Archive of Our Own ^beta

He was tired now. Despite the fact that he’d mostly been flat on his back on a gurney, in a tiny room that was only about twelve paces wide. Sheppard found himself napping like a four year old. Keller noted it, but she didn’t look alarmed. He didn’t know why; it was pretty damn alarming to him. The creature inside him was getting bigger – he’d gained a total of twenty-four pounds and couldn’t wear his pants anymore. And now it was sapping his energy, too.

That was the only thing that changed. He was still trapped in Isolation, bored out of his fucking mind in the moments where he wasn’t thinking about the evil parasite taking over his body.

His team was still visiting regularly. Ronon had been reassigned to Lorne’s team. He told Sheppard pretty much immediately, and whereas Sheppard should have been appreciative that at least one person in the goddamn city was being honest and direct, it mostly just pissed him off. He knew Ronon, of all people, had an innate need to stay occupied and could get downright destructive if bored. But that didn’t mean he wanted to hear about how his team was going to be dismantled after his death while he was still living.

Teyla was bopping around, occasionally going on missions with other teams, but mostly hanging out with her people. Specifically this Kanaan guy. Sheppard was sure he was a nice, proper Athosian, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear about how much fun Teyla was having with him.

Rodney came around less. Probably because he expected Sheppard to be pissed at him. Which he was, but not enough that Rodney should be avoiding him. Sheppard left a message on Rodney’s voice comm. to that effect, adding in the fact that if Sheppard died while Rodney was staying away, he’d feel really, really bad about it. The guilt trip worked, mostly because Rodney showed up immediately to yell at Sheppard and insist he wasn’t going to die.

So, it was mostly the same. He watched dumb movies with Ronon, made meaningless chitchat with Teyla, and played mindless chess while Rodney babbled. It probably wasn’t a bad way to spend the last few months of his life. He wasn’t in pain. Really angry and bitter, but not suffering.

Even so, he tried to be cooperative with the medical staff. Being nice took a lot of effort, especially since he’d exhausted his reserves for tolerating the constant invasion of his privacy on pretty much the second day in Isolation. But he also figured if he were polite and not combative, eventually someone would slip and tell him something they weren’t allowed to.

In the end, it was an Israeli xenobiologist who spilled. Dr. Avi Lautmann kind of looked like Santa Claus – except Jewish – and was one of the scientists who showed up daily to shove a scanner against Sheppard’s belly. He didn’t have the best bedside manner, evidently unaccustomed to specimens that could talk back. Sheppard didn’t mind all that much; he preferred being basically ignored to being coddled and patronized like some of his caretakers did until he said something horrible to them or accidentally (sort of)  knocked their tablet to the floor and broke it. Lautmann was also really, really excited by whatever it was he saw on the scanner screen.

Excited enough, Sheppard thought, maybe to share exactly what it was that he was seeing. He waited until Lautmann had the portable scanner set up over Sheppard’s stomach, cooperating in a way that he didn’t always do. The easier he made this, maybe the easier Lautmann would forget he wasn’t supposed to talk about it.

Lautmann had his face shoved practically against the little view screen, mumbling enthusiastically to himself and jotting down words in a spiral notebook propped up on a clipboard against Sheppard’s thigh. It was really old-fashioned and quaint, but Sheppard didn’t mind because it was lighter than the laptops everyone else used to take notes about him. Also, he’d stolen it once, only to discover, of course, that Lautmann was writing in Hebrew. There’d been a couple of meaningless diagrams, but the xenobiologist’s art skills tended towards the abstract.

“So, Avi,” Sheppard drawled when he thought the man was suitably engrossed in his work. “Keller said you could explain this thing to me better than her?”

“Hrm?” said Lautmann. He didn’t look up, which was perfect since Sheppard wasn’t sure that his plan would hold if they made eye contact. “Oh, I don’t know about that. About the same, I think. Is not really explainable.” And then he laughed, which was totally bizarre.

“Yeah?” Sheppard said, trying to sound casual. “She said you’d try.” There was silence, so he went on hurriedly. “You’re in here the most, looks like you know the most about it.” That part, at least, wasn’t a lie.

“Well,” Lautmann said. “Is absolutely amazing. I have never seen anything like this."

He sounded strangely positive, like the parasite was impressive or something.

“Yeah?” Sheppard said again, unable to disguise his annoyance.

“I suppose you disagree,” Lautmann said, abruptly looking a little embarrassed. “But an alien organism that can successfully imitate human female reproductive system including functional uterus is unbelievable discovery.”

Sheppard sat up so abruptly he knocked the paper notebook and the scanner to the floor. He heard it crash and probably shatter, but he didn’t register anything else. “Uterus?” he asked. “What?”

Lautmann was on his knees on the floor next the cracked scanner, sadly poking at the shards from the screen. “You broke scanner.”

Sheppard reached down, got a fistful of the man’s lab coat and pulled violently upwards. It made his incision sting a little, but he ignored it. “Did you say uterus?” he demanded. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

Lautmann immediately twisted out of his grasp. For an old, fat man, he did something incredibly painful to Sheppard’s wrist and instantly broke his grip. Sheppard remembered belatedly that all Israelis were ex-army.

“Oww,” Sheppard said, holding his arm.

“Sorry,” Lautmann said, looking genuinely apologetic and standing only a few feet from the gurney. He also looked betrayed, defensively crossing his arms over his massive chest. “You tricked me.”

“Yeah,” Sheppard said, not sorry at all. “Get Keller the hell down here.”

~

 “I didn’t tell you,” Keller said, flatly. “Because I believed it would be detrimental to your health.” She pointed to the monitors by the gurney. “And it is. Your blood pressure has shot up. You’re already hypertensive.”

Sheppard was sorely tempted to threaten to be detrimental to her health, if he didn’t think she’d just dope him unconscious or something.

“I don’t care,” he said, might have fairly growled. “Don’t change the subject.”

Surprisingly, Keller kind of dipped her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Sheppard gripped the edge of the gurney so tightly he felt the bed frame creak. He just needed to hold on to something.

“Tell me everything,” he ordered. “All of it. Right now.”

Keller finally showed him a picture. And even though that’s what Sheppard had been after for nearly three months, the first thing he did after looking at it was lean over the side of the gurney and vomit.

Because he knew what it was. Because he recognized it, immediately. His brother had shown him the sonograms for both his nephews; in Afghanistan members of his squad had taped the ultrasounds of their unborn kids on their walls next to photos of their wives. And that’s exactly what it looked like.

Gingerly, maybe expecting he was mad enough to strike out at her, Keller help him roll back to the center of the gurney and quickly and efficiently cleaned him up. Lautmann, standing awkwardly at the far wall and looking really, really guilty, made himself useful and went and got Sheppard a cup of water to rinse his mouth.

“You can’t be serious,” Sheppard said, after he’d spat a few mouthfuls of water into the proffered emesis basin. Even though he’d seen it with his own eyes. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Keller opened her mouth, took a breath, then flicked her eyes at Lautmann. “All we know,” she said, after a second. “Is what it looks like.”

“But,” Lautmann interjected, softly but firmly. “In all ways, it looks like what you think.”

“The physiological changes you’ve experienced,” Keller went on, keeping her voice down, “are consistent with it, particularly your hormone levels.”

“Which you haven’t mentioned,” Sheppard accused.

Keller nodded. “They’re atypical for…” she paused, and he knew what she was trying to avoid saying or even implying. “Atypical,” she said, finally. “You may have noticed some signs. Slowed facial hair growth, for instance.”

Sheppard touched his face. “I’m scruffy,” he said. But he hadn’t shaved in pretty much forever.

“By now you should have beard like me,” Lautmann said.

“And your other problem,” Keller said, “is also probably hormone related.”

Sheppard grabbed the edge of the gurney even harder. “This is ridiculous,” he said. He heard the note of panic in his voice. “This doesn’t happen.”

“Do you want a sedative?” Keller asked, and at least she was requesting his permission first.

“No!” Sheppard tried to slow his breathing, tried to visibly calm himself. Acting like a nutcase wasn’t going to help.

“Okay,” Keller said. She glanced at Lautmann for some kind of support, but Lautmann looked more uncomfortable than she did. Sheppard figured he wasn’t used to his samples having emotions.

“Who knows?” he asked, leaning back against the gurney.

“The medical staff directly involved in your treatment,” Keller said. Then, she amended it to “observation,” because, of course, they weren’t actively doing anything about this. “Lautmann’s xenobiology department-”

“Very few, quiet people,” Lautmann said, trying to be reassuring.

“And Carter,” Keller finished. “That’s all.”

“Not my team?” Sheppard asked.

“No,” Keller said. “Although, I caught Rodney hacking into your medical records file.”

“I asked him to,” Sheppard said. “I knew you were lying to me about something.”

“For your own good,” Keller said, but she looked really guilty and Sheppard was glad. “I told him that. He doesn’t know the specifics.”

“Is no reason to be ashamed,” Lautmann said. He patted Sheppard’s shoulder with a big hand. “Is private matter, yes, but you should not be embarrassed.”

“I wouldn’t describe myself as embarrassed,” Sheppard said, angrily, and the man hurriedly removed his hand.

Sheppard looked down at himself, at his protruding stomach under the sheet. Then he looked up at Keller and swallowed down as much emotion as he could. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“In my professional opinion,” Keller said, carefully. “The game plan has not changed. The goal is to ensure your survival and terminate the organism.”

“Organism,” Sheppard echoed.

“To our knowledge,” Lautmann said, “is alien life form imitating human fetus.”

“There is no reason to believe that it is what it looks like,” Keller interrupted.

“Because I’m male,” Sheppard said.

Lautmann kind of looked like he wanted to launch into a much more complicated explanation; Sheppard recognized that expression from Rodney’s face, except Rodney didn’t usually shut up. “Yes,” was all Lautmann said.

“If you were female,” Keller said, “things would be different. But the organism and its structure are entirely alien to your physiology.”

“You do not have uterus,” Lautmann said.

“I know that!”

“I guess it doesn’t feel this way,” Keller continued, and he could tell she was trying to be comforting. “But this probably good news.”

“Yeah?” Sheppard demanded. “How’s that?”

“Is not trying to kill you,” Lautmann said.

“If it is imitating human fetal development,” Keller said. “There is a natural and predictable end point to its...” she paused and trailed off.

“To it living inside me,” Sheppard provided.

“Yes,” Keller said, and Lautmann nodded.

“And just how the hell do you think it’s going to get out?” Sheppard asked. He was trying to keep from yelling, but that wasn’t working so well.

“Surgically,” said Keller.

“You tried that already,” Sheppard said. “You couldn’t do it without killing me, remember?”

Keller nodded. “That’s changed. Rather, it is changing.”

“In my observation, the supporting structure that has compromised your internal organs is reducing over time,” Lautmann said.

“What?” Sheppard asked. “What does that mean?”

“Do you want to see?” Keller asked, and he supposed that was fair since he had thrown up the first time.

“Yeah,” he said.  

Keller pulled out the same body scan she’d been showing him from the beginning. “Those,” she said, pointing to the pink wisps trailing around his abdomen. “They’re vanishing.”

“Dying, more likely,” Lautmann said. He hit a button and nearly half of the little pink lines turned a dull gray. “Still there, but not functional.”

“That’s over the past three months,” Keller said. “I think it’s a gradual process preparing for…"

“Birth,” Sheppard said.

“Departure,” Keller said. “It wants to leave, Colonel. That’s good.”

“So enough of those tentacles let go of my kidneys,” Sheppard said, “You can cut it out?”

“They aren’t tentacles,” Keller said. “But yeah, I think so.”

“That is good,” Sheppard said. He didn’t feel all that much better, but he no longer wanted to puke.

“My one concern,” Keller said, “is that while these things are declining, your blood pressure has been rising.”

“It relates to blood flow within the organism,” Lautmann said. And he was back to looking excited. “Its circulatory system –”

“It’s probably only going to get worse,” Keller interrupted. “I’m going to be monitoring you very closely. But I want you to tell me if you start feeling more fatigued, get headaches, experience dizziness, blurred vision, ringing in your ears, or feel flushed. It can be very dangerous.”

“Okay,” Sheppard said. “How long we looking at?”

Keller and Lautmann exchanged looks. “It’s difficult to be sure,” she said. “But based purely on its developmental progress, I’d guess at least 12 weeks.”

“Three months,” Sheppard translated.

“About.”

“Okay,” Sheppard said. He paused. “You could have told me from the beginning. You should have.”

Keller nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said, but he wasn’t sure he believed her.

~

It turned out that maybe Keller had had a point. Knowing what it was – more specifically knowing what it was pretending to be – didn’t actually do anything for Sheppard’s peace of mind. In fact it was kind of driving him crazy, so much so that it was really all he could think about. It didn’t even help that Keller seemed to think that he probably wasn’t going to die now. He didn’t feel any relief.

Well, he did feel some relief, but not about that. Sheppard was just really, incredibly glad that wherever he’d picked up this goddamn thing, it’d latched on to him and not to Teyla. He had no idea what’d it do in a body actually capable of pregnancy – maybe there’d be no tentacle stranglehold on her lungs – but it somehow seemed like it would be so much worse.

Now, they let him look at all the pictures and scans they had of it. He almost threw up again, especially when Lautmann pointed at an indistinct shadow on the scan and said: “Is a girl. There is vulva.”

Keller took the scanner away before Sheppard accidentally broke another one. Then she hauled Lautmann out of the room, presumably for a discussion on what he should and should not say.

What they weren’t saying was weighing heavily in Sheppard’s thoughts. Most of the staff didn’t talk to him about it at all, but those who did deliberately avoided the words that they obviously would have used if he’d been a woman. Except all the synonyms for ‘gestation,’ and ‘birth’ were incredibly obvious and awkward. One of the nurses accidentally called it a baby, turned white, and made an immediate excuse to leave the room. Sheppard didn’t get upset. Well, he didn’t get more upset.

“What’s the plan for when it’s out?” he asked Keller that night, as she did her usual checks of all the monitors before he went to sleep.

“Hmm?” Keller paused and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“When it’s out,” he said again, and gestured at his stomach. He didn’t look pregnant, which was one small mercy. He looked fat, mostly, or conspicuously bloated. Lautmann said it was because the alien uterus wasn’t in quite the same place as it would be for a woman. Lautmann said lots of marginally helpful things like that. Sometimes it was more horrifying than informative.

“I mean,” he said finally, “What if it still looks like a human?”

“It’s not,” Keller said, far too quickly. “That’s not possible.”

Sheppard just looked at her. He didn’t have to say anything to communicate just how many impossible things they’d already encountered in Pegasus.

“We’ll use standard alien life form protocols,” Keller said, which was probably true but still somehow, a totally inadequate answer. “No matter what it looks like. Don’t worry about that now.”

~

In other news that Sheppard could actually mentally process, they’d narrowed down the list of missions in the timeframe that the medical staff thought the thing had planted itself inside him. How they’d determined that, Sheppard wasn’t entirely sure. They didn’t know how long it had taken for the organism to build the artificial endocrine system. Sheppard didn’t know if he should want it to be slowly or quickly.  The doctors had settled on ‘fast,’ though, and that what they were going with. There were only five missions in the identified timeframe. Two had been to uninhabited planets left barren and empty by the Wraith.  Those missions had been unremarkable, just depressing as always. It seemed unlikely that a parasite that reproduced by imitating human reproduction – Lautmann’s typical helpful and yet repulsive assessment – would have been hanging around in either environment.

A third had involved actively fleeing the Wraith. Sheppard didn’t actually remember this one, having been stunned into unconsciousness. He’d been woken up by the pain of Teyla and Rodney dragging him towards the ‘Gate by the arms, Ronon having taken off to go after the Wraith. Nothing conclusive, but no one remembered any living humans on that particular planet. And that was one time Sheppard had gotten a full body scan, namely because he thought Teyla and Rodney might have dislocated his shoulders.

The fourth and fifth missions were judged the most likely contenders. One had been a standard trade mission to M3X-106, antibiotics and seedlings for a season’s worth of bean crops or something. Sheppard didn’t remember this one either, because it’d been normal. And because Ronon had convinced him to play a Satedan drinking game with the ale the chieftain had gifted them. If it turned out Sheppard had gotten knocked up with an alien parasite while drunk off of his ass…well…Sheppard wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but it would probably involve a combination of laughing and then crying hysterically. 

The fifth mission was the one to the broken mountain face covered in goat shit and its guano-coated caverns of naked unconsciousness. This planet was a lot more suspicious.

Except that Sheppard had had a body scan after this mission, as well. And there was absolutely nothing on it. Not even a stray speck of dust. Keller and Lautmann weren’t convinced by it, though. They used words like ‘zygote’ and ‘blastocyst’, stages of embryonic development that were too small to be detected on the massive scale of the body scanner. There was also the possibility that the organism skipped those stages, only needing to imitate the phases where its host might be aware of its presence.

That was when they got to the timeframe where Sheppard had skipped a bunch of body scans. His next one had the giant pink blob on it.

Carter sent reconnaissance teams to both planets, under strict instructions to gather information without putting anyone in danger. Sheppard wondered how specific their orders were, if they mentioned anything about asking the natives about any unexplained incidents of male pregnancy. He didn’t know if the teams knew the missions were about Sheppard’s condition. As much as he felt that being infected by an alien parasite was just another in a long line of mysterious and ultimately really unpleasant shit served up by the Pegasus galaxy – a chain of which Keller and Lautmann were mostly ignoring in favor of  repeating constantly that this wasn’t his fault and he shouldn’t be ashamed of it, like two goddamn rape counselors – he also really didn’t want anyone more than was absolutely necessary knowing he had something that looked an awful lot like an unborn human baby living in his gut.

He did, however, tell his team. It seemed likely that Rodney already knew or nearly knew. Actually, probably not. No way would he be able to keep his mouth shut about it. He knew something Keller had made up, which might be worse. Sheppard would have to fix that. Ronon and Teyla were around too much for him to not tell. He generally didn’t lie to them and didn’t really want to start. Besides, despite Keller’s new confidence that he’d probably survive, he might not be around much longer.

Teyla and Ronon reacted well to it. Better than Sheppard would have, in their position. It confirmed to him that they were really far too used to totally bizarre shit happening. Especially to Sheppard. That seemed unfair.

Teyla’s eyes got really huge and she tilted her head to the side. “A human child?” she said, disbelieving. And of course, she was staring at his abdomen.

“That’s what it looks like,” Sheppard said.

Teyla looked at him like she didn’t fully understand how that made a difference.

“The xenobiologists think it’s an organism imitating human reproduction,” Sheppard said. “Sort of like a cuckoo bird.”

That just made Teyla stare at him.

“It’s a bird on earth that lays its eggs in other bird’s nests,” Sheppard explained. “It takes the other eggs away. Only in this case, it’s an alien. And it thought my intestines were a nest. Or something.”

He wasn’t sure she got the comparison.

“But you are male,” she said.

“Apparently it couldn’t tell.”

Teyla stared at him, obviously searching for something reassuring and kind to say, and yet coming up empty.

“I take it you’ve never heard of anything like this in Pegasus?” Sheppard asked. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to say yes or no. It’d be nice to know he didn’t just have the worst luck ever, and that this had happened to other people. At the same time, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in this galaxy a second longer if this was legitimate threat.

“No,” Teyla said, emphatically. “Women are the child-bearers,” she added.

“Where I’m from, too,” Sheppard told her, and sighed.

She did like hearing that Keller thought this meant it wasn’t trying to kill Sheppard.

“That is good news,” she said.

Sheppard shrugged. “Relative to everything else, yeah.”

Teyla was still staring at his sheet-covered midsection.

“Do you feel it?” she asked, and then abruptly looked almost embarrassed. 

“No,” he said. “Keller said it’s positioned so that I really won’t.” Which was totally and completely fine with him.

Teyla seemed to understand he didn’t really want to talk about it anymore – or that there wasn’t much else to say –  and politely changed the subject.

Ronon didn’t want to talk about it much, either. He listened as Sheppard explained the situation, a weird expression of confusion and possibly disgust coming across his face.

“A baby?” he said, when Sheppard was done.

“Alien baby,” Sheppard corrected, not bothering to dispute it.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Ronon said.

“I can’t,” Sheppard growled. “It built itself a wom – a bunch of alien organs.”

“Oh.” Ronon was staring at Sheppard’s belly again. At least this time, he didn’t look like he wanted to rip him open and take it out so he could shoot it.

“So, you’ve never heard of this happening to anyone, either?” Sheppard checked.

“No,” Ronon said. “It’s weird.”

“Yeah,” Sheppard agreed. “That’s one word for it.”

He expected Ronon to turn on the laptop then, insert a DVD, and go back to their standard, silent movie-watching routine. Instead, Ronon reached out and pulled the sheet back, suddenly bringing his palm to rest on the curve of Sheppard’s belly where it stuck out from his pants. For a second, Sheppard let him. Mostly out of slowed reflexes, he decided, because in the next second he realized just what that gesture mirrored in the normal world, and violently swatted Ronon’s hand away.

“Knock it off!”

Ronon withdrew his hand. “I felt it.”

Sheppard readjusted the sheet. “You did not.”

“Yeah, I did. Like a flutter.”

“I don’t care,” Sheppard went with. “What movie did you bring?”

Ronon allowed himself to be distracted. Sheppard really hoped the person providing their film library knew enough to remove all movies having to do with pregnancy and birth, too.

“Dawn of the Dead,” Ronon said, tossing the DVD case onto Sheppard’s chest.

“Good. I’m in the mood for a zombie movie,” Sheppard said.

“What’s a zombie?” Ronon asked.

“An undead mindless killing machine who wants to eat the living.”

Ronon blinked at him.

“It’s really violent,” Sheppard assured him, and shoved the disc into the laptop.

He never got to tell Rodney. Teyla and Ronon took it upon themselves to do it for him. Fairly obviously to spare him the unavoidable reaction. Sheppard wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On one hand, it was kind of nice. On the other hand, it reeked of being coddled, like suddenly he was too much of a wilting flower to handle the obnoxiousness of one Dr. Rodney McKay. And then Sheppard got genuinely pissed off about it. He didn’t mind fighting with Rodney; he was good at it and he usually won. And he’d been cooped up for months with medical staff that came running and looked worried if he raised his voice in the slightest. Teyla and Ronon had just robbed him of the best chance of a remotely more interesting day, and that sucked.

Teyla and Ronon also came with Rodney the first time he visited Sheppard after hearing the news. That was pretty funny, actually. They stood on either side of him like a phalanx, as if their mere presence would prevent Rodney from saying something awful. Clearly, they’d learned nothing.

“Hey,” Sheppard said, from his usual spot on the gurney. His incision was long since healed, but Keller insisted he stay hooked up to a thousand monitors and that made moving around the room a giant pain in the ass.

“Hi,” Rodney said. He looked a little browbeaten; Sheppard imagined Ronon and Teyla had both threatened him with bodily harm. He paused, mouth hanging open.

Sheppard waited. He wasn’t disappointed.

“So,” Rodney said. “Think you’re going to grow boobs?”

Teyla inhaled sharply. “Rodney!”

Ronon said nothing, he just immediately smacked Rodney upside the head with the closest hand.

“Ow! Hey!”

“Did we not talk about this!” Hissed Teyla.

“It’s a valid question!” Rodney retorted, moving out of reach of Ronon and rubbing the back of his head. “Watch the brain!”

Sheppard shook his head, exhaled. “In your dreams, McKay.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rodney said. But he didn’t actually have any other horribly insensitive comments, so maybe Teyla and Ronon had gotten most of it out of his system. Sheppard was still kind of annoyed they’d deprived him of that.

Rodney did have some interesting info, though. He tossed a tablet onto Sheppard’s chest, took a seat in the ever-present visitor’s chair. “Anthropologists’ mission report from M3X-371,” he said.

“Which one was that?” Sheppard asked.

“Goat shit planet,” Ronon provided.

“Oh.” Sheppard picked it up. Over the top of the screen, he saw boredom on Ronon’s face and Teyla looking uncertain if they should stay.

“You can go,” he said. “I can hit Rodney myself.”

“Okay,” said Ronon, stepping towards the door.

“Oh, funny,” said Rodney, as Teyla nodded and followed Ronon out. “Did you know that Teyla’s really scary?”

Sheppard ignored him, already reading the document before him. It wasn’t actually from the most recent reconnaissance mission – it was the scientific follow-up to the original mission:  just the typical anthropology report detailing the culture of the natives and analyzing whether their social organization and economy could support engaging in any kind of trade relations with Atlantis. That wasn’t the relevant part. Rodney had highlighted the addendum, where the anthropologists talked at length about matters that were irrelevant to establishing trade relations and were theoretically of interest to other anthropologists.

“The kinship system,” Rodney said, since Sheppard evidently wasn’t reading fast enough. “It…might be related to what happened to you.”

That part of the report was highlighted and Sheppard skipped to it.

“They wanted to go back for more field research,” Rodney said, as he read. “I said no, because who cares. Then they asked to have an actual anthropologist in charge of approving their departmental requests. I denied that, too.”

Sheppard discovered about five seconds into the first paragraph that anthropological language was utterly incomprehensible. He put the tablet down.

“Related to what happened to me how?”

“All four of the tribes living on that mountain trace their origin back to same sex ancestors,” Rodney said. He looked awkward. “They don’t intermarry, either. Well two of them don’t, the other two recently had a Romeo & Juliet type situation and now they will, but before that they didn’t.”

Sheppard wasn’t following. “Point?”

“Same sex founders,” Rodney said, as if it should be clear. “Three sets of patriarchs and one set of matriarchs. No intermarriage. And they made babies.”

“That’s impossible,” Sheppard said.

Rodney looked down at Sheppard’s abdomen. “Really?”

~

“Wow!” Ferri said, her hands up over her mouth. Keller elbowed her sharply in the side. “Um, well not wow for you. But this is incredible!”

“I think it’s weird and freaky,” Ronon volunteered.

“Please stick to your report content, Doctor,” Carter said, “And remember that this is a sensitive issue.”

“Oh, right.” Ferri tried to compose herself. She didn’t succeed, black pony tail flipping constantly behind her head because she kept turning her face to look at Sheppard. “My initial report included the existence of homogenous mating in the origin stories of the people of M3X-371. That’s not wholly unusual, but I thought that it was interesting that all four communities shared it despite arriving on the planet at different times and having very distinct cultural differences, otherwise.”

“Isn’t ‘origin story’ like a ‘creation myth,” asked Rodney. “As in, a fairytale?”

“Oral history can’t always be taken at face value,” Ferri said, “But these people have been on M3X-371 for a very short time. They’re Wraith refugees. They haven’t been on that planet longer than two hundred years.”

“Why would that make their story any more true?” Sheppard asked.

Ferri shrugged. “It’s one thing when a myth evolves over millennia. It’s another when you have a great-grandma that says she was there.”

“Okay,” Carter said. “And what exactly did this great-grandma say?”

“That only men survived the culling of her grandparents’ world.” Ferri said. “And that’s what happened with two of the other tribes, as well. The third had only women and infants survive.”

“That happens a lot,” Ronon interrupted. Everyone looked at him. He shrugged. “Squadrons get trapped away from home. Or only women and kids are evacuated.”

“Oh,” Sheppard said. “That makes sense.” But he had the feeling he really, really wasn’t going to like where this was going.

“It also makes sense,” Rodney countered, “that the little orphan boys and girls found each other and made babies the old fashioned way. No pregnant men involved.”

“The communities on M3X-371 have not historically intermarried,” Ferri said. “The only thing they do together is farm goats, and they fight about that a lot.”

“Many peoples who have been culled are very strict about intermarriage,” Teyla said. “When you have lost so many people, it can be vital to maintain the culture and the bloodline.”

“Please, continue,” Carter said. Her face was hard and blank; she was taking this as seriously as Sheppard was.

“When my team was allowed to return recently,” Ferri said, “we were able to find out more. And it was consistent. Every one of these tribes believed they multiplied when two men or two women went up the sacred mountain.”

“Up or in?” asked Rodney, like it mattered.

“In,” Ferri amended.

Sheppard opened his mouth to say something. Nothing came out. It was just too much.

“Why the hell didn’t they mention this when we where there in the first place?” He finally managed to come up with.

“They thought you knew,” Ferri said. “And you were trying to be discreet.”

“But we had Teyla!” Rodney said, jabbing a finger in her general direction.

“One of the elders, I think, suspected why we were asking. He must have known about your original mission,” Ferri went on. “He told me that both fathers must return for the birthing ritual.”

“Both…” Teyla murmured. Her eyes suddenly moved from Sheppard to Ronon.

“What?” asked Ronon.

“Oh my God,” said Rodney.

Sheppard didn’t say anything. But the heart monitor Keller still had him hooked to went crazy. It took him a second, then he ripped the pulse ox off of his finger, threw it on top of the gurney. Keller moved as if to go to him, but he waved her off. That made the flat-line alarm go off, of course, and Keller got up anyway to turn it off. The silence was unbearable, so Sheppard waved his finger at Ferri in a ‘go on’ motion.

Wide-eyed, Ferri continued. “The elder said you – er…they must return for the nourishing gift and the birth. He wouldn’t elaborate.”

“Nourishing gift?” Carter asked.

“Lactation would be my guess,” Keller said.

Sheppard put one hand to his face. He was still speechless. Through his fingers he could see Ronon’s eyes fixed on something on the ceiling, processing the conversation. Or maybe thinking these people were totally fucking crazy.

“Wait a goddamn minute!” Rodney exploded. “You expect us to believe that a bunch of goat herding primitives –”

“Hey-” said Ferri.

Rodney kept going. “How do they get the kid out, huh? Cesarean section? I didn’t see any hospitals. I didn’t see a single sterile surface!”

“In the case of the patriarchs,” Ferri said, solemnly. “Only one survives. That was consistent in their stories, also. They don’t do a cesarean section. Not a proper one, anyway. They just use a knife.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, but his voice was kind of dying in his throat.

“The ‘nourishing gift’ is given to the other one, then?” asked Keller, and she was looking intently at Ronon.

Ronon shifted uncomfortably in his seat, shoulders abruptly hunching.

“Nothing happened to me,” he said.

“Not yet,” said Ferri, maybe unaware of what Ronon looked like when he was violently angry.

“Okay,” said Carter, and her voice had the faint ring of shock in it even as she tried to sound commanding. “First of all, no one is going back to that mountain. Period.”

She kept talking, but Sheppard didn’t hear what she said. He was too busy sliding to the floor as his chair somehow moved out from under him and it suddenly got really noisy and blurry. He vaguely recognized Keller’s fuzzy face leaning over him, but then everything grayed out.

~

When Sheppard woke up, he was back on the gurney and his Isolation room was empty. There was a new IV stand at his bedside and he felt the thick, distancing layer of sedative between him and the world. Keller arrived quickly, asked how he was feeling

The truth was he felt shitty, underneath the chemicals. She said he’d passed out; explained something that had to do with pregnancy, which all of a sudden applied to him because the Pegasus galaxy evidently enjoyed fucking him over. Keller didn’t offer any details on what else the meeting had discussed, but she did say that Ronon was waiting for him to wake up.

“Hey,” Ronon said, when Keller let him in and she stepped outside. He walked to the side of Sheppard’s gurney, put his hand out and rested his fist by Sheppard’s head. Almost like he was putting it there in case Sheppard wanted to hold it. And just because Sheppard had recently fainted like a goddamn debutante with the vapors didn’t mean he was going to do that.

“Hey,” Sheppard said, and glared at Ronon’s hand.

“You okay?” Ronon asked, and at least his voice was concerned and not patronizing. Ronon didn’t really do patronizing.

“Yeah,” Sheppard answered, though he knew he sounded thick and tired and not all that okay. “Keller says I don’t have enough blood to get angry. Or something like that. I think she shot me full of tranquilizers.”

Ronon nodded, but he didn’t say anything or move at all, and Sheppard figured he was asking the question in a broader sense.

Sheppard shrugged, annoyed to find that the motion was kind of hard and slow because Keller had doped him. “Yeah,” he said, again. “What else is there to be?”

“It’s just a baby,” Ronon said. And he had the nerve to have the tiniest of smiles on his face. Sheppard decided he had better be trying to be comforting, because if he thought it’d be cute to play proud papa, Sheppard was going to punch him in the face.

“It’s not in you.” Sheppard retorted. He probably didn’t have the strength or focus to sit up – his abdominal muscles were, of course, completely destroyed – but he could probably drag Ronon down and then punch him. All the better if Ronon hit him back.

“Coulda been,” Ronon said, shrugging. He wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t give him the right to be so calm.

Sheppard glared. “You gonna stay cool with it if you grow boobs?” he demanded. 

Ronon’s face flickered, maybe mostly in amusement. “I like boobs,” he said, and Sheppard really did want to punch him. The hand next to Sheppard’s head moved, and Ronon patted him lightly on the shoulder, his face gentle and serious. “It’ll be good.”

Sheppard couldn’t think of a sentiment he disagreed with any more strongly. Coming from Ronon, who was mostly immune to being glowered at, it was bad enough. The entire medical staff seemed to have adopted it as a philosophy for the duration, though.

He understood that they were primarily concerned with and focused on his health, but it did seem like they were purposefully ignoring anything beyond it. He felt worse and worse as the weeks went by, as he got even bigger and less mobile. There were new drugs Keller gave him and new medical apparatus – one a giant hybrid of Ancient and earth technology that fitted over his torso and very clearly wasn’t about monitoring Sheppard. Keller did, finally, sit down with him and deliver a fairly intimidating lecture on the fact that he didn’t just feel like crap because of the drugs, but because there were a lot things wrong with him, namely insanely high blood pressure, and that was why he was on so many drugs. She didn’t dwell on why, since, well, they both knew. In fact, she seemed to be trying to suggest that making him stay in bed with a giant monitor-thing strapped over his abdomen and bunch of machines analyzing his every breath was not wholly out of the ordinary for someone in his condition. Every time she tried to sell this line, he liked to remind her that other people in their third trimesters did not have a penis.  

He thought it was an important distinction and got more than a little pissed when she neither agreed nor wanted to argue with him.

“I don’t think this –” he cast an arm around the phalanx of medical instrument that surrounded his bedside – “would work out well if I was a goat herder.”

“No,” Keller said. “It wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean this is all that atypical. There are a lot of high risk pregnancies in women, and they usually don’t survive in communities like that, either.”

Sheppard wondered who she meant by ‘they,’ but didn’t ask.

“There’s nothing normal about this,” he told her. “I fell head first into an alien baby-making factory.”

Maybe Keller was trying to make everything seem less dire, particularly because the high blood pressure lecture had entailed scary words like ‘aneurysm’ and ‘stroke’. As had the one about what would happen if they tried to surgically excise the thing – Sheppard was still calling it that – before enough of the supporting structure had retracted and died off. They weren’t paying much attention to the suggestion that Ronon had dragged him out of that place, could have disrupted however it was supposed to work. But then again, the goat people said he wasn’t supposed to survive anyway.

More irritating was somebody started leaving books about pregnancy and childbirth around his room. Not data pads or websites, which he would have just immediately deleted, but actual books. Sheppard didn’t know where the fuck they came from. He ended up ripping the pages out and making them into paper airplanes. No one said anything about it, presumably because then they would have to admit to putting them there in the first place. Well, McKay criticized his technique and tried to make better, more aerodynamic ones. Teyla made a paper bird instead of a plane. Ronon didn’t want to play.

Another topic that no one talked about was what would happen when this was over. They were, optimistically, presuming Sheppard’s survival. No one had mentioned that there was something that would probably look very much like a human baby involved, and that it, too, might survive. Sheppard had absolutely no idea what to think about that, but it seemed like it should be getting more attention.

There were a few more weeks in Keller’s timetable, and he figured that it would inevitably have to come up. If it was anything like the past few weeks, they already had an extensive plan and were, as usual, just not telling him.

But those weeks never got the chance to come. Everything happened that night, while Sheppard was trying to sleep. It wasn’t easy, given how big and uncomfortable he was and all the stupid gadgets he had to wear. That night he felt especially hot and sweaty, his face flushed and warm. Shortly after that, one of his monitors started making noise and Keller showed up to check on him. She looked over the read outs and her face went very serious.

“What?” asked Sheppard, cranky because this had happened a lot and usually it just resulted in her looking worried while not telling him anything, and then he had even more trouble sleeping.

“It’s time,” she said.

Sheppard tried to sit up, and of course totally failed at it. Keller cranked his gurney up with one hand, the other stabbing something into his IV line. “Why?” he asked.

“Your BP’s stayed above the hypertensive emergency level for too long,” she said, which he didn’t understand at all. “The usual treatment hasn’t brought it down.”

“Whass’at mean?” He asked, realizing his vision was a little blurry and that was new and scary.

“It means organ damage if it doesn’t come down,” Keller said, putting something else in his IV that was probably a sedative because a giant weight was slamming down on his thoughts.

He tried to say something else, but it was too hard and then he was gone.

~

Sheppard didn’t feel much better when he woke up. It felt like a long time had passed, his limbs stiff and his eyelids heavy. His body felt lighter, too, and once he got his eyes open he realized that for the first time in months he wasn’t covered in medical machinery. There was an IV in his wrist and a tube against his thigh that was probably a catheter, but that’s all. Sheppard looked down, saw that the sheets covering him didn’t form the usual mound over his torso. It was over.

But he was still in Isolation, instead of a normal surgical bed. He moved one hand curiously down his chest, immediately felt the swell of surgical gauze bandaged across his abdomen.

Keller walked in second later, her face brighter and more relaxed than he’d seen since this all had started.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. “You’re back with us now?”

“Now?” he said, finding his voice dry and creaky.

“You’ve been in and out for about two weeks,” Keller said, approaching his bedside. “You don’t remember?”

Sheppard shook his. “No.”

“Probably better that way.” She found a pitcher of water and a cup from the table against the wall, poured him some, and handed it over. “First week wasn’t a lot of fun, you were in bad shape.”

He took a sip of the delicious cool water. Tentatively, Sheppard put one hand lightly on his stomach. The pressure made the incision sting, so he quickly moved it back on to the gurney. “It worked?” he asked.

Keller’s head bobbed. “Fifteen hours of surgery, total, but yeah, it’s all out.”

“It?” Sheppard asked, watching her intently.

“The alien tissue is in jars in Xenobiology,” Keller said. “It’s decomposing very quickly, though. I think Lautmann was going to cry.”

Sheppard continued to look at her, because that was very much not answering the question. And she was no longer allowed to keep things from him.

“The baby was a girl,” Keller went on, gently. “Five pounds, six ounces. Totally normal.”

“Alive?” Sheppard asked.

“Oh? Yeah. Healthy. Human.” She looked hesitant. He couldn’t tell why. “We…um… felt we couldn’t ethically deliberately neglect her when we had the ability to –”

She was defending their decision not to kill the kid, which was actually kind of offensive. Sheppard waved the stuttered explanation off.

“Ronon grow boobs?”

Keller blinked, then almost snorted in laughter. “No,” she said, and giggled. “We have a supply of formula, normally used for trading.”

“Oh.”

“She looks like Ronon,” Keller said, softly. “She’s really cute. Really tiny.”

Sheppard half-expected the kid to have Ronon’s dreadlocks, which made for a really amusing mental picture. He didn’t know where she usually was, but when Keller let his team in to visit, the kid was wrapped in a purple blanket and tucked under Ronon’s arm like a football. Sheppard hadn’t expected that, didn’t know if he’d have wanted more preparation for this.

Otherwise, it was kind of normal. Teyla did the Athosian forehead thing with him, told him earnestly how pleased they were that he was alive. As usual, Rodney and Ronon loitered there, neither wanting to share the same kind of affection, which was fine by Sheppard. Well, Ronon was holding a kid. Their kid. That was different.  

“Hey,” he said to both of them. All three of them.

Rodney hadn’t yet made any jokes at his expense, must have gotten them all out his system in the past two weeks.

“Wanna see?” asked Ronon, straight out, dipping his shoulder and holding out the purple blanket.

“I can see,” said Sheppard. The kid didn’t have dreads, of course. She had a head full of curly, poofy black hair and her little face was golden. She did look like Ronon.

“She’s asleep,” said Rodney, “finally.” Like he’d played some role in that. Sheppard squinted at him.

Ronon was still holding his arm out, like Sheppard should take the kid.

“No thanks,” he said, pointing at the surgical bandages under the sheet. “Just got cut open.”

Ronon accepted that excuse, went back to holding the kid like a football.

“They won’t let me hold her,” Rodney said then, in his best tattletale voice. “Everyone gets to hold her except me.”

Sheppard started to laugh, only stopped because his stitches immediately burned. Ronon slanted his eyes dangerously at Rodney.

“That’s probably a good choice,” Sheppard said, holding back his laughter.

At the same time, Teyla said, “You do not pay attention, Rodney.”

“I do, too!” Rodney scowled. “She survived eight and a half months inside Sheppard. I think she can survive anything.”

Ronon cast a dark glance his direction. “You drop her on her head, I’m going to drop you on your head.”

“Let him,” Sheppard said, because at least someone wanted to hold the baby. He didn’t.

It was a bizarre scene, but Ronon made Rodney sit down in the visitor chair, shoved a pillow on his lap, and then gingerly handed the kid over. Teyla moved over, so they were both standing on either side of the chair.

“This what I missed?” Sheppard asked, even though both Teyla and Ronon were both intently watching Rodney.

“Pretty much,” said Ronon.

Ronon and Teyla were right. Rodney didn’t pay attention. Within minutes, the kid was somehow sliding sideways out of his arms. Ronon immediately snatched her up and away, tucking her back tightly under his arm. She slept through the entire thing, which was a useful skill.

“She have a name?” Sheppard asked, vaguely curious. She probably needed one better than ‘kid’.

Ronon looked a little awkward. “Thought you’d want to,” he said.

Sheppard shook his head. “Yeah,” he said. “No.”

Ronon didn’t say anything, but Teyla piped up: “Ronon has been calling her Jo.”

“Jo?”

“That’s a boy’s name,” Rodney said. It sounded like maybe he’d said that before.

“Unlike Meredith,” Sheppard said.

“My mom’s name was Joa,” Ronon said. His voice didn’t change at all, but it suddenly sounded heavy and poignant to Sheppard’s ears.

“Oh,” he said. “Jo’s good.”

Ronon gave a little nod, didn’t say anything.

So, that was how Jo got her name. It was probably one of the simpler, least dramatic moments of her entire existence thus far.

~

There were a lot more complicated, dramatic times after that. In between trying to rehab from nearly six months of being basically sedentary, two invasive abdominal surgeries, and what frankly felt like the relocation of most of his internal organs by the entire experience, Sheppard got to have a lot of conversations about what was going to happen to Jo.

He was okay with it not involving him. He wasn’t really involved now. Jo lived in the infirmary and all the nurses and doctors, as well as Ronon and pretty much everyone else who knew she was there took care of her. That was a pretty select number, fortunately. Sheppard had trouble connecting this little baby with the past six months of hell. He’d first thought she was a parasite that was going to kill him, then a parasite that was pretending to be a human baby, which was just sick. The short time he’d known the truth, he’d been uncomfortable and ill, and also pretty heavily in denial.

So, he found he wasn’t sure what he felt. It was unexpectedly touching to watch Ronon with her, because Ronon loved her. Totally. It was, he figured, really fortunate that one of her parents did.

By some miracle, the US Air Force and the Stargate program didn’t yet know about her. Colonel Carter had a fine sense of discretion, had reported only his confinement with an alien illness. It seemed pretty important to Sheppard that no one outside the Atlantis infirmary ever know the truth about her origin. It was too easy to imagine a sick, curious bastard from Area 51 or something equally clandestine wanting to get a look at her.

And that thought made him abruptly really angry, which was probably a normal emotion to have about someone threatening his kid. So that was a healthy reaction, at least.

~

Jo couldn’t stay on Atlantis. That was immediately and painfully obvious. It was already difficult hiding her existence in the infirmary, because her cries echoed down in the entire level. Sheppard’s team was now totally on stand down. Ronon wasn’t going out with any of the other units and Sheppard was still recuperating. But that couldn’t last forever and having the kid in the city struck Sheppard as unbelievably dangerous.

Ronon agreed, and that was why he volunteered to take Jo and go offworld.  And that was totally unacceptable.

“What are you gonna do?” Demanded Rodney. “Tie her to your sword sheath and carry her around on your back while you chase the Wraith?”

Ronon looked at Rodney like maybe that was exactly what he intended to do, and he didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Teyla politely offered Jo a home among the Athosians. Sheppard had the brief image of the baby growing up to be just like Teyla, which wasn’t a bad thing. Except that he also remembered Teyla had grown up living in helpless terror of the Wraith, and that was a bad thing.

Thinking that over made him realize he didn’t want the kid anywhere near the goddamn Wraith.

Taking Jo back to Earth wouldn’t be all that hard, it would just involve lying to everybody. And Sheppard leaving Atlantis. They could tell the SGC Jo was from a dalliance with a Pegasus native, since the gossip mill had him doing that constantly, anyway. And technically, Ronon was a Pegasus native.

Ronon did not like that idea. At all. Well, he probably liked the idea of Jo being in a galaxy that didn’t know the Wraith, but he didn’t like the rest of it.

“You don’t want to do that," he accused Sheppard.

And that was true, in as much that Sheppard had absolutely no idea what he would do when he was back on Earth, with a baby who would no longer be cared for by thirty other people. Sheppard did hold Jo, sometimes. He wasn’t too good at it and Ronon and Teyla watched him almost as closely as they did Rodney. That was annoying, since Rodney nearly dropped her and Sheppard just forgot to support the head.

That brought them around to a less discussed option: sending Jo to Earth while both Sheppard and Ronon stayed on Atlantis.

Sheppard thought it was both mean and impossible. It left a bad taste in his mouth to try to suggest abandoning the baby to a stranger. And he couldn’t imagine who would volunteer to care for a child with two fathers conceived by an alien device in a different galaxy. Not sharing that fact wasn’t an option. Carter didn’t seem to think it was as unlikely as all that; she said her god daughter was an alien who had arrived on Earth with a bomb in her belly.

There’d been one vague discussion of the possibility that any number of sinister things might happen to Jo as she grew. Sheppard didn’t buy it – he was fairly sure the goat people were right about the device in the mountain. It just made baby humans from parents who couldn’t. Pretty damn miraculous for people who didn’t accidentally fall in it.

It was Rodney who finally, awkwardly, suggested a solution.

“I bet my sister would do it,” he said.

“Jeannie?” asked Sheppard, watching the way Ronon’s face was actually soft and open instead of instantly resentful and closed off. That meant he didn’t hate it.

“No,” snapped Rodney. “My other sister. Yes, Jeannie.”

“Yeah?” asked Ronon, his most supportive comment yet.

Rodney shrugged. “She’s trying to have another baby.” He made a face. “Now that we talk, she sometimes tells me things about her ovulation schedule, which is fabulous.” He went on, quickly. “If she’s going to waste her life in childcare, your and Ronon’s genes are probably better than Kaleb’s.”

Sheppard blinked at him. “Let’s not phrase it that way when we ask, huh?”

“Jeannie is a very loving mother,” Teyla piped up, smiling.

Actually asking Jeannie Miller was a lot harder. It wasn’t a matter that could be discussed over the databursts. Sheppard really didn’t like the idea of showing up on her doorstep with her obnoxious brother at his side, an overprotective Satedan looming over them, and a baby in hand. Really, it’d be ideal if he could just take Teyla. Either way, though, it was going to be an ambush and no one could think of any way to prepare her.

Rodney did send her a message he promised was both discreet about the topic but meant she wouldn’t be completely blindsided. Sheppard didn’t get to read it, but he had trouble believing it was any less direct than “Want a baby?”

Sheppard had to tell the SGC about Jo, then. He stuck with the close-to-the-truth lie about the Pegasus native. He was probably going to have to sit through some kind of disciplinary meeting where he got yelled at for not keeping it in his pants. It wouldn’t be fair or accurate, though Rodney said it’d be overdue, anyway. They were more than happy to hear that he’d already concocted a solution to the situation, and had no problem allowing Sheppard and his team – and Jo – to hitch a ride back to Earth next time the Daedalus went through.

Three weeks in space on a military ship with a baby went by very slowly. For the most part, the Daedalus crew restrained themselves from any comments about Sheppard’s lovechild, at least to Sheppard’s face. Possibly because Rodney was doing it for them. It was annoying as hell, but Rodney claimed he was just maintaining their cover story. Sheppard doubted that.

Rodney also spent the trip crowing over how funny he thought it’d be for a kid with Sheppard and Ronon’s genes to grow up in his sister’s household. Even though it’d been his idea.

“I like Jeannie,” said Ronon, not understanding Rodney’s point.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. “But she is Canadian.”

“And a genius.” Rodney said. “And a vegetarian.”

“Vegetables are healthy,” said Teyla.

“I’ll send her beef jerky,” Sheppard said.

“You saying Jo’s gonna be dumb?” asked Ronon, with a threatening eyebrow quirk.

“No,” Rodney said, stepping slightly away. “I didn’t say that. I mean we have to warn Jeannie that this kid is going to start stabbing people and trying to jump off of the roof as soon as she can walk.”

Sheppard started to retort, but Ronon just shrugged. “Gotta be honest.”

He was talking like it was a done deal, but Sheppard was less convinced. He was already contemplating how he’d go about resigning and making arrangements to stay. Those weren’t easy thoughts. He didn’t think Jo deserved a parent as reluctant as he felt, but then again, Sheppard hadn’t deserved to fall down the baby-making shoot.

~

They beamed down in Jeannie’s hometown and got a rental car. Putting Jo into the carseat was a nightmare, because it made the kid very, very angry. Sheppard drove to Jeannie’s house. Rodney got out and went up the doorstep, while everyone else stayed in the car. Ronon tried to clean up Jo so she'd look less like a furious, soggy, red-faced baby. Sheppard didn’t think it really worked, but Ronon did manage to change Jo into a clean, Athosian knit-thing Teyla had had made for her.

Rodney stayed inside Jeannie’s house for nearly half an hour.

“How do you think it’s going?” Sheppard asked Ronon. He could feel the other man getting restless.

“I am sure it is going well,” Teyla said, optimistically from the back seat.

“Bet they just stopped fighting long enough for him to tell her,” countered Ronon.

That seemed disturbingly likely.

Finally, Rodney emerged from the house. He was alone, though, and looked kind of flustered.

“No?” asked Sheppard, when Rodney opened the rear door behind Sheppard.

“I don’t think she believes me.” He said, sounding annoyed. “Kaleb definitely doesn’t.”

“Kaleb has security clearance?’ Sheppard asked. He’d forgotten about that.

“Jeannie has a big mouth,” was all Rodney said. “And he’s in the picture, anyway.”

“I wonder if Jo will learn to speak in the manner of the McKays,” Teyla said, softly behind Sheppard’s ear, and she was smiling.

“They haven’t said yes yet," Sheppard reminded her.

All the same, they all got out of the car. Ronon carried Jo. Sheppard read some tension in his back, and he wondered if he should be feeling guilty because he was more worried they’d say no than anxious about them saying yes.

Jeannie and Kaleb were sitting in their living room. The floor was strewn with Madison’s toys, but the little girl wasn’t in the room. As they entered, Jeannie’s eyes went wide.

“You weren’t kidding,” she said to Rodney.

“No,” Rodney said. “Why would I?”

“Hi,” said Sheppard.

Ronon said nothing. Teyla went forward and embraced Jeannie. “It is good to see you.”

Sheppard took a deep breath. “I don’t know what Rodney told you…”

“He said you and Ronon made a baby that needs a home,” Jeannie said.

“Oh.” Sheppard looked at Rodney, expecting a lot more than that in the half hour he’d spent inside. “Well, yeah. By accident. With alien tech.”

Jeannie was peering at the Jo, concealed in the Athosian knit Ronon had her wrapped in.

Slowly, Ronon moved the fabric so the baby’s face and big brown eyes were exposed.

“This is Jo,” he said, gruffly.

Jeannie looked confused, and then understanding settled on her face. “Oh.” She looked at Sheppard. “My brother said her name was Meredith.”

“I did not,” Rodney objected. “I said it’d be a good middle name.”

“Jo is after Ronon’s mom,” Sheppard said. He was watching Jeannie’s hands kind of twitching at her sides. Her eyes were big and sparkling, already ignoring her brother.

Carefully, Ronon held Jo out and Jeannie gently gathered the baby in to her arms.

“Um, if it makes a difference,” Sheppard said, “The Air Force would set up some kind of child support fund. I haven’t actually spent any of my paychecks in four years, so…”

“Look at that hair,” Jeannie crooned. She’d backed up to the couch, was sitting next to Kaleb again.

“Yeah, good luck ever getting that to be normal,” said Rodney. “Look at these two.”

Sheppard’s chest was feeling kind of warm, watching Jeannie holding the baby. He didn’t know if it was relief or what. Kaleb didn’t look as excited, but he was watching Jeannie’s huge smile.

“Is she…healthy?” he asked, tentatively. “I mean, it shouldn’t be possible…”

“Very healthy,” said Teyla.

“She’s perfect,” said Ronon.

“There are few trusted doctors at the SGC that would be available and be discreet if anything changed in the future,” Sheppard said, understanding what the man was asking. “And we made sure that no one else knew how she came to be, for everyone’s safety.”

Jeannie nodded, making eye contact with Kaleb. “I think we have to talk about this,” she said.

But she made no move to give the baby back, which was probably a good thing. Sheppard’s team shuffled out of the living room, eventually ending up in the kitchen.

“Meredith?” Sheppard muttered at Rodney, who just made a face at him.

He saw Teyla kind of rubbing Ronon’s back. The big guy was pulling his blankest face, but he still didn’t look happy.

Jeannie and Kaleb’s discussion took all of five minutes. And she was totally beaming when she came into the kitchen no longer holding Jo. She hugged all of them really hard, even though Sheppard tried to tell her his torso was still sore, and he awkwardly patted her on the back.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Jeannie whispered into his ear.

Sheppard wanted to say that it was Ronon, not him, who really should  hear those words.

After that, it wasn’t clear what should happen. They went back to the living room, where Kaleb had Jo and was looking just as enchanted as Jeannie. That was really good to see, and Sheppard checked to make sure Ronon noted it, too.

The SGC had documents it would invent. An American birth certificate for Jo with a fictional mother and Sheppard as the father. It didn’t seem fair that Ronon wouldn’t be in there anywhere, but the last thing this situation needed was acknowledgment of any alien involvement. The lawyers would magically straighten out the international adoption paperwork, too, so none of that was really a problem.

It was a simple as leaving the kid with her new parents, but it suddenly seemed bigger and harder. Sheppard glanced at Ronon, tried to read what was going on under the surface. He’d basically made the decision for both of them, wondered now if he had that right.

“I can send pictures,” Jeannie said. “I e-mail Rodney all the time with pictures of Madison. And you’ll come back to see her, right?”

Ronon looked a little happier about that. “Okay,” he said.

Before they left, Ronon held Jo, walked with her around the house by himself. Sheppard just kissed her on the cheek while Jeannie held her. He ruffled her hair, surprised himself by already thinking of her as Jeannie’s daughter. That was good, he figured.

There’d be stuff later. Like telling the kid she’d been conceived in another galaxy, had two biological dads, one of whom had called her a parasite for her entire unborn life.

As Sheppard’s team walked out to the car, Sheppard stuck his arm up and around Ronon’s back, digging under his dreadlocks ‘til he found the back of the man’s neck and gave it a squeeze.

“She’ll come back to Pegasus when she’s big,” he said. “Help us kick Wraith ass.”

Ronon looked at him sideways. “Aren’t gonna be any Wraith when she’s big,” he said. “We’re gonna kill them all before she comes back.”

 

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