orbital plane. For now, it flares up in brilliant pinpricks against the jumper's shield.

Sheppard takes them through the mine field of the broken fleet silently, then down through the atmosphere to the weapons installation.

They pick up their packs and guns out of habit and exit the jumper. They don't have any explosives, but it won't be necessary. Rodney is intimately familiar with the facility. He knows its weak points. He knows how to power it up and how to activate the self-destruct. It won't take long and when they're done, the Arcturus Project will be a Tunguska-sized crater, all evidence of its existence wiped away.

It's dark and freezing cold as they exit the jumper. Sheppard's breath curls white before him and Rodney's fingers go numb. So much dust has been thrown up into the atmosphere by the constant bombardment that the sun is only a pale, dim coin seen through the roiling black cloud cover. Doranda is in the grip of an endless winter that will kill any life left on the planet.

The air smells of cold and dust and ozone.

Rodney follows Sheppard inside. Power cells that had been depleted after millennia are still active now and the facility lights up for Sheppard as they enter. He remembers Ronon prying open the hatch when they found this place; he can even see Ronon's ghost standing with his arms folded, glowering at them. The light is sharp, unnatural, bleaching everything and throwing eerie shadows. For an instant, Rodney thinks he can see frost caught on Sheppard's dark stubble and his breath catches. He blinks and stops in his tracks.

When he doesn't move after too long, Sheppard turns back toward him. His face is gaunt in the blue-tinted light and his eyes are dark, dark and filled with anger. Sheppard's mask is cracking, but Rodney can't move. He can't think for remembering and seeing.

The bodies are back. Oh, yes, the bodies are back that they found the first time, but age hasn't kindly withered them to dusty mummies yet. Rodney can only stare. It's still possible to see that they died like Collins did: burnt by radiation from a thousand impossible particles generated by a runaway overload. The way everyone on Doranda died, he knows now. At least enough years have passed that the smell is gone. Bile rises in his throat anyway.

He turns around and sees Optican bent over a console. Radek pushing his glasses up his nose, eyes distracted. Teyla, her arms folded over the stock of her P90, her wonderful smile fading into something so full of disappointment, Rodney has to squeeze his eyes shut. He can't move, he can't do anything, it's all bearing down on him, crushing him under the guilt. The words want to tear themselves out. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I never meant, I never would, I didn't know, it wasn't supposed to be that way, I'd do anything, anything to repay.

Sheppard's too caught up in his own hell to see that Rodney is falling apart. Or he doesn't care, Rodney admits to himself. His tone eats at Rodney like caustic when he speaks, snapping Rodney's eyes open.

"What the hell are you waiting for, McKay?" Sheppard's face is tight, as though this place makes him sick, too.

"Oh, God."

"McKay, God damn it, don't you dare try anything – "

But Rodney is backing away from the control console. "I can't," he mumbles. "I – I've got to get out of here."

Sheppard crosses the room while Rodney's still looking around wildly for the exit. He has Rodney's arm under his hand. His fingers bite brutally into Rodney's bicep. He spins him and then he pushes Rodney back, one step, two steps, three, and Rodney's back hits the wall. The metal chill cuts through his jacket and his shirt. The shock of it makes him gasp. His hands scrabble at Sheppard's, but Sheppard is too close for Rodney to gain any leverage. He shoves his forearm against Rodney's throat, forcing his chin up, and leans in.

"You're not going anywhere," Sheppard says harshly. He looks feral.

He leans closer and suddenly the heat from his body is all Rodney can feel. Nothing else is real. There's just Sheppard. Hot breath so close it stirs against Rodney's skin. If he opened his mouth he could almost taste it. His own breath saws in and out. He's caught.

Caught under Sheppard's hands, caught between past and future, caught between the dead cold of this place and burning alive.

His hands are on Sheppard's arm, but he's not pushing it away.

He's not sure if Sheppard is going to exert the extra pressure it would take to close his windpipe. He could. Sheppard's good at killing. Rodney couldn't stop him. Wouldn't stop him. It would be the end of this nightmare.  Sheppard can set the self-destruct. Sheppard's good at self-destruction, too.

"Do it," he whispers.

He can see Sheppard's eyes widen. It's like light pouring into them, then it's gone and they're darker than Rodney's ever seen. The pulse in Sheppard's neck jumps and speeds.  His sweat smells bitter. "No," he says. "No, damn it." The pressure against Rodney's throat loosens.  His voice drops. "I swear, I'm not letting you go anywhere, Rodney."

Rodney slumps back against the wall. It hurts to swallow; his Adam's apple working against the painful presence of Sheppard's arm.

"Go back to the jumper. Get out of here."

"You want me to leave you?" Sheppard's voice rises into disbelief.

"Yeah."

"You bastard. You think I'd screw you over like that?"

"I think I deserve it."

Sheppard steps back.

He's scared out of his mind. He never, ever wanted to die. He never understood how Sheppard could smile when dying seemed inevitable, when Rodney wants to scream and flail and beg and claw and do anything to stay alive.

Rodney thinks Sheppard's going to do it. He's going to leave. He'll fly the jumper back to Atlantis and Elizabeth and that soft tickle at the back of his mind that is the AI, the whisper of Ancient that Rodney can almost make out. He'll go and Rodney will set the self-destruct and it will be over. He doesn't deserve to get away from his nightmares and he doesn't deserve the peace of knowing he's giving his life to undo his mistake. The truth is, he doesn't deserve anything. He doesn't deserve to escape living with what he did, either, but you can't die to amend your mistakes and live as penance, too. He knows he doesn't deserve Sheppard's forgiveness or Elizabeth's either, but he still wants it.

Except Sheppard isn't leaving. He grabs Rodney's wrists and pins them against the wall. It's slick and unforgiving under Rodney's clenched fingers. Sheppard's hands are going to leave bruises. Sheppard pushes closer, between Rodney's legs, pressing Rodney back, whispering, "Fuck that, fuck you, Rodney, just fuck you." His chest is against Rodney's, his weight holding them both against the wall. His hands slide up from Rodney's wrists to his shoulders, closing there tight enough to bruise.

Rodney's hands are free again, but he doesn't know what to do with them. Push Sheppard away? Pull him tighter? Finally, he mimics Sheppard and sets his hands on Sheppard's shoulders, resting them there lightly, afraid to do more.

Sheppard's stubble rasps almost painfully against Rodney's jaw line. Rodney cracks his head against the wall as he jerks it back in response to Sheppard's teeth closing on his neck.

He can feel Sheppard's erection grinding into him. Rodney's hard too and he doesn't – no, he knows what they're doing – he just doesn't know why.  It feels like oxygen when he's drowning, but they never would have done this before and he doesn't know why he needs Sheppard's hands on him and Sheppard's mouth and Sheppard's want now.

He realizes he can touch, so he does.

Rodney squeezes the back of Sheppard's neck, amazed at the heat and warmth of that strip of skin between the softness of his hair and the collar of his zip-neck black shirt. He tunnels his other hand under Sheppard's belt and the pants that are even looser than they used to be, under Sheppard's boxers, closing his hand on Sheppard's ass and pulling him tighter.

Sheppard lets go of Rodney's shoulders in favor of roughly opening Rodney's pants. His fingers are dry, faintly rough, as they brush against the bare skin of Rodney's stomach. Sheppard has got the buttons open now, pulling Rodney's pants open and Rodney's already hard enough his cock is pushing out of his underwear on its own. He doesn't notice the cold, because his whole body is lighting up, hyperaware of the places his skin touches Sheppard's, feeling overtaking any thoughts.

Sheppard's hand closes on his cock, not hesitating, no finesse, just stripping the pleasure from Rodney's nerve endings into his brain. Sheppard's face is pressed into the crook of Rodney's neck and he's grinding his cock against Rodney's hip almost desperately as he jerks him off. He doesn't say anything. All Rodney can do is grunt as Sheppard wrings his orgasm from him, leaving him sticky and spent, propped against the wall.

And Sheppard hasn't come. He's still hard, still pressed against Rodney, but he isn't moving. He hasn't even taken his hand away from Rodney's unpleasantly sensitized dick. His breath gusts down Rodney's shirt, his face still hidden in the crook between neck and shoulder.

Rodney takes a deep breath. He has no idea what comes next. A reciprocal hand job? A punch in the gut? His heart is hammering. A trickle of sweat runs between his shoulder blades.

"Fuck," Sheppard breathes against Rodney's neck.

"Yeah."

He slides his hand up from Sheppard's ass to his waist and rests it there, ready to tighten if Sheppard tries to draw away.

"Are you – ?"

Sheppard's shaking his head against Rodney's shoulder.  Actually, all of him is shaking.

"I'm not okay."

Rodney doesn't say anything. Sheppard's not okay. Rodney's not okay. What just happened isn't okay. He was so damn sure of himself he made a mistake that ripped apart the fabric of existence. The universe ends in just over nine thousand years, if they don't change what happens, because of him. Nothing means much compared to that.

Except Sheppard, who needs too, and smells of musk and sex and fear, and is still warm and alive.

Rodney manages to get Sheppard's pants open one-handed. The angle's awkward and unfamiliar, but Sheppard is sleek and hot and whimpers at the first touch of Rodney's hand. He holds onto Rodney's hips to steady himself and bucks into Rodney's hand after the first two strokes. He comes with a whole-body shudder, soundless, and slumps against Rodney briefly, before pulling away.

They don't look at each other. They're not going to talk about it. It's not going to happen again.

Rodney does what's necessary to blow up the entire weapons installation while Sheppard waits. It's even darker when they leave. Jagged, blinding streaks of lightning strike from cloud to earth in the distance, thunder following them. It gives the clouds a purple tint. Black and purple are the colors of mourning, Rodney thinks.

Fitting.

~*~

Elizabeth sorts the remaining MREs, counts them, calculates how far they can be stretched – another few days – while she waits and waits and waits. She paces around and through the control room, down the steps to the gate and back up, pausing under the darkened windows, hugging herself. She checks her watch over and over, half convinced it's slow or stopped. Time passes with agonizing slowness.

Atlantis is still and so quiet around her she can hear her footfalls and the quick, sharp sound of her jacket's zip as she pulls it closed. She can hear her heartbeat in her ears. She can hear her own breathing, too fast, in counterpoint to the city that seems to hold its breath, desperate for John and Rodney's return.

She curses herself for agreeing to stay behind. She was there the first time, she should have gone with them this time. John's too damn headstrong. When he gets an idea, he's as bad as Rodney, refusing to consider another way might be better. Her staying behind is just one more occasion in which she has let herself be persuaded by them, irrespective of her good sense.

Despite that, she knows exactly why they went. They both blame themselves. They think they have to make amends, undo their mistakes.

They aren't the only ones.

She rubs her hands up and down her arms, thinking about the past that may be the future. The future John and Rodney are guaranteeing won't end with Arcturus. A future that can be ... amended, she thinks. Her eyes narrow as she turns the thought over. They have Atlantis. They have time, oh God, do they have time, and all the benefits of twenty-twenty hindsight.

Why not?

Why not take advantage? They can make things better. They can repair the Lagrange point satellite and save this timeline's Peter Grodin. They can warn their counterparts to avoid the Wraith supply ship where Abrams and Gall died. They can not wake the Wraith, not initiate a devastating culling fifty or a hundred years early.

Intent now, she stops checking her watch every ten minutes. Instead she begins making a list of things they can fix before they ever happen. Being careful on Athos, quarantining the energy being, deleting Hoff from the database, never visiting the Genii, sealing off the nanovirus lab … Sliding into the routine of strategizing is easy, comfortable. This is a habitat she's at home in, weighing possible costs against possible benefits. Prioritizing. Survival over guilt.

It's playing God.

It won't undo their past, just change this timeline's future.Wiping out the Arcturus installation and the information it holds won't change what they did, before, only what may happen again. It isn't enough, can never be, and that's what haunts her. Time is unredeemable.

She doesn't care.

She begins thinking about potential missions, considering planets they visited in their timeline. Athos, Manarea, Dagan. She ponders Athos for a while but discards the thought of going there: if she remembers correctly, then Athos was in the middle of a Wraith culling cycle 9000 years back. She's not going to risk either of their lives finding out whether or not it's true. There also is the niggling suspicion that history will repeat itself, one way or the other, even if the culling cycle is long over. Manarea and Dagan seem safer, especially Dagan, since John and Rodney already know the secret of the Brotherhood. She's sketching out the details of a mission to Dagan, to recover the ZPM left by the Ancients with the Sudarians, when the stargate activates. Her earpiece crackles and John's welcome voice echoes in her ear. "This is Sheppard. We're on our way."

Elizabeth jumps to her feet and races for the jumper bay.

~*~

Rodney bolts out of the jumper the instant the ramp's down, the clang echoing up into the dark of the jumper bay's ceiling, metallic and harsh, greeting Elizabeth with a curt, "I have to get something to eat," and brushing past her. The set of his mouth, pulled thin, and the hunch in his shoulders shouts, Leave me alone.

She waits a minute, then another, and then John is walking down the ramp, looking pale and exhausted, moving with a brittle sort of care. The lights in the bay brighten in response to him. He stops when he sees her and she realizes he hadn't considered she'd be waiting.

His gaze drops back to the floor.

"John?" she asks cautiously. From the way Rodney acted and John's tense appearance, she's suddenly afraid something went drastically wrong, as though Doranda is cursed, because there are so many things that could have happened. She's spent too many hours imagining all of them. She wonders if he and Rodney didn't quarrel again, despite the apparent rapprochement between them before they left.

His lips move on a soundless word, maybe her name, but it's impossible to tell.

"The weapon?"

He shivers under the light gray and black jacket. "It's done," he tells her. His face goes blank, his eyes drop away from hers. "Rodney did it."

It should be a relief. Arcturus destroyed the universe in their timeline, but its threat is gone from this one. Elizabeth doesn't feel anything, beyond a horrible light-headedness as whatever she's using to hold herself together suddenly drains away. If this is what John is experiencing, small wonder he appears at a loss. She expected to feel something, but of course she doesn't.

But John's back, whole and safe, as is Rodney, and that propels Elizabeth forward to the bottom of the jumper's ramp. She wraps her arms around him, because she needs to feel that and he looks like he needs it.

John is stiff at first, and despite knowing about it,Elizabeth wonders at that; that he's so uncomfortable with a simple hug, a human touch. Then his arms close around her and he's breathing her name hoarsely. One hand presses between her shoulder blades, the other around her waist and both press her closer to him. His breath is rough and fast and her pulse ratchets up. The instant she starts to pull back, John's pulling her closer, finding her lips with his mouth before she can speak a protest. His tongue is there, slick and urgent, finding its way into her mouth.

He hisses when she bites his lip in retaliation.

The kiss is all bruising pressure, teeth catching tender flesh, hard hands and desperation. She twists and her nipples scrape over the rough pockets and zips of his tac vest. The sensation makes her tighten inside, tension spiraling in her belly. One hand is digging into his hair, fingers clenching on dark strands, and one clutching at his hip. Thinking her nails might draw blood right through the fabric of his BDUs. Not caring, because she just wants to take for once.

She's holding onto John, she's kissing him now, welcoming the mindless physicality in the place of consideration, wanting the heat. He groans when she grinds herself against him. Slides his hands down to cup her ass, lifting her onto her toes to press against him even tighter.

There's nothing good or sweet about what they're doing, she thinks, and rocks her hips against him, not caring, tasting blood and licking where it wells.

Then his hands are gone and he's three steps away, eyes almost black, blood trickling from his lip, and she barely regains her balance.

He holds his hands up, open, shaking his head.

"Jesus, Elizabeth, I'm sorry. I'm – that – "

She wants to scream at him. She holds onto her temper and whatever is left of her dignity. At least he can't tell how wet and ready she is, though she can see he's still aroused. She can't do anything about her nipples, except hug her arms over her breasts to hide them. "Sorry for what? A kiss?"

"No – Yes!" John echoes, his voice rising. "I just – this is too screwed. Not after – right now this would be – " He looks pleading. "I can't fuck things up more than I already have."

"Of course," she says.

She always knew he had more control than he let show. It broke just now, but he's building it back up with every harsh breath. His fingers twitch, but she knows he won't reach for her again.

She watches him leave the jumper bay, her mouth still hot from his kisses. Less than a month ago, if John had kissed her like that, she would have either kneed him or called for security because something was wrong with him. She would never have kissed him back, no matter how much she liked him as a man.

There were rules of conduct and they both lived by them.

John and Rodney have no reason to obey her now, except habit. To their thinking, they're the ones who are going to go out and do something. Her skills must seem nearly meaningless in the Pegasus Galaxy.

If John hadn't stopped, she wouldn't have. Part of her knows that fucking John would be a way to bind him to her again. It's an age old instinct, combined with fear and adrenaline, and it infuriates her that she succumbed to it for even an instant. Under the circumstances, if they slept together, neither of them would have retained much respect for each other.

A cold sweat breaks out along her back as she thinks of Rodney. He asked her out once. He'd be hurt if she slept with John. He'd be jealous of them both. She can't turn to Rodney for the same reasons. Everything could get worse.

A deep breath, followed by another, and she is in better control and grateful that John pulled back. If the memory of his warmth lingers like his scent, she'll live with it. Sex under the circumstances would be a mistake. She licks her lower lip. John felt good and kissed like his life depended on it.

It would have been a mistake.

She repeats that to herself, but her body is still buzzing, and she curses John, herself, Rodney and the situation equally.

The jumper bay goes dark, the lights switching off – Atlantis refusing to acknowledge Elizabeth's presence again.

~*~

The only key he needs in Atlantis is built into his genes. The door to his room slides open before he's even there. This is good, because John's hands are shaking. He's shaking. If he needed a key or a card, it would end up on the floor.

Rodney was falling apart in front of his eyes on Doranda and John panicked, panicked so badly the only way he could cover it was with anger. He lost it. He just lost it and assaulted his friend, who was already a mess, and then he'd almost repeated things with Elizabeth.

God, Rodney isn't the one losing his mind. John is.

Just the memory of the way Rodney's eyes had widened and darted around the installation, looking at things that weren't there, chills John. He still feels desperate, cracked open, because he reacted all wrong: anger instead of concern. Rodney wants John to punish him. Part of Rodney wants to die, he's figured that much out, wants that penance and escape, wants to finally give up. John's nerves twist just remembering that. Rodney never gives up, even when it's hopeless, and seeing him ready to quit broke something inside John. He'd been just an observer after that, lost, as his body moved against Rodney, going from threats to arousal so fast he couldn't understand it.
 
The lights come on as he steps inside, mimicking the late afternoon light far above them. He wills them to dimness, a low blue-tinged light that doesn't try and fail to look like sunlight. His room is striking in its bareness. There's nothing to show he sleeps in this room and not one of a dozen others along the same corridor. The Ancients left nothing personal behind and John had nothing when they arrived, nine thousand years from home.

The door slaps closed behind him and he's fumbling at his tac vest, tearing it and his jacket off. He's careful with his weapons, because it would require an effort to break the habit of taking care of them. The P90, the Beretta, the ammo he carried and what was stored in the jumper, along with Rodney's sidearm and the spare he gave Elizabeth, are all they have now.

The city hums around him, hums in the back of his head, an almost-voice that is Atenë, but he wants it out and gone for once. He wants to be alone in his head. Otherwise, he's going to keep doing insane things, things like he did in the weapons installation – his hand on Rodney's dick, for God's sake – in the damn jumper bay – Elizabeth just hugged him and his body switched on the way Atlantis does for him.

Rodney and Elizabeth… Jesus. How fucked up is he? Suddenly, there aren't any reasons, no restraints, no up or down, no rules beyond what he imposes on himself.  His universe, and everyone in it, except Rodney and Elizabeth, is gone. Nothing feels real any more. How the hell does he deal with that?

By reaching out and grabbing the first warm body he can find, apparently. John isn't sure why Elizabeth was going along with it, except she must be as screwed up as he and Rodney are, underneath the poise and the prim smiles. She didn't kiss primly, that was for damn sure and it's hard to reconcile the remembered feel of her body with the sexless commander he's always tried to keep her in his thoughts.

Elizabeth isn't really the problem, though, is she? He's not freaking out because he'd like to sleep with Elizabeth. She felt good pressed against him. He's still half-aroused, thinking of her. It's okay to be turned on by Elizabeth, she's a woman and one he cares about, likes, and even loves in a way. It isn't okay to be turned on, to want Rodney, even if he likes him, even if he loves him, because Rodney's a guy and John isn't into guys.

He isn't. But he likes Rodney. He loves… Oh, God. It isn't okay to be turned on by Rodney, and he's not okay, because he is. He is.

John sinks down on the bed and lets his hands dangle between his knees, staring blankly at the floor.

Rodney.

It keeps coming back to Rodney.

Don't lie to yourself, John. That's his father's voice, the best advice the man ever gave him. Don't lie to yourself. Know what you are doing and why and if you still do it, then at least when it turns around and bites you, you'll see it coming. Well, he hadn't seen this coming, probably because he's been closing his eyes and lying to himself for a long time. Telling himself not to look or think about anyone who isn't acceptable, shutting himself down before anything even started.

He looks down at his hand, the hand he'd had in Rodney's pants, on Rodney's cock, very much a guy's hand, with calluses and dark hair on the backs, and blunt nails. It occurs to him that he wishes he'd looked and seen what his hand looked like, wrapped around Rodney's erection. Just the thought gets to him.

This isn't who he thought he was.

Jerking Rodney off doesn't make him gay.

No, wanting to do it again, wanting Rodney to do it for him, to learn what he feels like and tastes like, that's gay, another part of him points out. Thinking about him and getting hard, that's a pretty strong indicator, too.

Maybe it's the ATA gene. If the city and Ancient tech can detect and respond to it, maybe he does, too. Rodney's got an artificial version of it, but that's still more than Elizabeth has. It's not him at all, any more than it was with Chaya. He's not gay. If he was gay he wouldn't have been so stupid crazy about her… except that theory meant that had been because of the gene, too, which proves nothing. He's back where he started. If it was just the gene, he'd have been attracted to Beckett, too.

"Jesus, Sheppard, get a grip," he says out loud and winces as he hears the words.

If he isn't going to lie to himself, then he needs to face this. He wants Rodney. Sex with Elizabeth would be good, but it wouldn't prove a damn thing. He'd still want – need – Rodney, too.

It's like being shot. He knows it but he doesn't feel it yet, then the shock hits, feeling, and it hurts. He wants, wants his hands on Rodney, Rodney's hands on him, just everything, everything, and he's fucked up and he's fucked everything up, shoving Rodney up against a wall because he was afraid, afraid for so long.

Oh, Jesus. He buries his face in his hands.

~*~

Rodney doesn't even make it to the bed to sit down. He steps into his room, palms the close mechanism, and slides down to the floor.

It was an anomaly.

Maybe it was a hallucination.

His head is pounding and his stomach is a twisted knot inside. He wasn't kidding Elizabeth. He needs something to eat, to even out his blood sugar. Even so, his body is humming.

He staggers to his feet and into the washroom, peeling his collar away from his neck. The mirror shows him the red marks left by Sheppard's teeth. Real, very real.

His stomach growls again. Rodney rubs his thumb over the mark, wincing, and decides it's something he is not going to think about. It isn't something that is going to happen again. It's a valid data point, but a statistical outlier that needs to be downweighted in any analysis.

Sheppard obviously hadn't wanted to talk about it. They'd barely looked at each other and only exchanged absolutely necessary words in the jumper. But he hadn't seemed angry.

Rodney grimaces. He is not going to obsess about a mutual hand job. As a way of snapping him out of a panic attack, he preferred it to Sheppard slapping him, certainly. But it didn't mean anything.

There are more important things to consider, really. They are currently living in an underwater city, consuming power from a limited number of ZPMs. The city shields will fail eventually. Not in their lifetimes, but before they did in their own timeline. Something has to be done about that.

Something has to be done about the supply situation, too.

He splashes water on his face and blinks it out of his eyes. The water looks like tears, but he's done with feeling sorry for himself. He's been dragging Elizabeth and Sheppard down, contributing nothing, and that has to change.

The other thing, with Sheppard, just didn't happen. That's the only way to deal with it, unless Sheppard says something.

~*~

Elizabeth hands Rodney a MRE bag that says it holds meatloaf.

"Thanks," he mutters, tearing into it. His eyes stay on his hands.

John is leaning his elbows on the table, forearms crossed, idly drumming his fingers against the surface. His eyes stray to Rodney and away. Elizabeth can't read any expression on his face, beyond weariness. He looks bruised.

She holds up two more MREs. "Any preferences?"

He glances at them and shrugs. "I'll take whatever you don't want."

Always the gentleman. Of course, she's relatively sure he doesn't care in this case. She slides one across the table to him, then opens hers.

"Enjoy it while you can," she declares. "We'll be out by the end of the week."

John is playing with the MRE, not opening it yet, and his head jerks up. He stares at her.

"It's that bad?"

"Did you think I was joking?"

"No. I just didn't – " He pulls in a deep breath. "I lost track."
 
He looks at the MRE bag and winces. "I hate these things."  Nonetheless, he opens it.

Rodney's head comes up from his single-minded attention to his meal. "What?  Really?  Because I've always liked them. I know, I know, they don't taste exactly like food, but they're reliable."

John's mouth twitches into an almost smile. "No nasty surprises, right?"

Rodney nods emphatically. "Right."

"So, speaking of surprises," John says, turning back to Elizabeth, "I guess Atlantis doesn't have any surprise stashes of supplies for us?"

She gives him a strained smile. "Not that I've been able to find."

"So it's back to trading?" Rodney mumbles around a mouthful of rehydrated mashed potatoes. "If we had anything to trade."

John slouches lower in his chair. "Not even any C4." His expression invites Elizabeth to laugh with him. She quirks a quick smile despite herself.

"I know you won't like this, John, but the Manareans are probably our best bet for trade. They regularly have surpluses and they were eager for medical data."

His eyebrow goes up, but he doesn't protest.

"We know the Wraith were culling from Teyla's people in the past. We know they left at least one sensor-tracer that was activated by your gene. We know at some point they introduced some of their DNA into a group of test subjects taken from Athos. Unless we have to, I don't think we should go to Athos."

Rodney nods. "Tell me you could stand back and not interfere."

"You might alter history so that Teyla was never born," Elizabeth explains.

John looks grim and doesn't argue her choice or what he would or wouldn't do.

She concentrates on her own meal, savoring the feel of filling her stomach, if not the taste. John picks at his until Rodney growls and makes a swipe at the packet of cookies that came with it. John's eyes widen and he snatches it just before Rodney's hand reaches it. "Hey! Mine." He pulls the rest of his meal out of Rodney's reach. The reactions are right, but they're a half second slow from normal. It's an act.

"Well, if you're not going to eat it, I don't see why it should go to waste," Rodney replies. He's just a little stilted, too. They're both trying too hard. He reaches for the cookies again, misses and brushes John's arm. He snatches his hand back in the next breath. "Sorry."

"No, it's okay, here," John blurts out. He pushes the cookies toward Rodney. "I don't want them anyway."

"No, really, I wouldn't want you to keel over from hunger in the middle of trade negotiations. We don't want the Manareans to know it's a sellers' market, do we?"

John toys with the cookie package, frowning. "No. No, we don't."

Elizabeth finishes her meal, watching the way they waver between the old, easy banter and sudden bouts of awkwardness. She can't read whether it's a result of Arcturus or something that happened between them on Doranda. John's not particularly awkward with her, even after the abortive kiss. Elizabeth takes the same tack, acting like nothing happened.

John brushes his fingers over his lip once, unconsciously, and Rodney's eyes flick to the cut Elizabeth left. He looks at Elizabeth, but she keeps her face a calm mask, revealing nothing. It felt good, nothing came of it, and that was it.

Finally, Rodney's forbearance snaps. "Cut yourself shaving, Sheppard?"

John's eyes narrow. He straightens in the chair. "Excuse me?"

Rodney points at his own lip.

A muscle in John's jaw twitches. He opens his mouth, then visibly bites back any words. He slouches back and offers a smirk. "Nope."

She can see the catty remark springing to Rodney's lips and forestalls him. "Don't."

John sends her an unreadable glance. Gratitude? Irritation? She can't tell. He opens the cookie package and eats one, concentrating on it and ignoring Rodney. It's just a tiny cut on his lip. She's surprised Rodney saw it. She looks away herself, when John darts his tongue out, licking away a crumb from the corner of his mouth.

Rodney stirs restlessly. Afraid he'll start in again, Elizabeth says what she's been considering. "We need to do more. What you did, going to Doranda and destroying the Arcturus facility? We can do more."

She waits for a reaction from both men, watches their faces blank for a moment. Rodney's brows furrow. John bites his lip.

"What do you mean?" John finally asks, slowly. She can see that he knows exactly what she's talking about, but he needs to hear it.
"We can dispose of the nanovirus in the labs, make sure no one releases that energy creature – "

Rodney interrupts her, eyes feverishly bright as he grasps the idea. "Repair the Lagrange point satellite so Peter doesn't…"

"Make sure our counterparts don't get Gall and Abrams killed," John says flatly. "Sumner, Smith, Markham, Hazelhurst, Simmons." He looks dazed at the thought. She knows he kept Sumner's dog tags up until they made it back to Earth. He looks away for a beat.

"We could," Rodney breathes.

"I believe we have an obligation," Elizabeth declares.

John and Rodney look at each other, holding a silent conversation. "What about the timeline?" John asks. "Could we mess things up?"

"We're already messing things up," Elizabeth says, redirecting their attention back to her. "Us being here is draining power from Atlantis' ZPMs. The rate of decay, even with my double's maintenance, resulted in shield failure when our expedition arrived and powered up even the most basic systems."

"However," Rodney chimes in, index finger raised, "if you're worried about Earth's timeline, nothing we do here should have any effect on history in the Milky Way."

"And won't until the Atlantis expedition gets here." John frowns. "Okay. We need to find ZPMs, along with food and generally cleaning up behind the Ancients."

"Sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Rodney looks glum.

John smirks. "Yeah."

"We'll at least know what we're doing," Elizabeth reminds them. "The benefits of hindsight may be genuinely useful in our circumstances."

"We'll head out for Manarea in the morning," John says. "We won't be able to take the jumper."

"That's probably wise. It would be better not to identify ourselves as Atlanteans."

"Why?" Rodney asks.

John rolls his eyes. "Because we aren't?"

"Right, right."

John checks his watch. "Manarea's rotation had the gate in daylight five hours ahead of Atlantis' time, right?"

Elizabeth glances at her notes to make sure she remembers correctly. "Yes."

"Then we'd better schedule ourselves a morning op. Oh six hundred and we'll arrive about mid-day. Rodney. Get some sleep."

"If I can," Rodney mutters.

John sighs. "Try."

"Oh, I'll certainly try, Sheppard. It's not like I enjoy sleep deprivation and its effects."

"John," Elizabeth says, "maybe you should get some sleep, too." Gently reminding him Rodney isn't the only one with problems and she knows it. "We'll be ready in the morning."

"Yeah, about that." He ruffles his hair in a nervous gesture and offers an embarrassed smile, the one that always prefaces something he knows she won't want to hear. "I don't think you should go."

"You and Rodney don't have the best history when it comes to trading."

"Okay, true, but Rodney's used to going off-planet and someone needs to stay here."

"Why?  There's very little I can accomplish since I don't have the gene."

"Neither did the first Elizabeth."

She shivers a little at the memory of her aged counterpart from a previous timeline. Ten thousand years dying, a long slow sacrifice, but she'd seemed to think it was worth it.

"That's something we need to do," Rodney says. "The city won't rise without that failsafe program the Ancient came up with for that Elizabeth. We have to do that this time. We meaning me, obviously, unless Sheppard's AI girlfriend can do it."

John shrugs. "I don't know. She probably can."

"She can't physically rotate the ZPMs, though," Rodney points out. "Elizabeth, the other Elizabeth, had to go into stasis to do that. One of us will have to do that, too."

John and Rodney both look at her.

She swallows hard.

"All of us would be the best choice, actually," Rodney continues, his voice softer. "The city would go back into hibernation, saving power."

"It's – it's something to consider," she says. She pushes her chair back. Rises and looks at them both, wishing she had a better argument against staying behind than I don't want to. She isn't going to demean herself by pleading, because she knows John has a point. He and Rodney are used to backing each other up on missions. If anything goes wrong, they can predict each other's reactions and work together. If she accompanied them, they would both spend too much effort looking out for her. She could be a deadly liability in a hostile situation. She's not a soldier, even less so than Rodney, and never aspired to the military virtues – if virtues they can be termed and not distortions of the real thing – so little as she likes it, she'll stay behind.

Her heart is still in her mouth when the two of them walk through the wormhole in the morning. John pauses, half turning back, lifting his hand in a small wave, a habit of his.

"Can we just do this?" Rodney gripes.

"Back before dark," John calls to her, smiling and slipping through the watery ripple of the event horizon in stride with Rodney.

He's wrong, though, because the dark is already all around them, pressing against the shield over the city.

~*~

"What the hell?"

Manarea is not what John expected.

Manarea is empty, grassy plains stretching as far as he can see. He stops barely two steps beyond the stargate. Rodney runs into him, a warm bump that makes John take another step forward, before he turns around. There's nothing on the other side of the stargate either, just more rolling grassland and distant, mauve-shaded mountains.

Rodney has a life-sign detector out and is slowly turning in a circle, his head bent to watch the read-out. His hair looks lighter in the bright sunlight. John's hand on his P90 tightens against the urge to reach out and ruffle it with his fingers.  Rodney hasn't said a word about what passed between them.  He's beginning to think Rodney is pretending it didn't happen because he hated it.

John's not sure what he'll feel if that's the case. Regret, because he won't be able to erase his own feelings or the things he's realized. Regret, because his friendship with Rodney will be damaged. A slow, deep sorrow if he hurt Rodney.  That most of all.

The sun that's shining off Rodney's hair and already pinking the skin at the back of his neck is pouring warmth and light onto John's shoulders. He stretches, soaking it up, because Atlantis under the sea offers no real day or night, no sunshine, and his body craves the light. For a moment, he lifts his face to the sun, the life-giving sun, the goddess in the sky, and savors the feel of it heating his cheeks, glowing red-gold through his closed eyelids.

Afterimages linger so that he blinks at Rodney in the next moment, unsure what he sees on Rodney's face. Rodney's lips are parted and he's frowning, but there was something else. It disappears before John can interpret it.

"Colonel?"

"Christ, Rodney, I think you can use my name at this point," John snaps, despite himself.

Rodney purses his lips, looking thoughtful, then nods.

Far above them, in the azure arch of the sky, a copper-feathered raptor calls, distant as a dream, a grace note in the quiet of wind-shushed grass.

"So, what do you think happened here?" John asks. "Where are the people?"

Rodney checks his life-sign detector again. "Not here, obviously." His lips purse. "Or not here yet. Remember, planetary populations are almost nomadic in Pegasus, Col – Sheppard. Not all of them, obviously, but maybe the Manareans haven't even come here yet."

They're in the past. It's easy to forget that, even after returning to Doranda and its winter-cold ruins, because Atlantis is unchanging.

"We're here. We should look around," John says. The emptiness gets to him. There's not much to choose from in any directions.

Rodney looks at him. "Why?"

"Are you ready to go back? Because we'll have to figure out some other place to try for supplies now."

John watches Rodney as he tucks the life-sign detector back in his tac vest. "Whatever you say."

"Just a short hike," he promises. He picks a direction and points, indicating a distant stone outcropping. They'll be able to see more from its vantage.

Rodney rolls his eyes, but falls into step with John. Their strides match without effort, grass swishing around their calves, a smell that is dust and green, sun and pollen, tickling at John's nose. A trickle of sweat runs down his back and he relaxes into the rhythm of walking. He notices that Rodney is right at his shoulder, the way they've always been, and that's a good sign.

There's more than one kind of grass growing on the plain, once John starts paying a little attention. Some of it has already gone yellow and dry, almost crackling under their boots. Tougher plants are still green, shades of dusty jade, and there are flowers poking bright, determined heads above the long blades of fading grass.

"Do we always have to walk up hill?" Rodney asks.

"Why, yes, we do," John replies, suddenly happy. At least Rodney is speaking to him. "But at least it will be down hill going back to the stargate." He slants a glance at Rodney, who looks sulky and very Rodney, which John has always enjoyed.

"With our luck, we'll be running for our lives. Tell me again, why no jumper?"

"The Manareans had buildings too close to the gate to clear the jumper," John explains.

Rodney snorts.

"Yes, I noticed the incredible urban density."

John folds his arms over the butt of his P90. "Hey.  They did have buildings. Or they do. Will." He grimaced. "Something."

Rodney waves his hand. "No, no, I realize, we're working from outdated information, or rather information that isn't yet valid. This sucks. We need information that's current."

John nods, agreeing. "The AI should have something that's a little closer to the situation as it is now."

Rodney stops.

"You're not going to get in that chair again, are you?"

"Why not?"

"Because – because – because it's dangerous!"

"Rodney," he says softly, "this is dangerous. Everything is now. Everything always was. You know that."

Rodney closes his eyes briefly, then nods. "Okay.  Let's just, let's just go, climb up your rock and then go back ho – back to Atlantis."

~*~

The rock is at least three times John's height and more a cluster of boulders, slowly eroding away earth, tossed down like giants' dice by some age-old flood. The stone is crumbly, orange-tan, bright specks of something like quartz caught in the matrix. Plants have colonized the cracks and crevices, slowly levering them wider with each season. The surface flakes away under John's hands and feet, gritty earth working its way under his fingernails, but it's easy climbing, and Rodney scrambles to the top just behind him.

From the top they can see farther across the plain, to where a river meanders, an aimless twist of richer green many miles away. The stargate is the only sign of civilization or any human presence anywhere within sight. A haze of brown to the south resolves into a vast herd of grazing animals when John uses his binoculars. There are several somethings with six legs and a predator's slink shadowing the herd.

"Well?" Rodney demands. "Are you satisfied?"

"Yeah, I am."

John seats himself on the edge of the rock. Pop, rustle, pounce, somewhere in the crevices a bird or insect or rodent moves, disturbed by their presence. He pulls out his water bottle and sips. Rodney's shadow falls over his legs. He rests the water bottle on his knee and trails his other hand over the leaves of a small, stubborn plant clinging to the rock beside his thigh. The leaves are heart-shaped and a little fleshy, the color of faded sage, covered with long, silky white hairs that give it a frosted appearance. The scent that rises from it is reminiscent of marjoram but softer.

Rodney seats himself next to John, tac vest shifting with a nylon sound and a muffled tink from a zip tab tapping against black painted metal teeth.

John rubs his thumb back and forth over one of the heart-shaped leaves, not hard enough to harm it, an absent movement as he stares out over the plain to the cold curve of the stargate. The leaf feels velvety.

"Don't do that," Rodney snaps suddenly.

John twitches, but doesn't shift. "Do what?"

"That! Touch that. It could be the Pegasus version of poison ivy or something worse," comes the answer and when John looks, Rodney is staring down at his thumb brushing over the heart-shaped leaf. John can see the pulse at Rodney's neck, fast, and he's flushed. John wants it to mean something, but knows it could be the heat.

"It's harmless."

Rodney lifts his eyes and glares at John. "You're doing that just to torture me."

"I wasn't," John replies. He brushes his thumb over the leaf again.

"You are!"

He shrugs and lifts his hand away.

They sit in silence after that, because neither of them feels like starting back yet. One of the rock pile's denizens finally ventures into the open again. Another hexaped, this one the size of a marmot and with a squirrel tail equipped with dark brown spines, it lifts its upper body and first two feet up to peer around. It sees them when Rodney shifts and his boot scrapes over the rock. It freezes.

"Shoo," Rodney says quietly.

The little animal dashes back into one of the shadowed crevices, uttering sharp little aggrieved barks all the way. John chuckles. Rodney lets out a little puff of air that isn't quite a laugh.

John offers him the water bottle and Rodney takes it silently. His throat works as he swallows and John's eyes are drawn to the movement of Rodney's Adam's apple and the shadow of beard just under his jaw. He wants to brush the pad of his thumb over the skin just there and feel the sandpaper crisp texture of Rodney's beard coming in. It's not a thought he let himself have ever before. It's not even really sexual. John likes to touch things, to ground himself in their reality, and he wants to reassure himself that Rodney is here, beside him.

Rodney's holding the bottle out when John drags his eyes back up, watching John watch him. It makes John swallow hard. He takes back the water bottle and finishes the lukewarm contents off, licking a stray drop from his lip after he swallows. Rodney's back is angled toward him, stiff-shouldered, when John finishes.

"The Great Plains must have been like this once," Rodney observes. "Before the Europeans arrived."

John stands up and scans the horizon, noting the soft dust haze where the herd of grazers are, the wave-like ripple of the grasses, and the stillness that seems to press down on them like the vast weight of the blue sky. "Yes," he says at last. It's just the two of them and he can feel just how huge a world is, not just another country or continent, but an entire planet circling a different sun in a different galaxy. The wonder of it fills his chest, even after what has happened, what they've seen and done. He says it again, smiling, because it is so amazing and beautiful:  "Yes."

He turns back and offers his hand to Rodney, pulling him to his feet, too.

"Time to go back, right?" Rodney says. He doesn't pull his hand away from John's.

"I guess so."

"No one to trade with, no supplies."

"Unless I shoot one of those grazers," John says with nod toward the distant herd.

"You'd probably start a stampede and get us both trampled."

John laughs, agreeing. Besides, he really doesn't want to gut and skin something or carry a still bloody carcass back to the stargate. He never was into hunting for sport. Though Elizabeth's reaction when he dumped it on the gate room floor would be funny, in a 'my God, you Neanderthal goon' way.

"You have a twisted sense of humor," Rodney says as they scramble down off the rock pile.

"Must be why you like me," John replies.

"Who says I like you?"

John bumps his shoulder into Rodney's. "I do."

"You're certifiable."

They walk toward the stargate at an easy pace, stripped down to T-shirts under their tac vests. John's more attuned now and he hears the contented hum of insects in the grass, undisturbed by his and Rodney's passage. The call of the raptor he saw earlier draws his attention back to the sky, always the sky, a high sharp skreeling cry that accompanies the stoop and strike that ends in an explosion of fur and fluttering feathers. The bird labors back into the sky, its kill clutched in bloodied talons. It makes John's breath catch, the speed and perfect precision of it.

"It must have been falling over three hundred kilometers per hour," Rodney comments.

"Nearly vertical," John says. He relives in his mind's eye the way the raptor folded its wings, shaping its body into a streamlined bullet as it dived from sky to earth. "It must have pulled over twenty Gs when it struck. Fast as a peregrine."

John picks his way off the course they've set to where the kill was made and plucks up one copper-sheened feather, imagining that the sensation of free flight still sings through it into his fingertips. God, to fly like that.

He walks back to where Rodney is waiting, taking his time, twirling the feather between his fingers, admiring the bars of darker bronze on it, because truthfully he's in no hurry to return to Atlantis, beautiful and fascinating as she may be. Atlantis is crystal and steel and the memory of everyone they've lost. Every breath in Atlantis tastes of salt. He isn't eager to take Rodney back, either. Rodney isn't flinching at unseen things here, isn't cowed and bent under the crushing weight of guilt.

It's probably getting to Elizabeth, too. She's stuck in the city, confined by their mutual agreement that someone has to stay behind, to raise and lower the gate shield, to eventually use one of the stasis pods – stasis pods that the city must have, though they haven't found them yet – and rotate the city ZPMs the same way the first Elizabeth from the timeline that drowned did. John hates waiting and he can't imagine doing what Elizabeth is doing.  It would drive him mad.

The feather goes into a pocket and he detours to the side and plucks up a wild flower on impulse, a daisy-like fan of white petals around a yellow and purple center. Two and then three more join it in his hand, then a spike of cone-shaped red flowers, a half dozen drooping golden bells, and something that looks like larkspur.

In one of his moments of surprising awareness, Rodney says, "She'll like those."

John ducks his head, looking down at the posy in his hand, feeling his cheeks and the tips of his ears flush. "It's not – here, you can give them to her," he blurts, shoving the flowers to Rodney. Rodney backs away, holding up his hands.

"What? Are you trying to give me an asthma attack? I could be allergic, you know."

John shrugs, immediately backing off. "Whatever you say, Rodney."

"So, are you a-courtin' Elizabeth?" Rodney asks, with just a trace of snide disbelief in his tone.

John looks at the flowers again, already bruised and wilting, and sighs. "No." It was just a thought, to bring back something from this mission, to make Elizabeth smile. He's usually awkward as hell if he tries to be romantic. It's embarrassing; he feels like a fake.

"So you wouldn't give me a flower?"

They've reached the DHD. John leans against it, while Rodney dials. Rodney's hands move over the chevron emblems, as assured with the Ancient technology as John's are on the stick of a helo or an F-302. They're broad hands, big and amazingly deft. Always in motion, like Rodney's mind, finger snapping, pointing, waving, mesmerizing John, making him smile.

"You'd sneeze and complain if I did," John tells Rodney as the lights sweep around the periphery of the ring and the wormhole initializes, whoosh, then settles into its placid blue ripple. The blue light throws an odd double shadow of Rodney's absurdly thick eyelashes over his cheekbones. It reflects in Rodney's eyes.

"Yes, well, that isn't the point, is it?" Rodney replies.

John's radio crackles.

"Colonel Sheppard?"

"Lower the shield, Elizabeth. We're ready to come back," he transmits.

"Were you able to obtain any supplies?"

"That would be a big no," Rodney says.

John arches his brows.

"Tell me about it when you get back here."

"On our way," John says.

He stops Rodney with a hand to his shoulder.

"What?"

John plucks the copper feather from his pocket and tucks the shaft into the top pocket of Rodney's tac vest, like a flower in a button hole. "There."


Rodney isn't sure what to make of Sheppard's gesture. It's a feather, but he saw how Sheppard watched the hawk or whatever it was, like it was glory. He isn't sure of too many things, but he still feels better than he has a right to as they step through the wormhole and back into Atlantis. They didn't find the Manareans, they didn't manage to trade for any supplies, but no one shot at them. A useless waste of time, he might have thought once, but it felt like being able to breathe again. And Sheppard smirked and smiled and there was life in his eyes.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, looks strained. Her eyes dart from Sheppard to Rodney and back, looking for damage. The tight set of her mouth and shoulders only loosens as she takes in that they're both all right.

He can feel his own muscles tightening up. If he lifts his gaze to the control room, he's knows he'll see Edwards and Zhang consulting over the dialing console, shades oblivious to the fact that they're gone, never were or not yet. Rodney doesn't let himself look up.

"Was there a problem?" Elizabeth asks.

"No problem, except there was no one there," Sheppard explains. "It looks like the Manareans haven't arrived on that planet yet." He shrugs and smiles at her, pulling the wildflowers from behind his back. "Nothing but grass, really. Flowers. Here."

Elizabeth looks startled as she takes them. She bends her face over the flowers, holding them in both hands. The colors reflect against her skin. "Oh." The pleasure that blooms over her features makes Rodney give Sheppard a look, wondering how it feels to make someone that happy with such an easy, stupid gesture. Sheppard's head is tipped to the side and his eyes are distant, his attention obviously somewhere else.

If Rodney concentrates, he can almost feel it, too, the hum that is Atlantis. He thinks it's happy Sheppard's back.

Elizabeth is still smiling, still holding the flowers, but she is all business, too.

"So there's no opportunity for trade there at all?"

"None," Rodney says.

"We could go back and do some hunting." Sheppard's expression gives away his reluctance.

They start up the stairs together.

"We need to go over our options again, gentlemen," Elizabeth tells them. "Let's walk and talk."

Sheppard pauses with his foot on the first step. He stretches. "You want to let Rodney and me clean up first? We did a little hiking before calling it quits back there."

"A little hiking, he calls it," Rodney mutters."My blisters have blisters."

"Baby," Sheppard laughs. The sound is startling, but welcome.

Rodney opens his mouth to protest and Elizabeth forestalls him, saying, "Go on, both of you, you smell." She's smiling again, amused by them, it seems.

"Hey!" he and Sheppard both protest, but it's true, they are sweaty and grimy, stuck in the same uniforms they've had to wash and keep wearing since arriving.

"Meet me in the fourth level common room," Elizabeth tells them, "when you're both presentable."

"Good thing she didn't say decent," Sheppard remarks as he and Rodney step into the transporter. He taps the destination and they're not for less than a second, then the doors open again on the corridor their rooms are on. The lights are already on for them. "You really have blisters?" He sounds concerned.

"No, but my feet are tired," Rodney admits. "Like the rest of me."

"We're out of shape. We've been lolling around Atlantis too long."

"Lolling?" Rodney can't help repeating. Sulking, hiding, having nervous breakdowns, yes. He didn't notice any lolling. That's just outrageous and utterly typical of Sheppard.

"Lolling," Sheppard drawls, as though he's enjoying the word.

"Insane," Rodney says as he reaches his door and it opens.

"Lolling," Sheppard repeats once more, ambling toward his own door. Rodney stands there and watches him until he disappears with a nonchalant wave.

"Insane," he mutters to himself.

Rodney contemplates the feather as he strips and heads for the shower. Was it just Sheppard being playful or did it mean more? He sets the feather on the table next to his bed. It seems to glow there, perfect in a way that Atlantis can never be, imbued with the memory of Sheppard's fingers spinning it and giving it to him, with that speculative look in his bright eyes.

The shower is a sybaritic experience. Hot water, just exactly right, just the right pressure, and it comes from three sides of the stall, angling in response to his will, squirting out something the Ancients used for soap when he thinks about it, that foams and smells not really like anything he could name, but good and clean. He leans back against one slick wall with his face raised, eyes closed, into the warm spray. The water hits his shoulders harder, like a massage, and gentler in front, feeling good enough his dick wakes up.

He looks down, blinking water off his lashes, and considers it: sliding his hand down his chest, over the hair matted down and running with water, playing with his nipples maybe, then reaching down and taking his dick in his hand. It's not really an urgent need, just a pleasant awareness of the weight between his legs and the familiar possibility. Jerking off in the shower is something he's done since he realized during puberty that he could, back when taking the edge off was a necessity if he didn't want to embarrass himself with a hard-on during class.

It's tempting, because he hasn't, not once since Arcturus. The only time he's got off was with Sheppard's hand on him and he's really been trying to not think about that. But if he closes his eyes and just does it, he's going to fall into one of the old fantasies, maybe the one with Sam Carter in the shower with him, wet and shining, with her blond hair dark and sleeked over her head, that was a good one, a gold standard really. But Sam's gone and it isn't the same, he can't, it would be like necrophilia, and the only people he can imagine now are Sheppard and Elizabeth.

God, it's not like it's hard to fantasize about either of them. They're both beautiful. The water slicks down his arms and legs and he pictures Elizabeth and Sheppard, both graceful and naked, in the shower with him. He snaps his eyes open, but it's no good, he's picturing Sheppard now, lithe and lanky and aroused, touching Elizabeth, licking water droplets from her nipples. His dick twitches, swelling, and Rodney catches his breath and flattens one hand against the wall behind him. He gives in to the fantasy and slides his palm down his length, stroking himself, imagining sinking into Elizabeth's heat with Sheppard pressed up behind him, touching him too. His breath saws in and out and he reaches down and cradles his testicles, rolling them gently, while in his mind Sheppard's mouth is hot against the back of his neck and Elizabeth's small breasts are flattened against his chest. He gasps and comes in a rush.

He should probably feel guilty, but his body is too relaxed and happy.

He finishes washing up and retrieves his clothes from the automatic cleaner, dressing again and heading for the common room next to a small kitchen they've taken over rather than use the conference room. If Rodney had to guess, he'd say the place was the Ancients' version of a café, but he really has no idea. It has couches, tables and chairs and the windows close over with color-patterned sliding shutters that let them ignore the deep, shielded darkness outside the tower.

Elizabeth's already there when he arrives and Rodney's face burns. He can't quite meet her eyes, flashes of his fantasy are ambushing him as he sneaks looks at her. Elizabeth is lovely and part of him wonders if she looks like he imagined. The rest of him is just grateful she can't read his mind.

"Rodney, are you all right? You're red."

"Just, uhm, just showered." He stumbles over 'shower' and waves a hand, "Hot. Hot shower. You know." God. He covers his face briefly. "I'm tired."

Sheppard saunters in, providing a blessed distraction, hair spiky and still damp. He smiles at Rodney and then Elizabeth with lazy good humor. Rodney's breath hitches and he wonders exactly what Sheppard would have done if he had walked in and joined him in the shower in reality instead of a fantasy. He almost thinks Sheppard would smile at him – there's a feather on his bedside table – but he's not brave enough to risk it. He's not taking a chance with their friendship, not presuming that what happened once was more than a one-off, a desperate move by Sheppard to snap him out of a panic attack. Something that would never have happened under any other circumstances.

"Elizabeth," Sheppard greets her. "Rodney."

"Gentlemen, we need to put together a plan."

"I need something to eat and soon," Rodney announces.

"No kidding." Sheppard drops onto one of the off-white couches and sprawls, stretching his legs out before him, hooked at the ankles. Elizabeth's sitting at a table with her PDA in front of her and a stylus she found somewhere in her hand. A tall drinking glass filled with water holds the wildflowers, positioned on the table where she can look at them. Rodney decides a couch looks much more inviting than the table and claims one opposite Sheppard. Sheppard grins at him, but it's not the incandescent one, because even a shower and cleaning his clothes hasn't erased the tired shadows. He didn't stop to shave, either. "We need better intel. Everything we know is out of date," he says.

"We need to figure out where we are in regards to the Wraith culling cycles, too," Rodney adds, because it occurred to him that a dart could have gated through and scooped them up snap back on Manarea. It makes him sweat, thinking of being out in the open like that, in retrospect.

"Exactly." Elizabeth is making notes.

Sheppard leans back and offers, "Maybe we should stick to planets where we can take the jumper through the gate."

"Good idea, but we don't know what planets those are, other than the ones with orbital gates."

Elizabeth taps her stylus against the table, looking at Sheppard thoughtfully. His eyebrows go up. "Something?"

"Could you disengage some of the gene associated security protocols on the database?"

Sheppard frowns and slowly shakes his head. "Some of it, maybe, but a lot of it is hardwired, just so it can't be hacked or changed by someone under duress, you know?" He shrugs, apparently over the Ancients' paranoia. "I could get everything we need from Atenë, if I used the chair again."

"What?" Rodney jolts fully upright and points right at Sheppard. "Oh, no. No, you are not database diving with little Miss Artificial Intelligence again," he snaps. He turns a glare on Elizabeth. "You did not see him. He was having seizures."

"Atenë had to adapt some of the protocols. I've got the gene, but my physiology is still human. The Ancients weren't exactly the same."

"Seizures, Col – Sheppard."

Sheppard rolls his eyes. "John. It's John, okay? Rodney. And it wouldn't be like that again."

"No, no, and no again."

"Rodney, I'm sure John knows what he's doing and we need the information the AI can provide, as well as convincing it to let me use some of the city equipment. Try to remember how frustrating life was before you had the gene therapy." Elizabeth is being soothing again. "John, I thought you said the AI was shut down."

Rodney folds his arms over his chest and slumps back. "Bad idea. I'm telling you, it's a bad idea."

"You'll be right there, Rodney, won't you?" Sheppard says, sounding oh so reasonable. "You got me out of it before. I know you can do it again."

"Not good enough."

"John, about the AI – "

"Atenë," he corrects her impatiently. "I said it wouldn't happen again and it won't, Elizabeth. She knows your biosignature now. I don't think she can be shut down, actually. It's more like she goes to sleep if there's no one to interact with for too long. Other than that, you'd have to destroy her memory matrices and that would cripple the city."

"Interesting," Elizabeth comments, "but not something we want to do, is it?"

"Hardly," Rodney agrees. "I still say Sheppard using the chair is dangerous."

Sheppard catches his eye. "I trust you."

He blurts, "Why? Why, after – "

"Because I choose to, okay?" Sheppard answers. He shrugs again and settles deeper into the couch.

He's afraid to look at Elizabeth, of what her expression might say, because it might ruin this moment. "I – That's – " Rodney scrubs at his face with his hand. "Thank you." Then he frowns at Sheppard. "Are you trying to sweet talk me? Because I still say it's a bad idea."

"I think it might be the best solution," Elizabeth says.

"I'm okay with it."

"Oh, of course, you're okay with it. You were like someone who just had their first hit of heroin! Now you want to do it again."

"Rodney, you're making a big deal out of nothing." Sheppard's looking mulish and irritated.

"Right, tell me that when your brain is turned into pudding.  Oh, wait, that's right," Rodney snaps his fingers, "you won't be able to, will you? I want to remind you, we don't have a doctor here now, not that the voodoo bone rattlers could do anything for you if something did go wrong."

"Honestly, Rodney, you'd think you cared."

"Hah!"

"Gentlemen, focus," Elizabeth says, a thread of laughter in her voice. How often has she said that to the two of them? No wonder she's amused. It's the Sheppard and Rodney show, back on the road, and it feels good and right, even if underneath it Rodney really is worried about what will happen if Sheppard sits in that chair again.

She starts detailing exactly what supplies are left from the jumper, a distressingly small amount, and prompts Sheppard for ideas about what the city can provide. Rodney slumps deeper into the couch, ignoring the grumbling from his stomach, and interjects a suggestion now and then. Exhaustion drags at him, the legacy of too many nights of interrupted or nonexistent sleep.

"Where do you suggest we try?" Elizabeth asks.

"Athos," Sheppard says.

"Do you have a reason beyond – "

"Actually, yes. I'm pretty sure Teyla's people were living on Athos before the Ancients evacuated Atlantis," Sheppard explains. "When we arrived, remember, Col. Sumner had hoped we'd find a ZPM in the ruins of their old city. Teyla showed me around – "

"Alerted the Wraith," Rodney mumbles.

"That, too." Sheppard nods. "The point is, the Wraith drove the Athosians out of the city during the last years of the war. It may have been one of the last planets lost to them before the siege. If we go there, we can count on finding someone. And, unless Teyla's ancestors were very different, they'll be good people and traders."

Elizabeth's nodding, too. "Plus, you're both familiar with Athosian customs, though they may have changed somewhat, along with the language. Not to mention, we have at least some experience with their foodstuffs. If there's nothing in the database to contraindicate a mission, I think we – you and Rodney – should try Athos next."

"Tomorrow?" Sheppard asks.

"Tomorrow you should use the chair again," Elizabeth says.

"No one's listening to me, are you?" Rodney grumbles.

"Did you hear something?' Sheppard asks.

"Very funny. Very funny, not."

"No, I guess it was my imagination."

"You're like, four and a half, aren't you?"

Sheppard just snickers. Elizabeth shakes her head at them both and bends her attention to the PDA. Rodney closes his eyes. Just for a minutes. "Athos, then, barring new developments," Elizabeth says and he mutters a sleepy acknowledgment.


 When she looks up from her notes, the silence from both men strikes her.  She leans back and surveys them, amused: they are both asleep.

Atlantis is quiet around them, almost as if it's trying to be especially considerate toward John and Rodney after their long, taxing day.

She smiles.

Rodney is slumped to the side, eyes closed, his neck at an obviously uncomfortable angle, his mouth slightly open. Seeing him asleep and still, not restlessly plagued by his nightmares, is good. Better than good. He's used to be so loud, so obnoxiously sure of himself, so full of energy, that it's strange how much seeing him this way makes her want to protect him. Maybe it's just maternal instinct, maybe it's what's left of their friendship, but it is there, in her, and feeling it is a relief. She'd begun to believe all she would ever feel again was worry and anger and soul-eating sorrow.

One glance at John shows her that he is fast asleep as well – only he is leaning against the side of the couch, shoulders hunched and legs stretched in front of him, his face smooth and relaxed. The gray-brown earth of Manarea is still caked in the tread of his boots. A soft crumble of it dusted on the floor makes her shake her head.

She chides herself for not noticing just how tired they were and pressing on with the meeting. But it doesn't stop her from drinking in the sight of them, now that she finally has them back.

The long hours alone on Atlantis had gnawed at her, and their return was, despite the disappointment on Manarea, a vast relief. Every time a team came back through the gate, before, she'd been relieved, but it was wrenching this time .

She consciously stops dwelling on those thoughts for now. They're both here, warm and alive and breathing, and she can relax again.

Rodney mumbles in his sleep and slings his arms around himself in a protective, warming gesture. John shivers.

They haven't eaten yet and Rodney's hypoglycemia will be wreaking havoc with his body, but they both look too peaceful and content for her to have the heart to wake them.

She slips from the common room and collects a blanket from each man's room. Rodney's pack yields a packet of glucose tablets. She takes one, leaves the wrapper where he'll see it. It would be simpler to nudge them awake, and tell Rodney to eat something, but she doesn't want that. Life in Atlantis has seldom afforded any of them even a moment to be unguarded. Letting them rest is a small thing, a thing she can afford to give them, a counter-balance to the times she has had to ask them for more than anyone could sanely give.

She notices the feather on Rodney's table and looks at it curiously. Rodney collects technological trinkets, but a feather? She's careful not to disturb it, though.  It's the only thing in the room that marks it. Pretty, too, she thinks, though she likes her flowers better.

Back in the common room, she sets the blankets aside and takes the glucose tablet over to Rodney. He snuffles when she touches his shoulder. "Rodney," she whispers, "you need to take this."

Bleary eyes open and regard her without recognition. "Huh?"

She pushes the tablet into his mouth, eliciting a grimace of disgust. "Open up. Don't worry, it's sweet."

"Oh," he mumbles, accept the tablet, and falls back asleep. "Sweet."

She spreads one of the blankets over Rodney. It's light gray and softer than it looks; Rodney immediately burrows deeper into the warmth it provides, his nose almost vanishing under it.

She combs her fingers through Rodney's soft brown hair on impulse. Seeing him acting almost normal again reminds her how much she cares about him and always has. He's been, in his acerbic fashion, utterly loyal to her since they met in Antarctica; she's tried to offer him the same support, within the strictures of her own wider responsibilities. John's unlikely friendship with Rodney allowed her to let the friendship between them fade into a more professional relationship, because she knew John would give Rodney the support she had previously. She put it aside, the way she put aside Simon, the life she left behind on Earth, even the flicker of physical attraction that sparked between them the first time they met. Elizabeth the expedition leader didn't have time for more than cordial but distant working relationships, though she knew she slipped into bias too often anyway. John and Rodney in conjunction were a force of nature.

Objectivity and personal bias don't count for much now. She goes on petting Rodney's fine hair, watching him sleep. It isn't the first time she's noticed them, but for once she allows her gaze to linger on his thick lashes and the soft shadows they cast on his cheekbones. The connection allows calm to seep into her slowly, making her drowsy, too. She bends down and rests her cheek on the crown of Rodney's hair, feeling and hearing him close to her, before ghosting a small kiss to his forehead. She is glad that he's here and safe.

"And he thinks I get all the attention."

Elizabeth jerks back when she hears John's voice. His eyes are tired, but sparkling. His posture on the couch hasn't changed.

"I thought you were asleep," she says, unsure of how to explain why she did what she just did.

He looks sheepish for a moment. "Sorry about that."

She smiles and shakes her head. "It was a long day."

"Does a guy always get kissed and tucked in after a long day here?" he asks.

She allows her smile to grow bigger. "When he's been good."

He nods, lazily, smiling. "It's like Santa, then. You know who's been naughty," John teases, "and who's been nice." A beat, then he adds winsomely, "I've been nice."

Elizabeth snorts softly. "Oh, I'm sure."

She walks over, crouches and begins unlacing his boots. John's eyes widen, then he smirks. "If anyone ever saw this…"

That earns him a swat to the knee. "Do you want to sleep in your boots?"

"No, but I should go back to my room. Why didn't you take off Rodney's boots?"

"Rodney's boots aren't filthy."

The first boot comes off. Elizabeth braces one hand against his knee, bony and warm through the fabric of his BDUs, and levers the second off, too. She retrieves the second blanket and stops any further protests by pushing him back until he's lying n the couch, and then draping the blanket around him as well.

"Go back to sleep."

He gives her a tired, stubborn glare that transforms into a smothered yawn, then gives in. "Just for a little while." His eyelids lower, lashes shadowing hazel to a darker green.

Her hand glides over his head and through his hair. It's silky and cool. John tenses for a breath, then relaxes into her touch, his eyes closing again and the fine lines under them easing. Sleep softens his face, betraying the distance he keeps around himself while awake, smoothing away the constant watchfulness.

His breathing evens out not long after that and only then does she touch her lips to his temple. "I'm glad you're safe," she murmurs.

In his sleep, John smiles, and Elizabeth feels more content than she has in weeks.


Rodney watches nervously as Sheppard seats himself in the control chair, grimacing as the crystals light up and the chair drops back.  He wants to drag Sheppard right back out of it. Sheppard gives him a twisted half-grin. "Don't worry so much, Rodney."

"Shut up," he snaps.

Elizabeth lays her fingers against his back over his shoulder. "John knows what he's doing."

"Better listen to her," Sheppard tells him. "She's the boss."

"Like hell," Rodney mutters.

It's too late, however. Sheppard closes his eyes and leans his head back against the chair, while his hands curl over the edge of the armrests. The light behind his head brightens and the metallic overlay writhes into tendrils that reach for Sheppard's temples and then his eyes. Elizabeth gasps when the first slender thread inserts itself through the outside corner of Sheppard's eye. Heavier tendrils are wrapping around his wrists and forearms. Rodney gags as one of them needles into the back of Sheppard's hand. Sheppard barely twitches.

"Two hours," Elizabeth says.

Rodney turns on her. "We talked about this, you made yourself clear: it's distasteful and necessary, even if it is dangerous. You're right." He lifts one hand to his brow and squeezes. "But I don't know how to make sure it's only two hours and not two days. Do you get that? I'm not – I don't know. I realize you aren't used to hearing me say that, but in this case? I don't know if he'll take two hours and I don't know how to get him out if he takes longer!"

"It's all right, Rodney. I don't expect you to – "

"You do. I'm supposed to have the answer, the right answer, every time." A muscle in his jaw twitches. "Look what happened when I was wrong."

Rodney switches his attention back to Sheppard, charting the delicate movements of his eyes under closed lids, the unconscious flex of his fingers against the armrests, the pulse at his throat. The silence in the chair room encases them, so thick it's hard to draw oxygen into his lungs. Sheppard's face is so empty; not soft, not relaxed; it's slack and there's no one there. It's so wrong Rodney feels sick just looking at him.

The conversation they had earlier replays in his head: Elizabeth's calm, reasoned insistence that until she can work with the city, she's helpless and even endangered – witness the transporter incident. Her acknowledgment that the chair might be dangerous, a sop to Rodney, he thinks, and the decision that John would only use it for two hours.

Elizabeth paces around the room, her arms folded, drumming her fingers against her elbows. She shoots glances at Sheppard and Rodney, a frown pinching her features. Her nervousness feeds Rodney's anxiety. The only change in Sheppard is his breathing, slowing and picking up randomly.

Elizabeth checks her watch.

"It's been an hour."

"Right, somehow that escaped me."

"This is worse than I imagined," Elizabeth admits.

"Yes, well, you might consider listening to me when I do counsel caution." She only saw Sheppard after he came out of the chair, Rodney concedes. He didn't tell her what it looked like. She couldn't know and Sheppard made it sound like a damned lark.

A rough, dry sound from Sheppard stops Rodney before he can begin a rant he'd probably regret eventually. Sheppard's eyes are open, pupils shrunk to pin points, not focusing on anything.

"Sheppard?"

A familiar hologram appears over their heads: the Pegasus Galaxy, inhabited systems lit brightly; planets taken by the Wraith marked in a sullen crimson. There is a lot of it surrounding Atlantis' system. It's a single cool blue dot amidst a field of danger red. Rodney is reminded of a map of a minefield. In a sense, it is: one wrong step could have explosive consequences down the timeline. It's all enemy territory. Looking at the hologram hurts in a peculiar way and he realizes it is because Atlantis and Pegasus became home someplace along the way. Earth was the home of his childhood, left behind and remembered fondly, comforting just because it was still there, but he'd outgrown it.

Before he destroyed everything, he reminds himself bitterly.

Sheppard's voice is a whisper. "Rodney?" His eyes still aren't tracking anything in the room.

"Here, I'm here," Rodney says quickly. He steps up to the chair and rests his hand on Sheppard's biceps, well clear of any of the chair's appendages.

"We're both here, John," Elizabeth murmurs. "You've been here an hour."

"Watch," Sheppard tells them, his voice still rusty. The hologram flickers and changes. Several of the red-shaded systems acquire a halo of secondary color, yellows, oranges, and greens. Gate addresses light next to them. "Possibles for ZPMs, shut down R&D weapons labs, potential trade partners."

"This is very good, John." Elizabeth's voice startles Rodney. She's looking up at the hologram thoughtfully. "Can you relay this data to a computer I can access?"

Sheppard's eyes close. "Yeah," he murmurs, distracted and already distant again.

"Try to find out what stocks the city has that we can use as trade goods," Elizabeth adds.

Sheppard doesn't answer, lost in communion with the AI again, and Elizabeth looks worried. Minutes tick away. Rodney sees her check her watch. A slow red trickle runs from Sheppard's nose. Rodney tightens his hand on Sheppard's arm.

"That's it," Rodney declares. "Get out of there right now."

Sheppard doesn't respond.

"Now."

He takes a chance and places his other hand on the alloy meshed into Sheppard's hand. He wills a message into it, trying to reach the AI with his less than optimal gene interface. Give him back. You're hurting him. The alloy's blood-warm under his fingers. It feels fluid rather than metallic, like his fingers will sink into it if he doesn't snatch them back. It shivers against his skin. For an instant, he feels something that isn't him, something that makes him twitch and blink and want to shake like a wet dog, something that is reluctance and interest, possessive and hungry and all cool blue equations. There's something else that might be Sheppard, but it's gone before Rodney can analyze it. He wants to snatch his hand back from the dimpled alloy. His fingers are stinging.

"Come on, Sheppard."

"John?" Elizabeth sounds really worried now.

Under his fingers the alloy clings momentarily, then pours like water away from Sheppard.

Sheppard twitches, and when the tendrils have withdrawn from him completely, doubles over coughing and spitting blood. Rodney steadies him without thinking about it, feeling Sheppard's muscles tighten and release randomly. Blood wells from a multitude of tiny pinpricks in Rodney's fingertips, the alloy absorbing a smear of it where his hand had touched the chair arm, a streak of it marring John's shirt. He swallows hard, fascinated and sick at the same time, realizing the AI was sampling him, sending impulses into his nervous system through that simple touch.

And Rodney panics now, really panics, because when Sheppard's eyes open, they don't react to the light at all, don't shrink or widen. The whites of Sheppard's eyes are tinged pink and there is blood trickling down his cheek and along his nose. Sheppard sways and leans on Rodney heavily, raising a shaky hand to wipe away the blood from his mouth. His eyes stay unmoving and Rodney feels his breath speeding up, spiking toward hyperventilation when he checks the places where the chair had been in Sheppard for cuts. Sheppard's skin is cold and clammy. His hand falls away from his mouth, limp, as if it doesn't belong to him. His eyes don't follow it. Sheppard's eyes see nothing, they appear blind. The thought alone makes Rodney nauseous. He breaks into cold sweat himself and feels his heart speed up.

"Sheppard?" He forces himself to sound normal, but the moment Sheppard's name is out he has already failed miserably.

Elizabeth is moving her finger before Sheppard's eyes.  "John, can you see this? Can you see anything?"

Sheppard doesn't answer, just draws gulping breaths in between coughing fits which sound far from normal. He shakes underneath Rodney's frantic hands.

"Damn it, Sheppard, I told you this was a bad idea from the beginning. Now look at you. Is this what you were imagining? Huh?" He shakes Sheppard, careful, but enough for Sheppard to feel. "Is this really worth spending all that time in cyberspace flirting with little Miss AI? You don't know what this is doing to you, you could sustain brain damage, you could go blind, you could damn well die, you – "

"Rodney, stop." Elizabeth's voice cuts through the maelstrom of his thoughts like a cool silver knife. He looks at her, finding a focus in her set features. "This isn't helping." She pries Rodney's hands away from Sheppard and moves in next to him, slinging Sheppard's arm over her shoulder to take his weight onto her. "We need to get him to the infirmary.."

He clings to her calm like a lifeline, once more glad for her ability to keep things in focus and to set priorities. Still, it takes a while for his brain to stop the panicked rant. "Right. Infirmary."

He sounds distracted and confused enough for Elizabeth to throw him a sharp glance.

Sheppard closes his eyes and slumps forward, leaning heavily on Elizabeth. Rodney can't tell if it's he's relaxed or too unsteady to support his own weight. It doesn't seem to make a difference at the moment, and Rodney mirrors Elizabeth's stance and helps her support Sheppard. They start walking slowly, their movements cumbersome with the additional weight.

"You did ... " gasp, "bring John to..."

Rodney grunts, almost stumbling to the side as John lists further onto him. He wishes one of them had thought to have a gurney on hand. Atlantis has to have them or an Ancient equivalent.

"... the infirmary after…"

He shakes his head.

"...the first time?" she asks, between harsh breaths, while they trudge through the hall to the nearest transporter.

Rodney presses his lips together and feels shame prickling in the back of his neck. Back at the time, he hadn't even thought about the infirmary. His mind had been on Sheppard alone, on the news of the AI and the fact that Sheppard was strong enough to walk on his own. He had talked, right? Why should Rodney have brought him to the infirmary?

"Rodney?" Her voice is mild, but Rodney knows the steel hidden behind them. His hesitation tells her enough, anyway. She knows that he didn't.

"He seemed fine," he says and wishes it would sound less defensive and helpless.

"Damn it, Rodney."

He can see Elizabeth clench her teeth. A small part of Rodney that isn't busy creating worst-case scenarios admires her silently for not snapping at him. He knows he will get his part of her anger later, but for now, she is focused on Sheppard's well-being.


She keeps going over what she knows and what she sees and not liking the results. John's eyes aren't responding to anything and blood is trickling from them like tears. The physical aspect of using the chair is far more disturbing than she'd grasped from John's description. She should have listened to Rodney instead of discounting his worry. She makes bad decisions when she has bad information; in this case, telling John to use the chair again.

John misleading her is even more disturbing. Why would he discount what was apparently dangerous so cavalierly? Communion with the AI had to be more than just information exchange, she realizes now. If she can't trust his judgment…

What's done is done. No use being angry with John right now or with Rodney for being so incredibly careless before. She simply must take into account the unreliability of their judgment in respect to the AI from now on. Elizabeth shifts her grip on John's arm, so much heavier than it should be, and feels his skin cold and damp under her fingers. He's still unconscious, a dead weight, and smells of sour sweat and blood. Her stomach lurches. Worrying about John's reliability may be a moot point, she acknowledges.

She's glad when they finally reach the infirmary and can place John on one of the diagnostic beds.

Elizabeth quickly moves to where she knows medical supplies are stored from previous scouts around the city. Those long nights pay off, and she is once again glad that she reads Ancient fluently, or they'd be in trouble now.

She palms one of the controls and waits for the stasis-storage cabinet holding gauze and antiseptic to open. On the diagnostic bed, John moans softly and Rodney is there immediately, hovering over him and talking a mile a minute, some of it so fast that Elizabeth can't even make out the meaning, much less full sentences. When she redirects her attention to the cabinet, it's still closed. Frowning, she palms the control again, touches more firmly this time. Again, nothing. Rodney is still talking, but there is urgency there now, more than ever before and when she turns to look at both men, she can see that John's eyes are open and he's started convulsing. More blood runs from his nose and mouth. The bottom of Elizabeth's stomach drops out. John needs help and he needs help now and the damn cabinet won't open and she can't get to the supplies they need and this is just unacceptable.

Her heart hammers against her chest and she slams her palm against the control, but it stays dark, doesn't show any sign of activating or opening. Her wrist stings all the way up to her elbow.

Rodney turns at the sound, throwing her a disgusted look. "Elizabeth, what the hell are you doing? We don't have time for playing around here, get me something to damn well help him with!"

"I can't!"

Her unexpected outburst snaps Rodney out of his haze. "Let me do this," he says, suddenly sounding much calmer than before. "You stay with John."

She knows she doesn't stand a chance in hell of restraining John on her own, but moves next to the bed without protest. Mercifully, when Rodney lets go, John stops thrashing and lies still, panting. Elizabeth uses the sleeve of her jacket to wipe some of the blood away from his face. The skin underneath is pasty and white. She checks his pupils again and sees that they finally do shrink, but slowly – too slow. He has all the symptoms of a concussion, but that doesn't fit and she's left with nothing to do.

A hissing sound in the back of the room makes her turn her head. Rodney has one of the stasis storage units open and is tearing through its contents – throwing everything out that doesn't suit his needs, muttering under his breath. The metal cylinders clatter onto the floor.

Under her hand, John's chest rises unevenly, as though he's fighting for breath.

"Have you found a way to initialize the infirmary?" she asks him.

Rodney grimaces and walks to the main console, lays his hand on the terminal and closes his eyes. For a moment, nothing happens, then he sways on his feet and his face goes slack for a few frightening seconds in which Elizabeth thinks she is losing him as well.
 
Then the infirmary brightens suddenly, the brilliance of the lights blinding her momentarily, making her shield her eyes. When she opens them again, the diagnostic bed has come to life, the scanner moving over John and holograms of his body appearing and disappearing in the space next to the bed, too fast to follow. An irritating, demanding tone emits from one console, oscillating up, accompanied by a flashing orange flight from the holo display above it. After a cycle that has Elizabeth clapping her hands over her ears, it shuts off. John doesn't hear it and Rodney is still intent on the console, eyes flickering as he speed reads a waterfall of Ancient text before him. The scanner morphs into something broader, the light changing, bathing John in cool blue. The wall at the head of the diagnostic bed opens and the bed slides into the wall, taking John with it, a corpse into a morgue drawer.

"Wait – Do you know what that is?" Elizabeth says. None of the equipment ever did that for Beckett, not for the most severely wounded. She didn't know it could do that. Her hand catches the end of the bed, but her fingers slide off the slick surface. This version of Atlantis persists in surprising her in ways the one that rose never did.

"Auto-healer-unit, " Rodney, back at her side, explains. He stands close to her, shivering as he watches the display above the  wall where John disappeared. A screen lights with a diagram of a body, presumably John's, and blue light washes over it from head to toe. "The infirmary is programmed to only use it if there are no trained medical personnel present."

"How long will this take?" Elizabeth asks.

Rodney shrugs, his shoulder brushing hers. "I can't say. An hour, maybe two or more, depending on how much damage he really took. The Ancients didn't believe in operating manuals."

She ignores the sarcasm. "I'll stay. You should get some rest for tomorrow."

Rodney just snorts. "You don't really think I can sleep now, do you?" He pushes himself onto another bed and his eyes flicker between the status read-out and Elizabeth. His hands twitch and shake with nothing to do. She notices the pads of his fingers are pricked and bloody. In a minute she'll pick up the supplies Rodney tossed on the floor, find what she needs and clean up his hands for him. "You still want us to go tomorrow?"

"We're starving here, Rodney."

"But John – "

"If this works anything like the sarcophagus the Goa'uld have, John should be all right again tomorrow." She's not quite sure she believes it herself, but she knows that this is what Rodney needs to hear now.
 
"He might become addicted to it as well, then? Lovely." His voice oozes sarcasm. "You put a lot of faith in the Ancients."
 
She stops him with a look. "They were far more advanced than the Goa'uld are. I doubt their medical knowledge was inferior." He starts a derisive remark, but she continues, not allowing him to get it out. "It's not the same as the sarcophagus, after all. The Goa'uld scavenged Ancient technology, they didn't have the prototype. They made mistakes."

"Right. And that's why they only used this if there were no doctors or any other choice," he says, full of scorn. "That's why Miss AI left John having convulsions."

"Did you have a better idea?" she asks, not willing to put up with his blame.

And at that Rodney leaves it. His shoulders slump a bit but he doesn't argue anymore. His breathing slows down as well and the shaking slowly subsides.

The infirmary around them is a mess of haphazardly thrown about storage containers and wrapped packages. Elizabeth ignores this disarray for the moment and climbs onto the bed, sitting down next to Rodney. She takes his hand, the one that isn't bleeding, lacing his fingers with hers, "John will be all right, Rodney. It takes more than one exposure to a sarcophagus to addict anyone. You'll both go to Athos tomorrow and barter for some incredibly tasty food. How's that sound?"

Rodney squeezes her hand and leans against her. "I'm not twelve anymore, you know?"

And in a Rodney McKay kind of way, Elizabeth knows he just said thank you.


The auto-healing unit disgorges Sheppard three long hours later.

"Hey," he says, giving Rodney and Elizabeth that gorgeous smile, the one the women in the expedition had called the real heartbreaker, because it had no contrivance in it. Rodney knew better; most of Sheppard's smiles were contrived, manufactured versions of the real thing. This one might be the original those were modeled on, however. He lifts his hand in a silly little wave. "You're here."

"Where could you possibly think we would be if not here?" Rodney asks.

Sheppard blinks at him, the smile getting even wider.

"Disneyland?"

Rodney rounds on Elizabeth. "My God, he's stoned."

Elizabeth looks a little wide-eyed herself, and also amused, which is a nice look on her, and maybe it's relief that Sheppard sees them and knows them, but they need a little comic relief, too. Rodney wants to laugh, because Sheppard stoned is goofy and sweet, just the opposite of a mean drunk, but he'd bet Elizabeth has never seen that side of their ranking military officer before.

Sheppard snickers. "No, no, I just feel really good, Rodney. Really. Rodney. I bet no one ever called you Rod, did they?" He turns the beaming smile on Elizabeth. "And you, you hate being called Liz, right?" He scrambles off the diagnostic table and almost goes down, unsteady as a newborn foal, all gawky legs and wide eyes. "Whoa!" He catches himself against the edge with his hands and giggles.

"Oh, right, just really good," Rodney says. He braces Sheppard before he can step away from the table and end up face down on the floor. "Stupid me."

Sheppard throws an arm around Rodney's neck. "Not stupid." He's so close Rodney's afraid Sheppard's going to hug him in front of Elizabeth. "I really like you, you know?" Sheppard tells him very seriously. "Really, really, reaallly."

"So stoned," Rodney says.

"Maybe just a little."

Elizabeth is shaking her head, barely biting back a grin. "I guess this is why the Ancients didn't use this technology except in real emergencies."

"Too bad, because it felt very, very cool," Sheppard says. The thousand watt smile is back suddenly. "I really like you, too, you know? Our fearless leader, Eliiizabeth." He snickers again.

Rodney guides him toward the door. "Come on, Sheppard, let's get you back to your room and you can sleep it off."

"Not Sheppard," Sheppard corrects him.

"What?  Changing your name at this late date seems rather strange."

Elizabeth presses her hand over her mouth.

"No, not Sheppard," Sheppard insists, leaning so close Rodney feels his breath on his cheek. "John. I really think you should call me John. Not Johnny, though. I hate being called Johnny. Don't call me Johnny."

"I tell you what, John, we'll discuss it when you're not stoned. Okay? "

"Okay," Sheppard agrees readily, giving him another loopy, endearing smile. He sags forward the next minute, stumbling over his own feet. His head comes up, a winning expression on his face. "We can discuss it now. I'm just a little stoned, see? Little." He indicates with thumb and index finger. "Very little."

Elizabeth's shoulders have begun to shake and Rodney glares at her. "Elizabeth, a little help here?"

She ends up holding Sheppard up from the other side, and gets a sloppy enthusiastic kiss pressed to her forehead for her troubles. Rodney can see her roll her eyes in amusement and twist her face away.

As soon as he hits the bed, Sheppard's out like a light, in an uncomfortable sprawl. It takes them a minute, but they get Sheppard situated. Rodney can't quite leave just yet. Sometimes, it's just too much, the way life throws him from terror to ridiculous relief so fast. He needs a chance to catch his breath.

Without really thinking about it, he smoothes dark hair away from Sheppard's forehead. When he looks up, Elizabeth's eyebrows are raised.

"I hope he doesn't have a hangover from this, or he'll be a bastard tomorrow," he says. He straightens up and stretches. "Whatever the AI provided better be worth it."

That gets him an odd look and he realizes that once he wouldn't have cared about the danger or cost of pulling information from Atlantis' AI. He'd have been too fascinated, too obsessed to worry about human collateral damage.

And he is intrigued by the thought of the AI. That sense of something he got from touching the interface alloy fascinated him. He can't help wanting to know more. He wants to ask Sheppard about the AI.  He wants to interact with her himself. Just not enough to give up Sheppard to it.

He nods to Elizabeth and heads for his own room, leaving the doors open behind him. If she wasn't there, he would stay with Sheppard, just to watch him sleep. He's not sure Elizabeth isn't doing just that.

Instead, he finds himself sitting up all night with his ghosts, staring into the dark and rubbing his thumb over his raw fingertips.


Sheppard acts like it's not a big deal, sauntering into the common room looking sleepy and unconcerned the next morning, while Rodney feels like shit. He really hates that aspect of Sheppard's personality. 

Sheppard helps himself to an MRE, one with tea as an extra, and fixes it quietly. He sits down opposite Rodney and sips it without speaking, his eyelids at half-mast. It's an act. He's not that casual. He shaved. Rodney notices, because he remembers how Sheppard's stubble felt against the crook of his neck, his breath so hot. His own breath stutters in his chest, thinking about it.

He's going to say something in a minute. He is. Because… well, because he's never been very good at being stoic or repressing. He's never seen much point. Somewhere in the long hours of the night, he figured out something. Rodney can't imagine Sheppard breaking and needing as much as he seemed to on Doranda with anyone else. That's amazing and frightening and it means something.

Somewhere along the way, Sheppard and he became closer than colleagues, better than friends, went beyond brothers-in-arms. Elizabeth doesn't let anyone that Rodney's seen too close. She keeps everyone at one remove, ever the unbiased negotiator and leader. Sheppard's never pretended to be unbiased. Sheppard's more like Rodney than anyone guessed. They both need someone they can trust, someone who will trust them back. Elizabeth's never going to fully trust Rodney again, but Sheppard still does.

He hasn't managed to speak before Elizabeth arrives. She has dark circles under her eyes, but seems hopeful their mission to Athos will be successful.

She smiles at Rodney and says with a nod of her head toward Sheppard, who seems half-asleep over his tea, "I told you he would be fine."

"Really, I must have missed that. You know, in between the blood and the convulsions and my latest nervous breakdown."

"Which number's that, Rodney?" Sheppard asks, smirking.

"Nine hundred nineteenth."

Sheppard waggles his brows. "So, everything is fine."

"In Sheppardsville, maybe."

"Well, that's where I live."

"I always knew you were delusional."

Elizabeth quells them both with a word. "Gentlemen."

Sheppard even sits up straight for about forty-five seconds.  Rodney smirks.


Elizabeth has been starving to do something, anything. This time, she barely notices John's and Rodney's departure, because she has something to work with, has more missions to plan for, logistics to think about, planets suitable for trade. Consequences to consider, what changes they can make to forestall their own mistakes without starting a dangerous domino effect through time.

If Athos is a failure, then she must provide them with another alternative from planets that are inhabited now, not nine thousand years from now.

John could do it, could use the control chair again, but she vetoed that option immediately. It wasn't worth the risk. Not yet.

She not sure they need the AI, not if she can access the database now. Using the control chair might result in permanent harm, no matter how blasé John is. She does worry, though the auto-healer worked. It isn't enough to say it's John's choice, John is accountable to her, while she has a duty to rein him in sometimes. Rodney's worries about the addictive possibilities of the auto-healer need to be weighed as well. Repeated use might be misuse. The Ancients didn't bother designing safety margins into their equipment.

She can understand the lure of meeting the AI, though. They need the information. If they're going to undo what mistakes they made in the past, and are likely to make again in the future, they need the contents of the vast database.
 
It worries her a little that she is left alone with the city again, but the AI is still active and alive and running everything smoothly, so anything that she encounters here will only be in her mind.

The city is creepy, yes, even more creepy now that there are only three people inhabiting it, but it's still just a city. The soft bubble of water through the green-lit conduits can sound like someone chuckling. The ventilation system starts and stops as abruptly as the window-mounted air conditioner she had her first year in college and those sudden shifts in the air hint at something moving that isn't there. Most of the city remains in hibernation, conserving power. Her passage through its corridors doesn't wake it and the shadows are thick in every niche and corner.  There are dangers lurking in the labs, of course, and strange noises from outside the shield. All that, yes, but no strange ghost in the machine.

"Spooky," she laughs, and is reminded of carnival funhouses.

She uses the main terminal Peter Grodin used to access data from. Now that there are no computers to interface Ancient technology with human and translate its outputs, she is the only one among the three of them who both reads and speaks Ancient fluently. She is the only logical choice for this job. She loved this part of her job from the beginning, playing with languages, uncovering what no one else could, and it gives her back a feeling of being needed and being useful. When she came to Atlantis that was, she'd anticipated many days of such work, only to be inundated by the responsibilities of a leader.

John's outburst a few weeks back, even though he has apologized for it, still smarts.

Now she has a vocation, and she launches herself at it with feverish determination. She needs to catalogue everything they did wrong in the past, everything that had devastating consequences for their future. She knows what she wants to do first, but before she acts, she wants to know what the database says about the black energy being that's held in containment. Plus, she needs to find where the carts used to move larger pieces of equipment are stored.

Elizabeth taps a few keys on the control-panel and waits for the screen to light up in the familiar blue-green holographic sheen.

Nothing happens.

She tries another combination.

Nothing.

Another combination, and another. Variables, alternatives.

Nothing.

She had access. She checked before John and Rodney left. She grits her teeth. It's the AI. Playing games, shutting her out now that John isn't here to run interference.

"What, do you hate me?" she says out loud. "A little cooperation wouldn't be out of line here."

She slaps the console with the heel of her hand and lets her head sink forward, feels the muscles in her neck stretching. Fine, she can do this anyway, it will just be a little harder. Radek Zelenka managed without the gene, she managed, a recalcitrant AI isn't going to stymie her now.

The memory of Radek makes her smile. Compared to Rodney, he was a breeze to deal with, but Radek's flyaway Einstein hair and soft voice were misleading. He was brilliant and driven, too.

But no longer. Radek is dead. Gone. Wiped out of existence. Not to be born again for nine thousand years. Or maybe never again at all. Maybe some would die earlier. Maybe some will never be born.

Radek.

More faces appear out of the mist of suppressed memories: Teyla, Carson, Major Lorne, Edwards, Simpson. So much potential, so many good friends she can never talk to again, never enjoy their presence again over a mug of tea or over a meal. Dead and gone. All of them. Everything.

Elizabeth doubles over and folds next to the console, gasping for breath. Tears burn in her eyes, blurring the console into a flare of colored Christmas lights. She blinks the tears back, drawing in deep breaths to steady herself.

She's never going to get past the grief of losing everyone, of being culpable in their loss. But she won't let it paralyze her.

She can still make a difference.

She's on her feet and headed for the stairs with that decision. She's not going to moon around the control room waiting for John and Rodney to return.

Her foot on the first step, she says, "I know you're there. A little help, please?"

If it answered, she'd fall over in shock, but there's something satisfying about addressing the AI. She used to talk to her car, too.


Two more steps up and she stops, doubling back to retrieve one of the dustcovers they pulled off the control room consoles. It's heavy, silky-slick stuff and will work navigating the stairs better than anything wheeled would.

It's going to be the stairs, because she'll never trust the transporters again.

The halls don't light up for her, but there are basic lights burning anyway, and periodical water conduits throwing their own green glow, bubbles chuckling their way upward as she passes.

She doesn't need a map or a search to find the lab she wants. It was the first to teach them Atlantis held a thousand secret dangers. They were still camped in cramped quarters while Marines tried to clear new areas for them, Athosian refugees dossing in the corridors, no one really sure of what was going to happen, still innocent, but already scared. Such a long time ago… Or yet to be, she reminds herself with a wry nod to the present she finds herself in now.

One thing that was the same: the dead plants. She dodges around one planter with its dusty, skeletal occupant. What was up with the Ancients? They could clear out everything, anything that hinted at the personal, but they couldn't remember to either take their plants with them or dispose of them? Atlantis probably smelled like a compost heap for several months after they left, with the watering systems and lights out, when all the plants died.

Her shoes scuff over the floor. Atlantis doesn't echo much, for its size. Sound-dampening properties in the materials. Once Atlantis held more people than Manhattan, but she doubts it was ever as cacophonous.

Right turn, left turn, down two doors, and there's the lab Jinto and Wex found. Poor Halling, trying to ride herd on that child in the midst of an alien, high-tech city he'd been taught was the next thing to holy. The Athosians, as a whole, had been torn between awe and resentment that outsiders could command what they'd thought would be their patrimony only to learn that the only thing the Ancestors left them was their enemy. It must have been a bitter pill for the adults to swallow.

The kids, though, had loved running up and down the city's stairs. Kids always adapted faster.

She's never wanted children.

Elizabeth stops and snickers at herself. She's never wanted children, so she chose to captain a boatload of scientists with the social skills of ten-year-olds and whose emotional development had ended at two with 'I want', sixty stubborn Marines barely old enough to shave, a Scottish geneticist still wearing Mommy's apron-strings, the Rodney-monster and a pig-stubborn Air Force Major. Every single one of them able to get into more trouble than Curious George.

Sometimes she forgot how much fun they'd had, despite everything, and then it would hit her again. That was all gone, wiped away, all that beautiful bravery was lost, except for Rodney and John.

They were all that was left to justify all that had gone before.

She wouldn't cry. She hitched the dustcover higher under her arm and continued. She had a job to do.

There it was. The containment vessel the Ancients had left their poor, experimental subject imprisoned inside. What kind of people had the Ancients been, to do that? To leave something even semi-sentient locked in solitary for an unknowable amount of time? Something that couldn't even die to escape? It made her queasy to contemplate. Even criminals deserved better than that, if not for their sakes, then for the sake of those responsible for them.

That thing inside, the black energy being, it couldn't have been sane after so long. A jolt of pity hits her. It hadn't been that hostile – just too alien, too hungry and lost itself.

The device it's trapped in hums, cycling somehow, drawing power from the creature it contains in a method so ingenious and parasitic Rodney had muttered for days after recovering from his first bout of heroism. Elizabeth finds it horrifying to think about, like manacles made of bone. The main cylinder glows a deep, warm yellow and she can see how it attracted Jinto.

She studies it a little longer. There are two carrying handles, one at each end, but it would take someone the size of Teal'c back at the SGC, or Ronon, to lift it alone. That isn't her plan. She just wants to be sure she doesn't brush the containment release.

The dustcover is folded into a length longer than the containment vessel and set down on the floor. Elizabeth shoves her sleeves up. She's never been big, never been fit and strong the way Teyla is – Teyla was – but she's not a weakling, either. She learned early to use leverage to compensate for bulk or the lack of it. That translated well into her studies in political science, later.

It's heavier than it looks. Elizabeth isn't surprised. She sets her hands on one of the handles and begins pushing until the vessel is balanced at a precarious tipping point over the edge of the lab table. The muscles in her biceps and her forearms protest a little. Biting her lip lightly, she edges around the table, one hand resting on the handle to counterbalance the vessel. This is the tricky part, the slow tip down onto the dustcover sitting on the floor. Rodney would be horrified, but really, it isn't that much different than wrestling Simon's prehistoric big-screen TV out of the bedroom.

She hopes she doesn't smash her toe this time.

Slow breath in and she exhales. She's in position. She locks her hands around the handle, but stops applying any weight, letting it rock down at the other end. Just a touch of counterweight now, letting it skid forward a little, keeping it slow. The other end of the vessel sinks down, down, she rocks back, uncomfortably twisted because she's doing this from the side instead of directly in line with it.

There, she thinks. Her arms and shoulders are burning now. She can't hold it up. There's a screech of metal and a muffled clang; the vessel drops several inches to the floor to stand on its end. Elizabeth holds on and keeps it from tumbling over, only letting go after she's sure it's stable.

"Hah!" she tells it, knowing she sounds like Rodney at his smuggest.

That's the riskiest part done. She rocks it around until she can lower back into proper position, leaving it neatly placed on the dustcover, which will let her tug and slide it along the floor without catching.

Her shoulders are going to be stiff tomorrow, she acknowledges, but there's a wonderful satisfaction in beating something physical, without philosophical or psychological ramifications. It's big and heavy and she still made it move where she wanted it. Brains beat brawn. Even pulling and pushing and literally dragging the thing down corridor after corridor, carefully thumping it down step by step at the stairs, is worth it.

All the way to the gate room…

By the time Elizabeth collapses on the gate room steps, hours have passed. She's hungry for the first time in days. Her hands feel a little hot and swollen, but her mind is occupied with reminding Rodney to rig something that will release the energy creature once it's gated to another world and can't endanger Atlantis.

Nothing deserves to be trapped and so absolutely alone.


Athos is different. Of course, it's different. John walked through the stargate for only the second time in his life, trailing behind Colonel Sumner, walked across the stars to Athos, into the night. A lifetime ago.

The stargate is situated in an open field. It had been a barren when John first saw it. Beyond it there had been trees. He remembers walking through them, listening to Jinto and his friend, trying to figure out how he could even understand them, realizing they weren't speaking English and he wasn't hearing it. Realizing the stargate had done something to his brain, loaded it with a basic language that had to be from the same root as the language Jinto and Halling were speaking. Sometimes the words were different, pronounced differently and he hadn't gotten everything at first, but he picked it up unnaturally fast.

Later he found out that everyone who went through the Pegasus stargates got the Ancients' trade language. As long as they were dealing with people near the stargate or who used it, they were usually able to understand each other. Only the civilizations that didn't use the stargate had languages that had drifted so far they needed interpreters.

It's morning. Mist curls up from the dark, wet ground. Gray streamers that twist round his ankles and Rodney's. Pearly light that saps away shadows and distorts his sense of distance. Nothing looks the same.

John stumbles to a stop and then slowly turns in a circle.

"Jesus."

"John?"

Yes. There's the sun, he's facing in the right direction. It's just gone. They walked through trees that night to reach the village. An entire old-growth forest he remembers is missing. It's a moment of dissonance as sharp as any he's experienced.

He blinks at Rodney's worried expression.

"You weren't here," he says.

"And?" Rodney prompts.

John waves to the east. "There were trees, old ones, a forest, and it's not here." He licks his lips. "Not even sprouted yet, not even acorns. That's – that's freaking me out."

Rodney looks around measuringly. "Hunh."

"That's all you've got to say?"

"It's inevitable that we'll keep on encountering differences, John. Cosmologically, ten thousand years is nothing, but in human terms, in cultural terms – unless  you're a Wraith, I assume – that's a long time."

John finally nods.

"The old city was that way." He nods to the east. "Not so old, I guess."

"So, let's go, we're not getting any younger here."

John raises his eyebrow. "You've been hanging around me too long, McKay."

"Very possibly."


They top a rise and find the Athosian village exactly where it had been in their own time. Across the lake, the wreckage of the city looks newer than John remembers, but is clearly already abandoned.

Smoke twines up from fires and stoves inside the tents. It's still overcast and getting colder. John's more than happy to arrive; he's cold and his fingers are starting to get numb. Rodney's got his hands stuffed in his armpits, but John can't bring himself to take his hands away from his P90. Neither of them is dressed for the cold weather.

He's happy to see something else: a line of motorized ground transports, looking much worse for wear than the images he gleaned from Atenë. The Athosians are still using tech salvaged from their ruined cities, but it's breaking down and they won't have the infrastructure to create repair parts, even if they've retained the knowledge necessary. Atlantis has plenty of stores and facilities for manufacturing more. With Rodney along, there is very little the two of them can't fix or figure out what it will take to do the job.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Rodney demands.

"Oh, I don't know," John says, "maybe for someone to notice us? Instead of just barging in?"

A rustle behind him is enough to make John spin, bringing up his weapon. It's as automatic as breathing to set the sight on the center mass of the woman standing a few feet away. She doesn't look a damn bit like Teyla, she's got seven or eight inches on her, walnut brown skin, straight black hair. Teyla knocked his socks off the first time he saw her. This woman isn't anywhere near as beautiful as Teyla, her face is long and almost horsey, but the slow smile that lifts her lips, the measurement in her brown eyes, is an echo of his friend, a glimpse of a ghost in the genes.

"Consider yourself noticed," she says.


Her name is Nelda Kerriden and she's the headman's sister. Older sister, John would bet, from the way she bosses Ingel around, and the long rifle slung over her shoulder with a wide, braided leather strap might be a muzzle-loader, but he guesses she'd qualify as a sniper with any kind of modern weapon. She's a hunter and she shadowed him and Rodney all the way from the stargate without John noticing.

Must be something about Athosian women, he muses. They can all kick his ass.

Rodney is irritatingly amused by all this.

It's a relief to settle in Ingel's tent and explain they're looking for a trade partner, food and other goods for parts and the skill to fix the transports the Athosians have been reduced to pulling with teams of some beast that looks like a cross between a camel and a rhino, and which apparently combines the charming traits of both beasts. The Athosians are going to want a little proof that they can do what they're saying, but for the first couple of hours, they just talk. John enjoys the warmth from the black iron stove in the center of the tent.

Half an hour later, he and Rodney are bent over a dirty engine along with Miril and Danic, two of the village's mechanics, Rodney explaining theory and John comparing the reality to the schematics he got from Atenë, trying to find exactly what's wrong. The whole thing needs an overhaul, but all they want to do for the moment is get it running. If they can do that, they'll have a deal.

It takes the rest of the day, but the four of them finally succeed. The transport's engine coughs, stutters and catches, turning over with a heavy growl that reminds John nostalgically of jet engines.

Ingel is thrilled and insists on feeding them before putting them up for the night. He insists on the very best trade goods the village has to offer: supplies they desperately need, changes of clothes that will be a hell of a relief. They're all a little perplexed when it comes to choosing clothes for Elizabeth, since she isn't there. Nelda rescues them there, finding another woman, Danic's daughter, who is Elizabeth's size, and picking things out. Several mysterious items are added to the packs and baskets by the women, who eye John and Rodney sidelong and giggle.

John tries to keep them from giving too much, since they haven't done all that much. Ingel claps him on the shoulder and tells him a wise man never crosses the women. Thinking of Teyla, John agrees.

Ingel reminds John of Jinto. Jinto all grown up and tall as Halling, but there's something kid-like and enthusiastic about the Athosians' current leader. He isn't half as cautious of them as Teyla was. Of course, they know what they're doing now, but John's still pretty sure that's not what has Ingel grinning at him and Rodney. Something about the way Rodney berated him while they were repairing that engine seemed to amuse all of the Athosians within hearing distance. John might have goaded Rodney a little, too. He'd missed Rodney's snide comments and constant complaints.

Definitely, he's the crazy one. He figured a few things out the day they went to Manarea, though. If this is what and who he is, what does it matter?  He's who he always has been.  Sleeping with Rodney won't change him. And he's okay with that.

Ingel shows them to a tent set aside for just them after dinner, grins and leaves them.

"Okay, did that just creep you out or is it just me?" Rodney asks.

John's eyebrows rise. "Just you, Rodney," he says.  He pulls back the door to the tent, surprised by how heavy the material is.

Rodney ducks inside ahead of him and comes to a stop, looking around the torch-lit interior of the tent. He shakes his head.

"God, a bed."

"What were you expecting?" John says, looking around. "Nice."

Rodney gets that sniffy, impatient look, the one where he doesn't actually roll his eyes, but John knows he thought about it. "I don't know. This is nicer."

John has to admit it: Rodney's right.

There are graceful little three-legged tables, antique-style folding chairs, the legs fantastically carved, their seats draped with skins with the head and paws still attached, and torches set on poles throwing warm flickering light. The ground is covered in rugs, dyed and woven in natural colors, greens and browns, along with heavy furs from hippo-sized beasts John never wants to encounter in the wild. There's a platter piled with fruit, goblets and a bottle of the same wine they had at dinner, a deep amethyst-colored vintage that tasted of blackberries, sarsaparilla and mint and none of those things at all, set next to a pitcher of water. Another plate is piled with the little fried cake things Rodney gobbled down at dinner. And there's a bed, a huge bed made up of feather mattresses piled one on another, draped in quilts.

"Hunh."

Some of the goods they traded for are piled in one corner, he notices, in covered baskets. Clothes, mostly, since their uniforms are falling apart at the seams, what with only having what they were wearing when they came back to Atlantis. Peasant bondage gear, Rodney dismissed the Athosians' clothes as, but it beats going naked. John is sort of looking forward to seeing Elizabeth in the red lace-up vest that reminds him of some of the stuff Teyla used to wear, that and the long, body-hugging coat. It will be almost as good as her expression when she sees it and the other outfits Ingel's sister helped them pick.

"What are you smiling at?" Rodney asked, deeply suspicious.

"Nothing," John says, overly casual and airy, knowing it will make Rodney paranoid.

He starts stripping off his gear, setting it on one of the chairs: P90 first, then his vest and jacket. Rodney is watching him, looking a little lost. John watches him from the corner of his eye while he unlaces his boots just enough to kick them off. That feels so good he forgets Rodney briefly in the pleasure of wriggling his bare feet against the soft rug, flexing his toes and pressing down. Going barefoot is something John misses from his childhood.

Rodney is looking at John's feet, which gives him a funny feeling, not quite embarrassment, just this sudden awareness of his body. It might be the buzz from the wine, too, but John feels warm and loose.

He unbuckles the thigh straps on his Beretta's holster, then the belt buckle.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, will you get on with it, Sally Rand?" Rodney snaps suddenly.

John pauses.

"Who?"

"The fan dancer, you know, you can't tell me you didn't read The Right Stuff," Rodney says. "I mean, really, Colonel, most strippers don't put on as much of a show as you."

John wasn't – really – putting on a show. Maybe just taking his time, though not as much time as Rodney, who hasn't taken off anything. Maybe he's planning on sleeping in his gear. John, however, is going to take advantage of the bath cloths, washbasin and ewer of water he has spotted in one corner. But if Rodney thinks he was putting on a show ... John smiles to himself. Well. That means Rodney really is watching and that answers the question John's been asking himself for the last week.

He finishes taking off his sidearm and sets it down next to the bed.

Rodney looks at John.

"Seriously, you sleep with a gun, don't you?"

"Just within reach, Rodney," John replies. He picked up the habit in Afghanistan, never broke it during eleven months on the Ice, and hasn't been sorry for it since ending up in Pegasus. He likes the Athosians of this time just as much as Teyla's people, but he's not ready to forget the lesson the Genii taught. People can smile, people can ostensibly be on the same side; it doesn't mean he should trust them completely. The only ones he trusts that much are Rodney and Elizabeth. They've earned it, mistakes and all.

Rodney sort of grunts, then wanders over to one of the little tables and plucks up one of the fried cakes.

"Maybe we can take some of those back for Elizabeth," John says.

"Gphhdee."

John waits until Rodney sits down in one of the folding chairs and starts undoing his boot with his free hand, still holding the cake, with its missing crescent, in the other. As soon as he has swallowed, he takes another bite.

"So I'll ask Ingel tomorrow after we finish repairing the water purifier."

"Uft ots."

"And in English that means?"

"Get lots, of course."

John pulls his T-shirt over his head, stretching as he does so.

Rodney stares, then ducks his head and mumbles something.

"Excuse me?"

Rodney mutters unintelligibly again.

"Sorry, I failed Mumblemouth 101."

"Exhibitionist!"

John opens his mouth to protest, then just laughs.

Rodney stuffs the rest of the cake in his mouth, then viciously jerks off his boot, followed by the other one. His socks come off next and he grimaces. Luckily socks are a human constant, pretty much the same in the Pegasus Galaxy as on Earth, and the Athosians were delighted to trade some of them for John and Rodney's help. A good deal all around, John thinks.

Rodney isn't looking at him now, which makes it a little easier to walk across the plush rugs silently and touch his shoulder. It makes Rodney jump and look at him with wide, wide blue eyes.

"Ingel thinks we're going to sleep together."

"Well, obviously," Rodney replies peevishly, still staring at John.

John licks his lower lip once, nervously.

"Do you want to?"

"Want to – oh. Oh. So that – on Doranda, that wasn't just a, a quiet Rodney down thing? Because we didn't talk about it. Not that I haven't thought about it, I mean about it, not about it before, except I did think about it, maybe once or twice, but only because Saleamoua in geology said – "

"Rodney?"

"Yes?"

"Breathe."

Rodney pulls in a deep breath. John waits, then grins.

"Out," he prompts.

Rodney lets his breath out with a whoosh.

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes. Have you gone deaf?"

Still smiling, John steps around the chair until he's between Rodney's legs. "I don't think so." He slips down to his knees, feeling great fondness for the Athosians and their soft rugs, leans forward and brushes his lips over Rodney's, watching him the entire time, not letting any other part of him touch.

He thinks he should have kissed Rodney before, a long time before, because that thin mouth is soft and his lips are dry at first, but warm and right, and Rodney doesn't close his eyes when he kisses either, so John can still look into them and it leaves him a little breathless and broken open, so that when they finally pull back he ducks his head.

"We should do that again," Rodney says hoarsely. "We should definitely do that again."

So they do, only this time John lets his tongue trace Rodney's lips until they're open and then Rodney's sucking on his tongue, melting John's brain, stripping his senses away, stripping his defenses. Rodney's tongue slips past his lips, into his mouth, and he lets him in, is opened up, watching his face the whole time, meeting Rodney's eyes. He'll never be able to turn away again, he thinks vaguely. His hands have found their way to Rodney's shoulders and clutch at his tac vest. He can feel the warmth of Rodney's legs along his sides and Rodney's hands slip around him, skin on bare skin making John shudder because he needs more.

"Again and again," John murmurs against Rodney's mouth finally.

Rodney's leaning forward and John's leaning in, breathing hard. Rodney's petting John's bare shoulder.

"I have this feeling," Rodney says quietly.

"Yeah?"

"This feeling that if we talk about this, we'll ruin it."

John opens his fingers, letting go of Rodney's vest, but not moving his hands off Rodney's shoulders. "Maybe."

"If we say something, it'll be real."

"And that would be bad," John says flatly, feeling a little sick. If Rodney needs to pretend this isn't happening, maybe it shouldn't be.

Rodney strokes his hand up to the back of John's neck, gliding his thumb along the skin behind John's ear. "I'll over-analyze." Despite himself, John tilts his head into the touch, wanting more.

He finds his voice again and says, "You already are. This isn't quantum mechanics."

Rodney smiles. "It isn't?"

John relaxes again, because Rodney isn't saying no to this or bothered, he's just being Rodney, pessimistic and contrary. Which John likes, because Rodney is those things and so many other complicated, brilliant things, too.

"Not on an observable level."

Rodney's hand curls into John's hair and he laughs quietly. "Here we are in position x."

John smiles back and begins pushing Rodney's tac vest over his arms. "Come on, we're losing momentum, even if we can't measure it," he says.

"I'm feeling arbitrary."

"You're always arbitrary."

Rodney just sits back and lets John do the work of getting him out of vest and shirt. It takes longer than it should, because they keep kissing and John's hands forget what they're doing. Eventually, they both stumble to their feet and over to the bed.

"Pants," John insists and Rodney takes that as an invitation to unbutton John's worn-thin BDUs and push them down his hips, taking his boxers with them. The air in the tent is cool enough to make John shiver, despite the heat wherever he's touching Rodney.

"Cold?" Rodney asks, divesting himself of his own pants.

"Yes!"

John pulls back the thick quilts and dives between the bleached-white sheets, soft with many washings. Rodney tosses his pants onto the pile of his other clothes and crawls in after John, until they're pressed together, with the quilts wrapped around them. Rodney's furnace-warm and John plasters himself close after a moment's hesitation.

"Apparently, it is a probabilistic universe," Rodney whispers, "I never predicted this," making John laugh, because it's true, this isn't something he'd have ever predicted either.

"Rodney, if you don't shut up, there's a .0000001 percent probability that I'm not going to kiss you again."

Rodney, however, is a determined kind of guy, and John finds himself kissing him over and over again.


The AI keeps blocking her the next day. Elizabeth is so frustrated that she has to walk away or start shouting at it. When John and Rodney return, she'll bug them into fixing what is the problem, but if she could just make it work without them, that would be so much better. The containment vessel sitting down on the gate room floor mocks her. All the work it took to get it from the lab and she can't get rid of it because the gate won't dial. At this rate, she should have gone with John and Rodney to Athos, where she could have done some good as a negotiator, instead of sitting around waiting to press a single button and lower the gate shield. They don't really need the shield; the Ancients didn't leave it up and no one dialed in for ten thousand years.

She wonders about that. Didn't anyone left in Pegasus have the gate address for Atlantis? Or did the Ancients change their number before they left?

Her muscles are stiffening up from shoving the stupid containment vessel through the corridors.

She leaves the gate room and filches a Powerbar from their dwindling stores, chewing on it as she wanders through the more familiar parts of the city. Even before, in the Atlantis she always secretly thought of as hers, there was so much they hadn't explored or discovered. It would be easy to get lost. Some day, though, she's going to just take off walking, to see what she can find when she isn't searching for something specific. To see something new and special that no one else has seen – well, no one but the Ancients, she reminds herself.

Her circuit includes the chair room. She almost passes it by; there is nothing she can accomplish within. But a random, dark dot and spatter on the ochre floor near the chair platform catches her eye. She enters and crouchs beside the stains, recognizing John's blood, dried to dark brown. A lick of her finger and she scrubs it away, disturbed by it, wiping her finger on her pant leg afterward.

The chair is in an upright position, waiting for someone to sit in it. She cocks her head. For her, it is nothing but a cold and uncomfortable straight chair. It isn't the heart of Atlantis, just a tool she can't use.

She sits in it anyway, imagining the AI watching. The armrests are cold, the seat too deep and high. It's uncomfortable, the veins and ligaments of the chair digging into her but she leans back and closes her eyes the way she remembers John doing. Nothing happens. The chair stays cool and unmoving under her.

"Let's just pretend you were answering me for a moment here," she says to the empty room, imagining the AI hovering in a corner. Not that it is, or no more than it is everywhere in the city, but maybe it has a particular interest in this room, where those with the gene can actually meet its mind.

"If you were answering me, you'd ask me what I was doing here now. You'd tell me that this isn't where I should be and that I should go back."

Elizabeth fidgets in the chair. "I need your help for John's sake, and Rodney's. And you would perk up at the mention of John, wouldn't you? Just like you always do."

She digs her fingers into the chair's armrest.

"You would tell me that I am bothersome and I would say that I need your help. You would say that I keep telling you so, but you don't see why." She takes in two breaths, then goes on, because there's a certain freedom to speaking aloud, letting the thoughts out of her head. She'd fall out of the chair if the AI answered.

"And I would tell you about Arcturus, about how we destroyed the universe in our timeline with the toys your creators left behind and you would say –"

"Foolish child," says a warm, female voice that is distinctly not her own.

Elizabeth stops breathing.

"I did not hear that."

She ruffles her hair and bounces out of the chair. The room doesn't look any different. Why would it?

"What the hell was that?" she asks the air and she's not addressing the AI. She hadn't realized she had that much imagination.

She heads back to the gate room, still wondering. Why would the AI suddenly talk to her? Granted, it probably could, there are intercoms through the city it could use to generate a voice. But why not talk to John or Rodney?

Oh, of course, she realizes. The AI would want them to use the chair, to really communicate on its level. Voice would be a last resort, a last ditch option to communicate to someone without the gene. The equivalent of learning sign language.

She picks up her pace. It was only a few words, but the AI probably hasn't picked up that much English. In time, they'll talk and she'll convince it to cooperate.

She almost wants to hug the knowledge to herself and not tell John and Rodney when they return.


Three things wake Rodney.

He has to pee.

Someone is awake and laughing outside the tent.

He's wrapped up in a tangle of quilts and John Sheppard.

John's twined around him like a warm, dry and very affectionate octopus, thigh over his leg, knee just brushing his morning erection, one arm heavy over Rodney's chest, the other snaked up under Rodney's shoulder, chest pressed against Rodney's side. He's breathing steadily against Rodney's neck, hot and damp. Surprisingly feathery dark hair brushes against Rodney's nose and mouth.

There are worse ways to wake up, but he has to get out of bed, so he reluctantly pushes John's arm off, then slides out from under his leg. Getting John's head from his shoulder to one of the pillows without waking him is harder, but he thinks he's managed it, until he glimpses the barely visible glitter of hazel through John's lashes.

"I was trying to be careful."

"You were," John agrees amiably.

Too amiably for Rodney. He hasn't had any coffee in months. He shoves John over without more ado and starts hunting for his pants.

"Try the floor," John suggests.

"I am."

The tent is cold and dim; the torches burnt out during the night. He stubs his toe against a table leg, hops, and curses. He's got goosebumps on his arms and flanks, his balls are considering crawling up into his body, and he still has to pee with a vengeance. Since tents don't come with indoor plumbing, he's going to have to get dressed and find his way to the camp latrine. This is not the morning after he envisioned.

He finds his pants, then his shirt, and, finally, his boots – by tripping over them – muttering invective the entire time. There's just enough light creeping in from the pre-dawn to show that John has wrapped all of the quilts around himself, leaving only the pale blur of his face exposed to watch Rodney flail around. Rodney narrows his eyes.

"What are you grinning at?"

The quilts shift and rustle as John shrugs.

"You're cute when you're grumpy."

"I am not cute."

John smirks.

Rodney makes a rude noise and retreats out of the tent, promising himself revenge that involves crawling back into bed and introducing John, who hates the cold, to Rodney's soon-to-be frozen feet.

The air outside the tent isn't just bracing, it's shocking, and he realizes the tent wasn't actually that cold inside. White frost crunches under his boots as he hurries through camp, waving and nodding to the few people already up and preparing for the day. They're all bundled in coats and feeding fires.

Ingel greets him as he's returning from the latrines, asking if he had a good night. Rodney mumbles something about the comfortable bed and hopes his red face can be chalked up to the cold.

"I believe it may snow before this evening," Ingel says.

Rodney peers at the sky and decides Ingel is right. Heavy cloud cover, no wind, freezing temperatures; it feels a little like Canada. The air has that still feel to it and bites at his lungs with every breath. Great. He really doesn't want to tromp back to the stargate carrying a dozen baskets and two packs full of trade goods in the snow and the dark. If Elizabeth wasn't waiting in Atlantis, he and John would probably stay another night, but they both know she worries. She worried before, when they had back-up and there were people to support her; now, alone in the city with only the AI that can't quite communicate with her, it must be a thousand times worse.

Elizabeth is something he and John are going to have to talk about. Whether to tell her, whether to just let her see in her own time, and how their relationship will affect her. Before, they were three people marooned together. Now, they'll be two and one. It's going to make a difference.

"I'll have the generator on your transport running by noon," Rodney promises.

"That would be welcome indeed."

Rodney rubs at his arms, shivering.

"Go, get back to your friend," Ingel urges. He grins at Rodney in a friendly fashion. "There are better ways to stay warm, but today you will need those coats you traded for."

"That's, ah, hunh. Yeah, looks like snow," Rodney blurts and hurries toward the tent, Ingel's laughter echoing behind him.

"Come join us for tea," Ingel calls after him. "We will greet the sunrise and break our fasts."

"Right, right," Rodney mutters, fumbling the ties on the tent door and bolting inside.

John's standing naked and unconcerned in front of the ewer and basin, cleaning up. Rodney freezes. So much for crawling back into the bed and warming up with John. They don't really have time to waste anyway, he consoles himself.

"Close the damn flap," John drawls. "You're letting the cold in."

And giving anyone walking by a show Rodney would like to keep for himself. He lets the flap fall closed. "I need to get to work on that generator as soon as possible," he says.

John pauses in his ablutions. He's all lean muscle and pale skin, smooth back and long legs, twisting gracefully at the waist to look at Rodney with a question on his face.

"Something wrong?"

"Snow coming in."

"Okay."

John doesn't question him, something Rodney appreciates more now than ever before, because after the mistakes he's made, John has the right to question anything Rodney says. He watches as John runs the soapy cloth over his legs and between them, calmly cleaning away any evidence of the night before. It reminds Rodney of how grimy and sticky he feels under his clothes. He sniffs himself and wrinkles his nose.

"Leave me some water."

"Glad to, Rodney."

"Was that a dig? Because, given a few days in the same clothes, hiking over half the planet, you're no fragrant flower yourself, Colonel."

John pauses again, nods, and adds, "John. Considering that the USAF doesn't even exist yet… I can't really be a colonel."  He grins that blazing, cocky grin at Rodney. "I'd be in serious trouble if I was, you know."

"Hunh."

John's eyebrow raises and he surveys Rodney from head to toe and then back up, until he's staring into Rodney's eyes.

"Serious trouble."

"Something you're very familiar with anyway," Rodney grumbles.

John rinses out his cloth and finishes what Rodney's grandmother called a spit bath. "It's all yours," he says and walks over to their packs and the baskets, bending over to root through them.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting some clean clothes, since we've got them now. I'm not parading out of this tent in nothing but my skin." John holds up a pair of dark trousers. "Yep. These'll do. It's damn cold, you know."

"I hadn't noticed," Rodney says. He forces himself up and over to the ewer and basin. John left him a cloth and a towel, too. "Get something out for me, would you?"

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know, how about something warm?"

"Feeling a little cranky, are we?"

Rodney spins around, wet cloth in hand, ready to say something scathing, and stares.

John is skinning himself into a pair of body-hugging black leather pants. Rodney's mouth goes dry.

John in leather looks like sin, but not the broody, look-at-me model perfection that's just an empty promise. John's tensile, imperfect, and possessing a whimsical streak, even something of a hedonist, if last night was any evidence. Most of all, Rodney knows, John doesn't make empty promises.

The pants have laces over his hips and John's tightening them, biting his lip unconsciously. He tugs at the legs and does a hilarious little hop to get everything settled comfortably. He flushes when he looks up and catches Rodney watching.

"What?"

"Wow."

John's eyes begin to sparkle. He strikes a hipshot pose, hooking his thumbs in his waist band, barefoot and shirtless, smirking. "Kind of hot, hunh?"

Rodney shakes his head. "Words fail, but spray paint comes to mind." He swallows hard. "Are you commando under there?" He is rewarded with a genuine pout.

"You're no fun," John says as he finishes dressing, layering a thin, homespun shirt under a thick sweater.

Rodney finishes washing up and hurries into the clothes John has set out for him. He ignores John's snicker when he wiggles into the dark blue leathers John set out for him, pausing only to watch the almost sybaritic pleasure John takes in putting on thick, new, clean socks. It's endearing.

Some of the playfulness fades as John straps on his thigh holster, but the soldier is part of John, too.

They exit the tent together, as the first incandescent red curve of Athos' sun creeps over the distant purple and gray mountains, and join the Athosians facing it. Ingel's sister hands them steaming mugs of stout tea that warms their fingers against the frost, while Ingel leads the rest of the people in their version of a prayer to the Ancestors. John stands closer to Rodney than he did the day before.

They both murmur the words in Ancient along with the Athosians. Rodney doesn't know what John is thanking them for, maybe just another day alive, maybe he's just going along out of respect for Ingel, but it's all right. John lifts his face toward the rising sun, the light gilding him, and smiles.

Rodney hides his face behind his mug of tea.

It occurs to him that he's happy.


Sitting in the dark at the head of the stairs descending from the control room to the gate room, she can feel the ocean pressing down over the city. The window behind her is dark, the room filled with a watery, green-gray darkness and blue shadows. They've been gone for two days. The empty city is beginning to spook her more than ever before, especially now. The AI hasn't spoken to her again – if it ever did. She's beginning to doubt her memory. Her mind creates images that aren't there - the AI hovering next to her, watching her every move but always out of reach, unattainable. She remembers things she can't remember - like the first Rodney dying in the flooded gate room.

What if they don't come back? She'll need to do what that Elizabeth did.

The idea that she led the expedition's people to their deaths not just once, but twice, persists. She wants to be as brave as the first timeline's Elizabeth and isn't sure she can be. She hates the idea of stasis for one thing.

"Too long a sacrifice," she recites, imagining the AI listening, "makes a stone of the heart." She rests her chin on her hands, elbows on her knees. The steps are cold and hard. "Yeats. You wouldn't know him."

No answer. She didn't expect one. She must have imagined the voice. Wouldn't John and Rodney laugh if she told them? She's not going to mention she scared herself with wild imaginings while they were gone or the little thrill she got when she thought – Well, it seems a little petty in retrospect, wanting the AI to talk to her because she feels left out. 

She hates waiting, too.Years of work mediating between stubborn politicians and men with guns and agendas, everywhere from Africa to Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia, taught her patience. It's a skill, waiting; one she learned, but never liked, even when she had no attachments beyond her own ideals. Now she waits for people who matter to her, she has a better grasp of what motivated so many of the people she worked with on Earth.

The containment vessel sits just beyond the gate's splash radius. The energy wash from an opening wormhole would probably destroy the creature trapped within it, but she isn't sure enough to try that solution. The dust sheet she used for a tarp to help skid it along is wrinkled and bunched against its base.

The whoosh of the gate brings her head up. She braces her hands against the steps and pushes up, onto her feet, heart beating faster, watching the white-water boil subside in a blue mirror behind the ice of the shield. Waiting for the radio to activate.

Endless seconds, worse than the past two days, pass. Goosebumps rise along her arms.

"Elizabeth?"

"John, I hope you have good news?"

"You'll see. You want to turn on the porch light?"

"I'll unlock the door," she says lightly, before racing up the stairs. A slap of her hand on the shield's manual control disengages it. "Shield's down."

"On our way."

With a quiet, sucking sound, a large reed basket slides beyond the event horizon, followed by two more, and then assorted packs and bundles. More than two men could carry on their backs. Little cascades of snow slide off the lashed-down lids to melt in puddles on the floor.

John steps through the gate, followed by Rodney. Or, at least, she thinks that it must be them. They're both bundled in bulky, thigh-length coats lined in animal fleece, the collars turned up to protect their faces. Both of them shrug out of the coats immediately, more snow slipping off their shoulders.

They're wearing Athosian gear beneath the coats, rather than their expedition uniforms.

Elizabeth walks to the stairs slowly, her head cocked to the side, eyebrows raised. They're both grinning and pink-faced from the cold they obviously left behind on the other side of the gate.

There's snow in John's black hair. He ruffles it off with his hand and a shudder that reminds Elizabeth irresistibly of a black cat her aunt had, a raunchy, half-wild tom with green eyes and a way of draping itself wherever it pleased. It refused to let most people too close, but purred like a diesel engine for her aunt, never looked more disgusted than when it rained, and would sometimes yawn, exposing the sharp, white fangs of a predator.  

Rodney pulls off a knitted cap. His hair sticks up in every direction, worse than John's, but dry.

"Hah!"

"Gentlemen."

John waggles his eyebrows first at Rodney, then at her, in a 'See? Didn't I tell you?' way.

"What is this?" she asks, nodding her head to their clothes.

John does a little pirouette on the spot, flashing her an even wider grin. "Like it?"

"Please, don't encourage him," Rodney says.

She walks down the steps and circles them, considering their appearance. They're clad in leather pants, the supple material outlining their thighs and calves. It is especially kind to them, showing off John's long legs and Rodney's backside. They both have heavy, hand-knit sweaters on under their tac vests, with new shirts underneath the sweaters. The shirts are homespun, undeniably Athosian; the soft colors come from natural dyes.

She circles them some more, just taking in what's presented to her, knowing full well that the intense scrutiny makes them uncomfortable.

"Well?"

"Nice," she finally says, even though it's the understatement of the century. She can't remember either of them ever looking this good or ever wanting to touch them more. John seems freed wearing something besides his uniform. But she's not going to feed their egos any more than strictly necessary.

"That's not all, though." Rodney is bouncing slightly, radiating impatience. She has to smile.

"What, Rodney?"

"Close your eyes," he says, looking to John for confirmation of his plan.

"What?"

John rolls his eyes. "Just do it."

"Why?" She crosses her arms, wondering if she isn't about to be the butt of one of Rodney's strange jokes.

"Don't be a spoilsport, Elizabeth, just do it."

"Why?" she insists again.

"Because," John says. "Just trust us."

She sighs and closes her eyes at that. Trust. Fine. John's the one with trust issues. She's not going there again today.

John steps behind her and she feels him drawing her jacket off. She tenses, clutches her hands to the jacket's lapels. Her eyes fly open. "What are you –"

"Nu-uh," Rodney says, putting his hand over her eyes. "Trust us."

She relents because their pleasure is so inviting, because they want to share it with her. Two kids on Christmas morning.

Elizabeth relaxes again and lets John remove her jacket, leaving her slightly chilled in the cool gate room. They both shuffle for a bit and she wants to open her eyes, but Rodney's hand is still over her eyes, so when she tries, only her lashes brush along his palm. Then there's the feeling of something smooth around her shoulders and John is tugging her arms, sliding them into the softness. It feels cool on her skin, almost like velvet but warms up almost immediately. It carries the scent of hay and snow-cold mornings.

"Can I?" She reaches her hand up to tug at Rodney's.

"Not yet. Patience, young Padawan."

Elizabeth laughs and drops her hand. "Yes, Master."

John is in front of her now,  muttering to Rodney, as he deftly does up the buttons on whatever they've dressed her in. His fingers brush between her breasts, she catches her breath, and he continues on, saying, "Oh, come on, you can spare one of them, we brought them for her."

Rodney's hand over her eyes twitches when he bats John away. "You said that we'd go back for more, but you didn't say when, so excuse me for wanting to keep as many as possi –"

"Gentlemen?" she can't help but ask.

"Rodney!" She can guess what they're quarreling about now. John gives a little cough.

"Fine," Rodney says, sounding peeved. He takes his hands away and she just knows that he's sulking now. She indulges him and keeps her eyes closed.

John is back, she can feel him brush against her hip.

"Sensory check next," he says and takes her hand, puts something into it. "Touch. What would you think this is?"

She turns the object in her fingers, it feels sticky and spongy, with a soft underside and a somehow crusty upper side. She can't place it yet, however, the shape is too unusual.

"Not sure yet?" he asks. "Let's try this, then." John takes the object from her hands and she can still feel a sticky residue when she runs her fingers over her palm. There's a soft sound, then John's hand is back, holding something under her nose.
"Smell."

The scent is heady, like caramel and vanilla and spices, but not entirely sweet, and she immediately thinks of pumpkin pie. A good memory. Beneath the spices are other smells, salt and snow, soap and leather left behind by John's gloves, and, persistent as instinct, a scent that is purely John.

"Elizabeth?"

She smiles again. "I think I may need a taste before I give my final vote," she says, and she can picture John's smirk.

He obliges, tucking a crumb into her hand and she accepts it, bringing it to her lips. The taste explodes on her tongue, utterly spicy and different from what they have had in the past weeks. She makes a contented sound in the back of her throat and lets the taste dissolve in her mouth. John waits for a moment and then pushes another small piece of the – cake, she now knows – into her hand and she takes it, savors its richness on her lips and tongue, tasting the sweetness and determinedly thinking of nothing else. She licks a skim of something buttery from her lips, hears Rodney take a sharp breath, and opens her eyes to see John watching her. He looks startled, his eyes widening for an instant, pupils dilating, and he licks his own lips.

Rodney swallows hard, but covers it up with a smug smile and a, "Well, Sherlock?"

Elizabeth lifts her fingers back to her mouth and sucks the last hint of flavor from them. "I'll go out on a limb and say: cake?"

John turns toward Rodney. "And we have a winner."

Rodney doesn't answer and gives her a considering stare that's enough to make her feel self-conscious. She realizes she's still holding her fingers to her lips and snatches her hand down.

She steps away from John and looks down at herself, seeing what John dressed her in. It's a coat in a dark reddish-brown color, elegant and slim-cut, hugging her waist, reaching almost down to her ankles. It's so smooth that she can't help but caress it over and over again. It's almost weightless, too.

She mirrors the little twirl John did earlier, the coat flares like a skirt from her hips, and she asks, smiling, "Well?"

"Oh, yeah," Rodney says. He seems to have shaken the earlier speechlessness, but his eyes still hold a speculative look. He ducks away, picking up something she can't identify before he hides it behind his back. "Definitely you."

John nods.

They exchange another look and Rodney pulls a small basket from behind his back, bouncing again. "Want to see the rest?"

Elizabeth laughs at their combined enthusiasm.

"You brought presents?"

John waves a hand.

"Oh, you know, commemorative plates, silly hats, T-shirts, tourist stuff."

"I just want to point out, John picked the clothes," Rodney says swiftly.

"I didn't hear you protesting!"

Oh, God, Elizabeth thinks, wondering exactly what else they brought back for her to wear.

"I didn't want to insult Nelda."

"Nelda is Ingel's sister," John says aside to her. "Ingel is the Athosians' leader right now. Real nice guy."

Rodney nods. "And Nelda suggested some of the things we brought back for you."

"All right," Elizabeth says agreeably.

It isn't as bad as she anticipates. Leather pants for her too, plus cotton trousers for all of them, shirts, sweaters, socks. Several long, high-split skirts that are much like what Teyla wore, and tight, lace-up tops. The item that Rodney probably thought she would object to is scarlet leather, skintight, backless, with a diamond cut-out meant to display a lot of cleavage, no shoulders and a multitude of straps attaching the opera length sleeves to the collar. She holds it up between forefinger and thumb.

"You thought I'd wear this?"

John manages a nod and a serious face, then loses it and snickers.

"You'd look good in it," he offers.

"Oh, that's pathetic," Rodney interrupts. "You should have seen him. Nelda had something like that on and he couldn't keep his eyes off her. Though he probably can't tell you if she even had a face."

John gives him a very dirty look and Rodney, wonder of wonders, shuts up. It seems to surprise John, too. He straightens his shoulders, lifts his chin and looks insufferably pleased with himself suddenly.

Elizabeth hands the top to John. "Not in this universe or any other, Colonel."

John just shrugs.

Elizabeth looks around the piles of clothes and foods spread out over the gate room and chuckles again. It does look like Christmas morning, presents opened and wrappings tossed around. She picks out another of the fried cakes they brought back for her, the ones Rodney keeps looking at wistfully, and takes a bite. It's still wonderful. She breaks the rest of the cake in two and offers a piece to John and then Rodney.

It's Rodney who surprises her, nipping at her fingertips, licking the sticky residue off with a happy, wicked hum. Elizabeth draws her fingers back, startled, and just restrains the urge to bring them to her mouth. John is staring at them both, pupils dilated wide.

She gathers herself together, ignoring the sudden electricity between the three of them, and says, "I think we'd better put all of this away, don't you?"

Then an imp of mischievousness takes over.

"You forgot something, you know?"

They both look at her in puzzlement.

"What?" Rodney asks. He looks affronted by the mere insinuation that they didn't return a complete success.

Elizabeth smiles and says it. "Underwear."

It's worth a whole basket of cakes to see John Sheppard and Rodney McKay both reduced to staring, before Rodney explodes with laughter, giving John a telling look, and John looks wicked and says, "How do you know that wasn't deliberate?"


Rodney sits at the foot of his bed. He's tired, but it isn't unpleasant. Footwear off, followed by the socks. Ah. He wiggles his toes happily and flops back on the bed, arms spread over the oatmeal-colored duvet, smiling at the dim ceiling. He never imagined back on Earth how much he could appreciate a good pair of warm socks. Of course, on Earth, he stayed in his labs. There was no hiking over hill and dale in search of ZPMs, no running for his life. No sentient city that warms his room and dims the lights and whispers at the back of his mind in Ancient that he doesn't quite understand, but knows is full of approval. No hazel-eyed Air Force officers… slouching against the open doorway, head tipped to the side.

Rodney eyes him, curious, apprehensive, annoyed: he feels like he might sleep at last, without his subconscious torturing him, for once. Two nights in a row, it would make a new man of him. He didn't dream on Athos. There are a lot of reasons that could explain that. Maybe he's finally coming to terms with what he did, maybe it was getting away from Atlantis, maybe it was the sex. Maybe it was John's presence.

"Yes, is there a reason you're draped virtually sideways or are you just too weak to stand up straight?" he snarks at John. It's the old conundrum: he wants John here, he doesn't like to look needy, so he resorts to a pre-emptive strike. It occurs him that he doesn't know why John's standing there, just inside his room. What does John want? What they had last night on Athos, together? Was that something they're going to keep doing, not just off-planet, but here in Atlantis? The thought goes straight to Rodney's groin, making his cock swell.

John grins blindingly. "You want me to stand at attention?" He steps into the room and Rodney blinks at him. "Because I'm feeling a little tired myself. I thought I might lie down."

"In my room?"

It's too late to hope for a time delay between his brain and his mouth.  

John's grin doesn't change at all, but suddenly it's as plastic as a politician's.

"Just checking on you," John says. "I'll be – "

"No, stay."

Blurt it out, what does it matter if he looks needy? John's seen Rodney drooling and paralyzed, seen him faint, seen him when exhaustion finally won out over amphetamines and he couldn't even untie his bootlaces; John's seen him screaming and weeping in the night and one short step away from catatonia. Last night John saw him come, from John's hands and John's mouth: there isn't anything left John can't see.

"No?" John echoes.

"Yes, it isn't a difficult concept."

Rodney scoots back on the bed, until he's sitting up at the head, watching John carefully. He curses himself for thinking everything would be easy after last night, nothing is ever that easy, especially the good things. John's body language lies unless you've watched him as much as Rodney has, in the same bad situations, and that's what it's doing now: lying. He looks relaxed, but his shoulders are tense, and his breathing is just a little too slow and steady, too controlled and deliberate. Best to treat him like something skittish and half-wild.

Rodney pats the bed. "Come here."

John wavers, then the door slides shut behind him with a soft shuff accompanied by the lock engaging. He walks over to the bed and Rodney without hesitating, but his eyes are still wary. His hands are loose at his sides. Rodney reaches and closes his hand around John's wrist, over that black wristband, holding on loosely. John's eyes drift down and he watches as Rodney insinuates his fingers under the black band, resting the pads against the inside of John's wrist, where he can feel John's pulse jump under the fine skin. He brushes his thumb back and forth over the sharp jut of John's wrist bone, a tiny motion, and John sucks in a quick breath.

"Okay?" Rodney asks.

John's eyes flick up to his face and he smiles, a real smile. "Oh, yeah."

"No third thoughts?"

John's smile widens and he's laughing, sinking down on the bed, his hip nudging Rodney's thigh. "None," he says, ducking his head to look at Rodney's hand around his wrist again, as though it's fascinating. He turns his arm, making Rodney's thumb slide over his skin, to the inside of his wrist.

Rodney takes hold of the wristband and slips it over John's hand, cloth and fingers trailing over John's knuckles, the length of his fingers, slow as a striptease; then he sets the band on the stand next to his bed. He turns John's hand over and runs a fingertip along his lifeline, then circles the hollow of his palm over and over. John watches, eyelids half lowered, his lips barely parted, his breath picking up.

He looks up as Rodney brings John's hand to his mouth and breathes on his palm. "God," he chokes out as Rodney tastes the skin right there, right at the center of his palm, salt, soap, skin, something uniquely John that makes Rodney's tongue tingle. He touches his lips to John's palm. John's fingers flex and spread and Rodney can feel the movement through his lips. He closes his eyes and tastes again, concentrating on the texture of John's skin, the warmth radiating from him. He opens them again when he feels John shiver. Looks up and watches John lick his lips.

His skin feels too tight, his clothes suddenly rough and hot against it, and he was half-hard before, but now his cock is pressing almost painfully against his pants. One glance tells him John's in the same state.

Before Rodney can even process how he moved, John is straddling him, one hand braced on his shoulder. He leans closer and his lips graze over Rodney's brow and then his cheekbone and, finally, the corner of his mouth. He traces along Rodney's lower lip with his tongue, teasing. His hand on Rodney's shoulder flexes like a kneading cat, sending little fragments of pleasure through all of Rodney's nerves.

The way John's slowly rocking against him just stokes the heat between them. It's almost maddening, too good and not enough.

"John, Jesus, that's – that's, God, perfect," Rodney says, hips lifting, matching push to thrust.

John strokes his hand down over Rodney's chest. Through it all, Rodney keeps his grip on John's other hand, their fingers laced together.

"Let go," Rodney tells him, "let go."

Rodney means let go of all that control, but John just lets go of his hand. Rodney finds himself running his hand over John's thigh and then his hip. John shudders and almost breaks the rhythm of his movements at that. He sneaks his hand between them and presses against Rodney's erection and Rodney's thoughts white out as he fights not to come from just that.

"Clothes," he gasps when he's no longer right on the edge. He's still pushing himself into John's clever, deft hand.

They rock together until Rodney's begging, "John, please, please." John backs off, but his eyes are smoky and full of want.

"You do it," he tells Rodney. His voice is hoarse.

He cooperates by lifting his arms as Rodney tugs the Athosian sweater up and over his head, then the homespun shirt. It turns inside out and is dropped off the side of the bed. Rodney thinks the lights brighter, because he wants to see as he runs his hands over John's lean torso, mapping the curve of a pectoral, learning the feel of flat, hard muscle layered over bone, the rise of John's ribcage, hollow flanks, chest hair. John squirms when Rodney's fingers find his nipples. Rodney keeps touching him everywhere he can reach, distracted from his own aching arousal by John's responses.

He's so quiet, Rodney has to take all his cues from John's body. He wonders briefly who or what taught John to make love in near silence.

When Rodney runs a hand down his spine, John gasps against his neck, warm breath. "I want this," he says, quietly. "You." John pulls back enough to look in Rodney's eyes, suddenly solemn and vulnerable. "It's okay, isn't it? You won't go away. I can have what I want now, can't I?"

"You can. Anything," Rodney promises, knowing it's stupid, but the word is out before he can think why he shouldn't say it. And then he's glad, because John just eyes him for a second, then pushes his face against Rodney's neck again, tangling his arms around Rodney's shoulders, plastering every inch of him he can against Rodney. He knows he missed something, something going on in John's twisty head, but somehow he still said the right thing, turned a key in a lock he didn't know was there and now he's inside, all the way inside. John's sudden desperation slips into boneless relief, tension dissolving under Rodney's hands stroking up and down his back, translates into movement, into the two of them rolling onto their sides, precariously near the edge of the bed for a breath, before Rodney drags John even closer.

He clasps his hand against the back of John's neck, urging him to lift his face, then they're kissing. He licks his way in and out of John's mouth, slick and sweet and willing, then sucks on John's lower lip. John's legs tangle with his and they push against each other, slower, drawing the tension out. It's torture, but Rodney wants to prolong it, because it's perfect, too. He wants to keep doing this forever, with John's restless hands reshaping his body into something that sings, that makes John's eyes bright and hot. They squirm and twist and work their way out of the rest of their clothes and then it's even better, skin against skin, the feel of another body, real and alive, against him.

Rodney rolls John under him, earning a startled, green-shaded look from abruptly wide eyes, but John pulls him down, and he settles between John's legs, letting their cocks slide against each other, the drag against tender skin making him groan and drawing a breathy sound from John. He rolls his hips forward and John wraps around him, arms and legs, chest to chest, his head thrown back, his eyelids fluttering closed. He bucks against Rodney's weight and stiffens, sleek sweaty skin and taut muscles helpless under Rodney's hands. The sensation rolls through Rodney to the base of his spine, centers in his cock, and pours out of him when the choked, breathless sound from John's mouth becomes his name, John's release spilling warm and wet between them, mixing with his own.

After recovering his breath, Rodney lifts himself off John. John blinks at him, not moving, eyes heavy-lidded, expression almost dazed. Rodney rests on his side with his head propped up on one hand.

"Wow," John says, softly. He stretches and then yawns, watching sleepily as Rodney trails a hand over his chest.

It's strange. He's used to smooth skin, curves… breasts. Rodney's always been a fan of breasts. Dumb blondes – or in the case of Sam Carter, brilliant ones – with breasts and legs that never end, that was his definition of what he liked in a woman. Not, apparently, what he likes in a man, because he's fascinated by the silky hair on John's chest, the way it traces into a dark line arrowing down to John's groin. John's skin is smooth, too, and Rodney can't get enough of touching it. John's dark and smart, muscles and angles, long lines and careful, strong hands. He pushes the thought of Sam away deliberately, because Sam is the past, and he can't even imagine her looking at him the way John is; he wouldn't trade that look, this instant, for a lifetime in Sam's bed, isn't sure he would even for Sam and the universe. 

Rodney goes on exploring, checking John's face from time to time. Expressions chase over John's features, unfiltered. His lips curve upward. Rodney can't resist touching his face, brushing his fingers over John's raspy whiskers. John tips his head into the caress, silently demanding more. Rodney ends up stroking his fingers through John's hair, because it makes John hum under his breath, a happy sound that makes Rodney's throat tighten with emotion.

He's never had a lover who hummed with pleasure just from Rodney touching her. He's never had a lover that he's known as long as he's known John now; knowing Rodney seems to be tantamount to not loving him, in his experience. John's different in so many ways that have nothing to do with gender it's scary.

He pets John's head until John's breathing evens into the slow rhythms of sleep, and his arm propping himself up is going numb. They're sticky with the evidence of their orgasms. Cleaning up seems like a good idea. Rodney slips off the other side of his bed and heads for the bathroom. He's on his way back when John jerks from sleep into wakefulness.

"No! Don't go!" John jack-knifes upright, gasping in a harsh breath. "Rodney? Rodney?" He looks around wildly.

"I'm right here," Rodney says carefully.

John's eyes focus on him with raw relief.

"Jesus. Jesus, Rodney. I thought – I dreamed you were gone."

"Gone to the bathroom. What's wrong with you?"

John draws up his knees, wraps his arms around them, and drops his face into the concealment both offer. Rodney can count his vertebrae and his ribs. He frowns over the ribs. Were they always this prominent? And is John shaking?

He sits on the bed and touches John's back. "John?" John's taking deep, slow breaths, but there's still a residual tremble in his muscles. Rodney hugs him from behind. It's strange; as many nights as John has held onto him after his nightmares, it should have occurred to him John would have them, too. "So, bad dream?"

John is still, then nods without lifting his head.

"Want to talk about it?" He offers, but John shakes his head, just the way Rodney thought he would. "Okay. Want to get under the covers?" Not talking is better as far he's concerned, too.

John cooperates with that idea and plasters himself against Rodney like a limpet. Second night in a row, so evidence would suggest John is a stay-all-night lover.

"Stay," he mutters against Rodney's chest.

"It's my bedroom, where would I go?" Rodney replies, though he knows John didn't mean that at all.

Rodney goes back to petting John's hair, feeling the tension drain out of the body next to his after a while. Sleep hovers at the edge of his consciousness, but he wants to think a little more. The ceiling's dark and easy to stare up at while his thoughts wander. "You're not going anywhere," John said on Doranda, just before this – whatever this is – started. John knows what Rodney dreams about and he's heard Rodney weep and wish he was dead.

Oh.

I dreamed you were gone.

"Still here," he tells John quietly, letting sleep draw him down now that he thinks he has the answer, or part of it.


She sleeps with her door open, waiting, but the night stretches soundlessly through the city, and there are no screams, no thud of John's feet in the hallway, no soft litany of self-loathing and horror from Rodney.

Disturbed by the change in routine, she rises and walks down the hall, feet bare and silent.

The doors to both John's and Rodney's rooms are closed.

Every night, those doors have been open, like hers, until now. She's become attached to the freedom to check on them, to stand and watch for a brief moment, reassured by their sleeping presence. She imagines she can hear the soft cadence of their breathing, Rodney's dreaming murmurs and John's barely-there snore, even when she's in her room, though it's impossible given the distance and Atlantis' soundproofing.

They never closed their doors before.

She heard the doors slide closed earlier and thought little of it. Now it feels like someone has taken all the oxygen out of her lungs. She walks back to her room and curls up in bed. Slings her arms around her knees and tries to stop the feeling of that she's suffocating. It isn't a betrayal.

Atlantis dims the lights in her room and her pulse begins to race – the city leaves her in the dark, and the AI smothers her in blackness to have John and Rodney to itself, like a jealous lover. She can almost feel the AI standing outside her door, smiling. Elizabeth shivers. She can't hear John and Rodney, only imagines the quiet, growling hum of Atlantis, shaping into a single word: "Mine."

Everything around her feels alien and hostile and she lies in the dark with her eyes wide open. She doesn't get any sleep that night.

John and Rodney's doors stay closed. She tells herself she'll get used to it.


Showering is different this time, she takes her time under the warm spray of the water after the cold, sleepless night. It warms her slowly, too slowly, and she's glad that here on Atlantis, wasting water is all but impossible. It's all around them, desalinated and pumped into the environmental system. She could stand under the shower all day and it wouldn't make any difference – other than an incremental increase in the power drain caused by their presence.

The shower won't adjust for her, the way it will for Rodney or John since she doesn't have the gene, but the manual settings are extensive too, so she doesn't care.

John and Rodney brought back more than they knew from Athos. While Rodney rigged a timed-release for the containment vessel and John dialed the same desert world they used before, she went through some of the baskets. Among the clothes and the food supplies was a small basket with a closed lid that John said was from Nelda, the woman who had also picked most of the clothes for her. John obviously liked her, which triggered Rodney's more sarcastic side when he mentioned her. Rodney insisted John was only interested in Nelda's looks, prompting a grin and waggled brows. Elizabeth still feels a slight, irrational twinge in her stomach at the thought of John and another woman and it isn't jealousy – she wishes him happy – it's the possibility that he might stay with a lover, the same fear that sat behind her breastbone when he went after Chaya Sar and they had no way to know if he would return.

Nelda, so it sounded from Rodney's version of the story, was not a woman to fall for John's charming smiles like so many others had done before, so it's moot anyway.

No, Nelda seems considerate in a way both men never would have been. It isn't a negative thought and she doesn't blame them, but there are some things they simply don't think about.

Underwear being one thing.

Last night, before she discovered closed doors and spent hours shivering and curled up in a tight ball, fighting the urge to either throw up or cry, she had opened the smaller basket Nelda sent. The contents had made her smile.

She is using the soap now, reveling in the scent and texture of it. And she has always liked the floral and fresh scents, maybe because they reminded her of a life outside of duty. She's tired of the sterile scent of the Atlantis version of shower gel, which smells too chemical for her taste.

Nelda's gift can't be called a soap without doing it an injustice. It's not a bar, for one. What she received from Nelda is a small, deep blue earthenware bowl with a glazed lid. The off-white contents have a creamy texture, almost like a mousse. She dips her finger into the bowl and scoops a dollop out, spreading it between her hands. The scent is overwhelming – freshly cut grass and white flowers on a balmy spring afternoon under a blue sky. Elizabeth closes her eyes and sighs. This – this is wonderful.

She runs her hands over her arms and breasts, dips down to her legs and delights in the feeling of the creamy substance creating a rich lather on her body, one that doesn't leave her feeling dry and itchy even before the water is turned off.

Elizabeth lifts her face into the jets of water and smiles, feels last night's tension drain from her body. She's almost sure it was an accident or a brief need for privacy. John and Rodney simply forgot to open the doors again. It was likely overreacting on her part.

The clear scent of the Athosian wash gives her a new perspective, feels almost a bit like aromatherapy, eases the stubborn tight knots in her stomach, while the water beats out the ones in her shoulders.

When she finally, reluctantly, steps out of the shower, she reaches for a towel that came along with her new clothes. The towel isn't strictly necessary; Atlantis is equipped with air-dryers that leave nothing to be desired in their efficiency, but she has missed snuggling into a towel. The slightly rough texture of the linen against her skin is nostalgic, reminding her of her grandmother, of afternoons spent in the orchard climbing trees and long baths in the evening and being wrapped up in a towel bigger than herself afterward.

Her pleasure fades as she remembers that all of this is no more – the orchard, the bathtub with the white lion's feet, the white house with the large porch under tall maple trees. She finishes drying off quickly and reaches for the stack of clothes, pushing the memory aside. It is time at any rate. John and Rodney will be waiting for her for breakfast. For the first time in weeks they actually have decent food to eat. That thought alone makes her mouth water as she slips into her clothes. The long skirt settles on her hips perfectly, as if made for her alone and she thanks Nelda once more for lending John and Rodney a helping hand. She suspects that the colors are Nelda's choice as well. John's color of choice seems to be black and she's seen Rodney's taste in shirts – not pretty.

The suede skirt is longer than she had expected and swishes around her ankles when she moves. It leaves her calves feeling exposed despite the length. She hasn't worn anything but expedition uniform since the three weeks they spent back on Earth.

The dark green top – suede as well, and she loves the smell of it, warm and familiar – laces up the sides and gives her more trouble than she'd like to admit, making her long for something more practical.

Once she has conquered the garment and looks into the mirror, that longing vanishes. It's tight, but looks good on her. It's also surprisingly comfortable, molding to her body and making a bra unnecessary. She's still not sure she likes it, she thinks as she puts her watch back on, turning the face to the inside of her wrist out of habit. Wearing it feels suspiciously like going native.

She feels self-conscious and tugs at the sleeves and the hem. Thinks about changing into something else, but there is a knock at her open door.

John calls softly, "Elizabeth? Hey, we've got real food this morning, remember? And stout tea. Are you up?"

She can't help but smile at the distinct lack of enthusiasm 'stout tea' invokes. She can imagine his little grimace and the way John will drink it anyway. Maybe it was the military that made John a less than fussy eater. Of course, Rodney has always made up for it, complaining enough for both men, but Rodney has reason to obsess over food, when a bite of something wrong could kill him.

Rodney chimes in as well, enthusiastically, "Cakes, Elizabeth. Let's not forget the cakes."

"Last one at the table washes dishes."

"You're washing dishes anyway," Rodney says, "since you can't even burn water."

Their voices are moving away from her door, bickering good-naturedly.

Elizabeth runs Nelda's wooden comb through her damp hair, tugs at the top one final time and then steps out of the bathroom. She scoops up her boots and carries them with her to the door, calling as she steps out, "Tea sounds good."

John and Rodney are almost at the transporter. They're standing in each other's space again and their arms brush as they both turn.

She expects them to laugh. Or to be politely quiet because these clothes don't look as good on her as they would have looked on Teyla.

What she doesn't expect are both John's and Rodney's eyes widening and hearing Rodney's soft, "Wow."

John's takes in the outfit and he grins. "Cool."

Elizabeth flushes, especially as she bends and shoves her feet into her boots.

"Going for the Seattle grunge meets Ren Faire look, Elizabeth?" Rodney taunts her with a wide grin as she joins them. John snorts, a habit she's sure he picked up from Rodney.

"Look, there was no way to figure out what size feet you have," John says before she can respond to Rodney. "You'll just have to come back to Athos with us next time. Ingel and Nelda want to meet you anyway."

"Yes, it's a good thing you're smaller than John, or they would have thought I wanted to dress him in skirts," Rodney adds.

Elizabeth steps between them before John can thump Rodney. Rodney is snickering.

"Jerk," John mutters.

"Everyone in the village knew you were sweet on me."

"Were, past tense."

"Aw, you'd look good in a skirt, Colonel. Wouldn't he, Elizabeth?"

"To quote Elizabeth, not in this universe or any other," John replies.

She chuckles helplessly at their ridiculous antics, linking her arms with theirs, as Rodney sticks his tongue out at John and John retaliates with a loud raspberry. She's never, even once, seen John this relaxed, giddy and happy, even when he gleefully pushed Rodney over a balcony testing the personal shield. The relief of having food and trading partners and an easy, successful mission is making them silly and it's wonderful.

"Come along, gentlemen - and I use the term very loosely," she tells them, tugging their arms, "let's get some of that fresh food. Especially the tea and cake."


"She needs to really meet you," John is saying. His eyes are too bright. He's radiating impatience, excitement and euphoria as he urges Rodney nearer the control chair. "You can do this. You'll love it."

Rodney is neither excited nor euphoric; he looks like John dragged him out of bed. He has been consistently distrustful of John using the chair to interface with the city AI since the last time. John is the only one who isn't deeply bothered by what happened to him.

Despite promising he wouldn't use it again without one of them present, he's gone back to the chair, she realizes. The telltale marks around his wrists are still dotted with drying blood.

"I'm not sure this is such a good idea," Rodney protests. His hair is longer now and sticks from his head in odd, sleep-rumpled tufts. "As a matter of fact, I am completely convinced it is a really bad idea. John – "

"You can do this. There's so much she can show you." John pushes now; carefully, but with intent. "She needs to help. It's what she was made to do. She needs you. I don't even know what questions to ask."

Rodney doesn't light up at the prospect of all that Atenë can tell him, and that alone is disturbing enough to make Elizabeth shiver. Rodney McKay, the man she used to know, would have pushed harder than anyone to try the AI interface. He would have insisted only he had the expertise to comprehend what could be learned from an intelligent guide through the Ancient database. This grim, tired acceptance without enthusiasm is just one more testament of how much their stay here and the reason for it has cost him.

She grabs John's arm. "John, think twice – "

He whirls. "Think twice? C'mon, Elizabeth, you don't know – "

"You promised not to use the chair again," she says.

"I needed to." Like it's a reasonable excuse and not an alarming admission. She tugs his arm up and pushes the sleeve of his shirt away from his wrist. "Look," he says, "you need to believe me. There are things Atenë can show Rodney that I don't even understand. It's important, damn it!"

"John – "

"Forget it, he's not listening." Rodney pushes past both of them and sits on the edge of the chair's seat, perched carefully as if poised for flight. His eyes are tired. "If this kills me…"

"It's not going to even hurt you, I swear," John tells him, tugging free of Elizabeth, his expression earnest.

"Are you sure?" Rodney asks and there is more making his voice crack than just sleep-induced hoarseness. He's asking John to be sure, because Rodney was before and he was wrong. He isn't sure of his own judgment anymore, relying on John or Elizabeth to make the ultimate decisions. He's been much better since they came back from Athos, been actually alive and even snapped and mocked, but it's still a far cry from the arrogance he once displayed.

It's a fair question, anyway, Elizabeth acknowledges. She's feeling certain it isn't safe and John's assurances are hollow, but she isn't the one Rodney's looking to for answers.

Atlantis – the AI, rather, since she's begun thinking of the city as separate from the machine mind – wants John in the chair, that's clear to Elizabeth. But whether the AI will welcome Rodney into the interface, with his artificial, half-power gene, is questionable, no matter what John thinks. Still, maybe the AI is as lonely as the rest of them and wants someone besides John to commune with and hear it. Her.  John calls it her. Atenë.  

With all the Ancients gone, Rodney with his artificial gene is the only other option Atenë has, since it won't even acknowledge Elizabeth's existence.

The question is what it will do once the AI finds out that Rodney's more or less an impostor.

John's hands close around Rodney's shoulder and his wrist. "Trust me." He looks less manic and more concerned for Rodney now. His hand lingers on Rodney's shoulder. "Trust me, I – I need you to do this. She needs you, too." His eyes hold a plea – like he's trying to save a lover from dying – that makes Elizabeth feel like an intruder just watching him. It makes her heart twist. 

He guides Rodney's hand to the chair's armrest and pushes him against the backrest. The room lights up. The crystal matrix behind Rodney's head lights blue.

Rodney's eyes fasten on John: tired, pleading, scared. John just nods and whispers quietly in Ancient. Elizabeth wonders when he learned Ancient and whether he even hears himself.

The chair reclines, the lights flicker and a low hum fills the room and spreads out into the halls. A few more seconds in which the control-chair glows brighter still and the hum of the city is like a heartbeat - then the interface moves, silver slipping around Rodney's wrists, clamping onto his head and sliding behind his eyes. Rodney convulses. No sound comes from his mouth, but his wide open eyes leak tears of pain even after he loses consciousness.

Or maybe his consciousness leaves his body. His eyes dilate the way John's did. He's so still, Elizabeth fears he's stopped breathing. But John's watching closely, standing beside the chair, and he'd see. Wouldn't he? She sighs as she sees Rodney's chest rise. He's still breathing.

Blood trickles from his eye. She's had enough. This is too dangerous. It's far different than having enough of the genes the Ancients had to activate their equipment. Rodney's human physiology isn't able to handle the stress of the interface. The chair is calibrated for the Ancients and John's the only one close enough to compensate for the differences. She suspects even the Ancients couldn't handle it or there would be more than one interface in the city.

"John, get him out of there," she demands.

John's staring at Rodney in the chair, rhythmically clenching and unclenching his hands. "What?"

He didn't even know she was there.

"Make it release him."

"I can't." He runs his hand over Rodney's cheek, wiping away the tears. "I swear he's not feeling any pain." His fingers pause over the threads of alloy at Rodney's temples, that creep into the corners of his eyes, stroking over them unconsciously, then smoothing Rodney's hair. It's a familiar touch. A lover's touch, and she knows suddenly: John and Rodney are sleeping together.

"It's hurting him."

Rodney's fingers are twitching. He tenses.

"Is this what I look like…?"

"Yes," she tells him, uncompromising. "Now make the damned AI release him. It could be doing irreversible damage. Do you want that?"

John sets one hand flat against the alloy next to Rodney's head, grimacing as it flows up and coils over his fingers, piercing into the back of his hand. His eyes flutter closed and the frown pleating his brows smoothes away into blankness. It perturbs Elizabeth. John's body is there, as is Rodney's, but they're not.

The lights flicker to the rhythm of a heartbeat, flaring into different colors that she's never seen Atlantis do before, the banks pulsing in a running pattern that she thinks might mean something. It's incomprehensible and frustrating, one light flaring on, mellow green, then off, followed by the one above it glowing rose, then a line of them on the opposite wall lighting blue, before turning off one at a time from top to bottom.

As the last one darkens, the interface withdraws from Rodney. The chair returns to upright. John sways and clutches at the back, while Rodney slumps to the side, blinking blearily before lifting his gaze to John.

"Wow," he croaks out. He swallows twice and tries again. "Wow, that was… incredible. She's incredible. I could have found out so much more, if you hadn't made me quit. Why'd you make me quit?"

John smiles at him.

"Elizabeth got worried." Steadier on his feet, he lets his hand drop down to Rodney's shoulder and squeezes. "I was too. I didn't know how creepy it looks from the outside."

Rodney's looking better with every second. Excitement gleams in his eyes. "I'm fine. I need to go back and learn what else she can teach me. There's a protected data cache, with information on ZPMs. It's part of her matrix."

John's nodding.

"ZPMs?" Elizabeth asks.

Rodney grins at her and nods himself, lit up and happy. "Yes!"

She realizes with a sinking feeling that the AI has the perfect bait to bring Rodney back to the chair over and over again.

~*~

She, they both say. They talk about her like a living being. Atenë. They sound hushed and awed but excited when they speak the AI's name, like infatuated teenagers.

John and Rodney have even more in common now, a fascination, no, she corrects herself, a love for the AI that leaves Elizabeth uncomfortable and unwanted.

She feels cold and nauseous when she watches John and Rodney sit next to each other, speaking about the AI with low voices; turned to each other, faces flushed and excited, their legs and hands surreptitiously touching. It's not much, but enough to cement her realization from earlier on. It's not the relationship that bothers her, she's not that petty.

They don't do it intentionally, she's sure of it, but she suddenly feels shut out, as if they're in a secret society that's denying her access.

Rodney's eyes are still glittering, animated and thrilled in a way she hasn't seen in weeks. John smiles at him, proud and happy, and Elizabeth feels something in her coil tight and painful at the emotions so plain on John's face.

No one looks at her, no one touches her like that, like John is with Rodney. Human beings aren't meant to be alone and she's that much more alone now that they're together. She misses Simon. Right now she misses the freedom and opportunity to go out and simply get laid, to satisfy her body at least.

They're drifting away from her; have been for a while now, and the gap is slowly but surely becoming insurmountable. She knows she lost John to the city when he first set foot in the control room of this Atlantis, but Rodney has been wary of the AI until now. Looking at him with John, listening to him, she realizes that is no longer true. She's alone now.

John laughs at something Rodney said. The sound chills her, makes her ache, only making it clearer just how left out she is, and she rises. Elizabeth pulls the loose cardigan tighter around her waist and leaves the common room without looking back, without hearing both men's questions.

It's moments like this when she regrets being too realistic to be religious. It would be so much easier to take this whole situation if she believed there was a deeper meaning behind it, some kind of a master-plan. If she could take this isolation as a god-given punishment for her sins, the loneliness she feels crushing her chest would have a meaning. But the way it is, she doesn't believe and is left to rely on herself and her own judgment to get through the days.

The bright feelings that followed the Athos mission have been tarnished. She shouldn't have expected them to last. Too much has happened. John and Rodney seem to have found a balance, but she hasn't, and doesn't think she will.

She's still flailing, trying to find a way to balance between guilt and progress. She's still looking back, like Lot's wife.

Her goal, the only thing keeping her sane, is to make sure that Arcturus can never happen again, in any way, shape or form. She isn't naïve enough to believe that destroying the installation is enough to eliminate its threat. As long as the AI knows about Doranda, as long as she and John and Rodney remember it, Arcturus remains a threat. She dismisses the thought – it's insane – that they should kill the AI, destroy Atlantis so that the expedition can never reach it, kill themselves… Rodney might joke that John has a death-wish, but John would fight tooth and claw to keep Rodney and the city safe. John would fight for Elizabeth, too, but he would never believe they could be a threat themselves, just by existing. While Rodney might understand, he'd never accept that solution. They'd both be right, of course. Thinking like that is madness. Yet, preventing Arcturus and undoing all their past mistakes is what keeps her going, especially now.

Stopping their future counterparts from accessing Arcturus is her priority, but she's glimpsing new threats, new dangers in Atlantis itself, in the form of the AI and the differences it will make for the expedition when they arrive. It's compromised John and Rodney already. It could do worse, much worse, in the future.

She can feel the AI watching as she walks through the corridors. She's studiously avoiding using the transporters alone since that first  incident, even though it means long treks through the city. At least the exercise she gets makes her tired enough to go to sleep immediately after she reaches her room. No more thoughts; loneliness is her blanket.

She's half asleep when she feels someone adjust the blanket over her shoulders. She slits her eyes open and thinks it must be a dream as Rodney smoothes her hair away from her cheek. There's a tall shadow in the doorway beyond him. She's so very tired that the worry on Rodney's face doesn't really register.

"Elizabeth?" That's John's voice, soft and concerned. She wishes he really sounded that way toward her.

"This can't go on," Rodney replies just as softly.

What? She wants to ask, but it's just a dream after all. They won't answer. They're not really here, they don't really care. She lets her eyes fall closed and sinks into a deeper, heavier sleep, escaping in the only way she can.


Fifteen hours in a puddle jumper with John isn't exactly terrible. Neither of them says anything about the downed Wraith supply ship, so conversation shifts to other things, like the Athosians' trouble with the Veneti and how long it will take to crack the ice surrounding the data cache with the ZPM information locked in Atenë's memory core. The AI helps, but some of the programming commands need to be input from physical locations in the city and thanks to the Ancients' paranoia, Atenë can only tell them so much. They're using energy just living in Atlantis, operating systems that in their original timeline had been dormant. Everything they do erodes how long the city can ultimately survive. They need to find a ZPM to supplement the three the city already has. Atenë has a list of places where they might find one, but even that is out of date, and they both know where they'll go first. Dagan. They've both been talking about it since returning from Doranda.

They fall silent for a while after that. Arcturus is always going to be a raw wound.

On impulse, Rodney reaches over and brushes his fingers over John's arm. There's no reason to pretend. They're discreet around Elizabeth out of courtesy, but they're alone in the jumper. It surprises John, he can see that, but then there's a smile, brief but bright, in response. But now, he's thinking about Elizabeth, who seems more and more distant from them both, and it worries him. Enough so that he's going to say something, no matter how awkward it is.

"She knows about us," he states. Us still sounds strange on his tongue.

He imagines Gall's ghost gagging behind him. He doesn't look. The only way to deal with the ghosts is to ignore them. He knows they're not real. Anything else threatens complete insanity.

John's hair is too long. It flips down over his eyes when he dips his head, and sticks damply to the back of his neck. It makes Rodney want to lift it away so he can read those shadowed hazel eyes. He doesn't, but he does set his hand on John's neck, resting it there and letting John's warmth soak into his palm. John stills for an instant, then tips his head back infinitesimally, silently signaling his pleasure in Rodney's touch.

"You've known her longer," John says at last. Under Rodney's hands, his muscles tense again. "Do you think it bothers her?" His eyes slide Rodney's way, then back to the front viewport. "Two guys?"

Rodney's still not positive it doesn't bother John. How can he know what Elizabeth really thinks? "No." He amends it. "I don't think so. She never had a problem with Cudmore and Salazar back in Antarctica."

"Oh."

He strokes his fingers absently against John's skin, memorizing its softness. "It's just not something she would have brought up with you," he says. "The US military has those idiotic rules. Even if you didn't agree with them, Elizabeth wouldn't put you in a position where you had to decide whether to enforce them or not."

"So, if it's not that…?"

He frowns. John's right. Something is eating away at Elizabeth. She's wound too tight, to a frightening degree. The last time she smiled was when they brought back the supplies from Athos, in the gate room. The shadows under her eyes are darker now than then, though she should be sleeping better. Rodney hasn't slept alone since that mission and John's presence keeps the nightmares away. He hasn't woken screaming since then.

Maybe that's it. She was there every night before he and John returned from Athos, out in the hall beyond the open door, while John held him together. And now, they close the doors.

"Maybe she feels shut out." Maybe, he doesn't say, she's jealous. He knows he would be, if it were her and John, with him on the outside. Not jealous, he reflects, alone, too alone, maybe that's what is affecting Elizabeth, the same way it did him, the way it did John, before John took one of his breathtaking chances and reached out. Isolation is a punishment, solitary the cruelest cell.

John tips his head, shifting Rodney's hand slightly. "Do you think ... should we… I don't know." His brows draw together and he looks embarrassed and uncertain. A flush colors his cheeks. Rodney found it endearing from the first that John, with his looks and brain and pilot's arrogance, is completely not suave. At least, not when he actually cares. He can be a charming, manipulative sonovabitch, but not with his real friends.

"What?"

"You were in love with her, weren't you?" John says it like it was obvious and one thing Rodney's sure of is that it wasn't, ever. But John has always been able to read him. John can read most people, it's how he deflects so well. Rodney knows he's gaping. John looks a little amused by that. "Come on, it's not a bad thing."

"No, but I wasn't in love," he tries to explain, putting it into words for John. He gestures at his chest. "My heart didn't race, I didn't get any more awkward around her. Not that Elizabeth isn't attractive or that I didn't want her, I'm perfectly normal in that respect… In other circumstances, of course, I'd think she was doable, but there's the matter of her being in charge, and in a relationship with some doctor, and sometimes I actually think before I say things that make women hate me."

John nods, seemingly satisfied. "Okay, Rodney, that's ...more detail than necessary."

"I asked her out once. She turned me down." She'd done it so deftly, he hadn't even felt rejected. She was involved already, with someone who wasn't part of the Stargate program. She was flattered, considering she wasn't blonde, she'd added with a smile that invited him to laugh with her. He'd been a little bit in love with Elizabeth for her brilliance and her beauty before that. He loved her for her kindness after. "I don't suppose that ever happened to you."

John chuckles. "I've had my share of strikeouts, Rodney."

Rodney wants to disbelieve him, but oddly, he doesn't. It proves his conviction that many, many people are too stupid to live, however.

"So," John says softly, "if you wanted to try again with her…" His voice trails away.

"What?"

"I wouldn't ... "

"Wouldn't what?" He's genuinely confused by John. He's confused by the whole conversation and feeling vaguely sick.

"I don't know. Mess it up. Get in the way," John says quickly, not looking at him.

"I'm not still in love with Elizabeth." With you, yes, but Rodney's not going to say that out loud. Guys don't. It would just feel too weird. They did, however, talk about sex. "So, what about you?" He crosses his arms. "Tell me you don't have a thing for her."

"I don't have a thing for her," John says agreeably. "I care about her." He makes a minor, pointless adjustment to the jumper's controls. "And it would be very, very easy to let it be more than that." The tips of his ears are turning pink, so something happened between them. John's not the kiss and tell type, though, so Rodney lets it go. Sometimes it's better not to push John.

"We need to do something for her."

He looks at John and tries to imagine him with Elizabeth. It isn't hard. It just makes his stomach drop sickeningly. Or it would, if he thought it meant giving John up. But John isn't talking about that, he's – rather awkwardly – suggesting Rodney pursue her. Or that they share. Rodney's not sure, because relationship stuff has always escaped him.

John glances at him, looking a little worried. "Rodney?"

"I'm thinking."

Elizabeth might not be interested in either of them… Except he's seen that flash of awareness in her eyes more than once. The circumstances that made her turn him down or put John off-limits certainly don't apply anymore. They have to ask her. Rodney cringes. That will be awkward, no matter what. Maybe they can sort of feel their way, hint…? He almost snorts at himself. Who is he kidding? He can't do subtle.

"You're always thinking. Let me know when you figure it out."

They're approaching the incapacitated defense satellite the way they did before and he concentrates on the sensor read-outs, putting aside the question of Elizabeth, looking for differences. It should be in better shape than it was ten thousand years later. He reads Ancient with the fluency of a native speaker now, too, thanks to Atenë, who also provided schematics and operations protocols on the weapons platform. All the information that would have saved Peter's life if they'd had it in the days when the Wraith were bearing down on Atlantis.

Peter's ghost hasn't appeared to him, of course. Peter was already dead when Rodney did the unthinkable. He takes a breath to thank his mind for not torturing him with Peter's presence, too.

"You okay?" John asks.

John always asks.

"Sure. Right as rain, fine and dandy, tiptop, A-one, better than the best, in fact."

Rodney always lies.

John's busy piloting them closer to the satellite and he doesn't answer, but it isn't necessary. John knows it's a lie, in that way that makes it not a lie, because neither of them ever takes the words at face value. John's question is a reminder to Rodney to get his head in the game. Rodney's answer lets John know where his head is at.

Rodney watches him, enjoying the play of John's hands over the controls, the concentration and ease John combines when he's flying anything. His gaze is drawn again to the way John's hair falls over his eyes. He isn't willing to let Elizabeth or Rodney near him with a scissors.

There's still a lot of debris in orbit with the satellite, just like Doranda, testament to just how much damage the defense station did along with its brethren before it was taken off-line. Ten thousand years later, it had been hard to grasp just how long and hard the Ancients fought the onslaught of the Wraith, when all that was left was ruins and legends. Now they're seeing the wreckage of the war still relatively fresh. A little over nine hundred years is nothing to the race that built the stargates, and a mayfly blink to the Wraith. John's keeping the jumper clear of the bigger chunks, but smaller pieces are flaring and burning against the shield like fourth of July sparklers.

"So, with Atenë's help, you think we could get the satellite back on-line for more than one strike?" Three different heads-up displays reflect over John's features, throwing the shadows of his lashes over his cheekbones. His lips quirk. In front of them, the satellite reflects sunlight from one side, almost too bright; opposite, the shadows are absolute.

"Of course."

John nods, one side of his smile kicking higher than the other; it's the one that says John is laughing at himself, too, somehow. There's no cataloging all of John's smiles, any more than there is defining what makes him more than just a handsome man.

"That would be good. We'll have to do that," he comments.

Rodney looks at the satellite. It looks like a Christmas tree ornament designed by H.R. Giger, all lethal spikes. Long-range sensors and weapons, shield generators and attitude adjusters; preserved in vacuum, and the damage from a lucky hit by the Wraith is a clear scar over its nearside face. If they'd known before… "I want to do that."

John's eyes slide toward him. "We will," he promises. His attention returns to the jumper. A graph display lights between them with a simple sine wave representing a transmission. John converts it into a sound and they both listen. There's something eerie about the endless modulation. It's the emergency beacon from the Wraith supply ship downed on the planet.

A thought changes the heads-up display to a grid overlay of the planet, one square brighter than the rest.

"Looks like it's on the night side this time. Ambient temperature is – ouch –minus three Celsius and dropping," John comments.

Rodney checks the sensors. "Fifty-seven hour planetary rotation makes for long days and nights by our standards. Plus the extreme axial tilt means the seasons are extreme too." He frowns at the display showing the Wraith ship. It's registering on a different set of sensors. "Oh, no."

John's head jerks around and his voice goes tight. "What?"

"They're alive."

"What?"

"The – the supplies," Rodney stutters. He looks at John in horror. "The life-sign detector is registering people on the ship."

"No," John says. "It's the Wraith. The crew – "

"People. People in cocoons show up. Hibernating Wraith don't," Rodney contradicts him.

John's just shaking his head. The jumper is hovering above one of the satellite's airlocks, waiting to dock. John looks bleak.

"We're here to inspect the satellite. That's it."

Rodney opens and closes his mouth twice before saying, "We have to get those people out."

John stares straight ahead. His knuckles are white.

"There's no way."

"No, we can't leave – "

"We can't."

John won't look at him, now that the soft, hoarse words are out and between them like some poisonous flower, filling the jumper with the sick perfume of exigency. Rodney can count John's heartbeat from the pulse in his long, bare neck. He can watch a muscle along John's jaw flex, watch John's Adam's apple work as he swallows. He always forgets how ruthless John really is. He can do so many, many things, but he can't save John from himself. And he wonders if this will be what finally breaks him.

"Rodney – "

There are limits. He rises from the co-pilot's chair. "I'm going aft and check the EVA suits." They're not EVA hard-suits from Earth. Atenë found them in storage for them and Rodney wants to go over them before he and John trust their lives to the unfamiliar Ancient technology.

"Rodney," and John's voice is desperate, cracking, he obviously needs Rodney to understand, but that isn't the problem, Rodney understands perfectly, he just is no longer capable of making that kind of decision, "Rodney ..."

"No. I know. But it isn't right."

John turns the pilot's chair and looks up at Rodney. "There are only two of us. We can't beat a ship full of Wraith, not up close, and those people are in cocoons. Paralyzed. What do you want me to do?"

It's his turn to look away.

"Do you want me to take us down there?" John demands. "Because it would be faster and more merciful if I put a bullet through your head and did the same for myself. And those people would die anyway. You know that."

"Maybe," he replies and adds the next, devastating words without thought, "I'm not Col. Sumner and I'm not like you."

He can only watch as John seems to even stop breathing. He can see the impact on John's face like the white imprint of a blow.

"Fine," he says tightly.

"John."

John shakes his head. He turns back to the controls. The heads-up display shows the stern of the jumper approaching the satellite's dock.

"John, don't…" Rodney doesn't even know what to say.

"Go check the suits. It will take a while to get the life support on line and the interior up to a temperature we can stand."

~*~

She sits in the common room, on one of the cream-colored couches, her knees drawn to her chest and a mug of Athosian tea cradled in her hands.

There is nothing to do but wait, unless she gates offworld – wouldn't that surprise the terrible two when they came back, if she was just not there – and she could, now that the dialing mechanism is severed from the AI's control. But she has no valid reason to leave Atlantis. She's safe here. She just doesn't feel that way. Elizabeth blows lightly on the surface of the hot tea and breathes in the little billows of scented steam.

She picks idly at the upholstery of the couch, digging her nails under the tweedy fabric. Not that it has any effect. This stuff is tough. It will still look pristine under the dust covers when the expedition arrives in the future. The Ancients built to last, even their furniture.

Elizabeth chuckles and leans her head back, admiring the geometric patterns of light and decoration on the ceiling. Atlantis has one thing in common with every city she's ever known: it is never completely dark, somewhere there is always something running, something with a telltale light lit. It's never utterly silent, but its noises aren't human noises, they aren't comforting

She has too much time to think these days and remembers when she never had enough hours in her days to do what needed to be done. The lack of paperwork, even the purely electronic kind, alone, frees up hours. Hours she's filled with too much speculation, about John and Rodney, about the AI, about the future: the one they mean to avert, the one they can shape, and, inevitably, their own, individual futures.

There are really only two options for them personally: stasis or leaving Atlantis.

John won't leave the city. Rodney won't leave John. When they've secured the city, they'll both go into stasis trusting the AI to guard them through the years of sleep. Elizabeth isn't so trusting. She's begun to worry about what happens when they wake. What place will they have, the three of them?

The tea tastes flat now, cooling in the cup – another item brought back from Athos, like the brilliant shawl draped over the back of her favorite chair and the carving one of the children gave John that sits on the corner table between the two couches. A dismantled life-sign detector on what they've designated their dining table is Rodney's mark. The common room is the only room that looks like humans live in the city.

They'll have to clean it up, restore it to the emptiness the Ancients left, before they… leave.

The paradoxes make her head hurt. They destroyed their universe, but were thrown back into its past, into a time while it still existed. So this is still their universe, yet they're changing everything, so that it won't be destroyed in the future. They won't be tossed into the past then, so how can they exist? Maybe they'll simply snap out of existence when the clock ticks over into the future after Arcturus, the one that didn't but now will happen? No entropic cascade failure because two versions of themselves exist in one universe, just poof – gone. Probably for the best, objectively. Cassandras, all three of them, or, no, Pandoras, with boxes full of forbidden knowledge, forbidden relationships, unforgivable choices made in untenable situations, the memory of lines crossed.

Like the AI… The Ancients couldn't have trusted it completely; they made sure it couldn't access some critical parts of the database itself, including everything they had on creating ZPMs. They made sure it would need them. It makes sure John and Rodney need it: symbiosis or vicious circle, depending on your point of view.

Sometimes Elizabeth wonders if Atlantis knows what John did in the future. Every time John gets out of the chair, the city's even more compliant, all but bends over backwards for him. But if it knows about John's role in saving it, it must know about hers, too, right?

Without her, Atlantis would have died in its sleep, when its shield failed and the drowning water flooded in. Without her, no expedition, no failsafe, no rising. That isn't pride, merely fact. Without her, without Daniel Jackson's translations, O'Neill's download of a database, Janus' timejumper, John's gene, Rodney's brain… A horseshoe takes more than one nail, but one nail gone and the shoe is lost. It's a better metaphor than anyone realizes.

She pushed for the expedition. Without her constant pressure and her winning arguments and her influence in the government, Atlantis would have slept on for thousands of years. John woke the city, but Elizabeth brought him to it. Doesn't that count at all? Doesn't the love she has for Atlantis count? She loved Atlantis once, even when they were struggling to survive, loved its opportunities and its wealth of knowledge, the elegant beauty and the feeling of home. Loved Atlantis that was, not this sunken, sullen incarnation.

"Atenë," she can hear John correct her. "Her name is Atenë."

Elizabeth sips from her tea and closes her eyes. "Atenë." She tries the name, tasting it, listening to the sound of the Ancient pronunciation. "Atenë." Again and again, until the name rolls from her tongue fluently. "Hello, Atenë."

The lights around her flicker, visible even through closed eyelids. A cool breeze touches her face, ruffles her hair and stirs goose flesh on her arms.

"Leave."

She snaps her eyes open, frowning. Mind playing tricks again, because she only heard the AI that one time and never since. Of course, maybe it only bothers with her when its favorites aren't available. No John or Rodney to lure into the chair and communion with it, just a lowly human.

God, lowly human, she's starting to think the way the Ancients did. Is this what is in store for the future they're trying to save? If so, then their efforts are just paving the road to a different hell.

Or hell is like Rome and all roads lead to it, all paradoxes solve for doom.

"Leave," she says out loud. "I wish I could."

She sets the cup down carefully, trying to keep her hand from shaking, but the pottery clatters against the tabletop. Her watch tells her they've been gone nineteen hours. Radio won't penetrate through atmosphere, ocean and shield, so there will be no check-ins.

Just the interminable waiting and the same sense of impending disaster she felt at least once before. She can't act, can't dispatch Lt. Ford in another jumper to provide back-up this time. Just wait.

"It's just you and me, Atenë. Want to chat?"

No answer.

No surprise.

~*~

The jumper mates with the airlock sweet as a kiss. The ring of metal on metal seems loud, but oddly dulled, the only air to carry the sound held within the jumper itself. Rodney busies himself with the EVA pressure suits. The Ancients' version looks a bit like a wetsuit, but heavier, white with fluorescent blue stripes, with heavy material reinforcing the arms and legs and a golden, polarized helmet that is completely clear from inside. His fingers fumble over the slick surfaces, checking the power packs, pressure settings, oxygen mix and recyclers the suits use in place of heavy tanks.

It strangled him, thinking of leaving those people to the nonexistent mercy of the Wraith, cut off his breath until his heartbeat boomed in his ears. He couldn't think of anything he and John could do, though, so he'd lashed out.

John's voice carried from the cabin, all business. "I've got the jumper's system linked to the satellite. There's power, but it will take twenty hours until the interior is warmed up and has atmosphere. We'll need to suit up, unless you want to wait."

The prospect of waiting, confined with John and his own conscience, is not to be borne. He'll say something stupid, something worse than he already has, and cut John deeper, just because he's crucified by his own helplessness. "No," Rodney replies.

He looks up as John joins him aft.

"Good, I don't feel like sitting, either." John's pretty much expressionless, quiet, the clearest indication he's still upset the way he stands at parade rest instead of slouching. That lasts until Rodney starts stripping. John watches, his nonexpression slowly sliding into questioning and then sardonic and amused.

Rodney points at the suits. "These suits aren't made to go over uniforms."

John considers them. "Fine." Without another word or glance at Rodney, he undresses, too. The energy packs and recyclers are built into the suits' backs, making them stiff and awkward to put on. It's either help each other or lie down like a beetle on its back and wriggle. They use the buddy system. Once they've both sealed up, except for their helmets, Rodney double-checks John's suit.

"Hold still."

"I thought you checked these already."

"I did. Now I'm checking again, because I actually give a damn whether something happens to you," Rodney snaps. "I'm funny that way."

John stops fidgeting. "Show me what to look for," he says, instead. Rodney tells him as he goes over seals fitting the gloves to the sleeves.

"Our headsets should work," he adds. "Remember to switch to send and receive before you put on your helmet."

"Yes, Mother."

Without thinking about it, Rodney gives the back of John's head a light thwap.

"You're going to pay for that later," John promises, a thread of laughter in his voice.

"I'm shaking in my boots."

John nods. "Okay, turn around so I can do this," he says. Rodney turns around. He can't really feel John's gloved hands moving over the recycler and the power pack, but he knows John is going over everything. He still trusts John and he thinks that, maybe, with the exception of the stupid thing he said earlier, John is starting to trust him again, too.

It's always easier to say these things when you don't have to look at someone, so Rodney forces the words out while John is behind him. "I, ah, I'm sorry. About," he waves one gloved hand, earning an annoyed grunt from John, who was checking the glove seal, "you know."

"No?"

"What I said," Rodney snaps. He's never liked apologizing. Why should he? In most instances, it's a waste of his valuable time, even if he has made a mistake.

John sighs. "You suck at apologies, Rodney." Which means he forgives Rodney. His hands on Rodney's shoulders urge him to turn around.

"I know. I don't get a great deal of practice, of course," Rodney babbles, because John's face is so close to his, all he can see are those eyes and John's mouth, "But I'm so good at so many other things, really, even I can't be perfect." He stops and bites his lip, thinking of talking too much to Allina, of Collins and Gall, of using John's friendship to get another chance at Arcturus.

"I know you're not Superman," John says, sounding exasperated. "Believe me, I know."

The EVA suits creak when John leans even closer, making them both jump. Rodney snorts out a huff of disgust and John's eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. Then John's mouth is smiling against Rodney's, soft, lips slanting over his, almost chaste, tantalizing and warm. He settles his hands on John's waist, lightly, sensation dimmed through the insulating layers of gloves and suit, so that he misses the warmth that usually radiates through John's clothes. John's kiss wanders from Rodney's mouth to his ear, warm breath against the lobe, and a barely there whisper.

"You and Elizabeth are all that matters to me." It sounds like an apology. Maybe it is. "Nothing else, just you."

It's easy just to turn his head and keep John from saying any more with another kiss; not because he doesn't want to hear it, it's almost too much, but Rodney knows that the more John opens up, the more he has to withdraw afterward. If John gives away much more, he's going to run away to the other side of the galaxy, and Rodney will have to hunt him down and drag him back to Atlantis.

The pressure suits creak again, squeaking against each other, and really there cannot be anything in the universe less convenient to wear while making out. At least, the Ancients' version doesn't include catheters. Even so, he's sorry to let his hands slide away from John's hips as they both step away from each other.

John's lips are just a little reddened. Watching him pick up the helmet of his suit and balance it on his fingers like a giant, gilt soap bubble, Rodney wishes they'd just had the guts to reach out and take this for themselves before. It's a fruitless wish. They were different people, with different responsibilities, before; friendship was all they'd shared then, fenced in by rules and duty and constantly surrounded by others. If they'd been closer than most friends, that happened with gate teams, and they'd never broken the unspoken rules. He still wishes for it, because they weren't so damaged then, and what they might have had wouldn't have been tainted by guilt and bitterness and ghosts. He picks up his own helmet and settles it over his head, after switching on his headset to send/receive, twisting and locking the base into the collar of his suit. A touch starts the air recycler and the internal temperature control activates automatically.

It's like looking at the world through heavily smoked sunglasses, everything is darker and tinged sepia. He can turn his head within the helmet to see, rather than reorient his entire body. He concentrates and the helmet's polarization lightens. A reduced, electric-green heads-up display floating in the upper left of his visual field gives his suit status. Sealed, twenty-eight hours breathable air, power pack at ninety-eight percent, external and internal suit temperature, external atmospheric pressure (sea level normal now, soon to be zilch when he enters the satellite airlock), it reports.

John slips on his helmet, sealing it to the rest of the suit. His face is locked away, hidden behind the blank gold mirror of the helmet.

"Rodney, do you copy?"

The tinny sound of John's voice from his radio earpiece snaps Rodney out of his odd funk.

"Loud and clear."

"Okay, let's get this done so we can go home." John picks up one of the toolkits they're going to use and hooks a tether to his suit. Then he hefts the larger of the two power generators they're going to need. A case of replacement crystals scavenged from Atlantis' stores is tucked between his elbow and his side.

Rodney lifts the case with the smaller power generator and another case of tools Atenë supplied from Atlantis' stores, and follows John into the satellite's lightless airlock. They have to open the first set of doors manually and the atmosphere from the jumper spills away in a hissing, frosty rush. The display in his helmet immediately registers the drop in external temperature and atmospheric pressure. Rodney doesn't need it to register the sudden disappearance of gravity once they're outside the jumper. He sets his foot down and shoots straight up, clanking his helmet against the ceiling. The tool case slips away from him, but he manages to keep the case of crystals and the generator. The tool case nudges his hip as he blinks in the absolute darkness. He can't see anything. His helmet would amplify ambient light, but there is nothing to amplify.

"Be careful," John warns him a beat too late, "you've still got mass and momentum."

"Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs," Rodney replies. Maneuvering in microgravity is not all fun and games, but he understands the forces at work, so he thinks he should be better at this than the average idiot. Knowing he's trapped in a small, black room with no oxygen doesn't do much for his claustrophobia, though. He breaks out in a sweat.

John pulls a chemical light from his toolkit and snaps it. The green-yellow glow illuminates the airlock's confines and eases Rodney's claustrophobia. John just lets the light go and it drifts slowly away from them.

Rodney lets go of the generator tentatively. It floats next to him. He grabs a handhold along the airlock wall and pulls himself over to the airlock controls, finding the access panel next to them where Atenë's schematics said it would be. Before he can fumble around for the toolkit, John is handing him what he needs to pry open the access. John activates another light, too, and situates it where Rodney can see inside the panel while he connects the temporary generator to the satellite's system.

John is also floating upside down in relation to Rodney's admittedly arbitrary orientation. And he's folded his lanky limbs into a half lotus as if to taunt Rodney. It's annoying and distracting. The lizard brain in the back of his skull is convinced John is going to fall any second. Splat. On his head. Which Rodney's gravity-trained instincts insist is a bad, bad thing. Of course, it is par for the course that John is one of those people who are completely at ease in zero gravity; John already thinks in three dimensions thanks to his training. It's still irritating.

"You're distracting," Rodney accuses.

It's disconcerting to not be able to see John's face, just the helmet, as he answers, drawling, "I try."

"Well, it would be a great deal more impressive, if I wasn't trying to concentrate, so we – we, of course, meaning I – could get this airlock open. Stop being upside down."

"Maybe you're the upside down one," John teases.

Rodney slots a lead into the gap left by a crystal he's just removed. "Sometimes I hate you," he says, and, "Switch on the generator." He knows what John is doing. He's keeping Rodney from thinking about the Wraith supply ship trapped on the planet below them, with its hungry crew and cargo of cocooned, doomed humans. Pretending everything is all right; because this is normal for them and the only things missing are Teyla and Ronon and someone shooting at them. He responds in kind, out of habit, and because John needs something to focus on, too.

John reaches out one arm, grasps a handhold above Rodney and effortlessly swings himself over Rodney in a cartwheel motion that brings him to the generator. He brakes his momentum with one boot against the wall, knee flexing and absorbing any excess kinetic energy, so that he stops exactly where he wants. It's beautiful, even in a less than aesthetic pressure suit. He brings the generator to humming life with a quick sequence of pressure pads touched.

The crystals in front of Rodney brighten into a typical blue glow. "Yes! Success!" Light panels follow, brightening the airlock to a dusk-blue level.

John's already policing up the tools floating around the airlock, replacing them in the kits. "I knew you could do it," he comments matter-of-factly.

"Of course, you did. When have I ever failed you…"

Doranda. He thinks it. He knows John remembers it.

John ignores that, points out the broad, orange arrows on the walls, all with the same orientation, and says, "Want to bet that there's artificial gravity on the other side of the lock and that that's down?"

"Do I look stupid?"

John's helmet turns toward him, blank and gold.

"Well, it's hard to tell."

"Just open the lock," Rodney says. He twists until his feet are pointing in the same direction as the arrows, though, because John's right. "There should be a control, something that sets how fast the gravity comes on, to avoid accidents."

John's already got the airlock cycling. "Yeah, it's here. I set it at twenty-five percent, increasing in increments of five."

"Good, good."

The doors in front of them slide open silently. They nudge the gear through and John closes the first set of doors behind them. It doesn't take long for the second set of doors to open, since there's no atmosphere to equalize yet. The dim blue emergency lighting and lack of weight make the interior of the satellite eerie. Rodney ignores it and makes sure their equipment settles to the floor without any jarring.

"Wow," John comments. His helmet is tipped back and Rodney remembers he never was aboard the satellite, before.

"Yes, it's actually rather remarkable, isn't it?"

There's just enough gravity to distinguish up from down now – his otoliths are grateful – and the core opens above them, shadowed and distant as the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral.

"Yeah."

"Well, enough gawping," he says, though he's smiling to himself, because John still hasn't lost that amazement at everything the Ancients did. It isn't awe, it's wonder, and John isn't afraid to let that show. "We have a weapons platform to fix."

"Yes, Sir," John drawls.

"Oh, I like the sound of that."

John's snort carries through the radio clearly.

They progress into the core in comfortable silence and hook up the second, stronger generator. John's quiet while Rodney works and three hours pass with only mutters and demands for various tools. Rodney hasn't quite got the feel for the size of his helmet. According to Rodney's suit, once he converts the Ancient readout in his head, the pressure outside has risen to approximately 0.154945435 atmospheres. The oxygen mix is still too low and the temperature is still in minus Celsius. It will be a while until they can take off even their helmets, no matter how much he wants his off.

He looks up too quickly and cracks his helmet against John's.

"Ow!"

"Ow? You didn't feel that."

"Did too," Rodney replies. "I may have a concussion." He glares, even though John can't see it.

John laughs softly. A moment later, he says, "So ... Did you figure it out?"

"Hunh?" Christ, he means how to approach Elizabeth or, really, whether Elizabeth wants to be approached, and no, Rodney doesn't have a clue. So he's probably going to say something that will tick off John or maybe Elizabeth, if he talks to her, or possibly manage a patented Rodney McKay two-for-one and annoy and disgust both of them. "Uhm."

"Elizabeth. Us. Brilliant plan, maybe, since you're the genius?" John's voice gives away a wealth of uncertainty.

"Right," Rodney agrees cautiously. His hands pause over the crystals he's pulling and replacing. "One of us? Both of us? Should… should we just talk to her?"

"I'm not…" John's voice trails away. "I don't want to make things worse for her."

"Okay, yes, that's not part of the plan."

"You have a plan?" John sounds relieved. His hand rests on Rodney's shoulder for a moment, squeezing.

"No, but when I do, that won't be part of it."

Softly, "Good."

"It might help if I didn't have to manually disconnect everything from Atenë's control to make sure it will work for Elizabeth," he says. "Think you could do something about that?"

John is still and quiet and probably denying the AI is thwarting Elizabeth at all. Maybe it isn't. More of Atenë's responses are hardwired, when it comes to equipment, than not. The Ancients didn't want their AI turning on them. Considering what the Wraith virus did on the Daedalus, it was a legitimate worry. They didn't want anyone besides themselves using their city or any of their technology, either, so they programmed Atenë to guard against intruders who weren't equipped with the gene. Locking Elizabeth out may be a cybernetic kneejerk reaction.

"I don't think so," John murmurs. "Sometimes, I think she wants to be the only woman in our lives."

Rodney privately agrees. The AI is more than a little possessive toward John, but he can sympathize. John is inordinately fond of Atenë, but she has no body, and John is too touch-hungry to devote himself to her only. And if John is still touch-hungry, what the hell must it be like for Elizabeth, living in complete isolation? They really need to do something, get her out of Atlantis, at least, even if she refuses the rest of their proposition. They left her behind when they went to Doranda and it's become habit since then, but it isn't necessary.

Elizabeth needs people and light and they need to stop taking her for granted. The first they can manage. The second requires a sensitivity he and John seem to lack.

"I should listen to her, shouldn't I?"

"Elizabeth? Yes, though the shock might do her permanent damage."

He turns his attention back to the display screen in front of him, comparing what the satellite says about its status with what Atenë hypothesized the problem was. He doesn't want to reproduce the overload that trapped Peter in the satellite. He really doesn't want to do an EVA if he doesn't have to, either, and it shouldn't be necessary since he has the right tools and all the time he needs to make the repairs this time.

According to the HUD in his helmet, the gravity is up to twenty-five percent of Atlantis normal – which is within ten pounds of Earth normal – and it feels like his muscles are suddenly seventy-five percent stronger. He keeps bouncing off things because he moves too fast. In other circumstances, it could be fun; he and John could play, but that's not going to happen now. There's too much to do. He consciously slows all of his movements.

Rodney traces one of the conduits that have been compromised. "Crap." To replace and test the crystal that controls it, he'll need to be in two places simultaneously. Well, that's what he has John along for.

"Problem, Rodney?"

"You could say that, since I'd need two of me to actually make this repair. The one system that could have used some redundancy, and the Ancients decided that would be too much trouble. This proves they were idiots, four-star purebred idiots complete with pedigrees and certificates of authenticity. Really, my cat was a better engineer. So was Kavanagh," Rodney gripes. He taps two different areas on the diagram displayed before him. "Look at that."

John leans over, hand braced on Rodney's shoulder, and studies the diagram. "Okay," he drawls. "Definitely further than you can reach."

"Listen, Reed Richards couldn't stretch that far."

John laughs quietly. Rodney wants to be done with this, out of this satellite and these damned suits that won't let him see John's face when he laughs, back in the jumper and on their way home to Atlantis and Elizabeth.

"I need you to climb up to the tertiary access," Rodney says. He points up the core. "You'll open the fourth access panel to the left of the ladder and replace the burnt-out crystal there. But only when I give you the okay. Some of the safeties seem to be off-line and it could overload again if power isn't shut off first. Got that?"

"Yes, Rodney," John says patiently.

"Yes, well, it's not terribly difficult, of course. You shouldn't have any problems. The crystal in question should be obvious, but if it isn't I'll coach you through it." He plucks a replacement from the case open in front of him and holds it. "Here, this is what you need. And tools, of course."

"Of course."

Sarcasm is the retreat of small minds, he's tempted to say, but knows John would roll his eyes.

"Yes, well, chop-chop, time's wasting, up you go."

John's shrug translates right through the heavy pressure suit, clearly saying Rodney is annoying and amusing in equal measure, but he'll go along without protest. He holds out his hand for the crystal, tucks it into a pocket on the leg of his suit, picks up the toolkit and loops the tether over his shoulder, then bounces – literally – over to the ladder stretching up into the core. He glides up the ladder with a floaty, fast grace that has Rodney's mouth hanging open, disappearing into the dim reaches of the core in seconds.

Rodney shakes it off and turns back to his own part of the repair. He double-checks the safety protocols, because another power overload would mean even more repairs, maybe even damage they couldn't fix at all. Everything checks out.

He disables the power feed through the tertiary access, watching as the warning overlay on the schematic blinks out. Everything should be safe now.

"John?"

"Okay, I'm at the access panel now," John's voice murmurs. "Just give me a second to get it – "

He hears the explosion through the radio earpiece in the same instant the display before him flares to a hazard red alert: safety protocols failed, power cut-off nonresponsive; the warning too late. He hears the sound of John's body hitting something, the air forced from his lungs, the whisper of oxygen mix rushing through a holed suit. His head jerks up and he follows the white form of John, falling. Sparks flare and die incredibly fast up the core, seeming to boil off a sizzling arc of blue power stretching from the tertiary access panel to the access ladder as the system overloads and shorts out again. Actinic ghosts burn his retinas, almost obscuring John, but Rodney's already moving as the generator burns out, shuts down, and everything snaps off. Two fading chemlights and the battery powered emergency lights are all that's left.

John falls so slowly, so very slowly, tumbling, a ghost-pale shape to Rodney's eyes. He has time to think: decompression isn't necessarily fatal, not if he moves fast enough, not if John's still alive. The interior already has some atmosphere; John's not being exposed to hard vacuum. The Ancients' pressure suits will restore pressure if the damage can be patched. John has maybe fifteen to twenty seconds before he passes out, the temperature's a factor, but hypothermia can be a positive in some circumstances. Oh God, oh God, oh God, please, no, not John, no, not John, please, please, please. This can't be happening. John's heart will go on beating for at least sixty seconds, even if he stops breathing. He'll probably start breathing again if he's repressurized before he goes asystole. Provided his lungs aren't a ruptured, bloody mess. No, please, no. John. Not like this. He thinks of that gasp and hopes that means John isn't trying to hold his breath; that will only do more harm to his lungs. And CNS damage, there's no real data on central nervous system damage, only two examples, but if John gets oxygen again, with any luck there won't be any permanent brain or nerve damage. Not dead, not that, please, not dead, not damaged, not John. No. Please. Oh God. And John is falling so slowly, it seems like – like the precious seconds are pouring away as his suited figure drops down the core and hits the floor.

In the next second, unmindful of any possible damage to John's back, because it won't matter if Rodney can't patch his suit, Rodney reaches him and rolls him over. There's a spidering crack over the side of John's helmet, frost forming around the cracks as water vapor lost from his lungs precipitates out as soon as the air leak encounters lower pressure outside it. A black burn scars the white and blue pressure suit along John's left side, his limbs are limp under Rodney's hands, head lolling like a broken doll; all Rodney can hear is his own harsh breathing, threatening to turn into sobs and he needs to stop it, he can't afford to hyperventilate, there's still a chance. He holds his breath and hears that telltale whistle through his earpiece; John's radio is still working and his suit is still leaking. The Ancients' pressure suits are much better than the ILC Dovers shuttle crews used, but they're not suits of armor. They don't require pre-breathing or an internal setting of one hundred percent oxygen, since they support a higher internal pressure than four point three psi despite the exterior pressure differential, but they do require suit integrity. There, low on John's side is a puncture breaching that integrity, and a piece of metal lodged in his side like a knife. Blood bubbles and freezes at the edges of the hole, vaporizing as it escapes.

He doesn't waste time trying to talk to John. He's tearing the pocket on his chest open, pulling out the emergency patch kit. With one jerk Rodney pulls the shrapnel loose from John's side, lifting John's body in an arch obscenely similar to the way his body bows when they make love, and there's blood boiling from the hole in his suit now. Rodney squirts epoxy into the hole, filling it, hoping some of it pushes through and fills the hole in John enough to slow the bleeding, because there's no way to bandage it, then he slaps a patch in place, holding it in place for a three-second count. He can't give it longer, because he has to move to John's helmet and pump more epoxy over the cracks, while praying they aren't spreading. He smoothes another patch over the golden material. The patch material is brilliant yellow, meant to stand out, and he's obscurely grateful the Ancients didn't use red – it would look too much like blood.

Somewhere outside him, outside his suit, there's sound: another alarm. The emergency lights pulsate. It finally makes its way through Rodney's head. It's a breach alarm. The satellite itself is losing atmosphere. Either the explosion threw shrapnel, or whatever caused the explosion.

He pushes any speculation to the side.

There's a port that lets him synch the two pressure suits' operating systems together, along with another that would let him mate his air recycler with John's to share oxygen. He pulls the lead from his suit and plugs it into John's, immediately receiving a download of the second suit's status parallel to his own. Pressure is already rising again now that the leaks are patched. He instructs the suit to up the mix to fifty-fifty nitrox, tagging it medical emergency. The suit shows him a third readout with John's respiration and heartbeat, both too fast, both beautiful and there. There's one instant of blinding, terrible relief, then Rodney forces himself to unhook the connection.

He lifts John's body, grateful the failure of the satellite's artificial gravity means decreasing and not increasing gravity, because John's all muscle and heavy for his size, and heads for the airlock and the jumper. John's helmet cracks against his and he tries to steady it, not wanting any more cracks to open, because the jumper is depressurized after opening into the airlock dock. The artificial gravity field is fading fast, but still extends to the docked jumper, unfortunately; it would be easier on John to tow him in zero gee.

The lock takes forever, trying to equalize the pressures and there's just no time for it. Rodney lets John down to the floor and hacks the airlock control, forcing both doors to open, venting a portion of the satellite's depleting atmosphere into the dock and open jumper. He absolutely does not care what kind of damage it will do when he undocks the jumper with the airlock bypassed and the satellite core open to space.

The alarm has escalated to a screaming siren as Rodney bends and picks John up as carefully as he can for a second time. The horrible thought that he may be carrying a corpse, that John could have stopped breathing since he unhooked their suits, runs through his head, along with that useless litany of denial that's been playing in the background of his mind since the explosion. Please, please, please. This can't happen. He carries John into the jumper and staggers under the sudden weight as the gravity field hits. He settles him on the deck, careful, careful, jostling him as little as possible. Pressure suits aren't meant for reclining, he can imagine the discomfort of being stretched over the bulk of the power pack and recycler. There's just no choice.

Rodney slaps the hatch control and heads for the cockpit while it's rising into position. John's radio is still working, so he begins talking, everything spilling out of his mouth in a torrent of barely reined-in panic.

"God, I don't know what else can go wrong, fifteen hours, you have to hold on, do you hear? The power was supposed to be off, maybe there was a micro-meteor, something, the system said the power was off, John, I'm so sorry – " He drops into the pilot's seat, leaning forward awkwardly because of his suit, and synchs his suit into the jumper's system, since it can't sense the ATA gene. The first command he gives it is to pressurize the interior and get the internal temperature up. He needs to get John out of the pressure suit and treat the shrapnel wound and any other damage. "God, I'm so sorry. It's like this damned satellite is cursed somehow."

The jumper green-lights as the hatch seals. Rodney pats the console in front him. "That's it, we're getting out of here right now." It's the jumper that brought them from Doranda the first time, John's favorite, and Rodney feels like it knows him better than any of the others, responding faster to his commands. "Screw it." His suit gloves slow his hands as he pilots the jumper away from the satellite. It tears loose of the docking seal with a grinding vibration that runs through the hull, leaving wreckage behind, the last remnants of atmosphere venting into space. Anyone wanting to access the satellite now will have to go EVA, all its seals are ripped loose.

"Okay, John, we're on our way back, do you hear? Fifteen hours and we'll be back in Atlantis. Elizabeth is going to be pissed. Just a minute and I'm going to come back there and check you again. So, you know, just relax, keep breathing."

Please, please, keep breathing, John.

He sets their course for home, top speed, cursing the distance under his breath, and activates the autopilot. What else, he thinks, and imagines John telling him: shield, cloak, and proximity alarm. His breathing is harsh in his own ears, accentuated by the confines of his helmet. He switches on each system and eyes the graph on the heads-up display, waiting impatiently for it to say there's enough atmosphere to get John out of the pressure suit. It's edging up but so slow.

He forgets the lead plugging his suit into the jumper systems and nearly jerks it in two when he stands up. He gets it unplugged and pushes himself straight. "Just a little longer."

A gurgling sound in his earpiece has him bolting aft. John is twitching, hands moving but uncoordinated, breathing suddenly loud and wet. He's trying to get the helmet off.

"No, no, no," Rodney blurts, dropping to his knees on the deck and catching John's hands. "Don't do that, not yet, there's not enough air in here yet. John, you've got to just stay still, just wait, I know you're hurt, but if you crack your pressure suit now, it's only going to be worse. Just, you have to listen to me now, you have to trust me, I know what I'm doing, I'm going to take care of you."

John's hands jerk against him weakly and Rodney tries to hold on without hurting him; it takes frighteningly little effort. "Sh, sh, just breathe through it, and, ah, listen to my voice. Not much longer, as soon as the jumper is pressurized, I'll get you out of there, it's okay, you're going to be okay. I mean, you've got a hole in your side, but you're tough, right? You're the guy with the high pain threshold, remember?"

John's right hand bats at him.

"Oh, ah, sorry, I don't suppose that really helped, did it? Okay, okay, when we get back, there will be painkillers! Lots of wonderful, mind-numbing drugs. That sounds good, doesn't it? I could use a sedative right now, myself. Seriously, why did we never stock the jumpers with better drugs? It was that power-mad, sheep-shagging Scot, he didn't trust us with the good stuff. Kept it all for himself and his staff of frozen-handed sadists."

A bubbly noise that might be laughter or a protest greets that sally. Rodney lets go of John's left hand and awkwardly pats his shoulder. John sinks back against the deck, not fighting him any longer.

"Really," Rodney goes on, "voodoo, it's all voodoo, soft sciences, biology, chicken guts and dancing naked under the full moon. You can never pin down a doctor, unless it's to declare someone dead. Hah! And they're even wrong some of the time then! Oops, well, it's not like we have a doctor, but that's fine, because there's nothing wrong with you that we can't fix in the Atlantis infirmary. I did think about going into medicine once, you know, but there were just so many diseases and I could imagine myself contracting all of them. I know, hard to believe, Rodney McKay, hypochondriac, but it's true."

"'ney."

Breathless and pained.

"Just a little longer, John, I promise." Just fifteen interminable hours. He's seen John dying in the back of a jumper before, he's seen him dead, but if he has to see it again, Rodney's going to sit down and just stop. He isn't going to scream or cry or kill himself. He's just going to fucking stop, because that will be it. Snap. He's already crazy, if he turns his head, he's sure he'll see Teyla kneeling on the floor and Ford up by the cockpit. That will be it, if John joins those ghosts, Rodney's giving up.

John's helmet moves, side to side, and Rodney doesn't know if he's miming no or thrashing his head from side to side inside it. He keeps one hand lightly on John's shoulder.

He checks the suit HUD. Air pressure in the jumper is almost up to sea level normal, oxygen at thirty-five percent. Almost there.

"Just stay right here, John. I'm getting the medical kit. As soon as we get your helmet off, I'm putting you on straight oxygen, so I've got to get the tank and the mask."

He's suiting action to words and thoughtlessly detouring around Ford's phantom, when John makes another questioning noise.

"What?"

He looks over his shoulder and John's making an anemic gesture that encompasses Rodney's strange perambulation of the jumper's interior.

"Oh, for God's sake, fine. You want to know about that?"

"'es."

"Stop talking, it sounds terrible. I'll tell you. Just a minute."

He pulls down the emergency medical kit and pulls out the oxygen bottle and mask. There's an ambu bag, morphine that he doesn't dare administer to John's compromised system, bandages, burn ointments, antiseptic wash. What he really wants is a dehydrated doctor. Just add water and voila! Aspirin, tape, laxative – who in hell packed this thing, he wonders – rubbing alcohol, thermometer, scissors, trach tube, scalpels and forceps in sterile seals, caffeine tablets, salt tablets, gloves, suture needles… Rodney desperately holds back the impulse to throw the entire kit at a wall.

"Crap, crap, crap," he mutters to himself and slaps a glove against the face of his helmet.

Okay, oxygen and antiseptic wash and bandages. He doesn't have to be a doctor to use those. He'll tape John together, get him back to Atlantis and Elizabeth will figure out what to do in the infirmary.

John lifts his hand as if to urge him on.

Humor, humor would be good. Make John laugh. Well, distract him, at least. Annoy him into staying alive.

"You know, when you wave your hand like that, it looks really, really gay?"

John gestures.

"Oh, very mature. Besides, I don't think that's happening in the near future."

John doesn't make any reply, either motion or noise, and Rodney feels like his heart might stop in his chest. He checks the pressure again. It's not as high as he wants, but he's afraid to wait any longer. He begins with John's helmet, releasing the seals and awkwardly lifting it away.

"John?"

John's face has a cyanotic pallor that sends a fresh rush of fear through Rodney. There's scarlet blood running from John's mouth, bubbling at his nostrils and caking in his stubble, trickling down his cheeks and into his ears. Rodney hopes it's running into his ears and not out. His eyes are closed, lashes stuck together in wet clumps. Rodney reaches for his cheek and sees the thick, white glove still on his hand. With a curse, he rips the seals on the glove open and tears it off, followed by the other. The jumper's still cold and it chills his fingers immediately.

"Damn it," he mutters as he fumbles the oxygen mask onto John's face and opens the valve on the tank. John's cheek is cold under his fingers, but water vapor mists the inside of the clear plastic. "Oh, thank God." Rodney squeezes his eyes shut for a second, his hand still on John's face, unconsciously stroking the skin in front of John's ear, just under his sideburns, rubbing away flakes of blood, his knuckles bumping against the radio mic still attached to John's earpiece. Each bump is twinned with a thunking sound in his own earpiece, painfully loud.

He pulls himself together enough to secure the oxygen mask in place. He decides to leave the radio headset. The mic will pick up any noise John makes, if his breathing changes or he tries to talk again.

He roughly releases and gets out of his own helmet, sending it rolling toward the hatch without any care.

Exhaustion overwhelms him for a moment and he drops his face into his hands, shoulders bowing. Just for a second, then Rodney's moving again, getting out of his pressure suit and into a pair of pants, then stripping John's pressure suit off too, talking the whole time, describing what he's doing, biting back a sound of dismay when he gets to the hole in John's side. John doesn't come around again until Rodney's dousing the wound with antiseptic, then he arches off the deck like he's being electrocuted. He cries out and a fine mist of blood spatters the inside of the oxygen mask.

His eyes open too and Rodney sees the whites are stained red with burst blood vessels. It's ugly, but not the worst; he knows John was seeing earlier and even retinal hemorrhages will clear up, as long as John lives. He's not going to be blind.

"Hold still, hold still, you're making it worse," he says, trying to calm John down, but John's fighting him now, fighting someone, gasping, trying to yell. He's hurting and he's somewhere in his head, not in the jumper with Rodney at all. Rodney grabs a thermal blanket and wraps it around John, lies down on the floor with him and wraps himself around the blanketed form, holding John, babbling, trying to get through the hallucinations with words and contact.

"I don't know what you're seeing, but it's not real, John. I know. I really know," Rodney tells him. "I see things all the time. Dead people. My ghosts. But they're not real, John, I know they're not real, they're just my mind punishing me." John's rigid in his arms, shaking, gasping and coughing, and Rodney runs a hand over John's chest, presses John's back to his chest and keeps talking. "They can't touch me and they can't touch you. Just listen. You're here, you're with me, you've got to calm down, you're only hurting yourself. Trust me, just trust me, listen to me, there's no one here but me and you, we're in the jumper and you're hurt. I've got to get a bandage on that wound, because you're bleeding all over, but it's going to be okay." John is still coughing and shaking, but he isn't trying to fight his way loose anymore. "I swear, I'm going to take care of you, you've got to just let me, let me take care of you…"

He keeps talking hour after hour, watching the blood seep through the bandage he tapes over John's side, holding on through the coughing fits that get longer and harder each time, turning up the heat in the jumper high enough that the sweat is running off him, while John gets colder and colder.

"You don't get to do this to me, John. You don't get to be one of the ghosts. Not you."

John mumbles something Rodney can't make out through the oxygen mask. He's in and out of consciousness, alternating between combative and quiet, but increasingly dazed.

"I don't hear them, you know. Just see them. It's almost nice, because I miss them, Teyla and Ronon and Radek. Carson. God, I miss Carson right now. I'd trade all the coffee in the universe to have him waiting for us in the gate room, the grubbiest damn doctor, I'd swear the man never heard of a razor."

John doubles over and Rodney ends up keeping him from rolling on his stomach, one arm tight around John's chest, one hand holding the oxygen mask away from John's mouth, while John vomits blood-laced bile. His breathing is getting worse, his breath fast and shallow and harsh. His lips are going blue. Rodney turns up the oxygen again. It isn't going to last until they reach Atlantis if it has to be turned up to one hundred percent.

And if it does, if John holds on until they reach Atlantis?

He doesn't know.

"And I can't touch them, I can't hold them," Rodney whispers, fitting the mask back over John's face, then stroking sweaty hair back from John's forehead, not sure John can still hear him. "They're just in my head and I need you to be here. Don't go away, John. Don't leave me behind."

Rodney keeps talking, his voice getting hoarser, throat raw and aching, because he's afraid to stop.

The proximity alarm begins to hoot. Their beautiful blue-green waterworld gleams in the distance, approaching fast, a bright glimpse through the jumper's front viewport, turning in its twenty-eight hour cycle, orbiting a sun that is older and larger than Sol. Heinlein wrote of the green hills of Earth as every man's home, but it's Atlantis' blue waves, blue depths and blue skies that are home now. The curve of the planet fills the screen, then they're slipping through the outer atmosphere, down to the glittering ocean. The jumper sinks through the water in submersible mode, meshing its shield with the city's on approach and sinking down to the jumper bay's open roof once it's inside. Rodney's emotions are so strong, the jumper jitters in response.

Fifteen long hours have passed.

John is still breathing.

~*~

The incoming vehicle alert jolts her out of a light doze. She slaps a hand to her headset as she heads for the jumper bay, but the radio just hisses static.

The jumper skids to a jerky stop and Elizabeth sees through the viewport that Rodney is flying it, not John.

Her pulse quickens unpleasantly. John never lets Rodney take over during the final approach, and the fact that Rodney is flying it now can only mean one thing – something has happened to John.

The jumper doesn't glide smoothly to its recharging bay, it slams down in the center of the hangar, the sleek little ship suddenly appearing monstrous. It has taken damage, bright raw scars of sublimated metal mar its hull.

She can see Rodney's retreating back through the viewport. The rear hatch opens with a loud hiss.

"Elizabeth!" she hears Rodney shout, words doubled in her ear and through the radio, "Gurney," and there's something flat and terrified in his voice.

The gurney… They have one in the gate room, one in the jumper bay, both taken from the infirmary after they had to carry John there from the chair room. It was Elizabeth's idea. Sooner or later, they knew it would be necessary. They just do the running into trouble thing too well.

She turns on her heel and heads for the gurney, grabbing it while her mind races, cataloguing what could have happened – the possibilities are endless – while her heart beats hard and fast with this latest dose of adrenaline. God, John. She clenches her hands on the gurney's edge and pushes. Whatever happened, Rodney will be pushed to the edge, if he's not wounded, too. She can have her own breakdown later – she's been promising herself that since the first day in Atlantis that was and hasn't had it yet.

The gurney wheels screech, echoing off the walls of the bay, one of the wheels squealing and turning to the side so that it drags the gurney to the side. Rodney's whispering voice is audible over breathing that sounds uncomfortably labored and rattling. "Don't you dare, you stupid bastard. Don't you dare." Then, louder, desperate: "Elizabeth, hurry, please!"

She steels herself for what she's about to see, and still it doesn't help. Two pressure suits are lying in crumpled disarray on the floor of the jumper. A helmet has rolled out the open hatch to the gate room floor. The interior smells: sweat, fear, the sharp whiff of vomit, the cloying reek of blood. John lies on one of the deck, wrapped in silver thermal blankets, his face half hidden by an oxygen mask. The contents of the emergency medical kit are scattered everywhere.

Damn.

The gurney wheel jams against the ramp lip. She jerks the entire thing up viciously, slamming it back down with a harsh clatter that snaps Rodney's head toward her. "Thank God. Did you stop for coffee?"

She doesn't answer, knows that his initial panic response is anger.

She shoves the gurney the rest of the way inside, running over a discarded glove.

"Tell me what happened," she asks.

Her hands lock the gurney brake while she's calculating the fastest way to get John to the infirmary. The transporters, of course, no need to use the stairs with two active ATA genes with her, even if John is unconscious.

"Do you want a full medical status? Fine," Rodney snaps. "His suit ruptured. He fell. He's unconscious, I think his lungs are filling with blood, and he can barely breathe even with pure oxygen. Is that enough for you?"

Despite her vow to not let herself respond in kind, she can't let him walk all over her. "Rodney!" His gaze snaps to her face at the acidity in her voice. "Enough!"

He falters, the cardhouse of anger around him crumbling and falling apart. The raw agony on Rodney's face is one more reason there are rules against fraternization, not that they ever work. It pains her to see him like this. She'd like to assure him John will be all right, but she has no idea how.

"Rodney – " Nothing comforting comes to mind. She's always had a horrible bedside manner, uneasy and forced. She tries to sound calm, at least. "Help me get him onto the gurney."

"Right, right," he agrees. Not even yelling anymore and that's a bad sign.

She feels none of the confidence she's putting up front, but her cool, commanding tone seems to calm Rodney momentarily.

They lift John carefully and Elizabeth has to fight down the nausea that rises. "Are you injured? There's –"

"It's John's," Rodney interrupts her and she has never heard his voice so toneless, so full of disinterest for someone expressing concern for him.

Brake off, start pushing, with Rodney on the other side, steadying John's limp form. They're only minutes from the infirmary. It will be all right. She repeats that to herself. The gurney wheel squeals and Elizabeth curses it, trying to steer it steadily down the ramp.

"What happened?" she asks again, tone still much cooler than she feels.

"There was an overload, the safety protocols went off-line, a great fucking piece of metal went through him," Rodney spits, temper returning. His hand is still on John's bare shoulder. He pulls the blanket higher. "He's cold."

"Then quit complaining and help me push this thing faster," she snaps back.

Fifteen hours by puddle jumper. Fifteen hours.

Rodney begins pushing with her, his face set, looking fifteen years older.

John's breathing hitches and stop-starts.

Elizabeth pushes harder.

~*~

The AI has been monitoring them. The transporter door is open well before Rodney is within activation distance. The auto-healer is active before they reach the infirmary. Maybe it senses how hurt John is. The instant they lower him onto the diagnostic bed, it's sliding him inside, moving before their hands have left John's body. Rodney keeps his hand on John's shoulder until he's out of reach, then stands with that same hand pressed flat against the wall. Elizabeth sinks back against one of the consoles, shocked and feeling her hands beginning to shake now they're not occupied. She wishes for Carson, for his comforting brogue and his kind eyes.

"He's – I didn't know what else to do – it was hours and hours, I – what do I do now?" Rodney blurts out, turning toward her.

His shirt is spattered with John's blood. It's on his hands. There are speckles of it on his face, freckling against the gunmetal shadow of his beard. He's pasty and shaking, too.

She needs to get Rodney out of here. There's nothing to do but wait, but if she doesn't get him moving while he's still lost and compliant, it will be impossible to shift him. If she waits, Rodney's going to start trying to access the computers and she'll never drag him away from the infirmary.

She reaches for Rodney's arm. "Rodney, you need to get cleaned up and eat something."

"No, no, no, I need to – "

"You need to calm down."

"I am calm. I am," he protests. He's completely unaware of the shudders running though his frame, the sweat standing out on his forehead, the way his voice rises with each word. "I should – " He looks at the auto-healer readout and blinks rapidly. "I – I don't know. Something?"

Elizabeth tugs him toward the doors. After balking for an instant, he follows. The infirmary doors snap shut behind them. Rodney spins.

"What?"

She watches in dismay as the doors refuse to open for him.

"Oh, this, this is unacceptable." He lifts his eyes toward the ceiling. "Do you hear me? This is not acceptable behavior! You can't keep him to yourself! This is not my fault. I won't just leave him. I can't – " He chokes and raises his hand to his face. "I can't."

The doors remain closed. Down the corridor, the transporter doors open. It makes Elizabeth twitch. She takes a step closer to Rodney. He pounds a fist on the door, making her jump back.

"Open the door." Another beat of fist against metal, and Elizabeth thinks how it must hurt, how he could break his fingers doing this. "Open the fucking door!"

There is no reaction, the door stays closed. He lets his forehead sink against the cold metal. "Damn it, , Atenë, please."

Elizabeth rests her hand on his shoulder and tugs him back.

"Why?" he demands. "Why are you doing this?"

She wanted to get him to the common room or his bedroom before the meltdown. Too late. Maybe she can get him moving again.

"Rodney."

"Elizabeth," he whispers. "I don't understand. Why is she locking me out?"

"Can the AI understand you?" Elizabeth asks, hoping the question will distract him.

"Of course. There are audio sensors in all the corridors and she's picked up English from John and myself. I just can't understand her without using the command chair." He stops, then snaps his fingers. "The command chair. Of course."

"Are you insane?" she snaps before thinking. "The chair?"

He looks at her in surprise, as though he can't believe she hasn't followed his line of thought. Blinks and focuses. "I need to use the interface to find out what Atenë is doing." He turns on his heel and starts toward the open transporter, walking fast.

He looks back. "Well? Let's go."

"Stop." She clenches her fists at her side and her scalp prickles with anger. "Damn it, Rodney, stop!"

He's still walking, trotting really, toward the transporter.

Elizabeth sprints after him, positions herself between Rodney and the transporter door, arms crossed in front of her. "I'm not letting you do this. Don't you dare use the command chair."

"Elizabeth – "

If he really wanted to use it, she knows that the only way she could stop him would be with a gun pointed at his chest. The fact that he has stopped, though, and isn't advancing further tells her what she needs to know. Not much longer now. "At least wait. You're in no shape to use it now."

She can see the exhaustion catching up to him in just this moment of not pushing forward. She sees his shoulders slump.

"Promise me," she insists.

He squeezes his eyes shut and, finally, nods.

~*~

Rodney falls apart by the time they reach his quarters. The shaking slowly gets worse, almost imperceptibly, so that she barely pays it any heed at first.

She moves to the table to get him a glass of water from the pitcher there, but when she turns back, he is huddled over, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, quaking as though caught in a bitter cold wind.

"Rodney?" She approaches him carefully, places a hand on his shoulder and feels the trembling travel up her arm. There's sweat collecting at his temples. He's breathing too fast.

Elizabeth crouches in front of him. "Rodney, look at me."

He doesn't react and she closes her hands around his wrists, pulling his hands away from his face. "Look at me."

His hands are trembling against her forearms. It takes him forever to raise his head.

When he finally does it's hard not to recoil. His face pale as a Wraith, his mouth turned down and his eyes are… they're bottomless. There's so much hopelessness in them that it stands between them like a living, breathing thing.

Her thumbs glide over his wrists, trying to soothe, trying to make sure that he knows she's here and not leaving. Trying to convince herself that he's still with her.

"What happened?" It's the third time she's asking this question. Maybe this time he'll answer.

His gaze darts across the room, away from her, fever-bright in that way she remembers from their first day here. He tries to speak, but no sound makes it past his lips. He swallows and at long last says, hoarsely: "It should've been all right. The power was off. I swear Elizabeth, I'd never…"

Appeals for an absolution aren't what she wanted from him; yet she knows this may be all she'll get for now, so she says: "I know you didn't."

He moves suddenly and twists his wrists out of her grip. "No, damn it, I did. I did. You think I've forgotten? People are dead because of me, because I was wrong before, how can that possibly okay? Even when I'm right, when… The access panel should have been safe, damn it. Why wasn't it safe?"

Elizabeth has no answer for that, so she just rests her hands on his knees, letting the warmth from her palms seep into his cold skin.

"I don't think I can do it anymore," Rodney says after a while, his head bowed again and almost touching her forehead.

"I… I can't do this here without either of you, and when John… "

Fifteen hours, with John closer to death than to life, Elizabeth remembers. Rodney must have gone through hell.

"John will be all right. You did everything right." She takes a deep breath and the rest of the sentence passes her lips: "Have faith in Atenë. She'll do the rest."


Atenë keeps the door to the infirmary stubbornly locked and there is nothing short of hacking the door mechanism that Rodney can do to get into the infirmary. He spends an hour planning his assault before stopping in terror that he'll interrupt the power to the auto-healer.

His nightmares return, worse than before. Rodney wakes up screaming again and crying. He's nowhere near to coming to terms with what he has done.

His happiness with John has been nothing but a buffer zone. His ghosts are still there. Dozens of them are crowding around his bed, staring at him.

Rodney shivers and curls in on himself, trying to ignore them. He can't make them leave, though, isn't strong enough to do so without John.

And John… John is in the infirmary, hovering between life and death, with Atenë locking him up. The AI doesn't even let Rodney visit.

Rodney wouldn't have left the infirmary on his own, that much is certain. He would have stayed with John the entire time to make sure he didn't miss a thing John might need, and John, even unconscious, would have kept the ghosts at bay.

But Rodney knows that Elizabeth had been right in making him leave.

It's the best for John, the best for him, too, but the ghosts around his bed are mocking him, mouths moving soundlessly and twisting into derisive smiles, moving closer, getting into his bed, transparent, impalpable hands reaching for him.

Rodney uncurls and scrambles backward, swatting at Simpson and Carter and Teyla. The sheets tangle around his legs and he tumbles from the bed, falling onto his back. Pain shoots up his spine.

Cold sweat breaks out all over his body. Carson crouches next to him, examining him intently. Simpson laughs. Carter and Teyla look at him from the bed, rolling their eyes. Lorne and Bates step closer still, crowd him, advance further until they're almost touching him.

Rodney tries to edge back but the tangled sheets prevent him from getting away and he starts thrashing in earnest. A scream builds deep down in his throat. He isn't sure how much longer he can take this without ... without…

"Stop, I can't, can't –"

Before the words can become a scream, very real hands catch his flailing arms and he recognizes Elizabeth among the phantoms: Elizabeth. The ghosts make way for her, stepping back.

She doesn't say a word, only untangles the sheets from around his feet and then wraps her arms around him the way John has done countless times before. It feels different, it's all one way with Elizabeth. Her hug even smells different – like that little blue flower that grows in tangled vines near the water on Athos – but right now, Rodney doesn't care about the differences. He clings to her, shivering, hiding his face in the crook of her shoulder.

Sometime during the night, they migrate to the bed. Elizabeth lies beside him, her hand holding his, keeping him safe. The ghosts don't return.

~*~

Elizabeth wakes slowly from a light sleep. Caught somewhere between dream and reality, she's too tired to move or check the time or even open her eyes.

Rodney is still with her, she can feel and hear him breathe, his arm on her heavy over her waist. His body radiates heat. A little more awake now, she runs her hand along the line of his shoulder and his side, noticing the changes. Rodney has lost weight during their stay here, they all have, but it's not all that prominent on him, his body still has the heavy set that Elizabeth prefers in men.

She knows that back on the Atlantis that was, almost everyone thought that she was having an affair with Sheppard, or was at least infatuated. The truth is that while she liked John, she had never gone for the lanky, slim types. Simon had been built more like Rodney, shoulders broad and back strong, muscles heavy under warm skin, all but overpowering her when he slid into her. She shifts uncomfortably when those memories begin to surface, reminding her painfully of just how long ago her last sexual encounter was.

It's nothing she usually thinks about. Before, there was no one she could have even considered, and here… John and Rodney are off-limits. Would be, even if they weren't together. Although she wonders at that - there have been no significant changes to the way they treat her, apart from the closed doors at night, so who is to say that it would have been different if it had been John and her who had paired off? Or Rodney and her?

Spending these nights here with Rodney, even if it's just to stop the nightmares from returning, has showed her just how much she misses the steady sound of someone else breathing next to her, the heavy feel of arms draped over her. The warmth and safety springing from such closeness.

Rodney's breath is warm against her collarbone and the way his arm tightens on her waist is almost possessive. Elizabeth shifts closer to him, to the comfort he offers her touch-deprived body. She would never ask for it during the day, because, especially now, Rodney needs her to be strong. But during the night, maybe, just for a few moments, she wants to let go. To accept what his body offers hers.

Rodney shifts as well, with a small half-snore, and pulls her closer to him still. His leg slides over both of hers.

They're chest to chest now, hip to hip and Elizabeth can feel… Rodney's breathing is even, he's still fast asleep. He is also half-hard against her leg.

She exhales carefully, not quite knowing what to do. She's sure Rodney is dreaming about John. But he's still asleep and doesn't move away from her. She should shift away. She will. Just in another breath, another moment, but as long as he's asleep, it doesn't hurt anyone.

Rodney begins to move then, the hands that had been pulling her closer now begin to roam, sleep-slow. She shivers when he threads one hand under her shirt and touches bare skin. Small circles on her back and his hands are warm. Her breathing picks up. She really should do something, wake him, push him away.

But she's been starving for touch for months now, and even though she knows Rodney's with her in his dream, she lets herself believe for a moment. Imagines that he's touching her with intent, that brilliant mind fully set on her. Rodney's hips are moving now, too, slow, too slow friction against her groin. She wants to touch him as well, but doesn't dare. When he wakes up, he'll be disgusted with her for not putting a stop to this. Better let his dream come to an end and move away then.

She lets herself shift closer though, lets instinct align their bodies, and inhales the scent of him, the clean, earthy, warm scent of a man. God, it's been so long, and he's broad and heavy and it's good. He's good. He thumbs her nipple and she can feel it between her legs, a hollow ache.

He finds her face with one hand and then kisses her, languid, drowsy, sucking gently on her lip, his thumb brushing over her cheekbone in a lazy caress. For just a moment, Elizabeth lets herself kiss Rodney back, then she pulls away, flattening her hands against his chest.

Rodney's eyes blink open, confused, and he licks his lips. "Elizabeth?"

She's still close enough to feel the heat from his body, the pressure of his erection against her through their night clothes. She buries the impulse to move against him, to kiss him again, to draw him to her while he's vulnerable. "You were dreaming."

"Oh."

For a long moment, he doesn't move. Elizabeth waits, holding her breath.

"John," he says, flushing red and inching away from her in the bed. "I was dreaming of…"

"It's okay."

"I need him back."

"We both do," she says, and pats his shoulder.

~*~
Dreaming of John's hands and mouth, of running his hands over the long lines and angles, of the way his mouth is soft and eager when they kiss, the way John gives himself over to it and still looks amazed by everything they do together, like Rodney's the gift. There's nothing hotter than the little, choked-back noises John makes when Rodney pushes him beyond his control. Except the whispers against Rodney's chest and the crook of his neck, the words John murmurs against his temple or his hipbone after they've both come. Rodney has to fight to stay awake, to hear the things John doesn't even know he's saying. No one else and just you and better than anything and need and his name, over and over, Rodney, Rodney, Rodney, dazed and broken open, and Rodney's a genius: he knows love is what John means.

He was dreaming of John's clever hands moving between his legs, wrapped around him and pumping, so good, so right… pushing into the perfect grip, running his hands up the smooth skin of John's back, finding John's face and leaning in to kiss…

Hands against his chest, pushing him away.

He's confused. Still cradled between warm, sleek thighs, instinct telling him to move, to slide against the damp heat, to sink into the woman pressed against him.

Woman.

Rodney blinks his eyes open, seeing Elizabeth staring back at him. The bedroom light is dim, but he can see her high color and dilated eyes, the soft shape of her parted mouth, the quick way she's breathing. Every single sign that she's as tempted as he is. More. She wasn't asleep when he was dreaming of touching John. She wasn't asleep and she didn't move away.

He croaks her name.

God, he wants… He's hard and aching and she's here, just one touch and he knows Elizabeth could be persuaded, they almost did it once before, he could drown himself in making love to her, forget nightmares and ghosts and the worry for John eating at his insides. But John… He can't.

Not while John's locked away in the auto-healer. Just thinking about it is cooling his ardor fast. He shifts back minutely and says something, excusing the intimacy, redirecting Elizabeth's attention, mentioning John half as an apology for waking up pressed into her, only the thin material of his boxers and the loose pants she wears to sleep in between them, half way to apologizing for not continuing, but he doesn't want this without John with them.

She says it's okay and he tells her the truth: he needs John. She slips and he sees regret and frustration flash through her eyes for a second, before she gives him a perfectly asexual pat on the shoulder, completing the shift away that he began. We both do. True, but not the same way, Rodney knows once he thinks about it. She probably wants John, the way she wants Rodney right now, because sex feels good, better when you like each other, but she doesn't love John. There's an essential distance inside Elizabeth that she won't give up for anyone and loving John would just be too much effort, too much like trying to tie a knot in a rope of water. She'll never give away enough of herself for John and John only gives back what he's offered. 

Elizabeth falls back into sleep easier than Rodney does. His body is still tense with need. The temptation to leave the bed, use the washroom and finish himself is strong. That would mean moving and moving might wake Elizabeth, who would know what he was doing. It wouldn't be fair. Elizabeth values her control, but it's worn thin. That would just be a slap in the face. He can practice a little self-restraint. He stares at the ceiling and calculates the odds against what happened on the satellite. He wonders if he would do more than sleep with Elizabeth if John had died. Replays every time, every way he and John were together and imagines Elizabeth with them.

He wants that. Wants them both.

He thinks John wants Elizabeth, too. Hopes that will be enough, later, but wonders if trying for more may not be a terrible mistake. He doesn't want to ruin what he already has. Most of all he doesn't want John or Elizabeth hurt by this.

Tomorrow he'll search some of the labs for something – anything – that will distract and exhaust him enough that this doesn't happen the next time he falls asleep next to Elizabeth, because it isn't fair to her or to John or to him.

In the corner, a dim shade resolves into Radek, who glares at him silently. Rodney lifts his fingers in a feeble wave. He isn't even touching Elizabeth, but the ghost doesn't care. Radek shrugs at him and dissolves again, with a last regretful look toward Elizabeth's softly breathing form.

~*~

He's unconscious when he goes into the auto-healer. Atenë shows him the security feed later, after he wakes in the interface, while the damage is being repaired.

She tells him how long it will take and he thinks he'll go mad, caught in a coffin for two weeks, unable to move, but Atenë reminds him that it's only his body. His mind is already free to range through the interface with her.

She shows him wonders. She teaches him her language, a language of precise numbers, and the language of the Ancients, equally exacting, but fluid and adaptable. All the things they knew the Ancients must have had, but that they never found, Atenë holds in her matrix: art and history and music and commerce, families and jokes and day-to-day life.

Medicine.

There is so much she knows, so much the equipment she controls can do. He's briefly disturbed as he realizes she made adjustments to his DNA the last time he was in the auto-healer, as well as recalibrating the command chair's settings so that the interface wouldn't damage him. She used the samples she took from Rodney to make further adjustments. Otherwise the interface might have killed him.

A rush of gratitude runs through John. He doesn't care what she's done, she can rewrite his entire genetic code, if it protects the others.

The others…

Two life-signs move through the city. He monitors them through Atenë's sensors. They move from the common room to the gate room. Then one, the one that activates the city interface powers up the jumper and shifts it back to its charging bay. John is reassured. That's Rodney, and so the other, anonymous incidence of independent organic energy has to be Elizabeth. They're all right. Atenë wraps him in assurances she will watch out for the other gene-bearer.

Some infinite passage of time later, Atenë shows him the two life-signs together again, so close they register as one. There are no visual or audio security feeds from the personal quarters, but John knows how close two bodies must be to confuse the sensors.

Atenë distracts him then, telling him what she wants to do: the modifications that tiny nanobots will make in his brain, which will let them speak clearly to each other even when he isn't in the command chair. It will make his stay in the auto-healer longer. She promises he will remain himself. John pulls up the sensor feed log. Each night two life-signs blend into one.

He says yes.

Sometimes he sleeps.

Atenë gives him a dream, a dream of wings, of wind and height, thermals and lift, gravity and muscle, stretching and turning, diving and rising, rising, rising into the lapis sky, she gives him G-force and air flow, feathers of copper and black, gives him life that is only a moment, all and always and endless, existence as instinct, hunger as purpose, and John flies.

Sometimes he wakes, and follows Rodney through Atlantis' corridors, watches from a security camera the way he lingers before the locked infirmary doors, one hand pressed flat against them.

Sometimes he watches Elizabeth. He watches her pace through Atlantis' halls. She never uses the transporters. He's sorry, because he understands why, but the emotion is attenuated, more something he remembers that he should feel than real. She looks up sometimes, as though she feels his attention on her. She hesitates, at doors that lead to balconies, but always turns away. There are no sunrises or sunsets to watch from under the sea.

There are no audio or video feeds from personal quarters. He wouldn't watch them if there were. He never watches when they are together anywhere.

~*~

The command chair tempts Rodney unmercifully, but he's promised Elizabeth he won't use it. She's afraid something will happen and she won't be able to get him into the infirmary. It's frustrating, because the keys to creating and charging ZPMs are in Atenë's matrix and he can't access it without using the interface.

He accesses the infirmary computers through the control room, but can't get anything more than that John's status is stable and improving, with a caret that leads him back to a notation on cerebral modifications using nanobots. That leaves him sweaty and freaked out for days. Goa'uld sarcophagi don't modify people. He keeps his worry to himself. Elizabeth would either try to reassure him or be equally disturbed and neither reaction would help.

Instead, Rodney divides his days into working with the data available through the control room's computers and just… wandering. He never really had an opportunity to simply walk around Atlantis without purpose. They were always searching for something useful or doing security sweeps. No sightseeing.

If Elizabeth knew what he was doing, she'd probably worry about that, too, or maybe not, since she does the same thing. It's safe. All he has to do is watch the lights. Atenë is monitoring him. And, unlike their own Atlantis, there are no dead or damaged sectors of the city. When he strays toward any of the portions of the city he knows hold dangers, the AI flashes red lights at him, brighter and faster the closer he gets.

She added an ear-splitting alarm when he approached the nanovirus lab. They're going to have to deal with that soon.

He finds the vault filled with cannisters meant to hold raw materials for manufacturing. All empty. He notes its location and moves on, too restless to figure out what the materials had been or were used to make.

Another lab yields a device that records memories and lets someone else experience them. It's made to work with the ATA gene, but as far as Rodney can tell, it will perform for anyone that uses it, though it's limited to a single download. He thinks it's related to the mechanism that downloaded the entire Ancient database in O'Neill's brain, without the unpleasant, potentially fatal side effects. From what he can uncover about the device, a close match physiologically and psychologically will result in clearer memories for the person receiving the download. Of course, there's no edit function – that's a drawback – and it would never replace data storage, but the ability to relay experiences that are more than the sum of facts seems incredible. He spends hours imagining what it would be like to know the mind of the Ancient who discovered zero point energy, wishing some of the Ancients in Atlantis had bothered to leave their memories for whomever came to after them.

Exploring distracts him during the days. It doesn't keep him from dreaming of John coming out of the auto-healer looking like a Borg. Cerebral modifications. Rodney's afraid to consider what that might mean. Is Atenë turning John into some sort of cyborg? Did he suffer brain damage that requires drastic measures to repair?

He can't help circling around again and again, passing the doors to the infirmary multiple times each day. Sometimes he touches the door. It doesn't open. Sometimes he leans his forehead against the cool, smooth metal. John, he thinks, John, John, John. It still doesn't open.

~*~

She finds the baths in a section of the city they never managed to explore before it was destroyed by the Wraith. That's a misleading description for something more like a water spa. The room is vast, arching in Gothic curves, and water chuckles and murmurs in everything from cool wading pools sized for toddlers to heated natatoria deep enough for high divers. There are sinuous support columns and stained glass walls breaking up the expanse of the room and paths that lead between them. At the far end is a window the width of the entire room.

The window opens on the darkness of the shield and the ocean and Elizabeth twitches, thinking of all that pressure, thinking of shield failure and a flooding gate room, of other fates that left her more alone than she is in this here and now.

She looks around a second time, still impressed. This, this is just amazing. There are little twinkly lights down in the pools. It's vastly more elegant than the roman baths scattered around Europe: nothing here is made of the straight lines that usually define Atlantis, the ceiling of this huge room soars into graceful arches, spanning the pools of various sizes, reaching from a tiny basin for only one person to Olympic-sized. The entire room is lit in a cool indigo that is infinitely soothing. She's tempted to kick off her shoes and dangle her feet in the water, but company would be even better. She turns away and heads back to the center of the city, hoping to find Rodney in the common room. He has to see this. It's just too good not to share. Besides, it will distract him as well as her.

His reaction is satisfying. Rodney's eyes widen and a thoughtful smile lights his face.

"It's marvelous, isn't it?" she says. "I wish we'd known it was here before, so that everyone could share it."

"Power," Rodney reminds her.

"It's still a shame."

"We can enjoy it now."

"You want to?" she asks him.

He starts to demur, his mouth opening with some excuse Elizabeth will make herself accept. He's been searching the city deliberately, but not for something as simple as these baths. Rodney's been hunting secrets and tools, working at extracting the protected information on creating ZPMs. She's let him because it's healthier than neurotic bitching and eating his way through their supplies – which is Rodney's other worried setting. Before he can say no, the columns of light bars beside the doors flare brilliantly, and the entire room brightens the way Atlantis always does for John.

They share one look.

"John," Rodney breathes.

Elizabeth has to run to keep up with him as he races for the nearest transporter.

~*~

The infirmary doors slide open at the same time the transporter does and Rodney sprints down the hall, reaching them as John careens out, staggering into the opposite wall. John's legs fold under him and he ends up sitting on the floor, blinking up at Rodney, without any clothes on, folded up like a pretzel, all knees and elbows and bare skin.

He can't see any signs of modifications. John's eyes are dilated, his hair has grown out even more and he has the beginnings of a respectable beard after two weeks. He's thin and pale and very shaky-looking. Rodney's never seen anything better in his life and he thought he already appreciated John's body as much as it was possible. But this isn't just John's body, this is John, his John, and he wants to kneel and press his lips to that soft mouth and just feel him breathe.

"Hey," John slurs. "R'ney."

Relief translates into an acerbic comment as Elizabeth arrives. "I think you get hurt just so you can get high in there."

"Rodney!" Elizabeth protests.

John smiles and nods. He looks a little more alert. "'S right." He tries to get to his feet and falls back. "Ow."

Rodney crouches and gets an arm around John, drawing him to his feet.

"You feel good," John murmurs against his neck.

"So do you," Rodney replies before he can think. Elizabeth just smiles at him. She knows, after all. And John does feel good. Thin as a rail, but solid next to him, and winding his arms around Rodney unselfconsciously. Bare as the day he was born, since they put him into the auto-healer naked and there may not even be any scrubs or hospital gowns in Atlantis' infirmary. John's too wasted to have thought about them anyway.

"'Lizabeth?" John asks, lifting his head from Rodney's shoulder.

"Right here, John," she tells him. She rests her hand along the back of his neck. "I think we need to get you back to your room and into some clothes."

"I'm really tired," John says.

Rodney glances at Elizabeth over John's shoulder. "I can get him back on my own."

There's a glint of humor in her eyes. "There's nothing I haven't seen before."

"I'm thinking there may be some blackmail material here, actually," Rodney replies.

"Jerk," John mumbles. He's begun shivering minutely.

"Cold?" Rodney asks, knowing John hates it. How he survived and liked Antarctica is a mystery for the ages.

John nods, curling in closer to Rodney.

"I'll get a blanket or some scrubs out of the infirmary," Elizabeth offers and leaves them.

Rodney pulls away from John briefly, earning a protest, and pulls off his sweater. It's roomy on Rodney and much too large for John. His head emerges from the collar with his hair more ruffled than ever. Rodney gives in to the impulse and kisses John's flushed mouth, one hand against John's jaw, stroking the dark beard that's grown long enough to turn soft. John's mouth opens for him, sour with sleep and sickness, but slick and so sweetly familiar. John's tongue licks at his languidly, welcoming but tired, and Rodney ends the kiss with a little suck on John's lower lip.

He's resting his forehead against John's when Elizabeth comes back with blanket and a set of drawstring scrub pants that John slides into compliantly.

They make it to the transporter in an uncoordinated reel, punctuated by John's complaints that he's cold, and back to John's room. Elizabeth pulls the sheets and blanket back before Rodney lets John tumble into the bed. John holds on and pulls Rodney down with him, then does his limpet thing before Rodney can get up. "Stay," he pleads softly, and Rodney remembers this is one of John's insecurities.  

"I – Ah." He shrugs, helpless to deny John this, kicks off his boots, and drags the blanket up over John and himself.

"It's okay."

Rodney looks down at John, arms curled around his waist, one leg thrown over Rodney's knees, head pillowed against his stomach, and flushes, feeling hot and embarrassed and so very, very relieved. "I guess it is." John tightens his grip on Rodney again. Rodney can't resist stroking his hand over John's shaggy hair.

"I'll leave – "

John shoves one arm free of the blanket and flails it toward Elizabeth.

"Don't go."

Elizabeth looks unsure, but then she takes John's hand, probably as worried by the way it shakes as Rodney is. She sits down at the edge of the bed, her hand still in John's. Not that she has much choice, with the way John holds on.

John's breathing evens out into sleep.

"I didn't realize," she says.

"Neither did I, but he lost a lot of people, even before."

"He won't lose us."

~*~

She watches John, the sheer pleasure blooming on his freshly shaved face, confused and fascinated at the same time as his gaze sweeps over the little fingers of steam rising from the water. The subdued light glints on the surface, indigo reflections against the cathedral-like walls.

John still has the innocent enthusiasm of a kid when he discovers something new, and this is nothing they had known about on the old Atlantis. These baths are in a section of the city that hadn't been explored yet. Elizabeth is still awed herself.

"It's different in the interface, it doesn't translate," John murmurs. He looks bemused. "It's just power usage numbers and maintenance schedules. I never really looked at what this was."

Beyond the last arch, the North of the city is a visible black silhouette through the huge window, but an opaque shutter slides into place over it, surprising Elizabeth. The shutter is a screen depicting a star-shot night sky that looks like the Milky Way. The clear blue water in the nearest pool  is flat as a mirror, reflecting it, yet allowing her eyes to travel to the bottom, to intricately set blue mosaics interspersed with small lights that give the impression of floating in space with the stars swirling around you. It's hypnotic just watching. Their breaths echo loudly in the arches, joined only by the quiet shush-shuff of the ventilation and the rare sounds of water lapping onto the narrow steps that lead down into the shallow end of the biggest, deepest pool.

The scent of chlorine she would have expected in a place like this on Earth is missing. There is barely any scent here, just something light and organic that reminds Elizabeth of fresh-cut grass. This, she realizes, is the Atlantis she had always dreamed about - elegant, sophisticated and welcoming.

"A few days ago," Rodney answers, pulling Elizabeth out of the daydream.

John is crouched on the lip of a basin, idly trailing his hand through the water, watching the ripples disrupt the perfect surface.

"And, have you…?" he gestures, spraying droplets that hit the surface with soft, bright sounds.

"No." Rodney looks almost scandalized and about to launch into a diatribe at the suggestion. He's so insulted it amuses Elizabeth.

"We wanted to wait for you," Elizabeth stops the looming argument before it can start.

John turns toward them. He's one hundred percent healthy again, but expressions flitting over his face suggest something else. John was high as kite when they brought him out of the infirmary, but he's been quiet and withdrawn since then. Tentative in his movements and his interactions with both of them, but especially Rodney. Maybe it is withdrawal. Rodney's research has confirmed that the auto-heal is an off-shoot of the same technology the Goa'uld used to design the sarcophagi.

Before Elizabeth can dwell on that possibility, John stands. "No offense, but you're both idiots." He gives them a quick smirk and reaches for the back of his shirt, pulling it over his head. Elizabeth blinks. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Rodney doing the same. "Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment."

John tosses the shirt in a crumpled heap on the floor, kicks his shoes off and reaches for the string fastening of the Athosian trousers.

Rodney makes an odd sound and Elizabeth swallows at the unconcerned display of skin John shows. He is a more than attractive man, even as thinned down as he is now.

John stops in mid-movement, giving them a look of forced patience. "What are you waiting for?"

The trousers slide off his hips and Elizabeth turns her face to the side instinctively, not wishing to cross this line just now.

Rodney, who seems to have shaken himself out of his stupor, gives a snort. "Underwear, Elizabeth. Stop being a prude."

"Prude?" She whirls around just as Rodney begins to open his boots. "Is that what you think?"

Behind her there's an almost gleeful splash as John enters the pool.

"You're a little uptight," John throws in helpfully from the water. "Some of the time." He is already in the middle of the pool. He looks at ease in the water, wet and sleek as an otter. With a grin, he flicks water at her and then Rodney. "You could loosen up."

"Pot meet kettle," Rodney mutters. John doesn't hear, but Elizabeth does.

"Uptight and prudish, hm?" she asks. That irritates her. It's such an assumption. Without thinking about it, she begins to fumble with the laces on her top.

It's Rodney who averts his eyes now. Elizabeth wants to laugh at him, but doesn't. Who's the prude? At the same time, she has to hide the way her skin tingles when she remembers the feel of him pressed against her.

John watches them both, quietly. Elizabeth is acutely aware of his gaze following every piece of clothing she steps out of until she is left in her panties and a light camisole Nelda gave her. Rodney still has his back turned to her, but she can feel him sneaking glances out of the corner of his eyes. She doesn't know why she is doing this, why she accepted the bait so readily, but maybe, just maybe, she is sick of setting aside her wants, of playing down the sexual side of being a leader, despite the aphrodisiac aspects of power. Maybe she just wants to have some fun.

She brushes past Rodney, bumping into him deliberately as she walks by, and then steps into the water, slowly walking down the steps until the warmth is lapping around her waist and she submerges. She's briefly startled when she hears something while underwater, before realizing the sound is music playing through the pool. She resurfaces with a quiet sound that echoes back from the arches. Water runs from her hair into her eyes and she wipes it away before slicking her hair back.

John smiles at her, water starring his dark lashes. "You didn't have to – you don't need to prove anything to either of us, you know."

"I wanted to," she silences further protests.

She slides behind him in a lazy arch, circling him in the waist-deep water. The wet camisole slides against her skin when she's submerged and clings when she straightens up, nearly transparent. John's eyes stray and she smirks at him this time. "Still uptight, John?"

"Not so much." The smile becomes a grin. He reaches out and touches her arm, his hand slick, slipping from her elbow a second later.

She smiles at him, tastes the clean water on her lips, and feels John's eyes following her tongue.

"We've all changed."

"Do you think so?" he asks. "Maybe we're exactly who we always were."

"Are you?" she asks, silencing him.

No one has changed so much as John. She follows the line of his throat down to his collarbones and his chest and sees the angry scar low on his side, just below the rise of his ribcage, half concealed by the water they stand in. It resembles a stab wound. Not even the auto-healer could make it vanish completely. Pegasus has marked him, with scars at his neck, on his arm, inside where they can't be seen and outside like this one.

Her chest tightens when she recalls just how close they came to losing him. He still looks brittle. She isn't quite sure this was a good idea after all. It wasn't just the puncture wound through his side that had to be repaired: his lung hemorrhaged, he went into shock from blood loss and oxygen deprivation. Another twenty minutes without treatment and he might have suffered permanent brain damage. It's hard to believe he's all right now. Something is missing, still, and when John smiles at her, it's not his usual smirk; it's wary and a little sad. His gaze drifts beyond her shoulder and she turns, seeing Rodney stepping into the water.

Seeing him take the few strokes to them, she is reminded of what she is missing. Rodney's beautiful. They both are, and the affection she feels for them scares her. It has nothing to do with physical desire. She simply can't imagine her life here without either of them. Not, she must acknowledge, that she would have a life for long without at least one of them; the city would shut down. Sometimes she has envied the first timeline's Elizabeth her clear conscience, but never once how alone she must have been. She would break without someone with her, even without the fact she couldn't survive in this Atlantis without the gene.
 
A painfully tight knot in her chest unfolds as she watches them both. Rodney watching John watching Rodney watching her. They're three again, instead of two, and the constant feeling of being unable to draw enough breath leaves her slowly. Rodney brushes against her when he floats around them.

She reaches out and touches John's face on impulse, startling him, but he holds still. She touches his hair, brushing wet strands away from his eyes, then closes one hand over his forearm, her palm slipping over water slick skin as she slides her hand down to his wrist. Rodney slips up to John's other side. Elizabeth touches his chest lightly next, resting two fingers over his heart, feeling the rise and fall of his breath pick up. John's eyes slip almost closed while she glides her fingers down his ribs to the new scar. He shudders then and shies away, still sensitive, stepping back into Rodney, who steadies him unobtrusively. Elizabeth's hand meets Rodney's when she raises it to touch the scar on John's neck, reminding herself that he's actually here and alive and real. It takes more than a hole in his side to kill John Sheppard. Their fingers twine for a moment.

Rodney's other hand is on John's hip. It's the only indication Rodney and John give her that they're indeed together. She's grateful for their discretion, for the effort they make to keep her from feeling excluded.

It's too close, and she fears that the peaceful atmosphere of the baths is just a dream from which she will wake sooner or later only to find out that they have lost John after all.

John's skin is soft under her fingertips. So is Rodney's hand as he lifts hers away from John's neck and slowly, so slowly, kisses her palm.

And it is a dream, she thinks. Both of them have made their choices and turned to each other, not her; thinking anything else will only end in heartache. She takes a step back. Her hand slides away from Rodney and along John's neck and then out of their reach completely. She does a few laps and kicks her legs, feels the sensation of moving weightlessly through the water. Her heart races but she forces herself to calm down, to regain control. The center of her right palm still tingles where Rodney kissed it, reminding her just how much control has slipped right there. The lines are blurring and it terrifies her.

She stops moving when she is in the middle of the pool and just floats. Compartmentalizing is good. The water and the underwater music lull her, allowing her to drift in blissful mindlessness. Off and on, she hears bits of conversation between John and Rodney, quiet words beyond the lap of water in her ears. It's comforting.

"… really okay? No after effects, no sudden urges to get back in the auto-healer again?"

John's chuckle is a sweet thing. It blends with the fragments of music from beneath the water. She drifts and for a little while forgets she isn't alone, the water buoying her up, silken and warm, circulating just enough to feel as a current against her limbs.

John and Rodney are still talking quietly to each other. There's an underwater bench along one side of the pool. Rodney's using it. John's floating with his head propped against a scalloped lip made for that purpose. His shoulder bumps against Rodney off and on.

"Mostly dreams, but in the interface," John murmurs. "Flying."

"Oh, that's different. Of course."

"It kept me sane."

"I almost went crazy. I was dreaming you died too…"

John turns in the water, sliding closer, until his head rests on Rodney's shoulder. The water swishes up over the edge of the bath, the sound muffling some of the low words that follow. She hears only, "...need you."

Elizabeth sinks below the water again, giving them some privacy. They're separated when she glances in their direction again. Still within each other's personal space, but not quite touching. Rodney looks relaxed for the first time in two weeks and the wariness has washed away from John's sharp features, softening his expression. She smiles, feeling the rest of the tension dissolve out of her own muscles, the ache in her neck, that's so constant she isn't aware of it most times, easing away.

"We should tell her," Rodney says. "You should."

John's voice is soft, "It's only there if I listen. It's there, but it's like music, really low, unless I concentrate. I'm still the same."

"Good."

John's voice rises into laughter.

"So you missed me?"

"Yes, yes, I did," Rodney replies, serious. "So did Elizabeth."

She did. She hopes he believes Rodney.

"… wound too tight ...," she hears John murmur to Rodney.

She jackknifes into a shallow dive, into blood warm blue, the underwater music thrumming through her, light sliding over her pale limbs. She holds her breath and brushes her hands over the mosaic patterning the bottom. The individual pieces are smooth, just convex enough to provide traction. The colors swirl in thick strokes, indigo and turquoise, azure and navy, robin's egg and aquamarine, traced with ribbons of green and teal, like a Caribbean lagoon strewn with stars, like Van Gogh's The Starry Night. Silver bubbles rise through her hair as she exhales and rises to the mirrored surface above her.

She treads water briefly, turning with spread arms, missing the sound of John and Rodney's voices. They're no longer at the edge of the shallow end. She blinks away water and wonders if they've left her here, craving more contact than they're comfortable displaying in her presence.

Then a hand wraps round her ankle and pulls her abruptly under the water. She's released immediately and thrashes to the surface, only to face John's white grin.

"You ..." Words fail her. She slaps the water as hard as she can, sending a wave into his face.

Before John can retaliate, Rodney's there behind him, smiling wickedly at Elizabeth, and ducking John. John must have slipped free, because one breath later, Rodney's disappearing underwater with a surprised gurgle. John reappears out of reach, looking smug. Elizabeth is reminded of playing in the pool with her cousins, when they were children, joyously testing their bodies without reflection, lots of splashing and breathless laughter, interspersed with a little spitting and coughing when someone got a nose full of water.

In that spirit…

Her head comes up from the water and before Rodney can do so much as blink, another wave of water hits him in the face.

Rodney crosses his arms in front of his chest and glowers while beads of water run over his face and catch in his long lashes. "Are you done?" he asks, sounding disgruntled.

Elizabeth shares a look with John. "I don't know. Are we?"

The grin almost splits his face when he glides around Rodney. Rodney's frown darkens and he shakes his head, saying, "Oh no. I don't think so."

"What is it, Rodney. No strategy in mind?" John quips, miming astonishment. With a mock-elegant gesture he dips the tip of his fingers into the water and flicks a spray of droplets directly into Rodney's face.

The glower becomes deeper. "Traitor. You said you wanted to get Elizabe –"

"Ah-uh!"

The wave of water hitting him this time is enough to make him gasp for breath.

"This stopped being funny after the first time."

"Sore loser, hm, Rodney?" Elizabeth teases. "How pathetic."

Something begins to gleam in Rodney's eyes. "Pathetic?" he says. "You don't even know the meaning of the word. Trust me, you'll be begging for mercy when I'm done with you."

John throws his head back in the water and bursts into a delighted laugh that manages to loosen all the remaining knots in Elizabeth's stomach. She smiles along with him, feeling his hand brush her arm in a conspiratorial gesture. All three of them have been edging deeper and deeper into the pool. Elizabeth's feet no longer reach the bottom.

"Uh-huh." Elizabeth snorts. "Right. I'm scared witless."

If there ever was something like a predatory glower, Rodney has managed it. "You should be."

"Rules?" John asks, diverting Rodney.

Rodney shakes his head. "No rules."

"Elizabeth?"

She turns to John, but before she can agree, her legs have vanished from under her body and the last thing she sees before she involuntarily dives under is the thing she never expected to be allowed to see again: Rodney McKay smug and self-satisfied, already in search of another target.

With unexpected ease John dives away from Rodney, swimming underwater for a few strokes. Reflections on the disturbed surface hiding him from Rodney and her. They both look for him for a few seconds, then Rodney begins advancing toward her, his expression becoming wolfish. Elizabeth retreats, but feels the exuberance of the situation expanding in her chest, blooming in a wide smile on her face.

"You can run but you can't –" The sentence ends in an "oof" and Rodney doubles over, coughing.

Next to him, John's head breaks the water's surface and Elizabeth realizes that he must have hit Rodney right in his diaphragm.

For a few painful moments Rodney gasps for breath, and John's pleased look begins to slip.

"Are you all right?" he asks, laying a careful hand on Rodney's back.

Unfortunately for him, he doesn't see the change on Rodney's face. Before Elizabeth can warn John, Rodney's hands shoot to John's shoulders and dunk him underwater, then let go instantaneously - only to splash a huge wave of warm water into her face where she is treading water, staring.

When she has finally wiped the water from her eyes, she can see that he actually has the nerve to be laughing.

"Is that the best you can do?" she taunts.

Forgetting about John for a moment, she dives, swimming dolphin-style near Rodney. His boxers have dipped low and she has the almost irresistible urge to just… She smirks, even underwater, and gives in to impulse: she yanks on his boxers, exposing a well-rounded ass.

Elizabeth can hear Rodney's yelp of surprise and dismay still echoing in the arches when she resurfaces.

Rodney's face is like a black cloud now and she can't help the laughter anymore, feels it shaking her entire body. She's making herself vulnerable to attack, she knows it, but the look on his face is simply priceless - all hurt pride and surprise and thundering anger.

Elizabeth is still laughing, just about to breathe in when hands close over her shoulders and push her underwater. The maneuver causes her to swallow too much water and she comes up spluttering and coughing, gasping for breath.

"Ha!" Rodney crows and points a finger at her. "Thank you for defending my honor, John."

"Yes, John," Elizabeth wheezes in between coughs. "Thank you for drowning me."

"Hey, you said no rules." John has the good grace to look apologetic, even if it's not entirely sincere.

"That was a fair fight between me and Rodney, you –"

"Fair? You yanked down my underwear!"

John blinks for a moment, then bursts out laughing so hard that he nearly submerges. "You…" he gasps, moving his arms to keep his head above water, "You play dirty, Elizabeth."

Elizabeth smiles sweetly. "You don't know the half of it."

Having caught enough breath, she dives again, aiming for John this time. She can see his legs move; he is trying to escape her, but he's much too slow. Her hands find his ribcage and sides, tickling along the tender skin mercilessly. John spasms and kicks her in the process, his hands moving to push her away.

"Did I find a weak spot there?" she asks innocently when her head is above the water again. Her hands move toward him and he begins to twitch before she even touches him.

"You can't do that." John says. He looks at Rodney, desperate pleading in his eyes. "Do something."

"Hey, you said no rules," Elizabeth imitates his lazy drawl, in turn causing Rodney to laugh.

"Rodney?" There is a definite whine in John's voice now. He eyes Elizabeth warily, hands stretched out to bat her away.

She lets him see her coming, but John still can't manage to fend her off. He swallows way too much water trying, until his movements slow noticeably. In a last-ditch attempt to save himself, he lunges forward, trying to grab both her arms to immobilize her. But Elizabeth is faster, slipping from underneath his hands - right into Rodney, who smiles at her nastily.

"Look, John, I caught a fish." He turns her around so she faces John, his arms locked around her waist, trapping her arms against her body. Elizabeth bucks against his hold.

John points at Rodney. "You're a man of many talents, Rodney McKay." He appears tired now, just treading water.

"I am." He's disgustingly smug.

"Do you give?" John asks.

Elizabeth shakes her head.

"Suit yourself." John raises both hands, waggles all ten fingers and then dips them into the water.

She tries to break free, twisting and struggling against Rodney's arms. He doesn't budge, only holds on to her more tightly. His breath huffs in her ear, John's hands are relentless, and her camisole is riding up.

Elizabeth tries to be stoic, she really does, but after long moments of pitiless tickling an undignified squeal breaks free. She begins to tremble, her breath rushing out of her in harsh gasps and her feet twitch involuntarily, kicking Rodney hard in the shin. He lets go of her with a grunt of pain and Elizabeth uses the opening, dives forward and into John, who tries to hold onto her, but can't grab her slippery arm tightly enough. He lunges after her, reaching out and finding her waist, turning her around, pulling her close in a tangle of arms and legs, kicking and flailing. It's push and pull and shove and sputter, they submerge several times, laughing.

She doesn't even notice just how far the camisole has ridden up until again John reaches for her once more and his fingers slip under the thin material and land squarely on her bare left breast.

They both stop immediately, breathing hard. Elizabeth searches John's face when he doesn't remove the hand but tightens it instead.

For the blink of an eye time simply stops. She looks him straight in the eyes, feeling the hot spike of arousal as his thumb brushes her nipple.

"John…"

"Okay, who won?" Rodney calls over to them.

As if shaken out of a daydream, John lets go of her, a flush that has nothing to do with the game staining his cheeks. "Sorry." He pulls the camisole down, the high color deepening and moving down his neck. In a hasty move, he turns to Rodney, dunking him when he is near enough, his back to Elizabeth.

She considers withdrawing, but is instantly drawn back – Rodney catching her ankle in one hand – when she makes for the edge of the pool.

The splashing continues for a while and she attacks Rodney, who in the course of fighting her splashes wave upon wave of water in John's direction, all but drowning him. John gives up first, gasping, "Enough, okay, enough," and now simply treading water. "I declare Elizabeth the winner."

Elizabeth eyes him in concern, but he's all right, merely tired.

"What?" Rodney protests.

"She ducked you way more times than you got her," John explains.

"I was a swimmer in high school," she tells them.

"Unfair advantage, then," is Rodney's immediate reaction. She sees him check John, too. "You want to get out of here?"

"Let's just float a while."

So they float, so close they touch sometimes.

John's half asleep by the time Rodney tows him to the pool's edge. Elizabeth's arms and legs feel like wet ribbons. She anticipates a shock of cold when she comes out of the water, but the temperature is perfect. Warm air wafts from hidden ventilation ducts, whispering over them.

She contemplates her clothes and pulling them on over her wet camisole and panties. Ugh. She's always hated dressing in wet clothes.

"Go ahead," John says lazily, sprawled out on the floor next to Rodney.

Elizabeth observes him, her own expression expressing sardonic amusement. He smiles back, clearly entertained. Rodney lifts himself and slaps lightly at John's head. "No looking, Sheppard."

"Hey!"

"Go ahead, Elizabeth," Rodney tells her. He rolls onto his side and lays one big hand over John's eyes.

"Spoilsport," John protests. He bats Rodney's hand lightly, but doesn't really try to move it. His hand lingers on Rodney's, fingers moving lightly, aimlessly, over the back from knuckles to wrist. A small smile curves his lips.

Rodney meets her eyes and says, "Trust me," and she knows she can, not that there's much the wet camisole and pants don't already reveal, nor is it anything he hasn't glimpsed already after the intimacy of sharing a bed for the last two weeks. She has to drop her eyes as she thinks of that. She's going to miss the press of a warm body beside her in bed, alone in her own barren room once more. A sharp stab of jealousy shafts through her, a moment of wondering why John and Rodney get to be happy after the mistakes they've made, and she's alone.

She shoves it down ruthlessly, strips and dresses as quickly as possible.

When she looks up, Rodney's not covering John's eyes anymore, but John's not watching her. His chest rises and falls in the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. Rodney is sitting up, Indian-style, just watching him, eyes unguarded and soft. His hair sticks up in wet, little spikes and a single droplet runs down his back enticingly.

"I didn't look," he murmurs when Elizabeth steps closer.

She wishes he would have and feels guilty all over again.

"Do you want – "

"I'm just going to stay here for a while, until John wakes up," he replies before she's even finished.

The temperature is so perfect she guesses the AI must be regulating it just to keep John and Rodney as comfortable as possible. There's no real reason to disturb John.

"We'll meet you in the common room later, okay?" He pauses. "Or you could stay."

She rests her hand on Rodney's damp, warm shoulder.

"Next time, we should bring towels," he adds.

Elizabeth laughs. "Next time?"

"Didn't you have fun?"

"All right. Yes, I had fun."

"So ... next time."

"All right."

"Do we still have any of that Athosian fruit? The one that's like custard inside?"

"No, the last of it was gone last week. You need to go back to Athos soon."

"Then you should come with us."

"We'll see." She settles on the floor beside them. "I thought you two wanted me to stay behind, keep the shield up, keep the home fires burning?"

Rodney shrugs. "That's John. He thinks we're all safer here."

~*~

He doesn't know if it feels like this for John, but for Rodney using the chair is like surfing the sun. The matrix of the AI's mind is a seething, furious center of energy, a continuous chain reaction of calculation, a gravity well that threatens to pull him in beyond the corona and melt his consciousness into its component molecules. It's blinding and glorious and dangerous. He understands how John could lose himself in this.

Atenë is slow to respond to him at first. Cautious. His gene is so weak compared to John's natural one, it's difficult to connect. She knows him through John, though, and gradually slips through his mind, learning him. When she accepts Rodney, the universe opens before him.

Everything he labored to rediscover in the Atlantis that was, is revealed to him: perfect, lucent knowledge. Just beyond that he can glimpse greater secrets, intricate formulae and blazing truths. He reaches for the fire –

And falls back into his flesh, his thoughts filled with satori-like revelations, body gasping, twitching, the taste of blood on his tongue.

So close, so close, he could almost grasp the last secrets Atenë holds. He almost understood.

When he can do more than shudder, he opens his eyes and meets John's gaze.

"I have to do it again," he says.

Maybe he expects John to protest, the way Elizabeth might, but John just nods and then kisses Rodney, slowly, and replies when they part, "I know."

~*~

"Rodney, do you have a moment?"

He is bent over a gray-striated device with two wings of something that looks like the alloy on the command chair spread open on workbench when she approaches him. It looks unpleasantly like it is meant to fit over a face.

"Elizabeth," he says, and his tone tells her that he hadn't noticed her arrival at all. "What is it?"

"I ... wanted to talk to you."

Rodney looks impatient but indulges her. "Yes? About?" One hand holds a finger-length decahedral crystal. It's the color of pink tourmaline and gently glowing.

Elizabeth has never been one to beat around the bush when it came to important topics, but for once she's not sure how to approach the subject. It's so rare to find Rodney without John that she had just taken the chance without thinking about what she was going to say much.

"Life. The universe. Everything."

He cracks a smile at that. "Yes, very nice, but I'm a little busy here. So, if you…" He makes a circling hand movement that suggests speeding up. If she were everyone else, Rodney would have just turned back to his work and ignored them.

"Have you noticed anything odd about the city lately?" she finally blurts out, unceremoniously. "Or… or John?"

He cocks his head. "Define odd. This is Atlantis. A lot of things are odd here." He's already close to dismissing her, she can see it in the way his eyes turn back to the crystal in his hand. "And John is, you know, surprisingly unpredictable." His mouth lifts in a smile. "In a good way."

"The AI."

"Atenë?"

Elizabeth shudders when she hears how easily the name slides past his lips, as if he were talking about a friend. "Yes."

"What about her?" Rodney asks, not looking up from slotting the crystal into  a receptacle in the device.

She crosses her arms defensively before her chest. "Don't you think you're putting a little too much faith in her?"

"I'd much rather say that we don't put enough trust in her. She's amazing, everything in her is in perfect order. She's elegant and smart and, and, and alive in a fascinating non-corporeal way. The wealth of knowledge she possesses alone is the stuff of a scientist's wet dreams." He ducks his head, noticing what he just said. "Ah, ignore that last part."

Elizabeth feels at a loss. She had thought that talking to Rodney would help her somehow, that he would see her point, but he talks about the city like an infatuated teenager. He's no different from John.

But maybe he will see reason. He learned a lesson about over-eagerness on Doranda, surely? She takes a breath and says what she came to say, no sugar-coating, no finesse: "It behaves differently toward me than toward you and John. And I'm concerned by the changes John admits it made to him while he was in the auto-healer. He acts… differently. Don't you think?"

Rodney's gaze returns to her, speculatively. "Differently how?"

She wants to avoid his intent gaze, but decides against it, looks him straight in the eyes to make him see that she's not joking. "Hostile."

"Hostile," he repeats, slowly, and an incredulous smile flickers across his features. Then: "John? Are you nuts?"

"The AI."

"Atenë," he corrects her.

Elizabeth grits her teeth. "It's… it's using you both. Manipulating you. Especially John. Sometimes I think he's addicted to using that chair. Except now he doesn't need to. Whatever the AI gives him, he gets all the time now."

Rodney's face goes blank. His mouth opens like a fish then settles into a thin, lopsided line. She can see him consider it and she can see him dismiss what she's said. "What he gets?" Rodney shakes his head. "Elizabeth, what do you think interfacing is like? Because it's information. Atenë's an artificial intelligence, not some kinky Ancient sex toy."

Her eyes narrow and he back-pedals visibly. "I'm sorry, but that's just… Elizabeth. What makes you think that?"

"Evidence. It doesn't let me connect to the consoles when you're not around, won't open doors for me, locks me in, doesn't let me access information we vitally need, it blocks me out –"

Rodney huffs and waves a hand loosely in the air. "Well, you don't have the gene. It shouldn't surprise you."

"Yours is only derivative. But it doesn't make things more difficult for you."

Rodney shrugs. "It's John's." Then the first part of her sentence registers and he bristles. "What do you mean 'only derivative'?"

"Only that yours isn't natural, and that if the city was making a distinction, it should make it with you, too. But obviously, it doesn't. It only blocks me out."

"So, what are you suggesting? That it hates you because you don't have the gene?" His eyebrows are raised in a very John-like manner that would make her smile on any other day. But not now.

"It's possible, isn't it? You don't know anything about this AI. You have no idea, either of you, what it can do, what it's capable of."

Rodney shakes his head vehemently. "No, it's not," he says in that voice he only used on recalcitrant colleagues who didn't want to see his point. "Yes, she is very different from anything we would have thought to discover, but that doesn't make her a threat. She's done nothing but try to help. She's provided us with information that has saved our lives more than once. And I don't need to remind you that she's been alone for almost one thousand years. It's only natural she's a little wary of strangers."

"Strangers," she repeats. The word slices her like a razor blade. Because he's right. She is the stranger here. Not Rodney. Definitely not John. It's her. The city knows that and makes her feel it more and more with every passing day.

Rodney actually rolls his eyes at her now and that hurts, hurts more than she can say, because he's not taking her concerns seriously at all. She wonders if he felt the same when she blew him off about Chaya. "She's not dangerous. This is Atenë we're talking about here. She would never hurt us, not with John around. She's…" He grapples for words, but has that bright-eyed look again, like he has just discovered a world full of coffee and chocolate and has met Einstein, Bach and Newton for breakfast. She already knows what his answer will be. "She's like a hyper-artificially-intelligent sheep dog. She'd do just about anything to please John."

"Maybe that's just the reason it blocks me. Maybe it wants him for itself," Elizabeth murmurs, no longer meeting Rodney's gaze.

"If Atenë saw anyone as a rival for John's affections, I think it would be me," Rodney says, dignified and scornful at once. "Not you."

"You're not a woman," she replies without thinking.

"Neither is Atenë," he reminds her. Rodney's face falls a little, as though he's actually disappointed in her and she wants to wipe that look away, because how dare he dismiss her like that? "Elizabeth, John's fine and Atenë isn't Hal. This isn't 2001. She's not out to get you. You're being paranoid, and quite frankly, it doesn't suit you."

She can't think of anything to say but: "Thank you for your time, Rodney," before she leaves the lab. Rodney's gaze follows her for a while. Out of the corner of her eye she can see him shaking his head and bending back over the device. He seems to have already forgotten she was there.

She stops in the hall and tries to shake the tension out of her shoulders. That was useless. Rodney's as blind to the threat the AI might pose as John is. He's just the same as he always was, too in love with the technology and the knowledge behind it to contemplate any consequences.

>~*~

Atenë sends a shrieking atonal clamor through the hall when Rodney and John head for the nanovirus lab. John lifts his head just a little and tries out the connection forged between them.

Lay off, he tells her. Rodney and I are immune anyway.

The alarm quits, leaving silence that makes his ears ring.

"Hey, why did it quit?" Rodney asks from beside him.

John grins at him. "I asked her to shut it off."

Rodney gets that fascinated look, laced with a certain amount of envy, and his lips part. "That is either immensely, extraordinarily cool or just plain unfair," he says.

John shrugs.

"I suppose I should say thanks, though, because it was giving me a headache."

No kidding. But for John it isn't the noise, though that's gone now, it's the information feed he is receiving nonstop, suddenly. Atenë is telling him, showing him, everything done in the lab. He's getting its purpose and its history, blueprints, schematics, contents, air temperature, the status of every experiment the Ancients left behind, and all of it is threatening to make his head explode.

"Slow down," he mutters.

Rodney gives him an odd look, probably because they're just standing outside the lab. John grimaces and waves at the ceiling or his head.

Atenë sends a feeling of apology mixed with embarrassment and the data flow slows to something he can handle.

"Better."

Sometimes, he knows the AI isn't really 'Atenë', that the emotions he assigns her – it – aren't accurate descriptors at all. But at the same time, Atenë is as real to him as Elizabeth and Rodney. Someone separate from the steel, glass and alloy city itself. A buffer that helps him retain his own individuality in the interface. It's better and easier to just accept the personality construct as the real AI; it's true mind is too alien to accept into his own.

They proceed into the lab and Rodney methodically destroys every hint of the nanovirus research, while John reviews what Atenë provided, pinpointing information that will take them to two other labs filled with lethal biohazards.

Every one of the weapons in development exempted anyone with the ATA gene sequence. But not humans without it.

"I am less and less impressed with the Ancients all the time," Rodney declares when they're in the second lab.

"Yeah," John agrees. "Feet of clay."

"Great big hobbit feet."

Which makes John laugh.

"Elizabeth still has them on a pedestal."

John considers the classified material Atenë's showing him, information that she won't release to any computers Elizabeth can access. Elizabeth's faith in the Ancients would be utterly destroyed if she did ever find out some of the things they'd been doing; his has been. Rodney's the only one who never saw them as something more, something better. He would tell her, but it's impossible: the interface works in both directions and some of the limitations on the AI affect him now, too. He's not sure he could say anything to Rodney and the whole restructuring of his priorities and the suspension of volition should bother him much more than it does.

It should and it doesn't, which means, objectively, that maybe Elizabeth's distrust of the AI isn't so ridiculous as he'd thought.

It's an ugly, selfish story, anyway, one Elizabeth has probably heard before, once the high technology and alien superbeings were cast into human terms. The Ancients were running scared from the plague in the Milky Way, researching ascension and anything else that might save them from it. Like the phenomenal regenerative abilities of the Iratus insects they found on one of the Pegasus worlds. Of course, they didn't experiment on themselves – they'd seeded the worlds of Pegasus with humans for that. Only something went wrong and they abandoned the results on a distant, dark world, because they were too 'moral' to simply kill the victims of their work. Until one day, a survey ship found a civilization and a race on that world and all of Pegasus reaped what the Ancients had sown.

"She's wrong," is all he says, though. About that and he can't explain the other.

Rodney nods.

"Next lab?" he says.

"Last one," John confirms, pushing away from the wall he's been leaning against.

Rodney rolls his shoulders and twists his neck as they walk, obviously stiff and tense. John's just tired. That's why they're doing this and instead of heading offworld to Dagan or Athos. They'll probably go to Athos first, an easy mission to a planet with proven friends. Then to Dagan, to recover the ZPM the Ancients left with the Sudarians.

"Maybe we should take a break, go back and get something to eat," Rodney says.

"Maybe we should just get this done, McKay." He knows Rodney's just concerned, but between him and Elizabeth, it's smothering him. He pastes on a seductive smile. "Then we can go back to our quarters and relax."

"Right, you need rest."

"I don't need rest, I need – "

Rodney's grinning at him.

"You sonovabitch."

"Come on, we'll clean this last lab out and then I'll show you why bodies are better than virtual environmental neuronal interfaces," Rodney promises.

John forgets to reply because Atenë is sending him a sense of approval. She likes Rodney.

He blurts that out, "She approves of you."

"Who?"

"Atenë."

Rodney frowns. "Is she listening in on us?"

"Sort of."

"Huh." He appears to consider that for a while. "So if she approves, will she show me the data on ZPMs?"

"Maybe, if you sweet talk her," John teases. "You'll still have to find a way around the hardware lockouts."

"I leave the sweet talk to you," Rodney tells him grumpily, but he looks pleased anyway. He loves Atlantis as much as John does. It would hurt him if the city and the AI didn't return his devotion.

"Why do I think you just insulted me?"

"Because you're not a dumb as you like to act."

The back-and-forth insults and cheap innuendo take them through dismantling the last bioweapons lab while thoughts of dragging Rodney back to the baths and splashing around until he finally feels clean distract John from thinking too much about the Ancients' lack of ethics or morals. Or his own.

Or the differences in who he is since he came out of the auto-healer.

~*~

Nothing goes right when they reach Dagan. The ZPM isn't where it will be. They dial Atlantis and radio Elizabeth in the afternoon.

"They haven't buried the ZPM yet," John says.

"It's not where we were looking for it," Rodney adds. He looks sour and tired. His hands are blistered, like John's, from digging a hole to nowhere. "The Quindozum must still have it."

"We should have anticipated this," Elizabeth replies. "We knew the Sudarians concealed the potentia when it became apparent the Wraith were going to wipe out the Brotherhood during one of the cullings. But that hasn't happened yet and we don't know when it will."

"There's no use coming back to Atlantis for the night," John said. "We can sleep in the jumper and get an early start tomorrow. We want to keep a low profile and dialing the gate is pretty noticeable."

"Take care."

"We will," Rodney says.

"We'll either head back or check in tomorrow afternoon," John adds.

"I'll be waiting," Elizabeth promises before John disengages the wormhole.


Culling beams seem to work on line of sight, but the Wraith have some kind of life-sign detector that they use to track their prey. People hiding in buildings are flushed out by ground troops. Fortifications are cracked like eggs under fire from the darts.

John's been running, dodging beams, half the night and he's totally turned around. No idea which way he came from, no idea which way will take him to the safety of the jumper they left cloaked next to the hole in the ground that will – eventually, but not yet – hide the ZPM the Ancients left with the Sudarians. They were legging it toward the monastery when the first darts whined overhead. They did the only thing anyone could: they ran.

They headed for the treeline, because running for cover, any kind of cover, is as age-old an instinct as primates have.

Dusk overruns the day while they dodge and hurtle between trees, scrambling over deadfalls and boulders, ducking low-hanging limbs and trying to circle back to the jumper's location. Rodney is right behind him, the comforting thud of his boots in John's ears, and then he isn't.

He's not there.

John stumbles to a sickened halt. He sucks in air in harsh gulps, fighting to stay as silent as he can, peering into the shadowed depths of the woods. He thinks he sees movement at his four o'clock, but it could be a Wraith illusion, messing with his mind. He swallows hard. Whatever he sees, it slithers between tree trunks much too fluidly to be Rodney. He steps back, and back, and holds his breath, scanning everywhere. Because the phantoms, the mirages the Wraith project, mean the Wraith are on the ground somewhere nearby.

He steps back again, still desperately trying to see Rodney somewhere close by, and that's it: he's falling over the edge of a ravine without warning.

John rolls over the edge, a root catching against his cheekbone in a white-bright flash of pain, sharp stones and pieces of broken brush stabbing and bruising him as he tumbles down, landing with a harsh shock of cold and pain in a streambed running with icy melt-water. Somewhere along the way, his radio mic and earpiece catch and tear away from him.

"Sonovabitch," he mutters, struggling to his feet. He wants to yell, but doesn't. He dabs at his cheek, feeling a thin trickle of blood working its way down. Repeats himself, because it bears repeating, under the circumstances. "Sonovabitch."

The whining shriek of a dart racing overhead makes him cringe, scrambling to press himself against the side of the ravine, trying to spot it through the dark outlines of the trees against the night sky.

John watches the white ripple of the beam quarter over the forest, flicker-bright, leaves and limbs silhouetted black against it, while listening to the whine of the dart's engines doppler in and out. The smell of moist dirt fills his burning lungs, dark, moldy, full of decay and life. A dry leaf drops out of his hair over his face, a phantom touch over his nose that he bats away.

The dart's moving away, curling back toward the population centers, richer hunting ground, an arrow's arc across the moon. The wind from the Sudarian city whispers of smoke and corpse-pale hunger stalking through it.

He doesn't yell for Rodney. He knows better. There are Wraith in the forest.

A bug crawls up his wrist, legs stirring the hair just beyond his watchband, and he swats it away with a silent shudder. A flush of sweet-sick stink floods the air when he touches it, potentially giving away his position. Ronon, with his sharp senses, could have found him just from that. John aches, remembering Ronon, remembering Teyla, reminded of Ford in that first year. Right in that minute, he misses Bates, he misses Caldwell and Lorne, he misses Zelenka and Stackhouse and, damn it, even Calvin Kavanagh: his people, his responsibility, better friends and closer to family than any kin he'd ever known. He closes his eyes for one breath, then puts it away, locks the grief up again, because the dart is gone, but the hunters are in the dark.

He refuses to believe Rodney's been culled, denies even the possibility that Rodney fell and has already been taken by the Wraith on the ground. Rodney's just lost and he will find his infinitely irritating friend and shake him once he does and yell at him to keep up next time.

Jesus. Jesus. It feels like he's running on empty. Fumes and momentum. Maybe time has its own inertia and it takes more than three people to change what has and will and always does happen.

He won't believe it, because if he does, he'll break. He'll still breathe and move and get back to Elizabeth, but there will be nothing left. They still mean something. He and Rodney aren't risking their lives pointlessly. He won't believe otherwise. He couldn't take Rodney through the gate if he did.

He'll never say how much Rodney means to him, or Elizabeth, or how much he needs them: that he'd be cut adrift without them, without the purpose they give him. He can't articulate it, any more than he can reduce his feelings to words that have been used too often to mean too little. There are words, words he thinks to himself and in bed with Rodney, but all of those words have been overused and devalued; saying them would demean what he feels.

This night he just thinks he has to find Rodney, get back to the jumper and get back to Elizabeth, without becoming some Wraith's dessert.

The knees of his pants are wet and stick against his skin as he picks his way over the tumble of rocks beside the stream. He resists the urge to use the flashlight mounted on his P90. It would be a beacon screaming technology over here to any Wraith. Instead, he walks slowly, getting as much from the moonlight as he can, setting his boots down carefully, in an effort to move silently and not roll one of his ankles on a loose rock.  His knees are twinging anyway and he has a stitch in his side in addition to bumps and scrapes.

He's cold, too. Dagan's second moon is rising, adding its light, turning the night chill and blue. There will be frost crystallized on the fallen leaves by morning. Already each exhalation condenses into dragon fumes.

Rodney has a scanner. He can track his way back to the jumper's energy signature with that. John's just following the stream downhill, because he remembers they were climbing on their way toward the monastery. He's not really worried about finding his way back; his sense of direction isn't half as anemic as Rodney likes to think. He's worried about what Rodney might run into getting back to the jumper without John to watch his back.

Something large rustles through the brush above the far lip of the ravine.

John moves silently back toward the side of the ravine, into the shadows, glad for his dark clothes, wishing he'd stopped to smear a little dirt over his face, glad for the scruff of unshaven beard that darkens his jaw by four o'clock most days. His hands move over the P90, blindly checking the clip, the safety, bringing the stock up to his shoulder, lining up the sight, stroking his finger over the trigger. It's as much an extension of him as the collective of a Blackhawk, the throttle of an F-302, the console of a jumper, but there's nothing sexual about it, contrary to what his old girlfriends used to think; he's never pulled the trigger without tasting bile, without being sick inside.

Heavy feet approach the ravine, leaves crackling under them.

John listens as hard as he can, trying to differentiate the sounds, to hear if it's more than one. It is. He hears a huffing breath now, too.

A figure stumbles into view in silhouette, not looking into the ravine. John hears a soft curse and the snap of a limb slapping against a body. He hears something else as well: more feet. Boots crunching down, breaking twigs, crushing brittle, dry leaves. The moonlight skates over the upturned curve of Rodney's nose, reflects off the barrel of the Beretta in his hand. It slides over dark leather, ridged bone masks and long white hair, too, as three Wraith drones march into a clear space between the trees behind Rodney.

Rodney's muttering to himself. He doesn't hear them.  

John calculates how many clips he has for the P90 and his Beretta. He adds in that Rodney's armed, too. Still not good, but he can't change that. Drones are strong and hard to kill, but they're slow and stupid compared to command caste. He'll work with what he's got. The Wraith don't expect their prey to bite back. They're going to be surprised.

If he warns Rodney, he loses the advantage of surprise. That doesn't mean he likes using Rodney as tiger bait. Just that he'll have a new nightmare to add to his repertoire if they survive tonight.

John lifts the P90, lining up the sights on the last drone's head. He breathes in as one of them lifts a stunner to its shoulder, aiming at Rodney. Rodney's almost back in the cover of the brush again. Two steps.

John squeezes the trigger, taking the head shot. It's harder, but blowing out the drone's brains will keep even a Wraith down. He switches his aim to the next one, emptying half his clip into it. He can hear Rodney yelling, but it's empty noise. All his concentration is locked on the Wraith. The third drone is reacting, swiveling to fire down into the ravine at him. John moves, spraying fire upward until the P90 dry fires. He stumbles over something and hits his knees.

A stunner bolt sizzles past him and he throws himself flat, rolling, trying to find some cover. The P90 catches against whatever tripped him, tearing loose from his hands. He scrabbles his hands through dirt and molding leaves, through something that stinks like feces, trying to find it in the dark.

Rodney's firing, sharp reports from the Beretta echoing back from the trees. Another stunner bolt lights the ravine, making the air tingle and ring with electricity where it hits and writhes like blue-white, hissing snakes over a tangle of exposed roots before dissipating, leaving John night-blind and blinking away afterimages.

His hands find the P90 and he snatches it up, fingers automatically hitting the clip release. He rolls behind a small boulder and fumbles a new clip from his vest, forcing himself to slow down enough to feed it into the receiver straight. He doesn't need a jam, a misfed cartridge or a misfire; not again, once was enough.

He's still half blind, but the stunner leaves a beautiful track back to his target, a glowing line in the air, better than tracers. He pops up over the boulder and empties the second clip into the Wraith. All that long white hair flies up as the impacts jerk its body like a half-strung puppet.

It goes down.

"Sheppard!"

He finally hears Rodney.

"Sheppard!"

If his knees are suddenly water-weak, he could pass it off as damage from falling on them. He could, but it wouldn't explain the bubble of sheer relief rising behind his sternum. He's lightheaded with a mixture of fear and adrenaline, gratitude and simmering, aimless anger.

"Shut up!" he snarls.

It takes two tries to clip the P90 to his vest again. He isn't even going to try to find the empty clip he dropped. They need to vacate the area before the sound of their little firefight draws more Wraith to them.

"Great, you're alive. By the way, so am I, only next time a little fucking warning before you spring a damn ambush right behind me!" Rodney shouts at him.

John splashes across the stream, bending for just one second to rinse off whatever the hell he stuck his hand in, and then clambers up the other side of the ravine monkey-fast.

"Rodney," he gasps as he reaches the top.

He blinks.

Rodney has one of the stunners in his hands, aimed at the downed drones. He's buried the bayonet of a second stunner in the chest of one of them. The air reeks of their ants-and-ammonia blood, stinging John's eyes.

"Can we get the hell out of here?" Rodney demands, his voice high and edging into a quaver.

John scoops up the third stunner, nodding, saying yeah, only his voice isn't there. He has to clear his throat and try again. "Yeah."

"You're fine, right?" Rodney asks.

John nods.

There was a second when he had the P90 aimed at Rodney. He tightens his hold on the stunner. Tight enough his fingers ache.

He swallows and says, "Bumps and bangs. Worry about it later. Come on."

Rodney's hand locks on his bicep for one moment as they head into the brush again. It's warm, but that warmth leaches away as they slip through the trees, hiding from drone search parties twice.

When they reach the jumper, John drops the stunner onto the floor and grabs Rodney by his upper arms. He knows he's holding on too tight. He still does. "You're okay," he says.

"Yes, it's amazing, considering just how screwed we were," Rodney huffs out. The jumper is almost painfully warm after coming in from the cold night. His breath feathers over John's face, a different warmth. He shifts restlessly under John's hands and John forces his fingers to release.

He takes a step back and the anger that's been simmering inside him finally boils over. "How the fuck did you get separated from me?" he demands.

"What?" Rodney's hands come up and poke, poke, poke at John, right in front of his face. "Excuse me if I can't run like a deer, leap logs and see in the dark! You're the one that lost me!"

John grits his teeth.

"And what the hell did you get into?" Rodney continues. "You smell like a stockyard."

John sinks down onto one the cargo space's benches. "I don't even want to know."

Rodney slumps down next to him.

"We didn't even get the ZPM."

John stares at his dangling hands.

"And we're going to have to sit here until the Wraith stop coming through the gate so that we can dial out," Rodney adds. "This galaxy fucking hates us."

John is forced to agree.

"At least Elizabeth won't be worrying about us yet," he offers.

"Oh, that's great."

He can hear Rodney roll his eyes. Rodney shifts closer, until his thigh is aligned with John's and his elbow bumps against John's ribs. Warm and alive, warm and alive. It's better, but not good enough. There's still an awful tension coiled inside John's chest. He needs more, but the thought of doing anything in the jumper, while the Wraith cull Dagan outside, makes his stomach roll. He doesn't want to fuck in an open grave.

After a long silence, Rodney asks, "How freaked out are you?"

"I don't get freaked out."

"Tell it to someone who doesn't know you."

Rodney's arm snakes around his waist, but John can't relax into it. It isn't that comforting, because Rodney was out there with him. He wants to hold onto someone who isn't going to disappear. He wants – Jesus, he just figured it out: he wants to keep Elizabeth in Atlantis, to trap her there, so that he can count on someone to come back to whatever happens, and that's sick and more than a little cruel. He'll only be able to relax when they see Elizabeth again, bird-boned and sharp, quizzing them on everything they did offworld; when he has Rodney beside him and Elizabeth close enough to touch – under control. Rodney loves her and he wants John to love her too – and John's wants to, knows objectively Elizabeth is worth loving – but most of the time John's too messed up for that. His relationship with Elizabeth is constantly playing out in a game to see who is really in charge; as long as he keeps her in Atlantis, he's winning.

When the hell did he turn into his father? When did he trade caring for control? He wonders how much damage he's already done and if it isn't too late to change things.

He hisses out a breath. "Shit." Just once, he'd like something to be easy.

There's nothing easy about wanting, needing and loving two people at once, though Rodney seems to manage it.

"Do you want to talk – "

"No." Then, rough and still angry, he adds, "I want to go home and fuck myself blind. I want to fuck Elizabeth and I want you. I don't want to talk."

He feels Rodney nod beside him.

"We didn't do anything while you were in the auto-healer," Rodney says. The words are offered quietly. John believes them.

"I know."

Rodney's arm tightens around him. John relaxes a fraction.

"I think between the two us we can convince her, you know," Rodney says. "She's a smart woman. She'd be an idiot to say no."

"She'd be insane to say yes."

"That's where you're wrong. She doesn't want to interfere with us. If we come to her together, it won't be a problem."

"If it is?"

He turns his head and studies Rodney's face, watching his mouth turn down on one side.

"If it is," Rodney says, "we'll deal with it. We need her and she needs us."

John is still doubtful, but he shrugs.

"Interpersonal relationships aren't your forte."

"I know, I know, but trust me on this. I say we find her when we get back and ask her. Simple."

John laughs raggedly.

Simple.

As if.

"Sure," he says. He wants to say nothing is simple, he's fucked in the head and Elizabeth's probably equally twisted by now. He's too afraid to say anything, because he can see pretty clearly that Rodney loves Elizabeth too and if he had a clue to how John's messed up everything with her, John would be the one on the outside looking in.

All he can do is try to do better with Elizabeth. He's going to fail at that, too, and that leaves him angry with himself and her.

They sit together in tense silence through the long hours, watching the distant fires of burning cities, until dawn hides the glow of the flames against the pale line of the horizon. Black smoke still billows skyward as the last darts speed through the stargate and John can fly the cloaked jumper back to Atlantis.

~*~

The city baths are a luxury they would never have availed themselves of before, had they found them in the there and then. No time, little power, maybe even embarrassment, would have kept the members of the Atlantis expedition in their cramped quarters. Quick, lukewarm showers were the norm, just enough to get the day's dirt, the sweat and fear stink and, sometimes, blood, off. She's alone here now, though, and indulges in this gift of luxury, courtesy of the Ancients.

The feel of warm, scented water around her is luxurious; a small escape from daily life to a memory of Earth. A way of distracting herself from the fact that Rodney and John are both still not back from their latest trip offworld.

Their latest trip makes it sound so innocuous, but what John and Rodney are doing is anything but that. They're playing with time, deliberately, even violently, changing what had happened in their own timeline. Elizabeth doesn't want to stop them; Rodney is sure, and she believes him in this just as much as John does. Earth's timeline is safe enough, unaffected by events in Pegasus, Rodney has argued persuasively. She still wishes she could go with them, but John is hard and immovable on that subject.  

So they leave her behind each time.

She keeps thinking of Marguerite. It was little things at first, wasn't it? Things Marguerite said she knew were wrong, but she couldn't stop thinking them. Couldn't get them out of her head.

She should say something. She should tell Rodney, that she thinks she is going to go crazy if they leave her alone here.

The city is John's.

Atlantis scares her now, when she's alone, with its vast, empty corridors, the looming height of its rooms, with darkness pooling in every niche and corner. It is and isn't the city she knew and lived in for two years; the city that rose, ten thousand years ago in the future. That city had slept too long to wake. This Atlantis is aware. This Atlantis is Atenë. This Atlantis will twist everyone in it into something different, no longer human, the way it has already touched John.

They don't belong here. She doesn't belong. Elizabeth can feel it, feel it growing every day. John has the gene, and Rodney's artificial one is close enough that the city accepts him, because John alone is not enough and Atenë needs more, wants much more. It doesn't want to share John and Rodney with Elizabeth. It doesn't want her here.

Sometimes she thinks it barely tolerates her presence. Sometimes she berates herself; Rodney's right, this is not 2001, Atenë is not HAL.

She can't push those thoughts out of her head when she's alone.

She feels the AI lurking, an ever-present consciousness. She feels watched, dwarfed by her surroundings. She feels sick, hot and nauseous, every time John and Rodney leave her to Atenë's mercies.

Atlantis concentrates everything on John. Does whatever he thinks before he even thinks it, tries to make life easier for him, tries to please him. Once it determined the Ancients weren't returning, it lured him to the chair room and trapped Elizabeth in a transporter. She knows that was no accident, even if it hasn't done anything so obvious since.

What John wants, Atlantis gives: it tolerates Elizabeth and accepts Rodney and his altered gene.

Once, Rodney expressed his concern over this behavior, over Elizabeth's uneasiness. Rodney was disturbed too, but now, after living day in and day out under the constant influence of the city's consciousness, it obviously no longer bothers him. It never has bothered John. There is a silent understanding between him and Atlantis - he would stay as long as he could and Atlantis would try to keep him alive and well. He is Atenë's lover as much as he is Rodney's.

She tries not to think about it, but fails every time. Fails to not imagine hard lines of muscle and bone and warm skin sliding against warm skin, moans and primal craving mingled with a deeper meaning that makes Atlantis sing out.

She hates that she can actually feel jealous of the city itself, but she is. Somehow they share with Atlantis what they don't share with her.

Part of Elizabeth will never forget or forgive. She still remembers the terror of being locked in that closet-sized transporter, with only the emergency lighting on, thinking John was dying, thinking there was nothing Rodney could do, that even her radio was out. She knows what it feels like to face that ultimate solitude and she blames Atenë.

She sees John after he's been in the chair, in the interface. The way he appears blissed out afterward, eager to go back in, worries her more than the adrenaline high she knows the life-and-death missions provide him. Rodney isn't exactly the same, but he comes close enough. At least, John takes Rodney with him offworld. When they come back from missions, they're both calmer, less at each other's throats. Elizabeth doesn't need an overly active imagination to fill her in on what else happens on those missions or after, either.

She runs a hand up her moist thigh to her calf and feels the water drip from her hands. For a moment, her fingers linger over the nearly invisible scar left by the three year birth control implant she received at the SGC along with every other woman on the Atlantis expedition. For their protection… No one told the men they had to have vasectomies. Of course, that would neither protect a man from picking up a disease or being raped. Her head sinks back against the pool's edge and she closes her eyes.

Would John and Rodney have fallen into whatever they have if Atlantis itself hadn't existed? Even if they had, by chance, met on Earth? She suspects not. Nothing in their files or psychological profiles indicate much more than tolerance – though in John's case, he might just have been too discreet for it to show up, considering his military status; Rodney, however, doesn't do discreet – but she's seen Atlantis change both of them, since Rodney got the ATA gene, too. She can't know what would have happened. If Rodney is right about the infinite number of timelines, then somewhere, Rodney and John hate each other, and in yet another, they fell in love without ever finding Atlantis.

She could hate them for that. Oh, yes. Atlantis was her dream before they came here. Now it's closer to a nightmare, the memory of blue-white solar plasma stretched and twisting across space into an ever-growing rift in the cosmos that burns behind her eyes a reminder of what their coming to Pegasus eventually cost. A white flare of light pulling apart the universe as John piloted the jumper into the stargate just ahead of the expanding rip in space and time. The end of everything and an infinite red scream through the wormhole. A nightmare she sees reflected in John's hard hazel eyes and the guilty shadows under Rodney's blue gaze.

It's what sends the two of them out, over and over again, searching for ways to forestall that future the three of them made.

Rodney mentions taking her to Athos, but it seems like a tease, at least until John changes his mind. Sometimes, lately, she suffers from something she never dreamed she could feel while in Atlantis: boredom. She has almost nothing to do, whether Rodney and John are away or not.

She has gone without touch for a long time before, but it's nights like these when she misses it so much it feels like suffocating.

Her hand on her thigh moves in broader strokes, bringing back some semblance of calm. But she's tired of touching herself, of feeling nothing but what she knows will come, of what only she controls. Wild envy for what Rodney and John have surges up, of the two of them sharing that with Atenë, and her hand stops.

Damn them both.

No. They're human. They need, too. She can't – shouldn't – won't let herself grow angry and bitter.

She's lying to herself.

She lets her hand fall away and leans back, the warm water buoying her up, resting her head against the scalloped lip of the pool-sized bath. The lights are low, but she closes her eyes anyway, trying to picture her home on Earth. She deliberately does not think that the green backyard, the tail-wagging yellow Lab, the house with its bay windows and graveled driveway don't exist and won't for nine thousand thirty-seven years. She pretends she can smell lemons heavy on the tree, remember the glossy dark green of the leaves.

Then, without a warning, there's a silky-soft touch to her shoulder. A touch that's not from her hand. A breath chills the water down her arm. Lips soft against her skin.

She opens her eyes slowly, turns her head,  and green eyes are boring into hers. John is sprawled prone along the edge of the bath, his index finger resting on her arm. His eyes are dilated. His mouth is bruised. He looks sharp-set and predatory and smiles so seductively her whole body tightens. She blinks in shock for a second, forgetting how to breathe at the intent look on his face. "John."

"Miss us?"

Us?

She turns her head. Rodney is crouched tailor-fashion on her other side. His eyes are dark, too.

"I think she did."

He drops one hand into the water, letting his fingers drift to the slick, smooth round of her shoulder and along her collar bone.

John trails his finger up her neck, brushing aside wet tendrils of her hair carefully, resting over her throat as if to find her pulse.

There's an angry bruise marring his cheekbone, a raw scrape at its center. He smells of soap and antibiotic. Tension thrums off him like stray voltage. The mission to Dagan must have gone very badly.

Elizabeth sinks deeper into the water, escaping their touch.  She doesn't want this. Not like this.

She won't.

Rodney shakes droplets of water from his fingers, then reaches over her to skim along the darkening bruise on John's cheek. John lifts his face and leans into Rodney's hand; sleek, but wired too, the gesture too elegant to be unconscious. His eyes are awake, trained on her the entire time.

They're both putting on a show and she doesn't know why, when they've made an effort at discretion until now.

"Did you?"

John's hand slides through the water and finds her breast. Elizabeth's breath catches. He traces a faintly callused fingertip around the edge of her areola, deliberate and expert, spiking heat through her, but she can feel Atlantis watching. Fear curls along her spine.

"John…"

He reaches for Rodney's hand and places it on her face. "She approves." Atenë approves. The AI. Elizabeth doesn't believe it. She knows the city doesn't want to share them with her. It hates her. She feels it all the time.

"No," Elizabeth insists. "No."

She grabs Rodney's hand and lifts it away, while her skin still aches for more.

"Stop it."

"Elizabeth," Rodney breathes, "you don't have to be alone.  Let us – "

"No," she snaps and pulls away from them both, floating to the other side of the bath, climbing out and wrapping a towel around herself. "I'm not doing this."

"Fine," John drawls.

He rolls onto his back. Rodney catches one of his hands and holds it. "Don't take it out on Elizabeth."

"I'm sorry," John says quietly. "Elizabeth? I'm sorry." He hides his eyes beneath his forearm. The knuckles of the hand Rodney holds are white. "I can't – It was too close."

She walks toward the door, trying to ignore them both. They're oblivious to her.

"Let it go."

"Fuck."

"That's the plan."

John sucks in his breath suddenly. "Okay ... Jesus. Yes. Please."

When she looks back, Rodney is drawing John's clothes off.  She realizes that they won't – can't – stop, even if she stays and watches. Need outweighs discretion.

She can't say what makes her pause and look back. Only that her feet don't continue walking and her eyes are drawn back to the two men near the pool. John is shirtless now and Rodney is in the process of relieving him of his soft leather trousers. She remembers the day when they came back with the new clothes. The sleek black of them looked good on John. She can't help but think that it looks even better now, sliding off his hips.

When she first catches a glimpse of him naked, it's not arousal that spikes in her. She looks at his lean frame and all she can feel is sharp worry at how thin he has become, how visible his ribs are and how slim his legs. With nearly no body fat at all, he's almost gaunt. All skin and sinewy muscles and hard lines that are still beautiful.

Hard lines that Rodney is exploring with just his fingertips – down John's arms and to his fingers, back up to his chest, circling his nipples and trailing down to his navel, skimming narrow hips, but deliberately avoiding John's firming erection.

Elizabeth swallows hard. There is no sound in the room but Atlantis' subdued humming and the lap of the water in the bath pools. She thinks she can hear Rodney's fingers moving on John's skin.

Both men breathe in unison, a little quicker now, but still unhurried as they remove Rodney's clothes as well.

It's little surprise to see that Rodney has thinned down as well when he steps out of his underwear and focuses on touching John again. The heavy muscles in his back move under pale skin. He trails his fingers through the water beside them, then strokes John with those wet fingertips, tracing wet patterns every where John allows, and John allows everything.  Rodney is still rounder and appears softer than John, but he really does have a beautiful ass, and his arms and legs are strong but not sinewy. For all that she can see the bones poking out from under John's skin, she can't help but think that the contrast between their bodies heightens the beauty of both. She can't help thinking about what they offered her and what it would feel like to be with them.

There are wet traces on John's skin now and John stretches luxuriously, almost decadently, shifting himself closer against Rodney. She would have pegged John for a noisy lover, but he is so quiet it's downright unsettling. The only things she notices are the shifts in his breathing, a small hitch when Rodney hits an especially sensitive spot,  voiceless sighs and exhalations, but nothing else. She wonders if he's vocal during orgasm, if that tight control ever slips.

But it does seem to slip, here with Rodney.

The lights in the pools throw rippling reflections across the walls. Some of the pools are so hot drifts of steam rise above the surface. The air in the room is moist. It catches in her throat.

Elizabeth inches closer, her hand clutching the towel against her oversensitive breasts. Her own breathing is unsteady now. She knows she should leave but she's human too and the temptation to watch them together is irresistible.

And then Rodney stops his exploration and moves up to just look at John – two beautiful bodies sculpted in the dim light of the bath. It flickers over their bare flanks as though Atlantis itself is touching them, too, and glitters like shattered crystal through the droplets of water on the line of dark hair running down John's chest to his belly and lower. Rodney dips two fingers into the water again and trails them around John's lips. John's eyes flutter closed and his tongue darts out to touch Rodney's index finger.

Rodney shivers. His fingers move to the back of John's head and pull him in, lips meeting lips, unhurried, gentle, just pressure at first. It evolves into more soon, there's a low groan from Rodney and a smile crinkling John's eyes as he pulls Rodney down to his body, flush, skin on skin. Rodney slides his lips along John's in a different angle, opening them.

She can see Rodney's tongue for a second, hears the wet sounds of the open-mouthed kisses growing in intensity. She swallows hard at that, at the intimacy between them. Her cheeks flush and she can feel herself getting wet when the sounds mingle with the view of John slowly shifting and rolling his hips against Rodney's.

They're kissing as if they're breathing each other in – teeth and tongue, lips sealed then softly parting only to return for more. Rodney bites and licks his way down to John's collarbone. John is breathing quickly but is still quiet, while Rodney is groaning into the hollow of John's neck, hands moving from John's neck over his shoulder and down, one tightening on his water-slick bicep and the other on his hip. It burns her up how much she wants to touch them, wants their desire for each other to wash over her.

Rodney's breath hitches. "John, I –" His voice - that broken, gasping plea – shoots straight to her groin. The soft towel feels coarse against her nipples now.

Elizabeth's breath catches in her throat.

John's hand is resting on Rodney's hip. His fingers flex in tiny little movements.

"Yes," he says in a low, hoarse voice, as though his throat is tight. He draws one leg up, knee hooking over Rodney's thigh. "Rodney, c'mon."

Rodney's snort of laughter is warmer and more arousing than anything Elizabeth ever thought would be between two men.

"Lube?" he asks, the smile still in his voice.

"Pocket."

Rodney pushes himself up on his knees, crouched between John's legs, bracing one hand on the decking, balancing over John. The muscles in his arm ripple. Elizabeth imagines what his arms would feel like around her, what they must feel like around John. She pretends the water droplets still beaded on her shoulders and thighs are from Rodney's hands whispering over her flesh the way he touched John. She can't see enough of either of them, John's leg obscures her view, but she's afraid to move. She doesn't want them to know she's there. She doesn't want to admit to herself she's watching and wet, much less have either of them know it.

They invited her to join them, not to play voyeur without their knowledge.

John is desultorily rubbing his calf against the back of Rodney's thigh. Rodney stretches his free arm to the puddle of clothing they'd shed and scrabbles through it. He doesn't look away from John for a moment.

"Hah!" he mutters, his hand closing on something and pulling it close. His breath whistles out as John curls up and licks a nipple. When John repeats the action, Rodney's arm shakes. "John – " His voice shakes, too.

John draws back and tips his face up, smiling.

She's seen that wicked smile on John's face across her desk, across a conference table, on a sun-drenched balcony. She's never seen it with such a sultry heat. His lips part, wet and flushed. Something clenches inside her. He's beautiful, she realizes; he's beautiful looking at Rodney like that, pleased with himself and still full of wonder.

Maybe Rodney sees the same thing, because he drops the narrow container beside them and brushes his hand over John's face. John's eyes stay on Rodney's face, even as Rodney's thumb rubs over his lips. Rodney touches him like the slightest pressure would break him. John turns his face into the caress and kisses the center of Rodney's palm.

He smiles again and settles back. The hand on Rodney's hip stays. The other strokes up Rodney's back and side, along the back of his arm and down to his hand, taking it and guiding it back to the abandoned container of lubricant.

"Where did you find this anyway?" Rodney asks.

John's smile becomes a grin. He chuckles. "The city has medical supplies, you know. Atenë told me where it was."

Rodney frowns at the container.

"And it's still good?"

John nods solemnly, then ruins it by losing control and laughing, his hands tightening on Rodney and holding on.

"Stasis storage," John blurts out, "I picked it up from the infirmary after I showered," then yelps as Rodney drops the container on his bare chest.

Before he can move, Rodney bends closer and slants his mouth over John's lips, swallowing his laughter. It's easy to see they've kissed before, often; there's no awkwardness between them, just a sure sweetness. John's arms twine around Rodney, threading through brown hair that's grown out longer than Elizabeth remembers Rodney ever tolerating, dancing down the hollow valley of Rodney's spine, stroking along his biceps, smoothing over the long, heavy muscles in his thighs, everywhere he can reach and touch.

When they part, John looks half-dazed and hungry.

"Rodney," he murmurs.

His hands move restlessly down Rodney's back again, coming to rest on Rodney's ass, thumbs making little aimless circles against Rodney's skin, fingers closed loosely on the cheeks.

"Come on," he complains softly.

"Look, I don't like pain and I don't like causing it when we're doing this," Rodney says between panting breaths. He sits back, ass on his heels. "Just – just let me – "  John's hand has found his erection and begun stroking. "Jesus – John – " He sounds desperate.

"I don't care if it hurts," John groans.

"Just let me do this right."

He takes John's legs and pulls him up until his thighs rest on Rodney's. John obligingly wraps his legs around Rodney's waist, lifting his hips and wriggling until he's resting on Rodney's lap. It's almost awkward and incredibly erotic. John's abandoned and shameless. A soft, breath-skipping groan escapes him as Rodney runs one hand inside his thigh. She can see him now, and presses her thighs together, tensing all her muscles, because John's erection is as elegantly made as the rest of him, flushed and hard. He bucks up when Rodney rubs the palm of the hand John kissed over the glans.

Part of her notices he's circumcised, like many American men of his age. Part of her is trying to keep her own breathing quiet. She's pressing one arm over her towel, just under her breasts. Her other hand is clenched against the need to touch herself as she watches. That would be succumbing to something wrong, despite their invitation earlier. They don't know she's still here. Spying. Invading the privacy of this act, stealing what was freely offered.

And Rodney is stroking his fingers between John's legs, back between his cheeks, working them into John. John tenses, his eyes squeezing shut, his breath stuttering. Elizabeth thinks he'll pull away now, but Rodney is moving so slowly, his lower lip caught between his teeth in concentration, his face set and flushed, damp at the temples, that John just breathes and lets him do it. A muscle in John's thigh twitches wildly and Rodney smoothes one hand down that leg, loosening it, soothing, before slicking himself.

He hooks his elbows under John's knees, drawing him wider open, lifts John's hips and rocks himself forward. John makes a small, breathless sound at the back of his throat, locking his hands on Rodney's elbows as Rodney slides into him. He arches his head back and writhes as Rodney begins to move in him.

"God, John," Rodney groans.

Elizabeth bites the inside of her lip.

They move together slowly at first, muscles tense under skin gleaming with sweat. Rodney is holding himself back, holding John back, until they move in tandem. John breathes out with each thrust into him. His fingers tighten on Rodney's elbows. The muscles in his forearms stand out in relief and his eyes are shut now. Rodney's buttocks tighten, hollowing along the sides, each time he pushes deeper into John.

She wants to run her hand over Rodney and feel the muscles move. She could slide her hand up the inside of John's thigh until she reached the crease between thigh and groin. She could cup the weight of his tightening balls, nails just scraping the hot delicate skin of his scrotum, the silky dark hair there, the back of her hand brushing against Rodney's abdomen with every rocking thrust. She could kneel beside them and run her hands over both bodies.

The fantasy is almost as real as what she's watching. She could have it. She could have both of them. The temptation is sweet as honey, thick on the tongue. She's denied herself and denied wanting either of them out of an instinctive belief that taking one of them into her body and not the other would fracture their brittle balancing act irreparably. But the only one left out now is her and it's her own choice. It chokes her. But where would she fit?

Rodney's murmuring now, one word over and over that contrasts with John's near silence. He's moving faster, quickening his strokes, intense and urgent. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."

John's face is transformed, every line of his body drawn out taut. Rodney reaches between them and wraps just his forefinger and thumb around John's erection, tugging expertly as he slides the circle up and down, working his hand in rhythm with the push and pull of his body inside John's. John's finally making noise, wild, wordless sounds. His hands roam over Rodney, drawing him in closer, urging him to move faster, harder. His head twists from side to side and he's biting his lip, trying to bite back the sounds he's making. Rodney bends and kisses his shoulder, then bites the muscle there and John arches, crying out, wet spilling over Rodney's hand and his belly.

Rodney's pace quickens as John comes, his face a mask of concentration and pleasure. Elizabeth burns and aches watching them, seeing John's face slack and soft, his eyes still unfocused, and Rodney caught on the cusp, gasping, "Oh, God," in wonder instead of horror. As Rodney stiffens and his hips jerk, as John's fingers find his open mouth, Elizabeth feels a hot rush between her own legs, a phantom orgasm that leaves her face burning and her body hollow and aching for more.

She closes her eyes and counts between breaths, finding her own control again.

Rodney is still sprawled on John, still heaving for breath. They look debauched, tangled lax-limbed together and sated, angles and hungers muted in the hum of post-coital languor. John's petting Rodney's sweat-dampened hair and Rodney's stroking the point of John's hip, his head pillowed on John's chest.

It's suddenly too much. She can't stand watching them any longer, not like this; she draws back and flees from the intimacy of the scene.

~*~

Rodney finds enough energy to get them both up and dressed. John just wants to drowse, now that the sharp-set need and fear-turned-anger have been exorcised. Without a crisis to snap him awake with an adrenaline jolt, John wakes up slow, yawning and stretching and rubbing at his eyes.

"Come on."

"What's so important?" John asks through a yawn.

"I need food."

A roll of his eyes is John's response, but he follows Rodney and enthusiastically eats what Rodney cooks.

"I can't believe you can't cook," Rodney gripes, making up a third plate that they share.

John shrugs. "Military. I never really had to." His gaze sharpens. "That's why you learned. So you'd know exactly what was in your food."

"Exactly," Rodney tells him around a mouthful of custard fruit. He isn't really surprised John figured it out. John pays attention to him.

John hums a little, his fingers hovering over the plate as he decides what to eat next, a piece of fruit or some of the crisp, cubed tubers that look like red celery and taste a little like radishes. After a hesitation, he chooses the things that look like pale blue pingpong balls and taste like carrots.

"So are we going to try with Elizabeth again?" Rodney asks. He's not sure why, but he keeps thinking of her expression, before she even knew he and John were there. She looked so distant. Of course, she also looked naked and wet, two of his favorite looks on her or John, but he can't get the idea that she looked painfully lonely out of his head.

John chokes and spits into his palm, then glares at Rodney, who is unrepentant.

"Because next time, you might try something a little more suave than tonight's approach."

"Yes, no, I don't know, okay?" John snaps. He stares at the table. "If it doesn't feel weird. Good enough?"

Rodney pops one of the coin-sized flat breads into his mouth, nodding, pleased.

John shoves the rest of his food away. "Rodney," he says softly. "what if we're making a mistake?"

"What?"

He looks away. "Pushing her. This. Do you even know what this is? I'm not – the whole situation isn't fair to her." He returns his gaze to Rodney. "I'm not sure… I'm not sure at all."

Jesus. John was the one who suggested this in the first place… Except he suggested it in response to Rodney's worries. That didn't mean John wanted it at all.

"Do you want her at all?"

"Wanting isn't the problem."

"So you don't like Elizabeth."

"McKay." The warning, the back-off-right-now tone is in John's voice. It just makes Rodney push harder.

"You just don't love her, huh?"

John pushes away from the table, ready to bolt, and Rodney knows better than to catch hold of him. "Love?" John echoes.

"Yeah."

John sinks back down in his chair, then draws in a deep breath. He meets Rodney's gaze. "Remember what you said?"

"I say a lot of stuff," Rodney points out dryly, earning an almost smile.

"You said you weren't in love with Elizabeth…"

"Ah."

"She has to know that," John concludes. "Second best sucks." He's watching Rodney warily, waiting for his response.

"Can't you try…?"

"I am, I'm just…Elizabeth…" He sighs.

"You've got issues. Elizabeth has issues. I get – "

"You've got issues," John points out.

Rodney rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes, all us chillen got issues. See, the three of us are perfect for each other."

John smiles and relaxes a little. "So, we can drive each other crazy. Crazier. – When did you become the optimist in this relationship?" He laughs. "Jesus. Relationship."

"Someone has to be and you seem to be hogging the gloom and doom."

"Right." John's expression darkens. "We're going to have to go back to Dagan again."

Rodney finishes chewing and swallows, despite the way his throat has gone dry. "You're not serious?"

John just looks at him.

"God, you are serious. The Wraith are culling Dagan."

"We'll have to wait them out, but you know we need that ZPM."

He pushes the plate away. "Great."

"I don't want to go back, either," John admits quietly. "I don't want to ... I can go alone, if you want to stay here."

"Don't be ridiculous, you're not going alone."

John sighs, then rises and begins cleaning up the kitchen. He doesn't argue. He doesn't resist when Rodney pulls him into his room and undresses him, before pushing him down onto the bed. Rodney pulls the blanket Nelda gave them with up over them both, while John watches him through slitted eyes, still tense, until Rodney rolls onto his side and pulls him closer, tangling their legs together, touching his lips to John's collarbone.

He slowly relaxes then. They don't speak with words. Rodney strokes his hand from John's shoulder down his back, over and over.

~*~

They slink into the Quindozum's monastery silently, perfectly in synch. John's plan goes like clockwork, which is, he'll admit, always a pleasant surprise. Rodney is on his toes, much too intent on getting the ZPM to notice any danger.

They start back out and it all goes to hell.

It begins with a quiver running through a tapestry hung high overhead, a shower of dust. Rodney staggers into a wall. "What – ?"

The next tremor is rolling the floor under their feet. John knows this sensation, remembers it from California, like being on a boat, but infinitely more disturbing. The ground is not supposed to move. All his senses rebel against the feeling. He rides it out. "Shit. Earthquake."

The rumble isn't really the earth, he knows. It's the building shifting reluctantly on suddenly unstable foundations. More dust springs from invisible crannies, bright specks by torchlight that make Rodney cough. He's swiveling his head, looking alarmed. "Earthquake?" He clutches the ZPM tighter. "That's just perfect."

John catches his arm and tugs him forward. "Yeah. Unless the Wraith are back. Come on. I want to get out of here."

"Was that it?" Rodney asks as they hurry for the stairs.

John still has his hand on Rodney's arm. "God, I hope so." He doubts the Sudarians ever heard of earthquake-proof construction. Black, ominous cracks snake up the walls.

Of course, it isn't. The next temblor hits as they start up a flight of stone steps. It goes on and on, like a slow motion bomb blast, John has time to think, as the mortar holding the stones together under his feet turns to powder and everything falls apart. A crack like the bones of the world breaking accompanies the stairs coming apart, a huge timber above them snapping, splinters like daggers flying, forcing them both to duck and cover their heads. The stairs under their feet are rocking, vibrations riding up through John's legs.

"I don't believe this!" Rodney shouts. "It's just not fair!"

Pieces of the stairs are tumbling out from under their feet.

"Move!" John yells.

"Shit!"

"McKay!"

He turns back and tries to grab Rodney's arm, only to have the ZPM shoved into his grip.

"No!"

He almost throws it away – but it's a ZPM – and reaches for Rodney again. He twists, holding the ZPM with one hand, stretching the other toward Rodney.

Rodney's hand clamps around his wrist, driving John's watchband into the flesh painfully, and John jerks him upward.

"Damn it, you weigh a ton," he hisses, trying to keep his balance. His arm is going to come out of the socket in a second.

"I've got nothing under my feet, thank you," Rodney snaps back. His other hand is clutching at a crack in the wall, the joints of his fingers white with strain. His eyes are all pupil and panic. Stones are raining from above: huge, quarried blocks, cobble-sized bricks, pieces of paving and facing, gravel that peppers the back of John's hands, the back of his neck.

The stone that hits John's shoulder is at least ten inches on one side, wider the other way, narrower the third. He cries out, pain flashing from bone and muscle to nerves and his brain. His entire arm goes numb and useless. Rodney's hand is still around his wrist but John's fingers won't close around his. He looks up, mouth opening in an O,  "John – " A second stone, smaller, just as brutal, hits Rodney, impacting the right side of his face.

John has time see stone and blood and Rodney's face go slack as death. Rodney's hands open, dropping away from their deathgrips on the wall and John's wrist. John throws the ZPM away and tries to catch Rodney's hand with his good one. It's too far. There is a flash of pale, open palm disappearing into darkness. Rodney is gone.

The ceiling comes down on his head with a roar that consumes the world.

~*~

Elizabeth stands in front of the gate. Even through her boots, she can feel the floor, cold metal making her shiver. She doesn't care. Or, rather, she does care, but she doesn't allow herself to move. John and Rodney are hours overdue from a planet that was being culled by the Wraith last time they went there.

She pushes her hair back from her face, thinking she should tie it back or cut it, and checks her watch again. Four hours overdue. Not that long, not that long at all, but her instincts are screaming. Something is wrong and she's standing here like a useless damsel having vapors.

She used to be better than this. She's let John nudge her into a box that doesn't fit. She isn't the woman she was, but she isn't this… helpless person waiting at home. She doesn't have to be. Maybe the diplomat doesn't have a place, maybe those skills have lain dormant so long she can't revive them, but there are options. That was what she learned and believed: there are always options, there are always choices.

Morals are not a luxury and she needs to hold onto her principles. Survival can come at too high a price: witness the Wraith. She's still clinging to that belief. While she has that, she's still Elizabeth Weir; if she ever forgets, she'll be lost. Who she is is still her choice.

The gate remains empty and silent. She glares at it.

Come on, she urges, come on.

She checks her watch again and makes the decision. Atlantis sat empty without the shield active for ten thousand years once. It can survive again for a few hours. She's going to Dagan.

~*~

She steps through the gate and stops cold, amazed by the air, the difference; it's night on Dagan, but the sky is star-shot and so high she feels like she could fall up into it when she tips her head back.

Behind her the wormhole collapses and with it, the cool blue light is gone. She's left with only moonlight, the smell of earth and grass, the subtle change in the gravity of a different plant. She walks forward, getting her 'planet' legs, like a sailor stepping onto a new ship.

As ever, she's astounded that most cultures don't establish some sort of border patrol, security checkpoint at the stargate. Not even a surveillance post to monitor anyone coming or going. She grateful for the lack of watchers tonight.

She touches the switch on her jacket and speaks into her mic.

"Colonel Sheppard? John?"

There's a harsh crackle of static, a blur of something that might be words behind the rush of sound. The replacement radio headset Rodney put together for John isn't as reliable as original issue.

"John?"

More static, harsh and painful in her ear.

She switches channels and tries, "Rodney? Rodney, this is Elizabeth? Please answer me if you can. I'm unable to contact John."

She pulls the moist air in and waits. Waits. She can hear her heartbeat. No answer. She waits through a sweep of the second hand around her watch face and returns to John's channel.

"John?"

Static, jolting loud, and sharp sounds that must be words, answer her. Unintelligible. She narrows her eyes, searching the area around the gate. The highest point is covered in trees. She doesn't want to get lost in the dark. She chooses the next point, a gentle rise with only grass covering it. The moon is nearly full and bright enough to navigate by. The grass is silver in its light. She lengthens her stride, hoping that reaching a high point will improve the radio's reception enough to make out a transmission.

The wind cutting over the hill, rustling the grass, is cool, cooler than Atlantis, but it doesn't chill her the same way. From the top, she can look in all directions as she turns. She finds the spark of fires in the distance and deduces it must be the remnants of the Sudarian city. The Wraith didn't cull everyone. Survivors still live there, rebuilding their lives.

She activates the radio again.

"John, this is Eliza – "

" – is is Sheppard.  Elizabeth, do you read? Elizabeth!?"

"I hear you, John."

"What are you doing – It doesn't matter." John's voice spikes and rises, then drops to a monotone. The radio leaches a great deal from a voice, but not enough to conceal that wild mixture of emotions. "I can't get him out. I can't get to him."

She doesn't ask who.

"What's your status?"

"Status?" Another blast of static, or noise, a radio mic dragging across something, the rough sound of laboring breath interrupted by a curse and more uneven words, "Fucked – Rodney's buried, I've been digging for hours, everything came down on us, I can't hear him anymore, he won't answer – "

"Did the Wraith come back?"

"Earthquake."

Elizabeth watches the bright lights and realizes she's seeing flames not from cook or hearth fires, but from buildings burning.

~*~

John tears at another stone. It's too big to shift with his hands. They leave dark streaks on the stone. The fire crackling on the other side of the temple – the remains of the temple, tumbled down – throws a red light. The wind shifts again and again, inundating him with smoke and, sometimes, a wash of heat. He ignores it, grabs the broken timber he's been using as a lever and jams it into a crack. His arm screams when he puts any pressure on it and he nearly blacks out, hanging on the wedged-in timber and sobbing out breathless, sick frustration. He needs to move this stone and the next one and the next. He has to. He has to get the rubble away and get down and get Rodney out of the hole. His whole existence is narrowed to the one goal.

The brush of a hand over his shoulder barely registers. He's already dismissed Elizabeth's voice on the radio. Threw the headset away.

He shrugs the hand away, squeezes his eyes shut and leans all his weight into the timber lever. The stone shifts, then shifts back and settles deeper. He feels the force shiver its way up the timber, the end of it cracking under the weight, and barely has time to react before it snaps with the sound of a gunshot and enough force to take his head off.

He falls onto his side, raw hands skidding over dirt and stone, while his lever flies up and lands higher on the pile of rubble that was the west side of the Quindozum temple. He uses his good arm to shield his eyes. More stones rattle down, dust rising to mingle with the smoke in the air.

"John."

Elizabeth's hands on him. He doesn't wonder how she can be there. She is. "He's under there," he gasps out. "He's – I talked to him, on the radio, he's alive."

"John, this is too big a job for one man and you're hurt," she says.

He knows in some distant and sane part of him that she's speaking reasonably.

"No, I've got to get him out," he insists, forcing himself back onto his knees and clawing at the nearest chunk of broken stone. "I can't leave him."

She catches his hands, gasping and looking down at the raw palms, the torn nails and bloodied fingertips. "My God, John – "

"It doesn't matter," he tells her, still trying to pull away, afraid he'll pass out if he jerks too hard and then how will he help Rodney? He'll be useless, he'll be too late.

"John, you have to think. If Rodney is trapped – " She catches her breath, eyes widening at his expression, his wild anger, and amends, "You could cause more harm than good, trying to dig him out without a plan. The wreckage can't be stable."

He stares at her, at the firelight shifting over her face. She's right and there's nothing he can do.

"He was talking to me," he whispers. "He stopped." He reaches for his earpiece, but it's gone, he threw it away when he fell and it broke. He keeps forgetting. "He stopped." It makes him shake, saying that. "Elizabeth," he says.

She's looking at the rubble.

"How deep is it?"

"It – We were coming up from the basement." John tries to pull his thoughts together, out of the black and the red and the terror that has choked him since he came to half-buried himself. "The stairs – he was behind me. When the floor above came down, he was hit by a rock. It knocked him out. He fell. I tried to catch him." His voice goes flatter as he drops into report mode. "We had the ZPM." A hitching feeling in his chest makes him stop. He sees Rodney's hand, falling away from him. He looks around and points to a bundle of blue cloth  next to a stretch of broken wall. "I found it when I started digging."

Rodney cared about the ZPM. So he put it there, resenting it because it was the reason they were in the temple. Why Rodney is buried underneath it and John can't breathe.

He lurches back to his feet and staggers back to the rubble. "I've got to get him out," he repeats. It's all he can think. He bends and finds a piece he can move, lifts it and throws it to the side. "He's still alive down there."

"We need more people," Elizabeth says. "We need – John, you're not helping!"

"I – I –" He can hear her, but it makes no difference. He can't give up. He can't stop. He shakes his head, prying at another timber. "I can't – "

Stop, cope, give up, listen, endure losing one more person. Just can't.

"You've got to help me dig."

"No, John, you're not helping Rodney."

She catches his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her, all shifting shadows, but his gaze darts back to the rubble, up to the night sky. Dagan's second moon is waning, no more than a silver sickle left, eaten up by darkness, riding just above the horizon. The Pegasans call a waning moon a Wraith moon. Darkness eats the light.

 "I will be back. I'm going to get us help."

"Help," he echoes dully. Who is going to help them? Dagan's empty, culled, any survivors hiding, probably terrified this latest disaster is the Wraith returned. "Yes. Right. I've got to – I've got to keep digging."

"I'll be back. We'll get Rodney out."

Elizabeth wipes his face with her fingertips. Then she's striding away, determination keeping her back straight. He doesn't know where she's going, what plan she has.

He drops to his knees and wriggles his hand into a crevice, trying to find some handhold, some way to move the next piece of rubble. Rodney is down there and he stopped talking. John can't hear him. He can hear the fire. He can hear the creaks and groans of the rubble continuing to settle. He can hear Elizabeth, but she's as far away as Atlantis.

He wrenches another stone loose, the piece of carved panel balanced on it snapping down against his fingers, scraping more skin away from his knuckles as he jerks back. He shoves his hands into the space he made and grabs the panel, pulling and rocking it with all his strength. He can't stop, he can't give up, and he can't see, there's too much smoke, wetness running down his face.

He wonders if Elizabeth was really there. Maybe he hallucinated her, like one of Rodney's ghosts. Rodney said he couldn't touch his ghosts. Elizabeth is like that. He can never touch her. He'd give anything if this wasn't real. Wishes Elizabeth was really with him. He hates how calm she is in a crisis, hates the way she takes the time to weigh every decision against some bigger picture he just doesn't see, but she could steady him; he could get angry with her and use the anger to clear away the terror eating him.

His mouth tastes of dirt and blood when he scrubs at his face. He has to keep blinking everything back into focus. He thinks the fire is closer. He has to work harder.

~*~

She jogs and walks back to the stargate, taking the straightest path. An earthquake. What would have happened if it had toppled the stargate? It's a waste of time to think about, though. She reaches the DHD and leans over it, palms flattened over the curved upper surface.

She knows Atlantis' gate address by heart. She knows the address of the old alpha site. She knows Athos' because John and Rodney have drilled it into her. And she knows Dagan, because she memorizes the address of every world her teams visited. She has a good memory.

There's only one place she knows, now, where she can get help.

She dials for Athos and walks through the ring as soon as the wormhole stabilizes.

It's night on Athos, too. But it's warmer, the air carries the unmistakeable scent of late spring, the intense and vibrant blend of fresh green and trees in bloom and rich, dark earth - life that shows its riches exuberantly. Lashing rain greets her and a darkness that is clear and perfect. When the stargate disengages, all light is gone suddenly and she has to wait a few precious moments for her eyes to adapt.

She didn't expect it to be night, here, too. There are no fires to guide her way. If she walks into the wrong direction, Rodney will have no chance at all.

It's hard to breathe against what her rational mind has quietly told her ever since she saw the huge pile of rubble: It may already be too late. There is little chance that Rodney is alive under that weight of stone. But even little chance still is a chance, so she starts moving, pulling one of the phosphor sticks out of the tac-vest she had put on under the coat and breaking it in two. She's not going to give up on Rodney, no matter what reason tells her to believe.

The field she stands on is empty. In the ghostly yellowish-green light of the sticks, she sees tilled earth. Rain water pools between the rows of soil, tall sprouts of whatever crop has been planted waving under the force of the wind. The ground is soggy and squish-squelches underneath her boots. Taking a deep breath, she bends forward, holding the glowing phosphor sticks closer to the ground so she can discern if there are footsteps anywhere. The search is taxing and difficult – the sticks are not a flashlight, after all. But after several long minutes, she finds the first prints in the thick dark mud and exhales explosively with relief.

The rest of her hike to the village won't be easy this way, but at least she has a clue now.

Straightening, she walks a few steps before bending down to check the ground again. Reaching the edge of the forest John and Rodney mentioned takes forever and her back hurts in ways it wouldn't have ten years ago. She ignores that reminder of her own mortality. Rodney can't have much time left if he's hurt, while John will still be killing himself to get Rodney out. The panic hasn't fully settled in her yet, her whole body is in an 'act, don't overthink' mode.

The wind chills her and she pulls the coat tighter around her, grateful that John picked it out. It seemed useless on Atlantis, even though she loves it. Now, it finally serves a purpose.

Straighten, walk a few shuffling steps, bend down to look, straighten again.

Bend, straighten, walk.

Straighten, walk, bend.

When she holds the waning light of the sticks near the ground the next time, the light catches a pair of soft leather boots and she jerks upright, looking into the face of a young woman.

The look on her face is both amused and wary. "Found what you're looking for?"
~*~

The woman is tall and slim but appears strong under a dark brown coat that reminds Elizabeth of Teyla. A long, dangerous looking rifle is slung over her shoulder with a wide, braided leather strap. In the eerie light of the phosphor sticks, they both scrutinize each other carefully for a long while that's beginning to make Elizabeth uncomfortable. The dark eyes are glittering, sweeping up and down her body, assessing, looking for weapons, calculating risks. Her stance is that of a hunter - poised and ready. There is something familiar about her, even though Elizabeth has never seen her before. Her mind superimposes the image of this woman with that of Teyla and a sudden, sharp pain blooms under her heart when she notices the similarities.

Finally, the woman's set features mellow into a slow smile and she bows her head slightly. "I had wondered when you would come, Elizabeth, though I had expected to meet you in the light of day."

The atmosphere changes immediately, going from threatening to friendly and welcome, and Elizabeth, too, knows who she is talking to: Nelda.

The relief is stark. This means that help is near.

"So had I," she says, smiling in return. "Thank you for not shooting me."

"I don't shoot easy prey." Nelda grins and Elizabeth is struck by how completely she is willing to believe that statement.

Nelda reaches for her arms and pulls Elizabeth alongside her, the rifle scraping along Elizabeth's side. Her grip is strong. "Come with me. We have many things to talk about."

Nelda goes still, then turns back to where Elizabeth had come from. "Where are John and Rodney?"

The phosphor stick gives out and they're left in the dark again. It'll be dark under the collapsed temple as well. Rodney is claustrophobic. He's hurt. And John is almost killing himself on the surface, trying to dig Rodney out. Panic finally hits and she has to clench and unclench her hands several times before she trusts her voice enough to speak. "They're the reason I'm here."

Nelda's hand locks around Elizabeth's wrist.

"Tell me."

"They need help. I know no one else to ask."

~*~

She pleads her case to Ingel once they have reached the Athosian village. He looks sleepy and rumpled and charmingly young, but his eyes are awake and trained on her the entire time. He's young, but has all the deflection skills needed in a leader. The charming, boyish appearance and reality behind it are miles apart. Ingel Kerriden is no fool. Halling and Teyla had nothing on this man.

She is amazed by how well the Athosians seem to know her and how willing they are to listen.

"Rodney and John speak of you with care," Nelda tells her and she's touched, reminded that they don't simply forget her existence when they go offworld.

She recites an abbreviated version of the events on Dagan and asks for their help, pointing out that they've been happy trade partners, but if John and Rodney are lost, that partnership will be lost, too.

"They have no other chance at survival," she tells them, her voice calm but firm, not betraying the fear for Rodney that is twisting her stomach in tight knots. "I need your help. They need your help." She holds Ingel's gaze for a long time, unblinking.

In the end, the decision is made quickly. Ingel nods and stands, then rings a big clay bell that sounds through the night like a cry.

He picks several strong men, and they gather digging gear, loading it and other supplies into a lorry-sized transport clearly designed to pass through the stargate just like a jumper – one of the ones Rodney helped repair – moving out before Elizabeth has time to say good-bye to Nelda. She ends up wedged onto a bench seat beside the village mechanic, Danic, a broad, quiet man with salt-and-pepper hair and startlingly green eyes. The transport rumbles and belches, filling the air with the reek of methane. As they jolt over the rough track back to the stargate, he gives her a hesitant smile, hardly more than a flash of teeth in the dark rear of the transport. "You are lucky that your men repaired the transports."

Her men. She resists the urge to laugh. They aren't hers. If they belong to anyone, it is each other. That has become very, very clear.

John and Rodney. Rodney and John. Rodney and John and Elizabeth - only not. They used to be three, their fates intertwined, going through all of this together, but now they are two and one. A pair and an outsider.

Or maybe she should say, they're four. Three and one. John treats the AI like a living being, and Rodney isn't far from the same. They're caught up in the fascination over this ...machine and it appears that John even loves the AI like a human being. She sees him drawn to the control chair, the way he caresses the ligaments and veins with a look of reverence on his face. Now that Rodney has been in the chair as well and is communicating with the city too, he acts the same way. His eyes light up when he speaks of the AI. He trusts it against better knowledge. Trusts it completely, as if anything the AI says is god-given and can't be second-guessed. Rodney McKay has always second-guessed everything. It scares her that he doesn't now.

None of that will matter a damn if Rodney dies under several tons of broken stone. She doubts the AI will have any more success than she will in drawing John back from the brink if that happens.

The transport shakes and shimmies. There are rusted-out gaps in the plates along its sides. It reminds her of the armored personnel carriers the UN troops used in Bosnia. Maybe it's the cold. She was part of a fact-finding tour there, riding out in the pre-dawn darkness to inspect mass graves. Dagan isn't like that. The bodies the Wraith left are all powdery and desiccated, as though there is not enough left to even feed bacteria.

Elizabeth swallows hard and nods. "Yes." Another wave of methane stink hits her and she wrinkles her nose.

Danic leans closer and says, "It's the fuel. Rodney showed us how to get the converters running again. He insisted we add the chemical that smells."

"Why?" Elizabeth demands. "It's horrible." The back of the transport is thick with it, enough to make someone with a weak stomach choke.

"Safety. You can't see the gas. If there's a leak from a bad join or a cracked cannister, the smell will warn us."

"Are we going to blow up?" A hard jolt as they roll over something big makes her squeak at the end.

Danic laughs.

"No, Ingel just topped up the cannisters. A little always escapes when we vent the lines afterward."

"Thank God."

They fall silent after that, the transport making too much noise for easy conversation, and Elizabeth's worry distracts her. Danic is a warm presence beside her. Rodney mentioned him. With enough training he might have been a tolerable engineer. Since Rodney only admitted Zelenka was competent, Danic must be very talented.

The transport jerks to a halt. Danic's hand on her arm stops Elizabeth from jouncing off the bench. The engine idles. The rear hatch opens and Ingel leans his head inside, holding a torch in one hand that offers a flickering illumination over the faces of the other Athosians in back with them.

"We are at the gate."

Elizabeth jerks to her feet and picks her way through the tangle of legs, tripping only once, caught by a strong hand on her hip. Ingel steps back and another man literally lifts her out of the transport to the frozen earth. There's as distant pale line to the east, enough light to gleam off the metal of the stargate.

Elizabeth dials Dagan. In the rain, the DHD is cold under her hands, water dripping off its frame. As the wormhole explodes into life, Ingel touches her shoulder. "You will ride in front with me, please?"

She nods.

"It will make navigating easier."

"There's a road," she mentions.

"That will help," he replies.

His silent friend hands Elizabeth up into the transport's open cab. The bench seat is damp and icy. Ingel starts the transport with an awful lurch, pushing the control stick forward and feeding fuel to the engines with a hand grip. Elizabeth clutches at the edge of the seat and they roll through the stargate into Dagan's night.

~*~

John registers the noise and jerks his head up. He recognizes the transport after a long, blank moment of wondering what new disaster is on him, and scrambles over the rubble, waving his hands. The fire throws light enough he can spot Elizabeth up in the cab with Ingel.

"Elizabeth!"

The transport stops. Men pour from the rear hatch, unloading equipment, setting up torches, moving with confidence. Many are familiar faces from trading trips to Athos.

Something in his chest hurts too much to speak. He looks up at Elizabeth's face, framed in dark hair, lit in red and gold, her eyes pale and reflecting fire, and wants to weep.

Elizabeth's scrambling down, and John sways and leans against the warmed metal of the transport for support, because his legs don't want to hold him up anymore, and he didn't believe she'd come back.

Somehow, he's going to tell her that, so that she can understand, that he sorry that he never trusted her enough before.

"John," Elizabeth says, "John," and he stares at her and starts to slide down to the ground.

Ingel's got an arm around him then and John never even saw him come down. "John," Ingel says, and his voice is beyond kind, "can you show us where we should begin?"

"Yeah, yes," he says, gesturing toward where's he's been digging, taking a step back there.

Ingel sucks in a harsh breath and John realizes it's in reaction to his hands. He tries to curl his fingers closed and hide the worst damage, but they won't cooperate.

"Let me – "

"Let us," Ingel tells him.

John tries to pull away from Ingel. "No, I've got to keep going. It's been hours, I can't leave him down there," he insists. Ingel tightens his hold on John, while Elizabeth catches his face between her hands. John shakes his head and looks back to the rubble. "I – "

Ingel walks John over to the half-wall, not that far from where the ZPM is still sitting, abandoned. John collapses down because, between one breath and the next, he's shaking wildly. "Elizabeth," he says thickly. She sits down next to him and he can feel the heat of her, against his side, her arm sliding around his waist, taking up the job of balancing him from Ingel. "You got them. I – You got them."

"I just dialed the gate and asked," Elizabeth murmurs.

"No, you came," he says, his throat closing up on the words, "you came back."

"Of course I did."

She doesn't understand. No one comes back, no one ever has. She squeezes him, though, reminding him he's bruised and cold and his hands are a mess. Reminding him Elizabeth is Elizabeth, not some ghost from his past. John breathes in and doesn't jerk away, doesn't run back to where the Athosians – that's Danic, shifting rocks John couldn't budge – are working. Ingel is there, too, now, he notes, unsure when he left John and Elizabeth. Time keeps doing jumpcuts on him.

Someone drapes a blanket over the two of them. Elizabeth tugs it closer. "I should – "

"You should let them do this," Elizabeth interrupts. "They know how to work together. You'll just get in the way."

He swallows and nods.

"Okay, I know, I know you're right," he whispers, still watching the Athosians work. Ingel relocates the transport with a grinding of gears that would have Rodney tearing his hair out and makes John wince, then Danic is attaching ropes from a winch to a piece of foundation stone twice his height, shouting directions to the other men. "Christ." The winch is taking up the slack on the rope and the Athosians are wedging heavy timbers underneath, slowly and surely shifting the block to the side, revealing a black, sudden hole in the ground. "Christ, they've got it."

John surges to his feet, bolting forward, heading for the opening. His whole being is centered on getting down there, reaching Rodney.

"Rodney!" he yells. Or maybe he screams, his voice is so worn from shouting for hours before Elizabeth brought the Athosians back that there is little difference. "Rodney! McKay!"

Danic catches him, wrapping massive arms around John, holding him back. "Easy, easy."

John leaves smears of blood and dirt over Danic's arms and chest as he tries to tear loose. "No, Rodney's down there, he – I need to get down there right now!"

"Sheppard," Danic rumbles. He's holding John the way he'd hold his son, firm and careful and not letting him get free. "Easy, Sheppard, Ingel is going down for him now." He turns and angles them both so John can see. Ingel and another man are being lowered on ropes into the hole.

"What if he's – ?"

Danic rests one heavy, rough-palmed hand on the nape of John's neck, pressing until John's face is against his shoulder, nose buried against homespun wool. "We will know soon."

He can't stop shaking. Hell, if Danic weren't holding him up, he'd fall down. As much as he wants to get to Rodney, suddenly John can't look anymore. They're going to bring up Rodney's body. When they do, that will be it, he won't be able to hold onto the last scrap of hope, the one he's been keeping alive inside him.

Danic runs his hand over John's back. The last culling on Athos was less than a generation ago. Danic has experience at this sort of thing.

A yell from the hole rings up into the night. John jerks around and stares despite himself. The men at the top of the hole are working hard, pulling up someone with the ropes – Ingel, with a limp body roped to him.

John stops breathing.

Elizabeth grabs his arm and squeezes, hard enough to hurt.

"Alive!" Ingel shouts.

~*~

Rodney's face is raw and bloody, he's limp, dirty and pale, thinning hair matted to his skull with filth. John can't look away from him. Danic and Ingel and a third man he doesn't know carry him to the transport. John trails beside them. He wants desperately to touch Rodney. Instead he leans into Elizabeth and lets her sort things.

They set Rodney down on the bed of the transport, in a nest of blankets, and John clambers up and in, kneeling at Rodney's head, taking it into his lap. He should be doing more, but he's too disconnected, cold and sweating and nauseous. He's bleeding worse than Rodney is. It's Elizabeth who takes Rodney's pulse, who peels back an eyelid, who runs her hands over Rodney's body, finding broken bones, eliciting one soft moan.

Two more Athosians climb in after them, obscuring the dim light coming in through the open rear, and settle onto the benches. Their faces are just lighter blurs as they move around, boots scraping over the transport's bed, clothes rustling.  

Elizabeth's fingers brush over John's cheek, jerking him out of his daze.

"John?"

"Yeah?" he says hoarsely. It hurts, but he can't keep from stroking the fingers of one hand through Rodney's dirty hair.

"We're heading back to the stargate now."

"Good."

The engine turns over with a jerky growl, missing and choking briefly, before settling into a steady roar that vibrates through the transport and into John's bones. Danic climbs in, the last of the Athosians. They're packed in back, squeezed together to make the space on the floor for Rodney and John. Danic sidles around and ends up with his knees bracing John, a calming hand resting on his shoulder. The transport moves out, lurching hard enough to throw John if he weren't hemmed in by Danic and Elizabeth and the others. There's too much noise for casual conversation.

He tries to make sure that none of the stops and starts and bumps shift Rodney.

Elizabeth leans closer and yells into his ear. "John, where's the jumper?"

"What?"

"The jumper – "

He'd forgotten the jumper they'd left cloaked next to high temple wall. The transport corners around a turn and starts down a incline. Danic's hand catches him before he can fall forward over Rodney. "Under a ton of rock. We landed next to the temple."

Rodney coughs and John forgets the lost jumper and whatever mess they've made of the timeline. He's never been good at declarations and hates making promises, but he lays his hand against the unmarked side of Rodney's face and begins whispering, his voice lost in the noise of the engine, "Stay, okay?" With his other hand he finds Elizabeth's and draws it to Rodney's throat, so that they can both feel him breathe and the unsteady pulse there. "Stay with us, Rodney, stay. I need you."

Elizabeth scoots closer. She doesn't take her hand away from his, doesn't flinch from the blood or the pain. Without her, Rodney would still be buried. John turns his hand and threads his fingers into hers, feeling the strength in her grip, a strength reflecting who she is. She isn't anyone but Elizabeth, she isn't a reflection of any other woman he's known.

He knows her then, the way he never did before. Recognizes what is like him in her: the will to never stray from her course, no matter the cost or the grief it might bring on herself.

~*~

She suppresses a shiver and wraps her arm around John instead. He's colder than her, in shock, and oblivious to anything besides Rodney. Next to her, the ZPM rolls loosely in its wrap of blue cloth, moving with each sway and judder of the transport. John would have forgotten it; she didn't.

The transport stops finally, dropping into a shuddery idle. The back is opened and Elizabeth makes her way out, jumping to the ground this time before anyone can hand her out like a package. She brings the ZPM with her.

Ingel gestures to the gate. "We have healers on Athos." He thinks she and Rodney and John are all that's left after a culling.

"We have medicines," she tells him carefully.

His expression is unreadable with only moonlight and the spillover of the transport's navigation lights, but his posture conveys doubt. Elizabeth raises her chin. "Help me get Rodney and John through the gate and we will be all right," she insists.

The slow inclination of his head is answer enough.

Elizabeth walks to the DHD. She pulls in the cold night air, smells must and smoke and sweat on herself, and sighs. Her hands press the symbols of Atlantis' gate address. The ring towers before her, silhouetted against the diamond-starred sky. She stands on an alien world, caught out of her own time, surrounded by those who, despite their kindness, will always be strangers who do not know all of her, and catches her breath again. The stargate will endure. On a thousand, thousand worlds, built over unimaginable time, the gates remain, binding then and now and once will be. More than Atlantis with its wonders and secrets, the stargates are the Ancients' greatest legacy.

The chevrons along the rim of the ring light dizzyingly fast, seeming to spin, and the wormhole opens, splashing light and energy into the open like an overflowing fountain. It settles in a mirrored pool of blue, the glow painting the ring's surroundings with cool, rippling light.

It's still – always – awe-inspiring for Elizabeth. A mirror for all humanity's dreams, promising discovery and danger and escape. Over and over again, they pay the price, each in their way, to pass through the gate, and she still thinks it must be worth it, to have stepped from one galaxy to the another. To have seen, to have done, and still to do; with all her soul she knows it is worth all the sacrifice.

Someday, they will come again. Someone will step through the gate and see this place for the first time, in wonder or agony, and that is the prize, the heart of it all. They were the best, all them, all her people, seeds on the wind, cast out, and there is no returning home, the seed cannot turn back to the flower. They can never turn back: this is what it is to be human..What matters is not what they did, but the doing, not what they found, but the endless search, not how far they came, but the going.

Danic and Ingel carry Rodney to the event horizon, followed by John, exhausted and stumbling, and stop, looking back at her.

Elizabeth lifts her hand away from the DHD, reminded that she is cold and tired, too, that Rodney is badly hurt, and the long night is not over yet. She gathers up the ZPM again and hurries across the space between them. The two Athosians drape Rodney between John and herself, his arms over their shoulders.

"Thank you," she tells them.

They drag Rodney through the event horizon, through the funhouse-green-twist-and-dissolve, and into the chilled, dark gate room. The lights brighten with each step and then they have Rodney at the gurney. Behind them, the wormhole collapses.

John cocks his head, his eyes distant. "Atenë has the auto-healer ready," he rasps.

She abandons the ZPM finally, safely within Atlantis, concentrates at last on Rodney. "I wish Carson was here."

"So do I," John agrees.

~*~
John is getting far too acquainted with the infirmary. Elizabeth moves with precision among the devices they hadn't known anything about on the old Atlantis and never needed to. They need to now.

They place Rodney on the bed made for sliding into the auto-healer and John closes his eyes, accessing the equipment. Rodney shivers despite the warmth of the room. Elizabeth is already cutting Rodney's clothes off, well ahead of him. Her attention is all on Rodney. She strokes his hand, then begins cutting his shirt and sweater away. His skin is cold and clammy from blood-loss.

John focuses on Rodney, pushing the hum of Atlantis' systems to the back of his head, and lifts Rodney's shoulders just enough for Elizabeth to tug the freed cloth out from beneath him. Rodney skin is clammy, cold and almost blue-tinted from blood-loss. His skin is reddened in places, bruises forming under the skin.

He watches a shiver run through Elizabeth when she feels how taut the skin over Rodney's abdomen is, recognizing the same signs she does. Rodney's bleeding internally.

~*~

Elizabeth swallows hard. Working over Rodney like this is all wrong – John's too silent, too white-faced and tense – she's used to Rodney's louder, angrier panic. She's used to John being the one who gets hurt on missions, it's almost a surprise when John comes back unharmed. Rodney has a much more healthy sense of self-preservation, he always comes back with only a bruise. She looks at John's dirty face and bloody hands and suppresses the panic clawing up inside of her at the role-reversal. Rodney shouldn't be lying on the diagnostic bed like a broken rag doll, all that frantic energy gone, while John radiates silent desperation.

He bends over Rodney, hands locked onto his shoulders, only breathing in when Rodney does. The intensity of John's reaction shouldn't startle her, but she has never before seen him lose control quite like this. It rattles her, makes her want to do something to show him that he's not alone.

The auto-healer slides open, a soft sound accompanying readiness.

"He's ready," Elizabeth informs John quietly, even though she knows that he already has the same information. She lays her hand on John's arm, squeezing carefully. "You need to let go."

She purposely bans the thought of the AI getting her hands on Rodney as well, for once glad that they have the auto-healer. Losing Rodney would be the end of both her and John. "You were far worse off when you returned from the satellite, and now look at you."

John gives her a hollow look.

~*~

John is willing Rodney to breathe with him. It's so much easier being the one hurt, than watching Rodney struggle for air.

He hears Elizabeth through a head buzz of panic and looks down at his hands. He's still holding onto Rodney's shoulders, hard enough to bruise, flesh white under the pressure he's exerting. He can't make himself let go.

"John."

On Athos, even in Atlantis, Rodney had laughed with him, had been happy, damn it.

He forces his fingers open.

~*~

Elizabeth closes a hand around John's elbow and for the first time since she's known him, he doesn't shrink back from the unexpected touch. Her thumb brushes through a tear in the homespun shirt. His skin is almost as cold as Rodney's.

He's still breathing unevenly. She tugs and steers him over to another bed.

She asks, though she dislikes the entire idea of his constant connection to the AI and how it's subtly changing him day after day, "What does the AI say?"

John tilts his head, then shakes it, murmuring, "Sorry, I can't – " He lifts his bloodied hands in a gesture of helplessness. "It's too much. I can't."

"Just stay here. I'm going to clean up your hands."

He nods, looking blank and lost.

"John. Listen to me." She keeps her voice deliberately gentle. John is more fragile now than ever before and she can't afford to alienate him. "Rodney is going to be all right. Believe me."

She guides him up onto the bed while she's speaking. He's too pliant, looking down at his hands again.

"I do." The words aren't convincing at all, but at least he is answering her.

She squeezes his arm lightly, feeling him tremble from exhaustion. "Rodney's far too stubborn to just leave us here on our own." The wisecrack isn't as effective as it might have been, they both know even determination isn't enough sometimes. John just relearned that lesson, futilely trying to reach Rodney by himself. All his stubbornness wasn't enough without Ingel and the Athosians.

John suddenly looks up at her, his face in tight lines, drawn and pained. 

"I hate that thing," John declares, gesturing toward the closed auto-healer.

Elizabeth stills her hand on his arm, surprised. "You said it wasn't dangerous." Sounding much more accusing than she'd have liked.

"It's not." He bows his head.

She doesn't push him for an explanation, and she doesn't have to. After long, silent minutes, John whispers: "It's lonely in there."

The simple admission sends something in Elizabeth breaking free, something fierce and hot she has to battle down before she can speak again.

"Rodney will be all right, John. He knows you're waiting for him."

John raises his head minutely and looks at her from under a filthy tangle of hair. His eyes are haunted, terrified. She realizes that she's never before seen him this weak.

~*~

Elizabeth begins cleaning the dirt out of the raw mess he's made of his hands. It should hurt more than it does, but he only knows what she's doing because he's watching. His head feels like a balloon at the end of a long string. "Rodney had contusions, a broken rib, some internal bleeding and a concussion – which you probably have, too – but that's all within the auto-healer's ability. You know that."

He knows it if he thinks about it, but he just can't pull his thoughts into any coherence. He keeps seeing Rodney's hand disappear and screaming in his head because he can't hold on.

"Stay with me, John," he hears.

Dazed, he lifts his head and looks into Elizabeth's gray-green eyes. "I – "

"Try to trust me."

He nods dumbly. Worry is written sharp on her face, but so is determination.

Watching as Elizabeth picks pieces of rock and splinters out of his palms is a distraction from thinking about Rodney and the smothering darkness, the dirt and stones pressing down, of waking into that and knowing Rodney was trapped, too. The feeling is starting to come back and he lets out a hiss with each touch. He tries to curl his other hand around the edge of the bed he's sitting on, but that sends another explosion of pain up his arm. Elizabeth steadies him, her fingers strong around the wrist of the hand she's working on. John breathes through the pain until it drops back to bearable and brings his other hand to his chest. "Fuck."

Elizabeth's mouth curls into a smile and he almost laughs, swallowing the bubble of hysteria before it can tear loose. Laughter is too close to tears, or he is.

"I'm not doing that again," he says.

"Fucking? Probably wise," she agrees. Then she bites her lip and ducks her head.

John finds himself smiling. "I did not mean… that."

"Of course."

"You're good at that," he comments a minute later, as she washes his hand a third time. He grimaces. He really did a number on his hands. He could use a few minutes in the auto-healer himself. His head is starting to pound, too.

"I used to play nurse and bandage up my cousins," she says matter-of-factly.

"I'm grateful," he replies quietly, turning his hand in hers. "I'm grateful for you." He squeezes her hand and then yelps. "Damn."

"Let me finish then."

He finds the status feed for the auto-healer in the interface and monitors its progress, hours to go, as Elizabeth finishes his hand and starts on the next one. It's almost soothing.

~*~

At first, John barely even flinches when the antiseptic touches the deep tears and angry gashes, and that worries Elizabeth, but he begins to wince and even breathe out a soft little noise during the more painful bits as she works on his right hand.

When he half-closes his eyes and goes completely still, she recognizes that he's calmed enough to use the interface. He's probably pestering the AI to make it work on Rodney faster. Elizabeth shivers despite the warmth and tunes out the eerie reminder of how John has been changed by the last time he was in the auto-healer. She's still convinced the modification wasn't for John's best at all.

That reminds her of how he acquired the modifications and flashes back to coercing Rodney out of the infirmary after John's accident on the satellite. She knows that she won't be able to move John from the infirmary the way she did Rodney, however.

When she slips out to get him something to eat, John doesn't move. He only looks up briefly when she returns again, placing the tray next to him on the bed.

"I'm not hungry," he says, still watching the auto-healer.

"Rodney would want you to eat." It's a bit of a dirty trick, but it works, though he probably recognizes it for just that. John diverts his attention from the auto-healer to the tray.

He reaches for the spoon and the soup-bowl, frowning when the spoon slips from his thickly bandaged hand. He isn't any more successful with holding the bowl.

"So much for that." A small smile ghosts over his features.

Elizabeth smiles back at him. "You're not getting out of it this easily." She breaks some of the Athosian bread and dips it in the bowl, then tucks the soaked bread into his mouth before he can do more than open it in protest. "Problem solved."

John mumbles around it the piece of bread: "Rodney would be so proud of you."

"Of you too, since you've picked up his habit of talking with your mouth full," Elizabeth gibes.

The words are barely out when he stops chewing and begins to swallow convulsively. A bit of the soup from the bread dribbles down his chin. He closes his eyes.

"John?"

His hands curl into fists. She sees the inner turmoil as clearly on his face as though she were looking at Rodney. John's too exhausted and too shaken to keep up any façades. This is John  terrified, close to coming apart at the mere thought of losing Rodney. He cracks silently. Seeing his fears flash across his features unfiltered breaks her heart.

"I can't lose him." John's voice is nothing but a croak.

She has to swallow hard before she can answer. "We won't."

She reaches out to wipe away the drop of soup that still clings in the blue-black stubble on his chin. When she touches him, John tilts his face into her hand, leaning his cheek against her fingers. It's the second time John has welcomed her touch today, so Elizabeth follows her instinct and stands, stepping in front of John, between his legs and wraps her arms around his shoulders. There is no initial tenseness there this time. John curls forward and rests his head on her shoulder, then encloses her in his arms, holding on to her. She can feel the trembling now and runs her right hand from his hair to his back, repeating the movement over and over again. She doesn't speak. He doesn't let go.

He never quite relaxes, his attention keeps returning to the auto-healer, but John consents to eat the rest of the meal she brought, and afterward leans against her, limp with exhaustion, quietly seeking and offering contact in a way he never has before. Not with her, not with anyone but Rodney, until now. Neither of them sleep or talk as they wait, but they are closer than they have ever been.

~*~

Rodney comes out of the auto-healer asleep, his mouth ajar, and John's going to tease him about the drool when he comes around.

They take him back to his room, the one John's been sleeping in every night, despite leaving some belongings in his titular room. John steadies him while Elizabeth slips from under one lax arm, then they lower him, supine, into the sheets. John can barely keep his own eyes open, but he stands beside the bed, just watching Rodney.

"Lie down," Elizabeth tells him.

"What?"

"Lie down."

"Oh. Yeah." He sinks down on the edge of the bed. Rodney's making the snuffling, not-quite snore that John should not get weird over, but the knots inside him are unraveling. He wants to hear the stupid sound again because it's part of Rodney. It's been a long time, even before they started sleeping together, since he could imagine his life without Rodney in it.

"Can you get out of your clothes all right?"

He glances at it carefully bandaged fingers and nods.

"Then I'll go."

"No," he surprises himself by saying.

Elizabeth looks at him.

"You can't want to be alone any more than I do," John says, wanting to give her an out if she really doesn't want to stay, but this time genuinely wanting her to remain with him. She almost lost Rodney today, too. She didn't fall apart the way he did; she found a way to save them, but that doesn't mean she wasn't scared, too. The feeling doesn't go away just because the situation is resolved sometimes. "Stay. If you want to. Just to sleep."

She studies him skeptically. "John ..."

"Please."

He watches in mild surprise – though why, he doesn't know, since Rodney slept with her while John was in the infirmary – as Elizabeth strips down to her underwear and climbs on the bed beside Rodney. She leans her head against Rodney's shoulder and hooks her knee over one of his legs. He murmurs a low protest in his sleep, struggling into a more comfortable position, his arm around her, but Elizabeth just slides in closer and whispers words into his ear that are too low for John to understand. They fit together. For an instant, John's throat aches and constricts, choking any words, freezing him in place.

"Elizabeth," he says, "I'm really not good at sharing."

Her lips curve into a smile.

"Neither is Rodney," she comments.

"He wants both of us." He corrects himself. "He loves both of us."

"John, you can figure it out later, just get in bed before you fall over." Rodney makes a grumpy sound that might be agreement or just a complaint that he's cold. John shrugs and begins fumbling out of his clothes.

He slips into the bed, on Rodney's other side, and scoots close so that he's facing Elizabeth. His arm brushes hers as he slips it around Rodney's waist. She surprises him then by stroking his forearm. He surprises himself by not moving away, not even wanting to.

He's not an idiot. He guessed from the beginning who she was really attracted to and it was never him, even if she hadn't been keeping faith with someone back on Earth. The rumors that ran through Atlantis – and eventually reached the SGC – were simply a product of boredom in a small, closed society and the fact that neither of them was visibly with anyone else. Every time he's felt something for her, it's been through the filter of that knowledge. But he's not immune to wanting her. Sleeping with Rodney hasn't utterly undone thirty-seven years of being attracted to women. They're healthy adults, caught in a pressurized limbo, with no one else to turn to but each other, the three of them. He's still unprepared for the sudden warmth he feels toward her, the desire that's suddenly present, not pressing, but real in a way it hasn't been before, desire for Elizabeth and not just a beautiful, possibly available, woman.

It feels good to hold on to Rodney, to just look into Elizabeth's face, to let go enough to realize he can trust her, he can learn that, despite it not coming as easily as his feelings for Rodney. He doesn't know exactly what is going on inside her; Elizabeth is like him that way; she doesn't give herself away. He doesn't know, but he can guess that the weight of what they did and their responsibility to the future is slowly smothering her, the way it almost did him, the way it would have without Rodney.

He's still shivering and presses nearer to Rodney, laying his face close so that he hears the reassuring beat of Rodney's heart, and can feel the soft, bellows lift of his chest. Elizabeth's fingers linger at his wrist and he realizes she is taking his pulse. Gradually, he relaxes, letting his eyes slide shut, and breathes in Elizabeth and Rodney, wondering what the hell they're all doing, why it has to be so complicated. John drowses, but he doesn't really sleep, waking instead when Elizabeth's hand slips away to rest on Rodney's hip, slack, as she dozes.

He feels Rodney wake up.

"Hey," Rodney whispers. "I'm alive."

John blinks his eyes open.

"Yeah." A thought brightens the lights enough that he can see Rodney's eyes. "Rodney." It hurts. This is why he never let anyone in. This is why it's easier, seductively easier, to merge himself with Atenë. No matter how many times he assigns the AI human emotion, it isn't the same. Nothing he experiences in the interface can make his throat tighten, his hands shake, his stomach knot and ache. And Atenë won't die some day.

"John?"

He smiles at Rodney, who looks at him narrow-eyed. "Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong."

"You don't know what I'm thinking," he says, his voice gone scratchy.

"Doesn't matter, you're wrong. I'm always right and you're wrong," Rodney tells him. "I'm the one that worries about everything – "

"I worry," John interrupts him.

" – and you're the cool, cocky, confident guy – "

"It's an act."

Rodney's wrist twists under his hand, fingers brushing over bandages and making John gasp at the pain. He imagines sinking into the cool, crystal datastream, abandoning his body and all the pain that comes with it. So damn easy to never feel any of this again.

"I know. John, it's going to be okay."

John stares at him. "It's really, really not."

"It is. Believe me this time."

John tries, but there's a part of him that remembers: Rodney isn't always right.

~*~

She wakes to smothering heat. The blankets around her are too tight and she feels sweat breaking out all over her body. She blinks her eyes open and stares at the ceiling, disoriented for a moment, her mind sluggish and unwilling to part from sleep. The last thing she remembers was slipping into bed beside Rodney. She doesn't remember ever feeling warm on Atlantis before. Not even in their timeline. But now, she's sweltering. Shifting to push the blankets away, she finds an obstacle and only now does her brain catch up.

Elizabeth looks to the side to see Rodney lying next to her. It's his arm that keeps the blanket in place, his body that exudes the heat that is burning her up. His breath that gusts along her neck. She tenses for a moment, then relaxes. His warmth is familiar, calming. But her other side, the one not pressed against Rodney, is feeling much warmer than normal, too, and she shifts a little to look at the source of the warmth.

The sight is a pleasant shock. John's dark head is nestled against her shoulder; his hand rests next to Rodney's forearm on her stomach. Sometime during the night the two of them shifted until they had her between them.

For a moment, she's afraid to breathe. Afraid that she has suffered too many sleepless nights and is hallucinating now. Elizabeth doesn't want this to be unreal, but then again, doesn't the mind always create what it wants most?

Here's the question that she has never dared answer before, though: Does she want this?

Their combined heat engulfs her completely, in a way that should be overwhelming but strangely isn't. Their presence soothes her nerves. Their scent is all around her, a faint bit of sweat and musk: clean, male.

Their hold on her is protective, possessive. If she shifts now, one of them will wake, will know, will move away. Then this precious moment of choice will be gone. If this is a fluke, a hallucination, or just something that will happen only once, never to be repeated, she wants it to last as long as possible. She feels too light and a little dizzy, but John and Rodney anchor her, keep her from floating in the maddening whirlwind of fear she now remembers sweeping her up while they were on Dagan. She refuses to remember what it felt like to think Rodney might be dead. If she ignores it, maybe it'll never have happened. They will never know, and she will never tell. They wouldn't hold her like this if they knew, and Elizabeth needs them now. She was never warm before. She is now, but now she doesn't know reality from fantasy from hallucination. She would never have asked for this, but she treasures it, and every thought of escaping the heat she found almost unbearable before has left her. She feels safe and at least partly warm for the first time since they got here.

"You think too loud." The vibration of the words travels from where John's lips touch her shoulder all the way to her fingertips. "You'll wake Rodney."

In the dim light of the bedroom, his eyes are more green than hazel when they peer up at her from under lowered lashes. His stubble makes a quiet scratching noise on the fabric of her shirt. He looks sleepy and relaxed, but she can't help tensing, feeling his words as a reprimand.

"Hey," he says, voice too damn gentle. "Joking." His arm tightens around her waist, hand idly stroking the point of her hip as if it's the most normal thing in the world and he has always been doing it.

She tries to answer, tries for a smile but fails. John ignores it and she's grateful for that.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, voice blessedly neutral.

Elizabeth tenses again. How can she tell him what she doesn't know? She feels safe, but knows it's an illusion, she wants to keep her distance, but wants to stay? She wants John to stop challenging her to win some contest only he knows the rules to, to stop constantly waiting for her to fail somehow. She can't possibly tell him that she believed Rodney was dead and went to the Athosians because she knew she would need them to drag him away if they couldn't find a body. She doesn't want explain any of that. Right now, she just wants to be. She evades and answers only the obvious: "Hungry."

"Smart woman," Rodney's voice suddenly reverberates against her skull, his breath moving her hair. He stretches, the muscles where his body touches hers taut and pleasant. Then he settles back against her with a sleepy sigh. His arm tightens around her waist, and she can feel John's hand idly stroking Rodney's forearm.

Elizabeth closes her eyes and sinks into the feeling of warmth and security. Their breathing is a familiar melody, their heartbeats a rhythm that is peaceful. Such a surreal notion after everything they have been through together. She hadn't thought she would find peace again, and she still isn't sure she or they deserve it after what they did. Their warmth is melting her defenses though and she needs those defenses to steel herself against the cold and gloom of Atlantis. She doesn't know if she can rebuild her walls fast enough without help. But she can't ask, can only hold on and draw from their strength as long as they allow her, and how long will that be?

"Easy," John says, and she realizes that she's breathing hard and fast, close to hyperventilating.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

Rodney's arm tightens further and his lips brush her temple before he says: "You should be. I'm the one who almost died."

She opens her eyes and in trying to avoid Rodney's searching gaze concentrates on John's hair, noticing for the first time that there are the gray strands in it.

The muscles in John's arm tense in a warning. "Rodney."

"No." Rodney moves and slips away from her, pushing himself up on an elbow. "What happened? All I remember is being trapped."

John never would have quizzed her like this, she's sure, in fact, he's still stroking her hip in quiet reassurance, but Rodney is relentless, not willing to back down. She grapples for an explanation that will satisfy him. "I went through the gate when you and John didn't come back, then I went to Athos for help. John stayed on Dagan. It was really pretty easy."

"Oh, really?" he snorts. "That's why John's hands are mummified and you smell like a bonfire? You can lie better than that."

John hisses a sharp: "Rodney!"

She pushes at John's arm and kicks at the blanket, trying to get away from them. She crawls to the foot of the bed and stands, her legs wobbly. It takes her too long to reach her clothes and pull them on.

Behind her, she hears the swish-thump of a pillow hitting something and a subdued, scandalized mm mph, a sound almost enough to make her mouth quirk up in a smile.

When he speaks up again, Rodney's voice is unconvincingly cheery and just a bit contrite. "So, ah, how about breakfast?"

~*~

Breakfast is more like a very late brunch, she realizes when she looks at her wristwatch. All three of them have slept for almost twenty hours. John claims he tried to wake her once and couldn't. She's sure she was just sleeping very deeply. She isn't the one who just came out of the auto-healer. 

John and Rodney are standing in the Ancient equivalent of a kitchen, bickering good-naturedly. The sound is reassuring and mercifully normal and she smiles over the rim of her mug, listening to them.

"You should be glad that the military was feeding you, or you'd be even more scrawny than you're now."

"Do you really want me to go there?"

"Hey," Rodney huffs indignantly while adding some of the star-shaped vegetables into the cooking-unit, "at least I can cook and no one can play xylophone on my ribs!"

John smiles sunnily. "Well, I don't need to learn now that I've got you and Elizabeth, right?"

"Have you ever seen Elizabeth cook?"

She chokes on her tea. "Hey!"

"Oh, come on. You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

He looks unsure for a second, then blurts out: "You're even skinnier than he is. If you could cook, you wouldn't look like the poster girl for all stick people."

She sets the mug down and raises and eyebrow herself. "You're digging your own grave there, Rodney."

What neither of them needs to know is that Rodney's right. Back on Earth, she had a set of seven four-course-dinners she could do by heart. Those were always perfect works of culinary art. But beyond that, she was hopeless in the kitchen. She always told herself that her improvisation skills were used up during the day. In the end, ordering from a restaurant or going out or letting Simon cook had been the easier alternatives.

Simon …

She closes her eyes for a moment to center herself.

It's John's bandaged hand on hers that jolts her back into the now. "Hey."

She blinks at him for a few seconds and smiles.

"Stew?" Rodney chimes in from the cooking unit.
 
He's holding a ladle in his hand, waving it carelessly, splattering small drops of soup on the light gray surface of the small kitchen.

"You're cleaning that yourself," John says. He's biting back a grin.

"What?" Rodney looks exasperated. "You force me to do all the work, insult me and then you mean to make me clean up, too?"

"Yeah." Another one of those sunny smiles that never fail to drive Rodney up the wall.

A hurt frown ghosts over Rodney's face. "Elizabeth?"

"I'll decide after I've tasted," she answers, consolingly. "If I haven't starved before you're done."

Rodney has the good grace to look contrite and Elizabeth bites back a smile. He sets the bowl on the table and John rises, going for small bowls and spoons, picking them up carefully because of his bandages.

The stew is delicious; not fancy, but simple and filling and satisfyingly hot. Elizabeth can't remember the last time she took time to eat something that was cooked, and the pleasure of a good meal warms her

She finishes her first bowl and watches with amusement as Rodney fills it for a second time without even asking her and John slips her another slice of the dark Athosian bread.

"So?" Rodney asks around a spoonful of soup.

She gives an appreciative mumble, trying not to burn her tongue. "I'm guessing John's on cleaning duty."

"Traitor," John grouses, but doesn't suggest she help him. He pushes one of the custard-fruits at her instead, already sliced, and accompanies it with another one of the fried sweetcakes.

They've both been very careful with her and each other since they woke up, tip-toeing around  as though on eggshells. It's beginning to make her uneasy.

"I'm not a porcelain doll," she blurts out, suddenly. "Don't treat me as if I were."

Both men look at her, eyes wide and unsure, bordering on hurt. "Out of the three of us, I'm the only one who hasn't been hurt." She reaches out and grasps both their hands, pasting a smile on her face. "Quit worrying."

Rodney squeezes her hand back and John does the same. "Take better care of yourself, then, you look worse than John."

"Thanks so much," John drawls.

She's tempted to tell them that she would be so much better if they weren't gone so often but bites her tongue. She won't burden them with that.

Instead, she smiles at them, a real smile this time and says: "I will if you will." She pulls her hands back. "Now, let's see how good John is at slicing fruit."

Rodney scoffs and John holds up his bandaged hands. "No good at all," he says, his tone light, but he's still watching her, looking troubled and uncertain, like he's given up the only way he knew how to deal with her and now doesn't know what to do instead.

~*~

They tell her about the second mission to Dagan – before the earthquake – over dessert, and halfway into a sentence, Rodney yells, "Oh, my God, the ZPM!"

Elizabeth jumps up.

"Where are you going?" Rodney snaps.

"Come with me and find out."

He hesitates and John just shrugs and leans back in his chair with a wry grin as if to say he's used to this behavior now and Elizabeth is surprised by how hard she finds it to remember that there was a time when John and Rodney weren't together. 

She strolls out of the room and returns after a few minutes, holding the blue-wrapped item she left in the gate room triumphantly, like a trophy.

When she opens the wrapping and pulls the ZPM out, Rodney hugs her and then grabs it out of her arms.

"Elizabeth, I take back anything and everything insulting I've ever said about you," Rodney declares, smiling delightedly.

"Why, thank you, Rodney," she replies, amused. She heaves a put-on sigh. "Is that all I get for a ZPM? A hug? No kiss?"

John cuffs the back of her head lightly and Rodney pats her cheek. "Patience is a virtue, Dr. Weir. Let's see if it's of any use before we start on the fireworks."

John and Rodney take the ZPM and leave for the labs then and she stays in the common room, a new mug of tea cradled in her hands. The gloom of Atlantis seems to tap at her nerves in the silence that follows all of Rodney's exits.

She thinks about fitting between John and Rodney. She can believe Rodney loves her. Rodney's a relatively uncomplicated person, not afraid of his own emotions. John's the question mark. She doubts he knows himself what he wants from her, though without any doubt he wants to make Rodney happy. That's what's keeping John human, despite the AI's effect on him.

A shudder runs through her as she imagines what might become of him, and them, if John didn't care more for Rodney than the city. Or what could have happened, if Rodney had died.

John needs more ties to life than just Rodney. She's not sure she can provide them, though, and she has to wonder, what happens in the future. John and Rodney won't be the only ones the AI changes then.

~*~

"Don't you think you're making a hell of an assumption?" John asks.

Rodney shrugs. "She can shlep everything back to her old room if she really objects." He pauses with his hands full of Elizabeth's Athosian clothes. "Elizabeth's all alone, all the time, here. Look, I still can't sleep alone here – "

John hesitates, thinking about it, because he never feels alone in Atlantis. He feels enfolded, safe, home. The presence of the city and its systems is in his mind all the time, like the sigh of the wind, the lap of waves, the song of crickets and frogs in the night. He could lie down and sleep anywhere in Atlantis. He sleeps with Rodney because he wants and needs to be with Rodney, not just another human.

"I didn't realize it was still that bad."

"It's never going away, John." The memory is stark in Rodney's eyes. John shoves the clothes out of Rodney's hands and wraps him up in his arms from behind, Rodney's tense back pressed to his chest, offering the wordless comfort of touch, suddenly getting that Rodney is right. Elizabeth needs this connection; they all do.

"Okay," he breathes against the nape of Rodney's neck. He presses a kiss behind Rodney's ear, making him shiver. "There're plenty of rooms in Atlantis for when we're not sleeping."

"We're still not doing it on the gate room steps."

~*~

Elizabeth doesn't see them again for hours, but she doesn't follow them. She doesn't want to know if Rodney has used the control chair again to learn something new about the ZPMs, doesn't want the small protective bubble of peace this day has created to be destroyed by reality. She decides to go to bed, to catch up on some more sleep. The way from the common room to their quarters is long, but she enjoys the walk, because for once, Atlantis stays bright for her.

When she returns to her quarters, she finds them empty, cleared completely of the small trinkets Nelda has sent her. Cleared even of the bed. All that is left is a brighter square where it had been standing. Elizabeth blinks for a moment, then turns around slowly to find John or Rodney. She formulates a rant in her head; big, effective words about privacy and property, ready to spill out the moment she sees either of them.

In the end, she doesn't utter a single one of them, because when she steps through the open door of John's and Rodney's quarters, she sees her bed crammed into the room, her few belongings arranged around it. They're not in, but there is a note, a precious slip of rare paper lying on her blankets.
 
Rodney's flowing handwriting is easy on the eyes. Still, she has to read the note several times before she registers what is written there.

"Stay with us." And, in smaller print, a postscript that makes her grin: "We both snore (but not loud), so, sorry about that."

When she lies down and closes her eyes, Atlantis feels warmer.

~*~

Some of that warmth dissipates when Rodney pulls her aside after dinner, leaving John doing the clean up.

"We need supplies again."

They're leaving her again.

Rodney's hand is still on her arm. "Look, it's Athos, we're known there. John can handle it and we'll stay here. I need to design a housing and separate energy control system for the stasis pods since we're going to have a ZPM to power them."

John joins them.

"Did Rodney tell you I'm going to Athos tomorrow?" he asks. He leans against Rodney's back, chin on his shoulder, arms looped around his waist, the picture of nonchalance, only his sharp eyes giving away any concern.

"Yes, and you're not going alone," she says. Athos may be the safest place in the Pegasus Galaxy after Atlantis, but that isn't really saying a lot. She's not letting John go on a mission, even a mission to trade for more food with friends, by himself. She imagines him wounded or taken by the Wraith because Rodney wasn't there with him. It isn't tolerable.

"Then come with us," John offers immediately. He catches her hand. "You could meet Nelda. She thinks we've made you up."

"I already met Nelda."

"Oh, yeah, right." He shudders, once, the memory of digging without hope flickering through his gaze.

She's so very tempted, but all the reasons she's stayed behind before are just as valid. She can't let them start coddling her now. She isn't going to go on missions just because John no longer objects. She's past that. 

"No, I think I'll stay here," she tells them. "Perhaps when I feel better."

John squeezes her hand. "We're going to hold you to that."

"We are," Rodney confirms.

"So, what's with sticking me in your room?" she asks, hoping to redirect their attention.

Rodney grins. "Great idea, right?"

"We'll sleep better knowing you're there," John tells her seriously. "We need you around." Clever John, she acknowledges to herself, making it out they need her rather than the other way around.

"We'll only be gone a few hours, promise," Rodney adds.

~*~

"I'll be fine," Elizabeth insists.

"You'd better be." Rodney makes it an order and she has to smile.

The smile lingers after they retire. They do both snore, but very quietly. There's something infinitely touching about the way John curls so close to Rodney in his sleep. He's slowly become far more open, even with her, but it is still a revelation to see him with his walls let down. Maybe if she pays attention, she could learn to let hers down, too.

Out of all of the destruction, she thinks, this thing between John and Rodney is something good, something worthwhile and even beautiful.

~*~

Rodney and John usually stay overnight on Athos. When the gate opens only hours after they've left, Elizabeth's heart jolts in her chest.

The radio crackle in her earpiece and John's calm drawl are a welcome relief.

"Elizabeth, we've got a situation here. We could really use your help. Now, don't worry, no one's trying to kill anyone. We'd just like to see things stay that way."

"And you need me?"

Rodney's voice joins the conversation. 

"Yes. These people need to get their heads out of their – "

"Rodney."

"Oh, all right. It's some kind of trade disagreement and the Athosians are ready to take their spears and crossbows and guns and head through the stargate to make these Venni – Venti –Vesti –"

"Veneti."

"Yes, whatever. The Athosians want their stuff back since the Vee people didn't pay up for it."

"Exactly what do you want me to do?" Elizabeth asks.

"We've convinced Ingel to let you mediate between his people and the Veneti. Come on, Elizabeth," John replies. "You know how to do the diplomats' dance?"

"Would they listen to me?"

"Ingel says their people will honor any decision you come to and the Veneti have already offered to talk," Rodney explains. "They want a woman in charge, though."

"It's a major sticking point," John adds. "They can't agree on a mediator."

Elizabeth rubs her hands together. It would be a chance to get out of Atlantis. Somtimes, she truly hates the city or the AI that inhabits it. It would be a chance to do some good and exercise her skills, do what she is good at, rather than the constant scramble to ride herd on John and Rodney. She liked the Athosians, liked Ingel and Nelda and Danic, who were all generous and kind.

"All right. I'll need to get some things, then I'll join you."

"Good," John says, sounding pleased even over the radio.

"We'll be waiting at the 'gate," Rodney chimes in.

"Half an hour, gentlemen," she tells them.

The wormhole disappears, leaving the gate room dark and empty once more. Elizabeth is already on her way back to her quarters to pack. She's thankful for the recent discovery that they could lock the shield behind them and send a code through the wormhole to the AI to lower it. It means they can leave the city empty without worrying. It took the ATA gene to activate the code transmission, though. John or Rodney still had to be there, though. Elizabeth could leave on her own, now, but she couldn't come back.

Part of her wouldn't mind at all.

~*~

It's summer.

The heat slaps Elizabeth's face, dry, dusty and fierce, as she steps through the stargate onto Athos for the second time. The sunshine blinds her and she stumbles. Everything is reduced to a bright, hot blur. A hand catches her elbow and guides her to the side of the gate.

"Hey," it's John's voice, light and kind, deflecting any unwanted attention with his next words, "guess we forgot to tell you to bring your sunglasses."

Elizabeth raises her hand to shade her watering eyes.

"I'd forgotten the sun," she exclaims.

"Jesus," John says very softly. "I'm sorry, we should have thought – "

Elizabeth forces a smile, because he sounds so contrite. Now that she can see a little again, there's no missing the guilt on John's expressive face. But she doesn't see Rodney anywhere, just Nelda and Danic. She nods at them and they solemnly incline their heads in her direction.

"Where's Rodney?"

"Back at the camp, adapting one of their portable generators to run on alcohol. They brew some mean moonshine here; I'm warning you, it's got about the same kick and taste as avgas."

"And you know this…?"

John waggles his eyebrows and mimes taking a drink. "Got to be sociable, right?"

Elizabeth's smile becomes real. The air is hot, burning the back of her throat, but it's good after the damp cold of Atlantis. It's alive, filled with the scent of crumbly earth and grass, green things, life. A ghost breeze caresses her cheeks, the natural movement of the air so different from the forced, recirculated life support in the city that she almost wants to cry, it's so good. She's tempted to drop down to her knees and kiss the earth, even if it isn't the earth of Earth, understanding at last those prisoners returning from far lands who indulged such dramatics.

She feels suddenly freed and paradoxically anchored, released from a solitary cell.

Dignity forbids her first impulse, but nothing can keep her from turning her face to the sun, eyes closed, and absorbing its light like a flower. Heat burns over the bridge of her nose and she smiles happily, not caring if she turns red and peels tomorrow. The sun is a crimson blur through her eyelids, its brightness inescapable. When she knows that she'll be blinded by floating afterimages, she finally lowers her face.

"You have been away from the sun for too long," Nelda says as Elizabeth blinks at her, fluorescent purple, orange and yellow phantoms floating over her features.

"Yes," Elizabeth agrees.

"It is good to see you again," the woman says and holds out both her hands.

"It's good to be here."

Elizabeth automatically takes Nelda's callused hands.

"I have so much to thank you for," she says.

"You have good men, but you should have come sooner," Nelda replies and bends, for she is considerably taller than Elizabeth, to touch her forehead to Elizabeth's in the Athosian manner. "We were greatly pleased to see our friends whole and well again, but disappointed you did not accompany them." Her teeth flash white in a quick, engaging grin. "We had begun to wonder if John and Rodney were perhaps hiding you again. Of course, before, we thought they were making you up."

John lifts his hands. "Not my fault this time. I wanted her to come." This time. His tone is sincere, a pleasant change after the last months, and acknowledges that he had objected before. She knows he's making an effort, these last few days, to treat her fairly. It's difficult to believe he's changed so much, not after the things they said to each other, but that was a bad time, she acknowledges, and he was as wounded at heart as Rodney, only far cleverer at striking back. As a negotiator, she knows that it is those who know each other best who can take the worst advantage. But she isn't going to think of the dark things here.

"No, indeed," Nelda agrees. She gestures to the tall man hovering behind her. "Do you remember my cousin Danic?"

"Very well," she replies, smiling at him.

Danic gives a shy nod and shuffles back. Not a big talker, Elizabeth remembers, but a man comfortable using his hands instead. He knew the right words on Dagan, though.

As they begin the walk from the stargate to the Athosians' summer village, Nelda asks, "While it pleases me to see you wear the coat, are you not too warm?"

Startled, Elizabeth realizes she's sweating under her coat. She was chilled, numb-toed and thick-fingered back in Atlantis, but Athos has already warmed her. She'll need it when night falls, she suspects, despite the summer heat, Athos is closer in climate to North America or Europe than the tropics.

"Yes, I am, in fact," she laughs.

John's at her side, helping draw the coat away from her shoulder in the next minute.

"I told you you'd like it here," he says into her ear.

"All right, you and Rodney both did."

"And the people."

"And the people," she agrees again, because she does.

"We are very grateful for your help in the Veneti matter," Nelda tells Elizabeth. They top a low rise and glimpse the white-tented village situated next to a small, mirror-calm lake.

"I welcome the opportunity to repay my debt."

Nelda looks serious. "I hope that you can guide us to a middle ground, Elizabeth. We would know peace, at least among the Ancestor's children. The Wraith are threat enough."

"Yes," Elizabeth agrees. The Athosians have acted decently. So far. They're easy to like. She hopes that they're in the right, or genuinely willing to work toward a solution. She'd like something to go right for once, after everything that has gone wrong. She hopes that she can find some peace here for herself, too.

They continue down the hill. Rodney meets them at the edge of the village, his hands dark with grease, his lopsided smile in evidence, genuinely glad to see her.

A messenger is dispatched to the Veneti through the gate, returning with assurances the Veneti representatives will arrive through the stargate the next day.

~*~
,br>The Veneti leader, Nerija, is a regal: cropped silver hair, neat, colorful but sensible clothes, no make-up. She's older than most Pegasans, she has wrinkles and freckles that speak of a life of work under the sun. Shorter even than Elizabeth, but she carries herself with strength and authority. According to Ingel, the Veneti were never as technologically advanced as the Athosians – before the Wraith broke both civilizations back to agrarian basics. Nerija obviously admits no inequality between their people, though.

The first talks between Nerija and Ingel go as badly as they  possibly can. It takes Elizabeth several hours just to establish that the Veneti refuse to negotiate with Ingel – or any man. No one bothered to mention this when the Veneti arrived, possibly because the Athosians traders have apparently never had this problem. Nerija trusts men with trading issues, but only to a certain point. Among the Veneti, having a man in charge of any important decision is unthinkable. Nerija tries to insist that no men may even be present during the mediation, but finally admits the Athosian traders present during the initial contact should attend, if only to offer witness.

It's the first éclat she has to settle and for a moment, she's furious at the AI for not giving her at least this basic information. John and Rodney aren't thrilled by their defacto exclusion, either.

After a short, exasperated discussion with John, Rodney and the Athosian party, Elizabeth suggests that Nelda take Ingel's place. Deep down, Elizabeth isn't too sure about this trade-off. Ingel has a sort of patient tolerance that would let him sit through hours of talks; Nelda seems like the restless type. She doesn't know how capable a representative Nelda will be. But the siblings share a few quick words and then Ingel gives Elizabeth a nod, ratifying the decision. It's no use trying to stand his ground here, he knows that much better than John and Rodney, who try to insist on staying. Ingel, however, obviously trusts his sister to lead the negotiation the way he would. The confidence in their quick exchange gives Elizabeth another reason to admire Ingel Kerriden.

Nelda takes her place on Elizabeth's right side and exudes a calm that reminds Elizabeth of Teyla. The ease with which Nelda fully embraces the diplomat's role shows Elizabeth that it isn't that new to her.

Both parties settle in by midday. Elizabeth considers the various approaches to negotiating a case like this. She mentally strikes out the competitive approach – with the case being as it is, it would have more disadvantages than not. Even though the conflict seems simple, it's hard to predict the outcome of the competitive approach or control the process. If she has learned one thing during her time as a mediator it's that it's not the difficult cases that are the most complicated ones. It's the simple ones.

Elizabeth has always preferred the integrative approach and from what she has gathered from the database, the mediators in Pegasus are trained in a more wholesome way of handling situations like this. Elizabeth agrees. Despite what the military may think, brute force and a tough façade hardly ever solve problems. There are common interests between the parties – it's up to her now to make them see those interests and realize their common ground. The success of one party doesn't necessarily have to mean the loss of the other.

She ends her contemplation when the ceremonial bell sounds, indicating the beginning of the negotiation. Outside the tent there were hushed conversations audible before, but they fall silent at the silvery sound of the small bell. She thinks she can hear Rodney cough and smiles.

Using that smile, she acknowledges Nerija and Nelda, along with their entourages,introducing herself to them again.

"We have come here today to seek the best way to resolve the issues standing between your people at the moment," she says, stating the rules of Pegasus mediation process again. "I am here as an impartial negotiator and mediator to help you solve those issues. However, negotiating power exists only to the extent that it is accepted." Elizabeth alternates glances between the two representative women, seeking consensus. "Are you both willing to accept the outcome of this negotiation will not be affected by any bias on my part?"

The Veneti leader bows her head in agreement. "The Veneti will accept the resolution found in this mediation."

"So will the Athosians," Nelda concurs.

"Thank you." Elizabeth smiles. Traditionally in Pegasus trade negotiations, only oral arguments in the presence are admissible, but notes are allowed. She reaches for rough, handmade paper and a pen. "To keep with the tradition, I would like both parties to state their cases again."

Out of respect for her greater age, Elizabeth indicates for Nerija to start. The account of the events is lengthy and detailed, forcing Elizabeth to jot down notes at a speed she is no longer used to.

She sees Nelda tense at some of the points in the report given, but she stays silent, though it appears to be a close call.

Finally, Nerija ends and sits back in the folding chair provided for her, resting her neat, strong hands in her lap. There is no smugness there, as Elizabeth would have expected from what John and Rodney had told her about the situation, but righteous indignation and a need to get this out of the way, by any means possible. The Veneti leader still commands respect, and Elizabeth begins to understand why the Athosians asked for a mediator.

She finishes her notes and indicates Nelda to state her version of the case.

The account of events Nelda gives isn't much shorter, but after about an hour, Elizabeth has the basic facts according to the Athosians clarified.

"Our people, headed by Hanar, delivered fifty baskets of wool to the Veneti. They were to deliver thirty baskets of seed grain to us after their harvest." Hanar is the lantern-jawed trader sitting on the other side of Nelda. He looks constipated each time she speaks and has done nothing but glare at the Veneti. Nelda concludes: "They did not."

So the Athosians sent the wool through the gate, agreeing to wait for the Veneti to finish their harvest, which would take place perhaps a month before sowing season on Athos.

"The wool was to remain Athosian property until delivery of the grain?" Elizabeth clarifies.

"Yes," Nelda states.

Nerija shakes her head minutely. "No."

Misunderstanding or lie? Elizabeth writes. Hanar's gaze flits around the tent, avoiding meeting anyone else's. She suspects any testimony from him will be questionable. Still, an unpleasant demeanor is not necessarily a sign of dishonesty.
 
Everyone agrees that during their last solar cycle, the Veneti home world suffered severe weather conditions and lost their major grain crop. Subsequently, they only delivered ten baskets of grain instead of the agreed upon thirty.

"We requested they return the unpaid for wool," Nelda finishes. "They refused."

"Wool we had spun, woven, and sewn into clothing and other valuable items, for which effort and value no recompense was offered by the Athosians," Nerija points out.

Well, it's classic, but complicated by Elizabeth's lack of knowledge of property law on Athos and Venet or the mores of the interplanetary trading. The AI had been less than helpful in her preparations for the mediation, since the Ancients hadn't had any interest in the societies of humans.

Nelda goes for bluntness. "Your people were not true to your part of the agreement, Respected Nerija, do you deny that?"

Nerija is unruffled. "We clearly stated that our harvest was destroyed by a summer storm. We could not hold our end of the agreement."

"Then you should have given us back a part of the clothes you made from the wool we traded to you. That is a simple act of good faith." Hanar leans in and murmurs into Nelda's ear. "Do you expect us to simply accept this loss and continue trading with you?"

"That would be within your prerogative," Nerija replies. The three women at the table with her stir, clearly uncomfortable with that possible outcome, but don't protest. Nerija looks placid, her hands rest loose and relaxed on the table before her. "Those clothes are considerably more valuable than the raw wool. Giving them back would have doubled the price of the wool. Do you expect us to give you back more than what you traded us for, Respected Kerriden?"

"The clothes are still made from our wool. Wool you did not pay for. We are traders, Respected Nerija. We do not give away gifts of such proportions."

"We never asked for gifts. We recognize that you Athosians have been blessed by the Ancestors, while the Veneti have not. That does not, however, put you above basic trading etiquette."

Elizabeth doesn't lean forward, but she notes Nerija's tiny nod to one of the women with her, along with a certain flattening of her lips. Something simmers there, something besides economic difficulties. Etiquette.  Nerija's eyes had dilated faintly and she had put a slight emphasis on that word.

She sits back and lets Nelda and Nerija talk to each other, trying to judge the underlying motivations. The Veneti's attitude doesn't seem entirely warranted. More is going on than they've said. When one of the Veneti women starts muttering insults under her breath, Elizabeth calls for a break, allowing all of them to get some fresh air, while she mulls things over herself.

John and Rodney ambush her as she exits the tent, their faces expectant. She has heard them talking to each other while she was inside. They're both so impatient, she's relieved Nerija had insisted on excluding observers.

Now Rodney all but bounces on the balls of his feet. "Well? Are you done?"

She glances up at them and bites back a smile. "It's not that simple."

"Well, why not? What can possibly take so long? You've been in there for the better part of two hours!"

Elizabeth feels a light surge of annoyance flare up but pushes it back, reminding herself that he doesn't know better and hasn't been in there. "Have you calculated pi to the final decimal place yet?"

"Well, no, but that's –"

"That's exactly the point, Rodney."

She sees John grin and place a hand over Rodney's mouth. "Let Elizabeth do her job."

Rodney pulls at John's hand and they end up in a verbal sparring match that gives Elizabeth the time to retreat into the tent set aside for them and go over her notes.

The most difficult problems in a negotiation are the personal feelings. Elizabeth likes Nelda and understands her indignation, but she also sympathizes with Nerija, a woman who reminds her of her favorite professor back in college.

Personal feelings … There is something else between the parties, something she can't quite put her finger on. Nerija's demand to not have any men present seems too pointed, rather than merely adhering to Veneti tradition. The Veneti seem sophisticated enough to interact with a culture outside their own; they'd managed it fairly well up until this conflict. There has to be something else, something Nerija hasn't disclosed yet.

She feels the thrill of pursuing a mystery and joy that she can finally contribute something to repay the Athosians – even if, in the end, she doesn't get them what they want. It's not only that. She simply feels good. The scents of warm earth and cooking fires, of wool and hay and summer blossoms contribute to a relaxation she hasn't known since leaving Earth. She breathes freely, undisturbed by sterile metal and perfectly cleansed and filtered air, for the first time since Doranda.

She purposely stays away from Nelda and any other Athosians during break-time. No use undermining her creditability with the Veneti.

The second day is a replay of the first, with both sides repeating their claims, insisting adamantly that their positions are right.

John and Rodney stay with her in the evenings, bringing her enough food to make her sick sometimes. They needle her over the lack of progress of the negotiation, still peeved about not being allowed to sit in. Elizabeth tells them about the minor facts that aren't crucial, leaving out anything of importance. She has no intention of violating the privacy of the talks.

John looks at her differently – interested – as she explains the impact the loss of the seed grain has had on the Athosians' harvest, which translates into them having to trade for flour and animal feed from another planet at a loss. She can see him translate it into military terms, expenditures of supplies for ground taken, unnecessary losses due to variables as different as human error and weather.

"Hunh," he says once. "It's like Von Clauswitz."

Elizabeth laughs. "John ..."

"What?" Rodney asks.

"Did you pay any attention to anything outside of physics in school?" John asks. "War is the continuation of politics by other means."

"The Athosians and Veneti aren't at war."

"No, because Ingel and Nelda and Nerija and Elizabeth are all trying to listen to each other."

"That's the idea," Elizabeth says. "By tomorrow everyone will have tired enough of yelling to actually start listening to each other, I hope."

"That's why you're letting this drag out?"

She smiles.

She can't quite place it yet, but the look John angles at her almost appears to be admiration. It feels good. It's the way he looked at her when the expedition stepped through the stargate to Atlantis, when she reminded Marshall Sumner who was in command.

Maybe, she thinks, he's looking at her that way, because for the first time in too long, she is that woman again.

He brushes a kiss against her cheek in the morning, an impulsive move, closer to the way he acts with Rodney than he's ever acted with her. "I'd wish you good luck, but you don't really need it."

"Thanks, I think."

The third morning, his lips touch her lips lightly, rather than her cheek, and she recognizes an invitation. She likes the man he is here; contrasting his behavior on Athos to the man she knows in Atlantis. The thought follows her back into the negotiations. How much of his attitude is influenced by the connection to the city and the AI?

Enough that she's noticing the difference here.

That's frightening. br>
~*~

The afternoon of the third day, Nerija stands abruptly and declares: "I have had enough!"

It's the first outburst Elizabeth has seen from Nerija and the suddenness of it makes both her and Nelda look at the other woman in surprise.

"I think it is time we laid aside the pretence, Respected Kerriden."

"Pretence?" Nelda echoes, confusion only visible in her furrowed brows.

Nerija paces toward the end of the tent, where the walls have been rolled up to encourage a little ventilation, her hands folded behind her back as though to reign in the need to smash something. "We both know that the trade conflict is not the heart of the matter."
,br>Hanar stirs restlessly, his whole face darkening.

Here we go, Elizabeth thinks. Finally.

"Please elaborate, Respected Nerija," she carefully urges the other woman on.

Nerija turns to address Nelda directly. She doesn’t even spare a glance at Hanar, who glowers at her. "One of your men broke one of the highest laws of the Veneti society. Are you telling me that you knew nothing of this?"

Nelda looks thoroughly nonplussed by this change of events. A muscle in her neck twitches, allowing Elizabeth to se that she makes an effort not to look at Hanar. "I did not."

"The Athosians and the Veneti have been trading partners for many years. The Athosians know the rules of our people."

"There are many rules, Respected Nerija, and our traders are instructed carefully to observe them," Nelda says, her mild tone not quite hiding what she thinks about those rules.

Something unpleasant ghosts over Nerija's face and this time, she faces Hanar, contempt marring her features. "You must have neglected this one in your instructions, then."

Elizabeth holds up a hand before either Nelda or Hanar can give an answer they would regret. "Please, Respected Nerija. For me to help you reach an agreement, I must know about those rules. Can you summarize them for me?"

Nerija returns to her seat, movements appearing calm but eyes still hot with anger. "As you know, we hold our men in high regard. There are  rules which are binding for them and us and which must not be violated. The most important one is the simplest. One," she throws a hard glance at Hanar," all our trading partners know about. Our men are not allowed to talk to strangers unless they have been introduced to by a mother, sister, wife or daughter."

Elizabeth has a feeling where this is going. She remembers overhearing some of the Athosians on the Atlantis that was. They had talked about Teyla and how Marshall Sumner hadn't taken her seriously as a leader. She remembers their indignation over his behaviour.

"Are you telling me that our trading party violated that rule?" Nelda cuts in, still not looking at Hanar. "I find that hard to believe."

Right in this very moment, Elizabeth wishes she had Ingel sitting next to her. He's considerably slower to anger, she suspects. "Respected Kerriden, I would like to allow Respected Nerija to finish."

Hanar’s hands ball into fists and he mutter under his breath. Elizabeth suspects it’s a good thing she doesn’t understand what he’s saying. Nelda's jaw works, but she keeps quiet.

"If you say the lost harvest is only a part of the quandary," Elizabeth says, turning back to Nerija, "I would like you to state the real conflict."

"During the trade which we are speaking about today, one Athosian man kept trying to talk to one of our older men, who had been present to help carry the wool back to the village. He was relentless. He refused to address our tradeswoman, he spoke insistently to this man, Jochar."

Next to Elizabeth, Nelda shakes her head in disbelief, but keeps quiet. Nerija sees that reaction and continues in a voice that is much crisper then before: "Not enough to break the law of the Veneti, Jochar is the father of our most respected tradeswoman. It made her father very uncomfortable to be forced to either speak with a stranger unintroduced or be unconscionably rude. The behavior of the Athosian man was both a violation of the Veneti rules and an insult to Jochar and our tradeswoman."

"Is that what this is all about?" Nelda bursts out. "Is that why you only gave us back a part of what we expected?"

Nerija straightens her back. "I told you that our harvest was destroyed by a summer storm. Are you calling me a liar?"

Both women glare at each other and Elizabeth reaches for the small silver bell to call for a break. The exchange is on the verge of becoming agitated to a point where insults are looming. A break and some food will allow all of them to clear their heads and cool their tempers. And Elizabeth suspects that Nelda will want to chew out Hanar.

~*~

John and Rodney are sprawled across the bed when Elizabeth makes her way back to their shared tent the third evening. They're doing their best to take up the entire bed, despite its size, with Rodney lying at a diagonal to John, his head resting on John's stomach.

The late afternoon light falls across Rodney's face from the open door flap and he rolls away from it, grumbling and tossing his arm over his eyes. Elizabeth is transfixed for a breath by the pale, soft skin on the underside of his arm.

John slits one eye open through a fall of dark hair. He looks as boneless as Rodney, but one hand is buried in the quilts, resting, she suspects, on the butt of his pistol.

"Ugh," Rodney groans.

Elizabeth surveys them.

"I suppose I should thank you for putting your pants back on."

John closes his eye again, but the sound of her voice jerks Rodney awake. "What – ? God. Elizabeth?" He flails and pulls himself up on his elbows, jabbing one into John's ribs and eliciting a sharp, annoyed grunt. He blinks at her rapidly. The light turns his eyes storm blue. "What are you doing back here? Aren't you… refereeing or something?"

"Ouch," John comments, pushing Rodney's elbow away, only to have Rodney's head thump back down on him. "Jesus, McKay."

"I think I'm dead."

"We're taking a break to let everyone's tempers cool off," she tells them.

"Does that work?" John asks. He sounds genuinely interested.

"When both parties are genuinely interested in reaching an agreement," she says. She sits on the edge of the bed, up by John's shoulder. Rodney rolls over, groaning again, and rests his chin on John's bare stomach. John blinks his eyes open again, the hazel dark in the shadowed tent. His mouth curves up.

"Yes? And are the Veneti interested?" Rodney asks. "Are they going to make good with the Athosians?"

She wonders if John realizes his hand has strayed to Rodney's shoulders and begun absently smoothing over the skin there.

"The Veneti have valid points, too, you know."

"But I don't know the Veneti, do I?" Rodney says.

"Let no one ever accuse you of impartiality," John murmurs.

"Go ahead, pick on me because I'm honest."

Elizabeth shares a smile with John, amused by Rodney's unapologetic stance.

"And that's why they want Elizabeth doing the mediation and not you," John tells him.

"So what are you two doing back here?" she asks.

Rodney looks theatrically disgusted and John smirks.

"Oh, oh, please, do not remind me of today's debacle."

She glances back to John, who assumes an expression of innocence. "It was hardly a debacle."

"Hah. So you say." Rodney transfers his attention to Elizabeth. "I am never, never, ever going hunting again."

"You went hunting?" She can't quite suppress the note of incredulity in her voice. "Rodney?"

"Yes, yes, insane and dangerous and a total waste of my brain and cognitive abilities, but we've fixed everything that can be fixed. And I almost died!"

"You did not," John contradicts him calmly.

"I most certainly did!"

"Ingel and Danic knew exactly what they were doing."

"So you say now, but you didn't look so sure when that boar was rushing at us. Which, by the way, is what we'll be eating tonight at the so-called feast. Ingel was making noises about serving the Veneti better food than they've ever had, to prove Athosian superiority," Rodney says. "It all sounded like some sort of potlatch thing."

"Boar?"

"It wasn't a boar," John explains. He scoots up into a sitting posture, with Rodney's head pillowed on his thigh. "It only had one tusk."

"So it was a unicorn and objected - violently - to our less than virginal selves coming near it?"

"I think it objected to the spears Ingel and Danic were using."

"Spears," Rodney says. "Me-caveman-hear-me-roar spears."

"Spears," Elizabeth repeats.

John grins. "I think Nelda uses a muzzleloader, but us guys had to take up the slack since she was tied up talking with the Veneti."

"Then we had to gut and skin it and bring it back here," Rodney adds. His mouth droops into a moue of distaste. "I may never eat meat again."

"C'mon, it wasn't that bad."

Rodney rolls over and looks up at John. "Hah. And I say again, hah. You were the one who looked green when Danic was letting the blood out."

"Because it ended up all over us," John protests, but he looks a little shamefaced.

"Well, I'm glad you two had fun today," Elizabeth tells them both.

"Fun?" Rodney echoes. "Only someone insane would call that fun."

"But you weren't bored."

Rodney thumps John on the shoulder. "Idiot." He manages to make it an endearment.

John laughs. "Elizabeth, are you sure you can't get us, or just me, into the mediation tent?"

"Yes."

"He really didn't like the gutting and butchering," Rodney explains. "Isn't that cute?"

John glares at him then switches his attention back to Elizabeth. "Okay, not asking anything specific, but are they making any progress?"

"I think so."

"Good. I like it here, but I'm kind of missing Atlantis."

Elizabeth isn't missing the city. She hasn't even thought of it for several days, immersed in picking up nuances of first the Athosians' and now the Veneti's cultures. She isn't looking forward to returning, either.

~*~
br /> Morning of the fourth day, Elizabeth pulls some diplomatic tricks out of her bag and the Veneti agree that they need witnesses for this part of talks. A dozen Athosian men and women, and an equal number of Veneti brought in through the gate, including Jochar and his daughter, Lero, attend, plus John. All of them are jammed inside the tent, sweltering as the sun rises toward its zenith. John's elbow to elbow with Danic and a lithe Veneti woman, who pointedly doesn't look at either of them.

He doesn't even nod toward her; Elizabeth explained the whole thing over dinner the night before.

It's always the stupid shit that gums up the works, he reflects, standing with his arms folded. Hanar just couldn't believe the Veneti's taboos applied to him and the next thing you know, the Veneti are pissed off enough to jump on the first excuse they can find to shaft the Athosians.

Probably, if their crops hadn't failed, they'd have paid off like good little traders and just told the Athosians to take a hike the next time they strolled through the stargate.

Watching Elizabeth maneuver the Veneti and the Athosians is a revelation. She knows exactly which buttons to push to get them to do what she wants.

The Veneti are much too proud to want a reputation of being welshers. The Athosians are traders and embarrassed as hell by Hanar's behavior. Elizabeth has both sides ready to go through with the big public apology.

Everybody except Hanar, who looks like he swallowed a toad.

Nelda gives him the evil eye until he joins her in the middle of the room.

"This is Hanar Demathen, son of Galan," Nelda declares to the room, looking to each of the Veneti women in turn. "Hanar," she hisses in a lower tone, jamming a booted foot down on his instep.

Hanar winces before gritting out, "I offer my deepest apologies and sincere regret for the insult I offered the people of Venet, specifically Lero, daughter of Jochar. In addition, I forfeit my share of trade profits between the Veneti and my people."

Ouch, John thinks. That probably hurts Hanar more than the public apology.

Elizabeth is smiling, just a hint of private amusement in the way the left corner of her mouth twitches up.

The Veneti's leader accepts the apology, first from Hanar, and then one from Nelda in the name of the Athosian people, graciously. Lero follows suit. John notices Jochar doesn't get much say in it, even though the Veneti insisted he was the one most insulted.

Elizabeth's gaze catches his as the witnesses file out. John sketches a loose salute. She's got it all under control. He'd have probably ended up threatening to shoot someone and Rodney – he grins – Rodney would probably have united the two sides in their desire to murder him.

~*~

The rest of the negotiations require no more than Elizabeth's presence. The Veneti have brought samples of various items they're willing and able to trade in lieu of the failed grain crop. The Athosians are eager to retain their status as preferred trade partners and willing to consider the alternates. It's not a spectacular moment, nor even a remarkable one as those things often go, just several hours of working out comparative values on goods and reaching a new agreement.

The agreement is arrived at quietly, from both sides, and as soon as the final decision is made, Elizabeth can see the masks slipping off the women's faces. Here's where the Pegasans differ from the diplomats and trade negotiators of Earth. The successful conclusion of a treaty talk on Earth might have ended with hands shaken and a tasteful reception afterward. Nelda breaks into a grin so wide that it almost hurts Elizabeth and Nerija sits back with a loud sigh. She smiles with them, breathes deep and closes her eyes briefly, allowing the tension to seep from her.

Even Nerija, who hadn't betrayed much emotion during the entire negotiation, begins to relax. Elizabeth can't help but think how different it makes her. There is no small amount of mischief in her eyes.

They step outside. Ingel is waiting along with about a quarter of the Athosians, all of them just a little tense, radiating curiosity and talking in hushed voices amongst themselves. The Veneti have already exited the tent and wait, too, just to the side of the Athosians. John and Rodney are neatly stationed between the two groups, and she notices both of them are armed, an unnecessary precaution in this case. Even if the talks had failed badly, the Athosians wouldn't start anything while their children were threading among the adults, piping voices high as birdcalls. Nerija takes Elizabeth's hands in the Veneti manner of respect, then Nelda touches her forehead to Elizabeth's. Next they both touch foreheads and take each other's hands, sparking a rush of soft words among both groups. It's an unmistakably good sign.

Nelda gives a nod and a smile to Ingel, who looks pleased, but unsurprised.

"An agreement has been reached," Nelda declares. A few of the Athosians look uncertain. She laughs and adds, "One that pleases all of us."

"Indeed," Nerija agrees.

"Well done, sister," Ingel says.

The crowd relaxes, including John and Rodney, who immediately begins a soft-voiced litany of complaints about sticky-handed children pestering him. Nelda grasps Elizabeth's hand and raises it, "We need to thank our peacemaker."

Ingel flashes grin at Elizabeth and snatches her hand from Nelda's. "A celebration, then, I think. You will stay, won't you?" He includes Nerija, "All of your people will stay, too, I hope?"

He still has hold of Elizabeth's hand.

"We would be pleased," Nerija tells him, looking just a little pink at the impropriety of addressing an unintroduced man.

Nelda slaps her brother's shoulder. "Let go of Elizabeth," she says, then chuckles and adds, "Respected Nerija, this is my brother Ingel. You can talk to him. He talks to everyone."

Ingel smiles at Nerija. "Especially the pretty women." His smile becomes just a shade more meaningful as he slants a look at Elizabeth and finally releases her hand.

There are answering calls and shouts of joy. Elizabeth distinctly hears a whoop coming from John.

She has done it. Both parties are looking forward to a reliable trading partnership again. She'd like to think it was all her, but it wasn't. The worst that might have happened was the two peoples breaking off relations. She did little more than sit and listen while they figured out what was wrong between them. But she'll take her victories where she can and this counts as one.

"I am sure your celebration will be joyous tonight." Nerija's rich voice shakes her out of her reverie. Elizabeth blinks at the petite woman a few times, not quite catching her meaning. "So will yours, I'm sure," she replies in what she hopes is the right answer. "Ours."

Around them, people are pooling, chattering, laughing. It's hard to focus on Nerija.

Nerija's smile grows wider and a little wistful, too. "I am an old woman, Mediator Weir. My husbands are older, too, so I did not bring them with me. I miss them. But you…" She inclines her head toward John and Rodney and her smile grows wider and uncomfortably knowing, "You have your husbands here with you. I am sure they will be pleasing you we–"

She interrupts the older woman hastily before she can finish the sentence: "Respected Nerija, I'm not married." Elizabeth has to struggle not to break into laughter at the thought of being married to John and Rodney. Both. At the same time. She waves her hand in their direction. "Our customs are closer to the Athosians than yours, John and Rodney aren't necessarily with me or any other woman." How true that was. "We're good friends, not lovers." Though she's tempted, every day, to make the best of it, to take what they can offer her. She knows all about compromise, has counseled it so many times, but applying it to her own life isn't so easy. Rodney loves her, in his fashion, if not in the consuming way he loves John, and John cares, more than she might have thought, but it's still a little bitter to believe – to know – that she's a second thought for them.

"Oh, but they should be," another voice chimes in, full of mirth and teasing. Nelda. Nelda who grins broadly. "Look at them."

Elizabeth does. "That's not the way it works among us, Nelda."

Nelda doesn't even look at her, simply ignores that Elizabeth is speaking. She turns to the Veneti leader. Both women seem to have found not only respect for each other but also an understanding. "Mediator Weir has odd priorities, Respected Nerija." If possible at all, Nelda's grin grows even wider, and Elizabeth is horrified to note that a similarly sly grin begins to spread over Nerija's face. Nelda might as well have called her a parochial prude to her face, the effect of those grins is the same.

"Well, there's always my brother, he's interested, if you're not taken."

Ingel's attractive and intelligent and there's a certain thrill to knowing he's interested, something she'd clued into the day before, but it's still academic. She'll go back to Atlantis soon enough and a one-night-stand with a local isn't in the cards. Casual sex has never been her style anyway. Though, God knows, it would be nice to just flirt and enjoy herself with someone, without having to weigh every word against the potential consequences. Sometimes interacting with John is like walking through a minefield.

"Mediator Weir's sex life isn't on the table for discussion," she says. "It's not something our people are comfortable talking about in public."

Nelda's having fun, but Elizabeth doesn't know her well enough to discuss engaging in a threesome, while standing in a public place, in the company of a woman who reminds her faintly of her grandmother – who would have had a stroke at the very mention of such a possibility. That's leaving aside her distaste for objectifying John and Rodney or invading their privacy by explaining that they're together and not with her. 

"Do your women not take several husbands?" Nerija asks, a sly, knowing smile still playing around her lips.

"No," Elizabeth answers firmly. "Nor do our men take multiple wives – " If you leave out the Polynesians, Muslims, various African tribes, numerous historical societies and the Mormons, she acknowledges to herself. But explaining all that would be a job for several college professors and take years. "Our marriages are monogamous."

Apparently, she is never going to have the chance to finish a sentence again, because Nerija interrupts her with a curious: "But how does only one husband satisfy your needs? I find it hard to believe that you can experience the full pleasure your body is capable of with only one man. Do you not care for the pleasures of the body, Mediator Weir? Or do those two not satisfy you?" She looks sympathetic now. "I have a son that is not bonded with a woman yet, and he is young. He would be able to please you."

"Thank you for the generous offer, but no."

Nerija considers her, head tipped. "Do you prefer women, then?"

Elizabeth blinks. "No, and please don't tell me you have a daughter – " Which provokes Nerija and Nelda both into laughter.

"No, no daughter to offer," Nerija admits, still smiling.

Elizabeth chuckles. "Good. I was starting to feel hunted."

Nelda doesn't help. The traitor begins to chuckle. The small feminine extras John and Rodney usually forgot on Athos had always come from Nelda; Elizabeth had thought the other woman liked her. Obviously, she's been mistaken.

Rodney chooses this exact moment to step up and grin his most manic grin at her. John trails close after him and he, too, smiles, a glint in his hazel eyes that promises trouble.

Nelda and Nerija share a knowing look, both crossing their arms in front of them. Nelda inclines her head toward the older woman, murmuring something that makes Nerija's eyes squinch, the laugh lines marking her features deepening at the corners, though she doesn't laugh out loud.

John kisses Elizabeth's cheek and she catches a whiff of sweat, sun-warmed leather, and smoke. "Hey there."

"John." It's such a casual, comfortable kiss that she returns it in kind before lightly pushing him away.

"Elizabeth," he drawls, "Everybody get what they want?"

"Yes," Nelda tells him.

"Cool."

"It's not like she brought peace to the Middle East," Rodney says, but his mouth quirks into a smile for Elizabeth. "It was a disagreement over goatish-things' hair and seeds, and weird talking taboos or not, no one wanted to kill anyone. Right?"

"Right, Rodney, way to pay a compliment," John remarks, but Elizabeth shrugs. It wasn't a difficult negotiation. Nelda and Nerija are a far cry from Somali warlords or fanatics intent on proving their points with bombs. Grain, wool, and wine were infinitely preferable to fissionable materials, globalized corporate propaganda, and weaponized viruses.

"Well done for someone with a soft-science degree."

John snorts softly. "Like that was better."

Elizabeth pats Rodney's cheek. "He's doing his best, John."

"What?" Rodney squawks, while John laughs

Nelda and Nerija do a poor job of hiding their amusement.

"So, ladies," John begins, casting a wary glance at Nelda and Nerija, "I mean, Nelda… I heard something about a feast?"

"Yes," Nelda concurs. "There will be a feast tonight, celebrating the successful negotiation. You will join us, I hope?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," John answers, and Rodney nods enthusiastically. "We'll be there." Elizabeth takes his arm, drawing him away from the smirks of the other women. John follows them after shrugging at Nelda and Nerija.

"Don't start without us!" Rodney calls over his shoulder, then turns a slightly annoyed look at Elizabeth. "Why'd you leave?"

"Aside from wanting to get back to our tent and clean up? Nerija offered me one of her sons," she replies curtly, "I was afraid she might be interested in 'acquiring' one of you."

"What!?"

"There have been plenty of days I would have considered trading both of you for a nice, quiet, well-trained – "

"You wouldn't – "

"Rodney."

"I just can't believe you'd even joke about something that, that insane – "

"Rodney."

John looks a little bothered, his eyes dark. "Have we been that bad?"

"Sometimes."

He cocks his head. "I guess we have."

"What we?" Rodney protests, clearly preparing for a lengthy, sarcastic rant.

"Rodney?" John says, his tone light. "Shut up."

Rodney's mouth snaps audibly shut and he sulks, just enough to be attractive rather than annoying.

"So, what did you agree on?" John asks, once again steering the conversation.

"The Veneti have agreed to pay their debts in a different form and Nelda has accepted on behalf of the Athosians. They're bringing the substitute to the stargate as we speak."

"And that substitute would be?" Rodney asks, still sounding peeved.

"Apparently, the Veneti are renowned for their wine. They will bring several cartloads through the gate."

"Wine?" John's eyes brighten. "I can't even remember the last time I had wine. Do you have any idea how good it'll be?"

Elizabeth grins when she remembers the bottle Nerija had offered for testing. "Good."

"Really?" Rodney pipes up, no longer sulking but curious.

John's smile is full of delight. "Cool."

~*~

The Athosians and the Veneti know how to celebrate. The semi-permanent camp along the lake is alive with preparations through the long summer afternoon. Music begins drifting among the tents as the sun sinks under the horizon.

Rodney shoves his elbow into John's side, because Elizabeth is dressed in Athosian garb. Tight green blouse with a modest cut-out, tight leather bodice thing – Rodney isn't sure what it's called – and a long, swirly skirt, that is a sort of paisley pattern in a dozen blues and greens. Her hair is loose over her shoulders. For the first time, he notices it has grown out. He and John have been letting one of the Athosian women trim theirs on trade missions. John grunts, then looks at Elizabeth with wide eyes.

Rodney knows that look, the way the green in the hazel warms when John is in bed with him.

He grins.

Nelda waves at them over Elizabeth's shoulder, white teeth flashing.

The Veneti really are good vintners. Rodney drinks a little more than he should, but not as much as Elizabeth. The music surges, as the feast begins in earnest, rising to be heard over the celebration. Drums and strings, flutes and voices, something that sounds like a kazoo crossed with a saxophone, and one grizzled man bent over a horn longer than Ronon Dex was tall, blowing rhythmically into it and producing an eerie, wheezing moan that twangs in Rodney's bones.

It's good music though, performed by people with talent, and there are soon couples and threesomes and one quartet in the cleared center of the village, dancing. Men and women, men and men, women and women, groups forming and changing, spinning and laughing, dressed in bright colors echoed from the sunset horizon, shadows dancing with them too, thrown by the flicker of torchlight.

It sets his fingers twitching, moving over a phantom keyboard unconsciously, but he is not going out and dancing. He's never danced and he's not about to start a new, humiliating effort tonight. Instead, he nudges his shoulder into John's and concentrates on the food, while Elizabeth and Nelda and the Veneti woman murmur and then eye him or John. He'd be alarmed if he hadn't listened enough to be thoroughly bored by their discussion of different traditions before he retreated to the other side of the table.

"Any idea what they're talking about?" John asks him.

"Boring stuff."

"In other words, anything that doesn't involve astrophysics or sex."

"Or food," Rodney agrees placidly.

John pushes his shoulder back into Rodney's. "Want to dance?"

Rodney looks up from his dessert, something creamy, broiled on top and fantastic, to give John a look of scornful incredulity. "Did you suffer a brain injury sometime today that neither of us noticed until now? Please. Go get one of your legions of admirers to dance with you."

John swipes a finger through Rodney's dessert, sucks it off, and rises. "Okay, I will."

The Veneti woman seats herself on the bench next to Rodney as John joins Danic and Miril among the dancers, moving with an intent grace that surprises Rodney until he remembers how proficient John is at hand to hand. Teyla would never have wasted her time schooling John if he didn't have a talent for it. After little more than a year, he'd been better than any of the Marines on Atlantis, though not in Teyla or Ronon's league.

"That one is very handsome."

Rodney almost tells her to mind her own business, but it's true. There's enough humor in her broad face to appeal to him.

"Yes, well, despite that, he happens to be quite intelligent too, which is a great deal more important than how good-looking he is."

She chuckles.

John's laughing, obviously having a good time out there, and Rodney smiles despite himself. There's very little as infectiously happy as John Sheppard having fun. He's known that since John had shot him – in the leg – and later pushed him over a balcony with the same glee Rodney had felt. Damn, if that isn't when he really fell in love, he realizes. He sucks down another spoonful of dessert and snags a second dish of it. He's going to take it back to the tent and feed it to John, even if Elizabeth is there.

"Your Elizabeth denies you are a threeing."

Rodney chokes. "What!?" He edges away, looking at her in disbelief. "Are you even supposed to be talking to me? Because even if you are, that's just not something I'm going to talk to a stranger about."

The Veneti woman's eyes crinkle into slits set in her broad face when she smiles at him. "Elizabeth introduced us earlier."

"So? That's still an incredibly inappropriate subject to bring up when I'm eating." He points at her with his spoon. "Or any other time."

"So, you aren't."

"Aren't what? A .. what did you call it?"

"A threeing."

"Yes, yes, I got that. Got the denies part, too. What possesses you to think any of us are sleeping together?"

She looks at him and back to John, dancing and laughing with the torchlight limning his face in gilt, and purses her lips against another smile.

Rodney stuffs another bite of dessert in his mouth in self-defense, afraid he'll blurt out something embarrassing otherwise.

John frees himself of Miril and Danic, bright and kinetic, body still moving to the drums. He avoids Ingel and two of the Athosian girls to slip up behind Elizabeth. A glance passes between him and Nelda. Before Elizabeth can react, Nelda has her by the shoulders, spinning her toward John, who catches her hands and draws her onto the dance floor.

The music kicks up faster. John and Elizabeth are spinning and spinning, hands clasping and releasing, turning around each other. Elizabeth's face is flushed bright and she's laughing along with John. Rodney watches them. He never knew Elizabeth could dance like this, wild and unselfconscious. She looks free and happy for the first time ever that he's known her.

"Go, join them."

He glances at his companion.

"You're evil."

She laughs. "Go, take them back to that big white tent."

Elizabeth is wavering in John's arms, her back to his chest, both of them dizzy and laughing. "Yes, yes, you might be – I'm going," he says and jumps to his feet. He grabs up the extra bowl of custard and heads through the crowd.

John sees him and smiles wider, glorious, joyous, and Elizabeth turns toward him too, eyelashes lowered flirtatiously.

"Let's go," he says.

"I'm not through dancing," Elizabeth protests.

Rodney holds up the bowl in his hand. "You can share this with me."

Elizabeth laughs again and shimmies against John, earning a startled huff of breath from him and widened eyes. "Is that all you'll share with me?"

"Sharing's good," John adds earnestly.

Rodney catches John's gaze, smiles back and walks right up to Elizabeth, kissing her quickly, lips closed but pressing against hers for a long instant. John catches on fast and brushes a light kiss along Elizabeth's jaw. Instead of drawing away, this time, Elizabeth sinks into their touch. Whether it's the wine or just that it's finally time doesn't matter.

"We can work something out," he promises. He starts backing away.

With a chuckle, John guides Elizabeth after him.

~*~
Elizabeth is licking the spoon clean when Rodney turns back to her, reaching for the small earthenware bowl in her hands. His eyes narrow. She tips the bowl so he can see the meager remains of the creamy dessert in it and smiles. "You were right, Rodney. That was really good," she says.
 
Rodney's whole body tenses. "Was?" He stares at the empty bowl in disbelief. "Tell me you didn't just eat all of it."

Elizabeth traces her index finger along a line of cream remaining on the side of the bowl. She nods, suppressing another smile at the indignation taking over Rodney's face, the way his mouth opens and closes without words.

John's grinning, just as amused as she is.

"I said try it, not eat it all!" He turns his attention to John. "Why didn't you do something? That was my dessert. Not to mention my favorite."

John makes a sound somewhere between a snort and laughter. "Like what?" he asks. "I'm not the Food Police."

Elizabeth audibly licks her finger clean. Rodney's head swivels between John and her for a moment before determination washes over his face.

Rodney moves to his knees, inching toward Elizabeth on the huge bed she's sitting on in a way that is most likely supposed to look like a stalking predator but more nearly resembles a grumpy, lazy cat. It's so damn hard not to laugh that she thinks she might sprain something from holding back. She pointedly doesn't look at John, knowing that it would make composure impossible.

"Give me that."

He is close to her now, and she can't help the grin, or the taunt. "I don't think so." Elizabeth runs her index finger through the bowl again, letting it slowly pick up some more of the last creamy traces.

Rodney's eyes narrow when she lifts the finger. "Don't," he growls, and his voice is low and deeper than usual. "Don't even think about it."

She moves her hand closer to her mouth, holding Rodney's gaze all the way, taunting him because it's fun and it's easy. Getting out of Atlantis is a relief, accomplishing something, for once not seeing her friends hurt, it's all exhilarating.

Rodney lunges just before her finger reaches her lips, surprisingly fast and agile. Her wrist is trapped in record time and his other hand buries itself in her hair, holding the back of her head so she can't move it any closer to her hand. His fingers are cool against her scalp.

"Hah," he says triumphantly and lowers his head slowly. Her gaze follows the curve of his skull under ruffled brown hair, the line of his shoulders, the brush of his long, thick lashes over his cheekbones. His grip around her wrist tightens, the fingers against her scalp curl, pressing lightly. She can smell the sweetness of the dessert and the sharp, clean scent that is Rodney. Then wet heat surrounds Elizabeth's index finger and the sensory overload is complete. His tongue swirls around it, licking and sucking every last bit of the dessert with a low, satisfied hum that reverberates through her.

Heat lances through her and her breath hitches. She can feel herself flushing and closes her eyes against the sight of Rodney sucking her finger with enthusiasm. He's good at this, God, she should have realized he'd make a point of being good at lovemaking. He's too competitive not to have. And she saw him with John, she knows he can be tender. Every nerve-ending in her body is firing suddenly, the sensations of slick and hot and soft causing her inner muscles to clench involuntarily. She can't help the moan when Rodney's teeth scrape over her knuckle.

He releases her finger after what seems like an eternity and leans back. A smug grin on his face is the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes again.

"That'll teach you to…" He trails off when he looks at John and she follows his gaze.

John's eyes are narrowed and dark, his attention locked on the two of them. His breath flows fast from his slightly parted lips. He looks good, she thinks, incredibly good. He looks… Everything in Elizabeth tightens when she takes in John's appearance.

She can hear Rodney swallow. This is where one of them always draws back, where they never have the guts to follow through, any of them. She curls her hand into a fist, wet index finger cool under her thumb. They flirt and tease and offer, but John's jealous or Rodney's worried he is, and then nothing happens. The frustration is killing her.

"What?" Rodney asks after a while of studying John. The casualness of his tone is forced, uneasy. He sounds apprehensive. Like the boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He's not as sure of John as he should be, can't always read him, any more than Elizabeth can.

Something flickers over John's face and he stands abruptly, leaving the tent with long strides. Shadows flare and tremble over the sides of the tent, the candle flames jittery in the draft of his passage. Elizabeth wants to curl up and disappear because she realizes that John really can't share. She shouldn't have let herself believe he could, not when he warned her.

She stares at her knuckles and refuses to meet Rodney's gaze even though she can feel it resting on her, burning through her skin. She can't believe she forgot herself again and trespassed in their relationship.

The uncomfortable silence on her part lasts for several minutes, then there are steps, the tent-flap moves and John is back.

His face betrays nothing when he pushes a small bowl in her hands.

She expects a reprimand, a ‘hands off Rodney', something scathing or drastic and already opens her mouth for an apology when she recognizes the dessert.

"John, I –"

He sits beside her, one leg on the bed, bent, the foot of the other still on the floor. He's wearing the leather pants again and it's stretched over his thighs, smooth and true to the muscles beneath.

"Don't," he interrupts her. "Don't talk."

He takes her hand, his palm warm and the lightly callused fingers wrapped a little too tight around hers, dips her index finger into the bowl and inclines his head toward Rodney. When he speaks again, his voice is liquid, dark velvet: "Do it again."

Rodney is sitting back, his eyes flickering brightly between John and her.

Elizabeth tries to remember how to breathe. The bowl is balanced between John and her. John, who is close enough for her to feel the heat of his body. His breath stirs her hair when he guides her finger out of the dessert, bringing it up with a dollop balanced precariously on the pad. It's somewhat like Crème Brûlée, an almost yellow-tinged cream. It's already melting a little. It would be easy to lift it to John's mouth; he's close enough in her personal space that his shoulder is nudging hers. John's hand is warm and he's stroking the tender skin inside her wrist.

She tries to follow the urge, to go with the sudden increase in intensity and smiles impishly at John, lifting her hand. But the look in his eyes stops her – it's dark and aroused. She thought he'd be a laughing lover. His breath is warm on her face. The grip around her hand becomes tighter. She's only seen him like this, seen the dark currents underlying the smiles, when he was angry or desperate before. There's a magnetic pull to it, to the ruthless, dangerous side he keeps under tight wraps otherwise. A light tremor runs through his hand, his pupils widen and his thigh presses closer to her. Suddenly she doesn't want to wait another minute, either.

She lets him lift her hand to Rodney instead, turning and twisting around, extending her arm and hand and finger with deliberate grace, an almost balletic gesture. Rodney scoots closer, looking pleased and turned on at the same time, but hesitating. The tension that has thrummed between them for weeks is thick in the air, making it hard to breathe. Don't, she thinks and feels a sudden spike of fear. If he hesitates now, she'll come to her senses, which is probably what has him so unsure. She's refused him, John's refused her, before, the two of them have pushed and pulled at him over and over again. He's probably anticipating that she'll draw back again or John will bolt at the last second. Don't, she pleads silently, frantically, don't over-think this.

Rodney looks at John, searches his face in that open, vulnerable way that he rarely displays. She can't see John's expression, but what Rodney sees must be convincing, because a smile begins to play at the corner of his mouth. He bends forward again and licks at her finger. Little, quick, delicate licks, using the very tip of his tongue.

She closes her eyes and gives in to the sensations, into the rush of arousal that comes with the velvety wetness of Rodney's tongue blending into the softness of his lips and mouth, with John's breath against her neck and his shoulder pressed against hers. She sways a little and uses her other hand to steady herself, meeting the tensed muscles of John's thigh. Involuntarily, her hand splays, fingers stroking.

John shifts and Rodney reaches, both so close she can hear their breaths quicken, and Rodney's hoarse, "God, yes, you're both idiots, finally, you know how long I've wanted this," along with John's raspy, dirty chuckle. When the first dab is gone and she opens her eyes again, it's Rodney dipping her fingers into the bowl and offering her hand to John. Rodney's leaning against her, his chest against her back, radiating heat, so wonderfully solid. She lets her head loll back against his shoulder and John murmurs, "That's it," like he knows exactly what she's feeling, "that's so good, Elizabeth, isn't it?" She smiles at him, feeling almost drunk with sensation, her skin so tight, her body already full with it, and traces her sweet-smeared fingers over the curves of his lips the way she's wanted to since he kissed her in the jumper bay. Dips her fingers again and brings them to his mouth, watches his throat work as he swallows.

Rodney's so close now his knee is pressing against her hip. He slides his arm around her and lifts some of the pudding on his own finger. John catches her finger between his teeth, lightly, just enough to hold, and then sucks and watches as Rodney lifts his own finger to her mouth, offering a return. There's a sound at the back of her throat, too, slipping free, when he touches her sensitive lower lip. Elizabeth leans back completely against Rodney's chest and then opens for him.

Watching John while tasting Rodney is exhilarating – his lips around her finger, his eyes fixed on her mouth – she knows he's getting hard just from the way his breathing changes, the exhalations skittering along her wrist and bare lower arm. It's like electricity arcing between them and through her.

John doesn't let go even when she knows that there is no more of the sweet left. He scrapes his teeth along her knuckles, smiling when she moans.

Rodney uses the distraction to take the bowl from John's hands. His body surrounds her from behind, engulfs her in heat and scent – clean and male and entirely Rodney – forcing her to hunch forward with his movement. A flash of what it would feel like, pressed down beneath his weight, the way he pinned John down in the baths, sends heat spiraling through her. She wants that. Wants everything.

John lets go of her finger and holds onto the bowl, his eyes flashing at Rodney in a playful warning. But this time, it's Rodney who wins and surprises John as much as her when he doesn't pick up the bowl for himself, but sets it aside, on the floor next to the bed.

John chuckles when Rodney tips to the side with an "Unh," and almost slips off the bed, locking his left arm around her waist to steady himself. Elizabeth squeaks and laughs as John catches them, uses those pilot's reflexes to save them from falling over. He shakes his head when Rodney is steady again.

"Graceful, Rodney," he drawls and the sound of his voice after those long moments of nothing but breathing and sucking and heartbeats should be jarring, but it's not. "Your moves could use a little work."

Rodney's hand is splayed on Elizabeth's stomach and he is even closer now than before. She can feel the huff when his chest moves against her back.

"I am graceful," he says, the challenge in his words as thick as it was before, when all of this started. "I am absolutely graceful. I know exactly what I'm doing."

And he does. Christ, he does. His big, broad hands move over her stomach in a light caress, dipping under her shirt and moving in tiny circles around her bellybutton, skating over the sensitive hollows above her hipbones like an artist's brush, making her shudder. His lips find her hair, then her ear. The first touch of teeth against her earlobe has her instantly wet.

She wants to close her eyes but can't stop looking at John. John, whose face is open and clearly showing that what Rodney is doing to her is not only arousing her, but John, too. Unable to hold herself up any longer, she leans her head back against Rodney's shoulder. He moves his lips lower, kisses her neck and this is what she wanted, reckless but perfect, to have that clever, never-shuts-up mouth against her skin. Rodney breathes faster and faster and Elizabeth moves with him. His erection pushes against her backside, hips moving lightly, creating the most minuscule friction that has her skin tingling.

This is probably a mistake, she thinks, all of it. She doesn't care, because she made the decision to do this if she had the chance earlier. Maybe the half bottle of Veneti wine helped, but she didn't really need it. Wise or not, this is going to be good, she's already teetering on the edge of coming. It's inevitable, impossible to turn away from. Rodney is her heartbeat and John is her breath, she can't go on without either of them. She can't choose one of them. Can't and won't and doesn't need to. Uncertainty washes away now, with every touch of Rodney's lips against her neck, with every small sweeping caress of John's hands on her bare calves. It's exhilarating, having them both, giving her back a strength she had thought forever lost. And if it is an illusion, it's one she doesn't want to see past.

John's abrupt movement startles her out of her thoughts. He moves to the edge of the bed, kicks off one boot and then the other, then slides further back onto the bed. Even his feet are attractive, narrow and long-toed, angular and well-made. She thinks how good he looks against soft, faded quilts, the tails of his homespun Athosian shirt loose and falling open so that a glimpse of skin shows above the waist of his pants. The torchlight is good to them all, warming Rodney's pale skin to ivory, hiding the new flecks of gray at John's temples.
 
Rodney's hand slides higher now, up her stomach to her breast, cupping her first through her bra, then deftly moving around it, finding her areola and circling her nipple. She arches against him as the sensations hit, another low moan escaping her lips. Behind her, Rodney's breath hitches and his hips move.

Then John pulls her away from Rodney, who protests softly, until she's straddling John, the long skirt she chose to wear for the celebration settling over his thighs and the bed. Rodney moves with them, between John's long legs, drawing up John's knees. One hand smoothes over his leg, down John's calf to his ankle. John shivers when Rodney finally touches bare skin.

He draws her closer and Rodney's other hand is pressed between John's chest and hers, while John kisses her, long and deliriously slow and different from that first time, and, God, apparently there is something John doesn't like to do fast. She can feel him under her and he's as hard as Rodney is, and he smells like leather and sandalwood and himself, a primal scent that makes her grind down on him and clutch at his shoulders. Rodney's working her nipple between his fingers, kissing the back of her neck, stroking the length of John's thigh to his hip.

John reaches around Elizabeth's waist, and she goes with it, curling her arms around him, the soft shirt slipping over his back under her hands. Slick, wet tongue caressing hers, a kiss so different than Simon's, different from the wildness of the one in the jumper bay. He curves his other arm over her shoulder and Rodney's, pulling Rodney closer, pulling him into this, pressing her between them. She thinks he must be running his hand over Rodney's neck or into his hair from the way the muscles in his arm flex over and over.

Rodney reacts by scraping his teeth along the back of her neck, nipping at sensitive skin, making her shiver, the tiny hairs at the back of her neck rising. Elizabeth's hands move, too, one shaping along John's cheek, running down his throat, over his Adam's apple to his clavicle, pushing aside his shirt. "Touch him," Rodney whispers, while Elizabeth does just that, uses her other hand to draw Rodney's from John's hip and slide it between them, pressing against John's erection and rocking herself against both of them. Her hand, Rodney's hand, John, so hard and hot, oh God, she might just come apart, just from that. She could lose herself in the slow undulation of her hips, but Rodney's undoing her bra one-handed – not a skill she'd have attributed to him, but she never thought she'd feel John Sheppard's hand brushing against her ass while he undoes Rodney's pants, either – and John kisses eyes open, mouth open, lips warm and moving over hers, breath unsteady and rough. The candle light fills his eyes, translucent green and amber.

Rodney's hand alternates between stroking and squeezing John and circling her, fingers moving under the fabric of her panties, touching her wetness and dipping inside her, circling, circling, circling until her head is swimming with need. John keeps kissing her all the way through, swallowing moans, his hand opening and closing at her waist – guiding her, pushing her against him harder. The movement presses Rodney's hand tighter into her and she gasps, arching, but John anchors her, his eyes never leaving hers.

"C'mon, c'mon," he tells hers, his voice gone hoarse and hungry.

She wants him inside her. She wants him as much as she wants Rodney and she's wanted Rodney since Antarctica, wanted him more and more, since facing that she and Simon were done. She's only wanted John since he kissed her in the jumper bay, but she wants him now, wants what he gives to Rodney. And she wants Rodney with them, wants his hands and his sideways mouth and the way he looks at John, the way John looks at him, the hidden sweetness both of them have inside. She wants to see them kiss again.

She wants everything. She wants them to give all of that to her, to let them do the work, to worship and love her the way they do each other, for once. She wants to give it all back, the way she never did with Simon, the way she never trusted herself to before.

Her mind is still occupied with that revelation, making her light-headed when Rodney twists his hand and John rocks up, moaning into her mouth, and Elizabeth's orgasm rolls through her like the rush of the stargate opening.

It's short and sharp and not as good as she had hoped it would be. She's still riding the aftershocks when Rodney pulls his hands away. John sinks back onto the bed, taking her with him, kissing her forehead while she fights for breath. Rodney's pulling off her skirt and her panties next, in an awkward maneuver that has John amused, despite the need still clear on his face.
 
John's hands keep wandering over Elizabeth's hips and the small of her back, tangling with Rodney's, distracting both of them.

Rodney's getting out of his own pants when John lifts her head with both hands, gentle but insistent, and makes her look straight in his eyes. "Can you do this?" he asks, face open and serious. She doesn't for a second think he means the sex, he means can she accept what he has to give, without wanting more than that.

"Please," Rodney murmurs, his eyes so blue and sincere she does believe he loves her, if not the way he loves John. Not that either of them use the word with each other or her.

She doesn't get to choose one of them. This isn't something they'll do and move on from, forgetting or reverting to the old pattern. It will never be just Rodney and her or just John and her. They know exactly what they're doing and she needs to know, as well. She's seen them together – the memory is seared into her – and she knows they don't need a woman for sex – making love. No, this is more than just sex, not a quick jump in the sack to be forgotten in the morning. If they want her, it's because they want her – Elizabeth.

Rodney is still behind her and then his hands are splaying over the small of her back, one of them sliding higher, to her neck and jaw, until it finds John's and their fingers twine together. Elizabeth can't help but lean into their joined hands.

Rodney glides his index finger along her temple in a tiny caress. John smiles at Rodney, and the tenderness takes her breath away. His finger follows Rodney's, brushing the corner of her eye, his touch butterfly delicate against tender skin. Warm and sinking into her like a balm, salve for the soul.

This is her last chance to back away without destroying the friendship between John and Rodney and herself. She doesn't take it.

"I want you both," Elizabeth promises.

"That's good," John says and smiles, his eyes happy. Elizabeth kisses him again and again, wilder and wilder, heat rushing through her, her hands dipping under his shirt and touching soft, hot skin, swirls of silky hair, a tightened nipple.

John has his arms around her as she feels Rodney reaching for her waist, lifting, his knees nudging her legs further apart. John is breathing her in as Rodney's erection brushes her ass. Her breath stops for a second – it's been a long, long while since her last time and she doesn't expect this to be perfect. She stares into John's eyes as Rodney slides into her from behind, filling and stretching her with agonizing slowness, murmuring, "Oh, Elizabeth. God. So good. So good."

It is. Good is what she had expected, this is better. She can barely breathe, the sensations of Rodney inside her, John under her, her forgotten, undone bra scraping over her nipples as they rock together, all are edging her toward overload.

John isn't kissing her anymore, but Elizabeth doesn't care, not while Rodney's hands are holding her hips and he moves in and out of her, his breath hot against her bent neck, his hipbones and belly against her ass. She's circling her hips, pressing her mons against John's still-covered erection, desperate for just a little more friction against her clit. John's pushed her shirt up over her breasts and is curling up to mouth her bared breast. His hand slides down her abdomen and between her legs, thumb circling while his other fingers dip lower, through slick folds until she can feel John's fingers right next to Rodney's cock, blunt fingernails sending shockingly sharp pleasure through her as he touches both her and Rodney where they are joined. She wants to close her eyes but John doesn't let her, his wide, dilated eyes spiking her arousal as they take her in and measure each stroke and touch by her reactions. She tenses and presses down on Rodney, desperate for more friction.

"There, now," she moans, "there, yes."

Sure as a high tide, the building sensation of another near-orgasm hits her as John's teeth drag over her nipple and one of his fingers dips into her next to Rodney, stretching her unbearably while his thumb keeps rubbing her. Rodney gasps at the added sensation, his hands tighten on her hips; he thrusts jerkily, deeper than before. She can feel it rising in her, higher and higher, her face flushing, her breath hitching. It curls tighter in her; almost, almost… and she falls over the edge. This time it's better, the orgasm skittering along her skin and blooming out, golden and all-encompassing from inside her; longer, fiercer, deeper down. Her hands flail helplessly and find John's face, drawing him away from her breast, gliding into his hair and holding on to the only thing anchoring her, the only thing stopping her from flying apart, her gaze holding his as she rides out her orgasm. Rodney's thrusts are stuttering faster; then he stiffens with release as her contractions bring him over with her. Her arms give out and she collapses on John's chest, Rodney draped over her in a hot, sweaty hug, breathing, "Jesus, fuck, Elizabeth."

She tries to answer, to reciprocate, but she can't breathe steadily enough to speak, aftershocks coursing through her body and over her skin. Rodney strokes her belly, smoothing his left hand over the twitching muscles in her arm as his hot breath fans the exposed skin of her back. She draws a deep gulping breath and Rodney moves, softening flesh slipping out of her, easier on sensitized membranes without a condom, wet trickling out of her. Rodney pants, rolling to the side and taking Elizabeth with him, his chest moving under her.

They both watch as John carefully gets out of his pants and his shirt.

Seeing John strip makes her mouth go dry. Hard lines and planes, sinewy muscles playing under smooth skin, proportions perfect, cock flushed and erect. Under her, she can feel Rodney move – not much, just enough to reach for John. His broad palm skates gently over John's shoulder and down his arm, fingers pausing over a scar earned facing the Wraith, then tracing down to close around John's wrist, thumb rubbing against the inside, just over John's pulse point. There's something vulnerable and knowing about the way Rodney touches him just there – just where John has always worn that black wristband – and John's breath whispers out, his eyes half-lidded and focused on Rodney's hand. It sends new spikes of arousal through her.

She tries to move away, to give them some time for themselves but Rodney's hand around her waist holds her in place, doesn't allow her to move. With the other, he pulls John closer.

John turns his head to kiss her, tiny touches of his lips to her skin, along her forehead, her cheeks, over her closed eyes, stopping to taste the salt sweat at her temples, then leans past her until he has reached Rodney. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see John sliding his lips along Rodney's closed eyes and cheek, nipping at that broad mouth, tongue darting out to open Rodney's own lips. Rodney responds, his breath faster again, his eyes opening. They kiss deeply, the sureness and slowness of lovers in every slide of John's mouth along Rodney's, in the tilt of his head that matches and mates with Rodney's, in the way they breathe for each other. Rodney's hand leaves John's wrist and moves over John's back down to his ass, stroking and caressing the long, beautiful line of John's muscles.

Rodney makes low sounds in the back of his throat; they reverberate through his chest and crawl under Elizabeth's skin. John begins to rock himself forward so his erection brushes her thigh and she reaches up, touches John's back and meets Rodney's hand there; moves in unison with it for a few moments. There is only the sound of John's and Rodney's wet, needy kisses and the slide of skin on skin and that alone brings her back to the edge, to wanting again, and she digs her fingernails into John's back unconsciously. When she does, he makes a sound, a deep groaning growl, that makes her shudder with need. She wants to make him yell, to lose all control, to give himself up.

John gives Rodney one last deep kiss, licks at Rodney's mouth almost playfully, then begins to slide down both of their bodies like a cat, slowly rubbing himself over Elizabeth and Rodney, creating an unholy amount of friction, kissing the strangest, yet most exciting places – the inside of Rodney's elbow, her ribcage below her breasts – painting mysterious hieroglyphs on their skin with his tongue, then blowing on them, hot, cold, hot, down. His mouth burns. His hands are there, too, reading Elizabeth's skin, writing erotic promises wherever they graze over her. It feels like his hands should leave a glow behind wherever they've gone, lines of fire along the pathways of her nerves.

Elizabeth lets him finally divest her of her crumpled shirt and bra.

John swirls his tongue over her navel, then lifts his head just enough to meet her gaze. He smiles wickedly at her. Elizabeth can't help sighing. His gaze moves past her and she knows he's looking at Rodney. While she can't see Rodney, she sees John's expression that manages to be both pleased and hungry and faintly questioning. One eyebrow goes up. Rodney's cheek rasps against hers, catching her hair, as he nods.

Oh, she realizes, he is, he is going to…

Rodney braces Elizabeth against him as John kneels between her legs. Her heartbeat picks up speed. She turns her head to the side and sees Rodney lick his lips, his eyes wide and intent, his face still flushed from his own climax, as he watches John push her legs open and begin kissing the inside of first one thigh and then the other. Elizabeth whimpers as John's dark head dips lower. His stubble scrapes against the soft crease between her thigh and groin, an almost pain that just builds her arousal. His harsh exhalations against her sensitive skin make her tense and release and need more.

And John is tasting her, licking where Rodney has been, sucking even, his thumbs biting into the soft flesh behind her knees, holding them open, while Rodney's hands are on her breasts, alternately circling and pinching her nipples. Elizabeth moves against their hands, shuddering, flushing, feverish; her body insists on more than her mind can imagine taking. But John crawls up again and positions himself and her third orgasm crashes through her, maddening and searing, as John slides into her so perfectly she can't stop the almost-sobbing moans. She hooks her legs around his hips and bucks against him with every smooth thrust, moving with him, moving with Rodney behind her, even as the best of it fades and she can feel John's movements getting faster and erratic. It's still exquisite, the feel of him filling her up, and she can watch his face illuminated as he comes. Behind her, Rodney leans forward and kisses John through his climax, swallowing the breathless, choked noise he makes. She clings to John; arms around his chest, biting his shoulder softly. A few more hard, unsteady thrusts and John groans one final time into Rodney's mouth, then goes still, his eyes closing.

He rests his forehead against her collarbone for a moment, licks at the sweat there, sighs, then withdraws from Elizabeth carefully. He stays where he is, though, not moving away, his dark head pillowed against her breasts, while his breathing returns to normal. The tent smells of musk and perspiration and the heavy scent of sex. It will be rank by morning. The perspiration that let them glide against each other will feel sticky and unpleasant. But for now, it's all still good and John's damp hair holds the faint, phantom memory of a cold wind and green grass when she presses a kiss against the crown of his head.

She tangles her fingers through his hair, letting them slip from there down his neck to his shoulder and then away, smiling languorously.

"Hmn," John murmurs, just a wordless sound of pleasure and contentment, his breath and lips against her breastbone, then shifts to look up, smiling, stretching languidly to caress Rodney's thigh.

Rodney, who looks at them both with pleased, if tired, eyes. "That was ..." He pets them both. "Yes. Just, yes. Thank you." Then softly, "You're both so beautiful."

"It was good," John says, and then softly kisses the spot just over her sternum.

Elizabeth feels boneless, unwilling to answer, filled with liquid gold, muscles she'd forgotten aching in a good way. So she simply leans into Rodney's caress, savors the affection in John's kiss, still surprised by it, wordless for once. John settles against her again, with a replete, satisfied sigh. "See?" he murmurs, before dropping off into sleep, lax-limbed and heavy. It's easy to lie there with both of them, between them, until the candle flames gutter and wax dribbles over the holders. She's warm wherever their bodies are in contact, but eventually the air begins to chill naked flesh, raising goose flesh, and John shivers.

It's Rodney who moves finally. He slides free of the two of them, off the bed, and walks over to the washstand. John wakes and shifts to his back next to Elizabeth, sprawling over the quilts in gorgeous abandon. Elizabeth stares at him, memorizing the moment, not sure it will happen again, propped on her elbow.

John's brows are starting to come together in a questioning frown, reading something in her face. Elizabeth smiles at him – it isn't hard – and he relaxes again, smiling back, sweet and generous.

"Hey," he says and she silences anything else with a slow kiss. She thinks he says something against her lips that might have been, "Stop analyzing."

When they part, Elizabeth gives him a playful push and begins tugging at the quilts. She wants to sleep under them, not on top. John deliberately sprawls out, making things difficult, grinning at her, until she swats his flank.

His hand smoothes where she hit and he gives her a hurt look. "Ow."

"Ow? What are you two doing?" Rodney demands.

"Off," Elizabeth tells John.

He gets off the bed. "All you had to do was ask."

Rodney shows a little of his typical awkwardness, "Ah, here, I thought, you know, you'd want to…" as he hands her a soft, wet cloth a moment later, but Elizabeth accepts it with a smile and uses it as matter-of-factly as John and Rodney do theirs. When they are done, Rodney stands at the foot of the bed a little awkwardly, unsure of himself despite what just happened, until John pulls him down next to Elizabeth and he obliges with a relieved sigh. John spoons around her and finds her hand, lacing their fingers while he drops small kisses to her shoulder.

"Blankets, okay?" Rodney says.

John fishes the quilts up from the foot of the bed and drapes them over all three of them, snuggling down again "Better?"

"Much."

The tent is dim, shadowed and cozy, as the last candles flicker wildly. She can just see Rodney's face.

She pulls Rodney closer, needing and wanting to feel him against her. He smiles that crooked, delighted smile, then bends down to kiss both of her eyes closed. She keeps them that way, drifts in the sensation of John's and Rodney's breaths and heartbeats, of their combined scents and their heat cocooning her. The quilts smell like cedar and feathers. Over her back, she feels Rodney resting his hand on John's waist. John's arm tightens around her, pressing both of their hands lightly against her stomach. She wants to say that she loves them both, but the heavy warmth of Rodney's arm and John's contented hum against her neck distract her and she's sliding into sleep, slipping away.

"Good night, Elizabeth," Rodney murmurs. "Good night, John – "

"If you call me John-boy, I'll have to hit you."

She feels the vibrations of Rodney's laughter through his body and chuckles herself. She falls into sleep wrapped in their arms, smiling, feeling tired and warm and relaxed. Just for once, the future could take care of itself.

~*~

She feels it the instant they step through the gate into Atlantis again. Atlantis is cold metal and dead after the life of Athos. The lights brighten in welcome for John and Rodney and flicker at Elizabeth. Neither of the men notice and she wonders briefly if she isn't just imagining the malevolent regard she senses all around her.

John casually kisses her temple then turns to helping Rodney pull the baskets of supplies out of the stargate as they're pushed through from the other side. She sees him press the heel of his hand to his temple.

"Damn, I never realized the stargate could make a hangover worse."

Elizabeth knows it isn't the stargate. It's the AI, using the neural interface it built into John while he was sequestered in the infirmary. No wonder it wouldn't let them inside. Elizabeth would have stopped it.

Now it's hurting John. She's sure of it. She's just as sure he would never believe her if she told him. Rodney won't believe anything against the AI at this point, either. Every time he gets in the command chair, the AI feeds him another addictive dose of information, teasing him with the prospect of ZPMs. But she's willing to bet John's headache is a result of the neuronal interface and being out of touch with Atlantis for longer than usual. Maybe it just needs to synch with his brain again, but she's afraid it may be doing him permanent damage.

If not to his physical health then to his personality. She felt like she was dealing with the real John Sheppard on Athos, and even on Dagan, but in Atlantis, she finds herself having to wonder how much is him and how much is Atenë.

She doesn't like the feeling she is getting about the answer.

~*~

Rodney lifts his face, eyes wide. They're standing in the center of a hollow tower that stretches upward floor after floor into a shadowed vanishing point. The walls are lined with blue glass stasis pods. Row on row facing out onto grated metal catwalks. Power conduits the diameter of redwoods run up the walls, branching like angular veins, sharp turns and rounded corners. Stairs in squared spirals climb up from level to level.

"Were they insane?"

"What?" Elizabeth gives him a raised eyebrow look that asks about his own sanity.

He points.

"Stairs?"

John glances up and narrows his eyes. "That is a long way up." His expression loses focus for an instant, in the way that has already grown familiar to Rodney. He's interfacing with the AI again. "Oh." Rodney follows John's gaze and sees a transporter at right angle to the entrance.

"Hunh," he says. "I was starting to wonder."

"Only now?" John teases.

Elizabeth turns her face up. The blue-tinged light falls over her features, finer than ever, reminding him she isn't happy here. Hasn't been and, he's realized, despite the nights they all spend together, still isn't. His little fantasy that the three of them could be happy together turns out to be just that, a fantasy. She's counting pods, he realizes, calculating how many there are. It's eerie and intimidating, as so much of Atlantis is and was, even now. "What did they need them all for?" she asks.

John shrugs. He isn't interested or, just as likely, knows through Atenë and isn't telling.

It's an interesting question. Rodney frowns, thinking about it, while he turns in place, trying to calculate how many pods the vaulting tower holds. Enough to hold the entire population of the city? Not possible. But there may be other tower vaults. They never fully explored Atlantis in the there-and-then. Never ventured into this part of the city or many others.

"Maybe they used them while they were moving between galaxies?" he speculates. He isn't sure how fast Atlantis' stardrive is. The Ancients had different stardrives, some as fast as the Asgard versions the Daedalus had, but maybe they hadn't developed those until after they came to Pegasus.

John drifts over to one of the pods and accesses its controls. Everything is in good shape, ready to slow someone down to a crawl within, just one tick faster than death. One thing Rodney knows: he isn't going into stasis in this tower. It's too much like a mausoleum.

"See if they're portable, would you?" he tells John.

"Any other orders, Oh great and mighty McKay?"

"Well, I'd like a chocolate bar and some coffee, but that will just have to wait."

John turns and looks at him, then laughs quietly. "Just a little while."

"What's a few thousand years?" Rodney adds, because it is insane. They're going to use three of these things and wake up ten thousand years in the future, which will amount to what was their present, and of course, there will be coffee and chocolate or Rodney will have to do something drastic. The one thing he isn't going to say is what will they do when they wake up? Will they still have each other or will they fall apart? That scares him more than anything.

"Elizabeth?" he asks on impulse, turning back to her, "what will you want when we get back?"

She shakes her head. "To see everyone."

Amusement abruptly fades.

"They won't be our people and there's a strong possibility, I'd venture to say even a surety, that our analogs from this timeline will be there – here – then," he reminds her, trying to be gentle. "This isn't our universe, really."

"Doesn't matter," John declares, offhanded and unconcerned. "We'll be together."

Rodney rocks back on his heels, smiling, because John can make you believe that. He points at John and snaps his fingers. "What he said."

John turns his attention back to the pod's control console. He taps in a couple of commands, then looks up. "We can move them. It'll take a little work to release and we'll have to find something to shift them on, but the pods are pretty self-contained. There's a power hook-up, an interface with Atlantis' systems so that they can be monitored from the control room or by Atenë, but nothing that can't be connected somewhere else. The bolts are just hold-downs to keep the pods from shifting and losing the power and data connections."

"Good, good, I've got an empty lab picked out to use as our stasis chamber. It's not far from the ZPM power room, much closer to the center of the city." He nods to Elizabeth. "You and John can handle that, right? I need to get back to the control chair. I'm this close to bypassing the security protocols and learning what the Ancients knew about creating ZPMs."

He forgets her, forgets that she never answered his question, in his enthusiasm.

~*~

John is still bent over a motor on one of the transports, along with Ingel. Miril and Danic, when Elizabeth and Rodney walk out of the village. She takes his hand as they walk. Neither of them speaks as they make their way through the fields, the sun like honey on their shoulders.

It's the last time they'll come here, the last time they'll talk and eat and laugh with Ingel and Nelda and the others, the last time they'll stand in the tall grain with the west wind cool against their faces. Elizabeth is wearing another Athosian skirt, a soft, undyed fabric that swirls around her ankles, swishing through the tall, golden grain. The silence between them holds as they walk beyond a low rise that hides the village behind them.

Neither of them wants to think that it might be the last time they stand under a sun, that they'll return to Atlantis one more time, lay themselves down, under the sea, in an endless sleep. Perhaps they'll wake one day to a world like the one they knew. It will never be their world, though, and maybe they will never wake, and waste all their days in waiting for an expedition that will never come.

Perhaps, perhaps.

They've done what they can in this here and now. Summer is at its end. All that's left are good-byes.

The wind blows the barley, light rippling over the heavy-headed grain like waves on the sea. The high voices of the Athosian children echo from behind them. Elizabeth lifts her sun-hot hair away from her damp neck, strands clinging to the nape. Rodney catches her hands and brings those strands away, too. She lets go, lets her hair fall over his blunt fingers, and turns toward him, the weight of his palm still there against her neck, hidden under her freed hair.

Rodney's lashes are thick and sandy, tipped with gold.

"I wish we could stay," Elizabeth says.

Rodney slips his arms around her. She leans against him. "We can't." He rests his forehead against hers. "It isn't really our world or our way. We'd be bored out of our minds."

"I know," she replies. "I know."

"I'd say it's not forever, but it is, isn't it?" He sounds almost happy about that; the idea intriguing him, the way ideas always will.

She runs her hands up under his shirt, finding bare, sweating skin. Rodney pauses for a breath, probably less than thrilled by the idea of al fresco sex, but he kisses her when she urges him closer. A bed of barley rustles beneath them, uncomfortable but not enough to stop them, when they sink down. Elizabeth's skirt wraps around her legs in a tangle she has to kick loose. Rodney's pale skin is gilt as he kneels beside her and unlaces her blouse, drawing it open and revealing her to the sun and his hands. He is haloed against the azure sky above them, too bright to look at directly. Elizabeth laughs, remembering her Greek myths.

"What?"

"Helios."

His hands are as warm as the sun. Her body rises to meet his and his mouth scorches her breast. She thinks that in this moment, Rodney loves her, more than anything, and pulls him closer, closer, as though they could touch more than bodies. It's sweet and bitter and better than they've ever been together. Her hands close over his shoulders, hot skin over bull-heavy muscle, as he's surging into her, and she comes in a spangle of gold.

"You'll burn," Rodney says much later, still catching his breath.

Elizabeth turns her head to look at him, where he's rolled to the side and is stretched beside her. One hand rests between her breasts, where her skin is slick with sweat. She makes no move to close her blouse, stretching instead. The muscles in her thighs ache pleasantly.

"I don't burn."

He snorts at that. His hand strays over the upper slope of her breast, dot, dot, dot. "You freckle."

"I was a tomboy."

"Strangely, I can believe that." His mouth quirks. "Do you think John's done yet?"

"Probably," Elizabeth says. "I think he was just drawing it out because he didn't want to say good-bye yet." She sits up and finally puts her clothes to rights. A smear of dirt on one cuff makes her frown. She's brushing at it, trying not to grind the dirt into the weave, when a shadow interrupts the sun.

John sinks down at their feet. He has a bottle of Veneti wine in one hand and a basket in the other. His eyes move over the two of them, thoughtful, but he smiles at them both. There's still a smear of grease on his cheek, below the crinkles at the corner of one gold-flecked eye. "Hey," he greets them, shoving the basket toward Rodney. "Cakes."

Rodney's already lifting the cloth folded over them and snatching up one of the fried sweet cakes. "I knew there was a reason I loved you," he mumbles through a mouthful.

John smiles and ducks his head. Rodney offers Elizabeth the basket. She plucks out a cake almost reluctantly. John doesn't seem disturbed by their defection. He's intent on opening the wine. Suddenly, she's very conscious of sitting on the ground, of the sweat slicking every crease and crevice of her body, the mingled scent of sex and raw earth. John levers the cork from the wine bottle intently.

They pass the bottle back and forth, alternating with the cakes. Rodney sits with his knee touching John's. The wine is sweet and fruity and stains their lips red.

Elizabeth wishes there was another bottle. She wishes she could get drunk enough it didn't hurt. She gets just enough of them to want more, but this is all there is for her. Let me in, she'd like to scream, but they'd look at her with blank incomprehension bleeding into concern. There is no room, no place between them for her.

"Nelda and Ingel?" Elizabeth asks eventually, when the basket is almost empty and the afternoon is edging into dusk, long shadows stretching east, purpling in the distance. "Danic?"

John traces his finger over the bottle's lip. "I told them we didn't much care for good-byes."

"Oh."

Rodney lifts the bottle from John. His hand runs over the back of John's. He raises the bottle to the sun, the light spearing through the glass in a crimson glow. "To Athos and the Athosians," he says quietly and takes a sip, handing the bottle to Elizabeth next.

"To our friends," she says and drinks, leaving enough for John.

He takes the bottle back and looks thoughtful. At last, he looks up and finishes the toast. "To never forgetting." He raises the bottle to his mouth and drinks, his head back and his throat working. When he's done, he lays the bottle down and walks on his knees over to Elizabeth. He cradles her face in his hands and kisses her sweetly, lips closed, eyes closed, just his mouth, warm and damp with the last of the wine, on hers. She lets her eyes close, too.

She keeps them closed as John draws away, intently aware of Rodney moving closer to them both, of the rustle of the broken stalks of barley beneath them as they shift and move, the susurrus of skin and fabrics, the light through her eyelids, red as wine. She knows the sound of John's breath, so very quiet, when he surrenders, and the whisper of Rodney's hands in John's hair. Rodney breathes out John's name like something wondrous.

John takes her hand from her lap and holds it, warm and slightly rough. She opens her eyes. They're leaning their foreheads together, kneeling in the dirt. John tugs her closer and Rodney wraps his big hand around both of theirs. On impulse, she rubs the smear of oil from John's cheek with her thumb. His lips quirk in another smile. He doesn't open his eyes or move.

"Elizabeth," he murmurs.

"The sun is going down," she says.

John nods, not shifting away from Rodney, though. "Time to go home."

Elizabeth sighs. She shakes her skirt out when she rises. Rodney makes her jump and grins at her when he 'helps', brushing her rear. John plucks another broken stalk of barley from her hair. They walk back to the path leading to the stargate silently. John leaves the empty basket and bottle there, where someone will find them, while Rodney dials the gate, and Elizabeth turns and looks back. Two tall, distant figures stand at the top of the rise that conceals Ingel's village.

The wormhole opens.

Rodney touches her waist. "Elizabeth." She walks with Rodney to where John stands in front of the event horizon, limned in its cold blue light. John lifts his hand, a final gesture of farewell, and the three of them walk into the stargate together.

~*~

The city whispers to John all the time. Elizabeth knows it, can see him answering in Ancient and numbers. He's always moving just beyond her reach, his gaze distant even when he speaks to her, and rapt when he converses with the AI. He spends hours in the command chair, alternating with Rodney, and even when Rodney is in the interface, John lingers beside it, running fingertips over the alloy strands that invade Rodney's body. Threads of it separate and curl around his fingers when his hand lingers.

Neither of them has made love to her since they returned from Athos this last time. She suspects the AI of stopping them, distracting and addicting them. What she shared with them begins to seem like a golden mirage shimmering beyond an ever-retreating horizon, a flower already fading, plucked from its earth and sun to wither here in the dark.

>This internal exile is somehow worse as the strength she gleaned from Athos, the feeling of light and freedom, fades into the uncertain remnants of memory. Memory is no friend of hers now. She thinks it must fill her dreams, the dreams she can never remember, that leave her shaking and breathless, her heart racing in the aftermath of unbearable fear.

Every step she takes is monitored. She knows it, feels it as a constant prickling in her neck, doesn't need confirmation in the form of evidence.

If only she turned around quickly, she would see the AI looming behind her, ready to harm, ready to push Elizabeth over a railing or flood the section of the city she's in at the moment. She knows that's pure paranoia. The AI's danger doesn't lie in a physical threat, but in what it's doing to John, what it will do to the others, how they will change. It will make them into ghosts of the Ancients, with the same cold disregard for anyone who doesn't have the ATA gene.

Elizabeth stays close to John and Rodney, but even they no longer make her feel entirely warm. They're both receding from her, from humanity, even from each other. Atenë offers them everything they want when they're in the interface.

Maybe flesh can't compare to direct brain stimulation.

She imagines they see it in the interface. When John is in the chair, when he's clearly seeing something she can't, she imagines it's Atenë. The avatar of an AI with access to his every secret thought and fantasy would be beautiful, wouldn't it? It would model itself into what he wants… She shudders. Maybe it looks like Rodney to him, but she doesn't think so, hopes not, because if so, then John is already lost.

It's certainly there for John, tempting him. Elizabeth has seen his eyes unfocus when he's speaking with it, like a lover looking at his object of desire.

Whatever he sees, he finds beautiful, worth giving up reality to know, no messy bodies, complicated emotions, no doubt… It won't have Rodney's thinning hair or be as bony as herself. It won't make him feel, and that must be the real attraction for John, she realizes, who has always wrapped himself in air and ice and attitude to escape.

Atenë gives John what he wants, but she – it – takes, too. Takes John aside, lures him away, keeps him busy.

Takes Rodney, too, seduces him with Ancient secrets.

But never her. Did Atenë resent not having a body or is Atlantis its body? Or does it possess John, now that the interface sits permanently in his head? That possibility nauseates her, obsesses her, twists into possibilities that terrify her. Once the idea is born, it takes root, and she studies John constantly, sidelong, looking for signs of Atenë in everything he does. She sets quietly and stares at John and Rodney, bent together over a lab table, speaking in Ancient and English interchangably, swallows back bile, relieved that they haven't touched her in days.

She stops mentioning it, though, because she doesn't want it to know how much she resents and distrusts it. She has a body. She can touch and be touched by Rodney and John. The AI can only offer an illusion.

She can act, as well, and a plan is forming in the back of her mind. It scares her that she's convinced John would choose the illusion over her. She's afraid Rodney would choose it, too. She can't trust them or ask for any help and that more than anything convinces her she's is right.

She hates it for that.

When John sits in the chair, his body tenses, muscles taut. But when the city touches his mind, his eyes unfocus and his face relaxes into a smile that should be Elizabeth and Rodney's alone; the smile that says everything they never admit to each other. It's wrong, all wrong, and her nightmares are filled with images of a future, of Atlantis divided into two classes, two groups growing steadily apart, of friends growing distant and detached from humanity, while the rest of the expedition is as hemmed in and helpless as she sometimes feels.
 
Today she goes to John, moving silently so as not to disturb Rodney, who is slumped asleep on his side on the floor, touches John's chest and feels his heartbeat synchronized with the city's slow pulse. She skims her fingers up his arms to his face, circles his lips and open eyes; eyes that never see her here and she knows that he feels her hands as those of the unattainable and untouchable Atlantis.

There's something of madness about what she does next. She wants to test just how far John is distanced from his body, just how much hold the AI has on him. Perhaps it's morbid curiosity, too. Her hands wander down his body and under his clothes, admiring corded muscles, warm skin, body hair that is so much softer than it should be in a man. Lower, lower – chest, stomach, hipbones, loose trousers opened easily, soft, soft hot skin – until she cups him through his boxers and squeezes and his eyes unfocus even more; the green iris almost swallowed by the alien darkness of his pupils.

He whispers – Ancient – and the city pulses brighter with his heightening arousal; electricity in the air and she moves more quickly, now touching skin, her hand experienced in what brings John to the edge.

He strains, fingers digging into the chair's armrests, hips bucking, breathing rapid, eyes rolling back in his head.

When he comes, the city flares up, bright light washing through the chair-room and a deep vibrating sound chilling and arousing her at the same time.

She can hear the city whispering now, gentling John through the aftershocks with promises it can never keep.

Elizabeth straightens, then bends down to kiss his open lips – hard, bruising at first, then gentle, caring – mentally showing the city what it can never have.

John moans, eyes still unseeing, still in the city's thrall, but the tongue touching hers knows that this is corporeal and real and makes promises of its own. His left hand leaves the armrest of the chair and curls around her back, pulling her closer of its own accord. The lights in the chair-room flicker.

"Elizabeth?" Rodney's eyes are dazed, shocked, dissolving the hazy fog in her mind. "What are you doing?"

She straightens, leaves John's sound of protest behind her and turns to Rodney, kissing him until his eyes flutter closed and he's panting, then leaves with a smile on her face. She doesn't explain, she doesn't dare explain what she's begun to believe. There are ways in which being human is still superior to anything else. She can't trust them now, she can't tell them, but she's going to save them.

~*~

Discovery is the light of a thousand suns opening within his mind. Comprehension is an origami puzzle unfolding to reveal the birth of universes, the unification of weak and strong forces, of time, space, dimensions, decisions, deities. Knowledge is truth is beauty is nirvana is religion is –

Rodney lurches out of the control chair.

He understands –

Everything.

~*~

They haven't been alone since they came back from Athos – Elizabeth is always with them, never a moment just between John and him. Rodney loves the freedom their new-found situation gives them, but he luxuriates in having John to himself again, too.

And John kisses him as though he's been starving for it: teeth scraping, tongue soothing and tangling with his, sucking and moaning.

John is wild and yet he's careful, rough and tender at the same time and Rodney can't get enough of it. He pulls John closer, running his hands under John's shirt and touching all that wonderfully warm and smooth skin. John moves quickly, pushing Rodney toward the bed until his knees hit the back of it and fold and then John is straddling him, his hips moving, grinding down on him. Friction, too much friction, oh God, yes, wonderful friction, but he isn't fourteen anymore, it takes more than a little frottage to get him off these days. He wants John's hand or his mouth, or please, God, let John want Rodney inside him again.

John slides out of his shirt and tosses it blindly, still kissing, licking and moaning into his mouth the whole time, only drawing back enough to repeat, "Now, Rodney, c'mon, now, I need you," more words than he's ever offered before. Grinding his cock into Rodney with intent enough that Rodney figures out that he's the one who is going to get fucked this time.

He groans and pushes up against John's heat, reaching for John to kiss him again: longer, wetter, messier. He wants it all now, wants John to fuck him without Elizabeth watching. To let John blow him, to jerk each other off, something, anything, just without an audience. He wants the intensity that is him and John alone.

It's the same for John, his kisses wilder and needier than before, hands divesting Rodney of his shirt. Slipping over his nipples, lower and opening his pants. John grabs Rodney's cock tightly and squeezes – too much, almost too much, too tight and Rodney can't, he can't –

John's hand stills abruptly and a tremor runs through his body. Then all that heat and wonderful pressure is gone suddenly, Rodney's cock exposed, while he gasps and blinks stupidly at the ceiling, hearing the sound of the bed moving and then the door opening, followed by bare feet running over smooth, polished floors. The air chills him, arousal abruptly wrecked by alarm. As he tucks himself back in, he realizes that he has never felt so naked before.

Jesus, John just left, without a word.

John's shirt is still on the floor.

~*~

The door slides open reluctantly and Elizabeth steps in, barely managing to suppress a gasp of surprise. She's been wandering again, sensing Rodney wants some time with John alone and that John isn't comfortable with her any longer. The vault is huge, dark, looming heights filled with bank upon bank of glowing crystals in all colors of the rainbow. A deep, growling hum pulses as though this room were animate, the living, breathing heart of the city.

Elizabeth shivers and realizes that this initial thought isn't too far off.

Atenë. She has found the heart of Atenë.

Elizabeth pulls the coat tighter around her shoulders and walks deeper into the vault. The light touches her face and pours over her hand as she steps close enough to one of the crystal banks to touch. She does and the jolt of electricity she receives isn't exactly painful, but surprising. She should have known this would happen. The AI distrusts her as much as she does it. But that thought gives Elizabeth a strange urge to move forward to reach out and touch again. She will ignore fear and pain if it means finding out that Atenë is scared of something, too. And this, Elizabeth being here, must worry her enormously, if the rapidly pulsing crystals are any indication.

Elizabeth moves still deeper into the vault, walking between the towering columns and banks. She stretches her hand out and lets it hover again and again over the crystals as she walks past them. The pulsing grows stronger.

"Is this your Achilles' heel?" she asks silkily, smiling. "You should have this room better secured if you don't want mere mortals to come here –"

The sound of the door swishing opens stops her. She whirls around to stand facing John. His face is flushed, set, and his eyes are black, narrowed in fury. He's panting between the words, his chest moving fast, but his voice is flat and absolutely steady in a way it shouldn't be, a way that isn't human. "Get the fuck out of here, Elizabeth."

"John – "

He reaches for her wrist and his grip is strong, bruising, making her gasp in pain. He doesn't ease up. Just drags her out of the vault like a protesting animal. His fingers bite into her flesh almost down to the bone. She stumbles against him when he pulls her through the door roughly and he jerks away, fingers clenching once more, then he releases her.

He is, however, immediately in her face again. "What the hell did you think you were doing in there?" John's voice – that she has rarely heard rise into a yell before – is now loud enough to make her want to clap her hands over her ears. Her legs tremble. John has never used any force before, he has always been reined in. No more. He reaches for Elizabeth's arms again and shakes her. She is too shocked to fight him, even though he's genuinely hurting her, knocking her head back against the wall. His eyes are as cold as the blue crystals in the vault. "You have no fucking business being in there. That room is off-limits. Do you understand?"

Rodney's hands clamp over John's wrists. "Let her go right now, John." John's hands tighten for an instant, then release under the pressure of Rodney's grip.

She sidles away along the wall, shaking all over. Looking at John – no, not John: the AI in John's body – makes it hard to breathe. He stares at Rodney with something close to hatred.

Rodney, too, sees it, and the pain on his face is so obvious Elizabeth feels it as her own. He's struggling to get his breath and his feet are bare. He must have chased John all the way from their quarters.

"Get out of here," Rodney says to her, still holding John steady.

She stands rooted to the spot, unable to move just one inch. She doesn't trust her knees to lock.

John – not John – shoots her a venomous glance and begins: "She! She went into the memory core vault –"

"Shut up," Rodney snaps. Then at her: "Move!"

The words don't allow hesitation and she starts walking, slowly. She doesn't look back but stops after the next corner, out of their sight.

"What the hell is wrong with you, John?"

"What – "

Rodney's voice is angry and worried at the same time. "I'm asking you. What happened?"

A long, long pause. Then a groaned: "I don't know."

"Don't give me that. You all but attacked Elizabeth. Ask Atenë if you don't remember."

"Don't –"

"Don't you dare shut me out now. Not after the way you ran out."

"Rodney – "

"No! Tell me. Right now."

A rustle of clothes and skin, and a sharp thud. "Shut the hell up, McKay."

"Fuck! John!"

"She doesn't belong in there!"

"Stop and listen to yourself."

"Leave me alone, McKay."

Steps retreat into another corridor, echoing. She can still hear Rodney breathe, can hear him slide down the wall.

She turns and runs.

~*~

John's curled up on one of the sofas in the common room when Elizabeth walks in the next morning. She hesitates in the doorway, watching him, the curve of a slumped shoulder, the bowed head. He still doesn't have a shirt, so she knows he hasn't been back to the room they share, any more than she has. She wonders if Rodney went back there and can't guess, doubts any of them slept in any case.

He lifts his head and looks at her. His expression is still and inhuman for an instant, then contrition and pain washes over his features. He needs a shave and it makes him look gaunt and far more vulnerable than he really is.

"Elizabeth."

"John," she says cautiously. She waits, but he doesn't say anymore.

His attention shifts to behind her and she hears Rodney's steps approach.

"Jesus, John," Rodney exclaims on seeing him. He steps past Elizabeth and storms across the room to grab John's shoulders and shake him. "Don't ever pull that shit on me again."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," John replies. He tentatively touches Rodney's hair and when he isn't rejected, spreads his fingers through the strands.

"Ever," Rodney repeats.

"I won't." He looks at Elizabeth. "It would probably be a good idea if you stayed away from the vault, though."

"Yes, I can see that," she tells him and heads into the kitchen. Her hands want to shake as she goes about making tea.

Rodney and John have their foreheads pressed together when she checks back, just sitting on the sofa together, knees brushing, and she is once again left outside that circle.

Later, John tells her, "I really am sorry for frightening you."

"I know," Elizabeth replies. She doesn't hide the bruises on her wrist, dark marks left by his fingers. John stares at them, and finally leaves when the silence stretches to a snapping point.

She knows beyond any doubt that the course she's set for herself is the right one and now she knows how to go about it.

~*~

John's busy loosening the anchor bolts on a stasis pod, preparing to move it and two others to a lab closer to the ZPM power chamber, while Elizabeth delicately disengages the monitor systems from Atlantis itself, when Rodney rushes into the main stasis storage vault. His hands are moving almost as fast as his mouth.

"I did it!"

"Did what?" Elizabeth asks.

John drops the heavy wrench that has already slipped four times and left his knuckles bruised and scraped bloody and really looks at Rodney. Through the interface, Atenë murmurs of bypassed security codes and renewable power resources. He can feel the echo of Rodney's elation still there, the determination of redemption.

"You got it," he says.

Rodney nods. "Zero point energy. I know how they did it. I know how to do it." He taps his temple. "It's all in here. It's so perfect, so simple once the basic premise is established."

Elizabeth twists around to look at Rodney with her mouth just parted. "Rodney?"

"Yes, yes! I have it all," he exclaims.

She moves before John can gather himself together. Rodney accepts the hug as his just due, along with the long kiss afterward. John's been feeling more and more disconnected, less and less real, so it takes him longer. He wipes his hands on his pants' legs and then sets them on Rodney's shoulders, just smiling back at him until neither of them can stand it. Then Rodney's hugging him and John thinks his ribs might be creaking, because Rodney has a lot of power in his arms and back, but he's hugging Rodney back just as hard. Next thing, Elizabeth is hugging him and then they're squeezing each other enough to end up breathless, Rodney babbling, "Give me two weeks, I can have spares – can you believe it, spare ZPMs? – with full charges. We should take one back to Dagan. We'll set the others up in the power room. No worries about the shield. We can dedicate one just to the stasis pods. It was gradual power loss that aged the other Elizabeth so badly, and we can – "

John kisses him. Rodney's mouth is a little sour, because he's been in the command chair for hours, but John doesn't care. For a heartbeat, Rodney's still talking, his lips moving under John's mouth, the words vibrating against his tongue, then he slides into the kiss, returning it sweetly, and Elizabeth's fingers are at the back of John's neck, and resting at his waist, while Rodney palms the small of his back, broad strong hand, with his other arm around Elizabeth. He loves them both so much in that moment, he's barely aware of the interface, a background hum, like the sound of his own breath.

He starts laughing when they end the kiss, because Rodney is talking again immediately.

"I found these memory recording devices. This is so important, I think we should use them, leave them for the expedition, in case anything happens to the pods, because obviously knowing how to manufacture ZPMs is the single most important discovery possible. Ever. They won't need to take the kind of chances we did. They won't – " He pauses and a little of the euphoria fades. "They won't lose the people we did, just trying to survive. Memory recordings will let them know about the Genii and not to trust the Manarians. Not that they'll need to, because with enough ZPMs, they'll be in touch with Earth. They won't even need the Daedalus, they'll send through charged ZPMs for the SGC to use, too."

"Memory recordings?" Elizabeth asks.

"Exactly. It's a similar mechanism to the device that downloaded the Ancients' database into O'Neill's brain, only it's just one person's life experience and it won't kill anyone or drive them crazy," Rodney explains enthusiastically. His hands move, shaping something wrapping around an invisible head. "It should work on all of us, though with the neural interface John has, the quality will be especially amazing – whoever gets that one will really live your life."

"I'm not sure I'd want to do that to anyone," John mutters.

Rodney pauses, giving him a keen look. "Well, the odds are no one will ever need to use it, we'll come out of stasis and tell our story. Think of it as writing a note to the future – just in case. You're military, you should be familiar with the concept of contingency planning."

"I am."

"We haven't decided to do this yet," Elizabeth says.

"But we will." Rodney is confident and John acknowledges that it isn't a bad idea. He just isn't thrilled at the thought of anyone having a key to look through all his memories.

"And, Rodney?" Elizabeth adds, "You haven't explained whether creating these ZPMs will be dangerous?"

~*~

"This isn't anywhere near as dangerous as Arcturus," Rodney says, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "This is going to work. It'll take some time to figure it out, but I can make this work. Given time, I can create new ZPMs."
 
Elizabeth stops listening after the word Arcturus comes up. Her heart stutters for a few seconds and she can feel a cold prickle in her neck and cheeks.
 
Arcturus. A name she had hoped would never come up again, erased from their collective memory after it was destroyed. But they haven't forgotten. Rodney hasn't forgotten.
 
Destroying the facility hasn't changed the fact that Rodney remembers – that they all remember.
 
The weight of knowledge threatens to drag her down when she realizes that it hasn't stopped. It will never stop as long as they live.

~*~

Rodney gives serious thought to throwing up after the recorder releases his face. How had he forgotten that he's mildly claustrophobic? Not so mildly after having that thing smother his face. It felt like he couldn't breathe and then…everything. Counting on his fingers and then counting in his head, the first time he had an allergic reaction, playing scales, looking through a telescope, Northeastern, numbers and knowledge and pride and no one, then the crushing disappointment of not having the gene. Elizabeth, Antarctica, Atlantis, John. Wraith in the city and the shield on fire. The need to prove… something… and the price. Oh God, the price. His entire life imploding in one breathless eternity, pouring from his brain into the crystal waiting for it.

It leaves his muscles shaking in reaction to insults and injuries suffered long ago. His heartbeat echoes in his ears. He aches, inside and out, body and heart.

He rolls onto his side and concentrates on breathing through the pounding headache and nausea. Eyes closed against the vertigo, drawn up into a shaking, fetal ball. The gentle pressure of a hand on the back of his neck seeps into his awareness. A warm and familiar body sitting on the bed with him, hip against his back. John. Someone else is moving in the room, too. Elizabeth, of course, and he's in Atlantis, in his own room, on his own bed, where he just downloaded his entire life's experience into a single, pink-tinged, finger-length crystal.

"Unnn," he groans. The woven blanket under his cheek was a gift from Nelda. It's a soft wool, but it still scratches. Even with his eyes closed, he can picture it, a plaid of deep green and plum and black.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" John remarks in response, his tone light, but his hand gentle and still there.

"Grrrg."

"Worse for us than Elizabeth, I think. Something about the gene. You'll feel better in a minute." A pause. "You kept the feather."

"Could I actually feel worse?" Rodney asks. Then, "Of course I kept it," before moaning again.

"Nothing's coming up, right?"

He groans and gulps hard. Memory supplies a sharp, sense-surround replay of John's reaction, complete with miserable heaving for a half hour afterward. His own stomach is in sympathetic revolt even now. Nothing in his research said anything about this reaction to the process. Maybe none of the Ancients had anything in their lives that was traumatic enough to trigger it.

"Put me in the auto-healer, I'm obviously having an atypical reaction," Rodney says.

"Here," he hears Elizabeth's voice. Something touches his lips. "It's water. Just take a sip."

"Can't."

"Yes, you can." Her hand guides the lip of a glass to his mouth. "You'll be fine."

"Oh, like you're a doctor."

"It's all soft science and voodoo anyway, according to you." John is rubbing his hand up and down Rodney's neck and between his shoulder blades. It does feel good. Maybe the vertigo and nausea are letting up, too. Rodney ventures a cautious sip of the water Elizabeth is still offering. It stays down and he relaxes minutely.

"Thanks," he murmurs. John's hand stills. "No, don't stop, that's good." The hand continues its almost hypnotic sweep up and down his neck and back.

Elizabeth's cool fingers stroke over his brow.

"Did it work?"

Rodney forces his eyes open. "I certainly hope it did, though there's no real way for us to know, unless we're there when someone downloads the memories into their brain."

"An awful lot of misery for something that you can't guarantee will work."

"But if it does, it will be a sort of immortality."

"Let our lives serve as a warning to others," Elizabeth murmurs in a distant voice. When Rodney looks at her, her gaze is both distant and inward.

"I suppose," he says.

Her eyes return to him and she smiles, just a little stiff at the corners of her mouth, like she's almost forgotten the expression.

~*~

Rodney said that it wouldn't be so bad for her. He said so, she keeps telling herself the entire first few moments the head-hugging device is on her. She can't breathe and her skin crawls, too hot, too tight, even before the device reads her brain anatomy and adjusts to her. She can feel the silvery threads slide against her skin like caterpillars crawling over her temples and she feels instantly nauseous and dizzy with disgust.

But nothing prepares her for the experience of the memory recording. Rodney said it wouldn't be as bad for her as it was for him and John.

He's wrong.

Her mind is ripped from her body and sucked into a maelstrom of pictures and faces and random words, whole scenes playing out, then stopping abruptly, jumbling together, a terrible wash of colors and sounds and feelings - happy in one microsecond and devastated in the next, her first dog dying, graduating college, her father giving her her favorite necklace, music, art, food, pain, sex, love, hate, negotiations, faster and faster and slower and slower until she doesn't think she can take it anymore. She's dimly aware of the keening breaking free of her throat and her memory flashes to Rodney during the first month after Doranda and to everything before and after – at the same time, too fast and too detailed, a maddening technicolor rush that tears her mind apart and leaves it shattered like glass.

She's still screaming when Rodney pulls the memory recording device off her face.

"Elizabeth?"

Her eyes take too to long to focus, but when they finally do, she scrambles away from Rodney. She had almost forgotten. Oh God, how could she have forgotten what he had done? In front of her is the face of the man who had destroyed the universe. A kind, worried face that she loves so much it poisons her from the inside. The face of the man who thought this was a good idea. Her hands flutter to push him away.

All her anxieties come crashing in on her, almost pulling her under. She curls into a tight ball, letting it wash over her – squeezing her eyes tight shut against tears.

"You said it wouldn't hurt her!" John's voice is too loud, but detached at the same time. He's more disturbed by the inaccurate information than her pain.

"It didn't. It can't. This shouldn't be happening. It should have been perfectly safe –"

"Told you," Elizabeth whispers into the cradle of her arms, even though she knows they can't or won't hear her. "Damn AI."

"Elizabeth, just breathe through it," John drawls in her ear. "The device was calibrated to work on someone with the gene. Atenë didn't do anything."

Arms close around her, choking her. It's Atenë holding her down. Elizabeth thrashes and kicks blindly. She's not ready to go. She still has a mission to fulfill, to guard the future.

Hands pull at her arms, exposing her face. The pain of a slap blooms bright against her cheek and brings her out of the dark haze.

"Stop." John's voice is clear and calm, though a part of her notes that it's a false calm. "It's just the initial shock. It'll wear off. Just calm down."

She blinks and stares at him, his beautiful features and ever-changing eyes. He reaches with both hands and frames her face, anchoring her. Slim, long-fingered hands. Hands that closed around her wrists like steel when he dragged her from the memory core vault, away from the rows on rows of crystal that make up the AI's mind. Slowly, her surroundings come back into focus. The memories fade from the sharp colors she saw in the device into the sepia of the past.

What doesn't fade is the picture of herself standing in the installation on Doranda, not doing anything to stop the events from unfolding. She won't make that mistake again. She knows what she'll have to do, no matter what the cost to John, knowing neither he nor Rodney will forgive her.

Arms that gripped her before slip to her waist, hugging her from behind, the pressure gentle and almost reassuring. In other circumstances… But not now.

Rodney's arms are around her.

She can't help the shiver.

"Elizabeth," John says. "You're okay. C'mon. You're scaring Rodney."

He sounds so concerned, so gentle and decent, that she looks into his eyes again. His beautiful eyes that are always a little sad, even when he smiles – only they've gone cold as crystal. It's the AI she sees staring at her from behind John's eyes. She wants its hands off her. The quickest way is to lie.

She fakes a tremulous smile. "I'm okay."

Rodney's arms are still around her waist, his hands locked around her wrists. She feels him taking her pulse. Her heart is still racing. "Not sick to your stomach?" he asks.

"A little." No lie. Her stomach is clenched in a sick knot. She bites back a scream. How dare he touch her? "It's getting better."

"I'll get you some water," John offers, rising from the bed.

Elizabeth squirms free of Rodney's embrace. She sits just out of reach, curled with her arms around her knees. Does her best to regulate her breathing, knowing Rodney is there, watching, watching for anything off about her.

"They'll figure it out," the AI whispers in her ear. Elizabeth nearly jerks away, but makes herself hold still. No, they won't, she thinks fiercely. They can't imagine it. They can't do it, but I will.

The sick feeling behind her breastbone gets worse.

"You can't win," it taunts her. "They're mine."

"Here," John says, returning with a tall glass of water. He shares a worried glance with Rodney, Elizabeth catches it, watching from beneath her eyelashes. She accepts the glass and drinks.

"Better?" Rodney asks.

"Much," she lies.
~*~
Rodney finishes with the last stasis pod and closes the access panel beneath it with a satisfying thud. John gives him a hand up to his feet.

"Is that it?"

"You tell me, you're the one with the AI connected to your head," Rodney says. He's smiling, dusting his hands together, clearly pleased. John knows the answer will be that everything is functioning at optimal settings. He raises his eyebrows anyway and asks, Atenë? Run a check on the three stasis pods here, would you?
 
Her answer is nonverbal, as usual, a rush of numbers and test results. Everything checks out.

"She says everything is fine. It's all tied in. Should work no matter what happens, even while she's in hibernation mode. Good work."

"Of course, it's good work." Rodney's smile fades a little as he looks around the room they've converted into a secondary stasis chamber. The three pods are set equidistant from each other, allowing the occupants to see each other through the clear glass lids. Secondary stasis storage containers are set up to keep their gear and safeguard the memory crystals they've recorded. He looks at the memory crystals and his mouth droops on one side. "Something could still go wrong."

"Let's go find Elizabeth," John suggests, mostly to distract Rodney. He knows something could go wrong. They could lie down in those pods tomorrow and never wake up. Or come out of them thousands of years from now, aged and used up as the first Elizabeth was.

He knows that must be haunting Elizabeth.

She's been tense and irritable for weeks, questioning everything he and Rodney do one minute and wanting nothing to do with them the next. Even Rodney's triumph with the ZPMs didn't really lift her spirits. John isn't sure anymore what would. Maybe nothing.

She won't talk about it with him and Rodney has been too intent on his work to quiz her, if he has noticed the changes.

"Good idea," Rodney agrees.

~*~

John doesn't say 'I love you'. He hasn't since before Afghanistan and suspects he didn't mean it then. Whatever the hell he felt then certainly wasn't what he feels for Rodney and Elizabeth. It wasn't even a shadow. But it wasn't as desperate, either.

He says that he loves it when Rodney touches him, says he loves Rodney's thick arms and solid thighs and the weight of him in his mouth. He loves the curl of Elizabeth's dark hair around his fingers, the scent that clings to the back of her neck, the way her legs fit around his hips. He touches Rodney more than he ever touched anyone and, now, Elizabeth, too. He lets them see him, the dark parts and the insecurities and the intelligence he always felt more comfortable hiding. He lets them know he needs them.

He never let anyone that close before.

It was the sex that freaked him out in the beginning, but that was much easier to get used to than the emotions. That still makes him shake some nights. That makes him curl closer to Rodney and reach out for Elizabeth each time.

He skates his hand over Rodney's hip, meeting Elizabeth's, twining his fingers with hers in a mutual caress. Delicate, tiny hands compared to Rodney's, compared to his, softer than his, but not softer than Rodney's skin there at the point of his hip. He licks a languorous path up the inside of Rodney's thigh to his groin, tracing silent words, the words he doesn't say. Looks up and Rodney's eyes are dilated and intent. So damn blue. That look, the soft way Rodney's mouth shapes his name, makes him burn, makes pleasure coil tight and hungry in his belly. Then Elizabeth is kissing Rodney and John is going down on him, wants this, wants Rodney, always, just that easy.

Easy being a relative description, he acknowledges, his eyes watering, because he still hasn't quite got the knack of deep throating Rodney. Part of him is laughing at himself as he backs off enough to keep from gagging, still wanting the feel of Rodney's cock, weighty and hot in his mouth. John presses his tongue just there, at the head, tasting again, finding the place that makes Rodney groan each time, while stroking his fingers down behind Rodney's balls, and the sound Rodney makes then shivers through his body and into John's mouth and suddenly it is easy. He always forgets, but it's easy and he opens up and takes Rodney as deep as possible, moaning softly himself. He doesn't care if Elizabeth's there, doesn't care about anything but this, this simple, immediate connection. He could come from just this, his mouth and Rodney in it.

Rodney gasps and shoves his hips forward like John's doing a more than good enough job. His fingers snatch at John's hair convulsively, enough that it hurts, as he comes, but John doesn't really care. He's busy trying to swallow and not taste, because making Rodney come with his mouth is the biggest turn-on in his life, but he still doesn't like the taste.

But, somehow, spitting instead of swallowing after giving Rodney head in front of Elizabeth seems more embarrassing. Which makes no sense. She's seen Rodney fuck him. It turns her on.

"John, John," Rodney mutters. He pets John's head apologetically. John rests his face against the crease between Rodney's groin and thigh and inhales, Rodney's wet, softened cock next to his cheek. The rich smell of Rodney's musk fills his lungs and he unconsciously shifts his hips, rubbing his own erection against the bed. Rodney pulls himself up and away, leaving John face down on the bed until he rolls over.

Elizabeth is crouched next to him, sleek and naked and intent, but she isn't smiling. He misses her smiles, the way she let go when they were on Athos. The thrum of his pulse distracts him from questioning what's going on in her head. She reaches for John's erection and Rodney slurs, "I want to watch him fuck you."

John's fine with that, fine with Elizabeth straddling him, slowly lowering herself onto him, wet and so warm, fitting together tight and sweet. God, yes, he wants to move and move and finally come. He can still taste Rodney in his mouth and it goes straight to his penis, almost unbearably arousing. Elizabeth's smooth thighs are tight against his hips, Rodney's hand is on his chest, playing with his nipples, and he is gasping, moving, pushing himself up into her. His world has narrowed to this bed and the two bodies on it with him, Elizabeth encompassing him and Rodney bending to suck on his nipple, the sensation a white-hot spear through his nervous system.

He's barely aware of closing his eyes until Rodney lets go of his nipple and murmurs, "C'mon, say something, say anything," his voice so low and thick John knows he's probably half hard again.

That makes him moan, the sound slipping free. Elizabeth tightens on him and he pries his eyes open. She's looking at Rodney. John reaches up and strokes his thumb along her cheek bone. He can never decide what color her eyes are, gray or pale hazel. She looks at Rodney with such a mixture of emotions. John brushes her lips with his fingers, softly, thinking in some distant part of his brain that neither of them would be here, together, without Rodney between them. They circle each other like two moons, but Rodney is their primary, the gravity well they both orbit.

His thoughts are drawn back to the physical when Elizabeth bites one finger delicately.

"Jesus," he groans. Sensation spikes through him that he never wants to end. "Jesus, please."

Rodney grins at him, pleased, then turns and kisses Elizabeth, long and messy, making John curse softly.

His hands find their way to Elizabeth's waist, steadying her. She's moving above him, her back a perfect bow, her head back and her eyes closed. White teeth are sunk into her lower lip. Sweat glistens along the slopes of her breasts. He slips one hand between them, trying to help her reach her climax, but she bats it away. John tries to slow the rhythm down, but Elizabeth is in control, setting a harsh, fast pace, grinding down on him and Rodney catches his face between two big hands, turning John toward him, slipping one finger into John's mouth.

"Keep your eyes open," Rodney commands and John does, even as he cries out, conscious thought whiting out in the rush of his climax.
He's still panting when Elizabeth pulls away, but his eyes are open and he sees the tight set of her features and wants to curse.

"Damn it, you didn't – "

She rolls away from them both, presenting her back and the line of her vertebrae, sharp and white under the skin.

John levers himself up, sharing a concerned and bewildered glance with Rodney. Rodney's already touching Elizabeth's shoulder. "Elizabeth?"

"It's fine," she chokes out.

Nothing's fine. Through his post-orgasm blur, John feels about two inches tall. She's crying. He can hear it. He follows Rodney's lead and rubs his hand up and down her back, from nape to coccyx, feeling her muscles tense and ripple under goose-pebbled skin.

Rodney looks as upset as John feels. "Why didn't you say – or, okay, give us a second and we'll make it up to you."

"I can do it myself," Elizabeth snaps. Her arm moves as she slips her hand between her legs. Her shoulder jerks, flipping Rodney's hand off. John stills.

"But  – you don't have to."

"It has nothing to do with you, Rodney. You didn't do anything wrong."

"But I did," John says, feeling hollow. He lifts his hand away from her.

Elizabeth's arm quits moving, she tenses, and breathes out hard through her nose. Her skin flushes pink. Then she rolls onto her back, only to stare at the ceiling and not at John or Rodney.

"Ménage à trois is as adventurous as I can be," she says. "I don't want to be part of a quartet."

"What?" John asks at the same time Rodney says, "Huh?"

Elizabeth stares at the ceiling. "It's watching, isn't it?"

"It?"

John gets it, maybe because the connection is there in his mind. "Atenë?"

"Is that what's bothering you?" Rodney asks. "Elizabeth, there isn't any surveillance in the personal quarters."

She sits up and leaves the bed, slipping on a loose robe with her back to them. She turns back as she's belting it closed. Looking at John, she says, "It doesn't need surveillance cameras when it has your eyes."

"It's not like that."

Elizabeth smile is a little chilling. "How would you know?"

Atenë's not pruriently spying on his sex life. That would creep him out worse than finding out Elizabeth had brought his body off while his mind was deep in the database with Atenë calling up schematics and files. If anyone had a right to be weirded out, he thought he did, after that. That had been a very disturbing way to wake up, even if Rodney had been there, telling him a little of what had happened.

He keeps wanting to ask Rodney why he hadn't stopped Elizabeth or why she'd done that. He hasn't gone back into the chair since, because he hates the thought of his body being that out of control, that vulnerable. But he wants it, he keeps finding his way back to the chair-room. It makes him itchy and angry, leaves him with a pounding headache and the same feeling of something he is supposed to do, that he'd felt when they first arrived in Atlantis.

"I know," John lies. His lips feel numb, like he isn't even the one talking, the rush of information in his head wants to push him aside. It's too much like when Atenë needed him to get Elizabeth out of the memory core vault. He pushes back angrily. Stop it, he thinks. He's not a meat puppet. Atenë doesn't think like a human or want the things a human would want, she doesn't get that she doesn't belong here with them. The interface is always alive in his head, but he recognizes the torrent of data that accompanies Atenë's attention. It hasn't been there when he's in bed with Elizabeth and Rodney, though it's there now – because he thought of her, conjured her, because Elizabeth mentioned her. Atenë isn't controlling him. He consciously doesn't hug his arms around himself, doesn't let himself shiver at the thought that he could be wrong, that he might not know if he's being manipulated.

He adds, "You're the one who wanted this tonight."

For an instant she looks devastated, then the smooth control he's always admired is back, her emotions hidden. "Yes, I did. But it was a mistake, I'm sorry if either of you feel mistreated."

"We don't feel mistreated," Rodney says. "We want you to be happy and this – "

" – doesn't look like happy," John finishes for him.

Elizabeth softens for Rodney. She leans over him, resting her hands on his shoulders, and kisses him with sweet tenderness. "Of course, you do. And you do, you both make me happy." She draws back and smiles at John, but he's faked enough smiles himself to recognize the falsity in hers. "I'm just nervous about tomorrow." She tightens the robe's belt. "I don't want to end up like the first Weir. It feels like this is our last night."

"The stasis pods are perfectly reliable," Rodney says. "The only thing that could cause any problems would be a power diversion and we have extra ZPMs." He can't hide the delight and pride in that. Not that John blames him. Atlantis will never need to worry about power again.

"I'm going to take a shower," Elizabeth says.

And wash his touch off, John thinks, still in a dark mood.

"Okay," Rodney agrees. "But you'll come back? We're all sleeping together tonight, right?"

"Right."

"John?"

"Sure," John tells him. Maybe Rodney can sleep. He doesn't think Elizabeth will. He won't.

~*~

She walks into the bathroom carefully, her thighs burning. She's raw, hadn't really been ready for John when she had taken him in her.

There is tension in her stomach, coiled so tight that it almost hurts. Her body buzzes with the denied climax; she feels swollen, each step creating friction that just isn't enough, frustrating her even more.

Elizabeth takes off the robe and flings it at the wall in a sudden burst of anger. She's not sure whom it's directed at – John for not lasting, Rodney for pushing John over the edge or herself for initiating this tonight.

It hadn't only been about the physical act, she acknowledges and runs a tired hand over her face. She had wanted them both in her, to take a little bit of them with her when she goes into stasis for several thousand years tomorrow.

But John had gone ahead to get Rodney off before she had a chance to feel Rodney moving in her. That still makes her angry and it  made her ride John harder and sooner than she'd been ready for.

Yet it had been Rodney who had wanted to see John and her together and in this very last night, she couldn't and didn't want to deny him anything. And John had felt good, just like he always did, smooth and sleek and gorgeous in his unabashedness, and she had almost been ready to forgive him for denying her the feel of Rodney, but then… John had closed his eyes when she moved above him and the hot stab of jealousy had lanced through her – he'd been comparing her to the AI, talking to it in his head while he moved deep inside Elizabeth. She had almost left the room at that moment, the anger so strong she could taste it on her tongue.

Instead she had locked eyes with Rodney, kissing him, imagining him in her, using him to push away the disturbing thoughts that John was betraying them in his mind even as both she and Rodney occupied his body.

Remembering the broken look in John's eyes when she had voiced those thoughts hurts her now.

It was never supposed to be this way. They had been happy on Athos.

She steps into the shower and lets the water wash away the images in her mind, the ones of the AI standing next to the bed and watching them all, stimulating John with her mind and smiling nastily at Elizabeth as John comes and leaves her unsatisfied

She had wanted them both tonight, Rodney and John. She'd had John, but it hadn't been enough.

The tension in her groin is painful now. She hasn't had Rodney. And even John who never fails to make her come hadn't managed to…

She scrubs her hands over her face, forcing back the stinging behind her eyes.

Maybe John hadn't been busy imagining her as the AI. Maybe he'd been focused on Rodney exclusively. He watches Rodney. He's always watched Rodney, Elizabeth realizes, long before there was any sex between them. Trying to fit herself into that relationship was the most painful, perfect mistake of her life.

The bittersweet truth isn't that John and Rodney don't love her the way they do each other, but that Elizabeth has never let herself feel that much for anyone, ever, certainly not Simon, not John and not Rodney – though she does care so very much for them both – and she isn't sure she even can. She's never wanted to give that much of herself up, never wanted to chance the pain that would inevitably come with the love. When it comes to emotion, she's always been a pessimist. She's right, too: if she loved John the way Rodney does, watching him subtly draw away would be unbearable.

The water feels like fine needles against her breasts, teasing skin that's too receptive now. She can feel the AI mocking her with the water's touch. Punishing her. It didn't want her to come. Still doesn't.

Elizabeth clenches her teeth tight enough to give her a headache. She's not going to let the damn thing win. She's not going to go back into the bedroom and feel the lightest touch from Rodney or John eat her up inside, leave her wanting what they can no longer give her.

She gets to work ruthlessly, her hand reaching between her legs, pushing in without preparation, one finger, two, three. Slicker than water inside but after John she's too dry, too raw already.

It doesn't matter. Using her other hand to push the first harder, she rubs the heel of her hand against her clit, hair and skin creating almost painful friction. It's still not enough. Four fingers now, stretching her unbearably, even more than John did. She pants through clenched teeth, willing her body to give her release without feeling any pleasure.

It takes her too long, dances out of reach for too long, but she needs to prove something to the AI – that it's not controlling her. She, Elizabeth, decides what happens, not the AI. She's not John, she's not Rodney, she's still free of it.

Her fingers slip in and out of her, rubbing her clit  efficiently and mechanically, too forceful, too strong, she's sure that inside, she's drawing blood already and she knows that Rodney never would have treated her this way. Neither would John.

The thought of their tenderness on Athos brings tears to her eyes and the ghosts of their touches dance along her skin when she finally comes in a painful, much too short rush. It's not enough. It never can be. She slides her fingers out and watches the water wash flecks of blood away. Knees weak, she sinks down in the shower, feeling dirty and horrible, missing Rodney and John so much that she can't breathe for a few moments.

The water is softer now.

Elizabeth drops her forehead to her knees. She still can't cry.

~*~

He rolls over and leans his head into the crook of Rodney's neck, stretching his arm around the breadth of his chest, and sighs after Elizabeth leaves the bedroom. "This is fucked," he says matter-of-factly against Rodney's collarbone.

"She's scared." Rodney's hand rubs against the back of John's neck, working at the muscles that have tensed there, working up through John's hair and massaging his scalp. He bends his neck and pushes into the touch. Rodney chuckles. John nips the side of Rodney's throat, then sucks carefully at the soft skin. Rodney's body heat soaks into him where their skin is in contact. John molds himself tightly into Rodney's side, loving the contact almost as much as the sex.

"Jealous," he whispers.

"The amazing thing is I think you're serious," Rodney says lightly.

"Mmn, I am."

The closest John can come to the other words.

When Elizabeth comes back from her shower, she slides into the bed on Rodney's side. Rodney is already asleep and mumbles a little as he shifts to accommodate her presence in the bed again. John opens his eyes and watches, feeling strangely wary.

He's never known her, except for that moment on Dagan, when like recognized like. Didn't want to, he realizes, tracing his hand over Rodney's chest. And if he doesn't know her now, after the hell they've been through, after sleeping with her, he isn't going too. That train has left the station.

She doesn't look at him, not once. He's watching her profile against the dim, blue-tinted light they maintain in the bedroom. Without some form of light, everything in Atlantis is nightmare-black. She's staring at the ceiling and surprises him when her hand finds his resting on Rodney's chest. Her hand is cold and he massages it tenderly, trying to work some warmth back into her flesh. He thinks the room temperature higher.

"Don't worry about it, John," she whispers. "Sometimes I just don't. That's all. It's really nothing."

"It isn't," he drawls. "Don't shut us out. You don't have to do that." It's a futile effort. Maybe she does have to keep her distance. Maybe this is what he was afraid of from the beginning. All he and Rodney have done is hurt her. He knows she doesn't trust him any longer. He can't even tell her she's wrong, after the episode in the memory core vault.

"Go to sleep."

He doesn't though, not for hours, and he tells himself it's because the three of them will be sleeping for thousands of years beginning tomorrow. Rodney's breath gusts in his ear, but Elizabeth's breathing is still too fast for a sleeper. Like him, she lies silent in the dark. Neither of them offers to share their thoughts out loud. He doesn't let go of her hand, but it never warms, maybe because he's gone cold, too.

Atenë murmurs in the back of his mind, keeping him company.

~*~

"Anyone remember that prayer?" John asks.

Rodney looks askance. "Prayer? Since when do you pray?"

John shrugs. His hand is still on the cool, blue-tinged glass of the stasis pod. The light reflects up over his features, catching in his eyes, transforming him from warm flesh to something fey and pale and distant. He looks like a ghost himself. Elizabeth shivers and wraps her arms close.

"What prayer?" she hears herself ask. None of them is ready to lie down in their pods yet. They look too much like coffins, even for John, who retains the confidence in Ancient technology and Rodney that Elizabeth has lost.

John ducks his head and mumbles. "Now I lay me down to sleep."

"Oh, would you stop it?" Rodney snaps. He crosses to where John stands and begins a last diagnostic on the pod.

Elizabeth remembers the rest of the childhood prayer, but she doesn't recite it out loud. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take.

"Elizabeth, come over here," Rodney orders. She joins them reluctantly. Rodney points at the screen. "This is what everything should look like when the pods are operating. Green status light and a readout with a life-sign. If it looks any different hit the main control here. That starts the emergency revival protocol."

"We've been over this," John says. He's standing with his hand on Rodney's shoulder, obliviously close to him.

"Yes, yes, I know," Rodney replies testily, "but this is your life and Elizabeth's and mine, by the way, so excuse me if I want to take every precaution."

"Okay." John smiles and rests his chin on Rodney's shoulder. "Show us again."

Elizabeth forces a smile for both of them. John has been watching her all morning, questions in his eyes – or maybe it's the AI, she trusts nothing he does now to just be him – but she's managed to avoid answering. He's nervous enough himself to let her behavior go. It's almost lucky they're going into stasis now. A few more days and John or Rodney would insist on answers. She couldn't hide that she sees the AI now, that she hears its voice – hears what it's really saying, not the lies it uses with John and Rodney, but the spiteful, jealous, possessive things. Rodney caught her arguing with it days ago, but she lied, said she was talking to herself, and he accepted it. He would remember and realize the truth if this went on. And John is observant. He already suspects something is wrong.

He doesn't understand that what is wrong is the AI manipulating Rodney and him. She can never tell him. But it would be better if he had died before they let the AI use the auto-healer on him. They gave him over to that soulless machine, she and Rodney, but it was really Rodney's fault.

Like Doranda.

Elizabeth pays close attention as Rodney explains how the pods are programmed. It's important. They are separate from Atlantis' main systems, independent of its three ZPMs, running on a fourth. She will need to know this.

The AI is watching her again. She can feel it. She pretends not to notice. Instead she smiles again and touches Rodney's cheek. He looks at her, startled, then smiles in real pleasure. It breaks her heart. He should be dead. He should be dead for what he did.

All three of them should have died, she thinks.

"We're ready," Rodney declares.

"Speak for yourself," John snaps back, a mixture of annoyance, uneasiness and affection in his voice.

Elizabeth walks back to her pod and opens it. "Shall I go first then?"

"What? Oh, that would probably be best. I can do a last check that way. John, you should go ahead, too."

"I think I'll wait for you." John is just watching Rodney. Elizabeth knows without doubt that he won't close his pod until Rodney is doing the same.

Someone has to go first, though, so Elizabeth gets in her pod and reclines. Her heartbeat is fast, but she tries to look calm. Rodney looks unsure, his face soft with it, and beside him, John is concerned, his brows drawn slightly together. Finally, Rodney steps forward and bends to her. One hand braced against the pod lid, he kisses her fiercely, teeth scraping against her lip, tongue sweeping inside, little sounds of desire slipping from his mouth to hers.

His lips are red when he pulls away. "Okay. Let's do this."

"Not yet," John says, stepping past Rodney. His kiss is even longer than Rodney's, drawn out and sweet as dark honey, his lips warm and gentle on Elizabeth's, and she holds him closer with her hand on the back of his neck. His kiss is promise and apology and she wonders if he can taste her regrets, her decision, her sorrows like salt on his tongue. He smoothes her hair away from her cheek when it's done.

She lets her hand fall away from him.

"It will just seem like a few days," Rodney promises. "Just close your eyes and it will be over. No dreams. Just snap, snap, awake again and it's all over."

It won't be over until she does what must be done.

"All right," she says. She presses the control inside the pod that closes it.

"Goodnight, Elizabeth," John tells her.

It sounds like good-bye.

Elizabeth closes her eyes and whispers as the first breath of sleeping gas fills the pod.

"Now I lay me down to sleep…"

~*~

The lid of the stasis pod lifts and slides back, leaving Rodney blinking at the blurry, shadowed ceiling. "Whu – ?"

Dry-dust throat and limbs that feel slack and too heavy to move. Didn't he just lie down? Did something go wrong? Gradually, his eyesight clears. He pulls himself together and sits up. His muscles feel like water.

The other two pods are running, green lights reassuring him that Elizabeth and John are all right.
 
For another second, he wonders why he didn't go into stasis too, until he realizes he did. There were no dreams, no sense of time passing at all. A thousand years passed in an eye-blink. The chronometer readout he converted to Terran dating confirms that: It's 6032.

He coughs uneasily.

He sits on the edge of the pod's platform and tries to let that soak in. A thousand years. It doesn't seem real. The lab they set up the pods in doesn't look any different. Atlantis is sealed and there are no drifts of dust to mark the decay of time. The air still smells of salt, a result of the osmotic transfer of oxygen from the ocean through the shield.

It's the work of a few hours to check Atlantis's sleeping systems and rotate the ZPMs. He runs his hands over the three spares, resting in a row next to the power room control console. His. His redemption – oh, it's a ridiculous conceit, he knows that, but he cherishes it anyway.

He takes longer double-checking the status of the two stasis pods holding John and Elizabeth. They look peaceful. He spends an hour just looking at them, wishing they'd agreed to wake in pairs rather than in solitary. The pods are functioning perfectly. The ZPM he dedicated to them guarantees unlimited power without fluctuation. In a thousand years, they've only aged a day.

He feels oddly bereft and it's more than just the lack of John and Elizabeth's company. Atenë is sleeping, too, powered down to rest through the long silent waiting. The city feels empty without the AI's watchful presence.

The ghosts have gone, too. When he wanders to the control room, it's just a hollow room. No one haunts the consoles or stands at ghostly guard by the gate room doors. They've all gone.

It feels almost painful. They were only products of his own guilt, but their disappearance seems strangely like losing them all once again.

He isn't ready to go back into the stasis pod. Once the lid closes over his face, he'll be out for another three thousand years, while Elizabeth and John each wake in sequence. If they wake. If he wakes. It's somehow more frightening now than it was when the three of them settled into the pods to begin with. They were still together then. Now he's utterly alone. The temptation to wake John and Elizabeth, despite their agreement, is nearly overwhelming. It's only his pride that holds him back. Nothing is wrong and he doesn't want to look weak and afraid in front of them.

Even if he is afraid.

He checks the pods once, then gives in to paranoia, to the sense of doom that still plagues him, and programs in a new failsafe protocol. If one of the pods fails, it will initiate an emergency revival of whichever of them is scheduled to wake next. When he can think of nothing else to do, he finally sinks down into the waiting pod.

Sleep comes with the cold hiss of gas filling the pod.

All is silence.

~*~

She wakes as scheduled, in the year 2032, and rotates the three ZPMs exactly as Rodney had told her to do, exactly, she imagines, as that other timeline's Elizabeth had done. The three extra ZPMs sit in a row, faintly glowing, jewel-like and extraordinary. She runs her fingers over them. They feel like cool, soapy glass and seem to hum with power. What a difference they would make for Atlantis in the future.

And the cost of them was only a universe. Richard the III should have had such a lament. A kingdom for a horse, a universe for a zero point module. Though that isn't it, is it, Elizabeth thinks, suddenly confused. Rodney had wanted Arcturus, a power source, he'd wanted Nobels and accolades. John had wanted a weapon to use against the Wraith, of course. Neither of them had cared what chances they took. They'd believed they could out-think the Ancients. So had Caldwell. She'd let herself be swept along in an attempt to maintain civilian control.

What happened was their fault. Her fault and John's and Rodney's. Her fault to fix.

They could very well do it again. Rodney could decide he knew what had gone wrong with his calculations during the test, he could tell someone the gate coordinates for Doranda. She didn't go with them; she can't be sure that they really destroyed the Arcturus installation. John and Rodney can't be trusted; they're compromised, by the future, the past, their importance to each other and by the AI.

Atenë.

"They lied to you," she hears. The voice startles her, especially when she realizes it is her own.
>
But she does believe they destroyed it. The threat she fears now is Atenë.

Elizabeth wraps her arms around herself, shivering in the dimly lit room with the ZPMs. She should do it now. She knows the way, knows what she has to do. She should, but she's afraid of what will happen the next time John wakes. She'll wait. She'll wait until the next time they wake will be to the arrival of the expedition. Then she won't have to face either of them alone.

She rocks from side to side, feeling sick. Rodney's screams ricochet through her memory, all the things he said in the grip of his nightmares. Oh God. Oh God. I wish I'd died. I wish I was dead. She imagines John screaming. She doesn't know what it will do to him. She'll wait, so that there is a doctor – Carson – there to help him when he wakes.

The city feels different. The AI is asleep, she realizes. Its eyes, that are everywhere, are finally closed, because John and Rodney are in stasis. It's not the AI talking that she's been hearing. No, Elizabeth knows that. It's her.

She stares at their two pods and the empty one for a long time, in the still silence of the sunken city. In the emptiness, she hears something, something distant, a white noise roar, voices screaming.

~*~

John shivers through his second turn awake, cold and lonelier than he's ever been. The white expanses of Antarctica were never as empty as his voiceless city. The temptation to wake Rodney and Elizabeth nearly overwhelms him. There is no one to touch him, no one to remind him that he isn't a ghost. He never let himself need anyone before Rodney and then Elizabeth. He promises himself that the next time he wakes, he'll revive them both. They can wake Atenë and bring the city to life before the expedition arrives from Earth.

He rests his hand on Elizabeth's pod. She's frowning. "Next time," he promises out loud. It's only been three days of waking, but he can feel the time that has passed. Something in him knows it, though the stasis pods have worked perfectly and he can find no sign of age in his body.

He knows that asleep or not, he has existed through all the long, long years.

The pod under his hand is chilled and he longs for the comfort of someone to hold. He misses Atenë's presence in his mind, too, but it isn't the same.

"Soon."

He touches Rodney's pod lightly, smiling, because Rodney would laugh at him for being so sentimental. Soft-headed and needy.

"Almost there, Rodney," he says.

Rodney has a smug little smile on his face, even in his sleep. It makes John grin. He gives the pod a light flick with his fingers, the way he'd cuff Rodney's shoulder, and nods.

"See you soon."

~*~

Elizabeth wakes to the realization that it's time. This is her last chance to do something about Atenë, while she's still in hibernation. While Elizabeth is the only one awake and alive in Atlantis. The three of them survived for a purpose, John to wake the AI, Rodney to recreate the ZPMs, and her to finish it. 

She climbs out of the pod and hesitates, catching her balance, shivering, before going to the niche holding John's pack. Takes his gun from it and thumbs off the safety. She heads for the memory core vault. John showed her how to use a gun, even though she already knew. No one in the SGC didn't. She had refused to carry a gun out of principles not ignorance. He would be horrified at what she means to do with this gun now. His gun.

She's going to kill her cheating lover's mistress with his own gun. She imagines the AI screaming and begging. That's what John and Rodney will think. It isn't that. She's eliminating a threat to the expedition, specifically to all the ATA gene carriers, the ones who would be sucked into the interface, addicted to using the control chair, added onto – modified – the way John has been. She isn't going to see the expedition split down the middle, those without the gene becoming cripples in comparison.

It has to be done. That's all.

"I have to," she says out loud.

She makes her way across the city, moving through dark corridors and up stairways, along catwalks she memorized in her wanderings. She doesn't need the lights that would come to life for John. The city didn't respond to her before, either.

The vault holding the memory core doesn't require the ATA gene to open. There are no locks. The Ancients didn't want their AI to be able to lock itself away from them. The Ancients must have felt some of the same fears Elizabeth does. Why not trust Atenë, otherwise?

She palms the door sensor and stands before the door, waiting as it slides open. Sweat slicks the butt of the pistol in her hand. She bites the inside of her lip and steps inside the vault.

The banks of crystals glimmer blue-white. She raises the pistol and empties the clip into them. The sound of each bullet hitting, the shattering, ringing rain of crystal, hurts her ears. Flying pieces of it pepper her hands and face, cutting her open. She ignores the sting.

The empty cartridges clatter to the floor, shiny brass-jacketed cylinders amid white, powdered-crystal dust.

Silence follows.

God, she's done it. The shield still holds above the city. Her teeth want to chatter, she's that cold from the shock of finally having done it.

No more Atenë. She doesn't know what this will do to John, but Rodney will be there for him.

Elizabeth walks away, still clutching the pistol.

The rest of it is easy, too. So easy. That's the worst part of it. She knew she was going to do this when Rodney explained how to maintain the stasis pods, how to rotate the ZPMs, because everything Rodney did is tainted. The ZPMs need to go, they changed the timeline too much. She gates them into empty space in orbit around MB3478, a planet that still seethed with volcanic activity when the Atlantis teams took a jumper through its gate millennia from now. The ZPMs will eventually fall through its sulfuric atmosphere and either melt in its magma seas or release their pent up energy in an explosion that will destroy the entire planet.

She feels a stab of guilt at that, but what is one planet compared to a universe?

"Please, forgive me."

Elizabeth isn't sure whether she means the dead or the living, Rodney and John, or the expedition that will come to a powerless, helpless city once again. In the end, she's only talking to herself.

From the gate room, she hurries back to the lab with their stasis pods. 

She's going through the checklist on her own pod, watching the lights flash from red to amber to green, when something in the corner of her eye makes her head jerk up. She snaps around and stares at Rodney's pod. At the brilliant red lights denoting its status. Everything around seems to ripple, until she remembers to breathe again. Her hands still rest on the console next to her pod. She's pressing down so hard her fingers have gone numb.

It's a physical effort to force herself to cross to room to red-lit pod. She uses the lessons Rodney gave them to call up a status readout.

"Oh," she whispers, converting the Ancient text into English automatically. "Oh God."

Oh God. This was what Rodney felt like when everything was spiraling out of control on Doranda. This empty horror that settles like poison through her system.

Little, bright-red lights.

Stasis field failed, sleeping gas still in effect, no oxygen, just the build up of carbon dioxide from Rodney's own exhalations.

Blood runs down her chin from the lip she's biting. It drops with a soundless splat against the lid of the stasis pod and runs down the curving glass. Inside, Rodney looks at peace, his eyes still closed, his lips turned up in a small, pleased-with-himself smile. His skin is flushed pink.

Atenë was tied directly to the stasis pod programming. She doesn't know what most of the readout means, but that much she can figure out just from the timestamps in the pod's log. The stasis field failed catastrophically a little more than an hour ago, while Elizabeth was gating out the ZPMs.

Rodney died while she was destroying his work. While John slept.

She whimpers.

The status light on her empty stasis pod is still green, but John's flickers amber, faster and faster, and Rodney's is still red.

She should be screaming. She wants to. She can hear it in her head, rising and rising. Her throat's too tight. She can barely speak through the ache.

"I'm sorry, Rodney." She presses her left hand against the cold glass. An alarm klaxons loudly and she turns, calmly, aiming John's gun at the main terminal. One shot, and the alarm dies with a hiss. Red light flickers across Rodney's face. 

She thinks it warms him, like the soft glow of a fire, caressing his still form. The life-signs-detector on the outside of the pod is dark and then everything is silent around her.

Elizabeth sinks to her knees in front of the pod, leaning her forehead against it. The pistol falls to the floor, unnoticed.

"You have to understand," she whispers, breath fogging up the glass. "It had to be done. I never meant for this to happen. Of anyone, you must understand that."

The scream in her head is gone. All gone, leaving emptiness behind, blissful peace that seems appreciative of this sacrifice. He didn't suffer.

In the hollow the screaming filled, she can think again.
 
Tears well up, scalding her eyes and rolling down her cheeks in a hot rush. It was the right thing to do. It was. There was no other option. But she never guessed this would the consequence.

And John, oh John…

She's killed them. Killed Rodney. Killed John too… The lights on his pod are already amber, flickering wildly. The alarm would be ringing through the room if she hadn't shot it. There is no blood, but Elizabeth can feel it on her hands, staining them crimson. She puts her fingers to her mouth, wanting to feel it, the last connection, the very last way of being close to them, of taking them into her.

But there is nothing. She presses her lips to the glass, instead, tries to remember the feel and taste of Rodney's lips.

No, Rodney's just asleep. See, his eyes are closed. He'll wake up and fix things soon. Look how flushed he is, like he has a fever. He'll fix her. She had to stop the future the AI would have shaped. She had to protect everyone. She was in charge. That was her job.

John will be angry, she knows, but Rodney will understand. She heard him all those nights. She only did what had to be done. Carbon monoxide is kind compared to the deaths they cheated.

She's crying, heaving, ugly, painful sobs that she can't stop. Her face feels twisted, her body not like her own. Not everything is done. She's still here. She finds John's gun on the floor and picks it up. It's cool against her palm. She curls her fingers around it, clutching its comfort.

She could use it. She should use it. She looks at the amber lights on John's pod and feels too paralyzed to do anything.

"I'm so sorry, John."

She crawls back to her pod and reaches up, pulling herself up and into it, throwing the gun with her. She'll need it if she wakes.

Her eyes slide back to their bodies in the pods.

"We never should have survived."

When the gas floods the chamber, it doesn't taste of poison, but it's there. Merciful sleep beckons.

She doesn't feel death when it claims her.

~*~

Sleep doesn't want him to open his eyes. He almost sinks back into quicksand darkness. It is heavy and quiet; it wants to pull him down.

Red shows through his eyelids. It won't let him let go. There's something about red. Something…

John jolts awake, fumbling for the release that opens his pod. He is choking, gasping, the air in the pod too thin, poisoned with his own exhalations, and his fingers feel thick, slow, and numb. The emergency release feels stiff. He pushes his hand against the pad, thinking through a growing haze, Open, out, let me out, let me – and it does, the lid sliding back.

He rolls onto his side and sucks in clean air, feeling his head clear. The red emergency light is still glaring against the back of his eyelids.

"Jesus," he gasps and claws at the edge of the pod, drawing himself up, looking around the room. Everything is familiar after waking twice before to check the city's status and rotate the ZPMs; familiar enough that he can see something is wrong immediately. It's hard to think. Coming out of stasis isn't easy, his knees are weak for hours each time, but his head never pounded like this before.

He's staring at Rodney's stasis pod when it hits him: the life-sign read-out is dark.

"No, no, no," he whispers. It takes two tries to coordinate himself enough to crawl out of the pod. He ends up on the floor, slicing his hand open on the shards of something. He leaves streaks of blood behind him when he pushes himself to his feet and lurches over to Rodney's pod. His head is taking forever to clear, it's pounding unmercifully, like his brain is contracting and expanding against the inside of his skull. All he can see is the dark read-out and the solid red status light above it.

He thinks there should be an alarm sounding, but all he can hear is his own breathing, his own heartbeat, and broken pieces of a shattered light column scraping under his hands and knees.

He braces himself against the lid when he reaches the pod. It's still running, the stasis field is operating, but the body inside no longer registers as alive. John stares at the read-out, trying to make sense of it. With trembling, clumsy fingers, he calls up the command log, reading the transcript of a program crash that interrupted the stasis field for almost two hours.

He has to turn to the side and vomit whatever bile is left in his stomach.

It has to be a mistake, or a lie.

When there's nothing left, he just holds on to the edge of the pod and shakes. The lid is slick and cold and his hand slips over it, curling into a fist he beats against the unforgiving glass over and over, until the skin covering his knuckles tears and bones crack and he's leaving smears of crimson behind with each blow. Sharp white pain runs up John's arm, but he doesn't stop until he runs out of the strength to lift his arm.

Rodney isn't going to take him to the infirmary this time.

He won't let himself look at Elizabeth's pod yet. He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the pod. How could this happen, how could Rodney be gone and never coming back?

Dully, with little hope, John reaches for Atenë through the interface with his mind.

For the first time there's no answer. There's hollow space in his head, an echo instead of her voice. The space around him feels deadened. The city is an empty shell without her presence. There's a hole inside of him that's stealing his voice, expanding with each breath, and her absence just gnaws away another piece of him.

"Please," John says in the silence. "Please." He doesn't know who he's appealing to. He wipes at his mouth, rubbing the sour saliva away, the taste of bile still sharp and raw.

Atenë is gone. Rodney – he squeezes his broken hand into a fist again and gasps with the pain – Rodney is gone. Gone. He doesn't want to, but he has to look at the other pod in the room.

The status light on Elizabeth's pod is fading into amber from green. John draws in a harsh breath, letting out a soft keening sound when he exhales. He doesn't know what he wants. He should get her out, but he's already realized what must have happened. Rodney's pod failed because Atenë is gone. Elizabeth was out of stasis. It isn't hard to put it together. Rodney is a collateral casualty. Thinking about that is unbearable. He tries to push it aside and decide what to do next, but can't quite. The life-sign detector still registers her. He pushes himself away from Rodney's pod – from Rodney – and staggers to Elizabeth's pod. He lets himself look, because she's there, there inside, she's still alive. He doesn't know what that means now or what he will do.

Her hair is tangled, he sees. Tears still glisten, caught and preserved for as long as stasis lasts, on her face.

His hands go to the control that will wake her ahead of schedule, get her out of the malfunctioning pod, but he stops, staring down through the glass.

She's curled on her side, the heel of one hand pressed to her lips, and there, just beneath her other hand, half hidden in her hair, he sees the gleam of dark metal. He knows those straight lines, those angles, from a thousand nights spent cleaning and oiling it. John lifts his head and sees the contents of his pack, left in his own stasis container the last time he went back into hibernation, strewn across the floor. That's his pistol in the stasis pod with Elizabeth. He knows it, knows the spot along the side of the barrel where his holster rubbed the dark, non-reflective finish away to bare metal.

His pistol.

The light column was shot out with his pistol. Another look around the room shows him bullet scars and a darkened console, where the alarm was shot out, too.

Feeling dull and stupid, he turns back to Elizabeth's pod and activates the command log. Last authorization, last command given by Elizabeth, less than a day ago. The same problem is affecting her pod that killed Rodney's, only slower: no oxygen is coming in. Only in this pod, with the stasis left on, the carbon dioxide is infiltrating Elizabeth's system slowly. It will take months, maybe even years to ultimately smother her. She'll never know, never wake up, never suffer.

John pulls himself upright and catalogues what he sees: Rodney's stasis pod, active, Rodney, dead; Elizabeth's stasis pod, active, Elizabeth, alive, slowly dying inside; alarm, deactivated; lights, damaged; Atenë, gone. Himself, awake, but barely functional. Why is he awake? He wasn't scheduled to come out of stasis again until the expedition arrived and activated the city, raising it to the surface, or a thousand years passed after Elizabeth's rotation.

He checks the date. It's a thousand years too soon for him. This is Elizabeth's rotation. A day ago she came out of stasis on schedule. He can't – doesn't want to – believe it.

John forces himself back to his own pod and checks it. Small wonder he barely woke up. His pod was filling with carbon dioxide, too. A back-up failsafe linked to Rodney and Elizabeth's pods made the pod wake him ahead of schedule. When Rodney's life-signs failed, John's pod began bringing him around. If Rodney hadn't died fast, John would have died slow, too.

He slams his hand down on it, almost passing out from the pain, hanging against the pod until the physical agony passes, and by then the anger that might sustain him has drained away. He lifts his head and tries to think through what could have happened. He hates Elizabeth for not making sure he died too, for letting him wake up, for not making it a clean kill at least.

Why? he wants to yell. Why? Why did he have to wake to this? Did she want him to suffer this?

He can't look at Rodney's stasis pod. He can't. He can't let himself feel this yet.

Everything reminds him. Even the wall in front of him. It is patterned with angular decorations the Ancients favored. The metal is a shade between gray and bronze, the markings more like red ochre. Those markings all meant something to the Ancients. They were intended to lend each room its proper balance, to enhance the mental well-being of those within. That didn't work. Atenë could have told him what each decoration symbolized. Atenë is dead, too. John concentrates on breathing, filling his lungs with air that isn't tainted, and stares blindly. There is no balance, no balance at all, and the walls are just walls with meaningless marks.

Rodney will never grumble and pull John back into bed because it's too early for anything but sleep or sex. He won't rub his thumb against the inside of John's wrist or steal the last fried cake from John's plate and share it with Elizabeth or finish his Grand Unified Theory or get drunk on Veneti wine and tell stories about the outrageous liberties Sam Carter took with gate protocols.

Thoughts beat inside him, beat like wings, breaking themselves against the glass wall he's made around them. Elizabeth, Atenë, Rodney. Atenë, Rodney, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, Atenë, Rodney. Rodney, Atenë. Rodney. Rodney.

Breathing hurts. His hand hurts, curled into a fist. The wall blurs and he remembers to blink, his eyes dry and burning, his throat closed tight and aching. There's blood running down his chin from his lip. His teeth are still biting down on it, still biting back a howl of fury and despair.

Another shuddering breath and he pushes away from the pod. He walks out of the room. He can't help himself, at the door, he looks back. He knows better, but he looks back, and his heart turns to salt. If he doesn't look at the pod's status display, then Rodney could be sleeping, still be waiting to wake up. He won't see those eyes open again.

The door shuts, blocking John's vision. He forces himself to move again. His legs are steadier now, but he braces himself against the wall sometimes, leaving more smears of blood.

The city still responds to his gene, automated sensors processing his presence and lighting his way, but it's sluggish compared to Atenë's responses. It's rote, a zombie shambling and fumbling at things that once meant something to its dead brain. John's head throbs, the pain mixing with the hollowness. Maybe it's him; he can barely remember why he's still moving.

The command chair is in one piece. John leans against the door jamb, staring, but there's no pull to sit down in it. There's nothing left there but a tool for controlling the city's active weapons systems. He turns away and keeps walking, not looking back this time.

A transporter takes him to a stubby tower halfway across the city. He knows what he'll find before he steps out into a single room once filled from floor to ceiling with columns of crystal matrix: shattered pieces of Atenë's mind. Dulled, broken pieces, soapy white particles finer than sand, blue-tinged chunks bigger than his head, raw scars on the walls, and scattered on the floor, copper jacketed, empty cartridges from his own weapon. His boot scuffs against an empty clip dropped on the floor and left.

John backs into the wall and slides down it. Particles of crystal puff up into the air, disturbed by his movements, and drift down, pale and glittering, onto his boots and his pant legs. He rubs his good hand over them and they slice through his skin like ground glass. When he wipes his hand against his shirt, it just drives the crystal dust in deeper.

He's completely alone in his head again.

He stays there. He stays there until his muscles are stiff and protest. The cold seeps into him. The blood on his good hand is dried, flaking away when he flexes his fingers. Little pieces of him raining down to join the pieces of Atenë. His other hand is swollen, broken wreckage. He could go to the infirmary. He isn't going to.

She did a thorough job, Elizabeth, he thinks. If he knew why, he might guess what else she's done. The city hasn't flooded, so the shield's still operating. Maybe she sabotaged the stargate or the jumpers. Maybe she didn't bother, because without Rodney and him, no one's going anywhere.

He doesn't understand why.

He checks the power room next and finds himself staring again. The three ZPMs that maintain the city and the shield are still there; all but one, the one they retrieved from Dagan, faded to low power yellow. But the others, the cache of new ZPMs Rodney built, are gone.

"Got to give you credit," he says out loud, "you were thorough."  His own voice startles him, raw as though he's been screaming.

There's no use to wondering what she did with the ZPMs, vented them to the sea bottom, gated them into vacuum or something he can't even imagine. They're gone, too. All of Rodney's work, all the hope they thought they'd found to leave for the expedition, is gone. Like she killed Rodney twice. Killed what they all made together, killed what John felt for her, too.

John has never been so tired.

It was all useless. Everything they tried to do. What a fucking joke. Time has some terrible inertia, dragging itself back onto the same course, no matter how they have tried to divert it. This timeline will destroy itself, too. There will be some other Ancient superweapon, some different enemy, it will all come to nothing in the end. They're all dust.

There's no redemption.

He doesn't bother with the gate room.

Like the compass needle returning to the north, he turns his steps back to the stasis chamber. He cleans up the mess Elizabeth left behind. He shoves everything from his pack back in except the gun. That's in Elizabeth's pod with her. He doesn't touch that. As he's setting the pack in the storage niche, his hand brushes the memory recorder.

He stares at the innocuous little device, then picks it up with shaking fingers. It's untouched and lights under his touch. There in the case with it are three finger-length crystals, one for Elizabeth, one for John and one for Rodney. For Rodney.

John runs his finger up and down that crystal.

"Just so someone will know," he says out loud.

He works swiftly, despite being restricted to one hand. Last time Rodney was with him as he did this, but he remembers the steps. He slips the crystal that holds his memories back into the recorder, holds it up to his face and thinks, Copy.  It comes to life, wrapping around his face, blinding him. His entire existence snaps through him in a rush. He relives his life, breath by breath, heartbeat after heartbeat, every thought, every event, every emotion and sensation he ever experienced pouring from him into the crystal.

His first solo flight, his first time, the blue ripple of the stargate, Rodney's mouth and arms and back, the white expanse of Antarctica, the red stone gorges of Afghanistan, Bosnia, heat rippling across the landing strips at Beale, the planes shimmering in the mirage effect, the yellow enamel of the refrigerator door in that little house outside Lackland, the thrill of coming home he felt the first time he set foot in Atlantis, Teyla's slow smile, the moment when he made the decision to shoot Sumner, the last time he touched Rodney.

Everything goes white.

He wakes hours later, aching and cold, on the floor. When he brushes his bad hand against the floor, he cries out despite himself.

When he can move again, he stores the crystals with the player that will download the contents into someone else's brain.

He thinks about reprogramming Elizabeth's pod. Rodney could do it. Rodney would do it. Rodney was never a killer. John was and is. He presses his eyes closed. He never thought Elizabeth was.

How could she do it? She loved Rodney. She loved them both. How could it end like this?

He remembers loving her.

He can't do it. He can't open the pod and ask her why. He can't face that.

Even thinking of Elizabeth isn't enough to keep the rest of what's lost at bay any longer. He can't stop it. He can't bury it or deny it. He can't smother it any longer because he has to keep going – there's nothing left to do.

The grief that he's kept on the other side of his own shield, is too close now, too strong. It breaks through him again, rushes in like dark, icy water, drowning him. John curls himself next to Rodney's stasis pod and lets the pain finally drag him under.

"Rodney," he gasps. "Rodney."

All the time in the world and they still ran out.

When he can move again, he forces himself to finish a last task, reprogramming his pod, but he knows he's being careless. It may work or it may not. There's no one to tell if he's made a mistake.

He leaves Elizabeth's pod alone. It's like watching himself through the wrong end of a telescope.

When he's finished, John finally lets himself look into Rodney's pod.

All the hurt floods back. He thinks there was a way once, a path they could have taken that wouldn't have led to here. But there's no way home now.

He presses his entire body against the stasis pod, arms spread wide, trying to see through the semi-opaque lid. He can't make out more than a shadow in the pod and can't bring himself to open it. He is dry-eyed. Beyond Rodney's pod, the lights on Elizabeth's flicker orange, then red. John turns his face away, pressing his cheek against the cold material of Rodney's pod. The pod is still chilled, will stay icy and inert as long as it still has power, and it leaches John's warmth away. His pod still stands open. The lights playing across it remind him of fire.

The lights on Elizabeth's pod stop flickering and stay red. Like the telltales on Rodney's pod.

All he can hear are his own hitching breaths.

Atlantis is silent. Cored-out, the way John is.

"You were all I could see," he says softly. He knows that there is no one left to hear. No one to answer him if he confides all his secrets or makes promises he's already broken. He can't say it, though, even now. He hopes Rodney knew anyway. "All I could see."

He pushes away from Rodney's pod with a last caress, gliding his fingers over the glass in good-bye. The updated memory recording is waiting for whoever finds them. John thinks about erasing it, but he doesn't. He can't destroy Rodney's and he wants whoever finds these to know the things he never said to anyone. Especially the things he wanted to tell Rodney.

His body feels too heavy, worn and strangely distant. All he wants now is to sleep. His mind is filled with echoes and hollows, empty spaces where the link with Atenë existed.

He lets himself settle back in the pod. The lid closes over his face automatically. A hiss fills the pod: sleeping gas and oxygen, unless his reprogramming didn't take. He doesn't know what will happen when the stasis field engages. The gas smells like ice-blue and high notes. It won't let him dream.

John breathes deeply.




Cheyenne Mountain, Earth
Milky Way Galaxy
2003

"Can I have everyone's attention, please. All right, here we go."¹

Sheppard resisted the urge to roll his eyes as Weir gave her little speech. Maybe the scientists needed the 'buck up, it'll be an adventure' pep talk, but he'd been with the SGC for two years, one of them leading his own team through the stargate, and as far as he could tell every trip through it was potentially a one-way ticket. Atlantis was just another step through the wormhole as far he was concerned.

Weir caught his eye and he smirked. "We need everyone who has the gene, Major. We need you on this mission."  Everyone had been falling over themselves to convince him to go along since O'Neill had pointed him at that chair in Antarctica and said, "Take a load off, Sheppard, what're the odds – ?" Except even long shots come home some days and Sheppard had lit up the Ancients' chair the instant he sat down. Turned out Ancient technology liked him even better than the General. That didn't mean he'd been in a hurry to sign on for a mission that would have him serving under a Marine colonel, answering to a politician, and forced to work beside McKay. Weir had been all over him, trying to convince him, and O'Neill had been pissed off and impatient. He'd said yes in the end to preserve the illusion of choice, but he'd known damn well he had none.

"I'd like to offer you all one last chance to withdraw your participation."

Sheppard sneered then cocked his head, listening for the irritating whine of the one person he wished would back out. Nothing. Damn it. The thought of being stuck in another galaxy with Rodney McKay was almost enough to make him back out. Would have been, except he couldn't. Weir had pulled enough strings in Washington that Sheppard was going whether it was on his own or in shackles. He'd been really hoping that McKay would find some excuse to weasel out. So much for her generous offer.

A muscle in his jaw ticked as he thought of McKay. SG-1 had lost a man because of McKay or so he'd heard. He'd never met Teal'c, the man had died in a stargate malfunction – that could have been repaired but for McKay – and that didn't sit right with Sheppard. After that, they sent McKay to Siberia, but somehow McKay got in with Weir and was now on board as the Atlantis expedition's chief scientist. It was too much like Afghanistan for Sheppard: him pulling up the Blackhawk and turning back on orders, leaving men behind because it was the tactically sound decision. He'd come so close to decking his colonel at the debrief afterward and if he had that would have been the end of his career. Now he wished he had, or better yet, said fuck it and gone after those men. Maybe he could have saved them. As it was, he'd never know. Instead, he'd been transferred to the SGC.

Maybe the root of his dislike of McKay did lie with his own sore spots, but no one would argue that McKay wasn't arrogant, loud and utterly obnoxious.

Sheppard schooled his face to a polite mask when Weir looked a little startled, catching his eyes. With a sigh, he folded his arms over the butt of his P90 and pretended to listen. His eyes lifted to the gate. He always felt something when he stood in front of it, had from the first time he'd seen it. A sense of recognition that had returned even more strongly in Antarctica.

Col. Sumner glared at him from ice-water eyes under the shadow of his cap brim. Sheppard raised his eyebrows. As much as he didn't want to be on an expedition with McKay, Sumner didn't want Sheppard himself along. Well, he did have a reputation for insubordination. Good thing he wouldn't actually answer to Sumner. He was assigned to the expedition as a consultant because of his ATA gene and not technically part of the military contingent. Weir had overruled Sumner to get that much, which had to rankle with the Marine, but Sheppard was happy about it. Bad enough to be railroaded into this without the added weight of being responsible for anyone else. He didn't want to be in the chain of command.

Weir finished up her little speech and the dialing klaxons began. Sheppard began checking his gear out of habit, despite having done it earlier. Sumner's raspy voice didn't really startle him, he had known the Colonel was there, but he did pause.

"Let me make myself clear, Major. You are not here by my choice."

Sheppard rolled his eyes ceilingward. It probably wouldn't help to point out he wasn't there by his choice, either.

"I'm sure you'll warm up to me, once you get to know me, Sir."

"As long as you remember who is giving the orders," Sumner rasped out and bypassed Sheppard to rejoin his Marines.

Sheppard couldn't help himself. He really couldn't, even knowing that winding up a superior officer, even one in another service, was incredibly stupid. "That would be Dr. Weir, right?"

He wasn't sure what he thought of Weir, with the way she'd made sure he was coming whether he wanted to or not, but he had enjoyed the way she had effortlessly put Sumner in his place every time he'd seen them together.

Sumner turned around and glared at him.

Sheppard smirked.

Fantastic start, he told himself.

The wormhole splashed into existence with a jolt, blue light rippling off the event horizon and over everyone's faces. Over the intercom, General O'Neill announced:

"Expedition team, you have a go."


Atlantis
Pegasus Galaxy
2004 

"You cannot let him go wandering around lighting everything up," McKay snapped, pointing rudely at Sheppard.

Sheppard widened his eyes and made a 'who me?' gesture toward himself. A muscle ticked along Sumner's jaw and Weir already looked tired. Atlantis was everything they could have dreamed and nightmare both. The city was intact, but empty and sunk beneath the ocean, protected under a shield that was eating the last power of the last ZPM, and they had no way home.

McKay had panicked for about minute when they'd realized the situation, then pulled himself together and started shouting orders right and left. Finding a hologram message warning them that the Ancients had bugged out after losing a war hadn't made anyone any happier, either.

They were gathered in what seemed to be a conference room just off the control room for the Atlantis stargate. A bank of doors had opened for Sheppard when they approached, revealing the high-ceilinged room with its table and chairs. The columns of wall lights had lit just enough to let them all see each other, but much of the room remained in shadow. They were all hyper-aware of the green-black water suspended above the dome of the city's shield.

"This city is operating on the final fractions of power in the third ZPM, maintaining life support and the shield that keeps the ocean from drowning us all," McKay went on. His hands flew as he pointed at various arcane symbols on the screen of his laptop. "Everything we turn on is using power. Once we get the naquadah generators hooked up, the situation will improve but not if some people go around turning things on."

"Major," Sumner said.

Sheppard shrugged. "I haven't done anything but walk around. I only think 'on' at the things he's pointed me at." He nodded at McKay.

"So far," McKay groused, "but I know you military types. You're arrogant – "

"We're arrogant?" Sheppard interrupted. "I didn't realize there was any arrogance left over after you went back for seconds and thirds, or was it fourths, McKay?"

McKay glared at him viciously. "I'm doing my not inconsiderable best to save all our asses, Major. Your brand of macho stupidity will get us all killed."

Sheppard opened his mouth to snarl back something about McKay's history with the SGC and getting good people killed, but Weir held up her hand. "Major. Dr. McKay. We need to work together. We need a plan."

"We need a ZPM," McKay muttered in an undertone. "Otherwise we're stuck here."

"So, we put together a gate team and start looking for one," Sheppard declared.

"Oh, just like that, without the faintest idea what you could be walking into."

Sheppard smirked at him and slouched deeper into his chair, draping one arm over the back. He caught a flicker of annoyance in Sumner's eyes and out-and-out irritation from McKay. Something about the boneless way he had of sitting bothered a lot of people. It made him grin lazily and look even more relaxed.

"Hey, that's what O'Neill and SG-1 did in the beginning."

McKay waved his hands. "Fine, fine, whatever, especially if it gets Major Flyboy out of my hair."

'What hair?' Sheppard mouthed at him.

"You'll need someone who knows what you're looking for," McKay said with a nasty smile. "Dr. Kavanagh is the perfect man for the job."

"Major, put together a team roster and run it by me," Sumner said. He looked across the table at their expedition leader. Weir gave a short nod.

"We'll begin working on accessing the database for gate addresses immediately. Dr. McKay, we'll need one of the naquadah generators hooked up to support the equipment in the gate room and the stargate. I'll begin translations from Ancient until we have the translation software loaded into the system through the laptops," Weir stated. Her mouth was pinched, but there was still a light of excitement in her eyes.

"Yes, yes, obviously, Zippy can do that." McKay waved one hand irritably, typing with the other, his expression intent. "The database may have something on where we can find ZPMs."

"Too much to hope for, I'd think," Sumner said quietly.

Sheppard tended to agree. He was already thinking of who to take through the gate: Sgt. Stackhouse, Lt. Ford, the scientist McKay had mentioned, and at least one linguist. He stood and caught Sumner's gaze, giving a nod toward the doors into the main control room.

Sumner nodded.

He paused. "We'll need a linguist. Any suggestions?" He put it out there, but he was really asking Weir, because she was the expert on Ancient. "Someone with gate experience would be good." Someone the expedition could spare, unlike her, he didn't need to say.

"I have some ideas," Weir said.

"Okay, good, I'll put the rest of a team together."

"Why the hell didn't they send Jackson with us?" McKay muttered without looking up. He jerked out of his seat and moved around the table to a second laptop, brushing against Sheppard carelessly. Sheppard grunted as an elbow jammed against his arm. McKay didn't even notice, busy pulling up something that looked like an Ancient to English cheat sheet on the screen.

Sheppard leaned close and said, too low for anyone else in the room to pick up, "Because he isn't disposable."

McKay's head snapped up and he stared into Sheppard's eyes. His eyes were bluer than Sheppard had realized, dilated with the same fear that had him pale and sweating. His mouth folded into a sneer. "Don't be too impressed by that revelation, Major, since you're here, too."

Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "I was never under any illusions about my status, McKay," he said quietly.

McKay blinked rapidly, then bent his attention to the laptop again, his shoulders hunched. "Look, just – just go do whatever it is you do, Major."

Sheppard hesitated, tempted to torture McKay a little more, but the man had a point: he had things to do.

"Right," he drawled, instead. "So long, McKay."

~*~

Kavanagh was already complaining before they activated the gate to the first address the Ancient database had yielded, some place identified by the linguists as Athos. His bleating rose over the hubbub of other expedition members still dragging crate after crate of the supplies that had been shoved through the gate in the waning countdown to the end of the thirty-eight minute window out of the gate room.

The MALP they'd sent before them to Atlantis was now aimed back at the gate, just beyond the danger zone, waiting to go ahead of Sheppard's team.

"Ford, Stackhouse," Sheppard said. "Check their gear." He nodded at Kavanagh and the anthropologist Weir had recommended. Corrigan had actually done a few SGC missions and had a secondary mission specialty in linguistics.

"Yes, Sir."

He ticked off his own gear in his mind, then started trying to anticipate what they'd run into on the other side of the wormhole. Of course, that was a fool's game, but he still did it, because once in a while that extra sense for things going wrong had saved him. He'd always had a talent for knowing when to zig and when to zag, if only in combat.

He touched the streamlined radio earpiece, activating it. "Radio check."

Ford, Stackhouse, Corrigan and finally Kavanagh chimed in.

He glanced up and spotted Weir standing at the balcony next to the Colonel.

"You ready, Major?" Sumner asked.

"Yes, Sir."

Weir turned her head and told the British guy, Grodin, "Dial the gate."

McKay joined Weir and Sumner. He clamped his hands on the railing and leaned forward. Sheppard smirked at him. McKay's mouth slid sideways, drooping to one side.

The Atlantis stargate dialed faster than Earth's jury-rigged DHD did. The aqua chevron lights along its rim flared to life, different sigils than the ones Sheppard had grown used to, and the wormhole gushed into existence. The blue flicker of its surface rippled across the dim gate room.

The MALP trundled through the event horizon placidly.

"Receiving MALP telemetry," Grodin announced. "Breathable atmosphere, no apparent buildings or other signs of habitation. It appears to be night."

"Night vision goggles," Sheppard said, pulling his own out of his tac vest, though he put them on.

"AR-1," Weir said. "You have a go. Good luck."

"Luck?" McKay exclaimed. "Great, we're relying on luck. Why not admit we're all doomed right now?"

"Move out," Sheppard said to his team. "Lieutenant, Sergeant, I want you at point, then Doctors Kavanagh and Corrigan. I'll be tail-end Charlie."

The two Marines moved ahead, pulling their night vision goggles down and then raising their P90s to shoulder position.

"I'm much, much too valuable to endanger in this way," Kavanagh complained.

"Feel like swimming, Doctor?" Sheppard asked.

"What?"

He pointed up. "Lots of water up there, Doc."

Kavanagh's glare didn't compare with McKay's. His moment of defiance crumpled and he followed Corrigan into the wormhole.

Sheppard turned his head back. Sumner, Weir and McKay were still watching. He raised his hand in a wave, then raised his P90 and stepped through the event horizon.

~*~
She was tiny.

That was Sheppard's first thought, but it was quickly replaced with: she was smart. He could fall in love with those brown eyes and the way her smile curved, but he didn't for an instant forget that small things could be deadly, too. He didn't make the error of asking to speak to whoever was in charge; no mistake, she was, not Halling, the redwood-tall guy who had brought them here.

"I am Teyla Emmagen, daughter of Tagan," she said.²

"Ah," he said, pulling off the night vision goggles the way his dad taught him you always took off your hat when in the presence of a lady. He offered her a sheepish smile. "Major John Sheppard." He nodded at the men with him. "Lt. Ford, Sgt. Stackhouse, Doctors Corrigan and Kavanagh. It's nice to meet you."

"You wish to trade?"

He glanced around the tent. It looked like these people were semi-migratory, but there were pieces of higher technology here and there, obviously working and integrated, not scavenged. "Well, trade… maybe, if we've got anything you would be interested in. We were hoping to get some information first."

"Not that they'd be able to even understand anything they got from us," Kavanagh muttered.

"Shut up, Kavanagh," Corrigan hissed before Sheppard could say it. Good man, Corrigan.

Her dark eyes flickered over Corrigan and Kavanagh, measuring them, then the Marines and back to Sheppard. "We do not trade with strangers."

"Well, then, we'll just, ah, have to get to know each other," Sheppard said, turning on the charm. He smiled his best Come on, I'm a nice guy smile. "Me, I like… Ferris Wheels, college football, and anything that goes more than two hundred miles per hour." Great, he thought to himself, you sound like Brandi with an 'I', Playboy's Miss March. Of course, the way Teyla's eyes had looked him up and down a minute ago, maybe that wasn't the worst tack to take.

Ford leaned over and murmured, "Sir, that's not going to mean anything to her."

"Feel free to speak up," Sheppard replied softly. "I'm just trying to break the ice."

"These people have nothing we can use," Kavanagh said, not bothering to keep his voice down. "This is a waste of time."

And he'd thought McKay was a waste of oxygen, Sheppard reflected. Corrigan shoved an elbow into Kavanagh's ribs.

"Each morning, before dawn, our people drink a stout tea, to brace us for the coming day," Teyla told them. Sheppard had a feeling they were amusing her. "Will you join us?"

Morning. Sheppard didn't check his watch, but he thought that was at least four hours away. Whatever was happening back on Atlantis, nothing would be gained if they returned now. They could stick around that long. Okay. He checked out the big guy, Halling, next to her. He just looked cautious, not like a man warning another off his woman. Good, Sheppard thought. Big smile. He stepped forward, almost into her personal space and smiled again. "I love a good cup of tea," he declared, looking at Halling first, then Teyla.

Halling looked blank and Teyla looked a little less than impressed.

"Now, there's another thing you know about me."

Now she finally smiled back, almost flirtatious.

"We're practically friends already," he added.

~*~

"We have to go now."

Weir's chin was raised mutinously and McKay had the urge to slap her. Granted, she was a woman, but he'd thought better of her. She couldn't possibly be that deliberately stupid, could she?

He wanted to explore Atlantis as much as she did, but didn't she understand that this wasn't about exploring anymore? Sheppard hadn't returned with a ZPM - with both him and Kavanagh on the team, McKay really would have been surprised if he had - and time was ticking out. The read-outs didn't lie, and they couldn't be fooled into Weir's 'just a few more minutes.' They didn't have those minutes. Either they dialed the gate now, or they'd drown. Rodney McKay really, really hated the thought of drowning. Even though, a cynical part of him reminded him, he'd never feel it. The pressure of the billion gallons of water would just squash him like a bug.

Not how he'd envisioned going down, either.

"Dr. Weir."

She still hesitated, still didn't give the order to abandon the city even as it shook and trembled like a wounded animal. Another part of the shield had collapsed and that was it, he'd had it. Panic was rising, because, oh, god, he didn't want to die. Not like this, not this soon. Pushing past Weir, he started dialing the gate, using the first address his eyes settled on in the database.

"Rodney!" The tone of her voice was like a whip-crack but he ignored it, kept dialing.

"We only have enough energy left for that one dial. We either take it or we go down with the city." He punched the controls harder than necessary, his hands shaking. "If you want to die, fine. I don't. And I doubt all the other people here do, either."

He punched the final glyph and the gate lit up in that strange blue glow around the outer rim, the chevrons racing fluid and graceful. The sequence never completed.

While he was still caught in a staring contest with Weir, Grodin suddenly gave a gasp of horror and everything round them, every single piece of equipment, every light and every console went dark.

He was left blind in the dark, unable to do anything more than wait for the inevitable. His blood rushed in his ears and he could feel the panic on his tongue, bright and sharp. He didn't want to die. It was too soon, too soon, he wasn't ready, he'd just come here, damn it. He wasn't ready.

A deep, almost regretful hum went through the city, followed by a terrible thump as the ocean crashed in on its spires and surfaces. Metal screamed. The sound of a bug being squashed under a boot.

"Oh, God."

The city bucked violently, a last desperate cry before the end that sent him to the floor, his tail bone hitting the steps painfully, his wrist giving a protesting crack when he tried to stop the fall.

From somewhere, a hand closed around his left arm, fingernails digging in enough to draw blood through the material of his jacket. For the first time in his life, though, he welcomed the pain, because it meant that he was still alive. Not dead yet. The hand – Weir's, she'd been the only one close enough to him – trembled despite the clawing grip. And if this was the last thing he did, he might as well go down like a tragic hero and forgive her the stupidity that had resulted in this, so he reached out and pulled her close, feeling her trembling warmth next to him. That it was for his benefit as much as for hers was something no one would ask about or judge anymore. He was a dead man, anyway.

The city around them shook and screamed, metal bending and breaking, he knew, and it would only be a few seconds now. Quick, he thought, God, please, make it quick. I don't want to suffer.

The noises continued and the shaking and quivering got stronger. Weir pressed her head against his shoulder and he felt her hair in his face. He regretted not seeing her. "I really hate being right, you know?"

Her laugh was dry and toneless.

Around them, stacked boxes crashed down, falling on people if the sounds of pain were anything to go by.

They'd waited for a few seconds already and still the air around them was air and not some afterlife glimmer and he was still breathing and painfully aware of his bruised ass and wrist.

When the sound came, he was so unprepared that it almost rendered him deaf.

A loud, booming noise like a massive explosion and that was it. McKay took a futile final breath, squeezed his eyes shut despite the darkness around them and cradled Weir closer.

Make it quick, please, please, please.

Over the breathless panic, he almost didn't notice the sick feeling in his stomach, the one he always experienced in the elevator at the SGC, going up and down too fast. The city trembled, but differently.

He held his breath until he saw stars behind his closed eyelids and only then, when there still was no white light and there still was no water and no giant boot squashing him, he realized that he wasn't dying. He could still smell Weir's hair and his own sour sweat and the ozone from the unsuccessful dialing procedure that had short-circuited the generators. He gulped in a huge lungful of air and catalogued the sensations one by one until he finally realized that the city was moving. Rodney McKay had never been a religious man, but he was thanking each and every deity he remembered in this very moment. The city was moving straight up, his body's initial response to an elevator ride not as far off the truth as he'd thought at first. Not a stairway to heaven, to some mystical afterlife he had never believed in. An elevator to the surface.

With a gasp and a shudder of final, last-minute strength he heard the city breaching the water's surface.

The light streaming in through the windows, blinding him, was the most welcome sight he had ever seen.

And if there were tears in his eyes when he let go of Weir? It was entirely the fault of the sudden exposure to that much light.

~*~

Morning brought stout tea sipped while the sun burned red through the fog on the lake. Several of the Athosians kept sending strange looks Sheppard's way. He didn't get it. They weren't checking out the Marines or the two scientists, just him. Across from the camp, Sheppard glimpsed buildings. "Is that – "

"The city of the Ancestors," Teyla said from beside him.

He glanced to the side and raised an eyebrow. "The Ancestors? Yours?"

"Some think so." She considered him in much the same way the other Athosians had been doing. "But I think they are yours."

"What?" Could she possibly mean he had the ATA gene? Would these people even know about genes and the Ancients? They obviously had some technological background and learning, though they chose to live simply. There was really no way to guess what people in this galaxy knew about the Ancients.

"Many generations ago, after the Ancestors fled the Wraith, our people traded with friends who sometimes spoke of such things. They warned us the Wraith had a way of tracking anyone who carried the same heritage as the Ancestors." She looked at Sheppard like he should know all this.

He checked it through his binoculars again. Nice little valley, buildings that looked a whole lot like the architecture he'd glimpsed back in Atlantis, maybe it would serve as a place to evacuate the expedition to if necessary, but there had to be a reason it was abandoned.

"Nice location. What's wrong with it?" he asked. "Why not live there?"

"It is not safe," the young man with her said. "The Wraith will come. They have sensors and transmitters hidden there."

"We can take care of ourselves," Ford said confidently from beside Sheppard. Sheppard was thinking about an enemy that had sensors and transmitters.

"No one can stand against the Wraith," Teyla stated. From the pinched expression on her face, Sheppard thought she might have been witness to someone trying and failing. "We were warned many generations ago, that should anyone descended from the Ancestors venture into their city, the Wraith would come."

"Who are these Wraith?" The kids, Jinto and Wex, had been playing some game with masks that were supposed to be Wraith. Maybe they were just bogey monsters… Sheppard sighed silently. He knew how likely that was. The Wraith were probably as real as the damned Goa'uld and the Replicators. It would probably pay to learn everything they could.

Teyla shared a shocked look with her companion. "We have never met anyone who did not know."

Sheppard glanced at Ford, raising his eyebrows. "Live and learn," he said lightly. Learn and live…

"If the Wraith have never touched your world, you should go back there," she told them.

"Oh, believe me," Sheppard said, "We would if we could. See, here's the thing…"

~*~

Hours later, Sheppard and his team walked back through the stargate with promises that the Athosians were eager for trade partners who could possibly provide parts for the remaining technology they had. Teyla had provided a comprehensive history of the Wraith in Pegasus, as well.

Sheppard froze immediately, raising his face to the illuminated glass window above the gate room stairs.

Sunlight?

"What the hell?"

McKay peered over the balcony, grinning dementedly. "Failsafe, Major. When the shield failed, the city rose."

"Hell of a ride," Sumner commented, joining them on the gate room floor. "What did you find out?"

"The people on that planet wear skins. There's nothing they can do for us," Kavanagh piped up.

Sheppard rolled his eyes. "I talked with their leader, Teyla Emmagen. Once they get to know us, they're willing to trade and give us some pointers about getting along here. They may look a little backward, but the people here know all about the stargates and use them regularly."

"No ZPM?" McKay called out.

"No, McKay, no ZPM. Did you think they were going to just magically provide one?"

McKay muttered something and disappeared.

"Tell me about the Athosians, Major," Weir said, joining them.

"Ma'am," he said, "I think I better tell you about the Wraith first."

~*~

"Which way, Doc?" Ford asked as his survey squad reached a corridor intersection.

Zelenka didn't even look up from the display on his portable data screen. He tapped a tiny button, pursed his lips, and then pointed to the right. The half-light from the water conduits reflected off the gold rims of his glasses. He adjusted something on the display. Ford shared an exasperated and impatient look with Sgt. Markham right over the scientist's wispy head.

"Doc?"

"I am trying to trace the anomalous energy reading McKay found earlier," Zelenka said. "Can you do this? No. Then allow me and do not be interfering."

Markham smothered a snicker, while Ford rolled his eyes and thought Zelenka spent way too much time with Dr. McKay. He was getting pretty damn snippy for a skinny geek.

"Sergeant? You want to check the doohickey again?" Ford asked, pointing to the life-sign detector in Markham's hands.

Markham glanced down, but the readout remained dark except for the three white dots representing Ford, himself and Zelenka. "Same as ever, Sir."

"Then I guess we go right," Ford declared. He started down the right corridor, trailed by the still distracted Zelenka, while Markham followed them both.

They checked three empty labs before Zelenka stopped abruptly and pointed to a closed doorway ahead of them.

"Is in there. Very faint power signature, but it resembles ZPM output," Zelenka said.

"A ZPM?" Markham asked quietly.

"No way," Ford said. "Doc McKay would have been down here like a hound dog if there was ZPM. Right, Zee?"

"Zelenka!  Zelenka!," Zelenka hissed, his eyes narrowed and mutinous. "Not Zippy, not Zeppo, not Zoolander, Lieutenant. If name is too difficult for you, Doctor is sufficient, yes?"

"Hey, Doc McKay calls you all… "

Zelenka's glare said Ford was not McKay and would never be allowed the same privileges.

"Fine. Doctor."

Zelenka nodded jerkily. "You are right, Lieutenant, Dr. McKay would not have ignored a possible ZPM here in the city. Is depleted worse than those in power room – " he gestured toward the ZPM chamber one level up, " – if so."

The lab door didn't open for Ford. It took Markham's gene to get it to slide – reluctantly – open. Ford took the lead, though, stepping into the red-lit room and checking for potential threats.

The first thing he noticed was the wreckage. Dead equipment, a console with a remarkably bullet-like hole in it, shattered pieces of pseudo-glass on the floor, stains mixed with it. Then the lights, all red, and finally: three coffins.

There didn't seem to be any threat.

"So, what is this, Doc?" Ford asked. He walked a few feet forward and tried to peer into one of the coffin-things. The pseudo-glass lid was blue-tinted and faintly opaque. Like peering through a fogged-up window.

Zelenka was already busy mating his laptop into the control console.

"Wild guesses only, Lieutenant."

Markham wandered over to another of the coffin-things. He rubbed his cuff over the lid and peered in the way Ford had tried.

"Whoa!" he yelled, backing away fast.

Ford spun and aimed his P90 at the coffin-thing. "Sergeant?"

Markham blinked at him, then at the coffin-thing. "Major Sheppard's in there."

~*~
Col. Sumner was lecturing Sheppard on getting along with the scientists – meaning McKay, since Sheppard had no problems with any of the rest of them – but a twitch of his lips gave away his amusement. As an Air Force officer, rather than a Marine, Sheppard wasn't part of Sumner's direct command; he was technically part of the scientific staff thanks to all the strings Dr. Weir had pulled to get him on the expedition at the last minute, but as the second highest ranking officer on Atlantis, he'd fallen into acting as Sumner's 2iC despite himself.

No one was more surprised than Sumner and Sheppard. Sumner might not have tolerated Sheppard's attitude from a Marine, but someone who would question him sometimes wasn't necessarily bad. Turned out the man had a sense of humor under the hard-ass exterior.

The radio headsets they all constantly wore crackled.

"Colonel Sumner? This is Ford. We've found something. I think you better get down here. You need to see – actually, you better get Dr. Weir and Dr. McKay and the Major down here too - you all really need to see this. If they're, uh, available."

"Threat potential?" Sumner asked.

"Uh - "

Sheppard raised his eyebrows.

Sumner's soft, hoarse voice prompted Ford. "Lieutenant?"

"Sir. It's - people."

'People?' Sheppard mouthed. 'Ancients?'

"Are you saying you've found Ancients?" Sumner asked.

"Uh, no, Sir.  I don't think so. Bodies. Doc Z says that they're dead. I mean, he says he thinks they are, but they're – they're Dr. Weir, Dr. McKay and Major Sheppard," Ford replied.

Sheppard switched his own radio to transmit. "Lieutenant, I feel pretty alive here. I think all of Atlantis would have noticed if McKay disappeared and I can see Dr. Weir in her office right now."

"Yes, Sir.  That's great, Sir. But, these people really, really look like you."

Sumner frowned. "Give me your location, Lieutenant. We're on our way."

Ford provided a level and room number that corresponded with the basic schematic they were creating for the city. They didn't know what even a fraction of the rooms were for but they had a system for navigating them.

Sumner gave Sheppard the sort of smile that translated into 'shit detail' every time. "Major, go get McKay and rendezvous with us. I'll escort Dr. Weir."

Sheppard stood. He shook out the kinks and rolled his shoulders. "Permission to shoot him if he doesn't come willingly? Sir."

Sumner's mouth twitched in a small smile before he suppressed it. "Permission denied."

"You're no fun, Sir."

"Get out of here, Major."

Sheppard offered him a lazy salute and commanded the doors open with a thought. His smile faded as he headed down the corridor. McKay. Jesus, the man whined and got on his nerves. He was damned grateful the offworld team he commanded didn't include Kavanagh or any of the scientists anymore, because they didn't have the training, but he would have kissed the Colonel's boots before he would have gone through the gate with McKay along. Even Kavanagh was better than that mouth.

He smirked to himself.

McKay wasn't going to be pleased at having his precious research interrupted by a military grunt. Maybe this would be a little entertaining. Colonel Sumner hadn't said he couldn't threaten to shoot McKay, after all.

~*~

"Is it dangerous?" Col. Sumner asked.

Ford had been relegated to guarding the doorway of the small lab, while the scientists ooohed and aaahed over the stasis pods, their contents – three eerily familiar-looking bodies – and Col. Sumner, Dr. Weir, and Sheppard looked over their shoulders, until McKay lost his temper and told them to back off. Then they found the pink crystals and the equipment stored with them and the two scientists were babbling at each other, finishing each other's sentences and looking a little awed.

"They are memory devices," Zelenka declared. "Similar to Ancient download device discovered by the SGC."

"Oh, really, I never would have guessed that," McKay commented with a roll of his eyes. "Give me that." He snatched a crystal out of Zelenka's hands.

"You might want to be a little more careful there," Sheppard said from where he'd stationed himself, leaning against a wall. One look into the pod with his double had satisfied him. The guy looked like him, but he wasn't dressed in an expedition uniform or anything like the holograms showed the Ancients wearing. And he looked… worn. It was disturbing. He thought McKay and Dr. Weir were having the same reaction. They both stayed away from the pods holding their doubles, too.

Beckett was trying to scan the bodies without opening the stasis pods, since there was some debate over whether they'd crumble into dust once out of the stasis field. Sheppard figured McKay was right for once. Even if they did lose the bodies, it would be worth it. The pods were powered by a separate ZPM, one that still held a significant charge. It probably wasn't strong enough to open a wormhole back to Earth, but it could still support a chunk of the city's systems and give their naquadah generators some slack.

"Just keep your mouth shut and be decorative, Major," McKay snapped.

He ran his fingers over the ribbed, gray-bronze material of the device in question. When nothing happened, he glared at it.  The glare then shifted to the pods. "They couldn't leave a note?"

"Problem, McKay?" Sheppard drawled, ignoring the quelling look Sumner gave him.

"Aside from the inherent injustice of a universe that gives you the ATA gene and not me?" McKay replied.

Sheppard nodded.

"Well, according to the logs we accessed, these three have been in stasis, with a break every thousand years to do something, since shortly after the Ancients left Atlantis. They left these devices, obviously in case something kept them from coming out of stasis, but they couldn't be bothered to leave some sort of explanation or operating manual."

"They must have picked up their bad habits from the Ancients."

McKay actually snarled. "You think you're joking."

"Rodney," Dr. Weir said, in her calm, long-suffering voice of patience.

"Fine. I need him," here he sneered at Sheppard, "to initialize it."

Sheppard looked at the basketball-sized device warily. He'd already had several unpleasant experiences initializing 'harmless' objects for McKay and the other scientists. "What'll it do to me?"

"What? Nothing. You'd have to load it with one of the crystals and stick your head in it for it to do anything." The scorn fairly dripped from McKay's words.

"Just checking."

"It should be perfectly safe to use these. Each device and crystal was stored next to one of the pods, so we can assume they correspond to the sleepers," McKay went on. "It's obvious they copied their memories just before going into stasis to leave them as up to date as possible."

Dr. Weir glanced at the pod holding her double. "Is there any other way to discover who they were or how they came to be in Atlantis?"

"No, though obviously, they are us." McKay paused. "Or clones. Or shapeshifting aliens, but that would beg the question of how they obtained our bodies' templates almost ten thousand years ago. The simplest explanation is that these are time-traveling versions of the Major, myself, and you, Dr. Weir. Naturally, we are the best choices to download their memories."

"I see."

"I'm not sure using these devices is a good idea," Beckett said.

"You never think anything is a good idea, Carson," McKay said, dismissing the doctor's caution. "It's a miracle you made it through medical school, joke that it is, since it must have been terribly dangerous to venture out your front door."

"Major?" Dr. Weir said.

He shrugged and pushed off the wall. There was a warm hum from the device under his fingertips when he touched it, thinking On at it. He snatched his hand back as it peeled open, revealing a hollow for someone's face and a slot designed to accept the crystal McKay still clutched.

They shared a quick look, both startled. "You put your face in that?" Sheppard asked.

"Yes." McKay sounded a little apprehensive. "It should be perfectly painless. Unless something goes wrong and it fries my brain. Possibly we should check the database for anything the Ancients left about these devices."

"No guts, no glory, McKay."

McKay narrowed his eyes. "Be my guest, Major. Go ahead, go initialize the other device and download your counterpart's memories."

"Oh, I will," Sheppard said. "If only to keep you from just giving your counterpart's version of whatever happened to these people."

He stalked over to the pod holding his double, picked up the second device and initialized it, too.

"Major Sheppard," Dr. Weir said.

He looked over to her. She'd crossed the room to the third pod and retrieved the device waiting with it. "Three recordings were left. I think I should use this one. If you would initialize it?"

"Do you really think this is a good idea?" Sumner asked her.

"I think it is necessary," she said.

"Dr. Zelenka? Dr. Beckett?"

"The devices are made to do this," Zelenka said.

Beckett just shrugged.

Sumner obviously didn't like it, but didn't argue, instead giving in with a sharp little nod that Sheppard took as confirmation. He initialized Weir's device with a quick touch and returned to his own.

McKay had already slotted his crystal into his device and held it before him.

Sheppard followed suit. From the corner of his eye, he saw Weir copy their actions.

"Major Sheppard should try this first, then Dr. McKay and Dr. Weir," Sumner said.

"There's nothing to worry about, Colonel, I assure you," McKay said. He looked a little sweaty, though.

Sheppard felt slightly twitchy himself, but not enough to back out. Sure as hell not enough to hesitate while McKay was watching. Hell, Weir was going to do it. His grimaced and lifted the damn thing to his face, sensing the way it was supposed to work. He had a second to draw a breath, then it came alive with a jolt, morphing open and latching onto his face.

He couldn't scream, couldn't breathe, couldn't coordinate himself enough to scrabble at the thing with his hands –

It flooded in, an entire life. He rushed in, everything he'd done, been, seen, felt: memories that were the same like double exposures, the different ones shivering and shimmering, accompanied by searing bolts of pain and amazing waves of joy Sheppard had never glimpsed in his own days and nights. It came all at once, more than he could process, more than he could have ever dreamed, echoes of things he'd forgotten himself and vistas he'd never known, names and faces and places, strangers he suddenly knew, friends and enemies, Halling, Teyla, Ronon, Keras, Kolya, Chaya, Caldwell, Cadman, Lorne, Ingel, Nelda, Athos, Dagan – The Wraith…hungry blue death, bullet holes closing up… Sumner looking up, faded eyes begging whoever was out there to pull the trigger just one more time… endless rain of darts, fire above the darkened city… 'So long, Rodney,' and 'I have to.'

Doranda.

The death of a universe.

Time unraveled.

Need and love and loss and Sheppard couldn't stand any more, couldn't, couldn't, it hurt too much, was too much, was unbearable and he keened out the only word he could still hold onto, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nothing he did could stop him reliving every instant and his grief was a raw, acid scour through Sheppard's soul. Major Sheppard blended with Colonel Sheppard, with John, who had lost his city and his time and his lovers and everything that had mattered. One was the other was one was them was him was too much –

Sheppard disappeared under the onslaught, crying out another self's denial.

"No!"

~*~

"What happened?"

Marshall Sumner looked at his mission commander, his unofficial 2iC, and the expedition chief scientist, all of them oblivious to him and everything else. He wasn't happy. He knew Sheppard was reckless and McKay was an arrogant bastard whose brains barely made up for his grating personality, but he hadn't expected Weir to get caught up in their pissing contest over who would try out the memory devices first. Now all three of them were down.

Or all six, if you wanted to count the three bodies in the stasis pods.

Not the way Sumner wanted to end up in ultimate control of Atlantis.

The soft interior lights had come up when Ford and Zelenka's survey team entered the room, displaying the perfectly preserved doubles. Beckett wanted to do DNA analysis, but Sumner was willing to accept that those were, in some way, Weir, Sheppard and McKay. And according to the computer logs the living McKay had accessed, the three of them had been dead for a thousand years. McKay's double had died first. Sheppard's double had been brought out of stasis by a secondary failsafe. He had waited until Weir's double's stasis pod failed too, then re-entered stasis himself and succumbed.

Nothing offered an explanation for their actions, except the memory recorders.

He was quietly furious with himself for not making a better argument against using the damn things in the first place. They were his people. Atlantis needed Weir in charge. It needed McKay and Sheppard, even if they were perpetually at each other's throats. Just like it needed Beckett, and Sumner himself, or they were never finding a way home to Earth.

"Doctor Beckett," Sumner rasped. "I thought you and Dr. Zelenka agreed the memory downloads shouldn't have any harmful effects."

He didn't repeat that he hadn't wanted all three of them to try out the devices at once. Sheppard had volunteered; it was what the major had come on the expedition to do, to activate and use the Ancient technology with his gene. Weir had insisted she should access her double's memory recording. McKay's ego hadn't let him back out of trying since Sheppard was doing it. He knew he should have stopped them. By force, if necessary.

"It should have been safe," Beckett insisted from where he knelt next to Elizabeth Weir.

She'd fallen away from the device when it released her face. His hand was on her wrist, but anyone could see her pulse was racing. A thin sheen of sweat shone over her face and her eyes were wide open but blind. A quiet, awful whine sounded in her throat.

Major Sheppard had stepped back from the second memory device, folded over with one short keening, "No," and curled into himself, shaking, with his arms over his head.

McKay hadn't even pulled free. His body went limp with his face still caught in the head-hugger. He'd hit the floor when it released him, scrambled back until he had his back to a wall, and sat there, rocking himself, repeating, "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God," softly, with no apparent awareness of anything around him. His fingers plucked at seams of his pants, moving mindlessly.

"It does not look safe to me," Zelenka said, from beside Ford.

Ford's eyes reminded Sumner of a spooked horse, whites visible around the edges. The kid was so keyed up Sumner did a quick double-check to make sure the safety on his P90 was still engaged.

Beckett glared at Zelenka. "You're the one who said the equipment was working fine!"

"The equipment is not at fault," Zelenka insisted. He crossed his arms and glared back at Beckett venomously.

"Physiologically I don't think they've been harmed," Beckett said. He glanced up from Weir to her double in the stasis pod.

That woman looked at least a few years older than their mission commander to Sumner. Something in her expression showed a harsh brittleness that was disturbing. Especially the smile on her mouth in conjunction with the tear tracks. He blinked. She had a handgun in there with her.

"Psychologically," Beckett murmured and shook his head.

"Not the fault of the equipment," Zelenka insisted. "Human error."

Weir tugged her wrist away from Beckett and wrapped her arms around herself.

"Psychologically, whatever experience they've relived appears to have been severely traumatic."

Sheppard rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "Rodney," he murmured. "Elizabeth." Then, choked and hoarse, "Oh, Jesus."

McKay began laughing hysterically.

Zelenka lifted his eyebrows. "Traumatic," he repeated. "Hah. Idiots." He pointed at McKay and raised his voice. "McKay. Stop it. Stop acting crazy."

"Sure and that will help," Beckett muttered. He was checking Weir's pupillary response with a penlight.

Sheppard turned his head toward the laughter. "Rodney?"

Sumner crossed the room and crouched beside Sheppard. It looked like he might be coming out of whatever it was first.

"Major – "

Sheppard jerked. He stared at Sumner, eyes dilating. Adrenaline response, Sumner surmised. Sheppard didn't blink. Then he was moving, rolling away until he was crouched next to McKay, his back to the wall, his sidearm in his shaking hand, not aiming it at anyone, just ready.

Ford reacted first. He grabbed Zelenka, who squawked in surprise, by the back of his jacket and jerked him away from the line of fire, before shoving him bodily out the door of the stasis chamber. Sumner pulled his own sidearm, but didn't aim it. Sheppard wasn't actively threatening anyone.

"Whoa," Ford exclaimed. He aimed his P90 at the wild-eyed officer. "Just whoa, Major. Okay? Don't make me – "

McKay's laughter dissolved into hiccupping near-sobs and another, "Oh, God."

Sumner held up a hand toward Ford. "Easy, Lieutenant," he said.

Sheppard twitched at the sound of Sumner's voice.

"Sir," Ford said.

"Major Sheppard," Sumner commanded, "put the gun down now."

Sheppard ignored him and looked sidelong at McKay.

"Rodney," he hissed.

Sumner frowned. He had never heard Sheppard refer to or address the scientist by his first name. Not even Zelenka did. Only Weir had that privilege.

McKay hiccupped and shuddered.

"Rodney," Sheppard hissed. "Snap out of it!"

McKay's head jerked up and he twisted around to stare at Sheppard. "Snap out of it? Snap out of it!? Are you insa – " He stopped and stared around the room, eyes widening, as he took in Beckett, Ford and Sumner. His mouth fell open when he looked at Sumner. "Oh. Oh." Then he blurted, "Where's Elizabeth?"

Sumner took that in, too, that McKay and Sheppard were both suddenly referring to Weir by her first name.

"Are you okay?" Sheppard asked.

McKay waved one hand around. "No, of course not. I just – I remember – I – you – and Elizabeth –" He gulped hard. "You and I – "

Sheppard turned ash pale. "I'm going to be sick," he muttered.

"Oh, that's nice, that's a hell of a reaction," McKay snapped. "I don't remember you protest – "

Sheppard was looking across the room. His whole body went tense. He surged to his feet, putting himself between McKay and ... Sumner blinked…Weir. Weir, who was on her feet and staring back at Sheppard and McKay like they were ghosts. She looked like hell. All three of them did. Sheppard extended his arm and aimed the Beretta in his hand at her.

Sumner stepped between them. "Lieutenant Ford," he said, trying to retrieve a rapidly devolving situation, "if Major Sheppard shoots, take him out. Major. Put the weapon down."

Sheppard laughed almost hysterically. "I killed you before."

Sumner wanted to ignore that, but snapped, "What the hell are you talking about?" Sheppard was obviously under the influence of something. That didn't mean Sumner could let him shoot Weir.

McKay scrambled to his feet. "John," he said. "John, don't."

He stayed behind Sheppard, but set his hand on Sheppard's shoulder.

Sheppard didn't shrug McKay away the way Sumner would have expected. A muscle in his cheek flexed. Eyes still locked on Weir over Sumner's shoulder, who hadn't moved, despite Beckett's panicky urgings, he said flatly, "She killed you. She killed Atenë."

McKay looked past Sheppard and Sumner to Weir, who had brought her hands up over her face. He gulped hard. "What do you mean?"

"She trashed the safety protocols during her last shift awake. Gated the ZPMs away. Destroyed the cores that held Atenë's memory set and personality matrix. Then she climbed back into stasis and left us to die in our sleep," Sheppard snarled.

"She killed me?" McKay repeated. His brows drew together and he frowned at Weir. "You killed me? And – and you tried to kill John? Did you just lose your damned mind or was it – Jesus, you were jealous of Atenë." He sucked in a breath, obviously holding himself together through sheer will, but his voice quavered. "Was it that? Was it what we were doing? Did you hate us so much? I thought – I thought you forgave me."

"No, Rodney," Weir held out both her hands, "it wasn't jealousy, you know what it was doing to him, you saw – "

"No! No, I didn't!" The sick look on his face belied the adamant denial. Sheppard swayed and McKay's hand tightened on his shoulder. "He wasn't – "

"He was."

"I don't believe you."

"No," Sheppard whispered. "It wasn't – I wasn't – "

"Yes, yes, you were," Weir shouted at him, "You and that thing, Atenë, you weren't even human anymore." She lunged at him and Beckett caught her, pulling her back with his arms trapping her close to her body. "Do you think I could let that happen to the rest of the expedition? Everything we went through, everyone that died because of us…"

"And killing us was the answer?" McKay yelled back, while Sheppard stared at her, hollow-eyed and shaking. The pistol in his hand shaking most of all. Sumner wanted to move and take the pistol, but sensed that any movement outside Sheppard's focus on Weir might be enough to spook him into pulling the trigger.

Weir didn't seem to even see the gun. Or didn't care, because it wasn't Weir talking, it was the woman from the stasis pod, a woman who had set up her own death, too. Maybe she wanted Sheppard to kill her. Again. She whispered, "I don't know what happened! I was going destroy the memory core, nothing was supposed to happen to either of you!"

"Atenë was tied into the stasis pod maintenance," McKay shouted. "You killed me."

Weir squeezed her eyes shut and slumped back against Beckett's chest. "Who is Atenë?" Beckett asked plaintively.

McKay waved his free hand, still clutching Sheppard's shoulder with the other. "The AI. The city. We've kept trying to theorize why the city seems so disorganized, why the data core isn't integrated into the systems, why we've had to have Sheppard or someone with the gene initialize every damn system. The AI's dead." His mouth drooped on one side and he blinked rapidly. "Atenë."

Sheppard looked at Weir. "Why?"

"It changed you," Weir said. "It changed Rodney, too, but you most of all. It would have warped everyone it could touch." She straightened her shoulders. "She could see that. You were both too close to it."

McKay opened his mouth then snapped it shut. "Oh, that – that is just bullshit," he said. He pointed at Weir. "Bullshit." Since McKay preferred eviscerating people with his vocabulary rather than obscenity, it sounded worse than it would have from one of Sumner's Marines. The acid scorn added to the effect. Some of the color had returned to his face, too.

"It wasn't like that," Sheppard added. "You don't know…" Unlike McKay, he didn't look angry. He looked wounded. He took a step back, and Sumner saw, shocked, that Sheppard felt threatened by Weir. But this, Sumner was starting to realize, wasn't really Sheppard, or rather it was a different Sheppard, along with a different McKay. Weir seemed devastated, but she didn't seem to be identifying the way the other two were.

McKay's hand tightened on Sheppard's shoulder. It was confusing to watch, to try and guess if they were seeing the people they knew or the bleed-over personalities of their doubles. Sumner thought this must be the downloaded McKay. "John. It won't help."

"She killed you." Sheppard shuddered and lowered the Beretta. "Jesus." A deep breath followed. "It's just – " He flicked the safety back on the Beretta, reversed it and offered it butt first to Sumner. "Sir."

"I know," McKay said. Sumner frowned. There was almost a difference in his voice – no, his accent – when McKay switched into his double's mindset. It was pure Canada when it was McKay, but when the double spoke, his voice took on hints of other languages. He sounded a little like the Athosians, in fact. "But they're all dead. That wasn't Dr. Weir. None of it happened to us."

"Major," Sumner said, as he accepted the weapon. "You want to explain your actions just now?"

Sheppard ducked his head, then twisted and looked at McKay. "I can't – I can't tell his memories from mine," he said. He looked at McKay's hand on his shoulder. "I remember everything."

McKay looked at his hand, too, then lifted it away. "It wasn't us."

"It feels like it."

McKay's mouth drooped to the side. "Do you really want to go there, John?"

"I don't know, Rodney," Sheppard drawled back, and it was almost the way he would have said it a few hours previously, but a thread of affection and amusement ran underneath the way he inflected McKay's first name.

McKay rolled his eyes. "Colonel."

"Still just a major, McKay."

"I just got used to colonel." McKay sounded peeved, but easy with Sheppard in a way, too.

"But that was him, not me."

McKay looked thoughtful. "Yeah, that's going to take some getting used to."

"Sort of like finding out you destroyed the universe in the last timeline?" Sheppard's eyebrow climbed and he smirked, despite still looking shaky. "That's going to look good on your CV, Dr. McKay. Destroyer of the Universe. Nice."

A rush of emotions flickered over McKay's face. Horror, disgust, guilt, and sorrow in quick succession. He turned his head away.

Sheppard grabbed his arm. "I didn't mean it that way. I – we – it wasn't just you – him. Damn it. It was the Ancients' fault, too. They built the damned thing and just left it there, like a loaded gun in a kid's toy box."

"I should have listened to Zelenka. I should have – damn it, I should have just slowed down, but everything kept snowballing," McKay said. "Their numbers really were wrong, you know."

"I know. We went over them again and again, remember?" Sheppard scrubbed at his face with one hand, then raised his gaze to the stasis pod holding his double's body. "God, it's like I am him.  Except he… " His expression turned bleak. "He went back for Dex and Mitch and I didn't."

McKay moved around Sheppard until they stood shoulder to shoulder. "Yes, well, it didn't work out so well for him, playing hero, disobeying orders. Did it?"

He obviously knew exactly who Sheppard meant.

Sumner only recognized the reference from reading Sheppard's file. Major Sheppard had an interesting black mark: he'd imploded after being ordered to turn back from a rescue mission in Afghanistan. He'd probably have ended stationed in Ultima Thule or McMurdo if the Air Force hadn't been screening all their people for the ATA gene. Sheppard's genetics had sent him to the SGC instead and from there to Pegasus with the Atlantis Expedition, despite the antipathy between McKay and him.

There was no way Sheppard had told McKay about his past.

Sheppard shrugged.

McKay sighed. "Me, either. God, if only it had worked. The power, the possibilities, we'd have never needed to worry about the shield or the Wraith; we could have put up a shield over the entire planet."

"It couldn't work," Sheppard said flatly.

"Yes, well, I know that now," McKay snapped. "At the time, all I could think of was finding a way to make sure I never had to stand in the control room while you went on a suicide run just to buy us five more minutes when it wasn't going to make a damned difference. Because even you couldn't take out two hive ships with one bomb."

"I knew you'd take the other bomb up if it worked," Sheppard said quietly. His face had gone blank. "He did, anyway."

"The point being," McKay overrode him, "that if we – they – had had Arcturus, if it had worked, there would have been no Wraith threat. Hive ship? Snap, gone. Twelve, sixty, all of them?" He snapped his fingers twice. "Like that."

"What the hell is Arcturus?" Sumner interrupted them both.

They turned toward him together, eyes communicating in the way of men who had been in combat together so much they didn't need words. The way they presented a united front kept jarring Sumner. McKay shook his head, a tiny, singular movement. Sheppard dipped his head, eyelashes dropping over his eyes, then faced Sumner, dropping into a parade rest posture.

"Sorry, Sir. I can't tell you that."

McKay folded his arms. He glared at Sumner, chin set at a mutinous angle. "It's a moot point. The installation is gone. Destroyed. Even the gate address to that system has been purged from Atlantis' systems."

"But you two know it," Weir said.

Sheppard and McKay stared at her, going pale again.

"You know it. And Rodney – Dr. McKay – could reconstruct the data from what you remember. Couldn't you?"

McKay swallowed. "He wouldn't. And I won't."

Weir tilted her head and it was a subtly different movement than Sumner associated with her. A bitter smile curled her lips. "There are no guarantees, Dr. McKay. That's what my double thought."

"Well, then, she should have thought about destroying the memory recordings too," McKay said, all scorn and indignation.

"Yes, she should have," Weir agreed. "Then we wouldn't be in this situation now."

"But we are," Sheppard said hoarsely. "We know, we remember."

"It's the past, Major Sheppard. Not even our past. I suggest you keep that in mind. Both of you." She gave a sharp nod. "And believe me, gentlemen, whatever happened in the past? Stays in the past as far as I'm concerned."

Sheppard looked at her and shook his head. "It's never that easy."

McKay nodded once, a jerky motion, and held up his hand. "I've got to get out of here."

Sumner started to catch McKay's arm before he could bolt past him into the corridor and watched as Sheppard came around like an attack dog, violence shimmering off him, the other Sheppard's personality clearly ascendent even in the way he moved. Sheppard flowed between Sumner and McKay, part of his attention still on Weir, wary and ready to protect the instant he interpreted a threat.

"McKay," he rasped out and McKay stopped immediately.

"All of you are going to the infirmary, right now," Beckett declared. "I want EEGs, MRIs, and PET scans of all three of you. "

Sumner nodded to the doctor. "I'll make that an order, if any of you feel like protesting."

Weir said tiredly, "No, I think that's a good idea."

Sumner tapped his radio on. "Sgt. Bates, I'd like an extra security team sent to my location. I want to secure this room and the contents until we have the whole story." He watched Sheppard grimace at that and guessed the story wouldn't be pretty.

~*~

Sheppard took his cue from Dr. Weir's declaration and prayed to God that McKay would as well. The last thing he needed was for the population of Atlantis to find out he and McKay – he and McKay's time doubles and wasn't that bad enough? – had been fucking each other and their version of Weir. Beckett kept the three of them in the infirmary for a night and subjected them to every test known to man or Asgard, but was forced to admit nothing was physically wrong with any of them.

He kept his mouth shut about interpersonal relationships through the endless debriefings that followed, even during the first day, when he could barely separate who he was from the other John Sheppard's memories. The memories felt exactly like his because so many were the same. He managed through the confusion because his counterpart hadn't been any more inclined to share his private life with anyone than Sheppard. That reflexive instinct to escape and evade let him limit his recitations to the obvious facts and edit out what had passed between the three castaways.

Sumner debriefed them each separately, looking for inconsistencies in their stories, Sheppard figured. Then he ran them through the ringer together, before separating them again and repeating the process. It was exhausting for everyone.

After that came hour after hour of reliving Col. John Sheppard's experiences in the Pegasus Galaxy, beginning with the Wraith and ending with an inadvertent slingshot through time. On the fifth day of debriefing, settled at the dark triangular table in the main conference room with just Sumner there and one of the Marines guarding the door, a recorder sitting in the center of the table like a reminder this was all on record, Sheppard described how his counterpart shot his commanding officer and why, again. Reliving it made Sheppard's empty stomach roll. His counterpart hadn't had any experience offworld before that and he'd made some good and bad decisions in the heat of the moment and ended up regretting them all, even the ones he would have repeated.

The temptation to apologize finally got the best of him. "Sorry, Sir."

Sumner's non-expression didn't crack, but he did comment, "So that's what you meant."

Sheppard forced himself to meet Sumner's gaze. "Yes, Sir." He hesitated. "I – There weren't a lot of options. The Wraith are – "

McKay interrupted, barging in without a by-your-leave, "Vicious, megalomaniac, giant, albino, space vampires with a seriously deficient dental care plan. Yes, yes, if they haven't got that by now, they aren't going to until tall, pasty and hungry latches onto somebody and drains them dry. Sheppard, the older memories are integrating faster than the newer ones, the ones that don't have any parallels in our own psyches. We can't wait that long. Do you remember which worlds had the ZPMs?"

"Why should I remember if you don't?" Sheppard asked, angling himself toward McKay without thinking about it. He smiled sunnily at him. "You're the big brain, right?"

McKay rolled his eyes. "Don't give me that look, John. I am immune. Immune. Honestly, by now you should realize that every piece of equipment in Atlantis rolls over for you and your ATA gene. Unfortunately, our Beckett is too gutless to administer the gene therapy to any of us, so unlike me Mark one – "

"Mark two," Sheppard said. "Remember the timeline where you drowned and I got blown up?"

"There are probably dozens of timelines where you get blown up. If we had Heightmeyer with us this time, I'd drag you to a few sessions to get rid of that disgusting martyr complex of yours."

"Dr. McKay, we're in the middle – "

McKay chopped his hand at Sumner. "That's not important. This is. ZPMs?"

Sheppard closed his eyes and thought. "Dagan and the suicide planet. M76-677. But the Dagan ZPM is the one we – they – used to power the stasis pods and those kids are killing themselves to keep the population low enough to live inside the shield. We take it and the Wraith will take them," Sheppard said. He raised an eyebrow at Ro – McKay. "We went through this before, remember? No stealing candy from babies."

McKay snorted. "They weren't too young to threaten to shoot arrows through all of us, if you remember."

"They thought we brought the Wraith."

"Please, it was like the Pegasus version of Logan's Run."

Despite himself, Sheppard grinned. God, it was good to snip and snap and snark with McKay. Except, what the hell was he thinking? He didn't like McKay. That was the other guy, not him. He had to keep repeating that to himself. Not me, not me, that was not me. The smile faded from his face and the first spike of a major headache drilled into his temple. Without thinking, he lifted his hand to his head, half thinking he could rub the ache away before it got worse.

McKay's hand went to his radio earpiece. "Beckett? You want to pull Major Sheppard out of the latest round of interrogation? He's getting a headache."

Sheppard snatched his hand down and frowned at McKay and everyone else in the conference room. "I am not."

"Rodney, what are you on about?"

Sheppard activated his own radio. "Nothing, Dr. Beckett. Pay no attention to him."

"Major, if you're in pain we should do some more tests – "

"I'm just fine," Sheppard snapped, glaring at McKay. If he ended up in Beckett's clutches again, being poked and prodded and questioned… Oh, yes, now he remembered why he disliked the Chief Scientist. "McKay is imagining things," he said and added silkily, "Maybe he's the one with a headache."

McKay etched a point in the air, that immensely irritating, smug smile brightening his entire face.

"You just went two shades paler," McKay pointed out. "One more and you can go undercover as a Wraith if we put you on stilts."

From his station next to the door, Markham stifled something suspiciously like a giggle. Sumner studied Sheppard. "Get out of here, Major. We'll pick this up at 0900 tomorrow."

Sheppard gave him a grateful nod and stood, realizing he was almost lightheaded. "Thank you, Sir."

McKay's hand wrapped around his elbow and he was jerked toward the doors unceremoniously.

"McKay?" he asked.

"Mess. I have no idea how you can go so long between meals, but I need something to eat. You can eat with me. We need to talk."

"Talk?" Sheppard thought his voice might have cracked on that word and was glad they were already out in the corridor. "Listen, McKay, we're not friends – "

"We don't even like each other, blah blah blah," McKay overrode him. "You are probably even more like your double than I am like mine, which means that if they could be friends, so can we." He stopped and turned to face Sheppard, his face gone tense and serious. "I – I won't ever say anything about – "

"McKay," Sheppard said, slumping back against the corridor wall. It warmed swiftly, responding to him, comforting heat soaking through his jacket and T-shirt and into his back. Nothing could ease the tension in his shoulders, though. Not considering the subject matter he and McKay weren't talking about out loud. "Don't." He held up his hand, horrified to see it was shaking. "Please."

"I wouldn't," McKay said with a strange dignity. "They deserve that much respect. It's no one's business."

"Then we understand each other and we never have to talk about this again."

McKay nodded.

Sheppard drew in a deep breath and nodded too, even as the faint scent he knew was McKay filled his lungs, heady with memories that weren't his, he insisted to himself. Memories of wrapping himself around the solid bulk of Rodney McKay and just inhaling, melting against him, pushing and getting hard, those hands, those hands working him into a gasping, shaking fever pitch of desire. He couldn't deal with the memories of just being touched, of needing Rodney, and feeling all the things he'd sworn he never would ever again. He thunked his head back against the wall, the jar ringing through his skull, superseding one pain with a more immediate one.

His headache ratcheted higher as he forced all those memories down where he didn't have to think about them. He blinked open his eyes and found himself staring into McKay's eyes. The scientist had taken two long steps away from Sheppard, separating the two of them.

"Are you sure you don't need to see Beckett?"

"Yeah," Sheppard said, levering himself away from the wall. "I just need to eat and get some sleep. Let's just, let's go to the mess." He knew he should get away from McKay and take the time to get his head straight again – no damn pun intended – but the prospect of his bare, lonely room made him cringe inside. When he glanced at McKay, he knew the other man was feeling the same loneliness, mourning the loss of something that wasn't even theirs.

~*~

Weir signed off on another report, clicked save, and stared blankly at the laptop screen, unable to even remember what she'd just read. She'd overheard the radio transmission between McKay and Beckett and Major Sheppard and lost all interest in the maintenance staff's worries about battery usage.

Everything had been hard since they arrived in Atlantis. No power, news of a looming threat in the shape of the Wraith, mounting tensions between the scientific staff and the military. Now she knew how much worse – and better – it could be.

She dropped her head into her hands, massaging her temples. Beckett swore the headaches were just stress, the result of her brain integrating a lifetime's volume of memories as much as from the contents of those memories. But he didn't know all of it, did he?

None of them had told anyone all of it. She saw it in Dr. McKay's eyes, in Major Sheppard's, in her own reflection. She had never sat blindfolded in the hands of the enemy, bargaining for bombs, while Wraith hive ships loomed closer and closer to Atlantis. It was another Elizabeth Weir who watched Rodney McKay fall apart and fall in love, who reached for the same things and, abandoned by her only ties to the past, fell herself.

Examined objectively, she still wasn't sure whether her other self had been right or insane. Or both, she acknowledged. It could be both. The AI had been a threat, but not through intent. If it was Arcturus she'd meant to stifle forever, then that Elizabeth had failed. Dr. McKay and Major Sheppard had those memories, even now, as did she.

She could walk into the control room, motion Peter to the side, and dial the address of the Doranda gate herself.

If John and Rodney and Elizabeth had died for that, then they had died for nothing.

They hadn't, though. They'd died for hubris, for fear, for the balancing of darkness against unbearable light. Fate had meant them all to die with their timeline, when they destroyed their universe, and it had finally caught up with them. No matter how they'd tried to remedy their mistakes, they just made new ones.

The memories ambushed her everywhere. Memories of Atlantis that was, Atlantis in the now of another timeline, and Atlantis under the sea.

Elizabeth had hung a set of ceremonial shields on the wall. There, where, she could admire them when she needed to sit back and straighten her spine for a moment. Weir had nothing on the wall.

She stared at the blank expanse. Nothing. That's what they'd left for her. Nothing.

~*~

They sat and ate together, ignoring the talk and the sidelong looks. It was just easier in each other's company. No one else knew what it was like and trying to explain something like the terrible, tangerine-fire beauty of the Wraith bombardment lighting up the city's shield or the thrill of piloting a dogfight through the corona of a sun, or making love in a field on Athos, with the sun hot against their shoulders, or the sweet taste of Veneti wine licked from Elizabeth's lips and breasts, was impossible. Just thinking of Elizabeth made Sheppard wince. Even Rodney – McKay – didn't know what it had felt like to John at the end, knowing what she'd done.

Every time he saw Dr. Weir, there was a fractional instant when his brain insisted she was the woman he remembered, loved and hated. He doubted he would ever trust the expedition's leader again.

"Sheppard?"

He poked his fork in his food and shook his head. Finally, he just pushed the tray away. "Look, McKay, I'm… I feel like my head's about to explode. I'm going back to my quarters. Thanks for dragging me out of the debriefing."

"I'm sure you'd do the same for me, Major."

Sheppard stood and cocked his head, just looking at McKay. "Not so much a couple of days ago."

"But now."

Sheppard nodded "Now. But not just because of… them."

McKay's expression went blank, his eyes opening wide. "Oh," he said quietly. "You mean, you… not him."

Sheppard shrugged uncomfortably. "Uh hunh."

"Thank you, Major."

He watched the emotions chase over McKay's face, all of them out there for anyone to see if they only looked and realized part of what his counterpart had found so extraordinary about his McKay. All of the regrets John Sheppard had felt at the end welled up inside, all the things that he'd never said, never would and never could. He sucked in a deep breath. God, at least he remembered.

It all ate at him, seeping into his dreams and leaving him lying awake, rigid and tense, watching the water-ripple reflection from the windows on his ceiling. That had been him. But it wasn't and he didn't want the same things that John Sheppard had. He didn't.

He couldn't want the things he dreamed about.

When it got too bad, he found himself wandering the night-dimmed halls of the city. His footsteps took him into an empty corridor in the main tower, one his counterpart had known well. The doors to the room Rodney had shared with the other two slid open.

Sheppard hesitated there. Too many images from the past bombarded him. He turned and walked away, heading back into those parts of Atlantis that he knew and not the man who had made love with Elizabeth and Rodney in that room and listened to the song of numbers a crystal mind had sung or gasped with pleasure beneath his lovers' hands.

Because, Jesus, that wasn't him, but he – he couldn't breathe, remembering and wanting.

~*~

The nights stretched on forever. Weir had never slept very deeply on Atlantis, out of necessity as much as out of a constant wariness. Since receiving her double's memories, she barely slept at all. Lying on top of the sheets with her hands folded on her stomach and she remembered doing this before, even though she knew she never had. She was assaulted by flashes of memories – touch, smell, sight: A bright light consuming the universe, stabs of fear and paranoia, the feeling of being crushed and being unable to breathe under the weight of her thoughts. Madness, creeping in slowly, character flaws revealed she never knew she possessed. And then there was more – laughter and seriousness, then easy banter, bits of conversation, "Please, don't encourage him" – "You won't regret this. Trust me. All it will take is the Colonel and me –" "And me. I'm coming with you." – "It won't happen again. It was a glitch. It's fixed " – "Not in this universe or any other, Colonel." – "I'm so sick of all this death." – "She's not out to get you." – "You don't have to be alone. Let us – "

But she had been alone, in the beginning and the end, though Weir realized the two men had tried. They'd just been too late, too intent on each other, to see what they were doing to Elizabeth. Too many pieces of all of them had been broken to ever fit together right.

She made an effort to stop the memory flood there, with the words. But the sense memory intruded every time, the flashes of skin and dark hair against her skin and lips against her thigh, and four hands holding her and both of them kissing her everywhere. She had vivid memories of how Major – Colonel – Sheppard's mouth tasted and how Rodney McKay sounded when he came and this wasn't right, she shouldn't know any of this and didn't want to know any of this, because they were her team and off-limits, but… Weir wanted to let go of her control and accept the flood of pictures, feeling warmth sweeping through her body. It would feel good to have hands caressing her skin, even if they were the hands of ghosts. She folded her hands tighter, feeling her fingertips leaving bruises. She wouldn't. She couldn't. But the mirage of Major – Colonel – Sheppard was trailing those distracting lips along her throat and she could smell his hair and his skin. She could feel Rodney McKay's never-still hands on her belly, caressing, stroking higher.

Not that those were the worst memories, the worst memories stayed quiet until she slept. Then she dreamed of darts screaming between the city's towers, of silver culling beams, desiccated corpses still recognizable as friends and Lt. Ford's face transformed, of quarantines, mushroom clouds, of solar plasma and Rodney's Oh God, of crystal and cold watching from behind John's eyes as he shoved her from the memory core vault, of the stargate killing her for ten thousand years, of the end of everything.

When she slept, she dreamed of the universe dying, and woke up screaming. Elizabeth had never screamed. She had never wept. Weir did every night, for Elizabeth, for all of them.

Weir groaned quietly and rolled to her stomach, burying her head against the pillow. Sex or destruction or maybe both. Sometimes she hated the woman who had left those memories for her. She had no idea how to look Sheppard and McKay in the eyes in the morning. But then again – and the thought sobered her up faster than anything – she hadn't been able to do that directly after the memories had been downloaded into their brains. Not after she had learned what her double had done and learned what their doubles had done. She couldn't even comprehend how they were coping. She had killed Rodney. Had killed the AI and wasn't sorry for that at all, even though she had guessed it would devastate John. Elizabeth Weir, and yet not her. Another timeline, another woman, another life. The same fears and worries, the same dreams and hopes and delights. Her and not her.

She stared out into the darkness of her room and tried to imagine the three of them together, until the pain blooming in her was almost physical. There had never been a place for her.

Weir stood up slowly, putting on a snug shirt and a long, comfortable skirt she had bartered from the Athosians. The skirt was a rebellion of sorts. Wearing it meant being Weir the woman rather than Weir the leader in her expedition uniform. At the same time, it made her feel closer to that Elizabeth, the one who had been trapped and lonely and lost, trying to do her best, in Atlantis under the sea. No one else was ever going to understand that woman or sympathize with her, no one else was going to argue her case to history.

Dressed, she left her quarters and began walking. The skirt swished against her calves.

The corridors were long and empty, and she was glad that no one met her on her walk in the dead of the night. The water columns still bubbled, the dim emergency lights still glowed, her steps scuffed softly over the floors, but the sense of something inhabiting Atlantis was not there. The city was like a beautiful Nautilus shell, but the creature that lived within was long gone. All that was left of that inhuman presence was the sound of the sea, nothing more than an echo of a heartbeat.

Major Sheppard would never cock his head to the side, his eyes going distant, as he communed with the city's daemon. It would never possess him the way it took John Sheppard. It would never seduce Dr. McKay the way it did Rodney. The way it would have taken and changed everyone who possessed the ATA gene, from Carson Beckett to Dr. Kusanagi to Sgt. Markham.

She wasn't sorry at all for what her double did to the AI.

Not for that.

No lights flickered on for her when she entered the chair room, but she knew her way around here, didn't need the light.

She stepped forward slowly, with hesitation, even though deep down she knew that nothing would harm her here, in fact nothing ever had, even to her double. But Elizabeth always considered this room to belong to the AI and the feeling remained.

She'd go to the stasis room, if only she could, but Col. Sumner had guards on its door and although they would let her in, they would also report her nocturnal visit. She had no desire to explain any of the sorrows she'd inherited to Sumner.

The memories there might overwhelm her, anyway. The harm in the chair room had already been done. There was nothing left to fear.

Weir walked two more steps, then stretched out her hand, finding the cool surface of the control-chair. She breathed for a while, just breathed, tried to shut the other Elizabeth's memories away, finally admitting they wouldn't ever go completely. But the AI was already destroyed and that had to be enough.

She truly didn't know if McKay or Sheppard could ever understand why she'd done all of it. Weir dropped her head until it rested against the chair's back and forced the memories to subside. This was her, Elizabeth Weir, of this timeline. She was in charge, she was not going to lose herself in regret for what another woman had never really had.

She thought of John Sheppard sitting in this chair. She thought of Rodney. She thought of both of them with Elizabeth on that last sunny day on Athos, of the terrible inevitability of their end, as if that joy, the connection the two men had forged, had carried a curse, because it admitted no place for anyone outside them.

Did Major Sheppard and Dr. McKay ache the way she did? Weir sighed. Very possibly it was worse for them. Beckett said that they experienced the downloaded memories even more vividly.

Would the two of them reprise their doubles' relationship? What would happen if they did? The circumstances were different for both men. They weren't isolated or desperate; they didn't need to save each other. There were dangers now that they hadn't faced then, risks to their careers, their images of themselves, and even danger from others if they were found out.

She pinched the bridge of her nose.

One thing she didn't remember was how her double had felt when she discovered her actions had killed Rodney. For that she was grateful beyond measure. Reliving that moment over and over would be too much. Major Sheppard's gaze returned to McKay constantly, as if to reassure himself, and she guessed he replayed the last hour of his double's life obsessively. They didn't have a psychiatrist with them on this expedition; Kate Heightmeyer had been in an auto accident outside the Springs three days before they embarked. Otherwise she would order them all into therapy. Though she suspected Major Sheppard would only tell a therapist what he knew would get him cleared fastest, while McKay would talk so much it all became a blur. Neither of them would reveal the truth or how they felt about it. She wouldn't herself: it was too personal and at the same time a secret not hers at all.

Not having to talk about it was a relief in many ways. The only ones who would ever understand were McKay and Sheppard.

She was in charge. She was responsible. Maybe responsible for this, too. If she hadn't okayed the use of the memories, they never would have known. And they would have been better off not knowing. But it wouldn't have given her the chance to do what she came here to do.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the empty, dark room. She was. Sorry she agreed to using the memory devices, sorry for three lost souls, sorry her double wasn't strong enough to find another way, sorry there was no other way.

But there wasn't anything she could do for the dead, except take what she could learn from their mistakes, and use that to help herself, along with McKay and Sheppard, whatever choices they made with the knowledge they'd been given.

There was nothing for her in this room. Her life didn't lie in the past. She still had an expedition to run, all of her people to look after. Whatever happened, she would take it as it came. If fate had currents that took them in certain directions, they still had free will. Nothing was inevitable.

She walked back to her quarters feeling a measure of peace. Whatever choices Sheppard and McKay made, she would hold true to herself.

~*~

McKay actually walked into three different people before the illusion that they were all ghosts let go. Zelenka was the last one and glared at McKay so venomously he actually muttered an apology before retreating from the lab. It was almost a relief to get out. He'd already spent several hours writing up reports describing exactly what each object in the lab was and did, all the mysteries and secrets of them already plumbed by the other Rodney first. The dissonance between his own memories and those others gave him a pounding headache after a while. All the pleasure of discovery was gone.

Without thinking about it, his path took him along the wrong corridor, to the door of the other Rodney's room. It opened for him and he stared inside. Atlantis' perfect temperature and environmental systems had preserved the contents. Not that there were many, just a wool blanket, the pattern hand-woven rather than printed, the colors remarkably pure.

A picture of John and Elizabeth curled under that blanket assaulted McKay. Bared shoulders, bare skin, one spooned against the other, both asleep in his bed. McKay's breath caught. The image had made Rodney ache and he'd sat on the edge of the bed, stroking his hand over the vulnerable, sharp bone of John's ankle, where the blanket had pulled up from his foot. John murmured against Elizabeth's neck. Rodney had tucked the blanket back over John's foot, then equally carefully slid under it and next to John. Their bodies had fit together with sleepy perfection.

He shook his head, trying to force the other man's memories down. He didn't need this, God, he didn't need this. Major Sheppard would deck him and Elizabeth Weir was simply not available. This wasn't appropriate. It was fantasy fodder, sure, but it was also real people who had lived and died. People who weren't the people he lived and worked with everyday, no matter that they shared the same names and faces. They weren't and he had to remember that.

Nothing could make him leave the blanket behind, however.

He couldn't find the feather.

~*~

"Major Sheppard," she greeted him. The door to her office off the gate room slid shut behind him.

"Ma'am," he said, assuming a parade rest position, expression wary.

"Sit," she invited. It wasn't going to make him relax, but at least she wouldn't crick her neck looking up at him from her side of the desk.

His gaze flickered and he gracefully sat in one of the two chairs opposite her. He looked bruised, like he hadn't been sleeping well… or at all. Weir had to swallow, thinking of the things that might be keeping him awake. It was hard to meet those hazel eyes. Not just because of the memories she had of her other self and his counterpart. It was the distrust and pain that he tried to hide when he looked at her that hurt.

The one thing she didn't remember and McKay never knew was what John Sheppard, the other one, had felt when he was left alone, left to discover Rodney dead along with his beloved AI, all the hope they'd worked to create snatched away at the whim of madness. She didn't know, but the scars her own memories had left her with told her the wounds were deep.

He looked at her, waiting, and she realized she'd been silent too long.

She'd meant to reassure him, remind him she wasn't that Elizabeth Weir and that the experiences they'd relived would serve as a warning, would make sure nothing happened the same way again. But nothing she said would salvage his trust in her, if Major Sheppard had trusted her to begin with, considering the pressure she'd arranged to get him on this expedition in the first place.

She folded her hands together on the top of her desk. Well. This was much harder than she'd anticipated.

"I wanted to ask how you're doing, Major?"

"Just fine, ma'am," he said, tone light, with perfect military courtesy, expression a blank that gave away nothing.

Weir forced a smile, knowing it looked strained. "Personally, I've found it… difficult, dealing with the memories, and I understand from Dr. Beckett that the download probably provided you with a much more intense experience because of the ATA gene."

He didn't answer.

"If we had a psychologist with us, I'd suggest you and Dr. McKay," she paused, then added, "and myself, might benefit from talking about how we feel, but that's not really an option."

"No, ma'am," Sheppard said very quietly. He wasn't quite looking at her any longer, his gaze averted slightly to the side. She saw his throat work. The abrupt sensory memory of how that felt under her lips almost made her gasp. She pushed the thought away. For a variety of reasons, she had no right to think of this man in that way. Certainly, he would never welcome any attention from her.

She leaned forward, the movement drawing his eyes back to her. "Major Sheppard, I wanted to assure you that I will never violate either your own personal privacy or the memories of our counterparts. What passed between them was not for reports to the SGC, for their sakes and ours."

He nodded stiffly. "Thank you, Dr. Weir."

That was progress. No more 'ma'am', at least. She decided to forge ahead.

"If there were anything between Dr. McKay and yourself – "

Sheppard flinched and blurted out, "There's nothing. He – I'm – We aren't. We haven't." He looked ready to bolt from her office. "We're not them. You know – ," here he covered his eyes with his hand briefly, then faced her again. "You know."

"I know," she said. "I thought I would mention that I do not agree with US military policy on the issue and while I would never encourage anyone to disregard regulations… " She trailed off.  Sheppard watched her, arms folded over his chest. His head tipped. She shrugged and smiled with a hint of humor. "I would do my best to make sure no one ever brought up the subject of said regulations, provided the people in question were discreet."

Sheppard's eyebrow rose. "Good to know." He stood. "Is that all?"

She nodded, letting him escape her presence, but he paused with the door still closed and turned around.

"Major?"

"I don't know how to describe this," he said. His hand opened then closed loosely and he frowned at it. "Atenë was…" Sheppard scrubbed at his hair. "The AI?"

"What about it?" she asked carefully. This had to be a minefield. She had no idea why he'd brought it up when he obviously didn't want to talk with her.

"It was in his head, all the time, not like just being aware of the equipment the way I am," his words picked up speed and Weir leaned forward, "the way he was before."

He palmed the door control rather than triggering it mentally. Half-turned away, in profile to Weir, he said bitterly, "She said the AI was in bed with them. He didn't even realize she was right."

She could think of nothing to say before he walked out.

~*~


"Jeannie!"

He woke up screaming. He'd destroyed the universe, all that he had left was this city, was Elizabeth's scorn during the day and Sheppard's silent, unwilling comfort during the night.

But Sheppard wasn't there. John, John, John, with his wounded, tired eyes had left him. Rodney clutched the sheets and whimpered. Left him alone with the revenants, the incarnations of his guilt, because Rodney had betrayed him, betrayed the trust Sheppard had given him.

He was so cold.

So cold… Nothing could make up for what he had done, nothing would ever even the scales, he deserved the punishment of losing his mind, the mind he took so much pride in, because he'd been too proud to admit it could all go wrong.

He grabbed the blanket draped over the foot of his bed and pulled it around his shoulders, rocking himself, staring at the wall. The soft wool didn't smell of anything. It settled around him light as a drift of feathers. Soft as Elizabeth's fingers on his cheek, soft as John's whispers in the night, when the three of them curled together.

McKay blinked and sucked in a harsh breath. That – that was not a memory, that was a nightmare, just one of the hells his counterpart had endured every night. An ache filled his chest.

Sleeping again was impossible. He couldn't face even the possibility of having another nightmare like that. He didn't have anyone to sit with him and ward away the horrors and his quarters were too small, cramped and smothering. McKay scrambled off the bed and dressed, desperate to escape the room's confines.

He didn't know where he was going, but he had to get out.

~*~

He ran across Sheppard wandering Atlantis halls late in the night, well past the twenty-eight hour terminator and into the new day.

Sheppard brushed his hand along one of the bubbling water conduits, an unconscious lover's caress that caught at something inside McKay. All of the other Rodney's memories were right there in his mind. He knew exactly how that hand felt on his flesh. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Jesus. He wasn't gay. He wasn't going to turn gay for Major John Sheppard, either. Not that the Major was offering. Because they weren't John and Rodney and Elizabeth. They were Major Sheppard and Dr. McKay and Dr. Weir, who happened to have those memories… But it wasn't the same thing at all. He'd keep telling himself until he believed it, as long as Sheppard and Weir did, too. But if either one of them touched him, McKay wasn't sure what he'd do.

Sheppard glanced over his shoulder at McKay. Green light limned his dark hair and caught on his cheekbones. His eyes were bruised dark.

"She's never going to wake up."

Atenë. He remembered what it had been like to fly in that elegantly logical machine mind, to see with sensors, to process data the way his involuntary nervous system regulated breath and heartbeat. To, for the only time in his life, meet and play with another mind that matched his, the freedom the AI had offered him. He hated that other Rodney for an instant, because he'd had that.

Sheppard's hand was still spread over the transparent conduit, fingers spread wide. McKay resisted the impulse to touch. Instead, he followed a line of rising bubbles with his eyes.

"No," McKay agreed. "I'm sorry."

Sheppard nodded slowly. He looked away and McKay could see the tension in his back, the careful set of his shoulders. His hand fell to his side.

"That might be a good thing."

McKay stared at him. "What?"

"Calling her – the AI – by a name didn't make it human. That was just a construct, part of the hardware-to-wetware interface." Sheppard leaned his forehead against the conduit. "It changed things in his head."

"What – ? My God." McKay wanted to prop himself against a wall, too. The temptation to run away and find someplace where he could think was strong. Did he have tore-examine every memory? Was Sheppard saying the AI had been responsible for their doubles' relationship? Or that Elizabeth had made the right decision, though it ultimately killed the three of them? He wanted to look at Sheppard's face, as though the answers would be there for him to see.

His wish was granted as Sheppard pushed himself away from the conduit and turned to face him, his hand still splayed over the transparent column. But Sheppard's expression was  unreadable.

"I'm sorry for, uhm, you know." Sheppard's hand moved. "For being such a bastard, I guess."

McKay blinked. "You," he asked, "or him?"

Sheppard chuckled. "Both?"

"Well, I, ah – " McKay waved his hand.

Sheppard turned and smirked. "Just say apology accepted, McKay."

McKay glared at him. "Maybe it isn't," he said.

"Oh, come on."

"Okay."

Sheppard smiled a little, one side of his mouth quirking up first, then the other.

Without conscious thought, they fell into step together, heading toward one of the transporters.

"So, what has you out at," Sheppard checked his watch, "0300?"

McKay winced. "Dreams."

"Dreams like dreams or dreams like nightmares?"

"Yes, okay, nightmares. Happy?"

"Not really," Sheppard admitted.

The doors slid open for him as they arrived. They stepped inside and Sheppard hovered his finger over the city display on the wall. "Where to, anyway?"

"My lab. If I'm going to be awake, I may as well get something done."

Sheppard nodded and touched the display, indicating their destination. There wasn't time to blink. The doors slid open and they were facing the corridor leading to McKay's main lab.

Sheppard followed him out.

"Why were you wandering the halls?" McKay asked.

Sheppard shrugged. "Dreams."

"Oh, yeah." McKay hesitated, then said, "Come on, you can at least keep me supplied with coffee."

"I'm so touched, McKay."

"Whatever."

They fell into step with each other again as they exited the transporter. Zelenka found them both in the morning: McKay slumped face down over his keyboard, Sheppard half-draped over a lab table with his face pillowed on his arms. Scrawls of esoteric equations that described ZPM functions covered every whiteboard in the lab, many of them not in McKay's hand, but a loopy chicken scratch that belonged to the Major.

McKay woke abruptly when Zelenka exclaimed in Czech, snarling at him, "Touch any of that and I'll make you shine the Marines' boots with your nose, Zeppo!"

Sheppard lurched to his feet, eyes barely slitted open, fumbling for the Beretta strapped to his leg.

"Stop, stop, stop!" Zelenka bleated.

Sheppard blinked at him, swaying on his feet, and then looked at the heavy black watch on his wrist. He groaned. "I have a meeting with Colonel Sumner in less than thirty minutes."

McKay pointed at the equations. "I think this is a little bit more important than counting bullets, Major."

Sheppard scrubbed at his beard-shadowed face, frowning. "You wouldn't say that if you ever ran out of ammo in a firefight, McKay."

"Perhaps not, but I do know that figuring out how to nurse more life from the one ZPM still powering this city is critical."

Sheppard shrugged. "I've got to go."

McKay was looking at the whiteboards. "Zinky," he said. "Go get me some coffee."

"What am I, your maid?" Zelenka griped, before heading for the lab coffee pot.

"You, Major, go, go. Then get back here. You have a better memory of what our counterparts learned from the AI, I need you working on this with me."

"I'll tell the Colonel," Sheppard said. He stretched and yawned, then ambled toward the door. "I'll see you at lunch, Rodney."

"Uhm, yes, whatever," McKay muttered, beginning to type into his laptop again. "Busy here." He blindly reached out and snagged the mug of coffee Zelenka offered, without leaving off typing with the other hand.

Sheppard tossed a mocking salute to Zelenka and the lab door shut behind him.

"I saw that," McKay snapped at Zelenka.

"The Major is not the man you thought he was, is he?" Zelenka observed.

McKay slurped down a searing, bitter gulp of coffee. "He's exactly who I think he is," he said.

"Then maybe you have changed."

"What? No. Just because…" McKay stopped, set the mug down and scrubbed at his face wearily. "It's impossible to separate him from the other one or what I think from that other me."

"Perhaps you should talk to someone."

"Perhaps you should mind your own business, Zelenka, and leave my private life alone!"

"Private life?" Zelenka asked.

"They were friends, okay? John was my… his… friend, even after my counterpart made the most horrendous mistake in the history of mistakes. That's not something I can forget." McKay paused. "And, yes, amazing though it might seem to you, I do have a private life, Zelenka."

"It's no business of mine, you are right," Zelenka said.

"Right, so go to work."

"Of course, Rodney."

"I never said you could call me Rodney."

"The Major called you Rodney."

"Yes, well, that's different."

Zelenka raised his eyebrows but let it go. Moments later, McKay was so intent on his work, he'd forgotten  the conversation entirely.

~*~

Lt. Ford was shaking his head as Sumner and Dr. Weir seated themselves at the mess hall table.

"Lieutenant?" Sumner asked, curious about what had his officer so perturbed.

Ford gave Dr. Weir a wall-eyed look, swallowed, and answered. "It's them. It's just freaky." He nodded to a corner table, where Major Sheppard and Dr. McKay were eating together amiably. McKay was eating and talking at the same time, while Sheppard listened and nodded and smiled in his laid-back fashion. "They're, like, joined at the hip lately. Didn't they hate each other back at the SGC?"

Dr. Weir choked on her coffee. Sumner handed her a napkin. When she'd dabbed her mouth and her top, she nodded at Sumner. "Thank you."

Sumner watched the two men at the other table. Their attitude toward each other had certainly changed. Frankly, while he could understand Ford's puzzlement, he found the two men's odd, new found friendship a good thing. They still sniped at each other, but without the real venom they'd had toward each other before. It was a relief.

A fork clattered to the floor.

"Oh my God!" McKay's voice had risen so loud everyone in the mess looked toward the two men. Even Sheppard was staring at McKay. "The ZPMs!"

Sumner saw whatever it was hit Sheppard, too, some realization that lit the man up from the inside. A wide smile graced his face.

"Yes, yes, of course, it's so obvious, now that I realize it," McKay snapped, but he looked so… thrilled and amazed even Sumner felt excited. He bounced to his feet and grabbed Sheppard's wrist, dragging him up, too. "Sheppard, you remember, don't you?"

"I told you, I remember everything. Stick me in the command chair and I can even access the database faster than anything we've got hooked up. I'll miss the neuronal interface, but it'll still work."

"I could kiss you, Sheppard."

Sheppard laughed. "Not here, McKay."

"Right, right, never mind, come on. We can do this. We can build our own ZPMs."  McKay tugged Sheppard toward the mess hall doors, utterly oblivious to the stares. "Quit dawdling, I need you to run the numbers. We'll get Zelenka and Simpson and that big Kiwi, what's his name, the one who specializes in materials processes…"

He never let go of Sheppard's wrist and Sheppard trotted after him, managing a half turn and a wave at Sumner as they went.

Sumner turned back only to see Weir blinking back tears while she smiled so wide it must have hurt.

"ZPMs," he repeated.

ZPMs were just the holy grail of every off-planet mission they ran, the key to protecting the city and themselves from the Wraith and getting them all home to Earth.

"I remember," Weir said. She looked transformed, transcendent with joy and relief and something Sumner thought was awe. "They discovered how the Ancients made and charged ZPMs. That's why they left the memory recordings."

She met his eyes. "To save Atlantis. To redeem themselves and save us."

He looked back at her. "If those two can do it, ma'am, then your counterparts sure as hell redeemed themselves. They did real good."

Sumner was surprised when she sighed and spoke again. "Lt. Ford? Would you mind if the Colonel and I spoke privately for a moment?"

"No, ma'am," Ford said, looking curious but cooperatively picking up his tray and relocating out of earshot.

"Doctor?" Sumner prompted after Ford had gone.

She smiled, though her eyes didn't reflect much happiness, and played nervously with her spoon. "I'd thought my double made a horrible mistake in leaving those recordings for us to download."

"You did?" He'd thought it himself, even though the tactical information they'd been able to glean, particularly from Sheppard, about the situation in the Pegasus Galaxy, looked to be invaluable. There were a dozen missteps they would avoid thanks to that knowledge. But the cost, personally to the Major and Dr. McKay, along with Dr. Weir, had seemed high too him.

"Yes."

The spoon clinked against Weir's tray, the sound seeming loud, and she muffled it swiftly with her hand. Sumner studied her. She was thinner than she'd been before the memory download. Not sleeping, and he didn't have to guess, he had the security reports that mentioned her, along with McKay and Sheppard, wandering through the city during the night hours.

"But not now?"

The doorway McKay dragged Sheppard through seemed suddenly fascinating. Weir sighed again. "No, I don't have that memory, but I think she left them deliberately. They were meant as a failsafe, a last ditch way to leave something for us to find, if the stasis pods failed. Though none of them anticipated the way they failed…"

"You agree the Artificial Intelligence was a threat?" he asked.

"I'm convinced she believed so and a conversation I had with Major Sheppard lends weight to that conviction."

Sumner didn't approve of some mechanical brain built by aliens – which the Ancients were, even if they did look human – turning people into cyborgs, either. "Beckett's going to do the autopsy on Sheppard's double this week, isn't he?"

"I think Dr. Biro will be in charge of the actual autopsy, but yes, the medical department is ready to get the bodies out of stasis," Weir confirmed.

"Are you going to let Sheppard and McKay see the results?"

"If they ask."

Sumner nodded. "Are you still having problems with Major Sheppard?"

Weir narrowed her eyes. "Not in the sense you mean, Colonel. I'm never going to be his favorite person, considering I had him coerced into joining this expedition."

"You did?"

"You may not have realized, but other than General O'Neill, who could not be spared from Earth, Major Sheppard is the first person we've discovered who can really control the Ancient technology through his gene, rather than simply activate it. We were increasingly concerned that if we reached Atlantis, we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything, until Major Sheppard's facility with the equipment was revealed. He wasn't offered much choice about accompanying us, I'm afraid," Weir explained.

Sumner made a note to himself to re-evaluate Sheppard's attitude with that in mind. It explained a great deal about his 2iC.

"I'm not sorry I did that," she said. She set the spoon down on her tray. "I'm more like my double than I'd like to think."

"Second thoughts after the fact don't help much, ma'am," Sumner said.

~*~

She'd been awake all night, trying to write the eulogies for three lives lost now that Carson had finally, after six weeks, allowed the bodies to be cremated.

She'd read the autopsy report on John Sheppard, Colonel, USAF three times and quizzed Carson to make sure she understood what he and Biro had found. He wouldn't commit to it, but Biro had been sure: if Sheppard hadn't suffocated in the stasis pod, he would have died of neurological damage caused by the failure of the implants in his brain. Without the AI maintaining the connection and taking over some of the functions his brain could no longer handle, Sheppard would have died anyway.

"It would've got worse and worse for the man, until he just couldn't function at all," Carson had told her. "He'd have been aware of it all, too. A bad way to go, Dr. Weir, no question of that. The way he died was a sight more peaceful."

She'd tried to decide whether Major Sheppard needed to know that, and failed, and finally concluded she would let him ask Beckett if he was interested.

She'd tried to find some words to sum up everything. Had tried and tried, staring blankly at the screen and hoping to come up with something meaningful and deep and fitting. Instead the images of John and Rodney and the memories of Elizabeth had flooded her and she'd had to fight tears. She hadn't cried in years and she wouldn't start now. But the feelings ran so deep, Elizabeth's and now her's, it made her choke.

She spent the rest of the night fighting for equilibrium, reliving memories of Rodney holding her and John brushing her hair, of the both of them making her come three and four times under the hot Athosian sun and then starting all over again when the night sank upon them, of John touching and making love to Rodney and her watching with their consent, caressing them both, of Rodney cooking and John teasing and all the while she tried and failed to differentiate between them and McKay and Sheppard. She had no idea how to face them, was sure they'd know as soon as they looked at her.

In the morning, when she stepped out onto the balcony next to Sheppard and McKay, the urn in her hands as she remembered Elizabeth doing with her first timeline's double, she still hadn't written one word.

Her counterpart's ash trickled through her fingers as she spread her hand and it drifted over Atlantis. She found it ironic that the other Elizabeth Weir would be united in death with the city she had both loved and hated so much. Maybe she should have kept the ashes in the hope that someday she could send them back to Earth. Only who would she send them to? It was the same for the other two. Whatever family they'd had to mourn them wouldn't while they still existed in this timeline. It was better to lay them to rest here, where the expedition force at least knew of them and their sacrifices. Small pieces of bone grated against Weir's palm when she took another handful of the ash. Just small pieces. All that was left of an entire life.

In the end, she was glad that she had passed on the eulogy. McKay and Sheppard flanked her and among them, she didn't need any words. She knew how they had to feel, even though they didn't openly display any emotions.

Behind them, in the control room, Sumner, Grodin and Zelenka were handling a fully powered city. They would dial Earth tomorrow, and she felt a thrill of excitement that was all the other Elizabeth Weir, and hardly herself. After all, she had just been gone from Earth for a few months. There had hardly been time to miss it.

Weir raised her face to the early morning sun and her gaze slid over the wide expanse of ocean around the city. In the distance, the shield rippled like a fata morgana, projecting images from a life she hadn't lived, explosions in a beautiful fiery red, blooming like deadly roses. Her left hand clenched around the urn. Not her. This was not her memory. This never happened here.

Next to her, McKay swayed and reached a hand to cover his face briefly. When he pulled it away, a fleck of ash clung to his eyebrow. She felt the overwhelming urge to brush it away, but was afraid what would happen if she did. This wasn't Elizabeth's Rodney. This was McKay. She was Dr. Weir. What had been wasn't hers, not theirs. For a moment, however, when she looked at the pain she could suddenly read so much more clearly behind McKay's usual mask of scorn and contempt, she regretted that. Elizabeth had loved Rodney. She had loved John, too.

And yet, in the end, she had killed both of them without ever meaning to. Killed them to ensure the future she now lived in.

Elizabeth Weir shivered.

Billows of ashes met in the air over Atlantis when all three of them opened their palms one last time, eerily simultaneous, and Weir had to swallow around the lump in her throat at the symbolism of that final goodbye.

Brushing her hands against each other carefully, she murmured, "My soul to keep."

McKay's voice was distant when he whispered, "Thank you."

Sheppard held himself rigid, didn't say a thing. But out of the corner of her eye, she could see his mouth form a silent: "Amen."

~*~

All those timelines, each decision and omission creating another branch, another way everything went…

Sometimes it went like this:

The others had all gone inside again, chased by the cold ocean wind. Only McKay stayed out with him, watching the alien horizon bleed lilac and tangerine and green as Atlantis' sun sank beneath the sea. Sheppard hunched his shoulders in his jacket and leaned over the balcony railing.

"He shouldn't have given up," McKay said abruptly.

Sheppard jerked. "Who?"

"You. Him. He should have repaired his stasis pod or used one of the others. He didn't have to die."

He looked at his hands, locked tight on the railing, reliving his counterpart's memories. Even second hand, the pain of loss and betrayal still knifed through him, making his throat close. His voice was rough and sharp. "You don't know. It was – it was bad, McKay."

McKay watched him silently. "I know how the other me felt."

Sheppard twisted to the side and looked back at him. His throat had gone dry. "We're not them."

"No, we're not," McKay agreed with him. His mouth turned down. He still watched Sheppard.

Sheppard looked back. He moistened his lips. He thought he'd done a lot of things that took guts, but he'd never taken this big a chance. He was going to fly or he was going to fall. He finally mustered his courage and got the words out, "We could be."

McKay closed his eyes. "Sheppard," he said, "we're not them. I remember, too, but – "

It was a long, long fall.

Sheppard nodded, hiding the sick jolt, the feeling he knew so damned well, the one that came right after he'd made a huge mistake. It was familiar by now. He faked a smile and said casually, "And you're not gay."

"No, I'm not, and neither are you," McKay replied.

Sheppard switched his gaze back to the horizon, to the line of pale lemon and green light fading upwards into indigo and the vast curtain of stars flaring to life as the night came down. He was deeply grateful for the dusk and the gentle way it hid what his expression couldn't. He'd asked and been answered. He'd get over it.

"Sheppard – "

He hadn't known McKay could sound that damned gentle. Except, of course, he did know, he remembered exactly how McKay could sound. He squeezed his eyes shut and let his head fall forward. "Don't."

"Major."

Sheppard raised his head again, feeling all the muscles in his neck and back going tense.

"You're in the Air Force and, with the ZPMs, we're going to be back in regular contact with Earth."

"I'm not arguing with you, McKay," he said.

"Oh. Good."

He saw McKay rub his arms and look longingly at the doors, his gaze finding Dr. Weir where she was standing beside Col. Sumner and Peter Grodin. Sheppard schooled himself not to react. He should have realized. If not one, then the other.

"I'll just – I'll just head back inside. There's work to do in the lab. Kavanagh – "

"Yeah." Sheppard didn't move.

"Well. Yes. Good night, Major."

"Good night, Dr. McKay," Sheppard replied gravely.

He stayed out on the balcony long after McKay had gone, feeling the ocean cold sink into his bones.

McKay was right, of course. He almost always was. They were all going to have a chance to get back to Earth soon. Everything would change. Sheppard would probably be reassigned anyway, but if he wasn't, he could take O'Neill up on that promotion he'd been promised or he could resign.

He wouldn't come back to Atlantis again, whatever happened, he already knew that.


Sometimes it went like this:

The others had all gone inside again, chased by the cold ocean wind. Only Sheppard stayed out, and McKay stayed with him, watching the alien horizon bleed lilac and tangerine and green as Atlantis' sun sank beneath the sea. Sheppard hunched his shoulders in his jacket and leaned over the balcony railing.

"He shouldn't have given up," McKay said abruptly.

Sheppard jerked. "Who?"

"You. Him. He should have repaired his stasis pod or used one of the others. He didn't have to die."

Sheppard looked down at his hands, locked tight on the railing, obviously reliving his counterpart's memories. His voice was rough and sharp. "You don't know. It was – it was bad, McKay."

McKay watched him silently. "I know how the other me felt." The way he'd learned to feel all over again. What he didn't know was how Sheppard felt now.

Sheppard twisted to the side and looked back at him. His voice was dry. "We're not them."

"No, we're not," McKay agreed. His mouth turned down. He still watched Sheppard. "We could be."

His eyes met Sheppard's gaze, the act of asking the question offering his own answer to it, waiting for whatever Sheppard decided. If Sheppard said no, that would be the end of it, they'd find a different equilibrium, not what their other selves had been, but not what they'd been before, either.

He waited, expecting Sheppard to say no, watching pain and hope speed over his features, realizing he was probably the only one who could read anything past the mask Sheppard usually kept in place. Whatever the answer was, it wasn't easy. It couldn't be, McKay knew. Sheppard remembered everything.

Maybe it would be better to go. Why make Sheppard say it? He'd go inside, have a drink with Weir. Have a lot of drinks with Weir, maybe even go to bed with her if she got drunk, too. Or not, because that would hurt worse than this did.

He wondered why he'd even said it, when he knew what Sheppard's answer would be but, still, he offered.

Sheppard's words were so quiet they were almost lost against the sound of the sea and the wind, as though he could barely get them out.

"We could be."

He wanted to laugh and grab Sheppard and kiss him, or just take his hand and hold onto it, but he couldn't, because anyone could see them. So he smiled.

He smiled and Sheppard smiled back, a smile McKay had never seen before, but one he remembered.


Or began again, like this:

She hadn't had time to breathe or think since dialing Earth; the day passed in a whirl without a moment to stop and take stock. Doctor Weir, expedition leader, remained busy even as evening fell and the rest of her people kicked a celebration into gear.

Hours later, the party was still in full swing. Hoarded goods had been broken out, secret booze stocks shared, along with treats and delicacies supplied by their new Athosian allies, and the botanists were passing suspicious cigarettes back and forth in an alcove off the gate room. Music from the library the anthropologists had insisted on bringing filled the control tower and piped over the comms. Lieutenant Ford was dancing with Dr. Dumais and Weir had overheard Beckett trying to explain a sword dance to one of the Athosians, with copious interjections and mocking by Dr. Zelenka. Even Colonel Sumner looked relaxed.

She loved seeing the expedition members so enthusiastic and everyone so infectiously happy, but she couldn't completely share the elation. For her, the day, that had begun with ashes, was bittersweet at best. She'd only glimpsed McKay and Sheppard when everyone toasted them, before they'd escaped out onto a balcony. Then they had disappeared.

She excused herself after another hour, claiming to have reports to write for the White House and the Pentagon, as well as the SGC. Those reports were written days ago and had been delivered in the first data transmissions. No one but Peter Grodin knew that, however, and she could trust him not to blow her cover.

Wandering through the corridors of Atlantis like a sleepwalker, catching distant snatches of music, Weir drifted in the memories of another life. She'd believed that with the creation of the new ZPMs, and after the ceremonial release of their doubles' remains, there would be some kind of closure. Apparently, she'd been wrong. The memories still haunted her and might always, she realized. Sometimes, when she set foot inside a transporter, she came so close to the edges of a panic attack that she had to claw her fingernails into her palms to keep from bolting or screaming. That, for one,  might be with her forever.

She supposed it would get better once the halls of Atlantis were bustling with people and not just their small group. Two hundred people couldn't fill a city meant to hold millions. But for the moment, the quiet remained in those corners of the city that were still dark, despite three new, fully charged ZPMs. It reminded Weir of her other self and made her uneasy.

Weir tried to remember if there was ever a time when her counterpart had felt safe on Atlantis. A picture of John and Rodney curled around Elizabeth surfaced. She shook her head against the memory. That wasn't what she had wanted at all.

Walking faster, she barely noticed that she had entered an area of the city that was both unfamiliar and familiar to her.

She approached the doors slowly, hesitating with a hand against the cool metal. The doors to the city baths slid open, revealing their vast blue elegance. The sight, though she remembered it, was still breathtaking. The fresh green smell filled her lungs, but her breath caught in her throat. She almost believed she could hear the sound of laughter and water splashing.

The lights dimmed until only those under water still glowed and Weir could see through the glass wall facing outside.

Unlike in the past, the huge window was open and clear. It presented the indigo ocean at dusk, two moons rising from the horizon below the bright veil of the Pegasus Galaxy seen edge on, an endless vista beyond the beacon-brilliance of Atlantis opened like a lotus upon the star-spattered mirror of the water, like a star itself, shining on the sea.

With a sigh, she sank down along the edge of one of the pools, shedding her shoes, turning up her pants' cuffs and dangling her feet in the water. This was her dream, Atlantis brought to life again. A smile curved her lips up.

It was so overwhelming she missed that she wasn't alone, until movement on the glass wall resolved itself into a dim reflection approaching her. He stopped just to the side and behind her, near the edge of the pool. Weir watched his reflection and didn't turn her head. As though looking into the past, into the darkness, she could see him beside her, but couldn't reach him. Eventually, he sat down beside her.

When the words came, she knew she should have been prepared, but still wasn't.

"Why did she kill him?"

Weir closed her eyes. Cold sweat broke out along her spine. 

She tried to answer, but found her throat too dry to coax her vocal chords into cooperation. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see McKay's hands gripping the lip of the pool hard enough to turn his knuckles white. She had a desperate urge to run her fingertips over those knuckles, just to watch them relax again. She didn't and didn't let herself look up into his eyes, either. He might see too much.  He was only oblivious because he seldom bothered to pay attention to anyone, not because he couldn't be observant.

"My memories of her aren't as clear as yours," she said, finally.

McKay's head snapped around, an expression of disgust on his face. "You've lied better."

That accusation stung, even though he was right. "It's different. The device was obviously meant for use by people with the gene…"

"I don't have the gene, either. Only Sheppard does," McKay snapped. Something chased over his features when he mentioned Sheppard, but it was gone too quickly for Weir to analyze. "Yet I remember. Clearly."

"You don't, but Rodney did," she reminded him gently. "He'd had the gene therapy." She had spent many sleepless nights trying to understand why Major John Sheppard seemed to almost be Lt. Col. John Sheppard, and why Rodney McKay had so many more memories and emotions from the recording device than she had. The simplest solution took her the longest to figure out. "One plus zero is still one. Zero and zero remains zero. Elizabeth didn't have the gene in the first place. Nor do I. You can do the maths."

McKay seemed surprised for a moment, as he always was when he realized that Weir wasn't just what he degradingly referred to as a soft-science type. But his face darkened, sooner than she had expected.

"You still have her memories. Don't tell me that you don't remember why she killed him!"

His voice echoed in the vaults, an acid half-yell.

Weir pulled her feet out of the water and hugged her knees to her chest, searching for some comfort in the posture. The tiles felt cold under her toes and she curled her feet up. "What do you want me to say, Rodney?" she asked, aware of how tired her voice sounded. "That she was evil? That she was playing him? That she meant to kill him all along?"

She turned, but kept her eyes lowered, watching his mouth, unable to meet his glare. From the mutinous set of McKay's jaw, she doubted she was getting through to him. "If you have even half of the memories I have, you should know better than that. She loved him." She did look up at him directly, then, purposely searching his eyes and holding his gaze. One hand around her ankle, squeezing tight enough to hurt, she forced herself to continue and admit what she hadn't admitted before: "Do you really think that she meant to hurt either of them?"

She watched McKay's mind trip and stumble over the one word she had known would undo him.

"Meant?"

Weir didn't answer. He didn't need her to, she knew. Rodney McKay was a smart man.

"Are you telling me it was ..." He frowned.

"An accident."

"He died, and John did, and your double, because she wasn't smart enough to check the stasis pods after she destroyed the memory core?" His outrage rings back from the ceiling. "After everything that happened? That's almost worse than finding out Elizabeth wanted to kill him."

His anger and disgust would have been amusing if it hadn't involved Elizabeth. 

She forced herself to answer. "You don't really think that."

"I think I'd rather Elizabeth hadn't been so stupid!"

A wave of nausea rolled over Weir at his words. "Go read the autopsy on Col. Sheppard, Dr. McKay, before you decide what Elizabeth did was stupid."

She shivered violently, wrapped her arms around herself, and stared at the water.

"What?"

"If your – if Rodney hadn't died, if the stasis hadn't failed, we would all have had to watch John Sheppard die anyway."

"The neuronal interface?"

"According to Beckett, it would have failed over a period of weeks, without the AI maintaining its function, and killed him."

Time passed, an endless amount of time, or maybe only seconds. Only the tentative touch of hands on her shoulders, closing around them, thumbs on her collarbone. "Elizabeth?"

He grounded her in the here and now and she let the words tumble out. "I know that you feel the memories even stronger than I do, and that it must be worse for Major Sheppard. But they stop for you before he died."

Weir's breath caught when she brought the thought to its inevitable conclusion. Dear Lord, John had seen Rodney dead. Maybe both of them. Sheppard, who was so close to John that he was almost one and the same person, had seen that. Maybe he'd felt the beginning of the interface's degradation, too. If experiencing Elizabeth's memories was her personal torture, then living John Sheppard's end was another hell, one that froze her heart in her chest. A surge of pity for Sheppard rose through her that was so intense she experienced it as pain. She didn't know if she could ever fix what had been destroyed between her and Sheppard, but she had to try. McKay was already listening to her again; he understood. Maybe, given time, Sheppard might, too.

It would take strength, more strength than her counterpart had possessed, and time, but she would try, beginning now, with McKay.

"We're not them. We didn't do what they did. And we can't be held responsible for what they did." She stretched out her hands, palms up, and looked McKay straight in the eyes. "I did not kill you, Rodney."

His gaze drifted away from her, flickering over the water next to them. "I know." His voice sounded small.

"I still think what she did was right."

"Yay for you."

In front of them, full night had fallen, and Atlantis was bright against the dark, star-shot sky. Even the lights in the pools had dimmed, making their reflections appear dim and ghostly on the broad expanse of the window. The silence between them wasn't comfortable, there was still too much that wasn't said, too much hanging between them that Weir wasn't comfortable discussing, but she took comfort in McKay's continued presence.

"Can you go on working with me, after this?"

"What's the alternative? Going back to Earth?" he asked bitterly.

He was warm next to her, his breath steady. His scent – earthy, warm and familiar – overwhelmed her and made her want to crawl inside of him, make him a shield against everything inside her. She remembered the feel of Rodney's arms around Elizabeth and wanted to feel it herself. She had to stop. Those feelings belonged to the past. To another person.

"You'd be a star," she said. "The man who cracked the secret of the ZPMs."

"Yes, I would be," McKay agreed. "But I wouldn't be here."

"No."

"It'd be a lie, anyway. I didn't figure it out. He did."

She turned back toward the pool, trailing her left hand through the water, then pulling it out and watching the drops of water falling back on the even surface, creating slight ripples. For the first time, she saw that Rodney's legacy in those memories might be a bitter one for McKay. He would never know if he could have made those discoveries himself. The subdued sound of water kissing water was too loud, but still didn't drown out the sound of McKay's breathing. Faster than it had been before. Labored, somehow. Did every gift have to exact a price?

On the window, their reflections migrated into each other's space. She tried hard to concentrate on the outline of Atlantis' shining spires and distant piers through their translucent images, and not on McKay next to her. She forced herself to stop thinking, to just look at the dim and fragile shadows caught in the faux mirror of the glass.

"I miss her," he said quietly finally, and she felt the room around her sway. "I miss them."

But not John? she wondered, then thought, John wasn't gone, he was still there, in Sheppard.

A ripple went through the water and their semblances blurred. "Me, too," she said. "But we're not them." We're not them, but Sheppard is, really. The loneliness must eat away at him. She wondered if Sheppard would stay or not. Maybe he would run – that's what John would have done.

She saw his reflection touch her hand before she felt it. McKay's big hand closed around hers, engulfed it in warmth and strength, squeezing lightly. "No, we're not." He ran his thumb over the back of her hand, a promise of a caress that wasn't one just yet. "We could be."

She didn't answer. Didn't know what to answer. Didn't even look at him, just stared straight ahead at their mirror-images and the pale outline of their joined hands. Squeezed his hand back, refusing to acknowledge the almost-despair in the grip. It was too much and too little and impossible and still imperfect. It wasn't and never could be.

"I'm not her," she said, finally. She pulled her hand free of his. "I can't be who she was." I can't afford to be, don't want to be, she thought. Not even for what she had. It wasn't enough. She had obligations and ambitions and a life that wasn't reduced to taking the leftovers of another relationship or trying to recreate a failed one.

McKay's response came too quickly to have gone through his inner filter first. "Considering that I'm far too important to be killed, I really hope you're better at problem solving."

Her eyes widened and he grimaced almost immediately. "Sorry. I don't want you to be her. I want you to be you. I mean, obviously. Despite – " his hand wave took in the entire Pegasus Galaxy," – everything, I've enjoyed working for you. Especially now that I'm not worried you're going to try to kill me. Other than accidentally, because really, there's been too much of that already."

Weir found herself grinning despite herself and the situation. McKay's bluntness admitted no comforting lies and his regard for her had not changed, it seemed, after all. "Now would be a good time to shut up, Dr. McKay."

"Right, right," McKay mumbled and gave her an embarrassed smile.

There remained one question she hadn't asked before and it still burned in her too painfully to ignore. "What about Major Sheppard?"

McKay's breath hitched, but he didn't answer. Maybe he didn't have any answers. She closed her eyes for a long moment, hoping it would somehow help her find an epiphany on how to handle Sheppard.

When she opened her eyes again, a third shape had appeared in the dark window, a mere hair's breadth away from them but still in the shadows, more like an apparition than a living man.

John Sheppard's darkened reflection tipped his head toward Weir – maybe a nod, maybe just curiosity – and he moved around McKay, levering himself down next to him and dangling his long, narrow feet in the water as well. She wondered what he'd heard, but it didn't matter: she'd said nothing she regretted.

He gazed straight ahead, hands around the lip of the pool, a casual act that hid the strain of not bolting.

"So," he drawled.

McKay huffed in a non-verbal reply that Sheppard seemed to accept.

All three of them stared at the city that glimmered before them, through their dark reflections, into the night. She saw McKay wrap his hand around Sheppard's wrist and Sheppard subtly relax into that hold.

Weir allowed herself a small smile, reached out and took McKay's other hand, letting his fingers fold around hers.

They had time.

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