Fic: Fracture (Gen, PG13)

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Title: Fracture
Author: kriadydragon
Recipient: obsessed1o1
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate: Atlantis
Author's Notes: Massive thanks, as always, to my beta wildcat88
Summary: Another day, another planet, another Ancient device wreaking havoc on John's head, sending him on a trip down memory lane.

Fracture

John would never refute that the longest he'd sat in any chair was when he'd been accosted by a Warlord looking to bone up on his English. Mitch and Dex had thought it the highlight of their lives, and about asphyxiated themselves trying not to laugh at Sheppard's five attempts to go to the bathroom. They eventually took pity on him, because Sheppard knew how to look pathetic and miserable and how to use it against people. Softening his expression like a kicked dog made women coo and men roll their eyes and call Sheppard derogatory names in a single breath. The cooing and immaturity he could live without but if it got him out of a crap situation then he didn't care. Dex had said some big, important general needed to see him, wouldn't take no for an answer and Sheppard took off with a well-practiced apology and fighting not to rub his numb ass.

He'd barely made it to the bathroom, but made it he did.

Kicked-dog looks weren't a full arsenal, however; they didn't work on everyone. They didn't always work on Rodney when he was distracted; didn't always work on Teyla who could see through anything (possibly even walls); didn't work at all on Ronon because he was Ronon and only took pity on anyone when he wanted, which was next to never.

They especially didn't work on locals high on the rush of having a new toy, even if that toy was six foot of walking, talking, pissed-off human.

The chair the locals had strapped Sheppard to didn't count as a ridiculous amount of sitting; they gave him breaks. John had yet to plot out the intervals between chair sessions - his brain was too crowded to tackle even basic math - but his bladder never felt like it was going to explode. They pulled him from an existence of data in binary and stats long enough to fill him with food, empty him and wash off the sweat of mental exertion. Then they strapped him right back in the chair. Sometimes they forced him to sleep with a needle to the veins that made him cheery and drowsy.

John hated the breaks. In the world of data he was data, a conduit sifting and sorting and making things work. Not to be sacrilegious about it, but he felt himself the equivalent of a demi-god wandering his own little pocket of universe. When he sat in the chair, everything lived, with no need for individual activation of individual consoles. When he thought, every single system in the place prostrated to him. The Morlans gave him directions, but John could rebel against directions if he wanted - if his team wasn't the Morlans' shield against rebellion. John gave the machines commands and the machines forever obeyed.

Outside the machine, John was pain. His head throbbed, his body throbbed and he was always freezing. The damn Morlans couldn't get it through their happy-go-lucky heads that skin contact wasn't necessary to control a control chair. He was starting to forget what wearing a shirt had been like.

They pulled John from the chair, waking him from his godhood back to the insect existence of mortality. They bathed him with cloths, fed him gruel, watched as he relieved himself then forced him to walk on gelatinous legs. It was hell. The Morlans had a thing for gold - gold robes, gold fezs heavy with feathers, and had gilded and tiled most of the facility/temple with gold. Ironic, really, since the town had been picturesque colonial, plain as hell. And John missed the plain. Plain didn't shimmer and shine and tear through his retina into his brain like molten lava. But the Morlans were efficient, and got Sheppard back into the chair before he could puke.

Before they did, he tried again to warn them about the glitch, the one spreading fast as a plague through the systems.

They told him to fix it, and promised to set him and his team free if he did. John was pretty sure they were lying. They were supposed to set John and his team free when he got all the systems running long enough for the tech-happy pilgrims to understand how they worked.

John was also pretty sure he'd been playing human battery long enough for them to learn how it worked plus make duplicates if they wanted. The information superhighway in his brain had quadrupled in lanes, information pushing into his skull like kids whining for attention. And the directions from the Morlans were a hell of a lot more technical than they used to be.

Definitely lying bastards, the Morlans.

They pulled him from the chair, bathed him, fed him, and made him sleep. He was a mortal, then he was back in the chair and he was a god. John forgot to tell them about the glitch, the one spreading to the more active systems, the ones the Morlans flocked to like ants to a Hostess cupcake: the shield, which would only encompass the facility, and a couple of weapons with limited range but that would make the facility a decent fortress when needed.

During a lull in the directions, John would creep like a thief over to the Ancient equivalent of a security camera. He saw his team in a cage, like the ones on Atlantis. Ronon was pacing, Rodney huddling, Teyla standing with her arms folded. They were the picture of misery. It was all Sheppard could do to keep from commanding that this place go haywire a lot sooner. Except that would mean all hell breaking loose, weapons being fired and people - namely one or all of his team - getting killed. John had no choice but to wait for the right time... whenever the hell that was. But, like most enigmas in life, he knew he would know it when he saw it.

John couldn't fix the glitch, because he finally found out it wasn't a glitch (finding the source of said glitch had been easier said than done in a data world the size of a galaxy), it was a dying ZPM. John said as much at some point in time during his next break. He was sure he'd managed to get it out before he puked up gruel. Puking must have been an offense, because the woman shoving the gruel into his mouth had slapped him for it.

Power drained like blood from a severed artery. John watched it and waited. The Morlans were going to blame him for the failure, maybe kill him for it, try to kill his team for it. But if he could time it just right - set off the proximity alarms, command the cage to power down and the locks to open while the Morlans were running around trying to figure out what the hell was going on - that split second of chaos when organization was tossed out the window and everyone was a chicken with their head cut off...

John was pulled from the chair. Break time, yay.

He was thrown to the gold floor.

Okay, maybe not.

"What have you done?" someone screamed. A kick to his ribs didn't allow John to answer, not that he had an answer. He tried to push himself to his elbows only for another kick to shove him back to the floor, slapping skin on gilding. A third kick, this one to the stomach, shoved the air from his lungs.

"You have condemned us!" The fourth kick was to the small of his back and John arched against it. The beauty of having a high pain threshold was that pain pissed him off long before it debilitated him, giving him room enough in his overcrowded head to come up with an appropriate response.

"What the... hell are--!" But a kick to his chest robbed him of words.

"You did not fix it!" Another kick, and John rolled to his stomach in time to vomit.

"Leave him to the Wraith. We must go!" said someone else. The kicks stopped, footfalls pattered away on the blinding tile, and then there was only silence.

John wiped his mouth while lifting his head to confirm that he was, in fact, completely alone - just him and the damn chair in the middle of the room. Nine-foot windows spilled sunlight onto the floor, the ceiling, the walls, amplifying the liquid glow into tiny daggers. John squinted and lifted a shaking hand to shield himself from the onslaught.

"What the hell?" he croaked. It was hard to talk, like pushing mild acid through his throat; hard to think. His domain of data still raced through his head, random information popping up like a whack-o-mole game. He remembered... there had been... spikes, energy spikes, in shields and weapons. A warning, klaxons maybe. Proximity alert? He didn't remember setting them off...

Leave him to the Wraith.

John's eyes bugged. "Son of a bitch." He flailed and scrambled to his feet, wavering under a two-ton head, and flopped into the chair. He slammed his back against the rest and his eyes shut. Data flowed sluggish through his brain like animals looking for a place to die. Shields were down, weapons dead and the proximity thing shot to hell so Sheppard had no idea how close the Wraith were, or if they were even here. It was no wonder chief guy had been so pissed.

But there was still energy, enough of a trickle for the only thing that really mattered to John. He pushed his way through the muddy data to the cell blocks and thought, and thought, and thought. He thought with everything he had - offoffoffoffoff - but his former flock were feeling rebellious in death. Nothing obeyed.

John squeezed his eyes until the headache was a spike through the brain, and gritted his teeth.

offoffoffoffoff... Off, you sons of bitches! Off!

The data told him to shut up by powering down the cell blocks. Air rushed from John's chest. It was about damn time something went right. He opened his eyes, regretted it but forced them to stay open. His team was free, hopefully on their way if the guards were as cowardly as their priests. It was time to blow this damn popsicle stand. Better yet, get the hell out and let the Wraith blow it.

John pushed himself onto shaking legs and wobbled toward the door. Blueprints crowded his head, pointing the way to the cell blocks. He was well aware that his team would find him before he found them; he just wanted to get out of the room before it boiled his brain. He swept his hand over the panel, the door slid open and John staggered out into blessedly calm coppers and blues. He took anything bad he'd ever said about Atlantis' color scheme back, if he'd said anything, which he doubted. Blues, greens and coppers were relaxing...

A solid weight like a fleshy brick wall plowed John in the side to the floor. Between the impact and the falling was pain, sharp and sudden, somewhere under John's armpit. He landed in a sprawl, data, pain and the the shock of being tackled by a linebacker on an alien planet stunning John witless.

"This is all your fault!"

John blinked up at the linebacker, dressed in gold, with a fez. Sparks obscured most of the guy's face but he looked young, twenty maybe, red-faced and seething. The kid kicked John in the chest, taking his air. John didn't know what it was about that area of the body that was so fun to pummel, but he really wished linebacker would stop, now. The sharp pain in John's side was stretching to his sternum like a hairline crack in glass.

It made John think of a guy named Jeff, who hadn't liked pilots. John didn't know why - personal reasons or a general prejudice, maybe. John hadn't had time to ask when Jeff had slammed his fist into John's chest. It was sudden, and hard, and having six feet and over two-hundred pounds of man-bull standing over him hadn't helped. John couldn't catch his breath, started choking. Jeff had panicked and ran.

It was Holland who'd found John, who'd lifted him up and talked him through the choking until John remembered how to breathe. And Holland who had ratted Jeff out as though he'd been the one Jeff had pummeled. And Holland who'd told John to stop being such a pansy-ass and learn to block.

John blocked by slamming his bare foot into the general vicinity of the kid's knee. But his aim was off, landing him a lucky shot to the groin. The kid wheezed, scuttling back with a hand over his privates. John hauled himself to his feet, even more unsteady with one foot bruised (what the hell did these people wash their underwear in, steel?) and started limping off.

A pile drive to the back smashed him into the floor, stars exploding in his eyes. Fists tenderized his back but no matter how loud his brain screamed to fight back already, the pain and data and the weight pinning him down wouldn't let him do a damn thing.

He didn't need to; a fist of crackling red ripped overhead and hit the weight. The weight convulsed and crumpled to the side in a heap of gold and feathers. Sheppard knew this was the part where he was supposed to push himself back to his feet, but he couldn't seem to send the right signals to the right limbs. The most he managed was a twitch.

"Sheppard!"

The shrill cry of a terrified scientist made him remember. He pushed himself slowly to his knees. It was as far as dizziness would let him go. His arms trembled, his body swayed and he could feel himself lean precariously to the side.

Hands landed on his arms, shoulders and back, keeping him upright then pulling him upright. They stayed on him, making sure he didn't fall. John forced his head up on a wobbly neck.

His team surrounded him, all of them armed with the weapons the pseudo priests obviously hadn't secured properly, staring at him as though he might vanish from sight at any moment. He studied them right back searching for bruises, cuts, any sign of ill treatment. There were bruises, mostly on Ronon's face, and all three looked (and smelled) in need of a bath. Other than that, they were the sort-of picture of health.

"John, are you all right?" Teyla asked with a gentle squeeze to his bicep.

John's body ached like one giant bruise, the pain in his side a sliver in his ribs but nothing he couldn't handle. The pain in his head was another matter but that was for Keller's happy-drugs to sort out. He still felt like puking.

And because he felt like several pounds of crap, he said, "I've been better," but remembered to add, "I'll live."

"Good, cause we gotta go," Ronon said. He slid John's arm across his shoulders (thankfully the arm not on the hurting side) and took half his weight. "Teyla sensed Wraith."

"Guess that means they are here," John muttered. They hurried down the hall as fast as John's craptacular state would let them, which wasn't very fast much to John's annoyance. It was a minor annoyance compared to Rodney's panicking litany of pointless words.

"They were forcing you to take part in some sacred mating ritual, that's why you're shirtless," McKay sneered.

"I'm shirtless," John swallowed back bile. "Cause they thought... the chair would work better."

Rodney snorted. "Morons."

John sighed. "Very."

The facility was like a mini-Atlantis, with bubbling pillars, stained-glass windows and metal stairs, but most of it covered over in gold tile that was like C-4 to John's poor skull. Schematics filled his brain and he called out directions like a pissed off On-Star.

"I said right, damn it!"

"How do you know?" McKay demanded.

"Just shut up and trust me!"

The mental map forced them through a room of windows, gold and light that made John cry out in agony.

Teyla called, "John!"

But John waved them on. "Migraine, go!"

Then they were outside, in open air that assaulted John with natural light and cool autumn air. He saw before he had a chance to slam his eyes shut the town at the bottom of the hill where the facility perched. It clustered like a nest being overrun by hornets. As far away as they were, John could still hear the screams. He barely kept the vomit in.

"We need to hide, wait this out," Ronon said, cutting through the noise.

John's mental schematics expanded from facility to terrain, from geometric white lines on black to topographies, grids and notes of the surrounding area. They were part of the blueprints for the facility, guiding the Ancients where to put their crap so it would last the tests of time and nature. According to the notes, there had been pockets in the hillside, not deep enough to worry about, but maybe deep enough for their needs.

"Other side..." John panted. "Of the hill."

McKay, of course, had to argue. "What? Why?" And it was like a second spike to the one already in John's head.

John gritted, "Just go!" with his eyes squeezed shut. He felt himself being yanked and just about dragged over slick grass like he was a sack. He called, "Bottom of the hill." The next thing he knew, gravity was pushing against his back. He cracked an eye open at the steep incline pulling his feet out from under him. The incline ended at a narrow ravine of a valley that was a mess of rocks, boulders and clefts. John needed help picking his way through the rock field slowed them down, and it amazed him that he didn't twist his ankle. It also amazed him that he was able to guide his team, with his eyes mostly closed and his brain stuck on the maps like a computer freezing up.
- Show quoted text -

But he did it, and knew he did it when Rodney gasped out, "How the hell did you know that was here!"

John parted his eyelids in a squint at a scar in a cleft-face, wide enough for them to crawl through on their hands and knees and screened by a nest of large boulders. He'd pointed them toward the largest pocket in the hopes that ten-thousand years had made it something more. They crawled in one at a time, Ronon first in case he had to turn back and pull Sheppard through. Their quaint little cave John wasn't sure could be called a cave, but it was deep enough to hide them from darts and, hopefully, ground patrols.

Mother nature rocked.

Except for the cave being young and, therefore, hard on the hands and knees. It was cool deeper in, a moist cold that stuck to Sheppard's bare skin and made him shiver, turning that pencil thin pain back into a blade. When they were as deep as they were going to get, John eased himself with a lot of grunts against a jagged wall that pressed into his spine like bony fingers.

"I hate caves," he said without meaning to. It wasn't that he was being ungrateful, but there was quite a bit of baggage between him and caves. That one in Afghanistan, where he and Holland had holed up, had been wonderfully cool, oppressively small and had felt like sitting against a bed of dull knives. With the added bonus of John being dehydrated out of his mind, it had put a taint on the whole cave experience. He didn't really remember much except the agonizing thirst and sharp rocks beating the hell out of him. And Holland, barely alive, keeping Sheppard alive by kicking him in the thigh.

"Well, get over it," Rodney said, huddling like an aggrieved rabbit. "This one's saving our lives." He added under his breath. "I hope. And how the hell did you know it was here? Because I highly doubt they took you for walks around the compound every half hour."

John lifted his shoulder, his shoulder on his left side - the hurting side - and hissed before answering. "Lot of data in that chair. Guess it... got stuck in my brain."

"Or downloaded." Even in the dark John didn't miss Rodney's eyes about to bulge out of his head. "Oh crap. It downloaded information into you."

"So?"

"So! Have you read any of the SGC reports? Ancient library downloads into your brain, you go smart, then insane, then have an aneurysm and die! Only this time without any little gray naked alien men to save you at the last minute. So, I say again. Oh friggin' crap!"

John grimaced at the volume that not even the closed space could soften. "Keep it down." He would worry about super intelligence and aneurysms later, like when he was sure that it would be an aneurysm that killed him and not a feeding hand. But he had read the reports, very detailed reports penned by a very meticulous Daniel Jackson, and from those reports John didn't think this was the same thing. For one, O'Neill hadn't suffered migraines. For another, the knowledge had crept up on him, while John's knowledge sat on his brain like an overflowing laundry bag.

And, sometimes, articles of clothing would fall out. When not focused on a specific need, such as finding the way out of a massive Ancient facility, info would pop randomly into John's head - readings, numbers, grids and graphs. They would expand in his brain, shoving out thoughts, senses, all reality until reality was a dream and he thought he was back in the chair, back to being a god. Then it would trickle away as though someone had pulled a plug. Natural memories would come flooding back, too many to know what memories they were until he had one to focus on.

The cave silenced the screams but not the buzz of darts, like cicadas. Rock scraped John's back when he shifted in a futile grab for comfort. Small movements made the sharp pain in his side spike, and his hand moved to the spot as though it would actually accomplish something.

"You okay?"

John looked at Ronon, saw a little light flash off the whites of his eyes. John swallowed and shook his head.

"Told you... been better." It was damn stuffy in the cave, like in Afghanistan. Stuffy yet cold.

Holland's kicks had kept getting weaker. That hadn't stopped him from kicking.

The scrape of boots against rock made John start and blink, feeling like he'd been pulled from a dream. He flinched again at Ronon's hulking proximity.

"Just gonna check," Ronon warned, and cool fingers on his skin gave Sheppard a third jolt.

Then the sharp pain under his armpit ripped through him like a finger-thick needle all the way to his lung. He sucked in a ragged breath, expanding his ribs, and the needle became fifty needles that made his chest lock.

"Sorry," Ronon breathed. He sounded like he meant it. Even his fingers vanished from John's skin. "Looks like a broken rib."

"Could've... told you that..." John coughed out, spraying saliva. The pain and the closed air made breathing unpleasant, like trying to suck air through a thin layer of cotton. It tacked on to his exhaustion; his eyes wanted to close and his mind to stop fighting the need.

A poke to the arm forced his eyes to flutter back open. He rolled his head toward Rodney's frowning face.

"Stay awake."

John sighed. "Trying."

"Try harder."

"You try harder... when you feel... like I do." John was so damn tired, so nauseous, not even the thunder of a distant explosion let him shake the lethargy.

There was a major difference between natural thunder and the rattling pop of a man (Wraith, whatever) made explosion. You could feel the man-made ones, like a quake in your bones, vibrating you to the capillaries. John's first experience with a close-range burst had been on a med evac run. Johnson, the guy who'd liked everyone and who everyone had liked back, had taken a hit.

The hit had been meant for Sheppard. Sheppard knew because he saw Johnson pull a hard left right smack on Sheppard's ass, barely clipping his tail. Then boom went Johnson in a fireball that had dropped like a comet. And John had felt it, in his bones, his capillaries, expanding his chest.

The very second they were able, Mitch and Dex had dragged him off and gotten him thoroughly wasted - the second time in his life. He was a forgetful drunk, as it turned out; the in-between after drinking and before his hangover a blank spot in his brain, and it scared the hell out of him. But unlike the first time (in which he'd woken up in an alley) he woke up in his cot, tucked in like a kid. John had hated Mitch and Dex for the hangover, but easily forgave them for making sure he didn't end up face down in the sand or, worse, his own vomit. He'd asked Dex what kind of drunk he really was when not passed out. Mitch had answered, "The kind I like - real quiet" and John was content with that. It meant not having to worry about that blank spot in between--

"Sheppard!"

John shivered and blinked. "What?"

"Just making sure," Rodney groused, dropping against the serrated wall. He eyed John like John's spaced-out moments were a personal affront. But that was Rodney, scared pissed because he felt anger more productive.

Then it was back to terse silence, listening to buzzing, explosions that rocked their bones and the crunch of heavy feet smashing fragile rock to powder. Shadows rippled over the boulders hiding them, and they hunkered deeper into the cave. Ronon squeezed his way forward, just enough to stretch his long body and blaster toward the entrance. Rodney gaped as though about to protest what he thought Ronon was about to do, then snapped his jaw shut, exhaling a tiny, barely audible whimper.

The shadows rippled by. No new shadows joined them. Ronon eased himself back without so much as stirring the thick air around John.

Speaking of air, John was certain that it was being siphoned out of the cave. He licked his dry lips, tasting salt and dust, then tried pulling in a deeper breath. He stopped dead when he hit the wall that was the pain. His ribcage felt smaller, tighter, and he numbly wondered if bones could shrink. Or maybe all the explosions were starting to accumulate enough force to give them all blast lung. Or... something - it was too damn hard to think. Data popped into his head telling him just how stupid and impossible blast lung was when they were so far from the actual blast.

Not so far that they couldn't feel it in their bodies and shivering the ground. The brunt of the destruction was on the facility. Had to be, unless the Wraith wanted the facility alive to poke and prod and gut. In which case, it was the town they were using as target practice.

Again, hard to think. Though John had to give himself kudos that he was at least brushing the edge of logical. Wraith liked to play with Ancient crap just as much as Rodney, but without the battery that was John Sheppard and a fully functioning ZPM, John doubted they would be able to do much with it.

Score one for the humans; the only score they were going to get--

"Sheppard!"

"Damn it, McKay!" John yelped, pressing his hand to the sweaty skin over his hammering heart.

Rodney had the decency to look less mulish and more worried. "Stop drifting off and I will," he hissed.

"It's gone quiet," Ronon said. A good thing he did, or John wouldn't have noticed. His ribcage had shrunk another size and every breath had to pass through another layer of invisible cotton. He needed to stop drifting off before he stopped breathing, the way Holland had drifted and...

Ronon shifted and unfolded himself, crawling around John's legs. "Going to check it out."

John grabbed Ronon's coat sleeve, and before he could stop himself blurted, "You'll die."

Ronon looked back at him. There was enough light to see half of Ronon's perplexed and, John thought, slightly disturbed features.

"I'll be fine," Ronon said, hesitant, but also as though Sheppard should have already known that. Then he crawled the rest of the way from the cave.

"You do know who you were talking to, right?" Rodney asked.

John sagged against the wall, the discomfort of it nothing compared to a tight chest, stabbing pain and cold - too much cold. It was a no-win situation; either he gulped in air and winced in between, or put up with the sensation of suffocating. Though the latter would come with a nice lethargy, if only Rodney and the cold would let him enjoy it. He shivered; it made him hurt.

Except now wasn't a good time to be lethargic. He watched the cave entrance, same as Teyla, waiting, waiting, waiting. He had a right to worry, damn it. Seven years of surviving may have made Ronon the expert, but it didn't make him immortal. And when the team separated, when someone was no longer in sight, that was when bad things liked to happen.

Sheppard hadn't known where Mitch and Dex were headed when they'd gone down. The mission had been all hush-hush, and Mitch and Dex had thought that bitchin'. Because they'd gone down in Kabul - where the secret mission wasn't - It had been okay to give John the news.

I let you bastards out of my sight for three damn hours: That had been his first thought. It had been followed by no thinking at all, just a lot of numb, then an explosion. John wasn't sure what kind of explosion, obviously the kind that made the world a blur of motion and color and the brain static. And when it all finally coalesced back into the world, he'd been on his knees in his trashed barracks, slicking up his face with snot and tears while Holland held him. Nothing intimate or unmanly; more like a restraint, but with a rub between the shoulder-blades and a litany of "let it out, Shep. Just let it out."

It was okay to cry. It just really really sucked. But John couldn't get drunk since he'd had his own mission the following day.

"Looks clear. No more darts."

John almost jumped clean out of his skin, and the gasp that came with it caught in his throat. There was barely any air left in this stupid cave, each breath driving the pain deeper into his chest. Even the smallest motion made John's head spin. Ronon crawled to him and placed a large hand on his knee.

"Ready to move?"

John could only nod, and the world tilted. He let Ronon do most of the work in helping him out of the cave. The pain and need for air had turned his limbs to rubber, and the bigger motions made the world drop out from under him. He had to pause, just for a second to gag. Then he was out in the sun and the open.

It didn't make a difference; he still couldn't breathe. If anything, his chest had diminished four sizes too small for his lungs.

He panted, "What the... hell?" If he hadn't been scared before, and he had been scared, then he was freaked out of his mind now. He looked at Ronon, Rodney, Teyla, opening his mouth to ask what the hell was happening to the oxygen but unable to spare enough breath for a "what."

His team looked back at him, equally freaked and confused - including Ronon, and that was saying something.

Teyla took John's face in her hands, forcing him to look at her, focus on her. "John. What is it? Can you tell me what is wrong?"

John gasped, "Can't--" then dug the heel of his hand into his sternum. "Hard to... hard... to breathe." As though an elephant were easing its weight little by little onto his lungs. He then coughed.

And sprayed Teyla's face with a fine mist of blood.

Ronon growled, "Damn it!" and gathered John into his arms.

"What the hell!" Rodney squeaked as they burst into a run. "When did that happen!"

Somewhere within the jumble of John's addled brain was the realization that he really should have felt indignant over being carried like an infant. It quickly became buried beneath an ocean of schematics and information on the use of medical equipment in the facility's med bay. That, too, was lost in another information super flood when John's focus, and the edges of his vision, began to blur. He was getting oxygen, just not enough to satisfy his petulant lungs, and the more he breathed, the less air there seemed to be. His heart pounded in his skull, beating on his brains, and his blood screamed through his ears.

The screaming never seemed to stop, and it was weird. His vision wasn't blurred enough for him not to see a world once populated now completely empty. There was the 'gate, and the DHD. His muddled brain managed to recall that, after a cull, there was always a crowd at the 'gate- huddled masses yearning to breathe free on another planet.

No crowd, not this time.

The blur crept over John's eyes, bringing gray with it. Not before he saw the 'gate burst to life. Then black followed after, with no Rodney poking him awake.

-----------------------

John had cried when he'd learned that Holland hadn't made it. That's what he hated about being doped six ways to Sunday; he couldn't blank out, couldn't trash a room, he could only cry while some nurse cooed and wiped the snot and tears from his face. He was drugged, yet still aware of a pitying face staring down at him. And when he told that face to take a hike in the unkindest way possible, the pity only got worse. Either that or the face got pissy right back and told him to suck it up because it wasn't gonna happen.

John was doped six ways to Sunday and crying again, but not because anyone had died. As it turned out, a person can go through chair withdrawal. The information in his head banged around his skull as though looking for a way out and getting desperate. Keller kept telling him to give it time, that it would soon fade, though it would probably get worse before it got better. John wasn't sure how Keller knew this, or if she knew anything, basing it all on immediate observation only and not scientific fact (which would have made the prognosis a hell of a lot more reassuring). Rodney was probably right - the info was building and it was only a matter of time before it burst a few blood vessels.

In the meantime, it hurt like a bitch. Even worse, it didn't take his mind off the pinch of a catheter in his ribs, still draining his chest of fluids. He'd broken a rib - duh. Somewhere along the way, that rib had put a microscopic nick in a vein slowly, very slowly, but surely filling his chest up with blood, pressing against his lungs, leaking into his lungs, until one finally collapsed. John had the worst and best timing, according to Keller.

The various drugs in his system weren't doing squat against any of the pain - that was how screwed up his brain chemistry was. The drugs did make him spacey so that the only way he could tell dream from reality was... well, actually, he couldn't. He could have sworn Ronon came in to tell him that Holland was dead, which didn't make any sense since Holland was already dead. Sometimes he would see his team standing by his bed, or sitting, talking or playing on a tablet or PSP. Sometimes it was Mitch, or Dex, or Holland, or all three. Sometimes it was his team and Mitch and Dex, or his team and Holland.

Sometimes it was that damn warlord, and a purple elephant pouting because he couldn't sit on John.

Because he knew how much it sucked to think someone was dead, or dying, or almost having died, he forced words from a tight throat.

"M' alive."

Because he didn't know what was a dream and what wasn't, he didn't have the luxury to believe his team's promise that they were alive as well.

He hated drugs. He especially hated drugs that didn't work.

"You look like crap."

John forced an eyelid to part, then shut it to clear it of tears. He wanted to respond with something pithy but the small box Rodney was currently holding made the info in John's brain do the happy dance.

The gist of the info was, "Portable interface."

Rodney patted the box, then set it on the bed next to John. "Yep. Pity having all that info in your skull is such a bitch. It could have come in handy." He sighed, "But it's a bitch so must be smited. Seems that the Ancients are willing to admit they make mistakes after all. The super auxiliary chair was a fluke. The information wasn't supposed to stay in anyone's brain. So they created this." He gave the box a second, harder pat.

The box was plain, a dull gray cube with a small panel on the top. From the panel wound a cord like a vine attached to wire webbing. Rodney raised the head of the bed then slipped the webbing over John's scalp. As he adjusted it, Teyla arrived with Ronon not far behind. Teyla wiped the moisture from John's face with a moist cloth and gave him a little water. When the machine was activated, stabbing John like a brain-freeze, Ronon lifted him up while holding a kidney dish for John to puke in.

And he did puke, a lot, not that there was anything for him to choke up other than water. And he cried. It was more agony, making it impossible to think, to separate reality from dreams, to know who was really alive and who was dead, so he didn't know if it was a dream when he said, "Please don't leave."

Someone gripped his shoulder, someone else his hand and he heard Teyla say, "We are not going anywhere, John."

Then everything snapped to black.

John woke up feeling heavy, sleepy and blessedly pain free. He licked sticky lips, trying to wet them. He rolled his head in the general direction of the clicking noise tickling his ear. Rodney was in a chair, typing, and Ronon and Teyla perched on the edge of the neighboring bed playing Backgammon.

On the tray next to the bed was a pitcher of water, clear and cool and waiting for him. John made a noise in the back of his throat that he absolutely refused to classify as a whimper. It pulled all three teammates' gaze to him.

John put on his best kicked-dog look, flicking his eyes between them and the pitcher.

With a put-upon sigh, Rodney handed his tablet off to Teyla, stood and poured water into a cup with a straw.

"You're pathetic," McKay said. He held the straw within reach. John took it between his lip and pulled as many swallows as he could get away with before the cup vanished. When it was gone, John tried the look again.

"Give it up. Jennifer stressed not too much," Rodney replied. "Need anything else?"

John rocked his head from side to side. "M'good."

Rodney gripped his shoulder. "Good. Because having a DR in front of my name does not make me your personal nurse." He sat back down, took his tablet and resumed typing. Ronon grinned. Teyla shook her head but was also smiling.

John smiled, too, in part because the happy drugs were making him pain-free and floaty, but also because he knew he wasn't dreaming. They really were alive.

The End