Lostcityfoundfic: The Undone Years (Genish, PG-13, SGA/SG-1) Pt 3/7
The Undone Years 3/7
Part 1 for header info.
~
The stars over Colorado Springs were the same as they always were. Blurry and indistinct, overshadowed by blazing light pollution. The view sucked, but Sheppard liked to look at it, anyway. He and Jackson never went farther than the second checkpoint. Sheppard was content with that.
“Sooo,” Jackson said, as Sheppard stared up at the sky. “How’s the memory coming?”
Scowling, Sheppard didn’t bother to look at him. “About the same,” he said. “Heightmeyer’s talking about hypnosis or something.”
“Hm,” Jackson murmured. “What about the Tok’ra memory recall device?”
“Lam said that’s not a good thing to use on someone with a recent head injury,” Sheppard told him. “I have enough brain damage.”
“Oh.” Jackson paused. “It’ll come.” He said it with such calm confidence that it instantly irritated Sheppard.
Sheppard took his eyes off the stars long enough to glare at the man. “You don’t know that.”
Jackson didn’t mind the aggression. He shrugged. “It’ll come,” he repeated.
“Why do you care?” Sheppard challenged. Jackson blinked at him and opened his mouth to respond, but Sheppard went on. “Were we friends?”
Jackson pursed his lips, which really was a totally infuriating non-answer. Except it was a totally stupid thing to get mad about. Sheppard went back to looking at the sky.
“We were collegial,” Jackson said, voice a little hurt. Sheppard heard his clothing rustle as he shrugged.
“Then why do you care?” Sheppard asked again, still not looking at him. “Why are you here? Why are you always around?”
“I…know a little about what it’s like not to remember who you are,” Jackson said, slowly. “And what it’s like to come back to yourself. It’s not a fun thing.” He shrugged again. “I wanted to help if I could.”
“This isn’t supernatural,” Sheppard reminded him, meeting his gaze again. “I hit my head on a rock. You went all glowy.”
Jackson nodded. “The shrinks don’t understand how that works, either,” he offered. “I think they treated me like I had a head injury, actually.”
Sheppard wasn’t really listening, though. Ascension. The word bounced around his head. It hadn’t even occurred to him, but…maybe?
Jackson noticed his silence. “What?” he prompted.
Sheppard didn’t answer for a moment. He didn’t have any reason to believe it. No evidence, no memories of a glowy one coming to take him away. But it made sense - in as much as any of that supernatural shit made sense - and he liked it better than accidental brain damage.
“You remembered everything?” he asked Jackson. “When you came back? When you -” he struggled for the right word and finally settled on -“Descended?”
“Eventually,” Jackson said, a little too blasé about that. And a little too uncertain. “I think so.”
“Ascending?” Sheppard asked. “And getting kicked out?”
“No,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “Jack actually remembers the first one. But everything from that time is just a blur. I remember some emotions. And every now and then I feel déjà vu about something I’ve never seen before. But I wasn’t allowed to…keep…any of that time.”
Sheppard didn’t say anything. But Jackson had apparently already figured it out.
“I didn’t have alternate memories,” he said, mildly. “I don’t know if I got it all back, but I didn’t get any extra.”
Defensive, Sheppard crossed his arms and just shrugged.
“I don’t think they’re allowed to do that,’ Jackson said, thoughtfully. “They shouldn’t be, anyway.” Sheppard said nothing. “I was really bad,” Jackson went on. “And the worst thing they did was bring me back naked.”
Sheppard tracked a plane across the night sky and still didn’t say anything.
Jackson let the silence hang for a few minutes.
“Was I there?” he asked, changing the subject. “Did I get to go to Atlantis?”
“No,” Sheppard snapped at him.
“Oh.” Jackson frowned.
“You got to visit, though,” Sheppard said. “A couple of times. O’Neill never let you stay.”
Jackson scowled. “That really happened,” he said. “Wouldn’t let me go on the mission at all. I got a big told-you-so dance when the Prometheus had to save your butts.” He caught Sheppard glaring at him. “You don’t remember that part.”
“I don’t really want to,” Sheppard said, honestly.
~
Ascension. It was Sheppard’s new favorite word. He didn’t tell Heightmeyer or Lam, and he didn’t think Jackson had. Possibly because the guy secretly thought Sheppard wasn’t special enough to go glowy and hadn’t hid it very well.
Sheppard tried to imagine himself agreeing to go all non-corporeal. It was hard. But then, the choice between dying from klutziness and sticking around as a floating thing might have made the decision for him.
But coming back like this. Taking away everything - taking away Atlantis - was just wrong. Jackson said the Ascended couldn’t mess with humans. This was turning the universe on its head. Bringing back the dead. It was breaking all the rules and then some.
He knew the idea was part narcissism and part denial. But there was a part that was believable. If Atlantis had done something - accidentally, unknowing - so bad it was worth it for Jackson’s glowy friends to wipe it out completely. Make it like it had never happened.
A lot of bad things had happened in Pegasus. Sheppard knew this. And the Atlantis mission had put a lot of it in motion. But they’d also done a lot of good. He didn’t know that it evened out, but it wasn’t that lopsided.
And he had no proof that this universe was any better. In fact, he was thinking it might be a lot worse, especially in Pegasus. If the Atlantis mission had met the Wraith - woken the Wraith - and then left.
Sheppard couldn’t talk about it with anyone. The idea that this was an elaborate illusion by alien captors was fading fast, but he still couldn’t - still felt he shouldn’t - share with these people. He knew every second he clung to his memories rather than what they told him had happened made him look more and more crazy. If he told them that the IOA had just badly fucked the Pegasus galaxy over, he wasn’t sure what would happen. It seemed unlikely to be good for him.
All the same, it itched inside his chest constantly. If the Wraith were awake, unopposed by Atlantis, unencumbered by the Hoffan virus - whatever good it had done - and free of most of the internal conflict that Atlantis’ actions had influenced…
Sheppard didn’t mean to, but he sort of told Heightmeyer. He had biweekly appointments with her and she was irritatingly good at getting him to talk. Somehow, she managed to get him to tell her he was very concerned about what the incomplete Atlantis mission had done when it left Pegasus.
Heightmeyer nodded, but then she launched into a speech about how it was important to focus on his reality instead of the one created by a brain injury. He wasn’t supposed to care about Pegasus.
That made something cold and heavy join the itch in his chest. Sheppard pretended it didn’t and tried not to show just how terrible he felt about it.
His confession actually helped, though. Only a few days later, Lorne showed up with the mission reports from Pegasus. It was a heap of manila folders, stacked so high he had to put them on the floor in two separate piles. The true measure of any clusterfuck was how much paperwork it produced.
“Thanks,” Sheppard said. He’d asked for them weeks ago and only been given the random ones from afterwards.
“No problem,” Lorne said. “It took a while for clearance.”
“I have clearance,” Sheppard said, already opening the first folder.
For a second, Lorne was silent. Then he shrugged. “Yeah, well.”
Sheppard paused and looked up at him. He realized suddenly that the military had probably been content not to let the brain-damaged man read the top secret records that he happened to no longer remember. Crazy people didn’t keep secrets all that well.
“Thanks,” Sheppard said again, and chose not to think about what the Air Force was going to do to a neurologically-impaired, amnesiac pilot.
Lorne vanished while Sheppard read. He probably didn’t want to be around to answer any questions.
The Atlantis mission recounted in the reports was not the one Sheppard remembered. It was as Lorne had said. The city wasn’t there. It just wasn’t.
Athos, however, had been just where Sumner and Sheppard and their men had found it. And Teyla had been there, too.
But the Wraith attack on the Athosians hadn’t been a scouting mission. It’d been a culling.
Sheppard hadn’t killed Sumner. He got to that part and had to stop and read it again. Sumner and half the squad had tried to herd the Athosians to a different cave. They’d all vanished into a culling beam. Teyla had been injured somehow, separated from her people when Sumner moved them out into the open. It was the only reason she was alive. The only reason she was here.
Sheppard couldn’t imagine it. Even though he’d been there, been there at least in one version. But he remembered shooting Sumner, remembered killing that bitch queen.
Except he hadn’t.
Sheppard hadn’t even ended up on board a hive ship. He’d been on the ground with the entire complement of terrified civilians, the remaining military squads, and he’d kept them alive hiding in the caves for months until the Prometheus arrived.
And that was that.
They’d never woken the Wraith. Never found Atlantis. Never done any of it.
Sheppard sat there and stared at the paper, but the words didn’t change. He found it impossible to process. He understood every sentence, but didn’t comprehend any of it.
~
Nothing changed after Sheppard got to read the reports. He didn’t even read all of them. The first few told him everything and were pretty repetitive. It didn’t seem worth going through the rest in the futile hopes that somehow he’d find something familiar.
He didn’t even feel relief that the Wraith had never woken. That probably meant he was an asshole. Sheppard knew that millions and millions of lives had been saved, but he sure as hell didn’t feel that way. Yeah, he was an asshole.
The Athosians were gone, though. A couple hundred people. Teyla’s people. That hurt. She was alone now. Alone with him and he didn’t even remember her. Not this Teyla, anyway.
Teyla had mostly stopped trying to touch him, caress him, or hold his hand. She still made aborted movements to do so, but halted before completing the gestures. Sheppard could read the pain on her face even though she was clearly trying to hide it. It made him feel like a bigger asshole.
Other people thought he was an asshole for that, too. It seemed to bother them more than the fact that he didn’t remember missions or friendships or any of that. But not remembering his wife disturbed everyone.
Heightmeyer brought up couples counseling, at the end of one of their very unproductive sessions. Sheppard just blinked at her.
“What?” he asked.
“Couples counseling,” Heightmeyer repeated. “This has been very hard on your wife.”
Sheppard stared at her. “Teyla,” he said, finally. It took him a few seconds. It always took him a few seconds and everyone in the vicinity always looked at him like he was a moron.
“Yes,” Heightmeyer said. She had the decency not to acknowledge his hesitation.
“Isn’t that for people who remember being married?” he asked. Because having Teyla here for these painful, pointless sessions would just make them suck more.
“She remembers,” Heightmeyer said, not giving him any room to argue. He must have scowled involuntarily because she looked at him sharply. “A spouse is often the person who knows the most about an amnesiac patient, colonel.”
“This already sucks for her,” Sheppard said. “I don’t think she should have to hear it from me over and over again how much I don’t remember her.”
Heightmeyer squinted at him. “Then stop telling her?”
He scrunched down into the chair and didn’t say anything.
~
Teyla was a lot nicer to Sheppard than she probably should have been. She could have gone off world with her team and stayed there. Pretty much any mission would have been more fun for her. He tried telling her that she could go. It might have sounded like he was telling her to get lost, but that’s not how he meant it. But he got yelled at by pretty much everyone he knew for it, anyway.
Teyla stayed. She brought him meals, even though he was allowed to wander to the cafeteria now. Mitchell, Ford, and Lorne were all smuggling him takeout. He probably wasn’t supposed to have hamburgers or ribs or Chinese or anything that tasted like food, but Sheppard couldn’t see how raising his cholesterol had anything to do with his brain or memory. Lam mostly just rolled her eyes and didn’t stop them, so at least he had that going for him.
Sheppard was getting better. Physically, at least. The physical therapy with Keller, as much as he hated it, was working. He was stronger and more coordinated, gaining weight and muscle. The hair on his head was beginning to grow back. It still looked horrible and Lam said she’d just have to shave it again when the stitches and staples or whatever needed to come out. So he let the staff keep trimming it down.
For a man who had been on his deathbed, Sheppard knew his recovery was pretty amazing. The fact that it didn’t feel amazing to him, that it mostly just continued to be confusing and hard and so different it made his teeth ache, was his problem not Teyla’s or anyone else’s.
It was good that Dr. Weir was alive. It was good that Kate Heightmeyer was alive. It was fucking fantastic that the Wraith were still in hibernation. And Teyla loved him.
He tried to tell himself this over and over again. Everyone who had died in Pegasus, everyone killed because of the Hoffan virus or the Replicator shit. None of it had happened.
If the fucking Ascended were behind this, he didn’t know why they’d wiped out the Athosians. That wasn’t fair. Actually, none of this was fair. Least of all the fact that only Sheppard remembered the way it had really happened.
Teyla brought him a burrito from a local Mexican place for dinner. She put her taco salad on another tray and took a seat, then rose abruptly as if remember something.
“I will be right back,” she said, and went to find Lam.
Sheppard watched curiously as Teyla took an envelope out of her purse - and Teyla carried a purse, how weird was that - and handed it to Lam with a few words. For some reason, Lam just rolled her eyes. Sheppard heard her thank Teyla, even as she looked to have no interest in the letter.
“What was that?” Sheppard asked when Teyla returned.
“A letter from Carson,” Teyla answered. “Dr. Beckett,” she said, as if he wouldn’t understand. “He -”
“He’s -” Sheppard began. He was going to say ‘alive,’ but Lam drifted over and interrupted.
“Backseat driving your medical care from across the globe,” Lam said, sounding mildly irritated. “Apparently, he became a neurologist in his spare time.”
“He only recently learned of the accident and your condition,” Teyla said. “He wants to help.”
Sheppard didn’t say anything. He unwrapped his burrito and took a bite. Of course, his silence just made both women look at him curiously.
“Do you -” Lam began.
He knew what she was going to ask, so he just interrupted. “Yeah,” he said. “I know who he is. Where’s he at, now?”
“Africa,” Lam said. “Doctors without Borders.”
“Huh,” Sheppard said. He had a hard time imagining the Carson they’d taken to Pegasus - but who hadn’t gotten to stay - undertaking something like that. But it was better than the Carson who’d gone to Pegasus and stayed there. “Tell him I say hi,” was all he said.
“I’m going to tell him he’s not a neurologist,” Lam muttered as she walked off. Sheppard didn’t think Lam was that particular specialist, either, but he just went back to eating his burrito.
Teyla settled down and opened her dinner, as well. She wasn’t even staring at Sheppard in that creepy, curious way that everyone did when someone who was supposed to be dead turned out to be alive and he failed to hide his reaction appropriately. So, he didn’t know why he told her anything.
“He was dead,” Sheppard said.
Teyla looked up, fork paused halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“Carson,” he said, softly. “He died.”
Teyla didn’t seem to know how to react to that. Fair enough. Sheppard shrugged and went back to his burrito while she blinked at him.
“Oh,” she said, finally. “He did not. He is…well.”
“Yeah,” Sheppard said. “Good.”
They ate in silence for a while, though Sheppard could see that Teyla was thinking this new piece of information over.
“It must be strange,” she said, eventually. “Can Kate explain why you would think such a thing?”
“No,” Sheppard said. Then, “I haven’t asked.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “It’s crazy. I’m crazy.”
Teyla frowned. “I do not believe so.”
Sheppard flicked his eyes at her. He could have said something really hurtful to remind her of the fact that he didn’t remember other important things, either. Instead, he shrugged again. “I’m glad he’s alive.”
“As am I,” Teyla said and smiled widely. “He is a very dear friend.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded emphatically. “Do you remember otherwise?”
“No,” Sheppard said. “That’s…that’s the same.”
Teyla had pretty much abandoned her dinner. She must have been excited he was finally talking to her.
“Do you remember others,” she asked, “others who you thought were dead?”
Sheppard grimaced. “Yeah.”
Teyla paused, but only for a moment. “Me?”
“No,” Sheppard said, quickly. He shook his head. “No.”
“Good,” Teyla said. She tried to smile about it.
“Yeah.”
But Teyla was looking at him like she was holding back on another question, and Sheppard found himself answering it.
“You’re married,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Not to me,” he interrupted, and looked down so he wouldn’t have to see her face. “An Athosian guy.”
When he raised his eyes, Teyla looked more stunned than anything else. Like she was having trouble processing that statement. It was about time someone else was in that position.
“Not married,” he went on. “But together. I don’t know if Athosians do that.”
“Do what?”
“Marry.”
“We do,” Teyla said, almost sharply.
“Yeah,” Sheppard said. “Anyway, you’re together and you had a kid, and that’s how it was.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not just being an asshole. I’m sorry. That’s how it was.”
Teyla’s eyes were big, She seemed to have missed the rest of his words. “You said I had a child?”
He nodded. “Yeah. A boy. A son. Torren.”
“That was my father’s name.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The shock on Teyla’s face was being replaced with something that looked an awful lot like distress. Sheppard didn’t know why. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
“Look,” he said, “Heightmeyer wanted us to talk - together - with her there. And I didn’t want that.” Teyla stared at him. “So, that’s what I had to say.”
“Alright,” she said, slowly, nodding but not really at him. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I won’t,” he said, because she really did look upset. “It’s nothing.”
“It is real to you,” Teyla retorted.
He nodded. It was true and didn’t look to be changing any time soon despite Heightmeyer’s best efforts. “But you should know, it has nothing to do with you.” He forced himself to continue: “The real you.”
“Very well,” Teyla said, after a moment. “Thank you for being honest.”
“All I can do,” Sheppard said. He looked down at his dinner. “Thanks for the burrito.”
~
The conversation with Teyla, hard and painful as it had been, seemed to make things easier. Teyla, at least, understood where he was coming from now. Understood a little. He hadn’t mentioned all the other things. He knew she wasn’t exactly happy about it, but he figured knowing what was going on in his skull would help her deal with the fact that her husband was still a grade-A lunatic with selective memory loss.
She might have spilled to Heightmeyer what he’d told her. Sheppard wasn’t sure. Heightmeyer didn’t bring up the idea of having Teyla join their sessions again. He was glad.
Heightmeyer wanted to try hypnosis next. Sheppard wasn’t thrilled. He didn’t think it would work.
Freaking Heightmeyer wouldn’t let him get out of it, though.
“Are you afraid it won’t work?” she asked. “Or afraid it will?”
“The first one,” he snapped, ignoring her pointed look.
It didn’t work.
Sheppard didn’t remember what he said or what Heightmeyer asked him. He woke as if from an indistinct dream to hear her voice counting down. For a second, he waited. Waited for memories to come flooding back.
They didn’t.
He blinked his bleary eyes open and found Heightmeyer’s face. Her lips were tight, eyes concerned.
“What’d I say?” he asked.
“Your dissociative reality is very complex,” she said. “I couldn’t get past it.”
Sheppard nodded. He felt sleepy and a little uncomfortable. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Heightmeyer reminded him. She paused and leaned forward in her seat. “Can you tell me who Ronon is?”
Sheppard froze. “I mentioned him?”
Heightmeyer nodded and waited.
“I think I made him up,” Sheppard said, slowly. “He doesn’t exist. Or I haven’t met him yet.” She didn’t say anything. He looked at her. “Is that weird?”
“Unusual,” Heightmeyer said. “But all head injuries are different.”
Sheppard waited for her to ask him about Ronon. About the guy that his brain-damaged overactive imagination had created. She didn’t and he looked at her in confusion.
“You need to focus on reality,” Heightmeyer said, noting his expression. “I don’t think it’s valuable to explore -”
“Delusions?”
“Events that didn’t happen,” she said, firmly. “It’s more important to get you situated on what you lost.”
Sheppard had lost Ronon. He’d lost Atlantis and everyone on it. But he knew she wasn’t talking about that. So he just nodded.
~
Lam said he could go home soon.
At first, Sheppard grinned. “Finally,” he told her.
Being trapped in a tiny infirmary room with no privacy and nothing to do hadn’t even been bothering him as much as it should have. It was kind of normal, in as normal as long term infirmary stays could be.
But then he realized he had absolutely no idea what she meant by ‘home.’
“Where?” he asked her.
Lam hesitated. “Your house, colonel.”
He kind of glared at her. She should know by now that he wasn’t playing stupid. “I have a house?”
Sheppard did have a house. A house with Teyla, of course. They’d bought it two years ago. Mitchell was the one that bothered to sit down and explain it to him. He said it was a nice place, in a good neighborhood with good schools. Sheppard boggled at him when he mentioned that, but the man ignored him.
“Congratulations,” Mitchell said. “You’re a grown up homeowner.” Sheppard decided the appropriate thing to do was glare at him. “No, really,” Mitchell said. “I think you’re the only SG team leader who’s evolved beyond an apartment.”
Sheppard didn’t say anything and Mitchell kept talking.
“So, the docs are letting you go?”
Sheppard nodded.
“You must be better then,” Mitchell prompted.
For this, Sheppard made a face at him. “You just had to describe my house to me,” he reminded him. “I still don’t remember anything.”
Mitchell’s gaze shifted awkwardly. “Maybe a familiar environment will help,” he said cheerily.
“Don’t I spend most of my time here?” Sheppard retorted. “Don’t we all? How much time do I even spend on Earth?”
Mitchell scowled. “As much as anyone else,” he said. “C’mon, just be glad you’re getting out of here.”
“Am I going to be allowed to come back?” Sheppard demanded. Mitchell looked confused. “If I leave the SGC today,” he rushed on, “aren’t they just going to mail me my discharge papers?”
“You don’t know that,” Mitchell said, sounding artificially calm. “You could still get better -”
“They don’t let pilots with a psychiatric history of forgetting five years do anything,” Sheppard interrupted. “You know that.”
Mitchell fell silent, his face grim. Before he could reply, Teyla and Lam arrived.
“Ready to go?” Lam asked, cheerfully.
“Yeah.” Sheppard hopped off his gurney. “It’s been fun,” he told her. “I’ll see you around.”
Lam smiled. “Don’t get too emotional, colonel. You’ll still be coming back for your medical check ups and to see Kate.”
Sheppard hadn’t expected that. “Yeah?”
Mitchell clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah!”
“So I don’t accidentally spill national security secrets to civilians?” Sheppard guessed.
“Because we are the best medical care available,” Lam corrected him. “Now get out of my infirmary.”
“Here,” Teyla said, handing him a black skull cap.
“What?”
“For your head,” she said.
“So you don’t scare the little children,” Mitchell said, laughing.
Sheppard followed Teyla out of the Mountain. He wasn’t sure how he felt, or how he was supposed to feel. Well, there was a solid pang of resentment when Teyla stopped at the security station to sign him out like he was a mental patient. Which he supposed he was, but it still sucked.
“You should keep the receipt,” he muttered.
He was surprised she got the reference. “No,” Teyla said. “I am satisfied with my purchase. It has a lifetime warranty.”
Involuntarily, Sheppard grinned and Teyla smiled back at him.
~
Teyla’s car was in the staff parking lot. And Sheppard hadn’t even gotten to thinking about the fact that she would have a car.
He sure as hell didn’t expect a bright yellow Volkswagon convertible bug.
“This is your car,” he said, when she held up her keys and the lights blinked.
“Yes.” She was looking at him expectantly.
“I let you get this car?”
“You do not let me do anything,” Teyla said mildly, but she sounded more amused than anything else.
“Okay,” he said, fairly.
“You do not like it,” she said.
“Yeah,” Sheppard replied.
“Good.” Teyla opened the driver’s side door. “You did not like it before.”
Slowly, Sheppard followed suit and opened shotgun. “Teyla, it’s -”
“You have a truck,” Teyla interrupted as he got in. “Which you do not like me to drive.”
“Okay,” Sheppard said. That was better. That was sensible. It was the among the first things to make sense since he’d woken up.
“Who taught you to drive?” he asked, buckling his seatbelt as Teyla started the engine.
“You did,” Teyla said, and then the tires squealed.
~
“I see why I don’t like you to drive my truck,” Sheppard said, when the bug finally rolled to a stop. He unclenched his hand from around the arm rest.
Teyla made a little face, sort of a smile. “Welcome home,” she said.
Sheppard raised his eyes from the dashboard where he’d be waiting for the airbag to explode in his face and looked out the windshield.
Mitchell had been right. Sheppard had had a little trouble paying attention during the drive, what with expecting to be violently ejected from the vehicle at any moment. They were in a suburban neighborhood with nice pastel-painted family-sized houses and now they were parked in front of one.
Teyla opened her door and turned to look at him.
“Home sweet home,” he said, mostly to himself. A thought flashed across his mind. “Um. We don’t have any kids, do we?”
An emotion Sheppard couldn’t identify flitted over Teyla’s face. “No,’ she said, calmly. “I would have told you.”
“Yeah,” he said, finding the handle on his own door. “Okay.” He knew Teyla wouldn’t spring that kind of surprise on him, but the question had come out his mouth anyway.
“What about, like a dog?” he asked, getting out of the car.
On the other side of the vehicle, Teyla looked at him across the front of the car. “No,” she said. “You say we are not home enough.”
“Oh.” He paused. “Fish?”
That got a smile and an eye roll out of Teyla, who didn’t answer.
Sheppard hadn’t lived much in non-military - or non-Atlantis - housing. Even when he’d been married to Nancy. He didn’t know what he was supposed to think as he followed Teyla up the driveway. Maybe the house would fix his fried brain cells and all the memories he was supposed to have would come flooding back.
It didn’t.
Teyla unlocked the front door and held it open for him. Sheppard stepped inside.
It was just a house. Kind of sparsely furnished - not much on the walls of the living room he’d entered. Big ass TV, though, and a large, comfy looking yellow sofa.
Teyla glanced at his face, maybe hoping to see a flash of recognition. Disappointment flicked across her expression before she forced it away.
“Nice place,” Sheppard offered.
Teyla tried to smile, but wouldn’t look at him as she turned around and shut the door. This must really, really suck for her, Sheppard realized. He stood awkwardly in one place while she pulled the deadbolt and chain across the door.
“I have not been home much,” Teyla said, clearing her throat. “Lately.” She tipped her head towards another room. “I think there may be pets in the refrigerator, now.”
For a second, Sheppard blinked at her, then he got it. He grinned and let out a small laugh.
“You may look around,” Teyla told him, maybe sensing he wanted to ask permission but knew how dumb that was.
“Okay,” Sheppard said, but then he followed her into the kitchen, anyway.
There was more stuff in the kitchen than Sheppard had ever had in his life. All he’d ever owned was a crappy blender. He didn’t know what half the devices sitting on the kitchen countertop were. The only things he recognized were the blender and the crockpot. And they were all the same color, a bright yellow. Teyla followed his eyes.
“Wedding gifts,” she said. “That is your custom,” she reminded him, as wondering if he still knew that.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Sam and Vala helped me,” she paused, searching for the word. “register?”
“Yeah,” he said, again.
“Mostly Vala,” Teyla went on, sort of smirking. “I do not know how to use most of them.” She continued to watch his face, maybe waiting for him to remember any of this before she had to tell him. “We do not cook often.”
That was the Teyla he knew.
She turned her back to him, opening the fridge.
“You say we are the people for whom the readymade section of the deli counter was designed,” she said.
“Sounds about right,” he said. The kitchen was far too clean and tidy-looking to see much use, even if it was filled with equipment. He was glad this Teyla hadn’t turned into Martha Stewart, despite appearances.
Teyla made an unhappy noise from inside the refrigerator. “This has liquefied,” she said, straightening up and looking back at him. She seemed embarrassed, though he didn’t think she had reason to be. “I will clean this up,” she said. “You should look around our home. Maybe it will help.”
That sounded kind of like an order.
“Okay,” he said, feeling her eyes on him until he exited the kitchen.
The house was large. Big enough for two people, big enough for a family. It was beyond weird to know that he lived here. He didn’t recognize any of the furniture on the first floor. The artwork looked kind of folksy. Maybe it was Athosian, or maybe it reminded Teyla of Athosian stuff. But over all, the place was tidy and sparse. He guessed they weren’t home a lot, or it just didn’t look lived in since he’d been hospitalized for the past few months.
They had a lot of videogame equipment. Stuff Sheppard didn’t even recognize. And Teyla let it fill up the living room. Maybe she liked it, too.
Sheppard found a staircase leading down and took it. He didn’t know that there’d been anything in the basement, but he went anyway.
A lot of his stuff was in the basement. His golf clubs, his surfboard. Except now he had two? Two sets of skis, too, and two kayaks stacked on top of one another. The second one of everything was for Teyla, of course, and he felt like a moron for even having to think about it.
He’d played golf with her on the Atlantis piers once or twice. Well, done the driving range thing, anyway. She hadn’t really understood it, but at least she hadn’t kicked his ass at it like Ronon had.
Sheppard turned around and went back upstairs. It took an educated guess to find the route to the top story. He circled the hallway and took the stairs up. His eyes landed on the wall and he stumbled. His Johnny Cash poster was affixed to the wall alongside the stairs. Put up with tape or something, not framed or anything. Sheppard glanced at it for a second and kept moving.
The upstairs looked a little more…lived in. Still tidy, which was probably Teyla’s doing. But there was an office with stacks of papers all over the desk, more Sheppard’s style. He took a seat. The chair was leather and high-backed, and it was comfortable enough that Sheppard had probably sat in it a lot for the cushion to start molding to his shape.
The papers were domestic stuff like the electricity bill. Sheppard sat there for a second, half because it was a really nice chair and half because he wondered if the memory of mundane tasks like paying taxes would come rushing back.
He kept having these thoughts. That he would see or hear or hell smell something, and then he would remember all of this. And every time he thought that, nothing changed.
Sheppard poked mindlessly at the paperwork on the desktop. A lot of bills. Junk mail. Underneath it all was a calendar, the big kind Sheppard always bought and inevitably ended up buried. He had to think about what month it was - it didn’t really matter on Atlantis, after all - and realized the thing was about six months behind. He scanned the days, finding the occasional hand-written appointment. Doctor’s appointments, mostly, which was kind of odd. He didn’t recognize the names, of course. Weird.
There were a couple of photos on the desktop, too. One of him and Teyla, in civvies, smiling at the camera. It was too tight a shot for him to tell where they were, but his arm was draped over Teyla and she was leaning into him. The intimacy was unmistakable. Sheppard looked at it, realized he hadn’t seen Teyla smile with that kind of sincerity since he’d woken up. Okay, that wasn’t true, she’d smiled brilliantly when he’d woken, but then he’d accused her of being an alien hallucination.
Bothered, Sheppard turned the photo face down. He knew that was both really immature and probably psychologically unhealthy, but he did it anyway.
There was another photo, hidden behind a pile of old Sports Illustrated. Apparently, Sheppard came up here to pretend to pay bills. He wondered if Playboy was around here somewhere, too. Sheppard brushed the magazines aside. This one was of him, Lorne, Ford, and that Lucy Hurst woman. His team, Sheppard realized. At some kind of official function where the three men were in uniform and the anthropologist was in a pantsuit. Okay. Sheppard looked at it, too. The team - his team - was smiling, seemed to like each other well enough. And he’d bothered to get it framed and put it on his desk. Or maybe someone had done it for him.
And there was even less reason that this one should bother him even more, but it did. Sheppard turned it upside down, too, and let the Sports Illustrateds slide on top of it. He was all about subtlety.
There wasn’t anything else to poke around, though Sheppard guessed there was probably a laptop hidden somewhere under the papers. He got up, pushed the chair back in, and left the room.
It was very tempting to go back downstairs and avoid finding his and Teyla’s bedroom. The house wasn’t making him feel better. It was just weird and unsettling. He could see himself living here. It was nice. That didn’t make it any less weird.
Unfortunately, Sheppard stumbled upon something much more bizarre. He opened the closed door next to the office and found himself in a room that was almost completely empty. The blinds were up, allowing the sun to spill in the through the windows. The walls were a gentle yellow; the color coupled with the sunshine seemed to make the room glow.
Sheppard blinked against the brightness and when his eyes could focus again, he saw the lone object sitting on the floor of the room.
It was a cradle.
Not a real cradle, it was made of wicker or something. It was set in the center of the room with a light yellow, woven baby blanket peeking over the edge.
Sheppard took a startled step forward to look, even though he knew rationally that there wasn’t anything - anybody - in it.
And there wasn’t, just the blanket arranged carefully against the bottom.
Sheppard heard light footsteps behind him and he looked sharply over his left shoulder.
Teyla was standing in the doorway, her face uncertain. For a second, Sheppard just blinked at her. He tried to get his thoughts together to ask a question more tactfully than ‘what the hell is this?’
“Are you pregnant?” It came out bluntly, but he didn’t think he sounded upset about it.
Teyla’s face flickered, as if she were forcefully staying calm. Maybe he did sound mad.
“I mean -” He waved his hand at the wicker cradle. It was fairly obviously what he meant.
Teyla stepped into the room and moved to his side. “No,” she said, voice calm. “I would have told you.” Calm and honest.
“Okay.” But he glanced at her stomach, anyway. She looked slender as always.
“We were trying to start a family,” she said, then. “Before you were hurt.”
“Oh.” He looked back at the cradle.
“It is an Athosian tradition,” Teyla said, after a moment. “To make a place for the child. It encourages the Ancestors to help you conceive.” She paused. “You think it is superstitious nonsense.”
“I do?” He was trying very hard not to think anything. He’d been ignoring the fact that he was married to Teyla; he could ignore the fact that they’d been trying to have a baby.
“You do,” Teyla said, confidently. She gave him a tiny smile. “I should have warned you before you came upstairs.”
He shrugged, but her explanation - to help you conceive - was echoing in his head. “Were we having trouble?” he asked. “Conceiving?”
Teyla’s smile dimmed. “Yes,” she said, shortly.
He had absolutely no idea what to say to that and suddenly Teyla looked really sad. “I’m sorry,” he offered.
She didn’t look any happier. And of course, he didn’t know any of this.
Abruptly, Teyla reached for the hem of her shirt and raised it as if to undress.
Sheppard averted his eyes. “Hey…” he began.
“I was injured,” Teyla said, and he looked at her. She was holding the shirt hem just below her breasts, exposing her stomach.
She wasn’t pregnant. But she was scarred; unmistakable dark pink jagged circles against her golden skin, accompanied by messy surgical incisions.
“Atlantis,” Sheppard said, dumbly.
“Athos,” Teyla corrected. She dropped her shirt and pulled it straight, the ugly red scars vanishing from his view.
“You were shot,” he said. She looked at him like he’d remembered that, and he had to shake his head. “What happened?”
“It was an accident,” she said, crossing her arms over the wounds as if he could still see them.
“We shot you,” Sheppard continued. No one else had handguns.
“It was an accident,” she repeated.
He remembered reading the mission report; it hadn’t specified that the reason they’d brought Teyla back to the Milky Way was because they’d shot her.
“That is why,” Teyla continued, maybe sensing he was staring off into space. “We were having trouble.” She spoke slowly and precisely, words that probably weren’t hers: “My reproductive organs have a lot of scar tissue.”
“Oh.” He forced his thoughts back to the present. “I’m sorry.”
“You did not shoot me,” Teyla said. “You and Dr. Beckett saved my life.”
“That wasn’t in the report,” he said, honestly. She was looking at him for a reaction he couldn’t give her. “I didn’t know.”
Teyla nodded. She didn’t look upset, just kind of frayed around the eyes.
“Come down stairs,” she said, beginning to back out of the room. “Forget about it.”
“Not a problem,” he said. She tilted her head, then realized what she’d said. “Poor choice of words,” he agreed, following her out.
~
~ Please feed the author~
Part 4
Part 1 for header info.
~
The stars over Colorado Springs were the same as they always were. Blurry and indistinct, overshadowed by blazing light pollution. The view sucked, but Sheppard liked to look at it, anyway. He and Jackson never went farther than the second checkpoint. Sheppard was content with that.
“Sooo,” Jackson said, as Sheppard stared up at the sky. “How’s the memory coming?”
Scowling, Sheppard didn’t bother to look at him. “About the same,” he said. “Heightmeyer’s talking about hypnosis or something.”
“Hm,” Jackson murmured. “What about the Tok’ra memory recall device?”
“Lam said that’s not a good thing to use on someone with a recent head injury,” Sheppard told him. “I have enough brain damage.”
“Oh.” Jackson paused. “It’ll come.” He said it with such calm confidence that it instantly irritated Sheppard.
Sheppard took his eyes off the stars long enough to glare at the man. “You don’t know that.”
Jackson didn’t mind the aggression. He shrugged. “It’ll come,” he repeated.
“Why do you care?” Sheppard challenged. Jackson blinked at him and opened his mouth to respond, but Sheppard went on. “Were we friends?”
Jackson pursed his lips, which really was a totally infuriating non-answer. Except it was a totally stupid thing to get mad about. Sheppard went back to looking at the sky.
“We were collegial,” Jackson said, voice a little hurt. Sheppard heard his clothing rustle as he shrugged.
“Then why do you care?” Sheppard asked again, still not looking at him. “Why are you here? Why are you always around?”
“I…know a little about what it’s like not to remember who you are,” Jackson said, slowly. “And what it’s like to come back to yourself. It’s not a fun thing.” He shrugged again. “I wanted to help if I could.”
“This isn’t supernatural,” Sheppard reminded him, meeting his gaze again. “I hit my head on a rock. You went all glowy.”
Jackson nodded. “The shrinks don’t understand how that works, either,” he offered. “I think they treated me like I had a head injury, actually.”
Sheppard wasn’t really listening, though. Ascension. The word bounced around his head. It hadn’t even occurred to him, but…maybe?
Jackson noticed his silence. “What?” he prompted.
Sheppard didn’t answer for a moment. He didn’t have any reason to believe it. No evidence, no memories of a glowy one coming to take him away. But it made sense - in as much as any of that supernatural shit made sense - and he liked it better than accidental brain damage.
“You remembered everything?” he asked Jackson. “When you came back? When you -” he struggled for the right word and finally settled on -“Descended?”
“Eventually,” Jackson said, a little too blasé about that. And a little too uncertain. “I think so.”
“Ascending?” Sheppard asked. “And getting kicked out?”
“No,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “Jack actually remembers the first one. But everything from that time is just a blur. I remember some emotions. And every now and then I feel déjà vu about something I’ve never seen before. But I wasn’t allowed to…keep…any of that time.”
Sheppard didn’t say anything. But Jackson had apparently already figured it out.
“I didn’t have alternate memories,” he said, mildly. “I don’t know if I got it all back, but I didn’t get any extra.”
Defensive, Sheppard crossed his arms and just shrugged.
“I don’t think they’re allowed to do that,’ Jackson said, thoughtfully. “They shouldn’t be, anyway.” Sheppard said nothing. “I was really bad,” Jackson went on. “And the worst thing they did was bring me back naked.”
Sheppard tracked a plane across the night sky and still didn’t say anything.
Jackson let the silence hang for a few minutes.
“Was I there?” he asked, changing the subject. “Did I get to go to Atlantis?”
“No,” Sheppard snapped at him.
“Oh.” Jackson frowned.
“You got to visit, though,” Sheppard said. “A couple of times. O’Neill never let you stay.”
Jackson scowled. “That really happened,” he said. “Wouldn’t let me go on the mission at all. I got a big told-you-so dance when the Prometheus had to save your butts.” He caught Sheppard glaring at him. “You don’t remember that part.”
“I don’t really want to,” Sheppard said, honestly.
~
Ascension. It was Sheppard’s new favorite word. He didn’t tell Heightmeyer or Lam, and he didn’t think Jackson had. Possibly because the guy secretly thought Sheppard wasn’t special enough to go glowy and hadn’t hid it very well.
Sheppard tried to imagine himself agreeing to go all non-corporeal. It was hard. But then, the choice between dying from klutziness and sticking around as a floating thing might have made the decision for him.
But coming back like this. Taking away everything - taking away Atlantis - was just wrong. Jackson said the Ascended couldn’t mess with humans. This was turning the universe on its head. Bringing back the dead. It was breaking all the rules and then some.
He knew the idea was part narcissism and part denial. But there was a part that was believable. If Atlantis had done something - accidentally, unknowing - so bad it was worth it for Jackson’s glowy friends to wipe it out completely. Make it like it had never happened.
A lot of bad things had happened in Pegasus. Sheppard knew this. And the Atlantis mission had put a lot of it in motion. But they’d also done a lot of good. He didn’t know that it evened out, but it wasn’t that lopsided.
And he had no proof that this universe was any better. In fact, he was thinking it might be a lot worse, especially in Pegasus. If the Atlantis mission had met the Wraith - woken the Wraith - and then left.
Sheppard couldn’t talk about it with anyone. The idea that this was an elaborate illusion by alien captors was fading fast, but he still couldn’t - still felt he shouldn’t - share with these people. He knew every second he clung to his memories rather than what they told him had happened made him look more and more crazy. If he told them that the IOA had just badly fucked the Pegasus galaxy over, he wasn’t sure what would happen. It seemed unlikely to be good for him.
All the same, it itched inside his chest constantly. If the Wraith were awake, unopposed by Atlantis, unencumbered by the Hoffan virus - whatever good it had done - and free of most of the internal conflict that Atlantis’ actions had influenced…
Sheppard didn’t mean to, but he sort of told Heightmeyer. He had biweekly appointments with her and she was irritatingly good at getting him to talk. Somehow, she managed to get him to tell her he was very concerned about what the incomplete Atlantis mission had done when it left Pegasus.
Heightmeyer nodded, but then she launched into a speech about how it was important to focus on his reality instead of the one created by a brain injury. He wasn’t supposed to care about Pegasus.
That made something cold and heavy join the itch in his chest. Sheppard pretended it didn’t and tried not to show just how terrible he felt about it.
His confession actually helped, though. Only a few days later, Lorne showed up with the mission reports from Pegasus. It was a heap of manila folders, stacked so high he had to put them on the floor in two separate piles. The true measure of any clusterfuck was how much paperwork it produced.
“Thanks,” Sheppard said. He’d asked for them weeks ago and only been given the random ones from afterwards.
“No problem,” Lorne said. “It took a while for clearance.”
“I have clearance,” Sheppard said, already opening the first folder.
For a second, Lorne was silent. Then he shrugged. “Yeah, well.”
Sheppard paused and looked up at him. He realized suddenly that the military had probably been content not to let the brain-damaged man read the top secret records that he happened to no longer remember. Crazy people didn’t keep secrets all that well.
“Thanks,” Sheppard said again, and chose not to think about what the Air Force was going to do to a neurologically-impaired, amnesiac pilot.
Lorne vanished while Sheppard read. He probably didn’t want to be around to answer any questions.
The Atlantis mission recounted in the reports was not the one Sheppard remembered. It was as Lorne had said. The city wasn’t there. It just wasn’t.
Athos, however, had been just where Sumner and Sheppard and their men had found it. And Teyla had been there, too.
But the Wraith attack on the Athosians hadn’t been a scouting mission. It’d been a culling.
Sheppard hadn’t killed Sumner. He got to that part and had to stop and read it again. Sumner and half the squad had tried to herd the Athosians to a different cave. They’d all vanished into a culling beam. Teyla had been injured somehow, separated from her people when Sumner moved them out into the open. It was the only reason she was alive. The only reason she was here.
Sheppard couldn’t imagine it. Even though he’d been there, been there at least in one version. But he remembered shooting Sumner, remembered killing that bitch queen.
Except he hadn’t.
Sheppard hadn’t even ended up on board a hive ship. He’d been on the ground with the entire complement of terrified civilians, the remaining military squads, and he’d kept them alive hiding in the caves for months until the Prometheus arrived.
And that was that.
They’d never woken the Wraith. Never found Atlantis. Never done any of it.
Sheppard sat there and stared at the paper, but the words didn’t change. He found it impossible to process. He understood every sentence, but didn’t comprehend any of it.
~
Nothing changed after Sheppard got to read the reports. He didn’t even read all of them. The first few told him everything and were pretty repetitive. It didn’t seem worth going through the rest in the futile hopes that somehow he’d find something familiar.
He didn’t even feel relief that the Wraith had never woken. That probably meant he was an asshole. Sheppard knew that millions and millions of lives had been saved, but he sure as hell didn’t feel that way. Yeah, he was an asshole.
The Athosians were gone, though. A couple hundred people. Teyla’s people. That hurt. She was alone now. Alone with him and he didn’t even remember her. Not this Teyla, anyway.
Teyla had mostly stopped trying to touch him, caress him, or hold his hand. She still made aborted movements to do so, but halted before completing the gestures. Sheppard could read the pain on her face even though she was clearly trying to hide it. It made him feel like a bigger asshole.
Other people thought he was an asshole for that, too. It seemed to bother them more than the fact that he didn’t remember missions or friendships or any of that. But not remembering his wife disturbed everyone.
Heightmeyer brought up couples counseling, at the end of one of their very unproductive sessions. Sheppard just blinked at her.
“What?” he asked.
“Couples counseling,” Heightmeyer repeated. “This has been very hard on your wife.”
Sheppard stared at her. “Teyla,” he said, finally. It took him a few seconds. It always took him a few seconds and everyone in the vicinity always looked at him like he was a moron.
“Yes,” Heightmeyer said. She had the decency not to acknowledge his hesitation.
“Isn’t that for people who remember being married?” he asked. Because having Teyla here for these painful, pointless sessions would just make them suck more.
“She remembers,” Heightmeyer said, not giving him any room to argue. He must have scowled involuntarily because she looked at him sharply. “A spouse is often the person who knows the most about an amnesiac patient, colonel.”
“This already sucks for her,” Sheppard said. “I don’t think she should have to hear it from me over and over again how much I don’t remember her.”
Heightmeyer squinted at him. “Then stop telling her?”
He scrunched down into the chair and didn’t say anything.
~
Teyla was a lot nicer to Sheppard than she probably should have been. She could have gone off world with her team and stayed there. Pretty much any mission would have been more fun for her. He tried telling her that she could go. It might have sounded like he was telling her to get lost, but that’s not how he meant it. But he got yelled at by pretty much everyone he knew for it, anyway.
Teyla stayed. She brought him meals, even though he was allowed to wander to the cafeteria now. Mitchell, Ford, and Lorne were all smuggling him takeout. He probably wasn’t supposed to have hamburgers or ribs or Chinese or anything that tasted like food, but Sheppard couldn’t see how raising his cholesterol had anything to do with his brain or memory. Lam mostly just rolled her eyes and didn’t stop them, so at least he had that going for him.
Sheppard was getting better. Physically, at least. The physical therapy with Keller, as much as he hated it, was working. He was stronger and more coordinated, gaining weight and muscle. The hair on his head was beginning to grow back. It still looked horrible and Lam said she’d just have to shave it again when the stitches and staples or whatever needed to come out. So he let the staff keep trimming it down.
For a man who had been on his deathbed, Sheppard knew his recovery was pretty amazing. The fact that it didn’t feel amazing to him, that it mostly just continued to be confusing and hard and so different it made his teeth ache, was his problem not Teyla’s or anyone else’s.
It was good that Dr. Weir was alive. It was good that Kate Heightmeyer was alive. It was fucking fantastic that the Wraith were still in hibernation. And Teyla loved him.
He tried to tell himself this over and over again. Everyone who had died in Pegasus, everyone killed because of the Hoffan virus or the Replicator shit. None of it had happened.
If the fucking Ascended were behind this, he didn’t know why they’d wiped out the Athosians. That wasn’t fair. Actually, none of this was fair. Least of all the fact that only Sheppard remembered the way it had really happened.
Teyla brought him a burrito from a local Mexican place for dinner. She put her taco salad on another tray and took a seat, then rose abruptly as if remember something.
“I will be right back,” she said, and went to find Lam.
Sheppard watched curiously as Teyla took an envelope out of her purse - and Teyla carried a purse, how weird was that - and handed it to Lam with a few words. For some reason, Lam just rolled her eyes. Sheppard heard her thank Teyla, even as she looked to have no interest in the letter.
“What was that?” Sheppard asked when Teyla returned.
“A letter from Carson,” Teyla answered. “Dr. Beckett,” she said, as if he wouldn’t understand. “He -”
“He’s -” Sheppard began. He was going to say ‘alive,’ but Lam drifted over and interrupted.
“Backseat driving your medical care from across the globe,” Lam said, sounding mildly irritated. “Apparently, he became a neurologist in his spare time.”
“He only recently learned of the accident and your condition,” Teyla said. “He wants to help.”
Sheppard didn’t say anything. He unwrapped his burrito and took a bite. Of course, his silence just made both women look at him curiously.
“Do you -” Lam began.
He knew what she was going to ask, so he just interrupted. “Yeah,” he said. “I know who he is. Where’s he at, now?”
“Africa,” Lam said. “Doctors without Borders.”
“Huh,” Sheppard said. He had a hard time imagining the Carson they’d taken to Pegasus - but who hadn’t gotten to stay - undertaking something like that. But it was better than the Carson who’d gone to Pegasus and stayed there. “Tell him I say hi,” was all he said.
“I’m going to tell him he’s not a neurologist,” Lam muttered as she walked off. Sheppard didn’t think Lam was that particular specialist, either, but he just went back to eating his burrito.
Teyla settled down and opened her dinner, as well. She wasn’t even staring at Sheppard in that creepy, curious way that everyone did when someone who was supposed to be dead turned out to be alive and he failed to hide his reaction appropriately. So, he didn’t know why he told her anything.
“He was dead,” Sheppard said.
Teyla looked up, fork paused halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“Carson,” he said, softly. “He died.”
Teyla didn’t seem to know how to react to that. Fair enough. Sheppard shrugged and went back to his burrito while she blinked at him.
“Oh,” she said, finally. “He did not. He is…well.”
“Yeah,” Sheppard said. “Good.”
They ate in silence for a while, though Sheppard could see that Teyla was thinking this new piece of information over.
“It must be strange,” she said, eventually. “Can Kate explain why you would think such a thing?”
“No,” Sheppard said. Then, “I haven’t asked.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “It’s crazy. I’m crazy.”
Teyla frowned. “I do not believe so.”
Sheppard flicked his eyes at her. He could have said something really hurtful to remind her of the fact that he didn’t remember other important things, either. Instead, he shrugged again. “I’m glad he’s alive.”
“As am I,” Teyla said and smiled widely. “He is a very dear friend.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded emphatically. “Do you remember otherwise?”
“No,” Sheppard said. “That’s…that’s the same.”
Teyla had pretty much abandoned her dinner. She must have been excited he was finally talking to her.
“Do you remember others,” she asked, “others who you thought were dead?”
Sheppard grimaced. “Yeah.”
Teyla paused, but only for a moment. “Me?”
“No,” Sheppard said, quickly. He shook his head. “No.”
“Good,” Teyla said. She tried to smile about it.
“Yeah.”
But Teyla was looking at him like she was holding back on another question, and Sheppard found himself answering it.
“You’re married,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Not to me,” he interrupted, and looked down so he wouldn’t have to see her face. “An Athosian guy.”
When he raised his eyes, Teyla looked more stunned than anything else. Like she was having trouble processing that statement. It was about time someone else was in that position.
“Not married,” he went on. “But together. I don’t know if Athosians do that.”
“Do what?”
“Marry.”
“We do,” Teyla said, almost sharply.
“Yeah,” Sheppard said. “Anyway, you’re together and you had a kid, and that’s how it was.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not just being an asshole. I’m sorry. That’s how it was.”
Teyla’s eyes were big, She seemed to have missed the rest of his words. “You said I had a child?”
He nodded. “Yeah. A boy. A son. Torren.”
“That was my father’s name.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The shock on Teyla’s face was being replaced with something that looked an awful lot like distress. Sheppard didn’t know why. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
“Look,” he said, “Heightmeyer wanted us to talk - together - with her there. And I didn’t want that.” Teyla stared at him. “So, that’s what I had to say.”
“Alright,” she said, slowly, nodding but not really at him. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I won’t,” he said, because she really did look upset. “It’s nothing.”
“It is real to you,” Teyla retorted.
He nodded. It was true and didn’t look to be changing any time soon despite Heightmeyer’s best efforts. “But you should know, it has nothing to do with you.” He forced himself to continue: “The real you.”
“Very well,” Teyla said, after a moment. “Thank you for being honest.”
“All I can do,” Sheppard said. He looked down at his dinner. “Thanks for the burrito.”
~
The conversation with Teyla, hard and painful as it had been, seemed to make things easier. Teyla, at least, understood where he was coming from now. Understood a little. He hadn’t mentioned all the other things. He knew she wasn’t exactly happy about it, but he figured knowing what was going on in his skull would help her deal with the fact that her husband was still a grade-A lunatic with selective memory loss.
She might have spilled to Heightmeyer what he’d told her. Sheppard wasn’t sure. Heightmeyer didn’t bring up the idea of having Teyla join their sessions again. He was glad.
Heightmeyer wanted to try hypnosis next. Sheppard wasn’t thrilled. He didn’t think it would work.
Freaking Heightmeyer wouldn’t let him get out of it, though.
“Are you afraid it won’t work?” she asked. “Or afraid it will?”
“The first one,” he snapped, ignoring her pointed look.
It didn’t work.
Sheppard didn’t remember what he said or what Heightmeyer asked him. He woke as if from an indistinct dream to hear her voice counting down. For a second, he waited. Waited for memories to come flooding back.
They didn’t.
He blinked his bleary eyes open and found Heightmeyer’s face. Her lips were tight, eyes concerned.
“What’d I say?” he asked.
“Your dissociative reality is very complex,” she said. “I couldn’t get past it.”
Sheppard nodded. He felt sleepy and a little uncomfortable. “Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Heightmeyer reminded him. She paused and leaned forward in her seat. “Can you tell me who Ronon is?”
Sheppard froze. “I mentioned him?”
Heightmeyer nodded and waited.
“I think I made him up,” Sheppard said, slowly. “He doesn’t exist. Or I haven’t met him yet.” She didn’t say anything. He looked at her. “Is that weird?”
“Unusual,” Heightmeyer said. “But all head injuries are different.”
Sheppard waited for her to ask him about Ronon. About the guy that his brain-damaged overactive imagination had created. She didn’t and he looked at her in confusion.
“You need to focus on reality,” Heightmeyer said, noting his expression. “I don’t think it’s valuable to explore -”
“Delusions?”
“Events that didn’t happen,” she said, firmly. “It’s more important to get you situated on what you lost.”
Sheppard had lost Ronon. He’d lost Atlantis and everyone on it. But he knew she wasn’t talking about that. So he just nodded.
~
Lam said he could go home soon.
At first, Sheppard grinned. “Finally,” he told her.
Being trapped in a tiny infirmary room with no privacy and nothing to do hadn’t even been bothering him as much as it should have. It was kind of normal, in as normal as long term infirmary stays could be.
But then he realized he had absolutely no idea what she meant by ‘home.’
“Where?” he asked her.
Lam hesitated. “Your house, colonel.”
He kind of glared at her. She should know by now that he wasn’t playing stupid. “I have a house?”
Sheppard did have a house. A house with Teyla, of course. They’d bought it two years ago. Mitchell was the one that bothered to sit down and explain it to him. He said it was a nice place, in a good neighborhood with good schools. Sheppard boggled at him when he mentioned that, but the man ignored him.
“Congratulations,” Mitchell said. “You’re a grown up homeowner.” Sheppard decided the appropriate thing to do was glare at him. “No, really,” Mitchell said. “I think you’re the only SG team leader who’s evolved beyond an apartment.”
Sheppard didn’t say anything and Mitchell kept talking.
“So, the docs are letting you go?”
Sheppard nodded.
“You must be better then,” Mitchell prompted.
For this, Sheppard made a face at him. “You just had to describe my house to me,” he reminded him. “I still don’t remember anything.”
Mitchell’s gaze shifted awkwardly. “Maybe a familiar environment will help,” he said cheerily.
“Don’t I spend most of my time here?” Sheppard retorted. “Don’t we all? How much time do I even spend on Earth?”
Mitchell scowled. “As much as anyone else,” he said. “C’mon, just be glad you’re getting out of here.”
“Am I going to be allowed to come back?” Sheppard demanded. Mitchell looked confused. “If I leave the SGC today,” he rushed on, “aren’t they just going to mail me my discharge papers?”
“You don’t know that,” Mitchell said, sounding artificially calm. “You could still get better -”
“They don’t let pilots with a psychiatric history of forgetting five years do anything,” Sheppard interrupted. “You know that.”
Mitchell fell silent, his face grim. Before he could reply, Teyla and Lam arrived.
“Ready to go?” Lam asked, cheerfully.
“Yeah.” Sheppard hopped off his gurney. “It’s been fun,” he told her. “I’ll see you around.”
Lam smiled. “Don’t get too emotional, colonel. You’ll still be coming back for your medical check ups and to see Kate.”
Sheppard hadn’t expected that. “Yeah?”
Mitchell clapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah!”
“So I don’t accidentally spill national security secrets to civilians?” Sheppard guessed.
“Because we are the best medical care available,” Lam corrected him. “Now get out of my infirmary.”
“Here,” Teyla said, handing him a black skull cap.
“What?”
“For your head,” she said.
“So you don’t scare the little children,” Mitchell said, laughing.
Sheppard followed Teyla out of the Mountain. He wasn’t sure how he felt, or how he was supposed to feel. Well, there was a solid pang of resentment when Teyla stopped at the security station to sign him out like he was a mental patient. Which he supposed he was, but it still sucked.
“You should keep the receipt,” he muttered.
He was surprised she got the reference. “No,” Teyla said. “I am satisfied with my purchase. It has a lifetime warranty.”
Involuntarily, Sheppard grinned and Teyla smiled back at him.
~
Teyla’s car was in the staff parking lot. And Sheppard hadn’t even gotten to thinking about the fact that she would have a car.
He sure as hell didn’t expect a bright yellow Volkswagon convertible bug.
“This is your car,” he said, when she held up her keys and the lights blinked.
“Yes.” She was looking at him expectantly.
“I let you get this car?”
“You do not let me do anything,” Teyla said mildly, but she sounded more amused than anything else.
“Okay,” he said, fairly.
“You do not like it,” she said.
“Yeah,” Sheppard replied.
“Good.” Teyla opened the driver’s side door. “You did not like it before.”
Slowly, Sheppard followed suit and opened shotgun. “Teyla, it’s -”
“You have a truck,” Teyla interrupted as he got in. “Which you do not like me to drive.”
“Okay,” Sheppard said. That was better. That was sensible. It was the among the first things to make sense since he’d woken up.
“Who taught you to drive?” he asked, buckling his seatbelt as Teyla started the engine.
“You did,” Teyla said, and then the tires squealed.
~
“I see why I don’t like you to drive my truck,” Sheppard said, when the bug finally rolled to a stop. He unclenched his hand from around the arm rest.
Teyla made a little face, sort of a smile. “Welcome home,” she said.
Sheppard raised his eyes from the dashboard where he’d be waiting for the airbag to explode in his face and looked out the windshield.
Mitchell had been right. Sheppard had had a little trouble paying attention during the drive, what with expecting to be violently ejected from the vehicle at any moment. They were in a suburban neighborhood with nice pastel-painted family-sized houses and now they were parked in front of one.
Teyla opened her door and turned to look at him.
“Home sweet home,” he said, mostly to himself. A thought flashed across his mind. “Um. We don’t have any kids, do we?”
An emotion Sheppard couldn’t identify flitted over Teyla’s face. “No,’ she said, calmly. “I would have told you.”
“Yeah,” he said, finding the handle on his own door. “Okay.” He knew Teyla wouldn’t spring that kind of surprise on him, but the question had come out his mouth anyway.
“What about, like a dog?” he asked, getting out of the car.
On the other side of the vehicle, Teyla looked at him across the front of the car. “No,” she said. “You say we are not home enough.”
“Oh.” He paused. “Fish?”
That got a smile and an eye roll out of Teyla, who didn’t answer.
Sheppard hadn’t lived much in non-military - or non-Atlantis - housing. Even when he’d been married to Nancy. He didn’t know what he was supposed to think as he followed Teyla up the driveway. Maybe the house would fix his fried brain cells and all the memories he was supposed to have would come flooding back.
It didn’t.
Teyla unlocked the front door and held it open for him. Sheppard stepped inside.
It was just a house. Kind of sparsely furnished - not much on the walls of the living room he’d entered. Big ass TV, though, and a large, comfy looking yellow sofa.
Teyla glanced at his face, maybe hoping to see a flash of recognition. Disappointment flicked across her expression before she forced it away.
“Nice place,” Sheppard offered.
Teyla tried to smile, but wouldn’t look at him as she turned around and shut the door. This must really, really suck for her, Sheppard realized. He stood awkwardly in one place while she pulled the deadbolt and chain across the door.
“I have not been home much,” Teyla said, clearing her throat. “Lately.” She tipped her head towards another room. “I think there may be pets in the refrigerator, now.”
For a second, Sheppard blinked at her, then he got it. He grinned and let out a small laugh.
“You may look around,” Teyla told him, maybe sensing he wanted to ask permission but knew how dumb that was.
“Okay,” Sheppard said, but then he followed her into the kitchen, anyway.
There was more stuff in the kitchen than Sheppard had ever had in his life. All he’d ever owned was a crappy blender. He didn’t know what half the devices sitting on the kitchen countertop were. The only things he recognized were the blender and the crockpot. And they were all the same color, a bright yellow. Teyla followed his eyes.
“Wedding gifts,” she said. “That is your custom,” she reminded him, as wondering if he still knew that.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Sam and Vala helped me,” she paused, searching for the word. “register?”
“Yeah,” he said, again.
“Mostly Vala,” Teyla went on, sort of smirking. “I do not know how to use most of them.” She continued to watch his face, maybe waiting for him to remember any of this before she had to tell him. “We do not cook often.”
That was the Teyla he knew.
She turned her back to him, opening the fridge.
“You say we are the people for whom the readymade section of the deli counter was designed,” she said.
“Sounds about right,” he said. The kitchen was far too clean and tidy-looking to see much use, even if it was filled with equipment. He was glad this Teyla hadn’t turned into Martha Stewart, despite appearances.
Teyla made an unhappy noise from inside the refrigerator. “This has liquefied,” she said, straightening up and looking back at him. She seemed embarrassed, though he didn’t think she had reason to be. “I will clean this up,” she said. “You should look around our home. Maybe it will help.”
That sounded kind of like an order.
“Okay,” he said, feeling her eyes on him until he exited the kitchen.
The house was large. Big enough for two people, big enough for a family. It was beyond weird to know that he lived here. He didn’t recognize any of the furniture on the first floor. The artwork looked kind of folksy. Maybe it was Athosian, or maybe it reminded Teyla of Athosian stuff. But over all, the place was tidy and sparse. He guessed they weren’t home a lot, or it just didn’t look lived in since he’d been hospitalized for the past few months.
They had a lot of videogame equipment. Stuff Sheppard didn’t even recognize. And Teyla let it fill up the living room. Maybe she liked it, too.
Sheppard found a staircase leading down and took it. He didn’t know that there’d been anything in the basement, but he went anyway.
A lot of his stuff was in the basement. His golf clubs, his surfboard. Except now he had two? Two sets of skis, too, and two kayaks stacked on top of one another. The second one of everything was for Teyla, of course, and he felt like a moron for even having to think about it.
He’d played golf with her on the Atlantis piers once or twice. Well, done the driving range thing, anyway. She hadn’t really understood it, but at least she hadn’t kicked his ass at it like Ronon had.
Sheppard turned around and went back upstairs. It took an educated guess to find the route to the top story. He circled the hallway and took the stairs up. His eyes landed on the wall and he stumbled. His Johnny Cash poster was affixed to the wall alongside the stairs. Put up with tape or something, not framed or anything. Sheppard glanced at it for a second and kept moving.
The upstairs looked a little more…lived in. Still tidy, which was probably Teyla’s doing. But there was an office with stacks of papers all over the desk, more Sheppard’s style. He took a seat. The chair was leather and high-backed, and it was comfortable enough that Sheppard had probably sat in it a lot for the cushion to start molding to his shape.
The papers were domestic stuff like the electricity bill. Sheppard sat there for a second, half because it was a really nice chair and half because he wondered if the memory of mundane tasks like paying taxes would come rushing back.
He kept having these thoughts. That he would see or hear or hell smell something, and then he would remember all of this. And every time he thought that, nothing changed.
Sheppard poked mindlessly at the paperwork on the desktop. A lot of bills. Junk mail. Underneath it all was a calendar, the big kind Sheppard always bought and inevitably ended up buried. He had to think about what month it was - it didn’t really matter on Atlantis, after all - and realized the thing was about six months behind. He scanned the days, finding the occasional hand-written appointment. Doctor’s appointments, mostly, which was kind of odd. He didn’t recognize the names, of course. Weird.
There were a couple of photos on the desktop, too. One of him and Teyla, in civvies, smiling at the camera. It was too tight a shot for him to tell where they were, but his arm was draped over Teyla and she was leaning into him. The intimacy was unmistakable. Sheppard looked at it, realized he hadn’t seen Teyla smile with that kind of sincerity since he’d woken up. Okay, that wasn’t true, she’d smiled brilliantly when he’d woken, but then he’d accused her of being an alien hallucination.
Bothered, Sheppard turned the photo face down. He knew that was both really immature and probably psychologically unhealthy, but he did it anyway.
There was another photo, hidden behind a pile of old Sports Illustrated. Apparently, Sheppard came up here to pretend to pay bills. He wondered if Playboy was around here somewhere, too. Sheppard brushed the magazines aside. This one was of him, Lorne, Ford, and that Lucy Hurst woman. His team, Sheppard realized. At some kind of official function where the three men were in uniform and the anthropologist was in a pantsuit. Okay. Sheppard looked at it, too. The team - his team - was smiling, seemed to like each other well enough. And he’d bothered to get it framed and put it on his desk. Or maybe someone had done it for him.
And there was even less reason that this one should bother him even more, but it did. Sheppard turned it upside down, too, and let the Sports Illustrateds slide on top of it. He was all about subtlety.
There wasn’t anything else to poke around, though Sheppard guessed there was probably a laptop hidden somewhere under the papers. He got up, pushed the chair back in, and left the room.
It was very tempting to go back downstairs and avoid finding his and Teyla’s bedroom. The house wasn’t making him feel better. It was just weird and unsettling. He could see himself living here. It was nice. That didn’t make it any less weird.
Unfortunately, Sheppard stumbled upon something much more bizarre. He opened the closed door next to the office and found himself in a room that was almost completely empty. The blinds were up, allowing the sun to spill in the through the windows. The walls were a gentle yellow; the color coupled with the sunshine seemed to make the room glow.
Sheppard blinked against the brightness and when his eyes could focus again, he saw the lone object sitting on the floor of the room.
It was a cradle.
Not a real cradle, it was made of wicker or something. It was set in the center of the room with a light yellow, woven baby blanket peeking over the edge.
Sheppard took a startled step forward to look, even though he knew rationally that there wasn’t anything - anybody - in it.
And there wasn’t, just the blanket arranged carefully against the bottom.
Sheppard heard light footsteps behind him and he looked sharply over his left shoulder.
Teyla was standing in the doorway, her face uncertain. For a second, Sheppard just blinked at her. He tried to get his thoughts together to ask a question more tactfully than ‘what the hell is this?’
“Are you pregnant?” It came out bluntly, but he didn’t think he sounded upset about it.
Teyla’s face flickered, as if she were forcefully staying calm. Maybe he did sound mad.
“I mean -” He waved his hand at the wicker cradle. It was fairly obviously what he meant.
Teyla stepped into the room and moved to his side. “No,” she said, voice calm. “I would have told you.” Calm and honest.
“Okay.” But he glanced at her stomach, anyway. She looked slender as always.
“We were trying to start a family,” she said, then. “Before you were hurt.”
“Oh.” He looked back at the cradle.
“It is an Athosian tradition,” Teyla said, after a moment. “To make a place for the child. It encourages the Ancestors to help you conceive.” She paused. “You think it is superstitious nonsense.”
“I do?” He was trying very hard not to think anything. He’d been ignoring the fact that he was married to Teyla; he could ignore the fact that they’d been trying to have a baby.
“You do,” Teyla said, confidently. She gave him a tiny smile. “I should have warned you before you came upstairs.”
He shrugged, but her explanation - to help you conceive - was echoing in his head. “Were we having trouble?” he asked. “Conceiving?”
Teyla’s smile dimmed. “Yes,” she said, shortly.
He had absolutely no idea what to say to that and suddenly Teyla looked really sad. “I’m sorry,” he offered.
She didn’t look any happier. And of course, he didn’t know any of this.
Abruptly, Teyla reached for the hem of her shirt and raised it as if to undress.
Sheppard averted his eyes. “Hey…” he began.
“I was injured,” Teyla said, and he looked at her. She was holding the shirt hem just below her breasts, exposing her stomach.
She wasn’t pregnant. But she was scarred; unmistakable dark pink jagged circles against her golden skin, accompanied by messy surgical incisions.
“Atlantis,” Sheppard said, dumbly.
“Athos,” Teyla corrected. She dropped her shirt and pulled it straight, the ugly red scars vanishing from his view.
“You were shot,” he said. She looked at him like he’d remembered that, and he had to shake his head. “What happened?”
“It was an accident,” she said, crossing her arms over the wounds as if he could still see them.
“We shot you,” Sheppard continued. No one else had handguns.
“It was an accident,” she repeated.
He remembered reading the mission report; it hadn’t specified that the reason they’d brought Teyla back to the Milky Way was because they’d shot her.
“That is why,” Teyla continued, maybe sensing he was staring off into space. “We were having trouble.” She spoke slowly and precisely, words that probably weren’t hers: “My reproductive organs have a lot of scar tissue.”
“Oh.” He forced his thoughts back to the present. “I’m sorry.”
“You did not shoot me,” Teyla said. “You and Dr. Beckett saved my life.”
“That wasn’t in the report,” he said, honestly. She was looking at him for a reaction he couldn’t give her. “I didn’t know.”
Teyla nodded. She didn’t look upset, just kind of frayed around the eyes.
“Come down stairs,” she said, beginning to back out of the room. “Forget about it.”
“Not a problem,” he said. She tilted her head, then realized what she’d said. “Poor choice of words,” he agreed, following her out.
~
~ Please feed the author~
Part 4