His Turn - Sheps_Atlantis Ficathon
Title: His Turn
Author:
kriadydragon
For:
seramercury
Rating: PG-13 to be safe. Contains nothing explicit.
Prompt: Shep/Weir, Shep whumping and angst
Spoilers: None
Summary: Sheppard watches out for Elizabeth, Elizabeth watches out for Sheppard. Can be seen as ship or friendship.
His Turn
With a gash in his side spawning infection and nerve endings trying to crawl out of his skin, Sheppard paces before the blue marble dais. Beckett is going to kill him. His whole team is going to kill him. When Elizabeth wakes (not if, when) she is going to kill him. Jumping through that electric blue haze had been nuts, granted, but he'd been short on options and Elizabeth short on time.
On the plus side, he'd made it in time to put a bullet between the eyes of the bald priest about to plunge a knife into Dr. Weir's chest. On the down side, it's just him, one nine-mil, and the electric blue barrier between an unconscious Weir and a gaggle of very pissed priests. The so-called monks are armed with bows, arrows, and very serrated knives. They mill like jackals beyond the barrier waiting for their high priest to come and shut the damn thing off.
John stalks rigid, back and forth, like a lion guarding his kill.
No, bad choice of words. A lion protecting the lioness until the rest of the pride arrives.
Sheppard checks his watch. Four hours. It has been four hours since he'd sent Ronon off to save the others while he saved Elizabeth. The others still aren't here to help seize the day, Weir is still out and John's adrenaline rush is trickling away with each drop of blood tickling down his ribcage. It hurts to breathe, to think, to be alive.
John chances a glance over his shoulder at Elizabeth, stretched out on the dais dressed in white; a fairy tale princess under enchantment. Crap what Sheppard would give to be able to sleep that peacefully. Except she's drugged, not enchanted, and will probably have one hell of a headache when she finally comes around.
Please let her come around. John's heart pounds in ever mounting agitation. Where the hell is everyone? Why won't Elizabeth wake up?
Sheppard looks back to the door where the robed wolves prowl eager for blood. There had been no rhyme or reason to why these people had taken Weir. They had felt themselves above explanation, too important to be subject to speaking with Sheppard, and completely in the right on taking Elizabeth for whatever barbaric ritual they'd deemed necessary to perform.
They'd expected the team to accept fate and move on, so had been a little hesitant with shock when Sheppard and Ronon broke away to start wreaking some havoc. Apparently, these people thought themselves above havoc. It had taken them a while to finally react.
And for all John knows, everyone is now dead, because these self righteous SOBs are too used to getting their own way. How dare these off-worlders defy them. Boo-freakin'-hoo.
The bald priests in the burnt-umber robes babble at him in their language, possibly calling him foul names. More probable promising to gut him as soon as they reach him.
Sheppard looks from the pale Weir back to the psycho monks. He has to believe the others are still alive. Number one: the high priest hasn't shown up yet, which means he's rather busy with other matters. Number two: They're his team, his people. He trusts them to help him and trusts them to survive in order to do so. Besides, now isn't a good time to bring himself to consider the alternative, not just yet. Maybe in another three hours when he finally passes out and wakes up dead, then he'll think about it.
Until then, John clings tight to hope. But he can't help feeling a hollow emptiness inside him, a feeling of sudden solitude, like when the world goes suddenly quiet in a way that makes you wonder if you're the only one left alive.
Sheppard shakes his head. He can't think that. They're still alive, all of them. They're coming. They are.
John takes a deep breath to cleanse his lungs and pays for it when his ribs cramp with pain. Those serrated knives were sharp, slicing through flesh and part way through bone like it was cold butter. Blood still flows in tiny drops rolling down John's skin, soaking into his shirt and BDUs. Pain throbs like one massive pulse through his bruised and battered body. He's so damn tired.
They will come.
Five hours. Now John is stumbling, his side burning, adrenaline barely a drop in the ocean of his blood. He wants to sleep like Elizabeth, which isn't going to happen until she's safe. She should have never come. He should have listened to his instincts that had said “don't turn your back on them”. But he hadn't listened and he had turned when he went to tell Elizabeth of the Carfas' requests.
The Carfas had been nothing but demanding from the start. He should have known. Damn it, he should have known! They had been establishing their dominance. McKay had called it a battle of egos, which it was and wasn't. It had been a battle of authority which the Carfas had won because the Lanteans had no reason to think them a threat.
This is what happens when instinct goes ignored.
John has no choice but to sit with his back against the dais when his legs try to give out. The monks are getting restless, annoyed, even a little worried. Sheppard grins. Good. That's a good thing. It means something has happened, is happening, that's keeping their boss away.
It won't be long now.
Six hours. John can barely keep his head up. Elizabeth is still sleeping, the cavalry is still absent, and feelings of abandonment and hopelessness are trying to worm their way in. The room is also getting warm, or it might be just him. Sheppard raises his hand wiping sweat from his brow. Sweat snakes down the ridge of his spine and into his wound, stinging it. Stepping through that haze has done something to him beyond electrocuting him. Messed up the rhythm of his heart, maybe. The beat of it feels off, steady one moment then stumbling the next. And he's starting to shake.
He just wants to sleep. Just not yet, not until they came.
------------------------------
Sheppard had stopped counting hours, so couldn't say when they had come. All he remembers is jolting awake. Awake. He'd been asleep. He'd given in to sleep when Elizabeth had needed him.
The monks are gone, McKay on the other side working to shut off the barrier as Ronon and two marines cover him. With a triumphant crow, McKay gets the barrier down for the cavalry to come rushing in. Sheppard surges to his feet.
“Elizabeth's been drugged...!” then promptly crumples into a boneless but conscious heap with the room spinning wildly around him. Hands are all over him, lifting him back to his feet then dragging him from the chamber. Elizabeth has been transferred to a stretcher to be carried out, still the fairy-tale princess waiting for her kiss from prince charming. But prince charming Sheppard isn't, more like a last ditch effort because Charming... well, Charming doesn't exist.
So that leaves Sheppard. He might not be a fairy tale hero, this might not be a fairy-tale ending, but he 'll make damn sure it involves a happily ever after. He fights to stay conscious from the temple to the jungle, from the humid-enough-to-drown-in jungle to the jumper, and from the jumper to home. All the way to the infirmary until Elizabeth is wheeled away beyond sight.
Then he passes out on his own gurney, content in the knowledge that Elizabeth will be all right. That he hasn't failed her after all.
------------------------------------
Elizabeth had awoken to beeping, soft murmurs, and comfort. It didn't take long for her bed to be surrounded by concerned friends and one protective Scotsman who wouldn't let those friends overwhelm her. She'd been happy enough to see all their faces.
Except for one face she had hoped to see more than the others. She hadn't been playing favorites. It was just that, when that face wasn't there, then something was wrong.
It had taken practically an order to get Carson to tell her what had happened. Most of it she was deaf to until he came to the part about John.
“He received a knife wound to the side which became infected. Between the blood loss and infection, he's very ill and very weak right now.”
Elizabeth had been ready to demand she be allowed to go see him. She barely had the words out when Carson pointed to the bed next to hers. Sheppard was stretched out on his back with an oxygen mask over his face, various wires and lines running from his body, and blankets pulled up to his collarbones. His chest was bare and pale to darken the bruises there. Sweat slicked his skin, a solid sheen that made him cold from the way he was shivering. Which was a good thing, according to Carson, as it helped keep the fever down.
That had been almost four weeks ago. A week of battling a high fever. A week of resting when that fever broke, and another week of fighting to get him back to his feet. He was back in his room the fourth week only because the constant activity in the infirmary was making him nervous and keeping him up. Or so Carson assumed. Sheppard wasn't sleeping the way he needed to, which was holding back the healing, and Beckett was willing to try anything to get the man back into the routine of natural sleep.
As for Elizabeth herself, she was restricted to bed rest. The drugs given to her were slow about breaking down in her body, making her tired and dizzy even after four weeks. She had yet to visit John, had yet to be able to so much as stand without the world tilting around her. He asked about her often, though. Carson and the others said as much when they stopped by to chat or check.
Sheppard is difficult to talk to, they say. Drugs and exhaustion making him giddy and sometimes incoherent. Carson suspects nightmares to be behind it all. Nightmares waking him prematurely, and improper sleep skewing the rest of his body.
Then there are the rumors of John being seen wandering the halls late at night like a specter. Except no one has ever caught him at it. Elizabeth doubts they ever will. John only gets caught when he wants to get caught. It explains why, some nights, Elizabeth wakes to the whispered rush of her door closing, yet seeing no one there.
It's also John. Even healthy, she imagines he does something similar. Maybe more surreptitious than what he is doing now, dropping in to say hi yet never staying long. Sometimes bringing food, a snack, a movie. Even if declined, he still leaves with a bigger smile on his face than when he had entered, far more content knowing that everyone is okay.
------------------------------------
Elizabeth is in bed like she's supposed to be, but tonight she can't sleep. It's one o'four according to the clock. It was around this time, Elizabeth believes, that she caught her door closing. Except it hasn't yet. Although this is less about catching Sheppard and more about having slept too much as is. The drug is wearing off for good, she can feel it by how the world stays steady when she moves, plus she's a hell of a lot less lethargic than she was yesterday.
Restlessness gives her a reason to get up and move around. Curiosity, however, gets her out the door to see if maybe, just maybe, she can be the one to catch Sheppard on the haunt.
Her feet bring her to Sheppard's door, just in time to hear a muffled cry of pain. She doesn't hesitate, or even think, just palms the door open and rushes in.
Sheppard's head snaps up, eyes wide, a deer in the headlights look. He's sitting on his bed wearing only black sweat-pants, his shirt crumpled by his side and his upper body bare. One hand holds a strip of gauze bandaging while the other hovers over the gash ragged with black stitching and scabs. Antiseptic cream is smeared all over John's fingers.
The illness hasn't been kind to him. His body is pounds lighter and alabaster pale. His glassy hazel eyes look large in his bone-angled face.
“Elizabeth!” he yelps. His eyes dart from the bandage to the antiseptic to his crumpled shirt. He wants to pull the shirt back on but can't with his wound still exposed. “Uh, give me a minute here.” He seems to panic for a moment, then recalls what he needs to do, touches the cream to his side, and yelps again.
John flashes a sheepish smile. “Stuff kind of stings.”
Again, Elizabeth doesn't think, she just moves forward to kneel beside John's bed. She doesn't even acknowledge she's in her pajamas. Not like it matters. They're flannel and plaid, nothing she would be ashamed of being caught in if she had to make a mad dash to the control room.
John, however, is clearly uncomfortable, especially when she grabs the tube of antiseptic cream. “Elizabeth, what are you doing?”
She doesn't answer since it's obvious. She squeezes the white cream onto three fingertips, then lightly dabs it onto the gash. Sheppard flinches, his flank recoiling, yet doesn't pull away. Elizabeth keeps her touch light while also quick to get it over with as soon as possible. She sees, out of the corner of her eye, Sheppard gnawing his bottom lip in abashment. He looks away, at the floor, wall, anywhere but at her. He must think it silly, the expedition leader playing doctor to her military commander.
Until she applies the bandage, smoothing the tape over ribs she can both see and feel, muscles quaking minutely beneath the pallid skin. She looks at him directly to see the quakes in his shoulders. His back is curved, his shoulders hunched as though trying to curl into himself.
This isn't embarrassment she is seeing, it's shame.
“John?” she says, afraid of what she's witnessing.
John swallows tightly. “I'm sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
He finally looks at her. “I fell asleep before they came. When I was supposed to be watching you.”
Elizabeth is about to ask what he's talking about when it hits her and she closes her mouth. “Beckett says it's a miracle you stayed awake at all.”
Sheppard shakes his head. “I fell asleep. I'm sorry, Elizabeth, I'm so sorry.” Quaking turns to trembling, exhaustion stripping him down to layers never seen before or meant to be seen. He has never looked more vulnerable to her, more fragile, even when lying on a hospital bed strapped to machines. Because even then, within the helpless body, lies the soul of a strong man.
It's only when he thinks he's failed that the soul reflects the body. Elizabeth hates seeing it. It frightens and saddens her at the same time. He should never have to be reduced to this when there is no reason.
“John,” she says. “John, look at me.”
He does, with great reluctance and a humility that breaks her heart. She takes his hand in hers and squeezes. “I'm still here, John.” Then smiles. “I think that means you didn't fail.” She wipes moisture from her eyes. “Please don't think that.”
She grabs tissues from the box on the nightstand to wipe John's fingers clean, then helps him back into his shirt. Shame morphs into amused embarrassment when she pulls back the covers for him to slide under.
“You don't have to do this,” he says while accepting it anyways. He winces when she tucks him in.
“Too late,” she replies. When finished, she steps back to observe her handy work. Sheppard is asleep instantly according to the even rise and fall of his chest.
It's on a whim that she crouches to plant a light kiss on his temple, part private joke at his current likeness to a child, and part secret thank you for giving so much of himself for the sake of others. He is so much more than he thinks he is. Tries too hard to be more when he doesn't need to be.
Elizabeth settles into his desk chair. She doesn't intend to stay long. Atlantis doesn't need more rumors circulating, and John has been through enough as it is. However, it does not hurt to stay a few minutes longer. It's not like she can sleep, anyways.
Someone needs to stay awake for him.
Author:
kriadydragon
For:
seramercury
Rating: PG-13 to be safe. Contains nothing explicit.
Prompt: Shep/Weir, Shep whumping and angst
Spoilers: None
Summary: Sheppard watches out for Elizabeth, Elizabeth watches out for Sheppard. Can be seen as ship or friendship.
His Turn
With a gash in his side spawning infection and nerve endings trying to crawl out of his skin, Sheppard paces before the blue marble dais. Beckett is going to kill him. His whole team is going to kill him. When Elizabeth wakes (not if, when) she is going to kill him. Jumping through that electric blue haze had been nuts, granted, but he'd been short on options and Elizabeth short on time.
On the plus side, he'd made it in time to put a bullet between the eyes of the bald priest about to plunge a knife into Dr. Weir's chest. On the down side, it's just him, one nine-mil, and the electric blue barrier between an unconscious Weir and a gaggle of very pissed priests. The so-called monks are armed with bows, arrows, and very serrated knives. They mill like jackals beyond the barrier waiting for their high priest to come and shut the damn thing off.
John stalks rigid, back and forth, like a lion guarding his kill.
No, bad choice of words. A lion protecting the lioness until the rest of the pride arrives.
Sheppard checks his watch. Four hours. It has been four hours since he'd sent Ronon off to save the others while he saved Elizabeth. The others still aren't here to help seize the day, Weir is still out and John's adrenaline rush is trickling away with each drop of blood tickling down his ribcage. It hurts to breathe, to think, to be alive.
John chances a glance over his shoulder at Elizabeth, stretched out on the dais dressed in white; a fairy tale princess under enchantment. Crap what Sheppard would give to be able to sleep that peacefully. Except she's drugged, not enchanted, and will probably have one hell of a headache when she finally comes around.
Please let her come around. John's heart pounds in ever mounting agitation. Where the hell is everyone? Why won't Elizabeth wake up?
Sheppard looks back to the door where the robed wolves prowl eager for blood. There had been no rhyme or reason to why these people had taken Weir. They had felt themselves above explanation, too important to be subject to speaking with Sheppard, and completely in the right on taking Elizabeth for whatever barbaric ritual they'd deemed necessary to perform.
They'd expected the team to accept fate and move on, so had been a little hesitant with shock when Sheppard and Ronon broke away to start wreaking some havoc. Apparently, these people thought themselves above havoc. It had taken them a while to finally react.
And for all John knows, everyone is now dead, because these self righteous SOBs are too used to getting their own way. How dare these off-worlders defy them. Boo-freakin'-hoo.
The bald priests in the burnt-umber robes babble at him in their language, possibly calling him foul names. More probable promising to gut him as soon as they reach him.
Sheppard looks from the pale Weir back to the psycho monks. He has to believe the others are still alive. Number one: the high priest hasn't shown up yet, which means he's rather busy with other matters. Number two: They're his team, his people. He trusts them to help him and trusts them to survive in order to do so. Besides, now isn't a good time to bring himself to consider the alternative, not just yet. Maybe in another three hours when he finally passes out and wakes up dead, then he'll think about it.
Until then, John clings tight to hope. But he can't help feeling a hollow emptiness inside him, a feeling of sudden solitude, like when the world goes suddenly quiet in a way that makes you wonder if you're the only one left alive.
Sheppard shakes his head. He can't think that. They're still alive, all of them. They're coming. They are.
John takes a deep breath to cleanse his lungs and pays for it when his ribs cramp with pain. Those serrated knives were sharp, slicing through flesh and part way through bone like it was cold butter. Blood still flows in tiny drops rolling down John's skin, soaking into his shirt and BDUs. Pain throbs like one massive pulse through his bruised and battered body. He's so damn tired.
They will come.
Five hours. Now John is stumbling, his side burning, adrenaline barely a drop in the ocean of his blood. He wants to sleep like Elizabeth, which isn't going to happen until she's safe. She should have never come. He should have listened to his instincts that had said “don't turn your back on them”. But he hadn't listened and he had turned when he went to tell Elizabeth of the Carfas' requests.
The Carfas had been nothing but demanding from the start. He should have known. Damn it, he should have known! They had been establishing their dominance. McKay had called it a battle of egos, which it was and wasn't. It had been a battle of authority which the Carfas had won because the Lanteans had no reason to think them a threat.
This is what happens when instinct goes ignored.
John has no choice but to sit with his back against the dais when his legs try to give out. The monks are getting restless, annoyed, even a little worried. Sheppard grins. Good. That's a good thing. It means something has happened, is happening, that's keeping their boss away.
It won't be long now.
Six hours. John can barely keep his head up. Elizabeth is still sleeping, the cavalry is still absent, and feelings of abandonment and hopelessness are trying to worm their way in. The room is also getting warm, or it might be just him. Sheppard raises his hand wiping sweat from his brow. Sweat snakes down the ridge of his spine and into his wound, stinging it. Stepping through that haze has done something to him beyond electrocuting him. Messed up the rhythm of his heart, maybe. The beat of it feels off, steady one moment then stumbling the next. And he's starting to shake.
He just wants to sleep. Just not yet, not until they came.
------------------------------
Sheppard had stopped counting hours, so couldn't say when they had come. All he remembers is jolting awake. Awake. He'd been asleep. He'd given in to sleep when Elizabeth had needed him.
The monks are gone, McKay on the other side working to shut off the barrier as Ronon and two marines cover him. With a triumphant crow, McKay gets the barrier down for the cavalry to come rushing in. Sheppard surges to his feet.
“Elizabeth's been drugged...!” then promptly crumples into a boneless but conscious heap with the room spinning wildly around him. Hands are all over him, lifting him back to his feet then dragging him from the chamber. Elizabeth has been transferred to a stretcher to be carried out, still the fairy-tale princess waiting for her kiss from prince charming. But prince charming Sheppard isn't, more like a last ditch effort because Charming... well, Charming doesn't exist.
So that leaves Sheppard. He might not be a fairy tale hero, this might not be a fairy-tale ending, but he 'll make damn sure it involves a happily ever after. He fights to stay conscious from the temple to the jungle, from the humid-enough-to-drown-in jungle to the jumper, and from the jumper to home. All the way to the infirmary until Elizabeth is wheeled away beyond sight.
Then he passes out on his own gurney, content in the knowledge that Elizabeth will be all right. That he hasn't failed her after all.
------------------------------------
Elizabeth had awoken to beeping, soft murmurs, and comfort. It didn't take long for her bed to be surrounded by concerned friends and one protective Scotsman who wouldn't let those friends overwhelm her. She'd been happy enough to see all their faces.
Except for one face she had hoped to see more than the others. She hadn't been playing favorites. It was just that, when that face wasn't there, then something was wrong.
It had taken practically an order to get Carson to tell her what had happened. Most of it she was deaf to until he came to the part about John.
“He received a knife wound to the side which became infected. Between the blood loss and infection, he's very ill and very weak right now.”
Elizabeth had been ready to demand she be allowed to go see him. She barely had the words out when Carson pointed to the bed next to hers. Sheppard was stretched out on his back with an oxygen mask over his face, various wires and lines running from his body, and blankets pulled up to his collarbones. His chest was bare and pale to darken the bruises there. Sweat slicked his skin, a solid sheen that made him cold from the way he was shivering. Which was a good thing, according to Carson, as it helped keep the fever down.
That had been almost four weeks ago. A week of battling a high fever. A week of resting when that fever broke, and another week of fighting to get him back to his feet. He was back in his room the fourth week only because the constant activity in the infirmary was making him nervous and keeping him up. Or so Carson assumed. Sheppard wasn't sleeping the way he needed to, which was holding back the healing, and Beckett was willing to try anything to get the man back into the routine of natural sleep.
As for Elizabeth herself, she was restricted to bed rest. The drugs given to her were slow about breaking down in her body, making her tired and dizzy even after four weeks. She had yet to visit John, had yet to be able to so much as stand without the world tilting around her. He asked about her often, though. Carson and the others said as much when they stopped by to chat or check.
Sheppard is difficult to talk to, they say. Drugs and exhaustion making him giddy and sometimes incoherent. Carson suspects nightmares to be behind it all. Nightmares waking him prematurely, and improper sleep skewing the rest of his body.
Then there are the rumors of John being seen wandering the halls late at night like a specter. Except no one has ever caught him at it. Elizabeth doubts they ever will. John only gets caught when he wants to get caught. It explains why, some nights, Elizabeth wakes to the whispered rush of her door closing, yet seeing no one there.
It's also John. Even healthy, she imagines he does something similar. Maybe more surreptitious than what he is doing now, dropping in to say hi yet never staying long. Sometimes bringing food, a snack, a movie. Even if declined, he still leaves with a bigger smile on his face than when he had entered, far more content knowing that everyone is okay.
------------------------------------
Elizabeth is in bed like she's supposed to be, but tonight she can't sleep. It's one o'four according to the clock. It was around this time, Elizabeth believes, that she caught her door closing. Except it hasn't yet. Although this is less about catching Sheppard and more about having slept too much as is. The drug is wearing off for good, she can feel it by how the world stays steady when she moves, plus she's a hell of a lot less lethargic than she was yesterday.
Restlessness gives her a reason to get up and move around. Curiosity, however, gets her out the door to see if maybe, just maybe, she can be the one to catch Sheppard on the haunt.
Her feet bring her to Sheppard's door, just in time to hear a muffled cry of pain. She doesn't hesitate, or even think, just palms the door open and rushes in.
Sheppard's head snaps up, eyes wide, a deer in the headlights look. He's sitting on his bed wearing only black sweat-pants, his shirt crumpled by his side and his upper body bare. One hand holds a strip of gauze bandaging while the other hovers over the gash ragged with black stitching and scabs. Antiseptic cream is smeared all over John's fingers.
The illness hasn't been kind to him. His body is pounds lighter and alabaster pale. His glassy hazel eyes look large in his bone-angled face.
“Elizabeth!” he yelps. His eyes dart from the bandage to the antiseptic to his crumpled shirt. He wants to pull the shirt back on but can't with his wound still exposed. “Uh, give me a minute here.” He seems to panic for a moment, then recalls what he needs to do, touches the cream to his side, and yelps again.
John flashes a sheepish smile. “Stuff kind of stings.”
Again, Elizabeth doesn't think, she just moves forward to kneel beside John's bed. She doesn't even acknowledge she's in her pajamas. Not like it matters. They're flannel and plaid, nothing she would be ashamed of being caught in if she had to make a mad dash to the control room.
John, however, is clearly uncomfortable, especially when she grabs the tube of antiseptic cream. “Elizabeth, what are you doing?”
She doesn't answer since it's obvious. She squeezes the white cream onto three fingertips, then lightly dabs it onto the gash. Sheppard flinches, his flank recoiling, yet doesn't pull away. Elizabeth keeps her touch light while also quick to get it over with as soon as possible. She sees, out of the corner of her eye, Sheppard gnawing his bottom lip in abashment. He looks away, at the floor, wall, anywhere but at her. He must think it silly, the expedition leader playing doctor to her military commander.
Until she applies the bandage, smoothing the tape over ribs she can both see and feel, muscles quaking minutely beneath the pallid skin. She looks at him directly to see the quakes in his shoulders. His back is curved, his shoulders hunched as though trying to curl into himself.
This isn't embarrassment she is seeing, it's shame.
“John?” she says, afraid of what she's witnessing.
John swallows tightly. “I'm sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
He finally looks at her. “I fell asleep before they came. When I was supposed to be watching you.”
Elizabeth is about to ask what he's talking about when it hits her and she closes her mouth. “Beckett says it's a miracle you stayed awake at all.”
Sheppard shakes his head. “I fell asleep. I'm sorry, Elizabeth, I'm so sorry.” Quaking turns to trembling, exhaustion stripping him down to layers never seen before or meant to be seen. He has never looked more vulnerable to her, more fragile, even when lying on a hospital bed strapped to machines. Because even then, within the helpless body, lies the soul of a strong man.
It's only when he thinks he's failed that the soul reflects the body. Elizabeth hates seeing it. It frightens and saddens her at the same time. He should never have to be reduced to this when there is no reason.
“John,” she says. “John, look at me.”
He does, with great reluctance and a humility that breaks her heart. She takes his hand in hers and squeezes. “I'm still here, John.” Then smiles. “I think that means you didn't fail.” She wipes moisture from her eyes. “Please don't think that.”
She grabs tissues from the box on the nightstand to wipe John's fingers clean, then helps him back into his shirt. Shame morphs into amused embarrassment when she pulls back the covers for him to slide under.
“You don't have to do this,” he says while accepting it anyways. He winces when she tucks him in.
“Too late,” she replies. When finished, she steps back to observe her handy work. Sheppard is asleep instantly according to the even rise and fall of his chest.
It's on a whim that she crouches to plant a light kiss on his temple, part private joke at his current likeness to a child, and part secret thank you for giving so much of himself for the sake of others. He is so much more than he thinks he is. Tries too hard to be more when he doesn't need to be.
Elizabeth settles into his desk chair. She doesn't intend to stay long. Atlantis doesn't need more rumors circulating, and John has been through enough as it is. However, it does not hurt to stay a few minutes longer. It's not like she can sleep, anyways.
Someone needs to stay awake for him.