Fic: Breathe by linziday
Title: Breathe
Rating: PG13 (swearing, violence off screen)
Spoilers: Takes place sometime around season 5, so character spoilers
Genre: H/C, Action/Adventure, Angst,
Characters: Team, plus Carson
Word Count: ~7,000
Summary: An assasination attempt leaves John injured and his team determined to find the would-be killer.
Written for kristen999 , who asked for John to survive an attempt on his life on Atlantis, with an emphasis on the aftermath, the support of John's friends when he reaches his limits, and lots of team bonding.
Hope you like it!
A/N: Thanks be to fabulous betas wildcat88 and everybetty , as well as the fantastic helpers at whumpers_guide ! I couldn't have done it without all the help.
“Move! Dammit, move!” Rodney shouted, pounding down the hallway. Most of the lunch crowd immediately cleared space, ducking into side corridors or plastering themselves against the wall. Rodney shoved aside the stragglers.
Corridor A looped into B, which offered two transporters, one of them linked to level five. The firing range was at the farthest end of that level, four corridors down, three over, the last room on the right. Yes, yes, there were shortcuts, of course there were shortcuts, but he was still at least a minute and a half out even with -
Rodney slapped at his earpiece. “Sheppard! Answer me!”
Silence.
Rodney ran harder.
He reached the firing range exactly sixty-four seconds later. Ronon and a trio of large Marines were trying to pry open the firing range doors with their bare hands, grunting and sweating and straining with the effort. He knew they’d been working at it almost the entire three minutes that room had been sealed. The doors hadn’t budged even a fraction of an inch.
Rodney slid to his knees in front of the control panel and jerked off the cover. “Ronon, get them out of the way.”
He didn’t need to explain. Ronon and the Marines jumped away from the door as Rodney pulled the auxiliary crystal and began changing the configuration. Port, crystal, crystal, port. Nothing. He heard the squeak of gurney wheels and the pounding boots of the emergency medical team behind him. Crystal, port, port, crystal. Nothing. Port, crystal, port, crystal.
The doors slid open.
White smoke curled along the frame and rolled into the hallway. The acrid fumes hit Rodney almost immediately and he coughed and gagged, tasting metal and feeling his lungs burn before he was able to pull his arm across his nose and mouth to filter the poisonous air.
“Go!” Rodney shouted, but his voice muffled by his sleeve. He dropped his arm. “Go, go, go!”
Ronon was already gone.
Eyes on the doorway, Rodney pulled his sleeve back up to his nose and mouth. The air there next to the door
was thick, and he coughed and wheezed despite his impromptu filter, but he had to stay, had to see, had to be there when they came out.
Someone grabbed his upper arms from behind. Rodney tried to shake them off, then tried to fight as he was dragged backward and away from the door, but they were too strong and he was getting dizzy. A moment later he found himself propped up against the far wall, Teyla pressing an oxygen mask to his face.
He reached up to pull the mask away, but Teyla shook her head. “Be still,” she advised. Her tone was kind but distracted. She kept darting glances at the firing range doorway.
Rodney dropped a shaking hand back to his lap and rolled his eyes to the doorway. Oh, God, he’d taken too long. They were too late. There was no way.
Then the doorway turned black, a figure blocking the smoke and light. Ronon staggered forward into the hall with Sheppard limp in his arms. He stumbled, went down to his knees as a medical team surrounded them.
Sheppard? Rodney couldn’t see past the wall of people. He gripped Teyla’s sleeve, a silent question. She shook her head. She couldn’t see either.
Rodney had the sudden, overwhelming sense they’d all plunged into the Atlantis version of Schrodinger’s cat. Sheppard could be alive. Sheppard could be dea- Rodney would just assume Sheppard was alive, thank you. As long as he didn’t know, his assumption was a kind of reality, his own personal reality, sure, but a reality nonetheless, and the more he thought about it, the more he really didn’t want to know the objective reality of the situation because only bad things could come from knowing and while he always wanted to know everything, this was one instance in which he was perfectly happy not knowing what-
“Rodney.”
Rodney’s head jerked up in time for him to see the medical team lifting Sheppard onto the stretcher. Teyla was smiling with relief.
“He is alive,” she said.
--
John woke slowly to the sounds of an argument.
“… no way.”
“You don’t know -”
“I do.”
Through the haze he could distinguish Rodney’s strident tones from Ronon’s rumble, but the context was lost as their voices drifted in and out.
“… time.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”
John jerked at Rodney’s exclamation. There was anger in his voice. Fear.
“… will not be happy.”
“Ha. That’s an understatement.”
“There is no other option?”
Little by little, John felt the fog lift. He recognized Teyla’s voice this time. Rodney’s again.
“Have to watch….”
Ronon’s.
“Aye, that would be best. The only -”
Carson’s?
“ - earth.”
John jerked again. The word, spoken in Carson’s soft brogue, might as well have been an alarm demanding attention NOW.
John opened his eyes with effort. They were sticky and his eyelashes caught and pulled. The light was painful, an ice pick to his brain, and John’s eyelids automatically fluttered closed before he got control and forced them open.
But what John couldn’t control was the small groan that escaped his lips - or the fire that ignited deep in his chest at that groan. He coughed again and the fire flared.
His chest burned.
His lungs burned.
He couldn’t breathe.
John bucked and writhed, his body begging for air even as his lungs refused to comply. He wheezed in then coughed out, choking on each breath and losing oxygen every time. Beside him, the monitors screeched.
“Oh, bloody hell-”
John’s eyes had snapped shut during his struggle, so he didn’t see the oxygen mask coming, but he felt the hard plastic cover his nose and mouth. He almost fought it, instinct screaming that covering his nose and mouth right then was a bad idea, but cool air pushed through and an instant later his wheeze drew precious oxygen, quenching the fire.
“Easy now, lad. Easy.”
John pulled his eyes open to find Carson standing over him, one hand holding the mask to John’s face, the other jabbing a button on the bedside monitor. The alarm cut off.
Movement drew John’s attention to the foot of his bed, where Ronon, Rodney and Teyla hovered. Teyla rested a hand on John’s blanket-covered ankle. They looked -
Pissed.
John reached up to pull the mask away and grind out “What?” because while he hated to get all self-righteous here, he was the one struggling to breathe in the infirmary bed. But Carson firmly nudged his hand away, and John was too spent to fight him. He resorted to looking annoyed. His team, he figured, would get it.
Rodney pulled up a plastic chair and sat down with a huff and a short, ragged cough. “The IOA wants -”
“Rodney,” Teyla interrupted, her tone warning. “Perhaps now is not the best time.”
“Aye,” Carson agreed, affixing the mask so he didn’t have to hold it in place. He turned to reset the monitor. “Let the man get his bearings.”
John took the opportunity to pull the mask away. “What?” he asked hoarsely.
And, shit, that was a bad idea.
His lungs burned and he drew more fire than air when he tried to breathe through it. His vision grayed. When it cleared, the mask was back on and Rodney was standing again. Their eyes met.
“The IOA wants you back on earth,” Rodney said before anyone could stop him.
Carson whirled around. “Rodney!” he admonished.
“He’d just keep doing that until we told him,” Rodney said, waving a hand at John’s mask. “Besides, it’s not like he’s actually going.”
“John,” Teyla said, patting his ankle so he turned his eyes to her. “We will talk, but you must not. Do you understand?”
John inclined his head, as much of a nod as he could manage with Carson holding the mask to his face.
“You were poisoned,” Ronon said, his voice unusually rough. “Pumped into the firing range.”
“We don’t know who,” Rodney said quickly, before John could even form the words on his lips. “We’re working on it, though. Believe me, we -”
Rodney coughed deep and crackly. For the first time John noticed Rodney and Ronon were wearing infirmary scrubs, that Rodney had dark smudges under his eyes and clutched a laptop in one hand. Rodney sat down again, heavily. Tiredly.
“In the meantime,” Rodney continued, his voice hoarse, “the IOA wants you back on earth. Recovery, safety, your own good, blah, blah, blah.”
John raised an eyebrow, a silent question about Rodney’s health. Rodney took it as something else entirely.
“Forget it,” he said. “We have another plan.”
--
John did not like the idea. At all. He sure as hell didn’t want to go back to earth, but he would not put his team in jeopardy. He would not let them risk themselves for him.
“No,” he said as forcefully as he could manage the second Carson removed the oxygen mask that night. The doctor had shooed his team off to bed twenty minute ago, sending Teyla back to her room and Ronon and Rodney back to the section of the infirmary they’d called home for the past two days.
“They want to do this, lad,” Carson said, trading the mask for a nasal cannula. “I’ve already gone over it with them. They’re determined.”
“No,” John said again, the word little more than a whisper. “If -”
Carson put a hand on John’s shoulder. “If you stay, if you do this, there’s a risk. To you. To them. I won’t lie to you about that.”
John opened his mouth to speak, but Carson cut him off.
“However, if you go, that leaves them here alone,” Carson reminded him.
John closed his mouth and kept it closed.
--
At 3 a.m. standard Atlantis time, Dr. Carson Beckett raised a hand to the gate tech on duty and bore one Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard through the wormhole to earth. It would likely take the military leader’s lungs months to recover from the incident in the firing range.
That was the official story, the one he told both the city and the IOA.
A few moments later, Carson returned with an empty gurney. Major Stevens was about the same height as the colonel and had similar hair color - similar enough, anyway, when Carson dimmed the gateroom’s lights. Stevens tucked his face into the gurney’s blankets, unrecognizable to any but personal scrutiny. Rodney would be wiping the colonel’s tracking device from Atlantis’ security system momentarily, ensuring Sheppard disappeared from remote sensor scrutiny as well.
It was a quiet handoff with the help of Samantha Carter, and “Colonel Sheppard” settled into an isolation room without incident. Which meant the assassin’s reach didn’t extend all the way to the SGC, or he was momentarily satisfied and biding his time.
Either way, the assassin was still on Atlantis.
Jennifer wouldn’t be back from vacation for three weeks. Until then, Sheppard and his lot were Carson’s responsibility. He slowly wheeled the empty gurney back to the infirmary, giving the team enough time to move.
--
John shifted on Rodney’s bed. Special orthopedic mattress his ass. He’d slept on the ground - frozen, rock covered ground - and been more comfortable.
“Stop making faces,” Rodney said, spreading out a pad of blankets on the floor. “Believe me, you’re getting the good end of the deal.”
John watched Rodney lay his sleeping bag on top of the blankets. He would happily trade places and he opened his mouth to say so.
Rodney’s head snapped up, as if a sixth Sheppard-sense warned him of impending vocalization. “No,” he said, pointing at John. “No talking. Use the tablet I gave you.”
John glared.
Rodney bent over, smoothing out his sleeping bag. “Hey, you’re the one whose lungs are so shredded he can’t br-”
Rodney began coughing, ragged and heavy. He straightened a little and braced a hand on the desk behind him as the coughing turned to hacking and the hacking to near-choking. John was just about to radio Carson when Rodney took a long, shuddering breath and steadied himself.
“That,” Rodney rasped, “is why this will work.”
Although Rodney and Ronon had inhaled just a fraction of the gas John had, they didn’t walk away unscathed. While John had been on a ventilator for the last two days, they’d been confined to the infirmary, under orders not to talk and to make use of the oxygen Carson supplied. Ronon, largely, didn’t have a problem not talking. But Rodney McKay couldn’t stop talking for any reason less than his jaws had been wired shut - which, apparently, the doctor had threatened to do more than once if Rodney didn’t “shut the bloody hell up” and allow his lungs to heal.
So Rodney was still racked by coughing fits when he overdid it. Which was too often. It meant Rodney was well enough to be released to his own quarters, but Carson would have to drop by to check on him frequently.
Him and, secretly, John.
“You good?” Rodney asked, waving a hand at the nasal cannula, IV line and pulse ox John was connected to. “You need to -” his eyes flicked to the bathroom door - “you know?” He paused. “Because I can call Carson.”
John scrawled a note on the tablet in his lap. His handwriting was shakier than he would have liked, but it was legible. Mostly. He turned the screen around for Rodney to read.
I’M FINE. GO TO BED.
Rodney started to get into his sleeping bag. He paused halfway in, reconsidering. “If you need to, or, you know, anything else, just wake me up. Not by talking, though. You could throw something at me. Or. Not. Um. I might have a bell around here or something.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh! I could rig the tablet to -”
John was already holding up the screen.
GOODNIGHT, MCKAY.
Rodney grumbled as he got into his sleeping bag. Something about ungrateful colonels and tablets and the cold, cold floor. The lights dimmed, then went out.
Rodney coughed a little. After a few moments, he settled down and soon after began snoring. For John, sleep was more elusive.
He couldn’t stop thinking about all the reasons someone would want him dead.
And how he could stop them before his team got hurt.
--
John woke to the simultaneous chime of the door and the sounds of Rodney in the shower. He unlocked the door with a thought.
“Shouldn’t do that,” Ronon said, striding in carrying a change of clothes that John recognized as his. The door slid shut behind him and he tossed the clothes down on Rodney’s desk. “Coulda been anyone.”
John picked up the tablet from the bedside table and scrawled. To his surprise, the tablet read the note aloud.
No one knows I’m here.
The voice sounded exactly like HAL. Rodney must’ve had the brainstorm in the night. “Cool,” John whispered. The single word sent a spasm through his chest. It tickled and burned, and John automatically doubled over, squeezing his eyes shut as he struggled not to give into it, not to cough and -
A large hand landed on his chest and gently pushed him back against the pillows. John opened his eyes to find Ronon looming over him.
“Breathe, Sheppard.”
John opened his mouth to say he was trying to, dammit. But before he could form a sound, Ronon pushed him back against the pillows even more so his back was arched slightly and his chest could expand.
“Breathe,” he ordered.
The position helped. Air seemed to speed from the cannula to his lungs, and John sucked in the rest of what he needed on his own. He was dimly aware that the shower had turned off in the other room, but he still jumped a moment later when Rodney stepped out of the bathroom and yelped with surprise.
“You almost gave me a heart attack!” Rodney fairly shouted. He was wearing his uniform pants and a gray t-shirt, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. “Where’d you come from?”
Ronon removed his hand from John’s chest, but John stayed against the pillows. The burning in his chest dimmed with each breath.
“You shouldn’t leave him alone,” Ronon said.
It sounded very much like an accusation to John. To Rodney, too apparently, because he tossed his damp towel in the corner and glared at Ronon.
“I was in the next room. The door was locked. Sheppard was asleep,” Rodney said. “You want me to take him in the bathroom with me next time?”
Ronon ignored the comment. “Lorne’s team is going to M1X-124 in an hour.”
While the news meant nothing to John, it made Rodney’s eyes go wide for a second.
“They can’t! That mission isn’t scheduled for two weeks,” he said. “No one’s off world. The next dial out wasn’t supposed to be until this afternoon.”
“Got changed,” Ronon said.
“How?” Rodney demanded. He began rifling through the room, looking for something.
“Someone changed it,” Ronon said cryptically.
“Excellent. That’s just excellent,” Rodney said, furiously tossing the room. “This is too soon. Now I have less than an hour to disable the gate.”
John snatched up the tablet.
Disable the gate?
But even as the HAL voice read John’s question, he got it. The chances of catching John’s would-be killer lowered to the near-impossible range if he fled off world. John cleared the screen and replaced his question with a new one.
Emergency evacs?
“Yes, yes, of course,” Rodney said. “Contingencies for all - aha!” He found what he was looking for under his pillow on the floor - his laptop. He straightened, grabbed a zippered sweatshirt from his desk and headed for the door. “You, watch him,” he said to Ronon. To John: “You, sit, stay, keep quiet.”
With a grin twitching at his lips, John scrawled.
I’m sorry, Rodney. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
John saw the flicker of a smile as Rodney stormed out the door.
--
Later, Rodney would realize how absolutely, terrifyingly stupid he’d been.
In his defense, he couldn’t stop thinking about how close they’d come to losing Sheppard. It was only pure luck that Sheppard had been wearing his black hooded sweatshirt that day, that he’d had the presence of mind to pull it off and use it as an impromptu air filter as the nariq gas filled the room. Sheppard made it out alive, but he wasn’t out of danger. Someone had wanted him dead and that someone was still in the city.
Rodney stomped into the gate room and pushed the gate tech out of his way, telling her to go get breakfast or go take a bathroom break or just go already because he was getting automated alerts that the gate’s servo ramoflat was overheating and unless he did something right now the whole thing was going to explode. He waved his hands and added “Boom!” for emphasis.
The gate tech disappeared as Rodney got down to work. A line of code here, a tweak in the operating system here, a password there. To everyone else it would look like a malfunction.
Rodney took a deep breath, then cursed loudly, dramatically. He turned, found the gate tech standing at the edge of the room. “Good news,” he told her. “We’re not going to be instantly incinerated in a massive explosion. Bad news is, the gate’s down.”
--
John liked to think he had the upper hand when it came to getting information out of people.
With Ronon, he was pretty sure that was wishful thinking.
Using the tablet as his voice, John spent an hour questioning Ronon about their investigation. How did they know it was an attempt on his life and not just an accident? Did they have any suspects? Who knew he was still in the city?
Ronon’s answers were short and not all that enlightening: The gas had to be brought in from outside. They had no suspects. Only his team, Carson, and Woolsey knew he was here.
Ronon countered with questions of his own: Who knew John was going to be at the firing range that day? Who’d he most piss off recently?
John thought about it. Everyone knew he had the range from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays; it had been his standing slot for three years, changed only when the team had a mission. The two men he’d sent back on the Daedalus weren’t exactly happy with him, but that had been two weeks ago and they were long gone.
The cook gave me a dirty look a few days ago when I was grabbing lunch for McKay and I asked her if the chicken had lemon in it. But she wouldn’t kill me over it.
He paused, picturing the Marine who manned the mess hall. He scribbled an addendum.
I don’t think.
By the time he was done writing both questions and answers, John’s hand shook, fine tremors conveying an exhaustion he didn’t want to deal with. He started to write another question, but Ronon took the tablet out of his hand and before he got more than a couple of words down.
“Get some sleep,” Ronon told him.
John narrowed his eyes. He’d slept most of the night. Hell, he’d slept for the last two days in a damned medically induced coma. He didn’t need more sleep. He needed to find out who wanted him dead before his team stepped in front of a bullet for him.
Ronon shrugged, as if John had spoken it all out loud and Ronon decided his points weren’t worth wasting words on. He set the tablet on the bedside table, pulled up Rodney’s desk chair and sat down, propping his feet on the edge of the bed.
They looked at each other, a silent battle of wills. After a long moment, John reached for the tablet, gratified more than he probably should have been that his hand didn’t shake. Ronon let him take it.
Go. I don’t need a guard.
“Had one in the infirmary,” Ronon pointed out.
It was news to John, but he wasn’t surprised. And he was willing to bet Teyla was that guard, with Ronon and Rodney filling in despite their own injuries.
I’m in McKay’s room. No one knows I’m here. It’s fine. Go.
Ronon responded by taking the tablet out of John’s hand again for the second time. This time he tucked it between his leg and the arm of the chair. If John wanted it back, he’d have to go through Ronon to get it.
John was not suicidal. He sighed and closed his eyes.
He woke two hours later to shouts and the acrid stench of nariq gas.
--
Carson had left an oxygen mask for Sheppard in case of an emergency. Rodney slapped it over Ronon’s nose and mouth, thanking God for the paranoia that caused him to rewrite the ventilation code last night while he was in the system wiping Sheppard’s tracking device from prying eyes. The ventilation system shut down as soon as it detected a foreign gas and Rodney got the alert on his laptop.
Unlike the firing range, his door hadn’t been locked against him. Rodney had tweaked that as well.
“Sheppard!” Rodney shouted as he opened his window and the balcony doors to air out the room. Less than one part per million had actually seeped into the room - far less than the thirty parts per million that had gone into the firing range and not enough to do permanent damage, but enough to knock out someone who was still recovering. He slapped at Sheppard’s cheek to wake him. “Sheppard!”
Sheppard started to slowly come around, eyes glazed and unfocused, the same time Ronon did. A few seconds later, Carson hurried in.
“Teyla?” Rodney asked as Carson crouched between Ronon and Sheppard.
“She’s in the infirmary now for observation, but she’s fine,” Carson told him, placing a wireless pulse ox on Ronon’s finger, the Satedan’s stats automatically popping up on Sheppard’s monitor. “Torren and Kanaan were already on the mainland. She was the only one home.”
Rodney let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He thumped his head back against the wall. The cool, fresh breeze played into the room, but the band around Rodney’s chest had nothing to do with air quality.
“He got Sheppard and Ronon’s rooms, too,” Rodney told Carson. “He knows Sheppard’s still in the city. He knows he’s with one of us.”
--
They moved to an unoccupied room in the south tower. It was large enough to accommodate the whole team, with two sleeping rooms and a main living area, and it was located one transporter away from both the infirmary and the gate room in case of emergencies. The first thing Rodney did was take the entire section off the grid - which meant wireless communications and no connection to the city’s main ventilation, water, or electrical systems.
“It’s camping. Joy,” Rodney groused, but John noticed he was the first of them to arrive, setting up a kind of command central in their living room, with an array of laptops, monitors, and gadgets John didn’t know the names of and half-suspected Rodney invented on the spot.
Carson gave John a fast-acting, short-lasting inhaled steroid to get him through the move. It did that, with the side benefit of allowing him to say whole sentences without nearly passing out. John considered using his newfound powers of speech to protest the group move. He was the target, and as long as his team was around him they had the potential to end up collateral damage. But the guy could just as easily go after Teyla, Ronon or Rodney in an effort to smoke out John. At least this way there was protection in numbers.
So far, to Rodney’s frustration, he hadn’t been able to backtrack the source of the nariq gas. The closest he’d come was a re-routed air shaft in a lower level of the city. But while the gas had traveled through there, it hadn’t been introduced in that section. Someone had relayed the gas around the city before releasing it on target. That took both chemical weapons training and infrastructure knowledge, plus some kind of off-world interaction to obtain the gas in the first place.
Military, John scrawled with a sinking feeling. He’d had attempts on his life before - hell, it was a good mission when someone didn’t try to kill him off world - but military meant one of his people. It meant this was personal.
“Not necessarily,” Rodney said, sitting forward on the edge of the couch, his attention divided between two laptops on a table in front of him. “The scientists could do it.”
From his place on the other end of the couch, John coughed a little. The steroid had long since worn off. The air in their new quarters was muggy, and the too-high humidity was bothering his him. He swallowed hard, hoping to kill the tickle in his throat before it became a problem that drew his team’s attention.
“Could someone else gain access to the city?” Teyla asked. She got up and retrieved her pack from beside the door.
“Break in?” Rodney asked. “They’d have to be in Atlantis to physically introduce the gas. I didn’t get any extra life signs after the firing range and -” his fingers danced over the keys “- I’m not getting any now.”
Teyla pulled a bottle of water from her pack and handed it to John. “I believe this will help,” she said.
John took it, both embarrassed and grateful. The water quelled the problem.
Rodney glanced between John and Teyla, then reached over and tapped one of the gadgets at the foot of the couch. It whirred softly.
“Dehumidifier,” Rodney said, answering to John’s questioning look. “I figured the air would be too humid here once I took us off the city’s environmental controls. We can’t all suffer stoically, Colonel.” He coughed a little as if to emphasize his point, but it was a pale imitation of the real thing. Rodney hadn’t coughed in more than a day. It was John who still needed the help.
John’s hand poised over the tablet. He wanted to say thanks. Thanks for the water and the dehumidifier, for making the move, for having his back when it came to the IOA. For putting themselves at risk.
But the words wouldn’t come.
So, he scrawled instead, what’s the plan?
--
That night, John woke to beeping over his radio. It was past 0100, he was injured, off duty, and, officially, not even in the city, but he was still the military leader of Atlantis. He’d kept his radio on.
Someone on channel four wanted him.
He paused only the briefest of seconds before he disconnected himself from the oxygen line and other medical equipment, got up and shuffled out of the bedroom and into the living room so he wouldn’t wake anyone. He keyed the radio.
“Sheppard,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“East pier,” the voice on the other end said. It sounded familiar, but John couldn’t pinpoint who it was. “Ten minutes. Or I blow the whole south tower.”
The east pier. John could barely walk through the apartment without getting winded. He snatched up the inhaler Carson had left on the living room table in case of an emergency. This counted as an emergency.
He felt the medication speed through his system, opening his airway even as he moved to the door. But the east pier was still far and even with the medication he couldn’t move fast. He needed to buy time.
“No one else has to die,” he said.
“I knew you’d say that.” The person disconnected.
--
John moved too slowly. Twelve minutes passed by the time he made it onto the pier out of breath and coughing so hard despite the medication that he had to stop at the threshold to fight the urge to throw up. The night was clear and cool, and each breath burned his already-raw lungs. He had his hands on his knees, nearly doubled over and too preoccupied to see the figure emerge from the shadows, but John felt the presence in the hair rising on the back of his neck.
When he looked up, she was an arm’s length away.
“Colonel,” she said.
It took him a moment. He wasn’t McKay-bad with names, but the gate tech worked late night and early morning shifts, so he’d met her only when - Then it dawned on him.
Not just who she was but why she was here.
“Lieutenant Marcus Jacoby,” John rasped.
“You know, I’m glad it happened this way. I actually am.” She brought her arm up, aiming the 9-mil at his head. “The other way was too easy for you.”
John slowly straightened, fighting a wave of dizziness as he raised his hands out to his sides. “You’re Melissa,” he said, his voice rough. “You were… together.”
“
Were, yes, were together,” she spat. “Until you decided to play hero with the Etharins.”
M5X-546. The Etharins cultivated a short-season plant that the botanists thought could cure at least one rare form of cancer. The plant was harvested just one time a year, but Lorne was injured and Teyla was just weeks out from having Torren. Rodney was busy working on Carson’s stasis and Ronon had already gone on a scouting mission with team three. So John threw a team together with Parish and two Marines - Jacoby and Richards - to negotiate for several cuttings of the plant.
When they got there, the elders were pleased about the trade possibilities. A young Etharin named Del was not. He was 15, tall for his age, a new council apprentice, and unstable. When the elders said they would consider the team’s proposal, Del became enraged. Ranting about the corrupting influence of outsiders, he grabbed a ceremonial knife from the wall of the council chambers and slit the throat of the chief elder before anyone could react. When he grabbed a second council member John shouted at him to stop. He motioned for his team to lower their weapons, then put his own gun down.
“I’m the one you’re angry with. I’m the outsider,” he said, walking slowly toward Del. “Take me. My team will go home and won’t come back. No one else has to die today.”
Del did release the council member, trading her for John. Trained in hand-to-hand, John thought he could handle the kid - detain, restrain, unarm - without either of them getting hurt, but Del wasn’t going to give him the time to try. He immediately pressed the knife to John’s throat.
The team’s weapons snapped back up. Distantly, John heard Jacoby pleading with Del to put the knife down. “I don’t wanna hurt you, kid. C’mon. I don’t wanna have to hurt you.”
It didn’t work.
The knife was ceremonial, decorative, unused. And sharp because of that. John felt the blood well and trickle but not the sting of the blade. Then the gunshot.
Del was dead before he hit the ground.
John’s wound was superficial. Del had begun to draw the knife across John’s throat, but he didn’t have time to get far. A dressing from the first aid kit staunched the flow of blood. His scar would fade.
Jacoby’s scars would not.
John found him retching in the bushes, pale and shaky. He was trained to kill, but he never thought he’d have to shoot a 15-year-old.
Sometimes soldiers get past the shock, John knew. Sometimes they didn’t. Jacoby didn’t. Months later he was still having nightmares. He was irritable, on edge, prone to angry outbursts. He couldn’t concentrate, which made him a danger in the field. He was jumpy, which made him a liability in a city that needed its soldiers calm and focused. The base shrink diagnosed him with PTSD.
John liked Jacoby. He was young but bright, had a good sense of humor but knew when to reel in the jokes and do what needed to be done. That’s what happened on M5X-546. Jacoby did what needed to be done. But he couldn’t live with himself afterward. John hoped sending him home would be a kindness. Get him out of the environment, take away his need to go off world, and maybe he could recover. He left on the Daedalus two weeks ago.
“I’m sorry,” John told Melissa honestly, his voice not rising much above a harsh whisper . “I’m sorry he was in that situation.”
“You put him in that situation,” Melissa said, her aim as steady as any soldier’s. “You just had to play the hero. You couldn’t find the kid’s family to talk him down-”
“There wasn’t time,” John said.
“You couldn’t negotiate -”
“He wasn’t listening,” John said.
“You couldn’t fucking wait!” Melissa shouted. “You get yourself taken hostage, you volunteer for it, and you don’t care who has to pick up the pieces behind you.”
John swallowed hard. “I care.”
Melissa shook her head. “I don’t think you do. I think you’re careless with yourself and with everyone around you.”
John swallowed hard again. His chest was feeling tight. “Tell me. . .” The medication was completely out of his system now. He’d been too long without the help of oxygen. “Tell me what . . . .” He coughed. The burning ignited. “Tell me what I can -”
He fell to his knees as he struggled to breathe. Through the black spots that danced in his field of vision, he saw Melissa readjust her aim. Her finger touched the trigger.
The last thing John heard was the whine from Ronon’s blaster as it stunned her.
--
John woke to a blurry view of the infirmary ceiling and the click-clack of typing. He blinked. Blinked again. His vision cleared but the noise continued.
“R’ny?” John asked. Or tried to ask. His voice was so thick and gravelly that it sounded more like a random string of consonants.
The typing stopped and Rodney appeared at his side. “Hey,” he said, filling a cup of water from the pitcher on the bedside table. “It worked.”
“She’s -”
“Already back on earth. Sent her through the gate twenty minutes ago.” Rodney helped him sit up and take a sip of water. “Lorne got a few minutes with her after she woke up and before we sent her through.”
John started to ask another question, but while breathing was easier - he touched his face and found the cannula was back - talking left a lot to be desired. John motioned for something to write with. Rodney grinned and handed him the HAL tablet.
What’d she say?
Rodney sighed. “She refused to say where she got the gas or how, exactly, she hacked into systems she should have been locked out of. But she did say she was on duty the night Carson supposedly wheeled you through the wormhole and that’s how she knew you hadn’t gone. She caught a glimpse of Stevens before Carson had a chance to dim the gate room lights. She reworked the gating schedule the next morning planning to create a catastrophic gate failure to, her exact words were, ‘smoke you out.’” Rodney looked suddenly uncomfortable. “But that plan changed the moment I showed up to shut down the gate.”
John raised an eyebrow, but Rodney went on before he could ask.
“She was the gate tech on duty when I went down there. I was in a rush, I didn’t realize -” He clenched and unclenched his fists at his side “- I’d grabbed your sweatshirt instead of mine. I was wearing black, not blue. She realized you were staying with team member, probably me.”
John was writing before Rodney even finished. Not your fault, buddy.
Rodney snorted derisively. “There’s proof to the contrary,” he said.
John scribbled furiously then tossed the tablet down. It’s my fault. This whole thing is my fault.
--
It took John three weeks to recover enough to return to light duty. It took him another week to come up with a plan.
He thought about orchestrating a trip to the mainland or a jumper flight around the planet - something that would give him the time he needed to say some things, along with the people he needed to say those things to. In the end, he went with beer on the pier.
The air was warm and the beer was cold as they settled onto the pier. Rodney and Ronon sat of the edge, letting their legs swing back and forth. Teyla sat with John on a blanket behind them. They were all unusually quiet, contemplative. John looked at the near empty bottle in his hand. It was his second. He’d probably need a third before he worked up the courage to -
“She was wrong, John,” Teyla said.
John startled and looked up. “Who?”
Ronon grunted, sounding partly annoyed and partly amused. “We were there, remember? She was yelling at you. Hard to miss.”
John took the last swing of his beer. He considered reaching for another, but the conversation was already in full swing without it. “Melissa wasn’t wrong. She had a point. That’s why I wanted to talk with you guys about -”
“What?” Rodney whirled around. “Quitting the team? Leaving Atlantis?”
John’s heart stuttered. He’d thought about both of those, yes.
“Better not,” Ronon said, the menace unmistakable.
John threw the bottle into their cooler with extreme prejudice. “Look, Jacoby had to clean up my mess once and it destroyed him. You guys -”
“Know you always try to do what is right,” Teyla interrupted. “It was right of you to remove the council elder from danger in any way you could, even if that meant offering yourself in exchange. Lieutenant Jacoby knew that. Just as he knew it was right to remove you from danger in any way he could, even if that meant shooting the man who was holding you.”
“Not a man,” John corrected. “A boy.”
“A boy who had already killed one person and was drawing blood to kill a second,” Teyla pointed out.
John shook his head. This wasn’t going like he’d planned. “I shouldn’t have asked Jacoby - shouldn’t ask any of you - to pick up the pieces behind me.”
“You don’t ask,” Ronon said. “And they aren't pieces.”
“Look, Sheppard, could I do without the suicide runs every other week? Yes,” Rodney said. “But you always try to do what’s right. Sometimes that’s messy.” He took a drink. “Sometimes you can’t do it alone.”
John rubbed the back of his neck. “I want to.”
Rodney scoffed. “And you say I have an ego.”
Teyla leaned forward and touched his shoulder until John drew his eyes to hers. “No one can do it alone.”
“You’ve got our six, we’ve got yours,” Rodney said. He furrowed his brow. “I said that right, right?”
John smiled a little. “Yeah, buddy.”
“So if you want to cut down on the suicide runs, great,” Rodney went on, digging another couple of beers out of the cooler. He handed one to John. “Otherwise, we’re not going anywhere, so don’t even bother trying to get rid of us.”
John twisted the top off the beer but didn’t take a sip. He held it between his hands for a long moment, feeling the cold condensation slide down the bottle and drip between his fingers.
For the first time in a long time, he felt like he could breathe again.