it all goes away when the sun comes up (1/2)
Title: it all goes away when the sun comes up
Author: somehowunbroken
Fandom: SGA/SG1
Characters: John/Cam
Word Count: 12,495
Rating: R
Summary: It's six months after the disease spread through Atlantis, crippling or killing everyone in the City, and Cam's more than ready to get out there to help.
Warnings: major character death, a few gruesome scenes
Notes: This is my story for sgareversebang 2011. Many, many thanks to padfootthegrim and stormylullabye for doing their usual amazing beta jobs, and to race_the_ace for creating this amazing piece of art and not freaking out at me when I told her it inspired me to kill off most of Atlantis by plague.
Atlantis is beautiful.
It’s not news, or it shouldn’t be; Cam’s been here twice before, and it’s not like it looks different now than it did either of those times. Maybe it’s just weird because Cam was expecting it to be different, was expecting Atlantis to bear the scars of her inhabitants.
It’s a little too much to ask of a city of metal and glass, though, even one with as much life as Atlantis has in her.
Cam shifts as John makes his way down the stairs, and there’s another beautiful thing, John walking under his own power, even if it is a lot slower than Cam would consider normal. John flashes him a grin as he eases down off of the staircase and makes his way across the floor to stand in front of Cam.
“Colonel Mitchell,” he says, and he sounds normal at least, voice just as healthy as Cam remembers. “Glad to see you made it in one piece.”
Cam drops his bag along with his formalities and pulls John in, wrapping his arms around John’s waist and taking his weight. He can tell how bad it is by the sheer fact that John lets him do it, that he even leans into Cam and lets out a little sigh. He’s not shaking, not trembling, but Cam can tell that he’s not fit for the duties he’s supposed to be performing, either.
It’s okay. Cam’s here for more than emotional support.
“I missed you,” John whispers into Cam’s neck, and it’s enough to make Cam close his eyes tightly, right there in the Gate room. John’s not the emotional type, never has been, so for him to freely admit something like that without any prompting says a lot about how he’s been, how this whole mess has been kicking his ass six ways from Sunday.
“I missed you, too,” Cam replies, pulling back but keeping an arm around John’s waist.
It’s fine. There’s almost nobody around to see it, anyway.
-0-
It had started innocently enough. About six months ago, AR-7 had been out on a routine milk run, trading with an ally on M5R-0F8, when one of the elders in the trading party had sneezed. It had been overlooked, because a sneeze is just a sneeze, but it hadn’t been long before the Lantean delegation had begun sneezing as well. Pegasus allergies, Corporal Anson had shrugged, glaring in the general direction of the Gate as the infirmary staff checked him over. We’re how many light years from Earth, and I still get hay fever.
The bug hadn’t triggered any of the fine-tuned quarantine protocols in Atlantis, and Dr. Keller herself had cleared the team after their mission, so AR-7 went back into the City, back into their various departments, and that had been that.
Until a few weeks later, when Rodney McKay had shown up in the infirmary, face swollen and eyes watery.
“It’s that damn bug the trading team brought back last month,” he’d complained as Dr. Keller frowned and drew a vial of blood. “The anthropologist on their team got sneezed on, she’s sleeping with one of my engineers, and now he’s spread it to the entire department.”
“I’m sure it’s just a cold, Rodney,” Keller had said, capping the vial and scribbling on the label. “We’ll run some tests and get in touch with you when we have some answers, okay?”
And that would have been that - should have been that, except for the fact that Dr. Eller, the anthropologist from AR-7 with whom Rodney was laying the blame for his cold, collapsed in the middle of the mess hall a few hours later.
Tests showed a strain of bacteria in her blood that was unfamiliar to the medical staff; subsequent tests found the same bacteria in McKay’s blood, to a lesser extent. Dr. Keller ordered immediate blood panels for the other three members of AR-7 and everyone in McKay’s engineering department. They all showed similar signs of infection, to varying degrees.
The thing of it was that the illness progressed slowly; it had taken three full weeks for it to get from sneezing and coughing to Dr. Eller fainting. A week after that she began to vomit blood; two weeks after that, she slipped into a coma.
Two months to the day after AR-7 returned from their trading mission, Anna Eller was dead.
The others had fallen a bit slower; Sergeant Nans died two weeks after Eller, and Dr. Simmons four days after that. Corporal Anson had clung to every last scrap of life he could find; it was a long four months before he finally breathed his last.
Dr. Keller had raced to contain the illness, but with no idea of what it was or how to stop it, there was little she could do. More and more people kept turning up sick, until she’d reached the point where she’d just ordered everybody tested.
Every sample came back positive. All they could do was sit and wait.
The reports to the SGC had been short and to the point, first alerting them to the problem and issuing a quarantine, then passing along research and ideas and asking for help. They’d passed along death notifications, too, piling up quicker and quicker as the months dragged on. The SGC debated sending help; on the one hand, they had some ideas, some resources that Atlantis didn’t have, and from all the reports coming from the City, they’d learned that the highest-ranking official in the medical department was a sergeant with basic field training; on the other hand, it was dangerous, possibly deadly. In the end, General Landry ruled that sending more personnel into Atlantis without a way to ensure their safety was a risk they couldn’t take, and that had been that.
Those left on Atlantis hadn’t even seemed surprised to hear the news.
-0-
“How bad is it?” Cam asks as John leads him down to the infirmary. There are more than a few ways to interpret the question, and Cam sees all of them ripple through John’s head as they make their way down the hall.
“Could be worse,” John finally replies, and Cam weighs it in his mind - on the one hand, John’s thinner than he’s ever been, even during the divorce, and he’s leaning more and more into Cam the further they walk; on the other, though, this disease has something like a ninety-four percent mortality rate, and John’s still hobbling along.
“Yeah,” Cam returns. “I suppose that’s the truth.”
The infirmary opens for John as they near the door, and Sergeant Lifton stands wearily when she sees who’s approaching. “Sir,” she says, lifting a weary salute in Cam’s direction.
“Sit down before you fall,” Cam tells her, and she smiles at him tiredly, walking to the medicine cabinet and pulling out a bottle of a thin blue liquid and a syringe. She shakes the bottle and draws some into the syringe, gesturing to the nearest table as she flicks the barrel of the needle. Cam sits on the table and bares his arm.
“It burns,” she warns, and then she’s pushing the medicine through his veins, and it’s all Cam can do not to scream as the fire runs through his system.
It takes a minute for Cam to register anything aside from the white-hot pain in every inch of his body, but eventually he feels John’s hand running up and down his arm, hears John murmuring into his ear. He concentrates on that, pulling himself out of the pain and latching onto John. Slowly, he opens his eyes and blinks as the infirmary comes back into view.
“Sorry,” Sergeant Lifton is saying, and the smile on her face this time is kind, sympathetic. “We haven’t found a way to make it hurt less without diminishing its effectiveness.”
“Hey,” Cam says weakly, “thanks. At least you warned me, right?”
She just nods before moving away, walking into the back of the infirmary, curtained off so passers-by can’t look in.
So passers-by don’t have to watch the remaining sick waste away.
They’d come up with an inoculation about a month ago. There still isn’t a cure, isn’t even really a treatment, but Atlantis now has the ability to prevent others from getting the disease, and that’s a miracle enough on its own. It’s why Cam was allowed to come through.
He’s got an assignment here in Atlantis; he’s supposed to evaluate the situation, report back to the SGC, and give his recommendations. Unofficially, he’s also here as a support for John; he’d been doing fine with the day-to-day running of what had effectively become a military hospital until he, too, had been stricken with the disease about six weeks ago.
Cam can only thank his lucky stars that John had been one of the fortunate ones who had, for some reason that nobody can quite explain, survived the disease.
“Okay,” Cam says after a few minutes of sitting on the gurney. “Okay, let’s get me settled into some quarters so I can sleep this off, how’s that sound?”
“Sounds good to me,” John offers, turning to the curtain that leads to the rest of the infirmary. “Sergeant Lifton, are we good to go?”
Lifton reappears form behind the curtain. “Dizzy?” she asks Cam, who shakes his head. “Good. You should be fine, then.” She turns to John. “Any coughing, nausea, vomiting-”
“I know,” John cuts her off, and they share a hollow kind of look, one that Cam has seen on far too many survivors. “Hope we don’t see you, Sergeant.”
“Same here,” Lifton replies as she ducks back behind the curtain.
Cam gets off the bed carefully, testing his legs beneath him as he lets go of the frame. He doesn’t wobble, and he’s pretty grateful for that, because he’s pretty sure Lifton would order him back into the bed for observation. She’d be within her right to do so; the vaccine is only a month old, and though it’s worked on everyone it’s been tried on so far, the truth of it is that it just hasn’t been tested on many people. They haven’t had the chance.
He stays steady on his feet, though, and he smiles at John as he takes a few steps forward.
“Let’s go,” John says, grabbing Cam’s hand in his own and heading for the door. He’s walking slowly, but Cam knows that he’s not trying to cater to any perceived weakness; John honestly can’t go any faster, not right now.
Maybe not ever again, but Cam’s trying for optimism.
-0-
John’s quarters are clear on the other side of the City, and even with the transporter system, it takes nearly an hour to get there. They have to pause every ten minutes or so.
“Sorry,” John says when he lets go of Cam and watches him slump against the wall. Cam’s ridiculously grateful for the cool metal beneath his cheek. “Under normal circumstances we’d keep you in the infirmary, but we’re a little short on beds at the moment.”
He doesn’t add and I can’t drag you back by myself to the end of the sentence, but Cam knows they’re not just stopping because the vaccine is getting to him. John’s pale, and his hands have started to tremble a little.
“It’s okay,” Cam replies instead of remarking on it. “I’ll be good once I sleep it off, right?”
John gives him a nod and a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and Cam slings his arm back around John’s waist and they make their way to the next transporter.
-0-
Cam sleeps for eleven hours, but when he finally wakes, he feels - fine. Back to his normal self, actually, and he’s grateful for that, even moreso when he turns over in the bed and finds John curled up next to him, eyes open and exhausted. Cam curls an arm around him automatically, drawing John in until they’re tangled together, arms and legs an almost-indistinguishable mess.
“I was scared,” Cam says into John’s hair, and he feels John’s arms tighten around his waist in response. “Quarantine, John, and then Landry said he wasn’t letting anyone else through. And then the reports stopped coming for a while-”
“Sorry,” John murmurs against his chest. “There weren’t enough people to man the Gate for transmissions for a little while there.”
“I know,” Cam sighs, keeping them pulled close together. “I don’t blame you, sweetheart, just sharing my feelings here.”
John huffs a sigh against Cam’s chest, and the fact that he’s feeling well enough to get bent out of shape at the endearment is heartening. It’s been a give-and-take thing since they began their relationship; Cam’s always been an endearments sort of guy, no matter who he was with, while John has been more the last names type. It hasn’t stopped Cam, though, not once, and like it or not, John will always be darling and sweetheart and baby to Cam.
(“It’s not demeaning,” he’d tried explaining once. “Really, John, it’s not.”
“I’m not your girlfriend,” John had retorted. “I really wish you’d stop thinking I am.”
“I don’t want you to be my girlfriend,” Cam had replied evenly. “It’s just - that’s who I am, baby, that’s me.”
John had rolled his eyes and sighed, but the nicknames have made a softness appear in his eyes ever since, so Cam’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually mind.)
Cam grins at the memory and John pulls back, scowling halfheartedly up at him. “You just did that to get a rise out of me,” he accuses.
“Nope,” Cam replies, kissing the tip of John’s nose. “Come on, darlin’, does that sound like something I’d do?”
John rolls his eyes as Cam laughs. “You’re such a pain in the ass,” he sighs as he settles back against Cam’s chest.
“You love me anyway,” Cam counters, the same response he always gives to the statement, but John just nods against his chest without saying a word, so Cam wraps him up again and holds him in the silence for a while. He watches as the light plays across the ceiling and feels John drift in his arms, somewhere between awake and asleep.
“We should get up,” Cam says after a while. The sun’s pretty high in the sky, and he’s starting to get hungry.
John’s quiet for a minute. “There really aren’t any deadlines around here any more,” he says finally. “Nobody to meet, nobody to answer to.” He shrugs a shoulder. “Not saying we should stay in bed forever, just… making sure you realize that.”
Cam knows; of course he knows. Atlantis had gone back to Pegasus with just over three hundred people, all told, and the number had been almost exactly that (three hundred and eight , his mind supplies helpfully) when the outbreak had occurred. There are thirty-four people left in Atlantis, including the ones in the infirmary waiting to die.
Cam hadn’t known many of the Atlantis personnel by more than name. He’d known John’s team, of course - McKay was a force to be reckoned with, and Cam had never quite understood how he and John had been such good friends. Ronon and Teyla were like what would happen if you mixed Jackson, Sam, and Teal’c up and split them into two people, in the least horrifying way possible.
Ronon is the only one of them left now. McKay had been among the first to die after the members of AR-7, and Teyla had passed shortly before John fell sick. Her husband had been in the Athosian settlement with her kid during the outbreak, and it’s one of those small mercies that Cam’s thankful for in this whole mess. Losing a parent at three is terrible, and there’s nothing that can make it better, but at least the kid will live to mourn. Cam can’t imagine a kid surviving a sickness like this.
Ronon’s still sick, though apparently he’s going to be one of the lucky ones. At the last report, his fever had fallen if not broken completely, and he’d slipped back into consciousness. John had sounded so relieved when reporting the news, like he was just glad that not everyone was going to die, and that’s when Cam had put his foot down and started arranging the mission.
He’s drawn back to the present when John pulls out of his arms and makes his way to the bathroom. “Come on, then,” he calls back to Cam. “Shower, and we’ll see what Adam found for lunch.”
-0-
Adam is Sergeant Stackhouse, another survivor of the disease, and he’s stirring a pot of something that smells pretty fantastic. Cam keeps his arm around John’s waist as they make their way into the kitchen.
“Smells pretty good,” Cam says as John grips the counter and reaches for a bowl and spoon. Cam takes the utensils from him when they’re offered and holds the bowl out for some of the violently colored goop from the pot.
“Beets,” Stackhouse says by way of explanation. “Or, well, almost-beets from M8R-124, and the carrot-things from ML6-8S1, and those sorta-peas from-”
“Vegetable soup,” Cam cuts him off. “Local fare. Like I said, Sergeant, it smells great.”
Stackhouse grins at him. “Glad to hear it, sir.” He waves out towards the empty seating area. “We’ve got vacancies today, so feel free to sit wherever you’d like.”
John snorts and walks for the door, snagging a mug of something on the way past; Cam hadn’t noticed on the way in, but there are two on the counter, so he grabs the other and follows John out. They make their way to a nearby table and sit.
John buries his face in the steaming mug and sighs happily. Cam sniffs his; it smells like honey and ginger, a few other spices he can’t place, and it tastes like weak cider. It’s not bad, and when Cam tastes the soup, he’s not surprised to find that it’s more than passable, too.
“Stackhouse isn’t half-bad in the kitchen,” Cam observes, chasing a piece of what looks like a red blueberry but tastes like a pea around his bowl. John shifts, and there’s something tense in the gesture. Cam’s gotten good at hearing what John’s not saying over the years, and he’s hearing something loud and clear right now. “What did I say?”
John shrugs. “Nothing. No, really,” he continues when Cam starts to frown at him. “We just - there’s not that many of us, you know? We’ve been doing the first name thing. It’s weird to know that after all we’ve been through together, everything we’ve survived, we’re gonna have to go back to what it was like before.”
Cam’s starting to get the feeling that the people left in Atlantis aren’t going to be able to do that, and he’s not sure exactly what to do about that yet. He nabs the pea-thing and chews it thoughtfully.
“I think they want to discharge all of you on medical,” Cam says eventually, and predictably, John stiffens and pulls back. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen, John, or that I’m going to back it, but you need to know that it’s been put on the table.”
“We’re fine,” John says fiercely, clutching his mug of tea defensively. “I’m fine, everyone’s fine.”
“John,” Cam tries, but John stands up and walks across the mess hall, bringing his dishes into the kitchen before walking out.
Cam just watches him go; sure, he could catch John easily, try to talk him down, but he knows that’s just adding insult to injury at this point.
-0-
“I’m sorry,” Cam hears from the doorway, and he looks up from the desk in John’s office as John makes his way to slump in one of the chairs. “Not your fault, don’t shoot the messenger, all that jazz.” He shifts, settling in more fully. “Sorry I blew up at you.”
Cam smiles and shuts the file he’s been reading. “Don’t worry about it, John.”
“Yeah,” John replies, shaking his head. “I figured you’d say that, but I still feel pretty crappy about it.”
“They sent me for a reason,” Cam points out with a grin. “Easier to hear it from me than someone you don’t know so well.” He raises a hand to forestall John’s protests. “General Landry doesn’t know, but you know Sam does, and she’s in position to take over the SGC when he retires. She got the paperwork sorted out so I could come.”
John lets out a breath and tilts his head back, closing his eyes. His head rests against the back of the chair and he looks - different, Cam supposes, more like he used to, when the only things stressing him out were the Wraith and the Replicators, enemies he could fight and beat. “I don’t need to be drummed out on medical,” he says. “I know it looks bad, but really, Cam, I know my limits. I’m not there yet. Hell, I’m getting better - I couldn’t even walk a few weeks ago, and I know it’s still slow going, but I’ll be back in shape eventually.”
His eyes plead with Cam, as if he’s the one making the decision and John might be able to convince him to change his mind if he tries hard enough. “Give us some time.”
“Not my choice, sweetheart,” Cam murmurs as he walks around the desk and crouches in front of John, resting his hands just above his partner’s knees. “I’m here to report on the situation and give my recommendations, but it’s not up to me in the end.”
“I can’t lose Atlantis,” John says, and it’s nothing Cam doesn’t already know. “I can’t, Cam.”
Cam pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, meeting John’s gaze and wondering if he should just tell him the rest of the news from the SGC, or if that should maybe wait. Sometimes he forgets, though, that John can read him as easily as he can read John.
“Tell me,” John says, covering Cam’s hand with his own and lifting his mouth into that half-smirk that Cam’s missed all this time. “I promise I’m not gonna blow up and run away again.”
Cam takes a breath and turns his hand under John’s, holding it firmly. “If they decide that you’re not fit for duty, John, that’s it. They’ll pull out of Atlantis, out of Pegasus entirely.”
-0-
“You’re good,” Sergeant Lifton says with a smile, pulling the stethoscope away from Cam’s chest. “As long as your bloodwork checks out, sir, I’ll be calling this a complete success.”
“Glad to hear it,” Cam returns with an easy grin, tugging his shirt back into position and threading his fingers through John’s. He’d insisted on staying with Cam through the checkup, and Cam has to wonder how many people John has sent to the infirmary and just never seen well again. He’s sure the number is higher than it has any right to be.
“Can we go?” John asks Lifton, who nods her head as she leans over to label the test tube. Cam stands and tugs John off the stretcher, sliding his arm smoothly around John’s waist and turning to Lifton.
“Thanks,” he says, and she flashes them a smile before going back to her work.
They head back to the living quarters, and Cam helps John change out of his clothing and into a pair of sweats and a tee that used to fit him a lot better. John tumbles into bed with a sleepy smile and Cam curls around him, pulling John into his arms and running a hand up and down his back.
John needs to sleep a lot more than he used to. He’s always been the kind that can function on less; Cam’s watched him function for two straight days on less than two hours’ sleep, and it was rare that Cam was out of bed before John.
That was before, though; now, John sleeps long and hard, like he’s catching up from a lifetime of going without.
John’s out in less than five minutes, snoring softly into the pillow. Cam keeps his arm around John’s waist, tucking his fingers between John’s hip and the mattress as he pulls John fully against his frame. He’ll have to move before he drifts off or he’ll wake up with one hell of a cramp in his arm, but for now, he’s content enough to lie there and let John breathe against him.
Cam lets his mind wander, thinking through the details he’d known coming in and what he’s learned since arriving. The disease had come from M5R-0F8, and had spread through the City pretty efficiently; nobody had been immune, and that included the Pegasus natives. The disease is almost assuredly fatal, and they haven’t been able to synthesize a cure. Even the vaccine had been a fortuitous accident.
Cam has a few questions - okay, he has a lot of questions, but he has some that take precedence over the rest. If the disease is native to the Pegasus Galaxy, why hadn’t Ronon and Teyla been familiar with it? Was it just native to M5R-0F8? Why weren’t they able to find a cure?
Cam’s first report to the SGC was due at the end of the week. He’d send his first set of recommendations back then: send an exploratory team through for intel gathering on planet of origin, he mentally composes. Request Dr. Jackson as cultural liaison and Dr. Brightman for medical assistance, with a team of Marines for tactical support.
In the meantime, Cam will have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to phrase the state of things here in Atlantis. He knows, without a doubt, that Landry would take one look at a straight-on honest report and order everyone home, but Cam knows what losing Atlantis would mean - to Earth, sure, but to John especially, and he’ll put that off for as long as he can.
Hopefully, he can put it off forever.
-0-
The week goes by without incidents of any kind, and Cam’s grateful if only because he knows John, knows how he’d push himself beyond his limits if something came up. He mentions it after the wormhole to Earth disconnects, all reports carefully worded and sent along for review.
“Glad the Wraith haven’t dropped by recently,” he remarks, and John goes kind of quiet, kind of still in a way that he rarely is. Cam tenses. “What?”
“They haven’t,” John says quietly, before clearing his throat and starting again. “They haven’t been by. Not once since the whole thing started. We, uh, we haven’t seen or heard anything from them.”
Cam has no response for that, honestly. “Six months?” he asks, a little dumbfounded.
“Six months,” John confirms, lifting one shoulder. “Almost seven.”
Cam sits back in his chair. “And nobody connected the dots on that before now.”
John shrugs again. “Two explanations,” he offers, holding up a finger. “One, they caught it too, and they’re just as hard-hit by it as we are.” A second finger goes up. “Two, they’re responsible for it and figured that either we’re all dead by now or not enough of a threat to worry about.”
“Jesus,” Cam breathes out. “So either they’re no longer a threat, or they’ve successfully eliminated the greatest threat to them.”
“Pretty much,” John agrees candidly.
“That’s a pretty low-key reaction for such a big revelation,” Cam notes, raising an eyebrow at John in an attempt to cover some of the shocked reeling he’s got going on in his stomach.
“It’s not a new thought for me,” John replies evenly. “I mean, I’ve had a while to think about it.”
“Jesus,” Cam repeats. “How likely do you think the Wraith are to resort to biological warfare?”
John rocks his head from side to side. “Normally, I’d say that they wouldn’t deplete their food source by just offing humans, but we’re kind of a pain in their asses, so they might risk it just for us.”
“Any chance you can get in touch with that one Wraith and find out?”
John shakes his head. “We tried a couple of months ago, but there’s not really an exact science to hailing him. We left a message for him, but he doesn’t stop by that planet all the time.” He lifts a shoulder. “He might not have gotten it yet, he might not want to get in touch with us for whatever reason, he might be dead. I really have no way of knowing.”
Cam blows out a breath. “Have you gated back to M5R-0F8 since the outbreak?”
“Yeah,” John nods. “When Eller and Nans first got sick, we gave them a call. The guy we spoke to said the place was decimated.” He draws in a slow breath and holds it for a few seconds before deflating a little in the chair. “Rodney worked out a probability model based on their rate of infection and apparent rate of survival. He figured we’d be less affected because of our medical advances and sanitation standards.” He tries to smile, but it’s more of a grimace than anything else. “Turns out that neither of those things matter when everyone’s already been exposed and you have no idea what it is that you’re supposed to be treating.”
“None of this was in the reports you sent back,” Cam says, but he’s going through everything in his head, everything that had come out of Atlantis, trying to put the pieces together and come up with the scenario John’s giving him now. He sucks in a breath when he gets it - a phrase here, some carefully-worded statements there, not enough to make into anything, unless you already know what you’re looking for. His eyes flick up to meet John’s. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” John confirms. “I don’t think anyone picked up on it, which was kind of the point, but it was all in there if anyone was looking for it.”
“Why code it?” Cam asks, frowning. “Why not just lay everything out? It’s not like-” He cuts off abruptly, face going pale. “The new regulations, the safety protocols. Holy shit.”
“Procedures and Policies of Stargate Command, updated 23 July 2010,” John recites easily. “Section Fourteen, Article 6.4b: ‘In the event of loss of containment on any base, colony, or other mission type, on Earth or offworld, Stargate Command has the right, responsibility, and authority to neutralize said containment issue in whatever method is deemed necessary by the acting commander of Stargate Command.’” He waits a moment, then shrugs. “When we figured out that this was pretty much exactly the kind of thing they were talking out, we figured it might be in our best interests to downplay it as much as we could.”
“You figured that Landry would send some sort of bomb through or something,” Cam guesses. He wants to throw up, because he can picture Landry doing exactly that, reading the reports and deciding that the risk to Earth was too high. He’d be well within his rights under the rules of the SGC, too, to just send a bomb through and eliminate the threat, and what’s worse, John clearly knows it.
“This whole thing started because some guy offworld sneezed on one of our guys,” John says by way of explanation. “By the time we figured out that we had a problem, every single person on the base was infected, and we just focused on trying to treat it.”
Cam closes his eyes and shakes his head, trying to assimilate this into his understanding of the situation and drawing more than a few blanks. “Why didn’t the quarantine protocols pick up on this thing and shut everything down?”
“It’s another point for this being engineered,” John replies. “If Atlantis doesn’t know that it’s a contagion, she won’t activate a lockdown.”
Cam rolls his eyes. “Have those protocols ever actually worked like they were supposed to?”
John grins back at him. “Not that I know of.”
“Great,” Cam sighs. “That’s just great.”
-0-
Ronon is deemed well enough to leave the infirmary towards the end of Cam’s second week in Atlantis. John gets the news early in the morning, and Cam’s a little angry at Sergeant Lifton for waking him, but the smile on John’s face when they get to the infirmary and see Ronon standing on his own two feet makes up for any negative feelings Cam might have had.
“It’s good to see you, buddy,” John says, clapping Ronon’s arm with his hand. “I’m - it’s really good to see you.”
“You too,” Ronon says, trying for a smile and pretty much failing. He nods at Cam. “Mitchell.”
“Ronon,” Cam returns, reaching out to shake his hand. Ronon’s grip is weaker than Cam thought it could ever be; not that he’s given a ton of thought to it, but Ronon’s always seemed like one of those guys who would have an iron grip until he died.
Then again, Cam figures, he almost had.
“Let’s get you back to your quarters,” John says, moving to Ronon’s side and slinging an arm around his waist. Ronon sags a little and John almost stumbles; Cam quickly steps to Ronon’s other side and counterbalances, and they manage to stay standing.
“Easy now,” Cam murmurs, angling to take most of Ronon’s weight. He’s not nearly as heavy as Cam would have thought, but then again, lean muscle turns to nothing pretty quickly with a month spent in bed.
Ronon’s quarters are, thankfully, closer to the infirmary than John’s; Ronon is still weak, even though Lifton had said he was good to go. Cam’s pretty sure that Lam would have kept him in the infirmary if they were in the SGC, but they’re in Pegasus, and for all her training and the care she’s been able to provide, Lifton has little more than a few advanced first aid courses to her name. Cam keeps his opinions to himself, because that’s still more medical training than he’s had, and helps Ronon into his quarters and sets him in his bed.
“Anything we can do for you,” Cam says, putting a radio on Ronon’s bedstand, “anything at all, you call, okay?”
“Sure,” Ronon replies, and he sounds like the walk has taken everything out of him. Cam’s pretty sure he’s going to fall right back to sleep as soon as he and John leave the room.
“Promise you’ll call,” John says, narrowing his eyes and folding his arms as he looks down at Ronon. For a moment, Cam has a flash of John as Colonel Sheppard, the steel in his voice and in his posture.
Ronon looks up blearily. “Sheppard, I’m planning on sleeping for at least twelve hours, okay? If I need you when I wake up, I’ll call.”
John frowns and cocks his head to the side. “We’ll be by in a few hours,” he says, turning towards Cam, who nods. “To check in.”
“Whatever,” Ronon replies with a yawn that reminds Cam of a tiger - or maybe a lion, with Ronon’s hair. “G’night, Sheppard, Mitchell.”
“Night,” Cam replies, tugging John out the door before he decides he wants to stay.
Cam walks John down the hall and into the transporter. As he brushes his finger over the part of the map that leads to their quarters, John leans into him, snaking an arm around Cam’s waist and resting his head on Cam’s shoulder.
“You okay?” Cam murmurs into his hair, and John nods.
“Worried,” he admits frankly. “He doesn’t look good, Cam. He still looks like he’s about to drop.”
“Hey,” Cam replies, shifting so he can pull John into him more fully. “This bug kicks your ass, remember? I’m sure you looked that bad when Lifton let you out of there, too.” John snorts, and Cam grins as he taps John on the shoulder. “You know what I mean, sweetheart.”
“Yeah,” John says. “Still, though. I never expected Ronon to look so-”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn’t have to. Cam can fill in the blanks well enough on his own.
-0-
They settle down in the bed when they get back to their room, Cam on his back and John pillowing his head on Cam’s chest. He’s tracing patterns only he can distinguish into Cam’s chest almost absently, fingers moving over the same space again and again, and after a while Cam figures out that they’re not random movements; some of it repeats, though not in any pattern Cam can figure out.
“Are you writing on me?” Cam asks softly, tilting his head so he can look down at John, who’s blushing a little.
“Maybe,” he admits, glaring when Cam lets out a laugh. “It’s Ancient.”
“Oh,” Cam replies, a little surprised. “I didn’t know you knew Ancient.”
“I don’t,” John says with a small, secret smile. “I know a few important phrases. ‘Systems operational’, ‘danger imminent’, ‘intruder alert’-”
“There are no intruders on my stomach,” Cam informs him, but John’s smile softens as he looks into Cam’s eyes.
“I love you,” he says quietly, propping himself up on one elbow and tracing the letters onto Cam’s skin again, distinct and sure. When he finishes, he leans up and places a gentle kiss against Cam’s lips.
“God, John,” Cam breathes, running his fingers through John’s hair, pulling him down to kiss him again and again. “Love you, babe.”
Everything is slow and careful; John’s nowhere near healthy enough for anything too vigorous. Cam lets him set the pace, lets him trail kisses down Cam’s jaw, lets him work their clothing off and toss it aside. They move together in an easy rhythm, familiar to both of them even after being apart for so long, and when they’re tangled together afterwards, Cam feels like a part of him he hadn’t known was still worried has been placated.
-0-
They check on Ronon a few hours later; as promised, he’s asleep, and John lets Cam lead him away without too much fanfare. They make their way up to the Gate room and dial in to Earth.
“Your request for an exploratory team has been approved, Colonel Mitchell,” Landry says after going through the usual checkin protocols. “You have enough supplies there to give them all the inoculation?”
“We do,” Cam confirms. “I’d like to request Hazmat for everyone going to that planet, sir. Even with the vaccine, I feel like we can’t really be too careful on this one.”
“I agree,” Landry nods. “Better safe than sorry is a good motto here. We’ll send the team and their equipment through at 2200 hours, local time.”
Cam does the calculations quickly; the times don’t line up between New Lantea and Earth. The team will come through in a little less than two hours.
“We’ll air out the guest rooms, sir,” Cam says, and that’s that.
He and John spend almost all of the time between the checkin and the scheduled arrival preparing. There will be a total of ten people coming through; in addition to Jackson and Dr. Brightman, Landry has seen fit to send two teams of Marines. “You never know,” Landry had shrugged, and Cam’s never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he’d just nodded.
The Gate activates right on time, and Cam’s standing by the staircase as Jackson steps through.
“Welcome to Atlantis,” he says, spreading his hands in front of him. “Again.”
“I wish it was under better circumstances,” Jackson murmurs, eyes sweeping around the room and settling on John, who’s making his way down the stairs. “How are things here?”
“We’re surviving,” Cam replies, slipping an arm around John’s waist as he reaches the bottom of the staircase. “How’s Earth?”
“Oh, you know,” Jackson replies, waving his hand around. “It’s - Earth.”
“Oh, is that all?” Cam asks dryly, watching the rest of the group move through the Gate with bags and boxes galore. “Wasn’t aware this was a supply mission.”
“Surprise,” Jackson says, glancing over his shoulder. “We’ve got food, medical, a whole bunch of things for the labs-”
“There are only three scientists left,” John cuts in, and Jackson blinks at him.
“That’s - yeah,” he fumbles. “Dr. Davids, Dr. Kusinagi, and Dr. Weller, right?” John nods, and Jackson continues. “They all had requests in when - before. I know that they might not be up to working yet, but I figured that if they were, they’d probably be waiting on what they had asked for.” He shrugs. “I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
“Thanks,” Cam says, because it looks like John isn’t sure of how to respond to that. “Let’s get you all down to the infirmary for your shots, shall we?”
-0-
Part Two
Author: somehowunbroken
Fandom: SGA/SG1
Characters: John/Cam
Word Count: 12,495
Rating: R
Summary: It's six months after the disease spread through Atlantis, crippling or killing everyone in the City, and Cam's more than ready to get out there to help.
Warnings: major character death, a few gruesome scenes
Notes: This is my story for sgareversebang 2011. Many, many thanks to padfootthegrim and stormylullabye for doing their usual amazing beta jobs, and to race_the_ace for creating this amazing piece of art and not freaking out at me when I told her it inspired me to kill off most of Atlantis by plague.
Atlantis is beautiful.
It’s not news, or it shouldn’t be; Cam’s been here twice before, and it’s not like it looks different now than it did either of those times. Maybe it’s just weird because Cam was expecting it to be different, was expecting Atlantis to bear the scars of her inhabitants.
It’s a little too much to ask of a city of metal and glass, though, even one with as much life as Atlantis has in her.
Cam shifts as John makes his way down the stairs, and there’s another beautiful thing, John walking under his own power, even if it is a lot slower than Cam would consider normal. John flashes him a grin as he eases down off of the staircase and makes his way across the floor to stand in front of Cam.
“Colonel Mitchell,” he says, and he sounds normal at least, voice just as healthy as Cam remembers. “Glad to see you made it in one piece.”
Cam drops his bag along with his formalities and pulls John in, wrapping his arms around John’s waist and taking his weight. He can tell how bad it is by the sheer fact that John lets him do it, that he even leans into Cam and lets out a little sigh. He’s not shaking, not trembling, but Cam can tell that he’s not fit for the duties he’s supposed to be performing, either.
It’s okay. Cam’s here for more than emotional support.
“I missed you,” John whispers into Cam’s neck, and it’s enough to make Cam close his eyes tightly, right there in the Gate room. John’s not the emotional type, never has been, so for him to freely admit something like that without any prompting says a lot about how he’s been, how this whole mess has been kicking his ass six ways from Sunday.
“I missed you, too,” Cam replies, pulling back but keeping an arm around John’s waist.
It’s fine. There’s almost nobody around to see it, anyway.
-0-
It had started innocently enough. About six months ago, AR-7 had been out on a routine milk run, trading with an ally on M5R-0F8, when one of the elders in the trading party had sneezed. It had been overlooked, because a sneeze is just a sneeze, but it hadn’t been long before the Lantean delegation had begun sneezing as well. Pegasus allergies, Corporal Anson had shrugged, glaring in the general direction of the Gate as the infirmary staff checked him over. We’re how many light years from Earth, and I still get hay fever.
The bug hadn’t triggered any of the fine-tuned quarantine protocols in Atlantis, and Dr. Keller herself had cleared the team after their mission, so AR-7 went back into the City, back into their various departments, and that had been that.
Until a few weeks later, when Rodney McKay had shown up in the infirmary, face swollen and eyes watery.
“It’s that damn bug the trading team brought back last month,” he’d complained as Dr. Keller frowned and drew a vial of blood. “The anthropologist on their team got sneezed on, she’s sleeping with one of my engineers, and now he’s spread it to the entire department.”
“I’m sure it’s just a cold, Rodney,” Keller had said, capping the vial and scribbling on the label. “We’ll run some tests and get in touch with you when we have some answers, okay?”
And that would have been that - should have been that, except for the fact that Dr. Eller, the anthropologist from AR-7 with whom Rodney was laying the blame for his cold, collapsed in the middle of the mess hall a few hours later.
Tests showed a strain of bacteria in her blood that was unfamiliar to the medical staff; subsequent tests found the same bacteria in McKay’s blood, to a lesser extent. Dr. Keller ordered immediate blood panels for the other three members of AR-7 and everyone in McKay’s engineering department. They all showed similar signs of infection, to varying degrees.
The thing of it was that the illness progressed slowly; it had taken three full weeks for it to get from sneezing and coughing to Dr. Eller fainting. A week after that she began to vomit blood; two weeks after that, she slipped into a coma.
Two months to the day after AR-7 returned from their trading mission, Anna Eller was dead.
The others had fallen a bit slower; Sergeant Nans died two weeks after Eller, and Dr. Simmons four days after that. Corporal Anson had clung to every last scrap of life he could find; it was a long four months before he finally breathed his last.
Dr. Keller had raced to contain the illness, but with no idea of what it was or how to stop it, there was little she could do. More and more people kept turning up sick, until she’d reached the point where she’d just ordered everybody tested.
Every sample came back positive. All they could do was sit and wait.
The reports to the SGC had been short and to the point, first alerting them to the problem and issuing a quarantine, then passing along research and ideas and asking for help. They’d passed along death notifications, too, piling up quicker and quicker as the months dragged on. The SGC debated sending help; on the one hand, they had some ideas, some resources that Atlantis didn’t have, and from all the reports coming from the City, they’d learned that the highest-ranking official in the medical department was a sergeant with basic field training; on the other hand, it was dangerous, possibly deadly. In the end, General Landry ruled that sending more personnel into Atlantis without a way to ensure their safety was a risk they couldn’t take, and that had been that.
Those left on Atlantis hadn’t even seemed surprised to hear the news.
-0-
“How bad is it?” Cam asks as John leads him down to the infirmary. There are more than a few ways to interpret the question, and Cam sees all of them ripple through John’s head as they make their way down the hall.
“Could be worse,” John finally replies, and Cam weighs it in his mind - on the one hand, John’s thinner than he’s ever been, even during the divorce, and he’s leaning more and more into Cam the further they walk; on the other, though, this disease has something like a ninety-four percent mortality rate, and John’s still hobbling along.
“Yeah,” Cam returns. “I suppose that’s the truth.”
The infirmary opens for John as they near the door, and Sergeant Lifton stands wearily when she sees who’s approaching. “Sir,” she says, lifting a weary salute in Cam’s direction.
“Sit down before you fall,” Cam tells her, and she smiles at him tiredly, walking to the medicine cabinet and pulling out a bottle of a thin blue liquid and a syringe. She shakes the bottle and draws some into the syringe, gesturing to the nearest table as she flicks the barrel of the needle. Cam sits on the table and bares his arm.
“It burns,” she warns, and then she’s pushing the medicine through his veins, and it’s all Cam can do not to scream as the fire runs through his system.
It takes a minute for Cam to register anything aside from the white-hot pain in every inch of his body, but eventually he feels John’s hand running up and down his arm, hears John murmuring into his ear. He concentrates on that, pulling himself out of the pain and latching onto John. Slowly, he opens his eyes and blinks as the infirmary comes back into view.
“Sorry,” Sergeant Lifton is saying, and the smile on her face this time is kind, sympathetic. “We haven’t found a way to make it hurt less without diminishing its effectiveness.”
“Hey,” Cam says weakly, “thanks. At least you warned me, right?”
She just nods before moving away, walking into the back of the infirmary, curtained off so passers-by can’t look in.
So passers-by don’t have to watch the remaining sick waste away.
They’d come up with an inoculation about a month ago. There still isn’t a cure, isn’t even really a treatment, but Atlantis now has the ability to prevent others from getting the disease, and that’s a miracle enough on its own. It’s why Cam was allowed to come through.
He’s got an assignment here in Atlantis; he’s supposed to evaluate the situation, report back to the SGC, and give his recommendations. Unofficially, he’s also here as a support for John; he’d been doing fine with the day-to-day running of what had effectively become a military hospital until he, too, had been stricken with the disease about six weeks ago.
Cam can only thank his lucky stars that John had been one of the fortunate ones who had, for some reason that nobody can quite explain, survived the disease.
“Okay,” Cam says after a few minutes of sitting on the gurney. “Okay, let’s get me settled into some quarters so I can sleep this off, how’s that sound?”
“Sounds good to me,” John offers, turning to the curtain that leads to the rest of the infirmary. “Sergeant Lifton, are we good to go?”
Lifton reappears form behind the curtain. “Dizzy?” she asks Cam, who shakes his head. “Good. You should be fine, then.” She turns to John. “Any coughing, nausea, vomiting-”
“I know,” John cuts her off, and they share a hollow kind of look, one that Cam has seen on far too many survivors. “Hope we don’t see you, Sergeant.”
“Same here,” Lifton replies as she ducks back behind the curtain.
Cam gets off the bed carefully, testing his legs beneath him as he lets go of the frame. He doesn’t wobble, and he’s pretty grateful for that, because he’s pretty sure Lifton would order him back into the bed for observation. She’d be within her right to do so; the vaccine is only a month old, and though it’s worked on everyone it’s been tried on so far, the truth of it is that it just hasn’t been tested on many people. They haven’t had the chance.
He stays steady on his feet, though, and he smiles at John as he takes a few steps forward.
“Let’s go,” John says, grabbing Cam’s hand in his own and heading for the door. He’s walking slowly, but Cam knows that he’s not trying to cater to any perceived weakness; John honestly can’t go any faster, not right now.
Maybe not ever again, but Cam’s trying for optimism.
-0-
John’s quarters are clear on the other side of the City, and even with the transporter system, it takes nearly an hour to get there. They have to pause every ten minutes or so.
“Sorry,” John says when he lets go of Cam and watches him slump against the wall. Cam’s ridiculously grateful for the cool metal beneath his cheek. “Under normal circumstances we’d keep you in the infirmary, but we’re a little short on beds at the moment.”
He doesn’t add and I can’t drag you back by myself to the end of the sentence, but Cam knows they’re not just stopping because the vaccine is getting to him. John’s pale, and his hands have started to tremble a little.
“It’s okay,” Cam replies instead of remarking on it. “I’ll be good once I sleep it off, right?”
John gives him a nod and a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and Cam slings his arm back around John’s waist and they make their way to the next transporter.
-0-
Cam sleeps for eleven hours, but when he finally wakes, he feels - fine. Back to his normal self, actually, and he’s grateful for that, even moreso when he turns over in the bed and finds John curled up next to him, eyes open and exhausted. Cam curls an arm around him automatically, drawing John in until they’re tangled together, arms and legs an almost-indistinguishable mess.
“I was scared,” Cam says into John’s hair, and he feels John’s arms tighten around his waist in response. “Quarantine, John, and then Landry said he wasn’t letting anyone else through. And then the reports stopped coming for a while-”
“Sorry,” John murmurs against his chest. “There weren’t enough people to man the Gate for transmissions for a little while there.”
“I know,” Cam sighs, keeping them pulled close together. “I don’t blame you, sweetheart, just sharing my feelings here.”
John huffs a sigh against Cam’s chest, and the fact that he’s feeling well enough to get bent out of shape at the endearment is heartening. It’s been a give-and-take thing since they began their relationship; Cam’s always been an endearments sort of guy, no matter who he was with, while John has been more the last names type. It hasn’t stopped Cam, though, not once, and like it or not, John will always be darling and sweetheart and baby to Cam.
(“It’s not demeaning,” he’d tried explaining once. “Really, John, it’s not.”
“I’m not your girlfriend,” John had retorted. “I really wish you’d stop thinking I am.”
“I don’t want you to be my girlfriend,” Cam had replied evenly. “It’s just - that’s who I am, baby, that’s me.”
John had rolled his eyes and sighed, but the nicknames have made a softness appear in his eyes ever since, so Cam’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually mind.)
Cam grins at the memory and John pulls back, scowling halfheartedly up at him. “You just did that to get a rise out of me,” he accuses.
“Nope,” Cam replies, kissing the tip of John’s nose. “Come on, darlin’, does that sound like something I’d do?”
John rolls his eyes as Cam laughs. “You’re such a pain in the ass,” he sighs as he settles back against Cam’s chest.
“You love me anyway,” Cam counters, the same response he always gives to the statement, but John just nods against his chest without saying a word, so Cam wraps him up again and holds him in the silence for a while. He watches as the light plays across the ceiling and feels John drift in his arms, somewhere between awake and asleep.
“We should get up,” Cam says after a while. The sun’s pretty high in the sky, and he’s starting to get hungry.
John’s quiet for a minute. “There really aren’t any deadlines around here any more,” he says finally. “Nobody to meet, nobody to answer to.” He shrugs a shoulder. “Not saying we should stay in bed forever, just… making sure you realize that.”
Cam knows; of course he knows. Atlantis had gone back to Pegasus with just over three hundred people, all told, and the number had been almost exactly that (three hundred and eight , his mind supplies helpfully) when the outbreak had occurred. There are thirty-four people left in Atlantis, including the ones in the infirmary waiting to die.
Cam hadn’t known many of the Atlantis personnel by more than name. He’d known John’s team, of course - McKay was a force to be reckoned with, and Cam had never quite understood how he and John had been such good friends. Ronon and Teyla were like what would happen if you mixed Jackson, Sam, and Teal’c up and split them into two people, in the least horrifying way possible.
Ronon is the only one of them left now. McKay had been among the first to die after the members of AR-7, and Teyla had passed shortly before John fell sick. Her husband had been in the Athosian settlement with her kid during the outbreak, and it’s one of those small mercies that Cam’s thankful for in this whole mess. Losing a parent at three is terrible, and there’s nothing that can make it better, but at least the kid will live to mourn. Cam can’t imagine a kid surviving a sickness like this.
Ronon’s still sick, though apparently he’s going to be one of the lucky ones. At the last report, his fever had fallen if not broken completely, and he’d slipped back into consciousness. John had sounded so relieved when reporting the news, like he was just glad that not everyone was going to die, and that’s when Cam had put his foot down and started arranging the mission.
He’s drawn back to the present when John pulls out of his arms and makes his way to the bathroom. “Come on, then,” he calls back to Cam. “Shower, and we’ll see what Adam found for lunch.”
-0-
Adam is Sergeant Stackhouse, another survivor of the disease, and he’s stirring a pot of something that smells pretty fantastic. Cam keeps his arm around John’s waist as they make their way into the kitchen.
“Smells pretty good,” Cam says as John grips the counter and reaches for a bowl and spoon. Cam takes the utensils from him when they’re offered and holds the bowl out for some of the violently colored goop from the pot.
“Beets,” Stackhouse says by way of explanation. “Or, well, almost-beets from M8R-124, and the carrot-things from ML6-8S1, and those sorta-peas from-”
“Vegetable soup,” Cam cuts him off. “Local fare. Like I said, Sergeant, it smells great.”
Stackhouse grins at him. “Glad to hear it, sir.” He waves out towards the empty seating area. “We’ve got vacancies today, so feel free to sit wherever you’d like.”
John snorts and walks for the door, snagging a mug of something on the way past; Cam hadn’t noticed on the way in, but there are two on the counter, so he grabs the other and follows John out. They make their way to a nearby table and sit.
John buries his face in the steaming mug and sighs happily. Cam sniffs his; it smells like honey and ginger, a few other spices he can’t place, and it tastes like weak cider. It’s not bad, and when Cam tastes the soup, he’s not surprised to find that it’s more than passable, too.
“Stackhouse isn’t half-bad in the kitchen,” Cam observes, chasing a piece of what looks like a red blueberry but tastes like a pea around his bowl. John shifts, and there’s something tense in the gesture. Cam’s gotten good at hearing what John’s not saying over the years, and he’s hearing something loud and clear right now. “What did I say?”
John shrugs. “Nothing. No, really,” he continues when Cam starts to frown at him. “We just - there’s not that many of us, you know? We’ve been doing the first name thing. It’s weird to know that after all we’ve been through together, everything we’ve survived, we’re gonna have to go back to what it was like before.”
Cam’s starting to get the feeling that the people left in Atlantis aren’t going to be able to do that, and he’s not sure exactly what to do about that yet. He nabs the pea-thing and chews it thoughtfully.
“I think they want to discharge all of you on medical,” Cam says eventually, and predictably, John stiffens and pulls back. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen, John, or that I’m going to back it, but you need to know that it’s been put on the table.”
“We’re fine,” John says fiercely, clutching his mug of tea defensively. “I’m fine, everyone’s fine.”
“John,” Cam tries, but John stands up and walks across the mess hall, bringing his dishes into the kitchen before walking out.
Cam just watches him go; sure, he could catch John easily, try to talk him down, but he knows that’s just adding insult to injury at this point.
-0-
“I’m sorry,” Cam hears from the doorway, and he looks up from the desk in John’s office as John makes his way to slump in one of the chairs. “Not your fault, don’t shoot the messenger, all that jazz.” He shifts, settling in more fully. “Sorry I blew up at you.”
Cam smiles and shuts the file he’s been reading. “Don’t worry about it, John.”
“Yeah,” John replies, shaking his head. “I figured you’d say that, but I still feel pretty crappy about it.”
“They sent me for a reason,” Cam points out with a grin. “Easier to hear it from me than someone you don’t know so well.” He raises a hand to forestall John’s protests. “General Landry doesn’t know, but you know Sam does, and she’s in position to take over the SGC when he retires. She got the paperwork sorted out so I could come.”
John lets out a breath and tilts his head back, closing his eyes. His head rests against the back of the chair and he looks - different, Cam supposes, more like he used to, when the only things stressing him out were the Wraith and the Replicators, enemies he could fight and beat. “I don’t need to be drummed out on medical,” he says. “I know it looks bad, but really, Cam, I know my limits. I’m not there yet. Hell, I’m getting better - I couldn’t even walk a few weeks ago, and I know it’s still slow going, but I’ll be back in shape eventually.”
His eyes plead with Cam, as if he’s the one making the decision and John might be able to convince him to change his mind if he tries hard enough. “Give us some time.”
“Not my choice, sweetheart,” Cam murmurs as he walks around the desk and crouches in front of John, resting his hands just above his partner’s knees. “I’m here to report on the situation and give my recommendations, but it’s not up to me in the end.”
“I can’t lose Atlantis,” John says, and it’s nothing Cam doesn’t already know. “I can’t, Cam.”
Cam pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, meeting John’s gaze and wondering if he should just tell him the rest of the news from the SGC, or if that should maybe wait. Sometimes he forgets, though, that John can read him as easily as he can read John.
“Tell me,” John says, covering Cam’s hand with his own and lifting his mouth into that half-smirk that Cam’s missed all this time. “I promise I’m not gonna blow up and run away again.”
Cam takes a breath and turns his hand under John’s, holding it firmly. “If they decide that you’re not fit for duty, John, that’s it. They’ll pull out of Atlantis, out of Pegasus entirely.”
-0-
“You’re good,” Sergeant Lifton says with a smile, pulling the stethoscope away from Cam’s chest. “As long as your bloodwork checks out, sir, I’ll be calling this a complete success.”
“Glad to hear it,” Cam returns with an easy grin, tugging his shirt back into position and threading his fingers through John’s. He’d insisted on staying with Cam through the checkup, and Cam has to wonder how many people John has sent to the infirmary and just never seen well again. He’s sure the number is higher than it has any right to be.
“Can we go?” John asks Lifton, who nods her head as she leans over to label the test tube. Cam stands and tugs John off the stretcher, sliding his arm smoothly around John’s waist and turning to Lifton.
“Thanks,” he says, and she flashes them a smile before going back to her work.
They head back to the living quarters, and Cam helps John change out of his clothing and into a pair of sweats and a tee that used to fit him a lot better. John tumbles into bed with a sleepy smile and Cam curls around him, pulling John into his arms and running a hand up and down his back.
John needs to sleep a lot more than he used to. He’s always been the kind that can function on less; Cam’s watched him function for two straight days on less than two hours’ sleep, and it was rare that Cam was out of bed before John.
That was before, though; now, John sleeps long and hard, like he’s catching up from a lifetime of going without.
John’s out in less than five minutes, snoring softly into the pillow. Cam keeps his arm around John’s waist, tucking his fingers between John’s hip and the mattress as he pulls John fully against his frame. He’ll have to move before he drifts off or he’ll wake up with one hell of a cramp in his arm, but for now, he’s content enough to lie there and let John breathe against him.
Cam lets his mind wander, thinking through the details he’d known coming in and what he’s learned since arriving. The disease had come from M5R-0F8, and had spread through the City pretty efficiently; nobody had been immune, and that included the Pegasus natives. The disease is almost assuredly fatal, and they haven’t been able to synthesize a cure. Even the vaccine had been a fortuitous accident.
Cam has a few questions - okay, he has a lot of questions, but he has some that take precedence over the rest. If the disease is native to the Pegasus Galaxy, why hadn’t Ronon and Teyla been familiar with it? Was it just native to M5R-0F8? Why weren’t they able to find a cure?
Cam’s first report to the SGC was due at the end of the week. He’d send his first set of recommendations back then: send an exploratory team through for intel gathering on planet of origin, he mentally composes. Request Dr. Jackson as cultural liaison and Dr. Brightman for medical assistance, with a team of Marines for tactical support.
In the meantime, Cam will have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to phrase the state of things here in Atlantis. He knows, without a doubt, that Landry would take one look at a straight-on honest report and order everyone home, but Cam knows what losing Atlantis would mean - to Earth, sure, but to John especially, and he’ll put that off for as long as he can.
Hopefully, he can put it off forever.
-0-
The week goes by without incidents of any kind, and Cam’s grateful if only because he knows John, knows how he’d push himself beyond his limits if something came up. He mentions it after the wormhole to Earth disconnects, all reports carefully worded and sent along for review.
“Glad the Wraith haven’t dropped by recently,” he remarks, and John goes kind of quiet, kind of still in a way that he rarely is. Cam tenses. “What?”
“They haven’t,” John says quietly, before clearing his throat and starting again. “They haven’t been by. Not once since the whole thing started. We, uh, we haven’t seen or heard anything from them.”
Cam has no response for that, honestly. “Six months?” he asks, a little dumbfounded.
“Six months,” John confirms, lifting one shoulder. “Almost seven.”
Cam sits back in his chair. “And nobody connected the dots on that before now.”
John shrugs again. “Two explanations,” he offers, holding up a finger. “One, they caught it too, and they’re just as hard-hit by it as we are.” A second finger goes up. “Two, they’re responsible for it and figured that either we’re all dead by now or not enough of a threat to worry about.”
“Jesus,” Cam breathes out. “So either they’re no longer a threat, or they’ve successfully eliminated the greatest threat to them.”
“Pretty much,” John agrees candidly.
“That’s a pretty low-key reaction for such a big revelation,” Cam notes, raising an eyebrow at John in an attempt to cover some of the shocked reeling he’s got going on in his stomach.
“It’s not a new thought for me,” John replies evenly. “I mean, I’ve had a while to think about it.”
“Jesus,” Cam repeats. “How likely do you think the Wraith are to resort to biological warfare?”
John rocks his head from side to side. “Normally, I’d say that they wouldn’t deplete their food source by just offing humans, but we’re kind of a pain in their asses, so they might risk it just for us.”
“Any chance you can get in touch with that one Wraith and find out?”
John shakes his head. “We tried a couple of months ago, but there’s not really an exact science to hailing him. We left a message for him, but he doesn’t stop by that planet all the time.” He lifts a shoulder. “He might not have gotten it yet, he might not want to get in touch with us for whatever reason, he might be dead. I really have no way of knowing.”
Cam blows out a breath. “Have you gated back to M5R-0F8 since the outbreak?”
“Yeah,” John nods. “When Eller and Nans first got sick, we gave them a call. The guy we spoke to said the place was decimated.” He draws in a slow breath and holds it for a few seconds before deflating a little in the chair. “Rodney worked out a probability model based on their rate of infection and apparent rate of survival. He figured we’d be less affected because of our medical advances and sanitation standards.” He tries to smile, but it’s more of a grimace than anything else. “Turns out that neither of those things matter when everyone’s already been exposed and you have no idea what it is that you’re supposed to be treating.”
“None of this was in the reports you sent back,” Cam says, but he’s going through everything in his head, everything that had come out of Atlantis, trying to put the pieces together and come up with the scenario John’s giving him now. He sucks in a breath when he gets it - a phrase here, some carefully-worded statements there, not enough to make into anything, unless you already know what you’re looking for. His eyes flick up to meet John’s. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” John confirms. “I don’t think anyone picked up on it, which was kind of the point, but it was all in there if anyone was looking for it.”
“Why code it?” Cam asks, frowning. “Why not just lay everything out? It’s not like-” He cuts off abruptly, face going pale. “The new regulations, the safety protocols. Holy shit.”
“Procedures and Policies of Stargate Command, updated 23 July 2010,” John recites easily. “Section Fourteen, Article 6.4b: ‘In the event of loss of containment on any base, colony, or other mission type, on Earth or offworld, Stargate Command has the right, responsibility, and authority to neutralize said containment issue in whatever method is deemed necessary by the acting commander of Stargate Command.’” He waits a moment, then shrugs. “When we figured out that this was pretty much exactly the kind of thing they were talking out, we figured it might be in our best interests to downplay it as much as we could.”
“You figured that Landry would send some sort of bomb through or something,” Cam guesses. He wants to throw up, because he can picture Landry doing exactly that, reading the reports and deciding that the risk to Earth was too high. He’d be well within his rights under the rules of the SGC, too, to just send a bomb through and eliminate the threat, and what’s worse, John clearly knows it.
“This whole thing started because some guy offworld sneezed on one of our guys,” John says by way of explanation. “By the time we figured out that we had a problem, every single person on the base was infected, and we just focused on trying to treat it.”
Cam closes his eyes and shakes his head, trying to assimilate this into his understanding of the situation and drawing more than a few blanks. “Why didn’t the quarantine protocols pick up on this thing and shut everything down?”
“It’s another point for this being engineered,” John replies. “If Atlantis doesn’t know that it’s a contagion, she won’t activate a lockdown.”
Cam rolls his eyes. “Have those protocols ever actually worked like they were supposed to?”
John grins back at him. “Not that I know of.”
“Great,” Cam sighs. “That’s just great.”
-0-
Ronon is deemed well enough to leave the infirmary towards the end of Cam’s second week in Atlantis. John gets the news early in the morning, and Cam’s a little angry at Sergeant Lifton for waking him, but the smile on John’s face when they get to the infirmary and see Ronon standing on his own two feet makes up for any negative feelings Cam might have had.
“It’s good to see you, buddy,” John says, clapping Ronon’s arm with his hand. “I’m - it’s really good to see you.”
“You too,” Ronon says, trying for a smile and pretty much failing. He nods at Cam. “Mitchell.”
“Ronon,” Cam returns, reaching out to shake his hand. Ronon’s grip is weaker than Cam thought it could ever be; not that he’s given a ton of thought to it, but Ronon’s always seemed like one of those guys who would have an iron grip until he died.
Then again, Cam figures, he almost had.
“Let’s get you back to your quarters,” John says, moving to Ronon’s side and slinging an arm around his waist. Ronon sags a little and John almost stumbles; Cam quickly steps to Ronon’s other side and counterbalances, and they manage to stay standing.
“Easy now,” Cam murmurs, angling to take most of Ronon’s weight. He’s not nearly as heavy as Cam would have thought, but then again, lean muscle turns to nothing pretty quickly with a month spent in bed.
Ronon’s quarters are, thankfully, closer to the infirmary than John’s; Ronon is still weak, even though Lifton had said he was good to go. Cam’s pretty sure that Lam would have kept him in the infirmary if they were in the SGC, but they’re in Pegasus, and for all her training and the care she’s been able to provide, Lifton has little more than a few advanced first aid courses to her name. Cam keeps his opinions to himself, because that’s still more medical training than he’s had, and helps Ronon into his quarters and sets him in his bed.
“Anything we can do for you,” Cam says, putting a radio on Ronon’s bedstand, “anything at all, you call, okay?”
“Sure,” Ronon replies, and he sounds like the walk has taken everything out of him. Cam’s pretty sure he’s going to fall right back to sleep as soon as he and John leave the room.
“Promise you’ll call,” John says, narrowing his eyes and folding his arms as he looks down at Ronon. For a moment, Cam has a flash of John as Colonel Sheppard, the steel in his voice and in his posture.
Ronon looks up blearily. “Sheppard, I’m planning on sleeping for at least twelve hours, okay? If I need you when I wake up, I’ll call.”
John frowns and cocks his head to the side. “We’ll be by in a few hours,” he says, turning towards Cam, who nods. “To check in.”
“Whatever,” Ronon replies with a yawn that reminds Cam of a tiger - or maybe a lion, with Ronon’s hair. “G’night, Sheppard, Mitchell.”
“Night,” Cam replies, tugging John out the door before he decides he wants to stay.
Cam walks John down the hall and into the transporter. As he brushes his finger over the part of the map that leads to their quarters, John leans into him, snaking an arm around Cam’s waist and resting his head on Cam’s shoulder.
“You okay?” Cam murmurs into his hair, and John nods.
“Worried,” he admits frankly. “He doesn’t look good, Cam. He still looks like he’s about to drop.”
“Hey,” Cam replies, shifting so he can pull John into him more fully. “This bug kicks your ass, remember? I’m sure you looked that bad when Lifton let you out of there, too.” John snorts, and Cam grins as he taps John on the shoulder. “You know what I mean, sweetheart.”
“Yeah,” John says. “Still, though. I never expected Ronon to look so-”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn’t have to. Cam can fill in the blanks well enough on his own.
-0-
They settle down in the bed when they get back to their room, Cam on his back and John pillowing his head on Cam’s chest. He’s tracing patterns only he can distinguish into Cam’s chest almost absently, fingers moving over the same space again and again, and after a while Cam figures out that they’re not random movements; some of it repeats, though not in any pattern Cam can figure out.
“Are you writing on me?” Cam asks softly, tilting his head so he can look down at John, who’s blushing a little.
“Maybe,” he admits, glaring when Cam lets out a laugh. “It’s Ancient.”
“Oh,” Cam replies, a little surprised. “I didn’t know you knew Ancient.”
“I don’t,” John says with a small, secret smile. “I know a few important phrases. ‘Systems operational’, ‘danger imminent’, ‘intruder alert’-”
“There are no intruders on my stomach,” Cam informs him, but John’s smile softens as he looks into Cam’s eyes.
“I love you,” he says quietly, propping himself up on one elbow and tracing the letters onto Cam’s skin again, distinct and sure. When he finishes, he leans up and places a gentle kiss against Cam’s lips.
“God, John,” Cam breathes, running his fingers through John’s hair, pulling him down to kiss him again and again. “Love you, babe.”
Everything is slow and careful; John’s nowhere near healthy enough for anything too vigorous. Cam lets him set the pace, lets him trail kisses down Cam’s jaw, lets him work their clothing off and toss it aside. They move together in an easy rhythm, familiar to both of them even after being apart for so long, and when they’re tangled together afterwards, Cam feels like a part of him he hadn’t known was still worried has been placated.
-0-
They check on Ronon a few hours later; as promised, he’s asleep, and John lets Cam lead him away without too much fanfare. They make their way up to the Gate room and dial in to Earth.
“Your request for an exploratory team has been approved, Colonel Mitchell,” Landry says after going through the usual checkin protocols. “You have enough supplies there to give them all the inoculation?”
“We do,” Cam confirms. “I’d like to request Hazmat for everyone going to that planet, sir. Even with the vaccine, I feel like we can’t really be too careful on this one.”
“I agree,” Landry nods. “Better safe than sorry is a good motto here. We’ll send the team and their equipment through at 2200 hours, local time.”
Cam does the calculations quickly; the times don’t line up between New Lantea and Earth. The team will come through in a little less than two hours.
“We’ll air out the guest rooms, sir,” Cam says, and that’s that.
He and John spend almost all of the time between the checkin and the scheduled arrival preparing. There will be a total of ten people coming through; in addition to Jackson and Dr. Brightman, Landry has seen fit to send two teams of Marines. “You never know,” Landry had shrugged, and Cam’s never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he’d just nodded.
The Gate activates right on time, and Cam’s standing by the staircase as Jackson steps through.
“Welcome to Atlantis,” he says, spreading his hands in front of him. “Again.”
“I wish it was under better circumstances,” Jackson murmurs, eyes sweeping around the room and settling on John, who’s making his way down the stairs. “How are things here?”
“We’re surviving,” Cam replies, slipping an arm around John’s waist as he reaches the bottom of the staircase. “How’s Earth?”
“Oh, you know,” Jackson replies, waving his hand around. “It’s - Earth.”
“Oh, is that all?” Cam asks dryly, watching the rest of the group move through the Gate with bags and boxes galore. “Wasn’t aware this was a supply mission.”
“Surprise,” Jackson says, glancing over his shoulder. “We’ve got food, medical, a whole bunch of things for the labs-”
“There are only three scientists left,” John cuts in, and Jackson blinks at him.
“That’s - yeah,” he fumbles. “Dr. Davids, Dr. Kusinagi, and Dr. Weller, right?” John nods, and Jackson continues. “They all had requests in when - before. I know that they might not be up to working yet, but I figured that if they were, they’d probably be waiting on what they had asked for.” He shrugs. “I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
“Thanks,” Cam says, because it looks like John isn’t sure of how to respond to that. “Let’s get you all down to the infirmary for your shots, shall we?”
-0-
Part Two