Recs of stories about damaged and/or secretive Sheppard (UPDATED)
Sheppard Personal Canon is a must-read.
John asks Lorne to do something difficult in Die Verwandlung
In The Pledge and The Turn, Lorne schools Rodney how to write an AAR to protect his team, especially Sheppard.
John in Afghanistan in "Just Another War Story"
These Secretive Walls shows Sheppard from the viewpoint of Ronon from when he is first brought back to Atlantis. Ronon sees everyone and everything from a fascinating and alien viewpoint and as he tries to understand these strange people and Sheppard, the most unfathomable of all, he gleans some great insights, especially when he tries to track Sheppard through the city. In the end, neither he nor the reader knows anymore about Sheppard than he wants them to but it explains how Ronon came to trust Sheppard so completely.
The End is Near and So Am I packs quite a wallop. The team is on the run from the Genii and as death seems imminent muse on some key points in their lives and how they ended up there. John thinks back to joining the Special Forces and how he lost everything.
The author and I had a very interesting discussion about Unshackled (apparently not related at all to the Korean horror movie of the same name she says) on how something can be incredibly adult in its themes as this story is, without being violent, having sex, etc. This story is incredibly powerful and disturbing and you don't understand how or what happened until the very, very end. Not for children or the faint of heart. Although nothing explicit is shown of what happened, the story and the damage to John haunts me still.
I also love The Four Moments Ronon Realized He Loved Someone From Atlantis and the One Time He Knew All Along, which completely gen despite the title. Ronon finds a kindred soul in the broken Sheppard and someone to follow to hell and back.
Be my homeward dove is a lovely gen fic set pre-"Intruder," on Earth in which Elizabeth, Rodney and Carson realize that this isn't home anymore. They attend the promotion ceremony for John, who already knew he felt that way, even though he didn't invite anyone at all. The author perfectly captures John's pride in the promotion even as he makes his unhappy superiors squirm.
I can't describe Uncanny Valley without ruining the devastating ending which haunted me long after I finished. Suffice to say, John isn't who he or anyone else thinks.
Leisurely From Disaster finds John on Earth discussing art and Rodney with Jeannie in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Angels in the Architecture speculates on an AU where John is a descended Ancient. Sad and intriguing.
The author sums up Falter perfectly by the first line "They each have places that break them a little." John isn't the only one on the team damaged by the things they see.
John and the team meet and bond with Liam, a truly alien creature, who is as much a secretive loner as John (also he's hilarious and tragic) in Fellow Traveler.
I dare you to read without crying the heart-wrenching Legion the Things I Would Give to Oblivion in which the Daedalus arrives to break the siege but things still go terribly, terribly wrong. John's connection with Atlantis is strongly explored as he nearly kills himself running the chair; warning for many, many major character deaths. Sheppard only survives the battle in body.
In necessary things, immediately after the siege ends, Rodney distracts himself and goes on a quest for music, specifically access to Kavanaugh's ipod, and begins to realize what Teyla already has, that Sheppard has not moved on from the grief and pain from those they lost and the events of the battles.
skeddykat devastatingly analyzes Sheppard's Trust issues.
The moving and disquieting In the Quiet Hours shows the different team members late at night. This blew me away by how the author took an SGA fic convention and used it to subtly explore some of the themes present in season 5 as Stargate Atlantis comes to an end: the regrets and consequences they are experiencing for all the things they have done and failed to do since they came to Pegasus. Rodney, straightforward to the end, is the only team member seemingly unaffected, spending his time alone doing exactly how he does it in public, working away in his lab and gleefully mainlining caffeine. Teyla sits up and seeks comfort in her mental connection with her son as Kanaan obliviously sleeps on. As she longs for what could have been and who should have been beside her and meditates on how Kanaan fears and hates her and Torren's Wraith DNA, despite sharing it, the cracks and short shelf life of the relationship have never seemed clearer. Ronon's artistic soul is revealed as he explores an abandoned Ancient art gallery and is particularly drawn to a sculpture of a dying warrior, in which he ominously finds a resemblance to an expression he has seen too often on John lately. The author uses the emotional shadings that Joe Flanigan has added to his performance since the middle of season four, the hardening and ever greater emotional retreat of Sheppard as he begins to become overwhelmed and wearied by his losses, failures, regrets, ommissions and what could have been. Sheppard finds it more and more difficult to sleep and hides himself away in his secret Atlantis aerie to find comfort in the city. Moving, sad and disturbing.
Sheppard becomes even more irreparably damaged in this dark, dark, dark series. It is more John and Teyla as best friends/life partners than romance and it will blow you away. It is super long and incredibly beautiful, evocative and moving AU world-building. Just to warn you, the first one broke me bad, truly a 10-hanky. There is John/OCF sex but it's completely non-romantic/non-emotional and he and Teyla are basically in an unacknowledged relationship with everything BUT sex/romance because John is so fucked up by everything that happens. (excuse my language but it is entirely appropriate to this AU. Part I: Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys; Part II: Summerland; Part III and IV: The Ghost Road (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)
Check out the dvd commentary for Part I also.
azurehorizon breaks me again (!) in Meridian. I don't mind because she makes it hurt so good to be ungrammatical about it. The imagery and emotions are so beautiful and the longing for what could have been is tangible. John's dying slowly and painfully and he muses on his emotions as his team begs him to ascend. While the sentimental part of me wishes John was the kind of guy who'd ascend, because I do believe he could, so that he could come back again, the rest of me recognizes that John's too honest and too much a warrior for ascension. It is the coward's way out. The author never fails to make me think, not just enjoy the story and ship, this time about death. I'm with John on this one; in the end we all die alone.
When Jack confronts John after the events of McKay and Mrs. Miller, he sees an uncomfortably close reflection of himself, his values and the difficult choices he has made in the younger man in Mirror, Mirror.
John is very broken in The New Frontier. Click link for longer rec.
Unmanifest Destiny is hard to recommend without spoiling but it is a story that EVERY SGA fan must read. It is that good and powerful on the subject of our team and Sheppard as both the glue that holds them together so tightly and the sun around which they all orbit. All I can say is that it a post-"Search and Rescue" AU of the team and Teyla's new baby taking a road trip on Earth. John's POV is so startlingly real that I felt little chills of recognition. You may have to read it twice so that you can truly understand it and marvel at how well it holds together once you do. I'd love to discuss it with someone once you do read it.
The Year of The Jubilee is strange and wonderful and heartbreaking. In this AU, Elizabeth doesn't let Sheppard keep Ronon. He makes a home for himself in an abandoned mansion all alone on Sateda and earns money and food building weaponry and munitions to arm anti-Wraith factions all over Pegasus. He's almost forgotten the Lanteans when he passes by a town having a slave auction and spots a familiar uniform. He buys the Lantean, whom he recognizes as Sheppard once he gets the badly beaten and tortured man cleaned up. He takes Sheppard back to Atlantis and figures that the end of it but in fact its only the beginning. Sheppard had a slave mind control device implanted at the slave auction and he has imprinted on Ronon as his master and won't, can't be separated from Ronon. This is an incredibly Sheppard-whumparrific fic. It's both physical as the device removes his ability to care for himself and causes him to almost beat himself to death to keep from being separated from Ronon, and mental as Sheppard fights against the mind control with every fibre of his being, hating how it makes him act and how weak it makes him. The story is GEN only; the author thankfully resists the impulse to go slash and the story is incredibly more subtle and powerful because of it. Ronon cares for Sheppard as the device makes him progressively weaker and helpless. The friendship and bond that is created between these two incredibly private and damaged men is incredible as is the Ronon POV. Rodney and Teyla in particular have wonderfully strong and moving characterizations. Please check this story out. I have made it sound dark but it is also incredibly hopeful.
Also John is incredibly damaged and grows more so in the i ncredible Ryan C. Charles series.
In this post, look under the heading of "John wishes Torren was his or Teyla wishes he was his short fics (not happy but great emotional longing scenes)" for some very emotionally damaged John.
Poets of the Fall by azure_horizon is a must read.
The Protect and Survive series by RowenaR has a wonderful and subtle John/Teyla thread throughout and they have meaty parts in the series. John is such a cipher to even those who know him best.
And in the dreaming weep by tielan is another must-read.
Four Scenes We Didn't See in Outcast gave me the Teyla John scene the episode so needed.
Down the Waterfall is a wonderful John and Teyla gen post-"Phantoms" tag that intensifies and provides closure to the memories and pain John has shared with Teyla over his failure to save Holland.
John's memory is wiped back to his academy days and he experiences his friends and Atlantis for the first time from a very young perspective, including Teyla in The Intergalactic Adventures of Lieutenant John Sheppard in the Twenty First Century. Startling contrast between the John of 15-20 years earlier and now.
Too Dear For My Possessing put John at odds with an old and renewed suitor of Teyla who does not fail to act where John has hesitated. This prince and Teyla quickly grow serious as a jealous John and the team discover his motives are not so pure. Will John be able to tell Teyla this and more? And if he does, will she ever forgive him? This is angsty and features some fabulous lines and characterizations.
One of my favorite authors is wedjatqi: Everything she writes is great. However my must particularly recommend my favorite SGA fic of all time, Making a House a Home This is one of my favorite stories by one of my favorite authors. Pretty much everything Wedjatqi writes is incredible and should be checked out but the writing in this story is particularly transcendent. I am moved and blown away by the author every time I read this. If you are having a terrible day, week, year, I highly recommend this story to help restore you to equilibrium. Yes, I swear it has healing properties! This is an AU Earth-set story in which the SGC is still losing the war with the Ori and the team had to destroy Atlantis with the Daedalus after saving Woolsey and General O'Neill. New Athos was completely destroyed from orbit by the Wraith while Teyla and Ronan joined the team in trying to save Atlantis from the Replicators in The Return, Part II. Ronan decides to stay in Pegasus and fight the Wraith. Teyla, who has become literally the last Athosian just as she discovers she is pregnant with Kanaan's son, chooses to come to Earth and raise her child in a world that will never know the Wraith. The others must return to the lives they were forced into when the Ancients returned and kicked them out of Atlantis, John as a team leader at the SGC, Carson in the infirmary, Rodney in Area 51. When the story opens, the distance, awkwardness, hurt and pain that entered into John and Teyla's relationship in the second half of Season 4 still exists because John reacted as badly to the news of Teyla's pregnancy in this AU as he did on the show. Despite everything still unspoken between them, John has invited Teyla and the infant Torren (who is Tagan in this story) to share a house with him so that Teyla will be allowed to live outside the Mountain. Although ostensibly they have settled into their new lives, both John and Teyla are in pain; as a result, Teyla has chronic insomnia and John becomes concerned and tries to help her sleep. The author warns at the beginning that the story is "a bit depressing and sullen." I think it is better described as a meditative and hopeful story. Wedjatqi takes John and Teyla (and the reader with them) through the sad but ultimately redemptive mourning process of accepting what they've lost, including their former closeness, Atlantis, the only place John ever felt at home, Teyla's people and the Pegasus galaxy, and healing as they come to realize what and who they still have left.The language is beautiful and incredibly evocative. Although I've made it sound terribly sad and emotional, there is much humor, particularly at a wedding of couple from SG-1, where many popular characters from both shows appear.
Other favorites by wedjatqi are Running to the End in which John and Ronon think they are about to die and John has some realizations about all the things he has never said and the feelings he has suppressed for so long, the Light series (so good!), the Life, Defeat, Departure, What is lost and what is found, The Return. Everything she writes is incredible and exactly as I see John and Teyla. She really gets to Sheppard's reserved and damaged core.
In I have almost forgotten the taste of fears Rodney tests a device on John that wipes out his memory back to early season one. John is shocked by what has changed and what hasn't changed in his life, particularly in his relationship with Teyla. I hope the writer will finish this wonderful and perceptive story soon.
Guardian is about John taking on guardianship of Torren John after Teyla's disappearance/presumed death in an AU "Search and Rescue." Again, I am hoping ruby_caspar finishes this (and that Teyla turns out not to be dead. This story is heartbreaking as John grieves for Teyla and tries to figure out if he can handle raising Torren.
If you liked The Time Traveler's Wife, you'll enjoy the ambitious Fractured, in which John, against his will, is flung through times by an ancient device, only managing to maintain his sanity through his connection to and interactions with Teyla. I wouldn't describe this as a tear-jerker but it's not a happy ever after either, just to warn you.
Unorthodox has a shocking twist end and I wish she would continue the story
In A Child's Insight, John enjoys time with Teyla's son, Torren John. The author perfectly captures the voice of a small child and Torren's questions about how the world works will make you smile with recognition. This brief and lovely story has a transcendently beautiful writing and a clever structure. My favorite part is how palpable John's longing for Teyla and for the child he loves so much to be his son is.
Sheppard's inability to accept the loss of Aiden, grieve and move on begins to damage the remaining team in sleeper. Interesting Rodney POV especially on how the author perceptively and subtly writes in that Teyla sees what is going on and gives Sheppard the comfort he needs before Rodney realizes fully what is going on.
Great gen action and whump in Eurydice Turns Left. The team visits a planet of stone mazes and is attacked. Everyone but Ronon is captured and buried alive in a cave. Can they dig themselves out and survive with no provisions or water and Ronon bring back a team to find them before they lose John, who grows more and more ill the longer he spends on the planet? Teyla caring for John is particularly affecting. John tries to make them leave him behind.
I really like the mysterious Guiding Light. John's dead but a grieving Teyla sees him in her bed every night, asking her why she hasn't come to get him. I do not want to ruin the very original premise for you but the author perfectly evokes the unbreakable (even after death?) spiritual, emotional and mental connection between John and Teyla that leads her to have hope when all is seemingly lost. I also like how she conveys Teyla's spirituality without being hokey.
What's Done is Done is the not the first John/Teyla abortion fic I've read, despite her very different choice in canon. All the stories I've seen handle this incredibly controversial subject gracefully, lyrically and with incredible sadness and sensitivity. John and Teyla want a baby and respect life more than most people but they also believe the realities of their lives make parenthood impossible and that it would be cruel if not outright negligent to subject a child to the dangers of their lives. If you're not pro-choice, please don't flame the authors, just skip it. There's also the very subtle A Strong Tea on this same theme.
Bates' POV on Sheppard at the beginning of season 1 in so you think you're a leader. And as counterpoint, Bates' POV on Sheppard after the events of "The Storm" and "The Eye" in the Calm After The Storm
John becomes quite jealous of how close Teyla becomes to the Marine he assigns to be the Athosian liasion.
Lorne takes care of a recovering post-Conversion Sheppard without seeming to in "The Care and Feeding of a CO" . "Minor in Archeology" features John communing with the city. In Plus ca change, Lorne learns a little about Sheppard through the ancient tech. "5 Times Atlantis Died"
"Cosecant" is a beautiful and dark scene between Jack and John that reveals as much about Jack and his damage as it does about John.
Things Said About John Sheppard" is more of a list than a story but somehow the contrasting responses from the pre-Atlantis John's men and superior officers are very telling. I think it says more about a man (or woman) what their subordinates or those weaker and more vulnerable than themselves thinks of them than what those above him say.
"Self-Made" is a just-post Afghanistan John, when he thinks his career and world is ending.
Number One is heartbreaking in " 5 Things Lorne Wishes He'd Never Seen and One He Did". " 5 Things John Sheppard Never Thought He'd Do,"
In"The Jenny Code" and it's three accompanying pieces, "In Abeyance," "Academic" and "Poppies in November" Sheppard and a group of Marines are captured and tortured and Sheppard experiences his worst nightmare, losing his men. Incredible action and beautifully done.
"Teacher's Pet: Lorne" is miss_porcupine picking up a chapter of a very unusual fic by another author, one which I fear is heading into dreaded McShep territory but her chapter is fabulous. A priestess turns John back into a child and he is reraised most unusually by the Atlantis staff. Seeing John as a child makes clear how much of his personality was shaped by his childhood and adult experiences. Since John is a child for all of the story, I hope and pray this doesn't turn into McShep since that would make Rodney's interactions with the child Shep incredibly icky in retrospect.
In "Just Like That Richard Gere Movie", Sumner's Marines learn they've underestimated John.
"The Second Terrace of Purgatory" is told by Lorne (she also have a drabble set right before from Sheppard's POV that's quite funny) and Sheppard doesn't appear until far in but the ruthless John of The Storm is perfectly captured.
"New View, Old Scene"is a short piece of a post "Common Ground" Sheppard seeking comfort by disappearing into Atlantis. Beautiful.
Teyla seeks out where John is hiding in Atlantis and collects Ford and McKay on the way in the charming nest building.
Cinderella Before Midnight visits many of the characters late at night. John wanders the city finding peace. Bittersweet and deeply sad in parts.
It's dark and sad just to warn you, but in a brilliantly written Irresistible AU, Irreplaceable by kashkow, John shows his true inner math genius and solves one of the Millenium problems, if I recall correctly, specifically the Navier-Stokes equations. He lives in an old Ancient science station for most of it and encounters an Ancient-created race.
In Self Defence Mechanism by cybersyd42, a grieving and peevish Rodney shows up at Jeannie's house for a disasterous visit after Carson's funeral. Sheppard and Ronon arrive to bring him back and end up spending the night. Jeannie can's understand John since she has no context but she has a way of seeing things that allows Sheppard and Jeannie to have some painful conversations about loss, responsibility and how ultimately John can't save all of them and the price he pays for that. It's very sad at times but worth reading just for the scene where the unable-to-sleep John, Ronon and Rodney play Madison's Cha Cha Chicken game with their usual competitiveness.
In Tenets of Leadership in a Vacuum, Rodney confronts John and says some very perceptive and scathing things after the events of "Midway." Funny, crushing and so true it hurts. Plus it's chock full of genius funny and beautiful prose.
John shocks Rodney and Cadman with his reaction to their funeral rites for the rats who died for their cause in "Duet" in the funny with a sudden twist of the knife at the end, Death be not squeaky by teaphile.
Steve the Wraith's perspective on Sheppard in My Soul From Out That Shadow and by the same author, a Marine guard's perspective of the two of them appears in Predatory
In every fight is a fight for your life, Sora as prisoner gives quite a unique POV on all of the characters; Aiden's darkness is presciently visible and Sheppard, despite getting only two lines, is the most terryifying of all.
All of the team members attempt to convince in their own so in-character ways to convince Ronon to stay in Atlantis and join the team in d's The Start Line but in the end it is a momentary glimpse of Sheppard's dark side that convinces him.
John also goes REALLY psycho in Last Full Measure of My Devotion after Teyla dies because of Rodney and it has a huge impact on everyone around him. Just to warn you that this one has lots of disturbing themes with rape, genocide etc and is very well written.
Mules in horses harnesses is a the Gouald invade Earth and win apocafic from Cam's POV. Sheppard snapped a long time ago; it just takes everyone a long time to notice how wrong he is.
Try Exigencies as well. John from an outsider's POV is frightening.
Rodney sees the man behind the facade in Paved With Good Intentions.
John asks Lorne to do something difficult in Die Verwandlung
In The Pledge and The Turn, Lorne schools Rodney how to write an AAR to protect his team, especially Sheppard.
John in Afghanistan in "Just Another War Story"
These Secretive Walls shows Sheppard from the viewpoint of Ronon from when he is first brought back to Atlantis. Ronon sees everyone and everything from a fascinating and alien viewpoint and as he tries to understand these strange people and Sheppard, the most unfathomable of all, he gleans some great insights, especially when he tries to track Sheppard through the city. In the end, neither he nor the reader knows anymore about Sheppard than he wants them to but it explains how Ronon came to trust Sheppard so completely.
The End is Near and So Am I packs quite a wallop. The team is on the run from the Genii and as death seems imminent muse on some key points in their lives and how they ended up there. John thinks back to joining the Special Forces and how he lost everything.
The author and I had a very interesting discussion about Unshackled (apparently not related at all to the Korean horror movie of the same name she says) on how something can be incredibly adult in its themes as this story is, without being violent, having sex, etc. This story is incredibly powerful and disturbing and you don't understand how or what happened until the very, very end. Not for children or the faint of heart. Although nothing explicit is shown of what happened, the story and the damage to John haunts me still.
I also love The Four Moments Ronon Realized He Loved Someone From Atlantis and the One Time He Knew All Along, which completely gen despite the title. Ronon finds a kindred soul in the broken Sheppard and someone to follow to hell and back.
Be my homeward dove is a lovely gen fic set pre-"Intruder," on Earth in which Elizabeth, Rodney and Carson realize that this isn't home anymore. They attend the promotion ceremony for John, who already knew he felt that way, even though he didn't invite anyone at all. The author perfectly captures John's pride in the promotion even as he makes his unhappy superiors squirm.
I can't describe Uncanny Valley without ruining the devastating ending which haunted me long after I finished. Suffice to say, John isn't who he or anyone else thinks.
Leisurely From Disaster finds John on Earth discussing art and Rodney with Jeannie in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Angels in the Architecture speculates on an AU where John is a descended Ancient. Sad and intriguing.
The author sums up Falter perfectly by the first line "They each have places that break them a little." John isn't the only one on the team damaged by the things they see.
John and the team meet and bond with Liam, a truly alien creature, who is as much a secretive loner as John (also he's hilarious and tragic) in Fellow Traveler.
I dare you to read without crying the heart-wrenching Legion the Things I Would Give to Oblivion in which the Daedalus arrives to break the siege but things still go terribly, terribly wrong. John's connection with Atlantis is strongly explored as he nearly kills himself running the chair; warning for many, many major character deaths. Sheppard only survives the battle in body.
In necessary things, immediately after the siege ends, Rodney distracts himself and goes on a quest for music, specifically access to Kavanaugh's ipod, and begins to realize what Teyla already has, that Sheppard has not moved on from the grief and pain from those they lost and the events of the battles.
skeddykat devastatingly analyzes Sheppard's Trust issues.
The moving and disquieting In the Quiet Hours shows the different team members late at night. This blew me away by how the author took an SGA fic convention and used it to subtly explore some of the themes present in season 5 as Stargate Atlantis comes to an end: the regrets and consequences they are experiencing for all the things they have done and failed to do since they came to Pegasus. Rodney, straightforward to the end, is the only team member seemingly unaffected, spending his time alone doing exactly how he does it in public, working away in his lab and gleefully mainlining caffeine. Teyla sits up and seeks comfort in her mental connection with her son as Kanaan obliviously sleeps on. As she longs for what could have been and who should have been beside her and meditates on how Kanaan fears and hates her and Torren's Wraith DNA, despite sharing it, the cracks and short shelf life of the relationship have never seemed clearer. Ronon's artistic soul is revealed as he explores an abandoned Ancient art gallery and is particularly drawn to a sculpture of a dying warrior, in which he ominously finds a resemblance to an expression he has seen too often on John lately. The author uses the emotional shadings that Joe Flanigan has added to his performance since the middle of season four, the hardening and ever greater emotional retreat of Sheppard as he begins to become overwhelmed and wearied by his losses, failures, regrets, ommissions and what could have been. Sheppard finds it more and more difficult to sleep and hides himself away in his secret Atlantis aerie to find comfort in the city. Moving, sad and disturbing.
Sheppard becomes even more irreparably damaged in this dark, dark, dark series. It is more John and Teyla as best friends/life partners than romance and it will blow you away. It is super long and incredibly beautiful, evocative and moving AU world-building. Just to warn you, the first one broke me bad, truly a 10-hanky. There is John/OCF sex but it's completely non-romantic/non-emotional and he and Teyla are basically in an unacknowledged relationship with everything BUT sex/romance because John is so fucked up by everything that happens. (excuse my language but it is entirely appropriate to this AU. Part I: Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys; Part II: Summerland; Part III and IV: The Ghost Road (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)
Check out the dvd commentary for Part I also.
azurehorizon breaks me again (!) in Meridian. I don't mind because she makes it hurt so good to be ungrammatical about it. The imagery and emotions are so beautiful and the longing for what could have been is tangible. John's dying slowly and painfully and he muses on his emotions as his team begs him to ascend. While the sentimental part of me wishes John was the kind of guy who'd ascend, because I do believe he could, so that he could come back again, the rest of me recognizes that John's too honest and too much a warrior for ascension. It is the coward's way out. The author never fails to make me think, not just enjoy the story and ship, this time about death. I'm with John on this one; in the end we all die alone.
When Jack confronts John after the events of McKay and Mrs. Miller, he sees an uncomfortably close reflection of himself, his values and the difficult choices he has made in the younger man in Mirror, Mirror.
John is very broken in The New Frontier. Click link for longer rec.
Unmanifest Destiny is hard to recommend without spoiling but it is a story that EVERY SGA fan must read. It is that good and powerful on the subject of our team and Sheppard as both the glue that holds them together so tightly and the sun around which they all orbit. All I can say is that it a post-"Search and Rescue" AU of the team and Teyla's new baby taking a road trip on Earth. John's POV is so startlingly real that I felt little chills of recognition. You may have to read it twice so that you can truly understand it and marvel at how well it holds together once you do. I'd love to discuss it with someone once you do read it.
The Year of The Jubilee is strange and wonderful and heartbreaking. In this AU, Elizabeth doesn't let Sheppard keep Ronon. He makes a home for himself in an abandoned mansion all alone on Sateda and earns money and food building weaponry and munitions to arm anti-Wraith factions all over Pegasus. He's almost forgotten the Lanteans when he passes by a town having a slave auction and spots a familiar uniform. He buys the Lantean, whom he recognizes as Sheppard once he gets the badly beaten and tortured man cleaned up. He takes Sheppard back to Atlantis and figures that the end of it but in fact its only the beginning. Sheppard had a slave mind control device implanted at the slave auction and he has imprinted on Ronon as his master and won't, can't be separated from Ronon. This is an incredibly Sheppard-whumparrific fic. It's both physical as the device removes his ability to care for himself and causes him to almost beat himself to death to keep from being separated from Ronon, and mental as Sheppard fights against the mind control with every fibre of his being, hating how it makes him act and how weak it makes him. The story is GEN only; the author thankfully resists the impulse to go slash and the story is incredibly more subtle and powerful because of it. Ronon cares for Sheppard as the device makes him progressively weaker and helpless. The friendship and bond that is created between these two incredibly private and damaged men is incredible as is the Ronon POV. Rodney and Teyla in particular have wonderfully strong and moving characterizations. Please check this story out. I have made it sound dark but it is also incredibly hopeful.
Also John is incredibly damaged and grows more so in the i ncredible Ryan C. Charles series.
In this post, look under the heading of "John wishes Torren was his or Teyla wishes he was his short fics (not happy but great emotional longing scenes)" for some very emotionally damaged John.
Poets of the Fall by azure_horizon is a must read.
The Protect and Survive series by RowenaR has a wonderful and subtle John/Teyla thread throughout and they have meaty parts in the series. John is such a cipher to even those who know him best.
And in the dreaming weep by tielan is another must-read.
Four Scenes We Didn't See in Outcast gave me the Teyla John scene the episode so needed.
Down the Waterfall is a wonderful John and Teyla gen post-"Phantoms" tag that intensifies and provides closure to the memories and pain John has shared with Teyla over his failure to save Holland.
John's memory is wiped back to his academy days and he experiences his friends and Atlantis for the first time from a very young perspective, including Teyla in The Intergalactic Adventures of Lieutenant John Sheppard in the Twenty First Century. Startling contrast between the John of 15-20 years earlier and now.
Too Dear For My Possessing put John at odds with an old and renewed suitor of Teyla who does not fail to act where John has hesitated. This prince and Teyla quickly grow serious as a jealous John and the team discover his motives are not so pure. Will John be able to tell Teyla this and more? And if he does, will she ever forgive him? This is angsty and features some fabulous lines and characterizations.
One of my favorite authors is wedjatqi: Everything she writes is great. However my must particularly recommend my favorite SGA fic of all time, Making a House a Home This is one of my favorite stories by one of my favorite authors. Pretty much everything Wedjatqi writes is incredible and should be checked out but the writing in this story is particularly transcendent. I am moved and blown away by the author every time I read this. If you are having a terrible day, week, year, I highly recommend this story to help restore you to equilibrium. Yes, I swear it has healing properties! This is an AU Earth-set story in which the SGC is still losing the war with the Ori and the team had to destroy Atlantis with the Daedalus after saving Woolsey and General O'Neill. New Athos was completely destroyed from orbit by the Wraith while Teyla and Ronan joined the team in trying to save Atlantis from the Replicators in The Return, Part II. Ronan decides to stay in Pegasus and fight the Wraith. Teyla, who has become literally the last Athosian just as she discovers she is pregnant with Kanaan's son, chooses to come to Earth and raise her child in a world that will never know the Wraith. The others must return to the lives they were forced into when the Ancients returned and kicked them out of Atlantis, John as a team leader at the SGC, Carson in the infirmary, Rodney in Area 51. When the story opens, the distance, awkwardness, hurt and pain that entered into John and Teyla's relationship in the second half of Season 4 still exists because John reacted as badly to the news of Teyla's pregnancy in this AU as he did on the show. Despite everything still unspoken between them, John has invited Teyla and the infant Torren (who is Tagan in this story) to share a house with him so that Teyla will be allowed to live outside the Mountain. Although ostensibly they have settled into their new lives, both John and Teyla are in pain; as a result, Teyla has chronic insomnia and John becomes concerned and tries to help her sleep. The author warns at the beginning that the story is "a bit depressing and sullen." I think it is better described as a meditative and hopeful story. Wedjatqi takes John and Teyla (and the reader with them) through the sad but ultimately redemptive mourning process of accepting what they've lost, including their former closeness, Atlantis, the only place John ever felt at home, Teyla's people and the Pegasus galaxy, and healing as they come to realize what and who they still have left.The language is beautiful and incredibly evocative. Although I've made it sound terribly sad and emotional, there is much humor, particularly at a wedding of couple from SG-1, where many popular characters from both shows appear.
Other favorites by wedjatqi are Running to the End in which John and Ronon think they are about to die and John has some realizations about all the things he has never said and the feelings he has suppressed for so long, the Light series (so good!), the Life, Defeat, Departure, What is lost and what is found, The Return. Everything she writes is incredible and exactly as I see John and Teyla. She really gets to Sheppard's reserved and damaged core.
In I have almost forgotten the taste of fears Rodney tests a device on John that wipes out his memory back to early season one. John is shocked by what has changed and what hasn't changed in his life, particularly in his relationship with Teyla. I hope the writer will finish this wonderful and perceptive story soon.
Guardian is about John taking on guardianship of Torren John after Teyla's disappearance/presumed death in an AU "Search and Rescue." Again, I am hoping ruby_caspar finishes this (and that Teyla turns out not to be dead. This story is heartbreaking as John grieves for Teyla and tries to figure out if he can handle raising Torren.
If you liked The Time Traveler's Wife, you'll enjoy the ambitious Fractured, in which John, against his will, is flung through times by an ancient device, only managing to maintain his sanity through his connection to and interactions with Teyla. I wouldn't describe this as a tear-jerker but it's not a happy ever after either, just to warn you.
Unorthodox has a shocking twist end and I wish she would continue the story
In A Child's Insight, John enjoys time with Teyla's son, Torren John. The author perfectly captures the voice of a small child and Torren's questions about how the world works will make you smile with recognition. This brief and lovely story has a transcendently beautiful writing and a clever structure. My favorite part is how palpable John's longing for Teyla and for the child he loves so much to be his son is.
Sheppard's inability to accept the loss of Aiden, grieve and move on begins to damage the remaining team in sleeper. Interesting Rodney POV especially on how the author perceptively and subtly writes in that Teyla sees what is going on and gives Sheppard the comfort he needs before Rodney realizes fully what is going on.
Great gen action and whump in Eurydice Turns Left. The team visits a planet of stone mazes and is attacked. Everyone but Ronon is captured and buried alive in a cave. Can they dig themselves out and survive with no provisions or water and Ronon bring back a team to find them before they lose John, who grows more and more ill the longer he spends on the planet? Teyla caring for John is particularly affecting. John tries to make them leave him behind.
I really like the mysterious Guiding Light. John's dead but a grieving Teyla sees him in her bed every night, asking her why she hasn't come to get him. I do not want to ruin the very original premise for you but the author perfectly evokes the unbreakable (even after death?) spiritual, emotional and mental connection between John and Teyla that leads her to have hope when all is seemingly lost. I also like how she conveys Teyla's spirituality without being hokey.
What's Done is Done is the not the first John/Teyla abortion fic I've read, despite her very different choice in canon. All the stories I've seen handle this incredibly controversial subject gracefully, lyrically and with incredible sadness and sensitivity. John and Teyla want a baby and respect life more than most people but they also believe the realities of their lives make parenthood impossible and that it would be cruel if not outright negligent to subject a child to the dangers of their lives. If you're not pro-choice, please don't flame the authors, just skip it. There's also the very subtle A Strong Tea on this same theme.
Bates' POV on Sheppard at the beginning of season 1 in so you think you're a leader. And as counterpoint, Bates' POV on Sheppard after the events of "The Storm" and "The Eye" in the Calm After The Storm
John becomes quite jealous of how close Teyla becomes to the Marine he assigns to be the Athosian liasion.
Lorne takes care of a recovering post-Conversion Sheppard without seeming to in "The Care and Feeding of a CO" . "Minor in Archeology" features John communing with the city. In Plus ca change, Lorne learns a little about Sheppard through the ancient tech. "5 Times Atlantis Died"
"Cosecant" is a beautiful and dark scene between Jack and John that reveals as much about Jack and his damage as it does about John.
Things Said About John Sheppard" is more of a list than a story but somehow the contrasting responses from the pre-Atlantis John's men and superior officers are very telling. I think it says more about a man (or woman) what their subordinates or those weaker and more vulnerable than themselves thinks of them than what those above him say.
"Self-Made" is a just-post Afghanistan John, when he thinks his career and world is ending.
Number One is heartbreaking in " 5 Things Lorne Wishes He'd Never Seen and One He Did". " 5 Things John Sheppard Never Thought He'd Do,"
In"The Jenny Code" and it's three accompanying pieces, "In Abeyance," "Academic" and "Poppies in November" Sheppard and a group of Marines are captured and tortured and Sheppard experiences his worst nightmare, losing his men. Incredible action and beautifully done.
"Teacher's Pet: Lorne" is miss_porcupine picking up a chapter of a very unusual fic by another author, one which I fear is heading into dreaded McShep territory but her chapter is fabulous. A priestess turns John back into a child and he is reraised most unusually by the Atlantis staff. Seeing John as a child makes clear how much of his personality was shaped by his childhood and adult experiences. Since John is a child for all of the story, I hope and pray this doesn't turn into McShep since that would make Rodney's interactions with the child Shep incredibly icky in retrospect.
In "Just Like That Richard Gere Movie", Sumner's Marines learn they've underestimated John.
"The Second Terrace of Purgatory" is told by Lorne (she also have a drabble set right before from Sheppard's POV that's quite funny) and Sheppard doesn't appear until far in but the ruthless John of The Storm is perfectly captured.
"New View, Old Scene"is a short piece of a post "Common Ground" Sheppard seeking comfort by disappearing into Atlantis. Beautiful.
Teyla seeks out where John is hiding in Atlantis and collects Ford and McKay on the way in the charming nest building.
Cinderella Before Midnight visits many of the characters late at night. John wanders the city finding peace. Bittersweet and deeply sad in parts.
It's dark and sad just to warn you, but in a brilliantly written Irresistible AU, Irreplaceable by kashkow, John shows his true inner math genius and solves one of the Millenium problems, if I recall correctly, specifically the Navier-Stokes equations. He lives in an old Ancient science station for most of it and encounters an Ancient-created race.
In Self Defence Mechanism by cybersyd42, a grieving and peevish Rodney shows up at Jeannie's house for a disasterous visit after Carson's funeral. Sheppard and Ronon arrive to bring him back and end up spending the night. Jeannie can's understand John since she has no context but she has a way of seeing things that allows Sheppard and Jeannie to have some painful conversations about loss, responsibility and how ultimately John can't save all of them and the price he pays for that. It's very sad at times but worth reading just for the scene where the unable-to-sleep John, Ronon and Rodney play Madison's Cha Cha Chicken game with their usual competitiveness.
In Tenets of Leadership in a Vacuum, Rodney confronts John and says some very perceptive and scathing things after the events of "Midway." Funny, crushing and so true it hurts. Plus it's chock full of genius funny and beautiful prose.
John shocks Rodney and Cadman with his reaction to their funeral rites for the rats who died for their cause in "Duet" in the funny with a sudden twist of the knife at the end, Death be not squeaky by teaphile.
Steve the Wraith's perspective on Sheppard in My Soul From Out That Shadow and by the same author, a Marine guard's perspective of the two of them appears in Predatory
In every fight is a fight for your life, Sora as prisoner gives quite a unique POV on all of the characters; Aiden's darkness is presciently visible and Sheppard, despite getting only two lines, is the most terryifying of all.
All of the team members attempt to convince in their own so in-character ways to convince Ronon to stay in Atlantis and join the team in d's The Start Line but in the end it is a momentary glimpse of Sheppard's dark side that convinces him.
John also goes REALLY psycho in Last Full Measure of My Devotion after Teyla dies because of Rodney and it has a huge impact on everyone around him. Just to warn you that this one has lots of disturbing themes with rape, genocide etc and is very well written.
Mules in horses harnesses is a the Gouald invade Earth and win apocafic from Cam's POV. Sheppard snapped a long time ago; it just takes everyone a long time to notice how wrong he is.
Try Exigencies as well. John from an outsider's POV is frightening.
Rodney sees the man behind the facade in Paved With Good Intentions.