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Chapter Text

John dragged the back of his hand across his forehead, trying to clear the sweat dripping into his eyes. Even in the shade of the open tent, it was well over a hundred degrees. The air was bone dry, as was the baked red earth all around them. The jagged hills and pillars of rock on all sides cast no shade at this time of day, and even behind his sunglasses, John squinted. 

This place made Afghanistan look like a tropical paradise. John wouldn’t have believed anyone could survive here if he hadn’t stepped out of the Stargate and into the bustling village built around the only viable well in a hundred miles. Nothing seemed to grow, beyond a few withered twigs and a leathery fungus which formed under the rocks. The people survived on that, and on the goat-like things which survived on the twigs. In John’s opinion, that didn’t make much worth surviving for. 

The local people, the Yamani, didn’t use the gate themselves, and were highly suspicious of them when they first arrived. There had been a great deal of arguing among the village elders, and some menacing by local warriors, but the Yamani had warmed up very quickly when John gave them all the food in their packs as a peace offering. They quickly became a circus sideshow, with everyone in town crowding around to gape at them, with their light skin and strange clothes and abundant variety of food. 

Then a local boy had taken Rodney by the hand and led him, in spite of his protests, into the baking desert (with John following at a wary distance). Rodney’s complaints died instantly when they rounded some rocks and found an Ancient interface built right into a pillar of red sandstone. It was completely powered down, and thus hadn’t been detected on their instruments. It was a configuration Rodney said he’d never seen before, and the glee on his face when he said it had John grinning right along. 

Now here John was a week later, still standing guard over a somewhat less giddy Rodney. The scientist was muttering and grumbling in a constant stream, shining with sweat and streaked with red sand which he’d now turned into red mud. Rodney didn’t handle heat well at the best of times, let alone when all his efforts were being frustrated by an ancient piece of Ancient technology which refused to cooperate.

“So much damn sand everywhere,” he griped, giving a violent swipe across the control console. “I brush away the sand and then, two seconds later, bam, more sand! I hate sand. I’ve got sand in places you should never get sand. Remind me why I’m even on this crappy sweltering litterbox of a planet, anyway.” John smiled indulgently, wiping his forehead again. 

“Because you’re a control freak who doesn’t trust any of the people on his team to investigate this for him.”

Rodney huffed, but smiled lopsidedly. 

“Every time I trust someone else, they mess it up. I can’t help it that I’m the only competent scientist within a hundred thousand light years.” 

“We get it McKay, you’re the greatest.” John rolled his eyes. 

“Well I am,” Rodney said petulantly. “Who raised the city under the gun? Who integrated the computer systems of two vastly different civilizations? Who consistently saves your life, and the lives of everyone in Atlantis, and gets zero recognition for it?” 

“It’s a classified project, McKay, we can’t exactly throw you a parade.” 

“How about a cake, then? A ‘thanks for saving all our lives again’ cake?”

John grinned. 

“Okay, fine. Next time you save our lives, I promise to get you a cake.”

Rodney smirked. 

“Better get baking, then. We never go long without almost dying in this stupid galaxy.”

John chuckled, and Rodney shot him a wry look.

“Especially you, Major Deathwish. You’d better stay on my good side if you want me to keep bailing your ass out every five minutes.” 

“Rodney, my ass will always be on your good side.” John wrestled with a smile as Rodney ducked his head, flushing bright red. 

“That’s what you think,” Rodney mumbled, bending lower over the console and looking busy. John watched him with amusement. He loved flustering his friend, and there was no easier button to push than the very obvious crush Rodney had on him. 

In all things, Rodney was about as subtle as an anvil to the head, and it hadn’t taken John five minutes to realise the other man had a serious thing for him. Rodney was always gazing at him when he thought he wasn’t looking, a mooney look on his face. He was always popping up wherever John was, often on some flimsy excuse, acting like he didn’t even care John was there. When John got too close to him, Rodney would freeze like a deer in headlights, going tongue-tied and red-faced. Once John had figured that out, he got close to him as often as possible, revelling in rendering the normally verbose scientist completely speechless. 

It wasn’t that John was trying to be mean. It’s just that the idea of Rodney being in love with him was so funny. For as long as he’d known him, at every possible opportunity, Rodney was making a lot of noise about how much he loved women. He was obsessed with Sam Carter, he wanted everyone to know. He dated Katie Brown, he couldn’t wait to tell you. Some local girl on a mission talked to him for five minutes, and he looked as smug as a cat on a mouse farm. Yes, Rodney McKay loved women. 

Rodney also made a big deal about how much John (supposedly) loved women. He called him Captain Kirk, accused him of being a lothario, griped about how every local girl went chasing after him. Yet, these complaints always seemed to morph somehow into compliments– about his hair, his eyes, his physique. By lamenting John’s irresistible appeal to women, Rodney was clearly regretting the effect of that appeal on himself. 

That’s what made the whole thing so funny: how obviously Rodney didn’t want those feelings. For whatever reason, he seemed determined to never reveal his attraction to John, going out of his way to prove that both of them were straight men on the constant hunt for women. Yet, he always ended up back on John’s doorstep, a sheepish, hopeful glint in his eyes. He was an unwilling participant in his own infatuation. He was like a worm on a hook, and he kept reeling himself back in. It would have been sad, if Rodney wasn’t so, well, Rodney: King of Self-Assurance and Chief Egomaniac. John knew that, once the puppy-love stage was over, he’d go back to seeing John as some dumb flyboy and the primary pain in his ass. 

“How much longer is this gonna take?” Ford grumbled from his spot slumped against the nearest baking rock. “This place is hotter than Satan’s asscrack.”

Rodney shot a glare at him.

“If you want to take a shot at rerouting the power in a sand-caked piece of ten thousand-year-old tech, please feel free.”

Ford grunted disapprovingly. 

“You need to drink more. You’re sweating like a hog in heat.”

Rodney gaped at him in outrage. 

“A hog? Screw you! I’m sweating exactly as much as anyone would in this damn heat.” He unzipped his black tac vest and flung it to the sand, revealing a sweat-drenched t-shirt. “This damn thing isn’t helping.”

“Ah, ah!” John shook his head. “No way, McKay, vest stays on. We’re still in the field.”

Rodney looked appealingly at him. 

“Sheppard, it is ten thousand degrees out here! That thing weighs like fifty pounds, plus it’s like, polyester or something, it doesn’t breathe for shit.” 

“It’s not a leisure suit, McKay, it’s meant to protect you.” 

“From what?” Rodney flung his arms up in a broad gesture to the empty desert. “There’s like three hundred people on this whole godforsaken rock, and they all like us. We’ve been here a week and nothing’s happened. I’m taking the vest off, Major.” He set his jaw, clearly decided.

John glared at him a moment, then sighed resignedly. He had long since learned there was little point arguing with Rodney when he got set on an idea.

“You should take yours off too,” Rodney said, crossing his arms. John raised an eyebrow.

“Why’s that?”

“You look like a tomato, that’s why,” Rodney said tartly, turning back to his console. “If you pass out, who’s going to protect me from all the murderous locals?”

John’s mouth turned up at one corner.

“At this point, I’m ready to let them have you.”

Rodney scoffed, but said nothing more. John subtly unzipped his vest, sighing with relief as cooler air reached his chest. There was a sudden metallic clang, and he looked up to see Rodney diving after the screwdriver he had dropped. Recovering himself, Rodney’s gaze quickly darted to where John’s black t-shirt clung wetly to his chest, then darted away again. John felt himself flushing slightly. From among the rocks, Ford heaved a sigh. 

The long afternoon wore on, the orange sun sinking at a maddeningly slow pace towards the horizon. Its rays eventually slanted under their canvas roof, uncomfortably in their eyes, still plenty hot enough to burn. John felt himself getting more and more pissed off, standing in one spot in the heat with nothing to do but look around and sweat. 

“Let’s wrap it up here, McKay. Time for dinner.”

Rodney shook his head, which was half inside the console. 

“No way. I’m finally making some headway. You guys go back if you want to.”

Ford looked hopefully up at John. John sighed resignedly. 

“We stick together, Rodney. You get one more hour.”

The hour dragged by, painfully slow. The shadows of the rocks grew longer and deeper, and the heat finally began to ease off. It was hard to believe that in another couple of hours it would be freezing cold in the barren desert. John’s stomach growled, and he began to think favourably even of roasted goat meat. 

There was a brief clatter of rock on rock. John whirled towards the sound, but found himself looking directly into the setting sun. He squinted, grip tightening on his gun, trying to see the source of the noise. Ford was on his feet already, and Rodney straightened up from his console, looking curiously back at them. 

“What is it?”

“Shh!” John and Ford hissed at him at the same time. All three stood perfectly still for a long, tense moment. John was just beginning to relax, lowering his gun a fraction, when there was a sharp crack by his head. Something had struck the rock. He ducked, gun at his shoulder, ready to fire the second he had a target. In a sudden burst of noise, half a dozen shouting men sprang from the rocks, crossbows in their hands. Another crack, and another bolt hit the rocks behind John and Rodney. John was just about to fire when, in a flash, Rodney was right in front of him. 

“Look out!” he shouted, crashing straight into John. His momentum slammed them both against the rock behind them, knocking all the air from John’s lungs. There was a spray of fire from Ford’s P90, and everything went quiet. 

“What the hell did you do that for?” John gasped hoarsely, struggling to get his breath back. Rodney was still against him, half on top of him it felt like. “Get off,” John grunted, shoving back against Rodney’s shoulders. Rodney only slumped more heavily onto him.

A pang of alarm shot through John.

“McKay?”

Rodney started to slide down his chest, and John instinctively grabbed him around the waist to hold him up.

“McKay?”

Rodney lifted his head at last and looked at John. His blue eyes were saucer-wide, and his face was bone-white. A chill went through John.

“Rodney?”

Rodney looked down. John followed his gaze, down to where their bodies met. From the very middle of Rodney’s chest protruded an arrow shaft, as big around as John’s thumb, a grooved iron head glistening darkly. With a sickening sense of unreality, John leaned forward and looked over Rodney’s shoulder. The other end of the arrow stood out like a porcupine quill, quivering slightly with each shuddering breath Rodney took. Their eyes met again. 

“John?” Rodney whispered, his lip starting to tremble. Then his knees gave out. John just barely grabbed him in time, easing him down carefully to the ground. He propped him up in his lap, taking care not to jostle the arrow from behind. Even so, Rodney jerked and shook, a whine of pain rising in his chest. 

“I’ll go for help.” John barely heard Ford as he turned and ran towards the village. All he could do was stare down at Rodney and the blood rapidly turning his blue t-shirt red. 

“You dumb son of a bitch,” he rasped. “What’d you do that for? God damn it, why’d you do that?”

Rodney just kept looking up at him with his big, terrified eyes. John reached into his tac vest (still open, god damn him) and pulled out a bandana. He wrapped it around the shaft of the arrow and pressed down on the wound. Rodney let out a wail of pain, convulsing in John’s lap. 

“John,” he gasped. 

“It’s okay,” John gritted out. “You’re going to be okay.” The blood bubbled up over his hand at a terrifying rate. He knew what this was, he’d seen it enough times. Rodney’s heart had been hit. It wasn’t going to be okay. Rodney was going to die. 

“John,” Rodney said again, his voice laboured. “Listen.” 

“No,” John barked. He’d listened to enough deathbed confessions in his life. He couldn’t bear to hear this one. Rodney clutched at John’s hand like a lifeline. 

“Listen,” he sobbed. John couldn’t look at his face, couldn’t stand seeing that knowledge there. “Please, John, you– I- I–”

John’s heart crumpled like a tin can. 

“Stop it!” he shouted. “Shut up, do you hear me? You’ll be okay, you’ll–”

Rodney’s body jerked, and he made a choked, coughing noise, blood spattering his lips. His chest heaved over and over again, breathing in but not out.

“No!” John cried. “Don’t you dare, god damn you, don’t you dare!”

Rodney’s eyes rolled upwards and his head arched back, his body shaking violently. John clutched him as tightly as he could, the bloody point of the arrow keeping them apart. 

Rodney went still. He went utterly, profoundly still. He lay heavy in John’s arms, eyes not quite closed, bloody lips parted. John looked down at him, completely unable to breathe.

He was dead.

A scream caught behind John’s ribs, and escaped only as a broken, muted whimper.

He was dead. 

The next thing John knew, he was sitting on a bed in the city infirmary. His face felt tight, his eyes burning, his lips dry. He realised he must have been crying at some point. He wasn’t crying now. Now, he sat, numb and silent and unmoving on a hospital bed, his chest and arms and hands stiff and sticky with dried blood. He looked at the blood like he’d never seen any before. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. He couldn’t really be dead. A voice floated to him from afar. 

“Major? Can you hear me?” He got his eyes to focus on Doctor Beckett’s face. He managed to drop his chin an inch. “We need the shirt off, lad,” the doctor said gently. “Let’s get a look at that wound.”

John looked down at himself questioningly. What wound? He wasn’t hurt. But as the doctor peeled the blood-drenched shirt off of him, John noted with disinterest that he was hurt; there was a four-inch gash down his sternum, the edges ragged and weeping. That must be from the arrowhead, from when Rodney had fallen against him. From when he’d held Rodney tight to his body, held him close and tried to keep him alive. From when Rodney had died for him.

John choked on his own breath, curling in on himself as grief found him at last. Rodney was dead. He was dead, and it was all John’s fault. His fault for letting him take his vest off. His fault for not keeping a better watch, for not expecting any threats. His fault for not taking the arrow meant for him. It was his fault, and he was going to have to live with that. 

“You’re alright, son.” Beckett squeezed his shoulder. “Just lay back now.”

John allowed himself to be pushed back into a lying position, shuddering with the effort of keeping himself from screaming. The doctor injected local anaesthetic and began suturing the wound on John’s chest. John wished he hadn’t used anaesthetic; he would have liked to focus on something less painful than the knowledge his friend was dead because of him. 

He suddenly became aware of Ford, leaning against the nearest wall. His chest, too, was smeared with blood, along with his arms. He must have helped carry Rodney home. As if sensing he was watching, Ford raised his eyes and met John’s. The gaze held for a long moment. Ford broke it first. Straightening, he turned and walked from the room. John swallowed with difficulty. Ford blamed him, too. 

It seemed only moments later that John was once again perched on the edge of a bed, this time in his own room. The light coming through the window was watery and pale, filtered through the white blanket of clouds that hung low over the city.

John looked down at his bloodstained hands, more brown than red now, cracked and flaking around his joints. He curled and uncurled his fists, feeling the tightness of it on his skin. He should wash it off. But then… it would all be gone. All of Rodney would be gone forever, slipped through his fingers and down the drain.

What a waste. It was all such a waste. Rodney was one of the most brilliant men who ever lived, and he’d died saving him. For what? Who was he? Just some Air Force grunt, a dime-a-dozen flyboy with very little to offer the world. Nothing, compared to a man who routinely saved entire planets and rewrote the laws of the known universe on his average Tuesday. 

Why had he done it? Why had Rodney thrown all that away for the likes of him? It was just a stupid crush. They’d only known each other for a year, Rodney’s feelings couldn’t possibly run that deep. Rodney wouldn’t die for just anyone, he wasn’t the heroic, self-sacrificing type. Except, apparently, he was. He’d seen a shot aimed at John and had taken that shot himself, without hesitation. John couldn’t reconcile that with the image of Rodney he had in his head– with the egocentric, temperamental, frankly soft geek he’d come to know and– not love, exactly, but appreciate. Obviously, there was more to Rodney than he realised. 

John curled up on the bed without even removing his boots, wrapping his blood-stained arms around himself. He felt the stitches on his chest catching on the cotton of his t-shirt, but no pain registered. He was suddenly very cold. Was he in shock? Surely Beckett wouldn’t have let him go if he was in shock. He was glad he had, though. All he wanted now was to be alone, to feel his aloneness. He’d lost a friend and teammate, by his own negligence, and he deserved to be alone. 

John sat in the conference room, looking down at himself. The blood was gone. He must have washed it off, but he didn’t remember doing it. But there were his arms, bare and clean, white hands resting limply in his lap. The last of him was gone. 

The expectant silence reached him. John looked up to find a whole roomful of people looking at him, clearly waiting for him to speak. 

“Sorry.” His voice came out thick and raspy, and he cleared his throat. “Sorry, can you repeat the question?”

Weir darted a look at Beckett, who gave a barely-perceptible shrug. 

“I said, can you confirm Lieutenant Ford’s report: six assailants with crossbows ambushed the three of you shortly before sundown?”

John jerked his head. Weir accepted that as a response.

“And Doctor McKay was struck in the back, and while tending to him, you were unable to return fire?”

John nodded again. He hadn’t even been able to avenge him.

“Luckily, Ford was able to dispatch them quickly.” She nodded approvingly at the Lieutenant, who kept his gaze grimly on the table. “Unfortunately…” Weir hesitated, swallowing carefully. “Doctor McKay was pronounced DOA in the gate room.”

John’s fists clenched in his lap. A moment of silence passed in the room.

“I don’t need to tell you all what a blow this is, to the people in this room and to the expedition. Doctor McKay was a valuable asset and a good man.”

John squinted down at his hands, his eyes burning. A good man.

“What happened?” 

“We spent most of last night with the village elders,” Teyla said, nodding at Doctor Ingram, the linguist. “The language barrier is making things more difficult, but from what we can gather, the attackers were two of the elders and their sons. The men had been strongly against allowing us to investigate the Ancient console, but were overridden by the rest of the council. They felt that the device was the dwelling place of dark spirits. There were tales of people being struck down when touching it; perhaps a malfunction, or even a security system. There was no incident of this in living memory, which might indicate that the device has been powered down for quite some time. Most of the elders felt the tales had no basis in reality.

“However, one of the attackers was the village shaman, who had voiced concerns that interfering with the device would provoke the spirits. Yesterday morning, a little girl in the village fell ill. The shaman took this as an evil omen. Evidently, he recruited these other men to try to prevent Doctor McKay from investigating further.”

Just some stupid superstition. Beyond the numbness, John felt a sharp edge of anger. Silly, paranoid fears about ghosts and spirits, that’s what Rodney died for. He deserved better than that. 

“I see,” Weir said gravely, hands folded on the table. “Were any of the three of you aware of this internal conflict at any point?”

John, Teyla, and Ford looked at each other. Had they been? Even without understanding the words being said, it had been obvious that first day that some of the elders had been angry. They had continued to shout and mutter long after they had presented them with food, and the others had turned friendly. But by the time Doctor Ingram got there to start translating, everyone seemed content to get along. 

John dropped his gaze, unable to face the rest of his team. They should have been more careful. He should have been more careful. He was team lead, their safety was his responsibility. He knew better than to let his guard down in the field, knew better than to trust that no trouble so far meant no trouble coming. He had screwed up, and Rodney had paid with his life.

“The villagers initially reacted with suspicion, but seemed to accept our presence after that.” Teyla took the lead again. “They were eager to trade. There were no signs of violent opposition before… before.” Her eyes flicked to John and back to Weir. Weir followed her gaze. 

“You had no reason to suspect attack, Major?” 

“No,” John said. His mouth felt bone dry, like he was still in the arid desert. 

“Is that why Doctor McKay had removed his vest?”

The question hit John like a kick in the ribs. 

“He–” John faltered, and swallowed carefully. “It was extremely hot. Doctor McKay removed his tac vest against my express orders. I should have made him put it back on.” John’s knuckles whitened in his lap. He clenched his jaw, anger rising again in his chest. This was his fault. Weir regarded him coolly. 

“Doctor McKay isn’t military, and thus not subject to orders.” 

“He was a member of my team. I should have made him.” 

“He’d be alive now if you had.”

John’s head shot up, looking wide-eyed at Weir. She was always diplomatic, she shouldn’t be saying… but she was right, it was his fault McKay was dead. 

“Yes ma’am,” he said tightly, forcing himself to hold her gaze. “I take full responsibility.”

Nobody said anything, letting John sit in his misery for a long moment. It was only what he deserved. At last Weir broke eye contact to look at the room at large. 

“In light of these events, and the fact that the Yamani have nothing to trade, I’m going to order the address locked out.” 

“But- but the Ancient device, Rodney never–” John stammered.

“If Doctor McKay couldn’t repair it, it’s unrepairable,” Weir said tersely, closing the folder of reports in front of her. “There’s nothing else of value on that planet. It’s best if we move on.”

John looked at the folder. Just like that, case closed? That couldn’t be it. Rodney couldn’t have died over nothing, over some defunct piece of tech with no value. 

Weir folded her hands in front of her once more and looked at each of them in turn. 

“Losses in the field are not uncommon, but that doesn’t make them any less significant. I trust that, if there had been any reason to suspect attack, the three of you would have taken the appropriate steps.” Her eyes latched on John. “There was a lapse in uniform protocol, but no one could have reasonably predicted such a severe outcome. My report to the SGC will indicate that no one was at fault.” 

“I was at fault.” John couldn’t live with that verdict. “I’m going to resign from the team. I should be sent home. They should discharge me.”

Weir looked keenly at him for a moment. 

“And what will that help?”

John opened and closed his mouth, dumbfounded.

“It was a minor lapse at best, Major. Punishing yourself won’t bring Rodney back. The rest of your team still needs you.”

John shot a look at Ford and Teyla. Teyla smiled weakly, and Ford still wouldn’t look at him. Maybe they needed him, but did they want him? 

“There will be a memorial service for Doctor McKay tomorrow.” Weir started to rise, as though everything were settled. “Per his wishes, his remains will be placed in orbit above the planet. Major…”

John looked up, feeling breathless. They couldn’t already be talking about a memorial service. Rodney couldn’t even be cold yet.

“I think it only appropriate that you pilot the jumper, along with Teyla and Lieutenant Ford. Do you agree?”

John nodded mutely. What else could he say?

John looked down at the controls of the jumper. He looked out of the viewscreen at the clear blue sky. He did not look back at the cargo compartment, where a simple pine casket sat, flanked by his silent teammates. His remaining teammates. The now-constant tightness in his chest worsened as he thought it. How long until he lost them, too? 

The memorial service had been short and to the point. Only Weir had spoken. She didn’t say anything specific about John, but every mention of the tragedy and profundity of the loss seemed to grind the guilt deeper into him. There simply was no other way to look at it: he’d let his guard down in the field, and he’d gotten his friend killed. He knew it, and everyone else knew it, whether they said it or not. Whatever Weir said, he should step down, from the team and as military head. No one could put their faith in him after this. 

The sky above them rapidly darkened, stars appearing like punctures in the fabric as they began to exit the atmosphere. Teyla and Ford rose from the benches, and picked up the helmets of their space suits. 

“Major?” Teyla’s voice snapped the silence like a firecracker. “Would you like to say a few words before we close the door?”

John’s knuckles whitened on the steering column. What could he possibly say? That Rodney was a good man? That he was going to miss him? That he was sorry? Nothing he said would change anything, make any of them feel better. But Teyla and Ford were looking at him expectantly, so he switched on the autopilot and rose. He cleared his throat once, twice, trying to loosen the lump forming there. 

“Rodney McKay was… He was…” He flexed and loosened his fists compulsively. He had no idea where the sentence was going. “He was our teammate,” he said simply. “He was a hell of a scientist. He was…” he faltered again. “He was great.”

Teyla and Ford kept their eyes on the coffin, heads bowed, hands folded, and waited. John foundered.

“He saved our lives more than once. He kept this city afloat, literally. It won’t–” he cleared his throat again. The stitches on his chest burned. “It won’t be the same without him.” 

He suddenly found himself unable to speak another word. Something was trying to burst from his chest, a scream or a sob he wasn’t sure. He was afraid if he opened his mouth again it would escape. With a quick jerk of his head, he stepped back, out of the cargo bay and back into the cockpit. He hit the button which closed the door between the two, then stood staring at it. After a minute, he dimly heard the loud hiss of the back hatch being opened, oxygen venting into nothingness as Teyla and Ford prepared to place Rodney among the stars. 

He navigated a wide arc back towards the planet. He didn’t want to see the casket, floating alone in the void. 

That night, John had a nightmare. It was as vivid and painful as a bullet burning through his brain. Rodney was once more dying in his arms, blood rushing out onto the sand, soaking into John’s clothes. Only it seemed to last forever, the blood, the agony. Rodney kept trying to speak, but every time he did, John covered his mouth and nose and tried to suffocate him. But he wouldn’t die. He simply wouldn’t die, no matter how hard John tried. Even after he put the arrow through Rodney’s heart, he still wouldn’t die. He just kept trying to talk, his voice hoarse and desperate and full of pain, and John wouldn’t let him– couldn’t let him. He was too afraid of what he had to say. 

After what must have been hours of staving him off, of keeping him silent, John’s hands grew too slippery with blood and he couldn’t get a proper grip on Rodney. Rodney drew a deep breath, tipped his head back and screamed one word. 

“JOHN!”

John jolted awake like he’d been slapped in the face. He stared up into the blackness, his chest heaving, his stitches pulling on each breath. Slowly, shakily, he sat up, scrubbing the sweat from his face. Something told him that wouldn’t be the last such dream he would be having. 

Suddenly, his hackles rose. At the foot of his bed was a shadow– a dark figure, stock-still and silent. For a tense second, John sat frozen, unable to take his eyes off it. Then he lunged for the lamp, fingers slipping on the switch in his haste to turn it on. As orange light flooded the room, he turned back to the foot of the bed, heart pounding in his chest. There was no one there. John took a deep, shuddering breath and blew it out. Of course no one was there. He was alone in a locked room, with only nightmares and regret to keep him company. He turned off the light.

Chapter Text

Everything went back to normal disturbingly quickly. Everyone ate their meals, did their work, exercised, did laundry, played games. John didn’t. The following days seemed to pass by in fits and starts, flashes of awareness interspersed with long periods of blank space. It just seemed wrong to try and be normal when Rodney didn’t get to be, and never would be again. John sat in his room and stared at the wall; he sat at his desk and stared at his unfinished paperwork; he stood on the pier and stared up at the sky, at Rodney’s final resting place. He thought about nothing while he stared, but then, the thoughts would come. They would crowd in like crows on a wire, an endless line of them running through his brain, identical and dark. It’s your fault he’s dead. He died saving you. He died for nothing. Over and over, a self-flagellating litany. 

John had lost people before. Hell, he’d lost tons of them; friends, fellow soldiers, his mother. He felt the weight of every one. But he’d never been truly responsible for a death before, never felt it on his conscience, on his soul. He didn’t know how he was going to live with it. So he chased the numb periods, when time flitted away almost without his notice, the grief a skipping record on his consciousness. 

He wasn’t exactly sure how many days Weir let him go on that way. Ford and Teyla had checked in on him occasionally, making a few gentle attempts at getting him interested in something, anything. They were still distant and reserved, obviously unsure how to act around him now. But team was family out here, and they were going to stick by him. The thought should give him comfort, but it just made him more guilty. They were stuck with a leader who couldn’t protect them, and who would want that?

At last, Weir put her foot down.

“You’re back on field duty as of tomorrow,” she pronounced, sitting down at her desk. John’s mouth went dry. 

“IOA ok with that?” He was desperately hoping. He couldn’t actually say aloud that he was scared shitless to go back in the field, scared he would make another mistake, cost another life. Scared he couldn’t hack it without Rodney. 

“I don’t need them to be.” Weir leaned back in her chair. “Personnel are deployed at my discretion. You’re the flagship team, I can’t just leave you on the bench. Here’s your assignment.” She pushed a folder across the desk. 

“We just lost a teammate,” John growled. “We’re not ready.” Weir looked sharply at him. 

“You mean you’re not ready.”

John opened his mouth, but had nothing to say. Weir let a moment pass.

“I’ve allowed twice the usual amount of compassionate leave for teams following a loss, John. You need to get back on the horse.”

John swallowed with difficulty. He reached for the file, gratified his hand didn’t shake. His eyes skimmed the summary page. A trade mission to a planet the Athosians had been trading with for years. A milk run. It had to be safe, didn’t it?”

“When do we ship out?”

“Tomorrow at 08:00.” Weir regarded him, seemingly waiting for a certain response. Excitement? Fear? Reluctance? He tried his best to school his face into impassivity. 

“Roger that.” John rose, still clutching the file, feeling like a man on his way to the gallows. He wasn’t ready for this. 

Rodney stood like an obelisk in the desert sun, solid and unmoving. He had his back to John, his broad shoulders held rigid. John didn’t know why, but he was afraid to see his face. He was afraid that Rodney would turn and see him, would speak to him, would come near him. He stood for what felt like hours, watching Rodney’s back as the sun wheeled overhead. 

He slowly became aware that his feet were wet. Looking down, he found he was standing in a puddle of bright red blood, seeping up from the sand, welling up between his bare toes. With a choked sound of horror, he tried to move, to step out of the blood. He couldn’t move, his feet rooted to the spot like he was standing in cement. 

He looked up, and his heart seized in his chest. Rodney stood directly in front of him, his face inches from John’s. The arrow protruding from his chest nearly touched John’s chest, the needle-fine iron point stained tarry black and blood red. John couldn’t tear his eyes away from Rodney’s, blown wide and full of terror. Rodney choked, warm blood spraying across John’s face. Rodney opened his mouth wide, a gaping, bloody gash in his face, and gasped out one word.

“John.”

When John woke up, his face was wet. In a panic, he scrubbed both hands over it, expecting to bring them away streaked with Rodney’s blood. They came away only wet with his sweat, trembling with fear. 

The black figure was back. Down below his feet, he saw it, broad-shouldered and stock-still. He couldn’t tell if it was facing him or turned away. He didn’t want to know. He forced himself to close his eyes again. If he didn’t see it, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. He was dead, and there was no bringing him back. He was dead, and John was just going to have to live with that. 

John stood in the gate room the next day, watching the dialing ring spin with a growing sense of dread. There were only the three of them on the platform, and it felt profoundly wrong– awkward and strange, incomplete, like missing a limb. It felt like a suicide mission, stepping out into the unknown without their genius. But the gate connected, and Ford and Teyla stepped forward, and he had no choice but to follow them. 

He stepped through into a sunny clearing, met by the chirping of birds and the singing of crickets. He hadn’t been so tense since Afghanistan. He kept a white-knuckle grip on his gun, eyes darting left and right, body braced for attack. They were alone in a grassy field, surrounded by woods on all sides– woods which could be hiding anybody.

“Teyla,” he said uneasily. “Thought you said they were meeting us at the gate.” 

“The Liruit have a very loose sense of time,” Teyla said casually, her grip on her gun practically nonexistent. “They will be along at a time that is convenient for them.” 

“Not a bad place to wait,” Ford said, stretching his arms. “Should’ve brought a lawn chair.” 

“We’re not on vacation, Lieutenant,” John said tautly, turning a withering eye on his teammate. “Check the perimeter.” Teyla and Ford conspicuously did not look at each other, and Ford moved off to patrol the treeline. John stood alertly by the DHD, head craning around, ears straining for any sound of movement from the woods. Teyla regarded him for a moment. 

“The Liruit are a peaceful people, Major. I have personally traded with them on half a dozen occasions. There is no danger here.”

John shot her a sharp look. 

“Yeah, well, forgive me if I’m not going to take that as a given.” 

“I understand,” Teyla said, her voice quiet, her face sad. For some reason, that irked John. 

“Go patrol the perimeter with Ford,” he snapped. “What are you standing around for?”

Teyla slightly arched one eyebrow, but turned and walked away without comment. John stayed where he was, glaring after her, hands tightening and relaxing on his gun. He hated pity. He didn’t deserve pity. He was the one who got Rodney killed. He was the reason the clearing was filled with silence, not the chattering and griping of an impatient scientist. He was the one who broke up the team. 

John began to pace nervously up and down the clearing, head snapping up at the slightest sound from the forest. The drag of his vest across the wound on his chest was like nails on a chalkboard, grating on his nerves with each step. The tension in his stomach grew and grew as minutes passed, one after the other, until it had been over an hour. 

“That’s it,” he growled, grinding to a halt on the lush grass. “You’ve been here before, right?”

Teyla nodded.

“Right. Then take us to the village.”

Teyla was about to protest, but he quelled her with a look. With a sigh, she turned and walked into the woods. 

The light in the forest was pale green, dappled yellow where the leaves parted in the gentle breeze. The trees were young and well-spaced, and the air smelled fresh, like damp earth. There wasn’t much undergrowth, but the ground was carpeted with twigs and mouldering leaves that cracked and rustled as they walked. Every twig snapping made John jump a little, grinding his teeth with frustration. Not only would their noisy walking advertise their presence to anyone else, it would cover the sound of anyone else’s approach. He looked around constantly, prepared at any moment for attackers to emerge. 

It wasn’t as though he was unaware of how irrational he was being. He knew he was reacting- overreacting- to what had happened. He felt Ford and Teyla exchanging glances behind him, looking at him like he was cracking up. He knew he wasn’t helping restore their confidence in him as a leader. But every time he managed to talk himself down, talk himself out of his paranoia, he would hear again the clatter of rock on rock, the ricochet of an arrow, and the desperate way Rodney said his name before he died, as though he could do anything about it. It just wasn’t worth the risk. 

John went dead still, his heart skipping a beat. Movement. Unmistakable movement off to the right. He held up a hand, but Teyla and Ford had stopped the moment he had, needing no command. He raised his machine gun, pressing it to his shoulder with the slightest tremor in his hands. He listened. A twig snapped, and he pivoted on his heel, finger curling on the trigger as his thumb flicked the safety. They wouldn’t catch him out this time. 

A smiling man emerged through the trees, raising a hand in greeting. John aborted only just in time, and he heard Teyla hiss in a breath of warning. If the man registered the gun currently pointed at him as a weapon, he made no sign. He just beamed and waved, calling through the forest. 

“Teyla! Welcome and good fortune!”

Teyla made a conscious effort to relax.

“Tomay! Good fortune on your house.”

John guiltily lowered his gun and came out of his defensive stance, but his heart still pounded in his chest. He kept a firm grip on his weapon. 

“I was on my way to meet you, I’m happy our paths crossed.”

“As am I.” Teyla smiled warmly, but John knew her well enough by now to sense the tension in her shoulders. She was watching him out of the corner of her eye, as if uncertain what he was going to do. “It is pleasant to see you once more. This is one of the leaders of Atlantis, Major John Sheppard, and his second officer Lieutenant Aiden Ford.” Ford bobbed his head and smiled. John made his lips curve, internally trying to force calm. He resisted the urge to keep scanning the trees for signs of reinforcements. 

“Nice to meet ya,” he managed. Tomay nodded at them both. 

“You are most welcome, and good fortune to you. Where is the other?”

The three of them froze. 

“What other?” John demanded, a chill running up his spine. What did the man know? What had Teyla told him? 

“Were there not four of you a moment ago?” Tomay looked puzzled. “I thought I saw one more through the trees.” 

“What do you mean? It’s just us, you didn’t see anyone else.” John found himself unaccountably angry. It felt like this man was messing with him, rubbing salt in the wound. It wasn’t as though Rodney really were a missing limb, visibly absent from the whole. It wasn’t as if the man could know. 

“A simple trick of the forest,” Teyla jumped in quickly, shooting him a warning glance. “Shadows move strangely among the trees.” 

“That must have been it.” Tomay laughed nervously, taken aback by the vehemence of John’s reaction. “No matter. Allow me to escort you to the village.” 

John fell into step behind the others, still trying to bring his pulse down. He wasn’t going to be truly at ease again until they were safely back on Atlantis, but he had to regain some semblance of calm. The man hadn’t seen anyone, his eyes were just playing tricks on him. Everything was fine. John was fine. It was just the first mission back out, he was just jittery. It would get better. It had to. 

As they stepped into the Atlantis gateroom, John breathed a sigh of relief so profound it nearly took the legs out from under him. He had spent the entire day held so tense, it would take hours just to uncoil the knots holding him upright. He hadn’t added much to the negotiations, too preoccupied with standing guard while Teyla chatted and schmoozed and apologised for him. He’d almost backhanded a woman when she leaned unexpectedly across Teyla to grab something and he mistook it for a lunge at her. The woman hadn’t noticed, but Teyla had. She briefly widened her eyes at him, her jaw flexing meaningfully, and he knew he hadn’t heard the end of it. 

He sat in the debriefing, waiting for her to bring it up, waiting for either her or Ford to broach the subject of how completely unhinged he had been the entire mission. They both simply relayed the facts of the trade negotiation, leaving him out of it entirely. 

“Anything to add, Major?” Weir was looking at him expectantly, like she knew. He felt the sudden urge to tell her, to admit that he was cracking up, to insist she relieve him of command at once. 

“That about sums it up. Mission accomplished.” John pressed his lips together in an approximation of a smile, and looked at her but not in her eyes. She seemed to consider for a moment, then nodded. 

“Alright then. Well done, AR-1.”

Sudden bitterness flooded John’s mouth. AR-1 was formed by the four of them over a year ago, in all the madness and confusion of those first days. AR-1 would never be anything but the four of them, forged in fire and bound by blood. She shouldn’t call them that now. But he couldn’t possibly say that, could he?

He felt Teyla behind him long before she made her presence known. Even her cat-like stealth wasn’t enough to offset the weight of the looming conversation they were about to have. He slowed his steps down the hall, trying to delay the inevitable. He paused just outside his door, hunched his shoulders, and sighed. 

“Come in, then.”

She glided into the room after him, unperturbed by his awareness. He didn’t bother turning the lights on, the watery grey afternoon light leaving them bathed in gloom. The gloom felt right.

“We have not known each other long.” She turned to face him.

“A year.” A staggeringly long time in the context of his life, spent roaming from base to base, actively avoiding anything like deeper bonds. Likely only a blip in the context of her life, ensconced in a village of family and friends she had known since childhood.

She nodded. 

“An eventful year.” A heavy silence passed between them. “I do not wish to overstep my bounds.” 

“Say what you gotta say,” John said, a little tersely. He didn’t like to dance around issues. Teyla nodded again, clasping her hands behind her. She turned her back and began to pace. She had shed her jacket and wore only her undershirt, muscular shoulders flexing slightly as she braced herself. 

“Rodney’s loss has cost you a great deal.”

John clenched his jaw. 

“Happened on my watch. I don’t take that lightly.” 

“Of course you do not.” She stood and regarded him over her shoulder. “We do not blame you, John.”

John regarded her back, coldly.

“Yes you do.”

She held his gaze.

“You could not have predicted the outcome.”

“And yet it seems like I should have, doesn’t it?” He clenched and unclenched his fists by his sides. “Rationale doesn’t count for much when someone you care about is dead.”

She turned all the way to face him. 

“Nor does our blame matter much when you have so much for yourself.” 

“What, am I supposed to be kind to myself? Forgive myself?” He ground out. “Spare me that crap, Teyla. I screwed up, and now Rodney is dead.”

“Rodney is gone,” Teyla said, squaring off with him. “We are still here.” 

“What do you want from me?” John barked. 

“I want you to get over it.”

He gaped at her. 

“What?” 

“Get over it.” She jutted her chin out in such a stunning imitation of Rodney’s defiant expression that it nearly brought tears to his eyes. “We are still here. Atlantis is still here. And we need you.”

John scoffed. 

“What, a screw-up and a nut-case?” 

“A leader and a commander,” Teyla said firmly. “You are needed here, now. You cannot fall apart.”

He stood staring at her, not quite believing what he was hearing. Teyla was emotional, spiritual, kind. If he expected anyone around here to have some patience for him, it was her. Evidently he expected too much. He jerked his head.

“Read you loud and clear. I’m on it.”

She stood and stared at him for a minute. Then she nodded slowly. 

“Thank you, Major.” She headed for the door. He worked up the nerve just as she got to it. 

“Thank you, Teyla.”

She paused, then inclined her head. 

“Rest well, John.”

John turned and looked out the window as the door closed, the grey light already deepening into evening. He doubted he would. 

He was in Afghanistan. His convoy was shredded, scattered through desert sand and bare rock in a brutal deadlock with determined insurgents. Gunshots split the air, shouts of anger and pain ringing out in between. And rather than trying not to die himself, he was trying to drag Private Ashcroft, sobbing and screaming, into the cover of a rocky outcropping. The kid was barely twenty one, fresh out of basic and weeks into his first tour. He wasn’t going to get a second. 

John already knew he was dead, he didn’t need to be a doctor to know that. The bullet wound in his neck was bleeding in quick, rapid bursts, his left side already drenched red. But he couldn’t just leave the kid writhing in the sand, begging for his mother alone while the blood drained out of him. So he got him to the shelter of the rocks, propped him up against them and tried to get him to quiet down. 

“Help’s coming, soldier,” he lied, with the medic in pieces in the HUM-V that hit the IED. “Hold on.” 

“N-n-no, G-God, please don’t let me die!” The kid wailed, fumbling at his neck with blood-slicked hands. 

“You’re not gonna die!” John barked, only half paying attention, more concerned with watching all directions for attack. “Stay calm, slow, deep breaths.”

Ashcroft let out a sob. 

“I’m gonna die, aren’t I?” 

Yes.

“No. Now shut up or they’ll find us.”

For several minutes, there was only the harsh rasping sound of Ashcroft’s panicked breathing among the gunfire. Reinforcements were en route, but not quickly enough for Ashcroft. 

“Major.”

John looked up, startled at the change in the young man’s voice. He was utterly calm now, eyes fixed on John’s face. John swallowed.

He knew.

“I need you to get a message to my brother for me.”

John’s stomach wrenched. Don’t do this to me.

“I need you to tell him I forgive him, and I’m sorry.”

John had to look away.

“You can tell him.” He steadfastly refused to think of his own brother. 

“He stole my girl.” Ashcroft made a horrible rattling, hissing noise that must have been intended to be a laugh. “Stupid, right? Way back in high school.”

John kept his eyes forward, trying not to hear.

“They’re married now. She was always gonna be his girl, was meant to be. I had to go and be a dick about it.” The words were coming harder now, farther apart and more laboured. He didn’t have long. “Haven’t spoken to him in three years. Stupid.” 

“You’ll speak to him soon,” John said firmly. “Just take it easy.” 

“Tell him for me,” Ashcroft gasped. John could hear the blood in his throat. “I love him.” 

“God damn it, I’ll tell him, okay?” He whirled on the young man, nerves frayed to breaking point. “Just–” The words caught on his tongue. Ashcroft’s eyes were fixed, head cocked to one side and resting on his chest, which no longer moved. He must have died the very moment John made his promise. For a long moment, John sat frozen, just staring at the body. 

Even as he watched, the body morphed and shifted and became Rodney, arrow protruding from his blood-drenched blue t-shirt, nothing behind his fixed blue eyes. Even in the dream, the change didn’t surprise him, just hit him like a dull blow to the breastbone. How many more times was he going to have to live out this scene?

John came awake like a long, terrible fall from a great height. He saw wakefulness coming from way off, but it still struck hard when it came. He dragged himself up on the pillows, sweat sticking his t-shirt to his back even as he shivered in the midnight chill. He went very still, holding his breath as his eyes lit once more on a shadowy figure at the end of his bed. 

He stared at it. It stared back. Or maybe it didn’t, since he couldn’t see its eyes. He should probably be afraid, but it just felt like a continuation of the nightmares he’d been having every single night. 

He’d had this particular nightmare before, too many times. He had it every night until he had given in and tracked down Ashcroft’s brother. The son of a bitch was dead. Cancer got him a year before, but the dying boy had gotten muddled and forgot, aware only of his own regret. John couldn’t fulfil his last request, and so would never be free of the ghost of it. The dream had gotten less, but never went away. 

Now it had to go getting tangled with his dreams– his nightmares– of Rodney. Rodney, who never got his final words, because John hadn’t let him. Because he couldn’t stand to have another ghost on his conscience. He had gotten one anyway.

“John,” the spectral figure whispered, the sound harsh and sibilant in the silent darkness. A chill went up John’s spine. 

“You’re not real,” he said, his voice horribly loud in the stillness. He shut his mouth with a wince. The figure didn’t respond, nor did it dissolve back into unreality. Its dark, featureless arm slowly raised from its side, raised and reached for him. With a strangled cry of fear, John lunged for the lamp, expecting any moment to feel cold ghostly fingers closing around him. 

Warm light flooded the room. It was empty. He was alone. 

John shuffled through the empty, dimly-lit hallways, arms wrapped tight around his chest. He didn’t know where he was going, he just knew he couldn’t be alone in that empty room any longer. It felt too much like a crypt. Not that he wanted to see anyone– that was the last thing he wanted. He was aware he must look rather pathetic, hair askew and dark circles under his eyes, boots unlaced and in sweatpants, creeping through the city in the middle of the night. He didn’t want to see anyone, but he didn’t want to be alone, so what did he want? 

His feet evidently knew what he didn’t, and they carried him down to the physics labs– to one specific lab. He stood on the threshold for a long time, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, trying to get the courage to go in. He hadn’t been here since. This place was Rodney, more so even than his own quarters; he certainly had spent more time here than there. How would it be to see the lab without him in it? Did he have it in him to face it? As if daring him to find out, Atlantis opened the door. John’s eyes widened as he peered into the dark rectangle, black and silent and cold as a hole in the earth. His feet carried him forward, and he plunged in. 

He raised the lights just enough to make out outlines. To do more at this time of night, in this place, seemed… inappropriate. Looking around in silence, a sad smile tugged at his lips. The barely-controlled explosion of chaos that was Rodney had definitely made its home here. Spread across multiple desks were half a dozen laptops and tablets, reams of papers, piles of circuit boards and tools and Ancient crystals, all in an order that only Rodney himself understood. Nobody could share a lab with Rodney. It was like trying to share a beach with a great white shark; probably you’d survive, but was it worth the risk?

John drew up to the main desk, the epicentre of the blast, where even now a laptop sat open, running some kind of simulation, spitting out line after line of code. He furrowed his brow at it. Did anyone know this was here? Had anyone dared set foot in here since Rodney’s death, even just to check for mouldering coffee mugs? 

He stepped closer, following the code with his eyes. He didn’t recognise it, not that he was well versed in computer code, but it seemed… off. And what was that sound? He tilted his head towards it, ears straining for the soft susurrus of noise that seemed to be coming from the laptop. It didn’t sound like machinery, it sounded like… voices? Like music or video played just above mute. He stepped closer still, puzzled by the uneasy feeling the sound was giving him. He leaned in, trying to hear, certain he could almost make out words. 

“JOHN!!”

He jumped back with a shout as the laptop speakers nearly shattered with an explosion of sound, the plastic casing vibrating against the desk. He gaped at the computer, his heart thundering in shock. The computer simply sat silent once more, strange calculations running on the screen. Turning on his heel, he nearly ran from the room.

He didn’t sleep again that night. He hadn’t slept well for ages, the unsettling dreams always starting him awake. It was taking a toll, more and more every day. In a meeting with Weir the next day, he kept finding his gaze sliding in and out of focus, his mind going fuzzy. 

“John!”

John jerked upright in his chair, his heart racing. Weir was looking at him in irritation. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, wiping his sweating palms on his pant legs. “My mind was wandering.” 

“I can see that,” Weir said tartly. “Where did I lose you?” She rifled her notes in front of her. John’s stomach churned guiltily. 

“Uh… Somewhere around the mission schedule.”

Elizabeth scoffed.

“That was literally the first thing I talked about.”

John shifted uncomfortably in his chair like a schoolboy in the principal’s office. 

“Sorry,” he said again. “Didn’t sleep much last night.” 

“Seems to me that’s been going on for a while.” Weir leaned back in her chair, tenting her hands in front of her. “You’ve certainly had a wandering mind for a while.” 

“In case you forgot, I just lost a member of my team,” John snapped. “Forgive me if I’m not at my best at the moment."

“A month ago.”

“What?” 

“You lost Doctor McKay a month ago.”

John’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“What? No we didn’t, it’s only been…” He hesitated. He hadn’t really been counting the days; they’d all seemed to blend together, hazy and indistinct. 

“It’s been a month, John, minus two days.” Weir narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you really not know that?”

“I knew it,” John said quickly. “I guess it just didn’t really register.” He was genuinely rattled. How could it have been a month? They’d only been on one mission in that time, where they normally went once or twice a week. Had Weir really let them off for that long? She was looking at him sceptically now, probably reading his confusion. He sat up a little straighter, trying to look calm and collected. 

“I think it’s time you spoke to somebody, Major.”

John clenched his jaw. 

“I’m fine.” 

“I think we both know that’s a lie,” Weir said drily. “Rodney’s loss has clearly unsettled you a great deal. I know you take these things very personally; you feel responsible. You need to address that and move on.” She leaned forward again, her face earnest. “This isn’t the first or last loss we’ve had here, John. You’re going to have to learn to cope.”

“I can cope just fine,” John barked angrily, rising to his feet. “This is my business, no one else’s. I’m not talking to any shrink.”

“You’ll talk to her or I’ll send a report back to the SGC saying you haven’t been performing your duties.”

John froze on the spot, looking at her in disbelief. 

“You wouldn’t.” 

“I will, if you force me.” Weir’s mouth was set in a grim line, and she firmly held his gaze. “Talk to Heightmeyer. At least once a week, until I’m convinced you’re functioning normally again.”

John gaped at her. 

“Once a week? Elizabeth, that’s–”

“That’s non-negotiable. Set up your first appointment by the end of the week.”

John stood glaring at her for a long moment. Then, realising he’d been cornered, he turned and stomped out of the room. 

He found Teyla and Ford in the gym, having just finished a bantos stick lesson. He stalked up to them, still visibly angry. 

“Is Weir making you see the shrink?”

Teyla’s brow furrowed. 

“Shrink?” 

“The head doctor,” John said impatiently, “about… about McKay.” He couldn’t look at them as he said it. Ford and Teyla exchanged glances. 

“Uh… no,” Ford said. “She making you?” 

“It’s ridiculous,” John growled. “I’m fine.” Ford and Teyla looked at each other again. John’s anger spiked higher. “I can see those looks, you know.” His teammates broke their gaze, looking guilty. 

“Perhaps it is for the best,” Teyla said delicately. “Perhaps it will help you… recover.” 

“I don’t need help,” John snapped. “I’m doing fine.”

Teyla’s mouth turned down at one corner. 

“If you say so, Major. But…” she hesitated again, her eyes flicking to the side and back in an aborted look at Ford, who was conspicuously silent. “But on our mission last week–”

John blinked. Last week?

“You were rather… ill at ease. It is natural to be wary after what happened, but it will be difficult to carry out missions with you so… easily unsettled.” She was clearly picking her words very carefully. 

John tried to control his anger, but he couldn’t seem to dispel the tension in his stomach. A small voice inside tried to tell him that what he was really angry at was himself, for not being better already. If only the damn dreams would stop… 

“I appreciate your concern,” he said flatly, keeping himself in check. “But my level of caution is appropriate for the situation. We never know what we’re walking into, and we need to be vigilant.” 

“If you say so sir,” Ford finally spoke up, his voice deadpan. John shot him a look. Ford barely spoke to him anymore, not unless absolutely required. They’d always been friendly before, in spite of the difference in rank. The change in his attitude was very noticeable, and John felt it acutely. 

“A member of our team died. I have to respond to that. I won’t let it happen again.” 

“We all feel Rodney’s loss deeply, John,” Teyla said gently. “But the universe is dangerous. These things are bound to happen.”

John gaped at her. How could she dismiss it so easily, just write it off? 

“Not on my team,” he barked. “Not again.” Turning on his heel, he stormed off without a look back. Neither of them really understood. Neither of them cared, not enough. Of course he had to be hyper-vigilant, neither of them were taking the whole thing seriously. It was all up to him.

Chapter Text

John perched on the edge of his bed, fingertips running worriedly over the scab on his bare chest. The surrounding skin was an angry red, and the stitches itched and tugged whenever he breathed. It wasn’t healing, but he didn’t want it to. The raw and painful wound was a good reminder of what he had done, and what he had lost. 

The room was bathed in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, dispelling all the shadows. He didn’t think he could face another night of dark figures, hovering over him, watching him, whispering his name. It was like being a kid again, afraid of the monsters under the bed. Only now, his mother wasn’t there to convince him there weren’t any. 

His eyes darted again to the clear glass bottle on the bedside table. It was a litre of Zelenka’s best moonshine, triple distilled and practically tasteless. He should put it away, forget it, save it for a special occasion. He didn’t want to be like that. 

“John.” Clear as day, someone whispered it in his ear. John clapped his hands to his ears, shaking his head.

“Shut up, shut up,” he muttered. He snatched the bottle off the table and uncapped it and took a huge swig. He coughed, sticking his tongue out at the sharp burn. He thought he heard something. He took another swig. 

Half an hour later, the bottle was half gone. John looked at it in dim surprise as he set it down, nearly missing the edge of the table. He felt warm and pleasantly numb. The dark suddenly didn’t seem so threatening anymore. He stretched out on the mattress, already feeling sleep tugging at him. He reached for the lamp, but hesitated, his hand on the switch. Then he set his jaw, annoyed with himself, and switched it off. He rolled over, closed his eyes, and drifted off.

John lay paralysed in his bed, muscles refusing to respond. Something was in his room. Someone. They would draw close to the bed, then pull away, then come back, each time getting closer. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t move. He could only lay there as the shadows loomed over him, closing in around him, and always that something, someone moving closer, closer. He kept trying to get up and fight, to run away, to scream. His body wouldn’t respond, was completely out of his control. Then, warm air, breath, on his cheek. Then, splitting the air like a knife through flesh, so loud he thought his ears would bleed, a voice. 

“JOHN!!”

He came back into his body with an almost painful jolt. He blinked up at the shadowed ceiling, his heart pounding between his ears as he tried to reorient himself. A dream; it had only been a dream. But it felt so real, still lingering at the edges of his consciousness like the echo of a voice in an empty room. But he was alone again, safely in his own bed after a nightmare.

But he wasn’t alone. Without seeing or hearing anything, John became suddenly, painfully aware that he was not alone. He lay still, waiting for a sign, for an escape. The other made no move either, just waiting. The seconds ticked by excruciatingly, the blackness of the room seeming to have physical weight on him. Then, finally, the other took a step towards him. John opened his mouth to scream, bunched his muscles to leap up. He couldn’t move. The other took another step. He couldn’t move, again! He had to be dreaming again, he had to be, because if he wasn’t, if he wasn’t–

John bolted awake like he’d been stuck with a pin, sitting up with a sharp gasp. The room was empty, the moonlight from the window casting only his own shadow. He let out a shuddering breath, scrubbing the sweat from his face. He was alone.

He sagged back onto the mattress with a groan. With the ebbing of adrenaline came the remembrance of how he’d gotten himself to sleep. His head throbbed and his vision spun; his mouth was dry and tasted awful. He was going to feel it in the morning. All that for nothing. What was it going to take to get some sleep?

He lay miserably in his bed until his alarm went off a few hours later. After a litre of water and a scalding hot shower, he dragged himself to the briefing on time. He slouched in his chair, a white-knuckle grip on his water bottle, and prayed no one noticed his red eyes and unshaven face. 

No one remarked on his sorry state, if they did notice. Weir went on with the briefing sparing him barely a glance, and John kept his head down and on the folder in front of him. Another trade mission; she was still going easy on him. He couldn’t help the flush of irritation creeping up his neck. He didn’t need to be coddled. But the idea of a rescue mission or another first-contact exploration made his heart race with anxiety. It made him furious, but it did. 

Suddenly, his hackles rose. Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out a figure standing in the corner of the room; not a dark shadow or a vague outline this time, but a clear person. He didn’t have to turn and look to know it was Rodney. He looked quickly around the table, checking to see if anyone else was reacting to the sudden presence of their dead friend. But they just went on with the briefing, blissfully unaware they were no longer alone.

John sat frozen, all his senses trained on the spectre in the corner. He refused to look directly at it, afraid that acknowledging it would somehow bring it to life. He became convinced the shade was staring directly at him, eyes boring into him, daring him to look. His hands began to shake. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. Even staring straight ahead, he saw the moment it opened its mouth.

“John.”

John started violently, barely biting back a cry of horror. He snapped back to attention just in time to realise it was Teyla who had spoken his name. He looked at her, wide-eyed. Her brow was furrowed in concern. 

“Doctor Weir asked if we had any questions.”

John looked quickly around to find Ford and Weir staring at him with similar expressions. 

“N-no, no questions.” He rose quickly. “Is that all?” 

“Yes,” Weir said warily. “If there’s no questions.”

John snatched up his copy of the briefing file. 

“No, I think I got it. Shipping out 08:00 tomorrow, right?” Weir barely got the answer out of her mouth before he was turning and fleeing for the door. The ghost of Rodney watched him the whole way. 

John raced back to his room, all thoughts of work for the day abandoned. He locked the door behind him and snatched up the bottle of moonshine. This was really not fucking good. He had only seen the shadows before in his sleep, or here in the dark where he could write it off as nightmares or sleep paralysis. This was broad daylight, and he was wide awake. 

He knocked back nearly a quarter of the liquid in one swallow. He coughed and sputtered as the liquor burned its way down his throat. His stomach lurched nauseously, still hungover from last night. But he had to calm his nerves, had to dispel the feeling of doom washing over him. 

He was going crazy. He was losing his mind, it was the only explanation. He didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or any of that hocus pocus, so he had to be going crazy. And really, that was the better of the two possible explanations. Rodney was not haunting him. He was not watching him sleep, appearing in his dreams, following him to briefings. He was a figment of John’s sleep-deprived imagination, pure and simple. 

John finished the bottle. It gave him the courage to do what he had to do. He tapped his radio.

“Sheppard to Heightmeyer.”

He stood and looked down at Rodney's body where it lay motionless and bloody in the sand. The skin was waxy, the limbs stiff, the blood on his chest dark and dry. Sand was beginning to drift onto his clothes and into his hair. John looked down at him, completely unable to feel anything. He just stood for hours in the desert twilight, the only sound the wind whistling through the rocks. He stood and watched him rot. 

Even as John watched, a fly landed on Rodney's glazed eye. Rodney didn't blink. The fly perched and sat, rubbing its forelegs, fluttering its wings. The fly took off with a start as, suddenly, Rodney's eye jerked to the side- as it turned and fixed itself right on John. The breath lodged in John's throat, his heart skipping a beat as Rodney's corpse was suddenly looking at him. He couldn't tear his gaze away, he could only stare back, meeting the eyes of a dead man. Those eyes seemed to condemn him, pointed right at him like a gun, holding him frozen in place. He wanted to run. He wanted to run so desperately when those grey lips parted, when the dead man opened his mouth to speak. 

“John.”

He came awake with a jolt at the voice in his ear. Someone was always calling him…

“Major Sheppard, come in.” The voice was exasperated, even angry. John squinted against the bright sunlight knifing into his eyes. He bolted upright in bed, his heart skipping a beat. The mission. 

“This is Sheppard,” he hit his radio, a little too roughly. He'd passed out with it still in his ear.

“Your team is ready and waiting, Major,” Weir said sharply. “Are you en route?”

John looked at his alarm clock. 08:20. He swore and keyed his radio again. 

“Yes ma’am, I’ll be there in two.” Swearing again, he yanked on his clothes in record time. No time for a shower. He quickly washed his face and splashed on aftershave, hoping to cover the smell of booze oozing out of him. He ran to the gear room as fast as his churning stomach would allow. It was still nearly ten minutes before he made it to the gate room, sweating and feeling like he was about to throw up. He could feel all eyes on him as he walked in. He’d never once been late for a mission. Ford and Teyla looked irritated, but said nothing.

“Are you quite ready now, Major?” Weir’s voice came from the booth. John threw a half-hearted salute. 

“Yes ma’am, ready and waiting.”

Weir nodded to the gate tech, who began the dialling sequence. John shifted uneasily from foot to foot, swallowing the sour taste in his mouth. He avoided looking at Teyla and Ford, who were both shooting him frequent glances. 

“Up late last night, sir?” Ford said drily, referring to his two-day beard and rumpled hair and clothing. Probably also referring to the smell. John flushed with embarrassment. 

“Mind yourself, Lieutenant,” he said tightly. Ford’s lips thinned, but he faced forward again and fell silent. 

They stepped through the gate into bare and rocky terrain. Low mountains loomed close on their right, sparse evergreens contrasting the dun brown and grey stone. The sun was behind the clouds, creating a dismal, muted landscape. 

This time, their hosts were waiting for them. A wiry and cross-faced old man was flanked by two large, imposing men with swords. John stiffened immediately, grip tightening on his gun. It took effort not to point it at them. 

“Good day, Minister,” Teyla said formally, before bowing from the waist. Hesitantly, John followed suit, but he kept his eyes on the aliens the whole time. “We thank you for meeting with us. Allow me to introduce my friends, Lieutenant Ford and Major Sheppard.” 

“Good morning,” John said stiffly.

“It is afternoon,” the Minister said snidely. John nearly rolled his eyes. As if that mattered. 

“Good afternoon, then.” 

“You are the leader?” 

“I’m leader of this team, and the military contingent on Atlantis, yes.”

The Minister looked him up and down disapprovingly. 

“Very well. Come.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and set off, followed by his guards. John shot Teyla a look, and she shrugged. They started walking. 

As they walked, John felt his tension growing. They were in a low, steep-sided valley between two rocky hills. All about them were piles and pillars of rough grey rock, imposing giants. There were a million hiding places, the perfect setting for an ambush. These people didn’t seem friendly, why should he trust them? 

Suddenly, off to the right, he saw someone, perched atop a massive boulder, looking down on them. He whirled, raising his gun and switching off the safety. 

“Heads up!” he called to his team, and Teyla and Ford instantly had their weapons poised. But even as John turned to face it, the figure was gone. Teyla and Ford looked at him in confusion as their escort stopped and turned around. 

“What is it, sir?” Ford asked tensely, his gun still raised. 

“I saw–” John hesitated. No real person could have disappeared that fast. “I thought I saw someone.” 

“Where?” Ford said, eyes scanning the hillside. 

“On that boulder.” John pointed with his gun.  Ford’s gaze darted briefly to Teyla.

“No one there now, sir.”

“They must have–” John struggled for an explanation. 

“What is going on?” The minister was stalking irritably back towards them. 

“I saw someone up on the hillside,” John answered, growing increasingly embarrassed. 

“And?” The minister demanded. “Why shouldn’t someone be on the hillside?” 

“Just being cautious,” John said stiffly. He started to lower his gun, reluctantly putting the safety back on. Ford and Teyla followed suit. 

“What you mean is you think my people would attack you.” The minister turned to Teyla, clearly offended. “If you believe we are violent, how can we possibly trade? Trade requires a certain amount of good faith, and clearly that does not exist between us.” 

“That is not the case, Minister,” Teyla said in alarm. John’s stomach lurched anxiously. Had he just ruined the trade deal before it even got started? “Major Sheppard has never encountered your people before, he is unfamiliar with your peaceful ways. As he said, he is merely being cautious.”

“If he is so suspicious of us, perhaps he ought to go back,” the old man said sourly. “I would hate to subject him to such stress any longer.” 

“I’m fine,” John snapped, dropping his gun fully to his side. “Thank you,” he added. “I didn’t mean any offence. We’re often in dangerous places, I reacted without thinking.” 

“I advise you to begin thinking, if you want to remain on good terms with us,” the minister quipped. John clenched his teeth and fought back a retort of his own. He forced a tight-lipped smile. 

“I’ll be sure and do that.” As the minister and his men turned to go, John couldn’t help an anxious glance back to the boulder where he’d seen the figure. He’d been absolutely certain, even only in his peripheral vision; it was a man’s figure, clear as day, standing watching them from above. But to disappear so fast… There was only one man it could have been. With a painfully dry swallow, John forced himself to start walking. 

Half an hour later, they arrived at a village of stone houses, ringed by a dry stone wall nearly five feet high. It couldn’t have housed more than a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty people. Pale-skinned villagers peered suspiciously at them as they passed, conversations ending abruptly and restarting, hushed, in their wake. They came to the largest of the buildings, long and low with few windows, and passed through a heavy wood and iron door inside. 

It was as dark inside as would be expected, only the light of a few sputtering lanterns illuminating the line of men sitting on one side of a low table. They, too, regarded the newcomers warily, falling silent as they entered. John really wished he had paid attention in the briefing; clearly, these people were not going to be as easy to deal with as the last bunch. 

As Teyla once more formally introduced them, John looked down the line of pale old men. Each one looked as dour and unfriendly as the last. But then, at the end farthest from John, a younger man leaned forward. Even in the dim light, dressed like a local, it was unmistakably Rodney.

John’s blood froze in his veins. He gripped his gun like his life depended on it and tried desperately not to react. His gaze instantly went to Ford and Teyla, to see if they had noticed him too. They simply stood, calm and unaware, in conversation with the other men at the table. John looked back to Rodney to find him looking directly at him. John quickly looked away with a slight gasp. Teyla cast him a glance, checking to see if he’d drawn breath to start speaking. He only shook his head slightly, and she went on. 

John dropped his head and stared at the ground so he couldn’t see anything else. He was fighting the overwhelming urge to run. It was not real. Rodney was not here. He was dead. Rodney was dead, and John was crazy. 

He felt like he couldn’t get enough air, the dank, close room threatening to suffocate him. He rocked on his heels, drummed his fingers on the butt of his gun, tried to take slow, calming breaths. He could still feel not-Rodney’s eyes on him, see his familiar figure in his peripheral vision. For a moment, he could’ve sworn he smelled his aftershave on the damp, cool air. He just had to keep telling himself it wasn’t real. He just had to ignore it, and everything would be alright. 

“John.” 

John’s head jerked up. Had Teyla called him? No, she was still facing forward, working her charms on a group of unimpressed villagers. Ford, likewise, stood to one side staring vacantly ahead, his own role in the proceedings very minor. John’s hands started to shake. They hadn’t said his name. 

“John.” Soft, urgent, insistent, it came again. He couldn’t deny it was Rodney’s voice. John set his jaw and looked straight at the wall behind the villagers.

“John, please.”

John shook his head slightly as if he could somehow shake away the sound.

“I know you can hear me.”

Cold terror clutched at John’s chest. He’d only ever said his name before. The shadows only ever said his name. If they were going to start talking to him now, addressing him directly, asking things of him–

“Excuse me,” John gasped out, and turned and bolted for the door. 

“Major!” Teyla called after him in shock, but he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to. He still felt Rodney’s gaze burning into his back, felt his presence until the moment he slammed the door behind him. It still wasn’t enough distance. John took off running, down the road, past the stone wall and out of the village. He staggered to a stop half a kilometre later, gasping for air much harder than his short run should have accounted for. 

He had stopped just where the land rose from the open plain of the village, back to the steep-sided valley the road to the gate ran through. He whirled one way, then the other, searching for the spectral figure. Every rock, every shadowy outline, seemed for a moment to be a human form, looming over him. His boots crunched on the loose rock of the road, sending back echoes that seemed to be approaching footsteps. He clapped his hands over his eyes. 

“It’s not real,” he ground out, trying to still the shaking of his hands. “Stop it, just stop it.” 

“John!” The voice seemed to come from very far off, but it echoed in the canyon, a ghostly chorus calling for him. 

“No.” John shook his head. “No, shut up. Shut up!” 

“John, listen!” 

“It’s not real,” John growled to himself again, trying desperately to believe it. 

“John! John! JOHN!” His name rang all around him, over and over, bouncing back at him from every surface until it became overwhelmingly deafening. He snapped. 

“NO!” he bellowed, whirling on the spot, raising his gun to his shoulder. He looked wildly from crag to crag, ready to shoot any person he saw, spinning back and forth. The loose rock shifted under his boots, and his knee twisted with a sharp pain. With a yelp, John went down on the knee, dropping his gun to its strap across his chest. 

The voices stopped. It went dead silent in the valley, only the sound of his own harsh breathing reaching his ears. His head swung from side to side, still checking for any sign of anyone. There was no one, only bare rock. 

John heaved a sigh, slumping forward. There was no one there; there never had been. It was all in his head. 

He climbed painfully back to his feet, flexing his knee experimentally. No major damage, he had just tweaked it. Hard to say the damage he had done to their trade deal, though. Guilt quickly supplanted fear as he looked back towards the village, wondering how Teyla would manage to spin his sudden bolt. He didn’t see them coming after him, so they obviously hadn’t been kicked out on the spot. But even she would be hard-pressed to side-step his erratic behaviour in what should have been a simple trade negotiation. He had screwed up, big time. These people had naquadah, piles of it, and they needed it badly on Atlantis to run the supplemental generators. But he may have wrecked their chance of that, and that wasn’t going to go down well with Weir. 

And what excuse did he have? He couldn’t possibly tell anyone what he’d been seeing. They’d have him off the team so fast he wouldn’t even have a chance to open his mouth to argue, and he couldn’t lose the people he had left. So what did he say to explain his bizarre actions? How long could he get away with the mourning excuse? 

He stood hesitantly on the road, staring down at the village in the fields below. Should he go back? Would that make things better or worse? Was there anything he could do to repair the damage at this point? No ideas came to him, so he stayed where he was, prevaricating. 

It was nearly two hours before he saw the two black-clad figures emerging from the gates of the town, headed his way. He gripped his gun and shifted uneasily from foot to foot. He still had no idea what to say, or how to explain himself. 

As they drew closer, John got a look at Teyla’s expression. She looked furious, her normally serene face drawn together in an angry scowl. John swallowed nervously. He had never seen Teyla mad before, and he didn’t like it. 

“John.” Teyla picked up her pace over the last twenty yards, approaching him nearly at a run. She stomped to a stop in front of him, looking angrier still. “What in God’s name was that? What were you thinking?” 

“Sorry, I- I–” John swallowed again. “I think I was allergic to something in that room, it was suddenly hard to breathe.”

Teyla’s eyes narrowed. 

“Hard to breathe?” She said it flatly, clearly disbelieving. 

“Yeah, you- you know… mould or something.” John raised one shoulder in a lopsided shrug. “I don’t know what it was.” 

“You could have taken a moment to explain yourself!” Teyla crossed her arms. “They thought you were a madman, bolting away as if you saw a ghost.”

John’s mouth went dry. 

“I’m not– I didn’t see anything! I just started getting chest pains, I didn’t want to wait and see if it got worse.”

“And did you not stop to consider that whatever made you feel that way could be putting Lieutenant Ford and I at risk, also?”

John’s gaze darted to Ford, whose jaw was set like stone. Guilt settled even deeper in his stomach.

“You… you both seemed fine. I assumed it was an allergy thing.”

His teammates both stood glaring at him.

“I see. Well, it is a relief to see you have apparently abandoned your previous over-caution, then,” Teyla said sharply, uncrossing her arms and stomping past him. Ford followed her, his shoulder roughly brushing John’s as he passed him. John opened his mouth to call them back, but he shut it again. He had nothing to say. Resignedly, he trudged after them. The debriefing was going to be hell. 

After four hours in the infirmary, Beckett declared there was nothing wrong with him. He fixed him with a piercing gaze. 

“It was probably a panic attack.”

John stiffened, sitting up straighter on the edge of the bed. 

“I was not panicking.” Even though he very much had been, Beckett didn’t know that, and he resented the implication. “I was just standing there.”

“You don’t have to necessarily be in a dangerous situation to have a panic reaction.” Becket picked up his chart and started scribbling on it. “Anxiety causes it. What were you thinking about at the time?” 

“Nothing,” John snapped, resisting the urge to snatch the chart from the doctor's hands and read what he was saying about him. “I was focusing on the meeting.” 

“I see. What was being discussed?” Beckett’s sharp blue eyes were back on him, and John was suddenly and painfully reminded of another blue-eyed man who frequently looked at him with the same intensity. 

“The trade deal,” he said flatly, dragging his eyes away. 

“What were we offering in exchange for the naquadah?” Beckett clicked his pen open and closed again. John faltered.

“Medical supplies.” 

“The technology to refine it,” Beckett retorted, clicking his pen open and resuming his notes. John ground his teeth. 

“Whatever.”

“You weren’t listening, Major. Your teammates and Doctor Weir report you’ve been distracted, inattentive, and irritable for the past month.”

Anger heated John’s face. They were talking about him, complaining about him?

“You’re not coping well with Rodney’s death. It’s time to talk to someone.” 

“I don’t need to talk to someone!” John barked, hopping up off the bed. “I just need people to leave me the hell alone!”

Beckett’s eyebrows lowered. 

“You’ll speak to someone or I’ll have you taken off field duty.”

John glared hatefully at him. He was getting real sick of people threatening him. Beckett looked coolly back.

“I know Doctor Weir told you the same thing. Take the hint, son, and let someone help you.”

John looked away, anger spiking again as a man scarcely older than him patronisingly called him ‘son.’ The only man whose son he was would beat the tar out of him before he let him go to therapy. 

“You can make me go, but you can’t make me talk.”

Beckett folded his arms, the chart pressed against his chest. 

“That’s true. But if you don’t start showing some improvement soon, you’ll be off of field duty anyway. So I suggest you make an effort, Major.”

John’s shoulders slumped, bitterly admitting defeat.

“I already have an appointment with her,” he muttered. “Tuesday.”

Beckett visibly brightened. 

“Oh! Good for you. Well then, you’re free to go.”

With his glare now directed at the ground, John slouched away. He was going to have to get a handle on this thing. He was going to have to just tune it out, learn to ignore it. He was going to have to pretend to not be crazy.

He didn’t tell the psychiatrist about what he’d been seeing. If he did that, he really would be crazy. He spent the session mostly talking about his childhood, neatly deflecting her with stories of his shitty father and dead mother. Psychiatrists ate that stuff up. 

He left the session more exhausted than when he arrived. He trudged back to his room, so tired his vision kept blurring as he walked. When he got to his room he flopped onto the bed without even taking his boots off. He moved only to switch on the lamp, unnecessary with the sun still above the horizon, but necessary to make it through the night. 

He looked briefly at the empty glass bottle on his nightstand. He could get more…

He set his jaw determinedly and looked away. He wasn’t going to become that person. He sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He was asleep in moments. 

He was on the pier, bathed in the glorious ochre glow of sunset. It was warm, a cool ocean breeze stirring his hair. It was perfect. Almost perfect. 

Then Rodney was beside him, legs dangling over the edge, shoes nearly skimming the water. He turned and smiled at him. 

“Stay here.” 

“I’m not going anywhere,” John said, returning the smile. 

“I can’t lose you.”

John’s smile fell. He turned away quickly, his chest tightening. He knew then that he was dreaming. Rodney was gone, and he was the one who lost him. But then he turned back, peering keenly at the other man. This was as close as he was going to get to speaking to Rodney again. Shouldn’t he take this chance?

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. Rodney looked out over the ocean, smooth as glass and nearly blinding with reflected light. 

“I tried to protect you.”

John looked away miserably. 

“I know. You shouldn’t have.” 

“I’d do anything to protect you.”

John swallowed, hands clenching in his lap. 

“I didn’t want that.” 

“I… I care about you. A lot.”

John stiffened. 

“We were teammates.” 

“You mean so much to me. You have no idea.” 

“Stop it,” he said hoarsely. “We’re friends.” 

“I never got a chance to say it,” Rodney said sadly. “I want you to know how much I–”

“Stop it!” John bellowed. “Shut up!” 

Rodney made a strangled gurgling noise. John’s head jerked around. Rodney was looking down at himself, at the arrow protruding from his chest, and the blood gushing down his front. 

“No!” John cried, recoiling. “Not again, don’t make me watch!” He closed his eyes, blocking out the sight. “Wake up, wake up!” He could still hear Rodney gasping for breath, choking on his own blood. He clapped his hands to his ears. “Wake up!” 

“John!” Rodney screamed. John’s eyes flew open just in time to see Rodney pitch forward and disappear into the water. 

“No!” John flung himself off the edge of the pier. The water closed around him like an icy hand, far colder than it should be on a warm summer day. He flailed around in the blackness, reaching out for Rodney where he should have been. He could find nothing, only empty water. His lungs started to burn. In despair, he began to swim up for the surface. He went up and up, but he couldn’t find it. He began to panic, kicking out with all his might, searching for the air and sunlight. He found only dark icy water, pulling him down and down. His lungs felt about to burst, the pressure in his head unbearable. Madly, desperately, he opened his mouth to scream.

John came awake so violently he nearly fell off the bed. He gasped convulsively, feeling the air rush into his lungs with profound relief. It was still dark out, but the lamp chased away the shadows. He looked around the empty room just to be sure. Then he looked down. 

Stretched out on the bed, nearly touching him, lay Rodney’s body. The arrow stuck out of his chest, blood drenching the white sheets below him. His glazed eyes were looking right at John. 

With a cry of horror, John leapt away, falling right off the edge of the bed. He hit the floor hard, bruising his side, but he barely noticed, scrambling away until his back hit the wall. He curled in on himself, gasping, eyes fixed on the bed. From the floor, he couldn’t see Rodney any more, but he knew he was there. He grasped his hair with trembling hands, and forced himself to close his eyes.

“Not real,” he breathed. “It’s not real.” He rocked back and forth as he said it, some infantile instinct of comfort, and tried to get his breathing under control. For several long minutes, he tried to work up the nerve. He tried to convince himself. At last he opened his eyes again, shifted onto his knees, and stretched up until he could see the whole bed. 

Nothing was there. No body, no bloodstains, not even a dent in the pillow. John nearly collapsed with relief, his breath leaving him in a gust. Then he slumped forward onto his knees with a groan.

It was getting worse. What was he going to do?

All at once, he became aware of pain in his chest. Looking down, he found a large patch of blood on the front of his t-shirt. He blinked owlishly at it for several moments, trying to disentangle it in his mind from the bloody chest wound he now saw every night in his nightmares. His sutures must have popped open when he flung himself from the bed. The wound kept on reopening, but what did it matter? His wound was the pale mirror of Rodney’s, mocking him with its insignificance. He hoped it never healed. It was a fitting reminder.

Chapter Text

At his second session with Heightmeyer, she finally pinned him down.

“Tell me about Rodney’s death.”

John went still, his throat tightening. He couldn’t do that. 

“You read the report.” 

“I read it,” the psychiatrist nodded. “But I want to hear it from you.” 

“Doctor McKay was in the process of investigating the unknown Ancient device while Lieutenant Ford and I stood guard.” Staring at the wall, John started citing his mission report verbatim. “Against my orders, Doctor McKay removed his kevlar vest, and–” He broke off, swallowing with difficulty. Writing that had felt like a betrayal, like saying it was Rodney’s fault. It was John’s fault, no one else’s. 

“And what, John?”

John shot her a brief glare. He didn’t like people who didn’t know him calling him by his first name. He’d been in the Air Force a lot of years, and the correct way to address him was ‘Major Sheppard.’ 

“You’ve read the mission report,” he said gruffly. “Don’t waste both our time.”

With the slightest twitch of one eyebrow, Heightmeyer leaned forward slightly. 

“I know what happened, John. What I want to know is what you think happened, if you think it was your fault.”

“It was my fault,” John snapped, then quickly reigned himself in. “I am their commanding officer. Everything that happens to my team while in the field is my fault.” 

“It’s your responsibility, yes, but it’s not your fault.”

“Semantics,” John said sullenly, picking at a loose thread on the arm of his chair. 

“I think it’s a very important distinction. You don’t just hold yourself responsible for your friends, you feel that what happens to them is entirely up to you.”

“Teammates,” John corrected without thinking.

Heightmeyer cocked her head slightly. 

“You don’t think of them as friends?”

John stared at the wall again. 

“I can’t afford to.” 

“I see.” Heightmeyer drummed her fingers on her notepad for a moment. “Do you think Rodney thought of you as friends?”

His gaze snapped to her instantly. Rodney thought of them as… Rodney wanted more than he could give. 

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.” 

“It seems to me,” Heightmeyer said carefully, “that the level of distress you’ve shown in the last six weeks is a little more than what would be expected for someone who had lost just a teammate.”

Anger flared in John’s chest.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. When you’re in the field with someone, when you have to trust your life–” He broke off again, the words choking him. Rodney had trusted him with his life, and look what it had gotten him.

Heightmeyer gave him a moment, then, seeing he wasn’t going to continue, spoke again. 

“Of course, the bonds between those who serve together are very strong. So then why are you unwilling to call Rodney a friend? You spend time with him, you care what happens to him, you trust him.”

“I spent time with him,” John corrected morosely.

Heightmeyer gave him an appraising look. 

“Quite a bit of time, from what I understand.”

John couldn’t help squirming a little under her gaze. Just what was she implying?

“There’s no denying you cared for Rodney, John– cared deeply. So why are you trying to?” 

It was well after midnight when John found himself once again outside Rodney’s old lab. He was trying to stave off sleep by walking around, and his feet kept leading him there. He walked by the door two or three times before he finally admitted defeat. 

He stepped inside, holding his breath. The lights rose dimly in the empty room, their soft hum the only sound. It was exactly as it had been when he was last here. Nobody else had set foot inside, apparently; not one paper had shifted. It was eerie.

The laptop on the central desk was still on, still rolling down line after line of code, green text on black like The Matrix. John stood staring at it for almost a minute. What could possibly be taking a month and a half to run? Was the program ever going to end? Or would it continue running into eternity like the electronic ghost of his dead friend, carrying on his work without him? 

At last he tore his gaze away, and stepped further into the room. He ran his fingertips lightly over a desk as he passed. They came away dusty. 

He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing here. The last time he was here, he’d been scared away by a voice he couldn’t explain, calling to him from a mysterious computer. But now, the voice was everywhere, following him, calling to him from beyond the grave. He may as well be here as anywhere. There was no peace to be found for him. 

John circled the room, stirring up papers, picking up tablets whose batteries had died long ago. There were nearly half a dozen old mugs, stained forever with the residue of dried coffee, Rodney’s drug of choice. There were several pieces of dissected hardware, both human and Ancient, the tools laying beside them as if about to be picked back up. And there, on the back of a chair, was Rodney’s jacket. 

John stopped when he saw it, his breath catching. The blue fabric, the Atlantis badge on the breast; they all had one exactly like it. But this was Rodney’s. Who else’s could it be? John touched it reverently, the barest brush of his fingers. Then he jerked his hand back with a sharp gasp. The garment was warm, as if someone had just taken it off. He looked around the room, but Rodney didn’t appear. Even if he had, it wasn’t any version of Rodney that could make the jacket warm. 

It’s not real. 

John repeated his new mantra. Hesitantly, he reached for the jacket again. It was cool. He gathered a handful of the fabric and pulled it off the back of the chair. He held it up and looked at it like an indecisive shopper. Then, without knowing why, he put the jacket to his face and inhaled deeply.

Rodney. It was Rodney– his aftershave, his shampoo, his soap, a hint of his addiction to coffee. John wasn’t sure why he knew the smell so well, but he did. It hit him like a punch to the gut, an ephemeral remnant of something he’d never have again. It burned his throat. 

He quickly dropped the jacket back onto the chair, feeling as though he had transgressed somehow. It felt almost like stealing, like he had taken something that wasn’t his. He wiped his hands on his pants. 

His eyes were drawn again to the computer, humming away on the desk. It made him nervous, like a ticking time bomb or a bear trap, ready to go off. But he wasn’t ready to go yet, to leave somewhere as close to Rodney as he was ever going to get again. 

Keeping watch from the corner of his eye, he began to sift through the other contents of the desk. He picked up a few papers, and there was a sharp bang like a gunshot in the silence. John startled badly, his heart pounding in his chest as he staggered back a step. Then he saw that the bang had merely been the impact of a fist-sized rock which had rolled off the papers when he grabbed them. 

Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he picked up the rock and looked at it. Smooth and black, it had obviously been polished by water over many years. Turning it over, he froze, his eyes widening. On the underside was a fossil, the ridged swirl of an ammonite. He knew it well. 

They had been trudging for hours across an uninhabited planet, looking for… anything. Rodney had been complaining about his feet hurting for at least half of those hours. Whenever he quieted down, John would ask him how his feet were feeling, and set him off again. Ford and Teyla hated it, but it made him smile. 

Then they came across a lake. It was crystal clear, smooth as glass, and the same shade of blue as Rodney’s eyes. Rodney informed them this probably represented a high concentration of calcium carbonate, but could also mean the water was poisonous acid, what with this being an entirely different galaxy. John dared him to put his feet in, saying the water would either make them feel better or dissolve them away, and either way his problem was solved. Rodney had spluttered and frothed about the insanity of exposing himself to unknown liquids on an alien planet in another galaxy, while John took off his boots and socks. Even as Rodney watched, bug-eyed, John had splashed into the water without hesitation, wading in up to his shins. 

John had turned back and grinned cheekily at him, waiting for the explosion. Instead, Rodney had gone still for a moment, waiting. Then he asked how the water was, his lips thinning on a repressed smile. John smiled wider, told him it was good, then started laughing. Rodney started laughing in turn, and for a moment, the world was only them. 

Ford and Teyla had started shedding their boots when John had, and were wading in after him a minute later. Rodney scrambled to follow suit, picking his way gingerly across the pebbled shore to join them. He sighed with relief as he sank into the cool water, and John couldn’t resist a ‘told-you-so.’ Rodney had kicked water at him in response, which set off a splash fight that left all four of them practically drenched. 

Later, sunning themselves dry on the shore, John  amused himself sifting through the rocks. Turning over a smooth black one, he saw the coiled fossil with a little thrill. Without even thinking, he turned to Rodney. He tossed the rock at him, and Rodney caught it clumsily, eyebrows arched in surprise. As he also turned it over and saw the fossil, John grinned at him. 

“Here. A souvenir.”

Rodney had flushed pink, cradling the rock in both hands as though it were fragile. He didn’t say anything, just stared down at it for a long moment. John looked at his bowed head with a kind of warm feeling in his chest.  

Soon enough, they were all reluctantly pulling their boots back on, ready for the long hike back home, and John forgot all about it. 

John had forgotten it completely until that very moment. He hadn’t expected Rodney to keep the rock, expected him to drop it, not lug it the fifteen miles to the gate. He hadn’t meant anything by it. It was just a rock. But apparently, Rodney had pocketed it, carried it home and set it on his desk. He looked at it every day. He had remembered that day, that small moment between them, and he wanted to keep it. 

Looking down at the fossil, John unexpectedly, inexplicably, began to cry. 

They were sitting on the end of the pier, watching the sun go down in peaceable silence. They each clutched a beer bottle tightly in both hands. John’s hand twitched slightly on his bottle, about to reach out, then stilled.

Rodney spoke. 

“You knew.”

John furrowed his brow.

“What?”

“You knew what I was going to say.”

John opened his mouth to protest ignorance, but Rodney carried on.

“You knew what I was going to say and that’s why you stopped me.” 

“I didn’t know.” John shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Rodney turned and fixed him with a stare. 

“You know.”

John looked away, suddenly acutely uncomfortable. He wished there were a few more inches of space between them. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“They were my last words, John. I had a right to them.” 

“What good would it have done?” John said angrily, knuckles whitening on his beer bottle. “It was too late.” 

“Maybe it would have done me some good, just to know you knew.” 

“I knew,” John murmured, eyes on his hands. “I always knew.” 

“You didn’t want to know.”

John said nothing, just picked at a loose corner of the beer label. Rodney turned away and sighed sadly.

“You didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t know!” John wailed miserably. “I don’t know what I was supposed to have done about it! I don’t understand why you felt that way, I don’t understand at all! Why would you feel that way about me?” He looked pleadingly at Rodney, who kept his eyes forward. “You were my best friend, I couldn’t risk losing you!” His chin fell to his chest in despair. “I lost you anyway. I’m sorry.”

Rodney said nothing, either to forgive or recriminate. But one hand loosened on his beer, reached out, and slid into John’s, cool and damp with condensation. 

John held his breath. It felt so real, so solid. It felt so close. He had been so close to something, and he’d missed it. How had he missed it?

John woke up with a sigh. He didn’t know what had awoken him until he saw that it was morning. He sat up, wide-eyed. It was morning? He had slept all the way through the night, for the first time in six weeks. No nightmares, for the first time in six weeks.

He sat there for a long time, elbows on his knees, looking unseeing out the window at the clear cerulean sky. He had cried, and he had slept. He had dreamt, but not of death and horror. Why? He looked to his bedside table, at the smooth black rock which now sat there. His eyes began to sting. He turned quickly back to the window, swallowing down the tears. 

He had thought he knew Rodney. He thought he knew what he felt. He thought he knew what he felt for Rodney. He looked down at his hand, which still seemed to tingle with the imaginary touch of his lost friend. What had he felt, really? What was it that made the loss, this loss, so incomparably awful? Was it just the guilt, or was it more? Were they more? 

John balled his hand into a fist and dropped it into his lap. It didn’t matter. He was military, it wasn’t an option. It wouldn’t have been an option. It didn’t matter because Rodney was gone now, and he was never getting him back. 

Dragging himself out of bed, John trudged to the bathroom to wash his face. Leaning on the sink, he made the mistake of looking in the mirror. He sighed heavily. He looked like hell. His eyes were sunken, red-rimmed with thick dark bags underneath. His cheeks were gaunt; he’d lost weight, too distracted most of the time to think about food. His hair was getting shaggy, and he hadn’t shaved in so long he practically had a beard. If his drill sergeant could see him now… 

With another sigh, John pulled his razor and shaving cream from the cabinet. If he ever wanted to convince Weir to send him on missions again, he’d have to start putting in more effort. 

Without a thought to breakfast, John headed for Weir’s office, near the control room. Maybe she would be satisfied just by him getting the ball rolling. He was still afraid, to his shame, of going out in the field, but at least it would give him something to do. He couldn’t escape the visions, but being out would still be better than being cooped up here, haunted by all the places Rodney used to be. 

As he passed the gear room, he was surprised to see Ford and Teyla just coming out of it. They were in full field gear– BDUs, tac vests, armed and ready. He ground to a halt and stared at them. 

“What the hell?” As they spotted him, both his teammates started, guilty looks coming on their faces. He closed the distance between them. “What the hell?” he demanded, gesturing to them. They wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

“We’re shipping out with AR-3 in a few minutes,” Ford said stiffly. “They needed an extra hand.” 

“I have hands,” John said flatly, folding his arms. “Two of them.” His mouth was dry, his heart thundering in his chest. He tried to maintain calm. 

“Temporary reassignment,” Ford said with a shrug, his mouth turning down at one corner. “Talk to Doctor Weir.” 

“You bet your ass I will,” John growled. His head throbbed. He wanted to scream at someone. He wanted to throw a punch. She was taking them away from him. She was taking his team away. He wouldn’t let her do that. 

Storming past his shame-faced teammates, John practically ran to Weir’s office. He threw the door open and stomped in. She looked up without surprise, clearly expecting him.

“Major.” 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He practically yelled, his hands in fists at his sides. 

“Shut the door please,” Weir said calmly. “And lower your voice.”

John slammed the door behind him, but did not lower his voice. 

“That is my team, you do not just go and reassign them without my say-so!”

Weir folded her hands on her desk. 

“You are an invaluable leader in this city, John,” she began diplomatically. “But I have the final say-so on all off-world deployments.”

“We used to decide on that together,” John growled. “Suddenly you don’t need my input anymore?” 

“It has been quite a while since you’ve had any input to give, John.” Weir’s voice was firm but neutral. “I’m attempting to keep your workload light while you… recuperate.” 

“That is my team, Elizabeth,” he said again. He felt shaky, his throat burning with emotion. “You have no right to take them away.”

Weir gave him a pitying look, which made him want to punch the wall.

“I’m not taking them away, John. But they’re no use to us sitting around the city. They’re both highly skilled field operatives, they’re more valuable out there.”

“Then let me go with them!” John cried, anguish edging his voice. He was trying desperately to keep calm, but it was starting to feel like he couldn’t breathe. What was going to happen when he had nothing left to take? “I’m their commanding officer, I should be out there with them.” 

“Yes, you should,” Weir said flatly. “But you’ve demonstrated that you’re not capable of that right now. I have to think about the whole expedition, John, not just you.” 

“One slip up,” John said through clenched teeth. “One. I only get one chance, and that’s it? Give me a goddamn minute! I’m never going to get back on the horse if you won’t let me! Keeping me locked up here is only making it worse.” 

“There is no margin for error out there, John. As you have now learned.”

John stared at her, speechless, her words like a slap in the face. She regarded him coolly.

“If you ever want to get back out in the field, pull yourself together. Go to your sessions, get your work done, and stop walking around like a zombie. That’s all.” Her eyes still on him, she opened her tablet case. Then she looked down at it and started tapping the screen pointedly. He had been dismissed. 

He could have stayed and fought her on it. He could have screamed and threatened and begged, but what would have been the point? He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t broken anymore. He turned and practically ran from the room, slamming the door behind him. 

He walked down the hall, faster and faster, emotion rising higher in his chest until it choked him. He was losing what remained of his team. He was being sidelined, too much of a risk to let out in the field. Wasn’t it punishment enough that he had to keep seeing his dead friend everywhere, keep hearing him call for him, keep being reminded of his failure? 

John stopped dead in his tracks, his heart pounding behind his ribs. Directly ahead of him, in the middle of the hallway, stood Rodney, looking straight at him. He had nearly run into him. The other people in the hallway flowed around them both, as if Rodney was really there, was really taking up space. John’s chest heaved on rapid breaths, panic threatening. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t. Real.  

“John.” Rodney’s voice was soft, his face sad. “Please, hear me.”

John shook his head vehemently, but couldn’t take his eyes off Rodney. 

“You’re not real,” he said hoarsely. A few passers-by shot him strange looks, but they seemed dim and far away. Only Rodney stood out in too-sharp, too-real detail, his colours blindingly bright.  

“I know you can do it,” Rodney said, and took a step towards him. John staggered back.

“No,” he gasped. “Leave me alone!” 

“Stop it,” Rodney murmured, stepping forward again. “End this.” 

“Leave me alone!” John bellowed, turned on his heel, and began to run. He ran as fast as he could, trying to leave Rodney behind. But every time he turned a corner, Rodney was there, waiting. He would open his mouth to say something, but before he could, John was already gone. He ran and ran, dodging startled people in the halls with no thought to how he looked. He just knew he had to get away. He had to make it stop. 

He bolted out the sliding doors and onto the pier. He was gasping for air now, sweat-drenched and at the end of his strength. From behind him, he heard a call. 

“John!”

He didn’t turn or pause. He just ran straight to the end of the pier, right off it, and flung himself into the churning water. 

The cold water hit him like a slap in the face. It swallowed him up, pulling all the warmth from his body in an instant. It rushed in his ears, drowning out all other sound as he sank. John hung there, suspended, unmoving. He wished he could sink like a stone, lost beneath the waves forever into oblivion. But he floated up, unbidden, his head breaking the surface mere seconds after he’d gone under it. He gasped for air, lungs burning from his frantic flight through the city. 

Slowly, fearfully, he turned to look back at the pier. Standing at the very edge, hair whipping in the high wind, Rodney looked down at him, concern etched on his face. His lips formed John’s name, but no sound reached John’s ears. John stared at him, treading water, too afraid to move back towards the pier. What would happen when he reached it? Would the ghost reach out and touch him, pull him from the water like the real Rodney would? Was this spectre to become his full time companion? 

Suddenly, something wrapped around his ankle. Colder even than the water, he felt the pressure of individual fingers branding his skin. Terror seized John instantly, his heart leaping to his throat. The hand pulled, a quick jerk on his leg, not enough to even pull his head under, then let him bob back up. He kicked out with both legs, trying to twist free, but the hand had a hold on him like an iron band. The hand yanked him down again, the water closing about his head this time. He kicked back up, gasping as he broke the surface, thrashing with all his might. 

“Help!” he howled, trying to swim for the end of the pier. The hand still held on, and once more pulled him under. It held him under now, his lungs burning on the half-breath he had gotten. He kicked out with his free leg, trying to hit something, to hurt whoever had hold of him. He found nothing. 

He broke the surface again, chest heaving desperately for air. 

“Rodney!” he screamed, hands reaching for nothing. He was pulled back under. This time, the pulling didn’t stop. He kept going down, down. Opening his eyes, he saw the glimmer of sunlight on the surface growing fainter. Nearly mad with fear, he forced himself to look down, to see what had him. 

Suspended below him was a figure, featureless and pitch black, blacker even than the yawning chasm of ocean below him. It was pulling him down without moving, without effort. Its face, if it was a face, was turned up at him, looking at him, watching. John looked back, frozen in horror. The blood thundered in his ears like a drumbeat as they sank deeper and deeper, into the crushing dark depths. 

He felt a sudden warmth, a hand taking his in a firm grip. He looked up, to a figure silhouetted against the light of the surface. Then he was being pulled, upwards this time, up towards the air. But the creature below, whatever it was, was not going to be easily defeated. It pulled down even harder, nails digging painfully into John’s ankle, determined to have him. 

It was a vicious tug of war with John in the middle. John kicked out with both feet, trying to help the one above him. He kept his eyes up, afraid if he looked at the thing below again he would be paralyzed with fear, and he’d be lost. His lungs were burning, straining like they were about to pop like over-inflated balloons. His vision was beginning to darken at the edges, his head pounding painfully. He was drowning. 

Don't let me go.

He kicked again, one last time, a man in his death throes, knowing only desperation. Suddenly, incredibly, the cold hand at his ankle shook loose. He was pulled quickly up towards the surface. The cold hand snatched at him, fingers scrabbling, trying to get hold again. But he was rising too fast, pulled heavenwards, raptured. The cold hand let go and was gone. 

His head broke the surface. He gasped in air in heaving lung-fulls, the pain in his chest easing. Fumbling blindly, his hands found the edge of the pier, and he nearly wept with relief. Someone gripped him by the arms and pulled him up, lifting his whole weight out of the water and onto the pier. He collapsed on the concrete bonelessly, still gasping. 

It took him a minute to collect himself. Blinking the water from his eyes, he lifted his head to see who had rescued him. 

He was completely alone on the pier. 

John managed to drag himself back to his room, drenched and shivering. He garnered strange looks, but no one stopped him to ask what had happened. He stripped out of his sodden clothes with weak and shaking limbs, dropping them in a heap on the floor. He climbed, still damp, into his bed, drawing the covers up to his ears. Then, snaking one arm out, he snatched the ammonite from the bedside table and clutched it to his chest, without really knowing why.

He lay trembling for a long time, staring blankly at the wall and refusing to think. But he could only hold the horrific thoughts at bay for so long. They could touch him now. The dark shapes that had crowded around his bed, watched him as he slept, left him paralysed and terrified. They could touch him, and they were trying to kill him. 

Or were they? Was this just another manifestation of his rapidly fracturing mind? Nightmares leading into hearing things leading into seeing things, leading into thinking that something had hold of him that wasn’t really there? How could he know for sure? How could he be sure of anything anymore, with his dead best friend dogging him everywhere he went? 

John stilled. Rodney. It hadn’t been Rodney pulling him down into darkness, had it? Not that featureless black form that was so terrifying. Rodney had been on the pier when he went under. Rodney must have been the one who pulled him back up. John lifted his hand to his face and looked at it. It felt just as it had when Rodney held it in the one good dream, warm and tingling. 

John closed his eyes and pulled his hand back under the covers. Rodney hadn’t held it. Rodney was dead. There were no such things as ghosts or guardian angels or any of that nonsense, dead was dead. No, this was John’s own mind, his own guilt manifesting dead people and dark figures to torment him. This was his punishment. 

John stood clutching his gun as things moved around him in the darkness, circling, getting closer. He stood with his mouth dry, his hands shaking, afraid as he’d never been in his life. He turned this way and that, trying to see what was coming. 

“John.”

John whirled to find Rodney close behind him. He looked as scared as John felt, pale and hunched, eyes darting in search of the oncoming threat. 

“It’s okay,” John rasped. “I’ll protect you.” He turned back to the blackness surrounding them, lifting his gun in readiness. It shook in his trembling hands. 

“John…”

The call didn’t come from Rodney this time. It came from the darkness, hissed in an unrecognisable voice. John flinched. 

“Who is it?” he called. “Who’s out there?” In response, he received an awful chorus, echoing and repeating his name in sibilant voices from all sides. He cringed in fear. “Stay back!” His voice quivered. “I’ll shoot!” 

“Joooooohn,” something whispered close at hand, close enough that it should have been perfectly visible, even in the darkness. He whirled to the spot and found nothing. He staggered back, crashing into Rodney behind him. Rodney’s hand closed, warm and firm, on his forearm. He looked at John with pleading eyes. 

“Let’s go, John.”

John shook his head. They were on all sides, there was nowhere to go. Rodney squeezed his arm tighter.

“It’ll be okay, I promise.”

John shook his head again. Nothing was okay. Nothing would ever be okay again.

“John, listen to me.” Rodney stepped closer, his eyes intensely focused on John. “You’ll be okay.” 

There was a sudden wet crunching sound. John and Rodney both looked down, down at the arrow now protruding from Rodney’s chest. 

“No!” John cried brokenly, dropping his gun. “Please, no!”

Rodney staggered, his hands going up to the iron point sticking out from between his ribs. His brow furrowed as if in confusion. John reached out too, his hands hesitating fearfully just shy of touching. There was nothing he could do. 

With a heavy thud, Rodney dropped to his knees, blood bubbling over his lips. All around, the whispering voices chittered louder, unmistakably laughing. 

“No!” John cried again, dropping to his knees in turn. Rodney swayed, bloody hands pressed to his chest on either side of the arrow. 

“John,” he breathed. 

“Rodney,” John moaned. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“John,” Rodney repeated. “I… I–” 

“Say it.” A jagged sob rose in John’s chest, choking him. “Please, please say it.”

Rodney looked at him, deep sorrow in his eyes. 

“I–” A wet, awful cough cut him off, and John felt warm blood spatter his face. 

“No!” he cried. “No, wait, wait!”

Pain twisting his face, Rodney curled forward, then flopped over onto his side. His body trembled violently, breath hissing in and out, hands clawing at the arrow like he could somehow dislodge it, like it would help if he did. John bent over him, still too afraid to touch, painfully helpless.

“Rodney, please.”

Rodney looked at him, eyes shining with tears. He opened his mouth. Then he went utterly still. His hands fell limply to the ground, his jaw slackening. A tear trickled from the corner of his eye and down into his hair. John could only stare at him, speechless, his own eyes beginning to blur. 

Around him, the whispering grew louder and closer. The things in the dark were closing in. 

John struggled to wakefulness with all his might. It was his only escape, not just from the whispering things, but from the sight of Rodney once more dead and bloodied before him. It was like swimming through tar, pulling himself through the blackness and back into the world. 

He opened his eyes, but he couldn’t move. He’d awoken before his body, and he was paralysed. Or was he still in the dream? Around him in the dark, things moved and called his name. Rodney was gone, and he was alone with them. They were getting closer. 

An icy hand closed around his bicep. Another one grabbed his wrist, then his ankle. He opened his mouth and tried to scream. No sound came. He tried harder, tried to wring the air from his lungs with all his might. Freezing cold fingers wrapped themselves around his throat. 

He realised that he already was screaming. His chest reverberated with it, it echoed off the walls. His limbs unlocked and he sat up, flailing. The cold hands were gone. He was alone in the room. He bit the scream off instantly, but it still rang in his ears, in the silence. He sat perfectly still except for the heaving of his chest, waiting for something to happen, for someone else to appear. 

“Rodney?” he whispered into the darkness, hoping. He remained alone. 

Chapter Text

His third session with Doctor Heightmeyer came before he was ready. 

“Why do you think you feel so responsible for what happened, John?”

John looked over her shoulder at Rodney, who had been standing silently in the corner for the last half hour. He saw him everywhere now– in the hallways, in the commissary, in the gate room. Sometimes he would be normal, looking so painfully like his old self that John could scarcely breathe. Sometimes, he would be drenched in blood, an arrow in his chest, mouth open as he gasped for air. It was hard for John to say which was worse. 

Sometimes, he tried to speak to John. Mostly, he still just said his name. Sometimes he whispered it, sometimes he screamed it. But more and more, he started saying things. 

Listen to me.

I’m not going to give up.

It’s not over. 

That last was so disconcerting, John had to bolt from the room, biting back a scream by the strongest effort of will. 

Most of what Rodney’s ghost said was nonsense, though. It was disconnected words and phrases, like a voice coming through radio static. It was maddening. 

John tried his best to tune it out. He tried to keep his eyes forward, not to look, not to see. He told himself the voice was just background noise, like someone speaking in the next room; he just had to tune it out. He tried his best. 

He was failing.

He was so, so tired, he couldn’t get his mind to focus. The nightmares were getting worse too, Rodney twining his way through every violent memory in John’s violent past, dark figures coming closer and closer. John was barely sleeping at all now, sitting awake in fear until he lost consciousness, then bolting awake hours or scant minutes later in the grip of horror. He was so tired, it was getting hard to tell the difference between when he was awake and when he was asleep. It was getting hard to remember. 

“John?”

John started, his gaze snapping to Rodney. Rodney shook his head. John’s eyes flickered to Doctor Heightmeyer, who was peering keenly at him. He shifted uncomfortably. 

“Sorry, what?” 

“I asked why it is you feel so guilty about Rodney’s death.”

John closed his eyes for a moment, his brain fuzzing with exhaustion. 

“Why do we have to keep going over this?” he said wearily. “I’m– I was his CO. His safety was my responsibility. I was supposed to be on guard. How else am I supposed to feel?”

Heightmeyer sat back, considering. 

“You weren’t alone on guard. Is Lieutenant Ford at fault also?”

John hesitated. He saw her line of reasoning. If he said no, then she would extrapolate from there. 

“He took out the attackers.” 

“While you were preoccupied with Rodney?”

John was hit with a vivid flash of Rodney slumped against him, of his face when he saw the arrow in his chest. He swallowed. 

“Yes.” 

“Lieutenant Ford didn’t see the attack coming either.” 

“Ford wasn’t in command,” John said doggedly. “Threat assessment was my job.” 

“And you assessed the threat wrongly.”

“Yeah.” John rubbed his hands on his pants legs, unable to stop his eyes flitting to Rodney again. He resisted the urge to apologise to the empty air. 

“Do you think another person in the same set of circumstances would have made a different call?”

John set his jaw.

“It’s irrelevant. I made the call, and it got Rodney killed.”

Heightmeyer leaned forward.

“It is relevant, John. You seem to hold yourself to an impossible standard, one you don’t place on anyone else. Do you think that’s fair?”

Even exhausted as he was, John felt the heat of anger flare in his stomach. 

“What’s fair got to do with it? You think it’s fair that some stupid superstitious shaman blamed Rodney for a kid getting sick? You think it’s fair that Rodney died over something so trivial? You think it’s fair that one of the most brilliant men who ever lived died, while I–” He cut the thought off at the knees, but it was too late. Heightmeyer’s eyes glinted. 

“You feel you don’t deserve to live as much as Rodney did?”

John clenched his teeth so hard they hurt. He couldn’t respond with the resounding and emphatic ‘yes’ that echoed in his head. Without realising it, his gaze drifted back to Rodney. Rodney’s face was profoundly sad. John looked away. 

“That’s not what I mean.” John tried to recover. “I mean, Rodney was uniquely extraordinary, and his death was a complete waste.” His voice was choked with bitterness. “It wasn’t fair.” 

“No, it wasn’t. And having someone to blame may feel like a form of justice, a way of making sense of the event. Even if it’s yourself.”

He avoided her gaze. He had no interest in being told it wasn’t his fault. It was, and he deserved all the misery he was in.

“Do you think Rodney blames you?” 

“Rodney is dead.” John glared at the floor.

“Whether or not you believe Rodney still exists somewhere in some form, you knew him very well. Do you believe he would have blamed you?”

John kept his eyes fixed, searching for the correct answer. Two months ago he would have thought of the sharp-tongued, irritable, short-tempered scientist and said yes. But now, he thought of the Rodney who used to follow him around, looking at him and finding something there he wanted. He thought of the Rodney from his dreams, gazing at him with sad eyes and holding his hand to comfort him. He thought of the Rodney who had thrown himself between John and an arrow, prizing John’s life above his own. 

“He wouldn’t have,” he said hoarsely, scarcely above a whisper. “But he should.” 

John trudged slowly to the infirmary, regretting every step. His body felt alien to him, just barely in his control as he puppeteered it down the hall. Rodney followed him at a distance. He couldn’t take it anymore. He was so tired. He just wanted to sleep. He wanted peace. 

He entered the infirmary to find it in an uproar. The doctors and nurses were rushing about from bed to bed looking harried. Most of the beds were full of pale and sweaty people with IVs in their arms. John looked around dazedly. 

“Doc?” He spoke questioningly as Beckett rushed by. The doctor pivoted towards him, aborting his current path. 

“Oh, Major,” he said distractedly. “What is it?”

“What’s going on?” John asked, gesturing to the room at large. 

“Some sort of noro-type virus,” Beckett said tiredly. “Knocked out a few dozen people over the last few days. Not airborne,” he said at John’s expression, “or anything like fatal, but it takes you off your feet for a few days.” His brow knit with concern. “Are you having gastric symptoms? Fever?”

John shook his head. 

“I’m just, uh… I haven’t been…” He didn’t know why it was so hard to say, to admit to even so small a weakness. He slipped his hand in his pocket and felt the smooth, reassuring weight of the ammonite fossil he had taken to carrying around. “I can’t sleep.”

“Oh?” Beckett was looking the other direction, at one of the occupied beds. 

“Haven’t been sleeping so good for a while.” John studied the floor. “Think I could get something?” 

“What does Heightmeyer say?”

John flinched. He wasn’t going to admit anything was wrong to the psychiatrist. He needed her to clear him for field duty, not give her another reason to keep him on the bench. 

“She said to ask you.” 

“Doctor Beckett!” A nurse called from down the ward, and he held up his finger in a ‘one minute’ gesture. 

“Are you on anything else?”

John shook his head.

“Right, okay.” Beckett rushed over to his desk and pulled out his prescription pad. “Here.” He scribbled rapidly and, as far as John could tell, unintelligibly on the pad. “Give this to one of the nurses, they’ll fill it for you.” Shoving the paper at John, he was off. 

After John finally pinned down one of the nurses for long enough to help him, he slouched out of the infirmary with a bottle of thirty pills of lorazepam carefully concealed in his pocket.

It was an act of desperation. Almost all the regular activities of his life had fallen by the wayside. He wasn’t exercising or reading, watching TV or playing videogames, he was barely even getting his work done. Even if he’d had the energy, he wouldn’t have wanted to do much. So many of his daily activities had included Rodney in them, before, from playing games to eating lunch. Now these things and places were all haunted, both figuratively and literally. Even now Rodney flitted in his peripheral vision, taking the familiar path to his room with him. It had to stop. 

In his room, John quickly changed into his pyjamas, even though it was only six o’clock. If only he could escape the nightmares, he could easily sleep for twenty-four hours straight. With slightly shaking hands, he took out one of the chalky white pills from the orange bottle. He looked at it, rolling it between thumb and forefinger hesitantly. From the corner, Rodney spoke.

“John,” he said softly, only just audible. John closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and swallowed the pill. He waited for a long minute, then opened his eyes again.

Rodney was gone.

John slumped down onto the bed, his body too heavy to carry a moment longer. He burrowed under the covers and closed his eyes, praying for sleep to come quickly. He left the lamp on. 

He stood next to a steel table under a single humming bare bulb. Rodney was on the table– or, his body was, naked and covered to the waist by a crisp white sheet. His skin was waxy and paper-white, his lips a dull grey. The arrow had been removed from his chest, leaving a narrow, ragged hole all the way through him. The blood was all gone, drained away into desert dust. He was just a shell now, a hollow plastic doll devoid of life. 

Yet he opened his eyes and looked right at John. John stared back, wide-eyed. He was supposed to be dead. He saw him die. But there he was, awake and looking at him, waiting. Waiting for what? 

Raising his right hand, John found a scalpel there. A thrill of horror passed through him as he took in the stainless steel table, the body, the scalpel. This was an autopsy, and he was going to perform it– on a man who was awake. He stepped closer to the table. Rodney watched him with fearful eyes. 

“John,” he murmured. John tried to fight back, tried to stop himself as he reached out for Rodney. But he couldn’t stop it, his trembling hand poised with the scalpel against Rodney’s bare chest. 

“I’m sorry!” John looked pleadingly at Rodney, begging his forgiveness. Then he plunged the scalpel in. Rodney gave a pained whine, drawn out and rising as John slid the scalpel from his collarbone down to his naval, leaving a fine red line between sharp edges of skin. Why didn’t he move, fight back, try and escape? John watched himself in helpless horror as he made two matching slashes across Rodney’s waist and collarbones, bisecting the first line. He went over the cuts again, deepening them until the white bone of the sternum showed through, Rodney crying out in pain each time. 

The scalpel fell to the steel table with a clatter. John whimpered with relief, closing his eyes. 

“John,” Rodney moaned brokenly. “Listen to me.” 

“I’m sorry,” John gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I can’t.”

“Listen!” Rodney cried. “You have to wake up!”

John’s eyes flew open and he looked at him in shock. 

“What?”

“Wake up, John! Stop this!”

John looked around the empty, barely-lit space, not much visible beyond the autopsy table. He looked down at his gloved hands, fingertips stained scarlet with a living dead man’s blood.

He was dreaming again, wasn’t he? 

His hands started to move again, completely out of his control. He dug his fingertips into the wound down Rodney’s middle, clawing underneath the raw edges of skin, getting a grip. 

“No!” John cried, muscles quivering as he tried to fight a force that came from within. It was a dream, just a dream. But his fingers sunk in deeper until he had two fistfuls of Rodney’s skin. Then, he began to pull. He pulled, but the skin resisted, bound in place by layer upon layer of fascia. He adjusted his grip, braced his elbows. John closed his eyes in abject horror as his arms moved on their own, pulling and ripping until, with a wet sucking sound, the skin came away. Rodney gave a wail of agony as his flesh was laid bare, white ribs flashing through red muscle and tan cartilage, dark vessels snaking this way and that. Lifeless blood oozed lazily down his sides to pool in the crevice where the skin still adhered to his body.

“I’m sorry!” John screamed again, nausea burning his throat. Why couldn’t he stop this? Why couldn’t he wake up?

A thrill of fear went through him. The sleeping pills. He had taken those damn pills, and now he was trapped here in sleep, confined to watching his own body as it dismantled that of his friend. 

His hands were moving again, reaching for a stainless steel tray at his elbow. He picked up a long, heavy tool, a power cord at one end, a glistening jagged saw blade at the other. John shook his head vehemently. 

“No! Stop!” 

“Wake up, John!” Rodney’s terrified eyes were on the saw, also, but still he didn’t move. Of course he didn’t move, he couldn’t. He was dead. He was dead and this was all just a nightmare, it didn’t mean anything, it didn’t matter. But as John’s autonomous hands switched the saw on, the high-pitched whine of it filling the air, he didn’t care it was just a dream. He didn’t care that Rodney was a million miles away, floating peacefully preserved in the void of space. He only cared that he was about to feel the blade of a saw sink into the flesh of his best friend, guided by his own hands. 

“Wake up!” John screamed at himself. Why had he taken those pills? He should have known the nightmares would still come, that he couldn’t escape them no matter what. They were his punishment, his penance for Rodney’s life. All he had succeeded in doing was trapping himself in them. 

The saw blade sunk into Rodney’s rib in a spray of blood and bone. It was barely a second before it sawed all the way through, the rib parting like a dried twig. He moved to the next rib, which split just as easily. He cut the next rib, and the next, all while Rodney shrieked in agony, the noise of the saw not enough to drown him out. John tried to close his eyes, to look away, to stop himself somehow. Sweat dripped down his forehead and stung his eyes with the sheer effort of it, but he couldn’t do a single thing about it. He cut the whole right side of Rodney’s ribcage in half, then leaned across him to start on the left. Blood and gore smeared all over him as he began again, cutting the bones of the screaming, begging man. 

“Please, John, please wake up!”

John’s eyes burned with tears, his chest heaving on every breath as he watched helplessly. He refused to think of the possibility that somewhere, in some afterlife or alternate universe, was a version of Rodney who was really experiencing this with him. It was just a dream, a cruel trap he couldn’t escape from. It was a punishment designed just for him. 

With a sickening crunch, the final rib split. John flicked the switch, and the saw whirred to a halt, leaving them in deafening silence. He set the saw down, and reached for Rodney’s ribcage. His fingers slotted through the ribs like window bars. With a sharp yank and a nauseating squelch, the whole panel of ribs came away, revealing the vulnerable organs beneath. John threw the ribs to the floor like so much garbage, and his hands once again sought the scalpel. 

“Please,” John sobbed. “Enough. Wake up!” He bent forward, looked closer. Rodney’s heart lay still and silent between his lungs, crimson red and pierced by a massive hole. John closed his eyes against it. The hand holding the scalpel began to move. He tried to redirect it. He tried to force it to his own wrists, to his throat, somewhere that would hurt him less. Instead, the scalpel point pierced the aorta above the heart, slicing through the thin walls as easily as butter. He severed the aorta, the vena cava, the pulmonary vessels. Then he plunged his hand in. 

He withdrew his hand, Rodney’s dead heart clenched in his fist. He stared at it in disbelief. How could this be a dream? He’d never seen a human heart in real life, how could his brain be conjuring this up? It was there right before his eyes, perfect in its vivid detail except for the hole which had stopped it beating. How could he be feeling the fibrous muscle bend against his palm so perfectly, the slide of the bloody tissue beneath his gloved fingertips? How could his mind be so much stronger than him?

He came suddenly to an awful realisation: the heart was warm. The rest of Rodney’s body had been cold and stiff and lifeless in his hands, but the heart was soft and warm. He stared at it in abhorrence. He wanted to drop it, to turn and run, but his fingers were frozen, locked in place around it. There was the slightest flutter against his palm. It knocked the breath from his lungs, locking his chest in place. As he watched, aghast, the heart in his hand swelled, then contracted. It beat. 

Suddenly, pain exploded in John’s chest. He cried out, clutching his free hand to his chest. The heart in his other hand beat again, and as it did, there was the sensation of lightning striking his own heart. He gasped for air, bending nearly double. Rodney’s heart beat again, and the pain plunged into John once more. Rodney’s heart began to beat faster, and every contraction brought with it the horrible stabbing, burning pain. John fell to his knees. It was growing harder and harder to breathe, his chest constricting as though there were iron bands around it. 

“Rodney,” he croaked. Rodney looked down at him, sorrow etched in his face. 

“Please, John,” he whispered, “please don’t go.” He lifted a pale arm, stained crimson with his own blood, and reached out for John. John extended his trembling hand, but Rodney was just out of reach. He wanted to touch him so badly. He knew that, if only he could take his hand, everything would be alright. He strained forward. Locked in place in his left hand, Rodney’s heart beat faster still, and, suddenly, began to bleed. Blood poured from every severed vessel, running down John’s arm and pooling on the floor beside him.

He had to reach him. With a final, desperate lunge, John clutched for Rodney’s hand. Just before their fingertips met, a rending, agonising pain pierced his chest through and through. With a cry of pain, John’s body seized, muscles contracting. Rodney’s hand slipped away. 

John collapsed to the floor. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The heart still clutched in his hand beat strongly, even as he felt his own grow still in his chest. He dimly heard Rodney’s voice. 

“John, I– I–”

John’s vision darkened, then faded away. He felt himself die.

He opened his eyes with a strangled yell, heart pounding in his chest. He thrashed weakly, limbs uncoordinated and head fogged, still under the influence of the sleeping pills. He had to fight for wakefulness tooth and nail, but he did it gladly to escape the dream, the nightmare of a living autopsy and his own death. 

He finally managed to roll onto his side, panting and sweaty, and get his vision to focus. It was morning. He looked at the bottle of pills on his bedside table. He had slept through the night, but at what cost? He dove for the bottle, snatched it up and threw it across the room. Never again. 

John sat slumped in a chair in Rodney’s lab, watching the code scroll by on the laptop screen. He was awake only in the strictest sense of the word. His eyes felt sticky and painfully dry, his head heavy on his shoulders. The world seemed to be on a dimmer switch, slipping in and out of focus moment by moment. It had been a week since the disastrous experiment with the sleeping pill; at least, he thought it had been. Day and night had little meaning when you never slept. 

He wasn’t sure why he was here again. The lab was the most haunted place in the whole city, but he just couldn’t seem to stay away. Rodney’s jacket sat in his lap. It hadn’t been warm this time, and he didn’t know how to feel about that. In his right hand, he turned the black fossil over and over, running his thumb along the grooves in the rock. It hadn’t protected him from the nightmares after that first night, so it made no sense to treat it as some kind of talisman. But he still slept with it by his bed, carried it in his pocket during the day, hoping that somehow, a little of its magic might remain. 

Suddenly, the text scrolling on the laptop screen stopped. John blinked sluggishly at it, not quite registering the change. The screen went white for a moment, then a dialogue box appeared. 

Decryption complete

John leaned closer, furrowing his brow. Decryption? It was some sort of code-cracking program, and whatever it had been cracking had taken over two months. What could it be? He clicked out of the dialogue box to reveal a file registry, containing exactly one file. The file name was one word. 

John

John’s mouth went dry. What the hell was going on? Why did the encrypted file have his name on it? He opened the file. A video flashed up on the screen, featuring Rodney’s head and shoulders, his blue eyes looking right into the camera. John’s heart skipped a beat. He looked at the time stamp on the file. It had been recorded the day before Rodney died. With a shaking hand, John hovered over the play button. Was he really prepared to see what was on this video?

He hit play. 

Hi John!

Rodney waved at the camera, smiling self-consciously.

I don’t know if you’ll ever hear this. But there’s a few things I need to get off my chest, while I can. 

Rodney took a deep breath, apparently working up his courage. He looked down at the ground for a moment, then back at the camera.

So, feelings. I guess I have them, whatever some of my lab assistants might think. I don’t have feelings about many people– well, except a feeling of irritation– but I guess I have some feelings about you. 

I know it’s only been a year. I know it hasn’t always been a good year. We’ve fought, we’ve shouted, we’ve almost died, what, twenty times? But the thing is, I wouldn’t change a thing about this year, because it’s brought us here. It’s brought us together. 

You and Teyla, hell, even Ford, you’re more than just a team to me. I know I may not always show it, but I care about you guys, a lot. I care if you live or die, I care if you’re happy, I even care what you think about me. That’s not something I can say about a lot of people, so I hope you’re flattered. 

Rodney smiled crookedly and scrubbed a hand through his hair. He hesitated before he went on.

The thing is, John, Ford and Teyla are great. But, they’re not you. I think, without really noticing, you became my best friend in the last year. I’ve never really had a best friend before. Kids in school weren’t exactly enthusiastic about me, and by grad school I was six years younger than everyone else. And you know well enough how many friends I’ve made over my professional career.

For a moment, Rodney’s eyes clouded, regret written on his face. Then he shook his head.  

But whatever, this isn’t a sad story about my crappy life. I’ve made my bed. 

So, yeah. Best friend. I don’t really know what that means, but I think you’re it. I care more about you than about my other friends, although maybe I shouldn’t say that. But I want you to be happy more than anything, and your opinion matters to me the most. If I make you laugh, or I impress you, that’s the best part of my day. When you chose me to be on your team, that was the best day of my life. 

Rodney looked down at the ground again, a slow smile spreading across his face. 

Wow. As I’m saying all this, something’s becoming really clear. 

Rodney looked up again, his face earnest. 

Look, John. I know I’m not the easiest person to get along with. I know I’m probably not who anyone would want as a best friend, or– or… And it’s probably completely insane of me to even think this, it seems so unlikely. Hell, it’s totally insane. 

Rodney drew his hand through his hair again, chewing his lip nervously. 

But this is probably the only chance I’m ever going to get to say this.

Rodney looked dead into the camera, his blue eyes seeming to fix right onto John. John’s stomach flipped.

John, I–  

John shut the laptop with a snap. His throat had closed several minutes ago, and his chest was heaving with the effort of drawing breath. This was insane. What the hell was this? Why had Rodney encrypted this, then immediately set to work decrypting it, leaving it out in the open for anyone to see? When he couldn’t possibly have known it would be John who found it? When he couldn’t possibly have known what was going to happen? Why? 

A sudden commotion behind him sent John’s heart into his throat. He snatched the laptop off the desk and clutched it to his chest, as if someone would try and take it from him. He turned to see three people standing in the doorway to the lab, looking at him with as much surprise as he was looking at them.

“Sir?” Sergeant Simons, the only one of the three he recognized by name, stepped further inside. “Is everything alright?”

“What–” John swallowed down the dryness in his mouth. “What are you doing here?”

Sergeant Simons looked uneasily back at his companions. 

“Well sir, I’m afraid we’re here to pack things up.”

John went cold. All three of the interlopers were carrying empty boxes.

“What?”

Simons shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. 

“Doctor Weir’s orders, sir. There’s a few new engineers coming in on the next Daedalus run, and since this lab is empty–”

“It’s not empty,” John growled, clutching the laptop even tighter. 

“Yes sir,” Simons said quickly. “I mean, no sir. It’s just…” He looked to his companions for support again, but both remained silent. “Well, it’s been over two months, sir. Surely you didn’t think the lab would sit empty forever.”

“It’s NOT empty!” John roared, making the other three jump. 

“Right,” Simons said slowly. “Well sir, I’m afraid those are my orders. If you’d like to speak to Doctor Weir about it–” 

“You bet your ass I will,” John snapped. Snatching Rodney’s jacket up from the chair, he pushed past the others to the door. He whirled on his heel. “Don’t touch anything,” he ordered, and stalked from the room. 

He marched straight to Weir’s office. The dark stormcloud of his presence scattered people in the hallways like a school of fish from a shark, the anger on his face unmistakable. He could feel Rodney just over his shoulder, flitting anxiously about. He heard the soft susurrus of his name whispered by the ghost again and again, but he tuned it out easily. 

He threw the door of Weir’s office open so hard it ricocheted off the wall. She rose from her desk, face startled. 

“Major Sheppard, what is the meaning of this?”

John dropped the laptop and the jacket on her desk. 

“You’re cleaning out his office.”

Weir’s eyes darkened in understanding.

“Yes.” 

“Why?”

“It’s time.” 

“Like hell it’s time,” John barked. “You don’t even know what’s down there. There could be important experiments, vital information we need to–”

“Doctor Zelenka has already been through the lab to assess the value of everything,” Weir interrupted. John’s anger flared at the thought of someone else intruding into the private space he thought was now his alone. 

“So that’s it? Just like that, you junk everything he was working on and cram someone else into the space?” 

“Why not?” Weir raised a challenging eyebrow.

“That’s his lab!” John shouted, flinging his hand up. “It’s all his work, his projects, stuff even Zelenka can’t understand! You can’t just throw that away!” 

“He’s dead, John.”

John staggered slightly as if he’d been struck.

“God damn it, I know that!” 

“So you want me to stop everything, to make a shrine to him forever?” Weir came around the desk and squared off with him. “It was a tragic loss, John, but he was just one man! The world goes on, whether you want it to or not.”

John struggled with his rage. Why was she trying to take everything, everything away from him?

“He wasn’t just anything,” John shot back through gritted teeth. Weir cocked her head. 

“No, you’re right, he was an extraordinary man. But he was also arrogant, rude, and abrasive, and you complained about him more than anyone. Yet his death seems to have you spiralling, why is that? If you were more than teammates, more than friends–”

Without even considering it, John balled his fist and punched her in the face. She fell against the desk, mouth open in shock, hand flying to her cheek. 

There was a long, deadly silence.

“Elizabeth,” John said, breathless with horror.

“I’m going to do you the favour,” Weir said quietly, her voice razor sharp, “of not reporting you to the SGC and having you court-martialled. I will, however, be ordering your immediate reassignment and return to Earth.”

The words hit John like a blow to the chest. 

“No, wait! I’m sorry, I’m–”

“You have five seconds to leave this room.” Weir righted herself, squaring her shoulders. “Before I have the airmen outside come and confine you to your quarters.”

John cast about wildly for something to say, something to do, some way to undo what he’d just done. He couldn’t leave Atlantis. Atlantis was his home, his life. Atlantis was the last connection he had to Rodney. 

“Elizabeth, please,” he said desperately. Weir looked at him with eyes as cold and hard as steel.

“Go,” she said, her voice a low threat.

Wordlessly, helplessly, John staggered for the door, snatching up Rodney’s things as he went. 

He ran blindly down the hall, barely aware as he made it to his room. He locked the door behind him and stood in the late-evening shadows, hugging Rodney’s jacket, trying to make his brain come back online. He didn’t know why he’d done it. He’d just snapped. She’d been saying such horrible things about Rodney, then she said… She’d started to say that, and he couldn’t bear to hear it. 

Now he was to be cast out. He was being sent away from the first home he’d known in a long, long time. Rodney was right; it had only been a year, but already this place was like family. It was all he had left, and now it was being taken away. Who would he be without it? Without him?

His eyes strayed to the little orange bottle lying discarded on a pile of laundry. He took slow, unsteady breaths, trying to keep the thoughts from crowding in. He was so very tired. All he wanted was to sleep, but the nightmares hung over him, threatening as a guillotine blade. He wished he could escape them. He wished, more than anything, that he could take back what happened, change what he did, change all of it. He wished he could be with Rodney. 

John blinked. When he opened his eyes, there, in the corner, nearly part of the shadows, a black figure stood, watching. John hung his head and let out a strangled sob. 

“John.” A whisper, a hiss. John turned his back on the shade. His eyes lit on the bottle of pills again. Even in the dim light, the orange plastic seemed inappropriately garish, the bright colours of a poisonous creature. 

“Jooooohn.” Louder this time, closer. He was awake, wasn’t he? This was real. Cold fingers caressed his arm. 

With a yelp of fear, John leapt away, turning to find no one behind him. Dropping the laptop and jacket, he fumbled in his pocket and withdrew the fossil with shaking hands. 

“It’s not real,” he muttered, running his thumb over the ridges of the ammonite, trying to ground himself. “It’s not… it’s not.” 

“JOHN.” A shrill cry from behind him. He spun around and saw a figure, and, without thinking, flung the rock at it, as if he could actually hurt it. The fossil hit the wall with a resounding crack, split in two, and fell to the floor. John stood frozen in horror, looking at the fragments. Then he was suddenly and violently shoved from behind, dropping him to his knees. He curled in on himself with a choked sob.

There was no escape. Everything he cared about was gone, and the shadows were coming for him.

A cold hand wrapped around the back of his neck. 

With a cry of despair, John lunged for the pill bottle and wrenched at the cap with shaking hands. Fumbling and desperate, he finally got the cap open, but immediately spilled half the contents on the floor. He dove after the rolling pills. He collected half a dozen in his hand, and stopped. He knelt there, looking down at the chalky white pills, totally numb. He didn’t want to die. He just wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep forever, and never dream again. He wanted to forget everything that happened– forget Atlantis, forget AR-1, forget Rodney. Would this do that? Or would it trap him in a nightmare forever? Or maybe, if the universe was far kinder than he deserved, he would get to be wherever Rodney was.

“John.” A whisper, directly in his ear. He felt chill breath on his cheek. He could see the dark, featureless figure, inches away, staring right at him. He kept his eyes fixed forward, trembling in terror, waiting for the cold fingers to close about him. Enough. Enough. John raised his hand to his mouth. 

“John!” Someone seized his wrist, and he cried out in fear, trying to jerk away. But the hand was warm, and instantly, Rodney was in front of him. Rodney was on his knees, his eyes wide and frightened, his grip on John’s wrist like iron. 

“No,” John said flatly, fighting against Rodney’s hold. “I can’t do this anymore. You’re not real.” 

“Please, God, please hear me!” Rodney said desperately. “Don’t do this, John! Don’t do this to me.” 

“I killed you!” John howled, twisting free of him. He clutched the handful of pills to his chest like a wounded bird. “You should hate me, you should…” He slumped forward, pain clawing at his heart. “It should have been me.”

Rodney laid a warm, gentle hand on his shoulder.

“You have to live, John.” 

“Why?” John cried, his eyes blurring with tears. “Why should I live when you didn’t? Why should I go on when there’s nothing, nothing left?”

“Haven't you been listening, John? I’m here.”

Tears burned stinging tracks down Johns’ cheeks.

“No you’re not. You’re gone, and it’s my fault.”

“I took the arrow for you, John. You have to live.”

John shook his head vigorously. 

“Please don’t ask me to, Rodney. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep. I want to stop seeing you everywhere. I want it all to stop.”

Rodney pushed back on his shoulders, straightening him up. John kept his head lowered, too afraid to look at him. Rodney put his hand under his chin and gently raised his head to face him. 

“John.” He imbued the name with so much tenderness, so much fondness, that it took John’s breath away. Rodney smiled sadly at him, and wiped a tear from his cheek.

“I love you.” 

John’s heart stopped, his breath catching in his chest. He blinked the tears away, looking at Rodney in wonder. Rodney’s clear blue eyes held him pinned in place, unflinching and unashamed. John felt stripped, laid bare, completely seen. He opened his mouth, but for a moment, he was too overwhelmed to speak.

“I love you, too.” The words came off his tongue as easily as breathing. He meant them with every fibre of his being. A thrilling, glowing kind of warmth rose up inside of him. Rodney smiled with such joy, it almost set John crying again, he was so beautiful.

Rodney leaned forward, rising up on his knees. John waited, wide-eyed and breathless. Rodney’s lips pressed warm and soft into John’s, as he kissed him with more tenderness than John had felt in his entire life. John’s eyes slid closed, lost completely in the feeling of the kiss. The pills tumbled from his hand as he ran it up on Rodney’s shoulder, pulling him closer. 

Rodney pulled back the slightest bit, his lips still brushing John’s. John struggled to catch his breath, his heart racing and his head spinning. He tried to press forward into the kiss again, but Rodney held back. 

“I just need you to do one thing for me, John,” he murmured, breath ghosting warm over John’s face.

“Anything,” John whispered reverently. 

“I need you to wake up.” 

Chapter Text

John opened his eyes. For a long moment he stared at the ceiling, not quite understanding what it was. Then, a sadness so profound that his lungs wouldn’t expand descended crushingly on his chest. It was just another dream. Rodney hadn’t told him he loved him. Rodney hadn’t kissed him. Rodney was dead.

“When you wake up, I’ll show you.” It was Rodney’s voice. John closed his eyes again. He couldn’t face another waking dream, too, another Rodney who wasn’t really there. “It’s so blue, you have to see it to believe it, honestly. Remember that lake on P3X-452? It’s bluer than that, even.” 

John opened his eyes again. In spite of himself, he smiled a little. Even from beyond the grave, Rodney’s voice sounded wonderful.

“We can go all the way over the Rockies, back to B.C. It’s a hell of a trip.”

John slowly turned his head on the pillow towards the sound of Rodney’s voice. He was dimly surprised to find himself in the infirmary. Maybe he’d taken the pills after all, then. Rodney was on his back in the next bed over, chatting animatedly to the ceiling.

“I’ll show you all around Vancouver, it’s great. It’s kind of like San Francisco, in a way, without the street cars.” 

John lay still, not really listening, just watching. Even viewed in profile, Rodney’s face was more expressive, more dynamic than anyone else’s. When Rodney talked, you had to pay attention, just to see what he’d say. His pale pink lips flew around his rapid, rambling speech, lips that John had thought he’d felt against his. The pale morning light filtering in the windows made his fair skin almost glow. The thick layer of light brown stubble on his jaw was new, but John thought it suited him. All in all, he was a beautiful sight. 

“Then we’ll take the Sunshine Highway, stop at all those little diners and craft stores and souvenir shops. I’ll buy you a souvenir shot glass.” Rodney turned to John with a cheeky grin. John smiled tiredly back at him. 

Instantly, Rodney’s face transformed. His eyes flew wide, his jaw dropping in shock. His pale skin went paler. He looked like he had seen a ghost. Which was ridiculous, because he was a ghost. 

“Oh God. John.”

John blinked slowly at him, wishing he would go back to talking like before, in full coherent sentences at last. Now he looked more like he had done since he began appearing: sad, scared, and desperate.

“John! John, can you hear me?”

John chuckled, but it came out a dry, rattling rasp. His throat was so dry. 

“I can’t stop hearing you,” he whispered. Rodney’s face did something then that John couldn’t understand.

“You could hear me?” His voice was almost as hoarse as John’s, hesitant and hopeful. John looked curiously at him, uncertain at the turn the conversation had taken. But he’d never really had a conversation with Rodney’s ghost, not while awake, anyway. Not before he’d been on his floor with a bottle of pills. He looked around the infirmary, finally curious about his surroundings. 

“I’m alive,” he said quietly, not quite sure if he was happy about it or not. 

“Yes. God, yes, John, you’re alive.” Rodney’s voice was choked, and, turning back to him, John saw his eyes filled with tears. John’s brow furrowed. 

“Why are you crying?”

“We didn’t know– we didn’t know if you would wake up or not.” Rodney’s voice shook with emotion. “We almost lost you half a dozen times, your heart kept stopping. We got you the antidote, but, it- it’s been weeks, and you weren’t waking up, and we didn’t know why. I kept talking to you, trying to get you to wake up, to come back. And you did.” Rodney’s eyes shone with joy behind the tears, and he gave a shaky smile. “You’re back.” 

John stared at him, completely at a loss. Back? He hadn’t gone anywhere. He took another look around the small hospital room, containing just their two beds. His bed was surrounded with monitoring equipment, digital numbers flashing by he didn’t understand. He felt weak and exhausted, and his throat hurt something awful. His head was so fogged and muddled, he couldn’t think straight. He didn’t remember taking the pills, but he must have. He turned back to Rodney.

“Why are you here?” John didn’t know if he meant here in the infirmary with him, or here in his head. He had been too afraid to talk to the ghost before, to even consider asking. Rodney gave a brief, unsteady laugh. 

“I mean, I did get skewered by an arrow, like, three weeks ago. Missed my heart by this much,” he held up two fingers nearly touching. “Besides, I wouldn’t go even if they let me.” He sat up a little straighter in the bed, jutting his chin out defiantly. “Someone had to stay here and watch out for you. You kept trying to die on us.” His voice became a little shaky again. “Your heart stopped again only a few days ago. Beckett nearly didn’t get it going again, he had to shock you about ten times.”

John was getting more confused by the second. The ghost had never talked like this before. He wanted to go back to talking like they were before, back in his bedroom. He had just opened his mouth to suggest this when Beckett walked in. 

“Dear God in heaven.” The doctor stood frozen in the doorway, mouth hanging open. Rodney beamed at him. 

“I told you, I told you! He’s awake!”

Beckett advanced slowly into the room, gaping at John like he was a ghost. John looked from one to the other, increasingly unsettled. 

“What’s going on?” 

“What do you remember?” Beckett drew up to the bedside, took a penlight from his pocket and began to shine it in John’s eyes. John flinched away.

“I was in my room, I was–” he broke off. He didn’t know how much Beckett knew, and didn’t want to admit to more than he had to. 

“You don’t remember anything about the mission?”

John furrowed his brow. 

“Which mission?” 

“The Yamani, the Ancient console.”

“Yes,” John said slowly, giving them a strange look. How could he possibly forget?

“You got shot.”

“Rodney got shot,” John replied hoarsely, unable to look at the spectre in the next bed over. 

“Also yes,” Rodney said with a dry chuckle. “But the arrow passed right through me and stuck into you, too. The poison was in deep grooves on the arrowhead, so you got even more of it than I did.” John’s hand flew to the deep, ragged gash on his chest, a chill passing through him. That couldn’t be true.

“We had you both on life support for over a week before Doctor Zelenka was able to activate the Ancient console,” Beckett continued to explain. “It was a sort of anthropological observation site, apparently. There was enough information about the compound in there, something distilled from a local cactus, that we were able to derive an antidote.”

John stared disbelievingly up at Beckett, something like panic clutching at him. Was this the real Beckett, or was he seeing spectres of living people now? He must be, because none of that had happened. He’d walked away with barely a scratch, and Rodney had died. 

“When we got the antidote, I woke up, but you didn’t.” Rodney’s voice was sad and taut with remembered pain. “We didn’t know why. Nothing we did would wake you up. You just seemed to keep getting worse and worse. The last time your heart stopped, I–” he broke off. Beckett gave him a worried frown. 

“Your brain activity was all over the place, but your body just kept getting weaker. The poison was gone, but something kept pulling you under. I still don’t know what it was.”

John shook his head, heart racing between his ribs. What Beckett was saying couldn’t be true. He remembered months of time, he’d been awake… hadn’t he?

“We didn’t know if you’d ever wake up.” Rodney’s voice was rough, his eyes too bright. Beckett turned to him with a sad smile. 

“Aye, but this one never could take no as an answer. For two weeks now, he’s been in this bed, talking at you ‘til he was hoarse. Kept demanding you wake up, telling you it wasn’t over, he wasn’t giving up.”

Rodney flushed slightly, sinking a little lower on his pillows.

“Told you he’d hear me,” he said quietly into his chest. 

John suddenly jerked violently as if he’d received an electric shock. Beckett had been reacting to Rodney. He’d spoken to him. He could see him.

“Oh my god.” John’s chest began heaving on short, shallow breaths. He struggled to sit up, to get up, to go to Rodney. “You’re alive.” Beckett and Rodney sat up in alarm as the heart monitor by John’s bed began to shrill. “You’re alive, you’re- you’re–” 

“Calm down, John,” Beckett said soothingly, pushing back on John’s shoulders. “I know it’s a lot to take in. Just take slow, deep breaths.”

John flopped back onto the mattress, gasping, devoid of strength, but he didn’t take his eyes off Rodney. He saw now how different he looked from the ghost of himself, how much paler, how much more hollow-eyed and tired-looking he was. He had an IV line in his arm and was clad in a hospital gown, his hair ruffled where he’d been lying on it for too long. He was really here. He was here, he was real. It couldn’t be. 

“You’re alive,” he whispered again, unable to tear his gaze away. Rodney looked at him with a furrowed brow.

“Of course I’m alive. Why–” His eyes widened as understanding dawned. “You thought I died?”

“You did die,” John gasped, his chest clenching like he was about to have a heart attack. “You died in my arms, right there on the planet.”

Rodney and Beckett glanced at each other.

“You were both brought back through the gate unconscious,” Beckett said reassuringly. “Rodney’s wound wasn’t fatal, but it was a close call.” 

“No,” John’s head rolled wildly on the pillows. “You- you were dead, I saw you die.”

Rodney’s eyes widened. 

“Have you been dreaming this whole time? Dreaming that I died?”

John shut his eyes tight and dragged a shaking hand across his face. 

“It felt so real. It was real, I- I…” 

“It wasn’t real, John.” Beckett perched on the side of the bed and gripped his arm soothingly. “It explains your erratic brain activity though. Sometimes it looked like you were in REM sleep, other times it looked almost as though you were awake. What was it you were seeing?”

“I–” John looked from one to the other, suddenly terrified. “Nothing, nothing. Rodney was dead, I- I came back here. I just- I- we carried on. I thought my life was just carrying on, eating dinner, doing laundry, running missions. You know… life went on.”

Rodney’s face went suddenly blank and he looked away. John felt like he had needles in his skin. 

“Fascinating,” Beckett said, oblivious. “Maybe some side-effect or hallucinogenic property of the poison. Your subconscious generated an entire world for you this whole time. Incredible.”

John swallowed with difficulty. It had generated far more than a world. He kept staring at Rodney, but Rodney didn’t look back.

“I’ll need to run some tests.” Beckett rose and went to the door in search of a nurse.

While he was briefly absent, John quickly swiped a hand across his eyes and the moisture gathering there. Rodney was alive. They were both alive, and everything that had happened in the last two months hadn’t really happened. It was a hell of a lot to wrap his head around. 

“You–” He cleared his dry throat, trying to sound less wrecked. “You were talking to me. This whole time.”

Rodney darted a glance at him before looking away again. 

“I never did know when to shut up, right?”

“Thank you.”

Rodney’s eyes shot back towards John, wide in surprise. Before he could react further, Beckett returned with two shocked-looking nurses. John kept his eyes on Rodney until the last possible moment as his bed was wheeled out the door. He was alive. 

John felt bizarrely exhausted for someone who’d been asleep just shy of a month. Yet, he was still reluctant to sleep, even with Rodney in the next bed over. Maybe it was because he could barely stand to take his eyes off the man, irrationally afraid that the moment he did, he would disappear like the spectre of his dreams. Or, maybe, it was because he was secretly terrified to find spectres of another kind awaiting him there. 

His reunion with Teyla and Ford had been joyous, but draining. Seeing them again, he felt a rush of guilt at having ever been convinced by their cold, callous, and unfeeling dream versions. Teyla must have embraced him a dozen times, and Ford kept slapping him on the shoulder and calling him ‘unkillable’ with a broad grin on his face. 

They, like Beckett, were full of praise for Rodney’s tenacious insistence on talking to John the entire time he was unconscious. Rodney, red-faced and stuttering in an uncharacteristic show of bashfulness, insisted he’d only done it because there hadn’t been anything better to do in the stark hospital room. No one believed him for a moment. 

“He was so certain you were going to come out of it,” Teyla said, smiling fondly at the scientist. “Even when the rest of us–” she broke off, dropping her eyes. 

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” John quipped, pushing away the memory of a bottle of pills. Teyla looked about to cry, and hugged him again. 

The reunion with Weir had been more dignified, but no less warm. John had to bite back an apology when he first saw her, but her smiling, unblemished face reminded him of reality just in time. He’d never hit her. She never took his team away, threatened his job, or tried to send him home. He couldn’t help the lingering resentment in his chest, however unreasonable, but he didn’t let any of it show on his face. 

Weir squeezed his shoulder reassuringly, other hand resting easily on his forearm as she stood right at his bedside. 

“You take as long as you need, John.” She gave him a benevolent smile. “Lorne’s doing just fine covering. I’m so glad you’re both alright, you and Rodney.” She looked over her shoulder at the napping man, her eyes warm. “It was touch and go there for a while.” She turned back to John, and for a moment, her eyes seemed a little red. “Atlantis wouldn’t be the same without the two of you.”

John could only look at her in wonder, the picture of her telling him to get over it clear in his mind. 

Eventually, however, he could escape it no more. As he sank down into the darkness of sleep, he thought he heard Rodney murmur his name. 

John stood on the hard-packed earth, the warmth of the setting desert sun seeping into his bones. The heat wasn’t unpleasant, and the sun didn’t scald his eyes; he wasn’t even sweating. He looked out across the baked red plains and pillars of rock, and he saw how beautiful it was. 

A warm hand slipped into his. He turned to see Rodney beside him, and he smiled. Rodney smiled back.

“You heard me.” 

“Yeah. I heard you.” John squeezed his hand tightly. “I didn’t want to, at first, but… I heard you.”

Rodney’s head tilted slightly. 

“Why didn’t you wake up for so long, John?”

John’s face fell and he turned away. 

“I don’t know.”

“Are you sure?”

John stared out into the desert for a long while. 

“Am I going to hell?”

“What?” Rodney sounded baffled. John squeezed his hand even tighter. 

“The dark figures. They were after me, they were trying to take me… Am I going to hell?”

Rodney looked at him quietly for a moment. 

“You were afraid of them.” 

“Yes.” John’s heart raced at the memory alone.

“Are you afraid of death?”

John hesitated, some foolish sense of pride stopping him from stating the obvious.

“Yes.” 

“Hmm,” Rodney hummed thoughtfully. “I always wondered what death looked like.” They stood watching the sunset for a minute. “Why didn’t you wake up, John?” 

“I don’t know!” John cried in frustration. “You tell me! I thought I was awake, I thought it was all real. Why did all that happen in my head? Why did I keep seeing you, hearing you, everywhere I went? I thought I was losing my mind!”

“You thought I was dead.” 

“Yeah.” John’s voice cracked slightly.

“But you thought I had something to say to you.” John looked at him finally. 

“Didn’t you?”

Rodney shrugged. 

“I don’t know. What did you want me to say?” He turned and met John’s gaze, his eyes sharp. John’s mouth went dry. 

“I don’t know anymore. That day in my room– in my dream in my room,” he corrected himself. “I thought– I felt–” he groaned in frustration. “I don’t know! It wasn’t even real, I don’t know what it means now!”

Rodney looked at him, his face unreadable, for a long moment. 

“Why didn’t you wake up, John?” 

“Because you were dead!” John shouted. “You were dead and it was my fault! And if you were dead, if you were gone, I didn’t– I didn’t–” He hung his head, unable to voice it even in a dream. Without letting go of his hand, Rodney came around to face him. Leaning forward, he rested his head against John’s. 

“I didn’t want to live without you, either.”

John quivered, his throat tightening. Rodney spoke again.

“I just kept talking to you, kept hoping you would come back to me. And you did.” They raised their heads together, and their eyes met. “The dream is over, John,” Rodney said softly. “What are you going to do now?”

John awoke with a startled jolt. He turned his head instantly, his eyes seeking Rodney. His friend was still in the next bed, curled on his side, his face softened by sleep. John stared at him, feeling slightly breathless. What, indeed? 

It was another week before Beckett finally let John leave the infirmary, having run every test he could possibly think of. He said, with no small amount of bafflement, that he still had no idea what had kept John in the coma for nearly three weeks after the poison was treated. John certainly wasn’t going to tell him. 

Rodney was released the day after John, the ten-inch surgical incision in his chest practically healed after four and a half weeks. John learned this second-hand, with a strange jolt that could have been excitement or anxiety. 

“Says he only stayed so long because he had to keep an eye on you,” Beckett said with an indulgent chuckle. “As if it was up to him.”

John wandered away from the doctor, his heart racing a little. He still didn’t know what he was going to do, but he needed to talk to Rodney. 

Not that he hadn’t been talking to Rodney for weeks– or rather, Rodney had been talking to him. Almost non-stop, if he believed the stories. But since he’d awoken, Rodney had been strangely reserved, talking only when John addressed him directly. He wasn’t overtly cold or rude, he just seemed… detached. John hadn’t said anything about it– hadn’t known what to say. How much could he really say in a hospital room, with nurses popping in and out a dozen times an hour? 

Now, he had a chance to talk to Rodney properly, alone. But what did he say? Thanks for haunting me in my dreams? Thanks for not giving up on me? Thanks for stopping me from killing myself, by giving me the kiss I didn’t even know I wanted? How did he even begin to explain what had happened, entirely within the confines of his own mind, and how it had changed him in the waking world? 

Without thinking about it, his steps carried him to Rodney’s lab, his habitual haunt (so to speak). Apparently, even Rodney wasn’t so much of a workaholic as to go to work the day he got released from the hospital, because he wasn’t there. John crossed to his desk, a sudden thought nudging at him. He shifted the messy pile of papers, looking for…

There it was. His heart sped up as he saw the now-familiar black stone amongst the white paper. His hand closed on its smooth surface. It was really here. It was real. 

How could it be real? He hadn’t even known about it, how could his dream tell him of its existence? Had he perhaps seen it in passing and his sleeping mind parsed out the detail, connecting it with the memory of that day on the rocky beach? Or… or what? What possible explanation could there be for his eerily prescient knowledge of a rock he’d forgotten all about? What did it mean?

He had to find out.

He had an idea of where else Rodney might be. Rodney must have the answer. He raced as fast as his weary body would carry him to the edge of the city, down to sea level. The door slid open to reveal Rodney perched on the end of the pier. John’s heart beat faster. This was his chance. He could ask Rodney, tell him… let him say… what? What was their reality now? Did he have the courage to find out? With his heart pounding between his ears, he opened his mouth.

“Hey.”

Rodney started slightly. He half-turned towards him before quickly turning away again. John thought he heard him sniffle. 

“Hey. Been a while.” Rodney’s voice was slightly rough. John flopped down next to him, his shoes dangling over the calm dark water. He tried not to think about shadowy hands reaching up to clutch his ankles. Rodney was here. He pulled him back once before, and he could again. 

“Yeah.” He looked out across the sea, shimmering in the late-afternoon sun. “Still looks the same.” Rodney gave a clipped nod and stayed silent. “Could do with a beer though.”

Rodney gave a half-hearted smile and kept staring out at the water. John looked at him nervously, his mouth dry, completely at a loss for what to say.

“I’m glad you’re not dead.” He flinched slightly. Of all the possible options… But Rodney gave a snorting laugh and glanced his way. 

“Likewise.”

They lapsed back into silence, except for the lapping of the water beneath their feet. John drew the fossil out from his pocket, and held it out to Rodney. 

“Did you talk to me about this when I was… asleep?”

Rodney took the stone, wide-eyed. 

“I- I guess I did. I talked about the day you found it, the day you- you gave it to me. I thought maybe you might remember.”

“I remembered,” John said softly. Rodney flashed him a glance. 

“I mean, it’s stupid, but… it- it’s the only gift you ever gave me, so it’s kind of… special. It’s good luck, I think.” He flushed red. “It’s stupid.”

John turned slightly towards him. 

“It’s not stupid.”

“Yeah, it- it’s just a rock.”

“It's not just a rock. It's...” John hesitated. How could he explain it? Did he even want to? "It is good luck. Keep it."

Rodney looked down at the fossil, rubbing his thumbs over the ridges of the ammonite just as John had done.

“Okay,” he said quietly. He tucked the stone in his pocket, and they lapsed back into silence. 

After several long minutes, Rodney quietly cleared his throat. 

“So, I was dead in your dream, huh?”

John’s throat constricted a little in spite of himself. Only Rodney’s warm and solid presence mere inches away kept him from the slight panic that this, in fact, was the dream, and Rodney was still gone. 

“Yeah,” he replied. Rodney nodded slowly. 

“And you, uh… and things just… Everything just…” John looked at him for a long moment before he clued in, his own words flooding back to him.

Life went on.

“No,” he said quietly. “No, it didn’t. I didn’t.”

Rodney’s head turned towards him a few degrees, his face carefully blank. John drew a slightly unsteady breath.

“I kept seeing things. I kept seeing you. At first I thought you were haunting me, that you were my- my guilt haunting me.” He hung his head; even the memory was painful. “You kept calling my name, trying to get me to listen to you, but I was afraid to. I was afraid what you would say.”

Rodney’s breath hitched a little, but he didn’t speak.

“I, uh,” John cleared his throat roughly. “I never did thank you for taking that arrow for me.”

Rodney quickly ducked his head. 

“I didn’t– I wasn’t trying to– I mean, I would have done it for Ford, too.”

John smiled thinly. 

“Maybe. But you did it for me. You almost died, for me.”

Rodney shifted uncomfortably, looking over his shoulder like he was looking for an exit. 

“Don’t let it go to your head,” he grumbled, but there was no weight behind his words. 

“I kept dreaming about you dying. And every time you were dying, you kept trying to tell me something. But I- I never let you. I’m sorry I never let you.” John paused a moment to sit in his regret. “When you were shot– when I thought you were dying in my arms, you were trying to say something to me. What was it?”

John watched Rodney’s face carefully. He wasn’t sure what had been filtered through to him from the waking world, and what had been conjured by his own mind, but he was pretty sure that had been real.

Rodney went perfectly still, not even seeming to breathe.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Rodney?” 

Rodney turned and looked at John, his eyes fearful and unsure. 

“I- I…” He stuttered on the word, as it seemed to catch like glass in his throat.

John gave him a moment, holding his breath, waiting to hear what he’d been first too afraid to hear, then desperate to hear. Words he’d already heard in the world his mind had built for him, the world where he learned to see what was right in front of him. The world where, against all sense and probability, Rodney had followed him and kept him safe. All at once, he knew what to say. 

“I love you, Rodney.”

Rodney’s face turned and twisted a dozen directions, unsure what expression to make. John watched it all fly across his face; confusion, shock, disbelief, relief, fear, joy. He had to make sure it would settle on the right one.

“I’m in love with you.” 

Rodney made a strangled noise in his throat, mouth opening wordlessly. John knew what to do next. Slowly and gently, he reached up and took Rodney’s face in his hands. Rodney stared at him wide-eyed and breathless, but made no move to pull away. John leaned over and softly, reverently, brought their lips together, trying to impart half the tenderness he’d felt when Rodney did the same to him. 

As their lips made contact, a thrill passed through John he didn’t expect. The dream kiss had felt so real, impossibly real. But this kiss… this kiss was real. What he felt for Rodney was really real, he hadn’t just dreamt it. What Rodney felt for him was undeniably real, as he finally pressed back into the kiss with a soft sound, his hands going around John’s back. They were alive, they were together, and this was real. 

When the kiss finally broke, both men pulled back slowly, staring at each other incredulously. Rodney slowly raised his fingers to his lips, brushing them cautiously. 

“You–” 

“I love you,” John said again, immediately and without hesitation. Rodney let out a slightly hysterical laugh. 

“Wow.” 

“Yeah.”

They lapsed back into silence. 

“Well,” Rodney finally said. “I’m glad you said it, because I’m too much of a coward–”

“You said it,” John interrupted confidently. 

“No I–” 

“You said it,” John said firmly, quelling him with a look. “You took the arrow for me. You stayed with me. You didn’t give up on me. You said it.”

Rodney flushed slightly, twisting his hands in his lap. 

“I know, but I- I need to actually say it.”

John smiled warmly at him, eyes alight with affection. 

“Go ahead.”

Rodney took a deep, slightly unsteady breath. 

“John, I…”

John waited.

“I never thought I’d get a chance to say this.”

John twitched impatiently, raising his eyebrows at Rodney. Rodney tried again.

“I mean, I know you already know it, clearly, but, for my own good I need to just spit it out.” He scrubbed what were no doubt sweaty palms on his pants legs. “I wanted to tell you for so long, but I didn’t want to wreck anything, I didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t want to hurt you. I never thought that you- that I- that we-” 

Rodney was forcibly broken off by John seizing hold of him and crashing their lips together again. John held him in place as he kissed him ferociously, unreservedly. Then, as abruptly as he’d taken him, John let him go, leaning back with a wicked grin, his eyes glinting a challenge. Rodney’s breath stuttered for a moment, trying to recover. Then, without further hesitation, slightly rushed as though he was afraid to wait a moment longer, he declared,

“John, I love you.”

John’s grin spread wider, and one likewise lit up Rodney’s face. At last, John felt at peace, as Rodney once and for all got his last words.