sans peur et sans reproche--by frostfire
It’s been a year and a half, and John’s gotten used to Atlantis. Command can be a pain in the ass, and there’s the possible death by life-sucking alien, 1950’s-era bomb attack, ten-thousand-year-old anything, and being turned into a fucking bug, but there are perks. Really sweet ride, for one. Ascended sex. Fucking with Rodney’s head. Shooting people.
All in all, he likes it.
And he’s settled in, tested his limits, gotten comfortable. He got himself into command right away, figured out how far he could go with Elizabeth during the virus incident (answer: all the way, like he ever thought anything else), and just recently, the Caldwell Goa’uld thing. Serious luck, there. No one really trusts Caldwell anymore.
And the Marines will follow him to hell and back, because he’s willing to lay down his life for them. (Not their fault they never asked why.)
So he’s gotten used to Atlantis, hardly ever flashes back to Earth, to expensive drinks and identical neatly-trimmed beards-and really, the sudden plunge into fear and death and shooting things, right at the beginning, helped him a lot. His new job has been great.
Lt. Col. John Sheppard likes football, Ferris Wheels, and things that go more than 200 mph. The first is true, the second he could give a fuck about, and the third is pretty much half the key to his happiness. Here on Atlantis, he has one football game, zero Ferris Wheels, and a ton of really fast things. He also has carte blanche to commit genocide.
He really fucking loves this job, and it’s about to get better.
The Daedalus brought him a letter today, supposedly from an old war buddy. John has zero old war buddies (considering certain methods of calculation, he might even have negative old war buddies), and the letter had a super-secret message, underneath five layers of encryption, because a certain guy with a hard-on for himself (literally) also can’t get enough of the cool spy stuff.
Elizabeth stepped into her room five minutes ago. The doors always open for him. (It’s a great job.)
She starts, then smiles. “John. Don’t you ever knock?”
“Nah.” He thinks about it. Elizabeth has her moments, and he’s held off because he doesn’t want to do her job, but basically he’s wanted to shoot her for a year and a half. P-90? Handgun? Hit her over the head with the freaking huge tribal mask on her wall? He’s never liked the way the thing grins at him.
“So, John,” she says, sitting down on her bed, “what did you want to talk to me abou-”
John looks down at the handgun, still pointed, and grins.
He’s at the other end of the city, forty-five minutes later, when he radios Rodney and says, “Hey, did Elizabeth ever make a decision about the mission to P4X-839? Is it tomorrow or-what are we calling the next day? Thursday?”
“No, she didn’t say anything,” says Rodney after a minute. “Here, wait a second.” And a minute later, “She’s not answering her radio.”
John does not twitch with suppressed laughter. At all. “It’s okay, I had a couple other things I needed to ask her. I’ll go find her.”
“Fine,” says Rodney, and clicks off.
John makes his way to Elizabeth’s room, counting off prime numbers with each step. When he gets there (2963, but that’s only because he used a transporter), he stops short, and he hears his own voice, grim and clipped. “Major Lorne, we have a situation.”
Altogether, including the time it takes to calm Rodney, Beckett and Teyla down (he delegates that last one), he has the city locked down and under control in forty minutes. Marines are guarding all essential personnel, in randomly-chosen groups. The scientists are confined to quarters or labs. Rodney is sweeping the city for aliens. Beckett is overseeing the autopsy. Teyla and Ronon are standing behind him in the control room, waiting for someone to come out of the walls and attack.
So that’s Step Two. Step Three is coming right up. “I’m going to do a quick patrol, see how our guys are doing,” he says.
“I’ll go with you,” says Ronon.
“I need you to go sit on Rodney. Once he finishes that sweep, he’s going to start freaking out again. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want him doing any…creative self-defense.”
Ronon looks like he wants John to say or you could just commit seppuku right here, but he goes. Teyla opens her mouth, but John just grins and says, “Need you here. Someone has to run the place,” and jogs off.
Twenty minutes later, they find him kneeling by the body of Private Leonard Malkin, who came over with the Daedalus, and who almost threw himself in front of a Wraith last week. He was starting regular sessions with Heightmeyer tomorrow. John’s holding Private Malkin’s gun, carefully, and he’s staring down at the still face, the bloody hole in the private’s chest. There are three bullet dings in the wall behind him. One of the shots creased his upper arm. His hard-on is almost entirely gone.
“He followed me out here,” says John. “He told me what we were doing was wrong. That Elizabeth had lost sight of everything the SGC stood for.”
Beckett lays a hand on John’s arm. Teyla, Ronon, and Rodney are back at a safer distance.
“Let’s all take the rest of the day off,” says John. He’s done all he needed to do today, at least.
Although, now that he’s started with the shooting people, he really-really-wants to keep going, but. There’s a plan. So he heads back to his room, drops down on his bed, thinks about silk sheets and Ba’al, wandering around his penthouse. Ba’al’s the only one (four) of the Goa’uld John’s ever met, but he likes them all better than he likes the Wraith. Sense of humor, sense of style, and they kill things for fun instead of just for food.
Ba’al against the Wraith. That’s going to be fun to watch.
John can make it happen. Turn Rodney against Caldwell, send Caldwell back to Earth, keep Rodney on his side as long as possible. When it isn’t possible anymore, threaten to slice Rodney open along the scar that Kolya left. If that doesn’t work, start breaking his fingers. Beckett will cave even faster than that. They can keep him in Steve’s cell.
He bets himself that he can make Rodney like it, though. He can blow up solar systems for a living.
John has zero (at most) old war buddies, but he’s gotten to like some of the people he works with (against) in Atlantis. He’s never known anyone else who could turn him into a bug, and he’s definitely never known anyone else who could make a sun go nova, and when he thinks about it-working with Rodney. Working against Rodney. He can’t decide which one he wants it to be.
He gets to find out, though.
Ba’al against the Wraith with John, Rodney, Beckett-Cadman, oh yeah-Zelenka-
He’ll have to kill some of them. Actually, he might have to kill all the Marines. And then, oh yeah, they’ll be exterminating the Wraith.
His job is fucking fantastic.
end