All These Things That I've Done
Title: All These Things That I've Done
Rated: PG13
Pairings: McKay/Sheppard, implied Sheppard/Mitchell, Teyla/Trip
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Elizabeth Weir, Aiden Ford, Teyla Emmagen, Cameron Mitchell, Ronon Dex, Richard Woolsey, Sim.
Genre: SGA/Star Trek (mostly Enterprise) fusion
Summary: If Jonathan Archer is the Federation's architect, then John Sheppard is the carpenter. Sweat and tears and secrets make up its walls, and blood welds it all together.
Disclaimer: I don't own Atlantis, or the Star Trek universe.
Notes: I apologize to any Trek buffs out there. The only Trek I ever really watched was Voyager. Most of what I've seen of Enterprise is just after seeing Conner Trineer on SGA and saying "ooooh, pretty," and gorging myself on Trip episodes on youtube so there might be some inconsistencies. This is just a brief attempt to map the SGA people into the Star Trek universe. I might like to play around a little more in this 'verse if people are into it, specifically Teyla/Trip. Title is from the Killers' song by the same name. Spoilers for: Similitude, First Flight, Andorian Incident, To Boldly Go, Divergence, Michael.
All These Things That I've Done
The Enterprise is the shinning light of the fleet, a beacon in the darkness; while the Atlantis is a creature of the dark itself, sweeping in behind while the crowd is momentarily dazzled.
Archer may be soulfull and brash, stubborn and courageous. He stands proud in front of the masses and sets hearts ablaze with the passion behind his words and the sparkle in his eyes. He is Starfleet's darling boy, the so-called architect of the Federation. But there's so much the adoring crowds don't know.
Whispered behind closed doors at the highest level, in vieled code and in the shadowy dark of space, there is another name. If Jonathan Archer is the Federation's architect, then John Sheppard is the carpenter. Sweat and tears and secrets make up its walls, and blood welds it all together.
Archer negotiated a final peace with the Xindi, but it was Sheppard who razed their cities to the ground and made sure it would be decades before the were ever heard from again.
Archer may have won the favor of a few key Andorians, but Sheppard earned their vote with even more well placed kidnappings.
And the Vulcans, the poor trusting Vulcans, if only they knew the things brewing in Carson Beckett's laboratory. On Sheppard's order, their precious logic could be gone in an instant, their entire homeworld lost to civil war in the blink of an eye.
When you meet him, John Sheppard can fool you with his charm and his boyish good looks. He can dazzle you with his honest love for exploration or his fierce loyalty to the crew he considers a family. But don't, even for second, forget the brutal iron fist beneath the soft velvet exterior.
Idiots, idiots, Rodney McKay is surrounded by idiots. And the worst part of it is that these bright eyed young engineers think that just because the passed a physical and a psych screening along with their engineering degree, they're somehow better than the contractors that have been in this business since they were in diapers. Unfortunately, as his Starfleet liason, Captain Elizabeth Weir, has pointed out on multiple occasions, firing one every time they make a boneheaded move will leave Rodney training recruits until the day he dies.
And Rodney does need them. One of the reasons he's not an officer (along with his asthma, citrus allergy, sensitivity to sunlight,and supposed hypochondria and narcissistic complex) is the fact that he'd rather take something apart than build it any day. He deconstructs alien technology, reverse engineers it, and the idiots in the monkey suits build it. It's a lucrative arrangement, and a fun one. It's enough to keep him occupied at least, when he's definitely not thinking about the stars, the hum of the engines all around him, the great void in all its glorious potential. Any cargo freighter would take him in heartbeat, one of the colonies, too, but frontier life is just like Earth, but with a rationed supply of coffee. No, what Rodney wants is the one thing you need that uniform to have.
So he doesn't think about it, no matter how many times he sees those bright blue jumpsuits, or creates another piece of one of their fabled ships. He doesn't even think about it when he drags his heels out the door, away from Starfleet headquarters and the frat house that is the 602 club, catching a public transport over to Castro street and the historic bars still standing to this day. He knows the days of the gayborhood are long past, but the millennial architecture and the many painted rainbows are the opposite of Starfleet and its stainless hypermodernity.
The night is cool and Rodney's nerves more fragile than usual. Reading through Vulcan schematics always manages to tire him out - as though they can actually transmit their superior little lectures and their technicolor monotony directly from the page. So, even though he frowns on paranormal superstitions and the associated voodoo, Rodney makes for the Haunt.
He's not sure what the club used to be called, but now it's half lounge, half memorial service, the polished black walls covered with picture frames - black and white photos of men lost to AIDS who are said to still haunt its grounds. It's loonier than an albino Rigellian space moth, of course, but Rodney finds that he enjoys the atmosphere of hushed reverence the place provides. Not to mention the high quality of the escorts that tend to linger there.
The first thing Rodney notices (after the millennial style blacklit surface of the bar), is the man seemingly holding court on one of the black velvet chase lounge in the far corner. He's wearing black slacks and a tight black t-shirt that clings in a way that lets you see the outline of his pecs, the strength of his biceps, and his perfect narrow waist. His hair is black, too, and tousled looking, that just rolled out of bed look that others make look forced. He pulls it off with ease. Serious hazel eyes are offset by delicate features and pale, almost vulnerable looking skin.
Other than space, Rodney has never looked at anything else like this. He just wants plain and simple. Unfortunately, so do about a dozen others, ranging from barely legal tweasies to distinguished refined gentlemen who could pass for an Admiral if given the right uniform. And this man sits, simultaneously smiling at everyone and at no one. Rodney doesn't need to deal with this plebeian hoard, so he plans to pass right on by and up the spiral staircase to the top level and the VIP bar and private rooms, where the escorts tend to hang out.
But he can't help but look, drawn in as though this man were himself a siren. For a second, their gazes lock and Rodney can read promise in that look, like the void between the stars themselves might be lurking there. It's almost painful to continue on his way, but he manages somehow, wishing all the while that he'd just gone home and sat down for Dr. Who. The twenty fifth doctor wasn't exactly an eyesore and it was better than this - so close and yet a million lightyears away.
"Martini, please, and I'm deathly allergic to citrus, so--"
"I know, Dr. McKay," the bartender replies (a forgettable young tweasy, among a thousand young tweasies). At least this place still serves voldka, instead of all those new alien drinks that are constantly in vogue.
"Make that two." The voice is like silk, but a thousand times as soft, low and husky like sex distilled.
A whole swarm of flies could have entered Rodney's mouth, it's hanging open so wide. "Um, er, it's you."
The man in black from downstairs smiles seductively back. Rodney's offputting awkwardness seems not to even put a dent in him. "You can call me John." In a strange twist of formality, he holds out his hand for Rodney to shake. His grip is firm and his hands rougher and more calloused than Rodney would have expected.
"I'm Rodney. Um, Rodney McKay. Doctor Rodney McKay."
"Nice to meet you, Doctor."
John doesn't just slouch back, he seems to meld into the scenery, like someone painted him onto the smooth surface of the bar.
"So, your, er, your adoring fans won't be missing you?"
John shrugs, like the ten people he could have bedded with the snap of a finger were nothing more than air, forgotten on the exhale. "They'll live. I saw what I wanted. And what I want, I'm not afraid to take." His voice is sex itself, and Rodney's grateful for the sturdy surface of the bar in front of him, the liquid courage of a voldka martini sliding down his throat.
John beats Rodney to give his thumbprint on the tab. "So you're a Doctor, huh? Care to give me a checkup?" It's an awful line, but it's as though John knows that no one would dare to call him on it. Rodney's certainly not that stupid.
"I'm not the kind of Doctor, unfortunately." He gives John an appreciative once over, just in case he might've missed the fact that its impossible for anyone not to want him.
"Too bad. What kind of Doctor are you, then?"
"Astrophysics, though I've moved out of the theoretical field into Starfleet R&D."
"I would say, you can research me, but that'd be a little corny."
"More than a little. What do you charge?" Rodney feels that there's no shame in it. He's under no illusions that he's here for anything but sex. And when he takes the time to look, he doesn't usually have trouble finding someone genuinely interested. He pays men like John for their expediency and skill, not for their pick up lines.
John chuckles. This time it's deep and throaty, almost a moan. "I'm not for sale, McKay. And if I was, you definitely couldn't afford me. Now, do you want to rent out a room, or would you rather head back to your place?"
Rodney lets his mouth hang open for just a second. It's not that he's not perfectly attractive, only that if he'd had his pick out of John's little fan club, he wouldn't have gone off to find someone like himself. "You want to-- With me?"
"Don't see anybody else around here," John replies, completely ignoring the veritable hoard watching them from the wings. "Unless you don't want to."
"Oh, I want--" Rodney doesn't even get to finish before John is leaning forward and kissing him, practically fishing for his tonsils with the raunchiest, most possessive kiss that Rodney has ever experienced.
John finishes it off with one last nibble to Rodney's lower lip. "So what are we waiting for?"
Four hours later, Rodney wakes, sore and sated, to a soft chirping sound. John is whispering quietly into some wrist communicator Rodney hadn't even know was beneath his black sweatband, while pulling up his pants (no underwear) with the other hand.
"Huh?"
John smiles at him, almost fondly, before slinking over and giving Rodney a solid kiss on the lips. "I'll see you around," he says, before stepping onto the balcony, the silver shimmer of the transporter left in his wake.
Rodney doesn't expect that he'll actually see the man again, of course. If not for slight pull in his shoulder muscles, it might've been easy to chalk the whole thing up to a particularly vivid wet dream. But as Rodney stumbles out of the hangars (or rather, is unceremoniously kicked out by Commander Jefferies and the rest of the work team), there's a familiar figure looking out over the bay. Later, Rodney will realize that this is when he should have known. John looks too deadly beautiful in the shadows.
"Rodney!" he practically shouts. "I was wondering when you'd get out of here. C'mon." John pulls him into a sleek black shuttle, custom designed by the look of it.
"You're right. I really couldn't afford you." Was that a personal transporter huddled in the back there?
"Aw, this puddle jumper's just my company car. Wait until I can take you out in my personal transport. Vintage millennial fighter jet, pristine condition. Had to sponsor about a thousand acres to score the carbon credits to run her." John grins.
"Sounds, erm, death defying?"
"Exactly. So, you like Italian?"
With a transport like John's so called puddle jumper, Rodney's surprised when they don't end up in Italy, but in a little hole in the wall in Palo Alto. "This was my favorite place in college," John explains, digging in to his fettuchine alfredo.
Over desert they get into a passionate argument about the physics behind the Star Wars movies, and before he knows it, Rodney is being dragged towards John's transport and up into the air. "Stop it, you -- you insane adrenalin junkie. I admit it, you can do it without the power of the force, now for the love of god, please don't kill us!" he shouts as the twist and through the narrow openings of some canyon, John whooping and hollering at his side.
And just when Rodney's positive they're going to go splat into the canyon wall like some fly on the windshield of a flitter, Rodney peeks out from behind his hands in time to see John fire at the small practice drone he'd dropped there before this exercise in insanity. He pulls up fast, practically rocketing Rodney out of his seat, setting the transport to hover with nothing but the bright desert sky and a million unexplored stars above them.
John lets Rodney fuck him right there, braced against the main steering console. Maybe it's the adrenaline of just almost dying or maybe it's true love, but when John kisses him and pulls him down to rest on the cool metal of the transport floor, Rodney swears that he feels hope, tangible and true for the first time ever.
Three days later, after spending every spare moment with John (who somehow always materializes the second Rodney's off shift), those hopes are pretty well crushed by Elizabeth Weir's pale features and the shocked look on her face when Rodney waves to John from the balcony of Starfleet Headquarters.
"Do you have any idea who that is, Rodney?!" Elizabeth whispers, her voice low and harsher than Rodney has ever heard it.
"It's John. My boyfriend. You know the one I just finished telling you about."
"Oh, Rodney," Elizabeth sighs. She sounds as though she personally aches for him. "That's John Sheppard, the most dangerous man in the fleet."
Rodney stares at her blankly.
"The clandestine charter, the people you're dissembling Suliban cloaking technology for!" At Rodney's blank look, she sighs. "Please tell me you're not this politically oblivious. I know it's a well kept secret, but everything you do in the division is monitored by these people! They're dangerous, Rodney. They do the dirty work that Forrest and the Starfleet brass couldn't possible admit to. You don't want to involve yourself with John Sheppard. If you do, we'll probably never hear from you again."
Rodney retreats out the back entrance, finding a quiet table at the 602, where nobody would think to look for him. He remembers the promise of John's skin sliding against his, the man's goofy smile, the light of exploration in his eyes that spoke nothing of the darkness that Elizabeth talked about. And even if he might disappear one day, Rodney doesn't want to give that up.
So, when John comes sauntering in half an hour later, looking as perfect and delicious as the first time they met, Rodney lets him take a seat. He lets John take him to the stars.
John Sheppard is the first known student to beat the supposedly unbeatable Kobayashi Maru battle scenario at the Academy, though there is no record of his trial. In fact, there will eventually be no record of Cadet John Sheppard at all. Where everyone else tried battle scenarios or negotiation tactics, John Sheppard bribed the captain of the unidentified alien vessel with promises to split the plunder from the downed ship, then transported over a live torpedo the second their shields were down. The scenario was later redesigned from unknown alien vessel to mortal enemy specifically to thwart students like John.
Teyla Emmagen is the shame of the Third House, an inconvenient heir born out of an even more inconvenient marriage to the Athosian diplomatic minister, Tagan, a man of no particular telepathic ability. Raised by her father on the Athosian homeworld, surrounded by emotions so beautiful and complex and terrifying, she learns to be strong and wield her gift like the weapon that it truly may be.
And yet, no matter how they bow down to her power and how it keeps them safe from the constant threat of the Wraith, she is not one of them. She senses it in every careless thought, in the distrust that follows her like a mist. Even Halling, her greatest friend and the council's leader, cannot hide his occasional washes of fear. Everyone has a secret, Teyla soon learns, and though they only come to her in snatches like whispers, their hang in the air around her like a tangible weight, obliquely oppressive.
Teyla doesn't even realize she has been living all her life among shadows until the day John Sheppard steps into their midst. He has come to them from Betazed, where they looked into his thoughts and did not like what they saw. His ship, the Atlantis, is captained by the fierce and calm Samantha Carter, who protects her loneliness with all she is. The science officer who never seems to leave Sheppard's side cloaks fear with pride, but his secret is simply denied, and Teyla will later tell him so. He need not worry that Sheppard will stop loving him, there is not even a doubt.
But Sheppard's thoughts, his emotions, are exquisite. His secrets are marvelous in their serpentine complexity, a veritable fortress of thorns that protect the simple elegant truth beneath. He wants to do the right thing. He'll do it, no matter what the costs. So when he opens his hand and asks her to join him, to do what must be done to create this beautiful complex thing, a federation where Teyla's people and her ancestry will be treated as equal, regardless of culture or level of technology, she has no trouble joining him.
She does not enjoy the interrogations she is asked to perform along the way, but every time she touches John's soul, she feels it, her first love: equality.
Aiden Ford is the first of Sheppard's recruits from within the fleet. Serving two years on interstellar commerce's guardship, Cheyenne, he has more deep space experience that Sheppard when they first meet. Sheppard isn't an officer at this point. He's been officially out of the service since that training disaster in Afghanistan. Nobody knows exactly what happened, only that Sheppard took eight men into that desert and only he came out. Some say that they somehow betrayed him, and he had taken his revenge out in the wilderness. Others insist that there was an attempt on Sheppards life, and he'd sacrificed them to save himself. But others, like Aiden, believe something much different. Sheppard, who spent seven years of his childhood on Vulcan, was said to have been imitating the kahs-wan coming of age ritual. He was obviously the only one to pass. Aiden could respect that. He could even come to admire it.
The Wraith homeworld is Sumner's mission. Their objective is a clear one: break in, download the database, get some samples and get out. The Wraith are a plague to this part of the galaxy, one of the few spacefaring species whose dealings are apolitical. No beings are more to them than food, and yet Starfleet's charter prevents attacking them unprovoked. Captain Sumner and the newly minted Atlantis have no problem in that regard.
Aiden runs into Sheppard in the gear up room. He doesn't look like the guy everyone talks about. Aiden was expecting a huge muscle bound man in a trenchcoat. Or maybe someone like James Bond. But Sheppard is surprisingly narrow in the shoulders, lanky and casual like he's just one of the guys. The only thing that gives him away is the sparkle of intelligence in his gaze, the way that even when he's laughing or messing around, he's always watching, calculating, and scrutinizing.
"At ease, Lieutenant," Sheppard smirks.
Aiden forgets himself and salutes even though he knows that Sheppard doesn't have a rank. "Will you be going on the strike team, Sir?" he asks. While Sheppard's combat skills are legend, he doesn't exactly look made for a fight. The stories say that when he was in the service, he was a pilot.
Sheppard shrugs. "If Sumner will have me." His eyes say otherwise, however. There's something down there that Sheppard wants, and even Sumner, commissioned by the highest levels of the organization himself, doesn't know about it.
The Wraith hives are dank and dark. There's a musty, thick smell to the air that reminds Aiden simultaneously of herbal medicine shops and decomposition. There are only about fifty Wraith settlements on this planet. The rest is stockyards filled with blank faced and unresisting humanoids modeled on various species. When Aiden asked about it, Sheppard's personal science officer, McKay, snapped something about predator/prey ratios. Also, there was some discussion of veal.
The cattle, as McKay has taken to calling them (his face hidden in his scanner and his hands shaking just slightly), wear loose white robes of a stretchy material that clings to their perfect bodies. Aiden hasn't seen a single overweight individual, or even a particularly short one. The sections with the reptilian species weren't as bad, but he's beginning to feel his gag reflex coming on, walking among village after village of vacant beings who, excepting their baldness, could pass for humans. They stare at the team with an absent curiosity that Aiden can tell is making Sumner and Bates nervous. None of them approaches.
They're nearing the towering mountain of the Wraith complex when Aiden glimpses it. They have seen other children on their way in, working in the fields or simply just standing and staring. But this one is clutching something in her arms. At first it looks like a muddy, worn rag, but Aiden spots two patches, coal black, and a red line curved up into a smile. It's a doll and these cattle are intelligent enough to create that much. There's a spark of creativity and originality there, and suddenly Aiden is stumbling, stuttering to a halt.
He doesn't react until Sheppard already has his arm clasped in his hand. His eyes are as charcoal dark as the dolls, but intense, almost frightening. "This is what we're fighting for," he growls, low and feral.
That's why, when Sumner and Bates turn one way down the corridor to what Commander Jackson assures them should be the computer core, Aiden follows Sheppard, McKay, and Teyla in the opposite direction.
Aiden doesn't know much about Betazoids other than the fact that he shouldn't think about porn in their presence, but Teyla is different than he imagined. Instead of blurting out all of Aiden's secrets, responding to his simple intention, she's quiet, almost serene. It's hard to imagine that she has all of their thoughts and their emotions swirling around in that head of hers.
It takes him several moments, twisting and turning down these creepy pulsing corridors, before he notices it. She's barely giving off any signals, just slight shifts in body movement, but Sheppard is following her, dragging McKay behind him as he takes readings. "But if I could just get--" he protests.
"No," Sheppard commands, yanking McKay to him forcefully enough to drag his attention away from scanner.
Teyla steps up to a wall that opens before her, revealing a small room with two computer terminals and barely enough space for the four of them to stand. McKay goes to work like he was meant for it, all the nervous shakes of early gone. Sheppard turns toward Teyla, though he leaves a possessive hand on the back of McKay's neck.
Teyla doesn't physically sigh, but Aiden feels it anyway, reading the weariness coming off of her in waves.
"Teyla?" Sheppard asks.
"It is unlike any mind I have ever felt," she admits. "They are separate, and yet this place binds them together as a whole. They are telepathic, but unlike anything on Betazed. The Queen, she moves throughout, weaving a mind from many."
"Is the package delivered?" Sheppard asks.
"Almost. Yes, she can almost sense it. We must hurry."
"No," Sheppard stops her. "We'll go. You stay here with Rodney."
"But--"
"Tell me where."
She almost seems to blink and he nods, taking off out the door without even waiting to see if Aiden will follow him.
The chamber is vast. A long table runs down its center stacked with butcher's shop horrors, postmodern interpretations of human food. For a second, the woman that stands there holding Captain Sumner to his knees seems beautiful. Her body is graceful and sensuous, her long hair a pretty contrast to the smooth pale surface of her skin. But her teeth and her eyes and the wickedness in her smile betray what she is. So does the pain in Sumners features as she steals the years from him.
Aiden is frozen, choked and sick with this moment of ultimate human suffering. But Sheppard is a great man. He is a man of action and he doesn't hesitate, not even for a second, before he raises his weapon and fires. Aiden comes awake to the sick crunch of a sack of bones hitting the strangely springy floor.
He doesn't have time to expel the taste of bile from his mouth, because Sheppard is already running for the cage that holds Bates and the rest of the MACOs. It opens on its own before Sheppard can even set the charge. "Teyla," he explains, simply. "They'll meet us at the beam out site."
Later, after Sheppard and McKay have disappeared into their quarters and Aiden has debriefed their acting captain, Carter, he finds Teyla down in the mess. After the events of today, he wonders why she hasn't sought out solitude, for even her usually serene features are tightly drawn and pained.
Aiden forgets himself for a moment, standing at the corner of her vision, debating whether or not to join her.
"You are welcome to sit with me, Lieutenant," she states, without looking up.
"Sorry. I forgot. I should keep my thoughts down, huh?"
"No need to apologize. I am used to it. Please." She gives the barest of nods, but Aiden takes it as a command to sit. "You are troubled?"
"You sure like to cut to the chase. Don't you?"
She smiles. "It is only fair. If I can know what you are thinking directly, should you not be similarly informed about me?"
"Makes sense." Aiden only wishes it were that simple. As much as she might value honesty, being able to see his thoughts would allow her to come up with the most convincing lie.
"You are at a disadvantage and it makes you uncomfortable. I understand. But, as John thinks most highly of you, I hope we will be able to get along."
It's not getting along he's worried about. That much should be easy for her. He catches himself too late, forcing words that he hopes will distract her. "He thinks highly of me?" What could he possibly have done to earn that? Not save Sumner, that's for sure.
"John is a good judge of character. Or in the very least, he thinks himself so."
"You'd be a better one."
"Perhaps, but in this case, I agree with him."
Aiden finds that strangely hilarious. As though she can find anything redeeming in all this confusion. "Really? Because I have no idea what went on today."
"You were not meant to. But, as John would like you to work more with him in the future, I will do my best to inform you."
"What was he after? Did Dr. McKay find something the strike team missed?" He knows he sounds overeager, but he can't help it.
"I do not know. I may be able to hear some of Dr. McKay's thoughts, but my ability does not guarantee the ability to decipher them."
It takes Aiden a second to realize that this is her subtle way of joking. He laughs a little too loudly when he finally gets it. "So, he wasn't after some intel?"
She shakes her head. "Anything Rodney has found is a bonus. John's plan was to deliver a package and he delivered it."
"But I was with him, the only thing the Wraith got was--" No, it can't be.
"Captain Sumner. I would have preferred it be Sergeant Bates, but we hardly had control over the Wraith. And Captain Sumner's replacement will certainly bode well for John. Captain Sumner attached too much merit to rank. He looked through me as though I were not there."
Aiden's mouth is dry. He can barely swallow. Sheppard was delivering a person. One of their own.
Once again Teyla does that thing where she seems to sigh, but with the utmost economy of movement. "You are right to think, at first, that he is a monster. But it helps to keep in mind that John was raised on Vulcan. Though he did not succeed in repressing the great majority of his emotions, he did absorb many of their key values, such as the fact that the good of the many outweighs the good of the one."
"So in his book, it's okay to just sacrifice someone like that?"
Teyla shakes her head. "I do not suggest that it will not pain him. He will carry that death, along with many others, to his grave. He would have been the one to sacrifice himself, if I had allowed it. But, after the Wraith have gained the knowledge of a rich new feeding ground, they will not hesitate. First they will strike Andoria. Then Vulcan. There are many territories between here and Earth, but the Federation will have mobilized by then. Nothing brings planets together like uniting against a common enemy, and nothing brings attention to a great injustice more than having it arrive in your back yard."
"And you're okay with this?"
Her smile is baleful, but it is still a smile. "My people have been victims of the Wraith for generations."
It's not the right answer. Maybe it's not even a good one. But Aiden is a kid who joined the fleet for explosions and adventure. He never figured he'd understand the politics, or need to. He knows himself well enough to know that he couldn't say whether or not the Vulcans are right when it comes to the logical nature of sacrifice, but he can say one thing with absolute certainty: what he feels in his gut is that John Sheppard is a leader to follow and Teyla Emmagen is a woman to trust. And even though he came into this looking for adventure and explosions, he wants to be more. With John and Teyla and Rodney, he can make history.
There are myths about John Sheppard that range from super human to not human at all. He has been called a shapeshifter, capable of infiltrating any group and charming any individual. Some say that he is a blank slate onto which anything can be written. What is in question is not his changeability but the why behind it. Some say it's about power, others about protecting his true self, or maybe even finding that self. But few know of his younger years, running around among children much brighter and more disciplined than him, trying to get them to play when already they were told to stay away from emotions and all that bring them. Few remember the night he got a hold of his mother's laser scalpel, and even fewer think to ask if his ears were always that way or if, like most things about him, he created them.
Doctor Carson Beckett wants little to do with John Sheppard and his men. And while they work together under the auspices of the same organization, he's barely comfortable calling them colleagues. Carson is a doctor, first and foremost. It is his job to heal. Humans, at least. He took the hippocratic oath and he believes it, but despite all the medical ethics classes, he sees no reason why it should naturally apply to other species. He believes in minimizing suffering in all living things, yes. And he'll do his best to save as many alien lives as he can, but the true fact of the matter is that he has to value his own kind first, and the promise of research on other species is just too valuable to humanity to stop at a few pesky ethical issues.
Like his mum always used to say, if you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs.
So, while he understands the people like Sheppard are sometimes necessary, Carson admits that he doesn't want to be involved at that scale. With medicine, the benefits to humankind far outweigh any harm done to a few test subjects. He doesn't understand politics well enough that he could say the same about what Sheppard does.
Carson had always let the other doctors take care of Sheppard, except for one emergency surgery that the man was unconscious for. That is, until the retrovirus incident. Sheppard wasn't even supposed to be anywhere near the test subject. He just happened to be in the hallway when Ellia broke out.
Carson doesn't remember much of that week of genetics and very little sleep, but he does remember Sheppard, looking up at him with those very alien eyes. His team was off on some harebrained scheme to search for the illusive Iratus stem cells that not even the shadow agencies within Starfleet would authorize a search for. Carson would've told them not to bother (the chances of saving Sheppard were slim), except for the benefit those kinds of samples could provide his research.
But Sheppard had looked at him, yellow eyes as deadly and mesmerizing as a cobras, and said, "You have to kill me."
"What?"
"I said you have to kill me. Before you let any more people go down there, you have to kill me."
"No," Carson had said, because first, do no harm.
"You did this, Carson. And you will take responsibility for it."
Luckily, Carson doesn't have to. He gets the stem cells and finds a cure, just in the nick of time too. Guilt is a strange and terrifying thing, he thinks as he spends the next few weeks hovering at Sheppard's bedside or kicking out the men and women who were so ready to risk their lives to find Sheppard a cure.
The sad thing is that, no matter how you try to separate yourself from that next step, the one that will cross the line, it's not your ideals (if you ever had any) that ultimately pull you over. It's people. Because what Sheppard really meant by responsibility is that Carson owes him one. And John Sheppard is not a man you want to be indebted to.
The last thing he remembers is lying down, Phlox above him, his captain at his side. He remembers both loving and hating the both of them. Phlox, in a strange way, was his father and also his executioner. And Jon was in one life his best friend, in another a monster, a stern teacher, and the judge who sentenced him to death.
This doesn't look like heaven, not with the soft sounds of medical equipment humming around him. Maybe this isn't it. Maybe they found a way to save both him and Trip. He pushes himself up, looking around for Phlox and Archer. He's in some kind of great big metal box, with golden panels that part for him as he rockets upwards, panting.
"I told you it would work," a slim woman with a strange accent exclaims, poking the man standing next to her in the chest. If it weren't for the leopard spots running along her hairline and down her neck, they could be brother and sister, both tall and slim with hazel eyes and thick black hair.
The man sighs, uncurling from where he's slouching against the wall and sauntering over. "We'll see about that."
There's a doctor floating around too, with the same dark hair, pale eyes, and sharp jaw. They all look human enough, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything out here. "All the tests are coming back positive so far," the doctor pronounces. "It seems that the sarcophagus has been successful at slowing the rapid aging process."
It couldn't be? They've found a cure? "The Velandran Circle?" he asks.
"No, just some good old fashioned alien tech. Thanks to Vala, here," the man wearing black replies. "I'm John Sheppard. And you are Trip?"
"Sim."
"Same difference. You have his memories, don't you? His body? You're him." And wouldn't it have been wonderful to hear those words coming out of Jonathan Archer's mouth. Sheppard says it like it's to most simple and obvious thing in the world.
But there is a difference, a big one. Or at least so he's been taught his entire 'life.' "No. I'm not him. If you're looking for Commander Tucker, I assume he's still onboard the Enterprise, saving the day, as predicted."
"Commander Tucker is dead." Sheppard sounds almost stern about it.
"That's why you bothered to save me?"
"I would've saved you either way. Couldn't step on the great Jonathan Archer's toes by stealing his chief engineer right out from under him. Could I?"
He gets the feeling that Sheppard's just taunting him now. "Who are you? Where am I? What do you want?"
"Funny, I thought those would be the first words out of your mouth. We're aboard the SS Atlantis, constructed about a year after you were declared dead. We were on our way back from a little mission with your good friends the Xindi and we picked up on your torpedo floating in space. Lieutenant Siller is doing a bang up job with the engine, but I thought I could do better."
"You're Starfleet?" There isn't anything about form fitting black pants in the handbook, so far as he knows.
"In a manner of speaking. C'mon. The more you sit in that thing, the more you're going to start thinking I'm some kind of evil alien impersonator. Better get you up and about and around the ship. You're going to love the engine. McKay's been tweaking her after a few of our more interesting encounters. We've had her up to warp seven, you know." Sheppard reaches down to grab his hand, Sheppard's grip firm but still gentle somehow.
The engine is every bit as amazing as Sheppard says it is, though that McKay guy is damn annoying. He'd prefer T'Pol's infuriating calm over McKay's mixed bag of emotions any day. Everything Sheppard says seems legitimate, however. If this is a hoax, it's a spectacular one. They have everything right from the uniforms to the database entries, to random bits of Earth movies and culture. He even recognized a couple of the crew members from briefing rooms or training. He's especially surprised to find Jon's old girlfriend, Samantha Carter, not just a captain, but the captain of this ship. "Trip!" she exclaims, almost running forward to hug him. "It's good to see you."
"I'm not," he starts, but she barrels right over any objections. "I'm looking forward to working with you, Commander."
He's saved by the bell when Sheppard pulls him aside to introduce Lieutenant Aiden Ford, apparently his escort until he familiarizes himself with the ship. "She was at the funeral. She knows you're not him," he says later.
"Then why does she--"
"You remember each other. There's no point in pretending you just met."
"I'm still not him."
"You've told me enough times, believe me, I know. Just, reading Archer's report about what they did to you, I can't imagine you like being treated as just a simbiote, spare organs in a nicely wrapped bag of bones."
He knows Sheppard is manipulating him. He can feel it, like all those rebel rousing ministers back home. But he can't help himself. There's something about this guy. Strangely, he's a lot like Malcolm.
"No, I guess I'm not Sim, either."
Sheppard nods. "Then who are you?"
He takes a long minute to think. Sheppard stares at him, like he doesn't know the answer either. "You can try to go back to Enterprise if you want. I can't guarantee anything, but I'm sure Archer would be glad to have you back."
"Not me."
"With the kind of stakes we're dealing with out here, we all make compromises."
He can imagine it, though. He hated how Jon treated him like some kind of tool, no more alive than the ship around them, when all of Trips memories cried out for his best friend. If he'd felt like ghost then, who knows what it would be like now, with Trip actually dead and gone? What John Sheppard is offering here is a fresh start. "I don't want to go back."
"I didn't think so." Sheppard pats him on the back. "I'm going to head out, now, give you some more time to think things over. Teyla will be by to bring you to dinner." Sheppard's half way out the door when he stops, not turning. "So, what do you think about the name Michael?"
"It's good," he replies. That was Trip's maternal grandfather's name. He wonders if Sheppard knows that. He seems like the kind of man who might know things. Or maybe not.
"All right, Michael. I'll see you tomorrow."
Michael barely has time to collect himself in these barren personality-less quarters. He could get a diving helmet and some photos and some other things. The photos, maybe. He wants one of Lizzie. But this is going to be different. He's going to start anew.
He's in the middle of reviewing the engine specs Sheppard left him when the door chimes. "Come in," he calls, as though that would stop anyone at this point. He still feels a bit like a prisoner, but from what little Sheppard has told him about the Atlantis and its missions, it's probably just to protect him should he ever want to rejoin Enterprise. Plausible deniability, that's what it's called.
"Hello, Michael." The woman standing before him is a vision. Her skin is a gorgeous copper tone and flawless, her hair pale in exotic contrast, but even though her body is nothing to disparage, what really gets him is the warm intelligence in her eyes. And when she smiles at him, he finally gets the Mona Lisa.
Before the Virus, Sateda had been a flowering, beautiful, modern world - the far flung jewel of the Empire. But then the virus came, and the Wraith. Ever since Kathless, the Empire had not hesitated to defend it's own, especially the colonies - revered for their bravery, stretched so far away from the relative safety of home.
But defense was not the word the ever governed the loud shifting rages of the Chancellor and the high council. It was offense, and did it truly offend to attack a word full of ridgeless weaklings, too devastated by the Virus to fight back? The question had nothing to do with costs and benefits, like so many other species, but with apathy. Were those affected by the Virus still Klingon? Did attacking them call forth the dogs of war?
No. And there was a part of Ronon, a festering weakness, like the smooth expanse of his once-ridged forehead, that agreed. The fact that he even doubted that the Empire should go to war against the Wraith agression betrayed his weakness.
It was for the good of all Klingons that the weak ridgeless ones died and only the strong survived. There were rumors of happenings in the heart of the Empire - quarantine and extermination, thousands dead upon their own swords to stop the weakness in its tracks, millions plunging themselves into the front lines of the most brutal wars, hoping that in death, at least, they might reclaim their honor.
If not for the Wraith, Ronon might have gone that way too - but the Wraith were the worst of enemies - cold and clinical, not fighting but capturing, feeding. The very idea disgusted him and if the Chancellor would not act to stop them, then Ronon would.
And if, when he was his old, ridged self, he had imagined that he might one day meet the man who had brought the Virus on Sateda, and thus the Wraith, he would have him impaled on his sword before the traitor had the time to blink. And, yet, now, meeting John Sheppard, covered in blood in the middle of jungle, their backs pressed together as an army of Wraith close in from both sides, he can almost say he's comfortable here, more so than he has ever been since his transformation.
"Hey, you're pretty good at this," Sheppard gasps out. He's cradling his right arm to his chest, strange red blood dripping down from his temple and mixing with the black spatter from an army of decapitated Wraith, but there's a desperate pride in his smile. John Sheppard is loving this, like the best of Klingon warriors.
"Shouldn't be surprised," Ronon replies. Sheppard's not as big as legend - the silent black figure that presided in the shadows over the tests of the few subjects that survived the research. By Klingon standard he's not much of a fighter either, but what he lacks in skill, he certainly makes up for in enthusiasm.
He's slicing the head off the last Wraith drone with Ronon's battle'eth when he looks up, grinning beneath the strange midnight haze of this forgotten planet, "so, wanna join my team?"
Ronon has to laugh at this, shething a few knives and throwing his head back, drunk on Wraith blood and the audacity of this man, standing half-broken and defenseless before him, a complement like an insult on his tongue.
"Our peoples are practically on the brink of war. After what you've done--"
"Your people," it's Sheppard's turn to laugh. "Your people have abandoned you for what you are."
"Because of a disease you set loose."
Sheppard shrugs. "Water under the bridge. Fight the Wraith with me. Or do you think I'm too weak to win?"
Ronon advances on him and Sheppard doesn't flinch, even when Ronon rips his own weapon out of Sheppard's broken arm and brings it to the man's neck. No fear, Ronon remembers that. "You are weak. Your ways - viruses and secrecy and politics. They are weak."
"But do you think I'll win?"
Sheppard looks brilliant in this light, stunningly malevolent covered in blood as he is. The old ways, the ways of the Empire are no longer, not out here. Ronon is a new breed, a weaker one, perhaps, but he will triumph. If the Wraith are killed, is that not enough?
"I don't doubt it."
Sheppard grins wildly back at him, limping forward and slinging an arm around Ronon's shoulder in a way he knows humans consider to be friendly. "Great. We have a lot of people to meet. I can use you in combat training, that's for sure. And as a member of my diplomatic team so long as you promise to behave. Senator Weir can push through the papers and you can even get through to Earth, if you'd like, maybe work with our geneticists on a compromise, for when your people are ready to see reason. I don't leave my people behind."
The thing is, Ronon thinks much later, sitting across from a pretty blonde doctor watching his blood drip red into a collection vessel, he doesn't think he ever agreed to any of this.
"Congratulations," John says, slipping an arm around Cam's shoulder like a familiar lover returning to the room, not sneaking up from behind specifically to startle and intimidate.
Except Cam hasn't been startled by John in years. All the whispered questions about his former friend, the rumors. He doesn't add to them, certainly, but he never bothers to respond either. John is what he is and Cam has stopped being appalled by it.
"Hey, stranger." Cam lets John slide up to the bar next to him, breath warm in his ear. "Was wondering when you'd pop up again."
John laughs. "Not every day a man's buddy gets promoted to the fleet's flagship."
Cam pulls away, scowling. "That would be the Enterprise, and last time I checked, I'm not Jonathan Archer."
"No, you're a much better pilot, not to mention more attractive. Besides, the Sierra Gulf One isn't just some pretty little diplomatic vessel. It's a ship that can go out there and do things." It's a warship, that much, Cam knows.
"You only say that because you think you've got me in your pocket. But you don't, John. You haven't in a long time." Cam remembers those days at the academy, that final offer from Admiral Forrest - if he'd just stop hanging around Sheppard and fucking up, he'd be on the fast track to his own command. Ironic that it's Sheppard's hand, not Forest's that got him here.
"I've had you in more things," John replies meaningfully, as if a few misplaced fumblings in a storeroom somewhere could account for unending loyalty.
Cam is growing tired of this. He's done the press conferences, taken his photo ops and his cabinet meetings and the last minute meetings with engineers all in stride, but Sheppard and all the associated baggage are the last straw. John is shiny and beautiful, sparkling with temptation and power, but the truth is that those things are tangible objects for him, and they are jealous mistresses. Cam has kept John's secrets and helped bail him out when his back is to the wall and he knows that Shep will do the same, but the man didn't send so much as a comunique when the Goa'uld war left Cam in the hospital or when his fiancee left him. Those things are water off Shep's back and Cam has stopped bothering to wonder where that leaves them.
"What do you want, John?" he sighs.
Sheppard shrugs, petulantly. He hates it when people disrupt his bullshit and ruin his little games.
"Fine. Change of subject - so what really happened in Afghanistan?" Cam asks. He's trying to make it casual, but he knows that Sheppard sees right through him, always has, even before he managed to pull this cloak of myth around himself.
"An accident." Shep seems to be doing his best at casual, too. Cam wishes that he'd just remember how they used to goof around back at the Academy. Cam isn't some politician or enemy. They might not be friends in the traditional sense, but they're better friends than that.
"An accident or an accident?"
"Somebody misaligned the drive pods on our transport. Mitch was at the helm. Holland and I were in the back trying to make manual adjustments. Everyone in the forward compartment died on impact. Captain Holland didn't survive for long out in the desert. I barely did. All the power brokering in the world wouldn't've saved me from the elements."
"Rumor has it that you walked out of the desert and into the base a Kanadar without a scratch on you."
John laughs, mirthlessly. "I got picked up heading the wrong way from the crash site by a group of Afghani war reinactors, then spent two weeks in a local hospital recovering from heat stroke and internal injuries, before I dared show up on the base to kill the sonofabitch in charge of satellite monitoring. You can't take a piss on this planet without someone recording it from space. Do you think a crash in the middle of a training zone can really go undetected for eight days?"
"You're saying someone tried to kill you?"
"No. I'm pretty sure the mechanical problems were an accident. Someone noticed that we'd gone down and thought maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if I didn't come back. I wouldn't have blamed them, if their late reaction hadn't condemned Holland to death."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Like I said, I wouldn't blame them for wanting me dead, after all the things that I've done." Sheppard looks tired all-of-a-sudden, for the first time showing all of his forty years. It's a tough life, Cam knows
"But you killed them anyway."
"Enemies are enemies, Cam, even if you dress them up with a smile."
Cam's used to Sheppard's paranoia by now. That doesn't make it any easier. "And who are your enemies now, Shep?"
Sheppard grins at that, like a cat that's just eaten the canary. "You'll know when you find them." He has something small and smooth and glowing in his hand. Cam barely stops himself from screaming when it sinks painlessly into the skin of his arm where Sheppard presses it against him.
"What the hell?"
"When you find those enemies, give me a call."
Before he knows it, Sheppard is gone, as suddenly as he appeared.
When Cam does finally locate those enemies, he's not happy with what he finds.
"We can't simply eliminate him, Mr. Woolsey," Elizabeth Weir states calmly. Bureaucrats, their naivety is always astounding, never amusing. "No one knows what he's gotten his hands into. To borrow an old corporate term, we don't want to be stuck swallowing a poison pill."
Woolsey is not amused by Elizabeth's cute little historical references. "But he's in violation of so many parts of the charter. I don't even know where to begin."
"He wants us to write him into the charter." Elizabeth remembers that meeting - John Sheppard sitting before her, flanked by a telepath, a former Klingon, and the smartest man on the planet, making veiled threats with a casual smile.
"Surely you're not considering it."
Elizabeth schools her features to not laugh at Woolsey's righteous indignation. "Men like Sheppard are necessary, Mr. Woolsey. They are part of the political process itself. Yes, the rules send an important message, but there has never been a successful government that gave up the freedom to extend it's will beyond the apparent."
"The rules were created for a reason, Senator Weir. They are created to protect us from ourselves. Sheppard is too powerful. Even Captain Carter has lost control over him."
Elizabeth flexes her right arm, trying to feel the hard press of the communications device Sheppard had slipped beneath her skin. He could be listening, even now. But Elizabeth feels brash, defiant after her nomination to the federation diplomatic corps. "Perhaps. But you wouldn't be the first who tried to kill him, and certainly not the most skilled."
"Then what do you suggest, Senator? Grant him even more, legitimate power?"
"Sheppard may not be easily killed, Mr. Woolsey, but that doesn't mean he's not easily contained." She reaches into her purse, removing a slim datapad.
"What's this?"
"If you had been following Sheppard's most recent activities, you'd notice an increasing obsession with the little problem of the Wraith."
"An obsession that is certainly warranted, considering the current state of affairs."
Elizabeth curbed the desire to roll her eyes - as though any of the mere reactionary bureaucrats like Woolsey and his IOA could even wrap their minds around the idea that nobody would be focused on the Wraith if Sheppard didn't wish it. "Nevertheless, Sheppard does not invite people into his inner circle lightly. He may be a rogue to the rest of us, but a look at his starfleet psych screening shows a deep loyalty to others, and ideological loyalty to the right cause."
"Sheppard was in Starfleet?"
Elizabeth does not dignify Woolsey's ignorance with a response. "Yes. Those files have been wiped now, of course. Only those of us who saw them at the very beginning know the contents. But that's my point. Despite appearances, he is human. And humans can all be properly motivated."
"So you're saying we trap him? Let the Wraith take care of him for us?"
"Please, Richard, nothing so obtuse. Creatures like the Wraith do not arise out of nothing. Think about it. How could a species that feeds off humanoids evolve in independence of humanoid species, accessible only by space flight. What you have in your hand," she gestures to the benignly glowing datapad that Woolsey is gripping tight, "is the work of Dr. Daniel Jackson, the linguist aboard Sierra Gulf One."
Woolsey looks down at the strange markings scrawling across the screen, eight symbols, repeating. "He's a linguist and he didn't bother to translate it?"
"He didn't translate it because there's no translation. Those are coordinates, Mr. Woosley. The homeworld of the Wraith's creators and possibly the origins of the human race itself."
"Interesting," Woolsey says, though his tone indicates that he doesn't think so. "But no matter how metaphysically titilating, what does this have to with the Atlantis and the federation charter?"
"Everything, Mr. Woolsey, because we're going to send Sheppard there."
Elizabeth finally lets her sly smirk loose as she shakes Woolsey's hand and walks out of his Starfleet headquarters office onto the bustling streets of San Francisco. She presses down on the hard surface lurking beneath the skin of her arm, watching the skin glow subtlely. "John, this is Elizabeth, we have a go."
The End
Rated: PG13
Pairings: McKay/Sheppard, implied Sheppard/Mitchell, Teyla/Trip
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Elizabeth Weir, Aiden Ford, Teyla Emmagen, Cameron Mitchell, Ronon Dex, Richard Woolsey, Sim.
Genre: SGA/Star Trek (mostly Enterprise) fusion
Summary: If Jonathan Archer is the Federation's architect, then John Sheppard is the carpenter. Sweat and tears and secrets make up its walls, and blood welds it all together.
Disclaimer: I don't own Atlantis, or the Star Trek universe.
Notes: I apologize to any Trek buffs out there. The only Trek I ever really watched was Voyager. Most of what I've seen of Enterprise is just after seeing Conner Trineer on SGA and saying "ooooh, pretty," and gorging myself on Trip episodes on youtube so there might be some inconsistencies. This is just a brief attempt to map the SGA people into the Star Trek universe. I might like to play around a little more in this 'verse if people are into it, specifically Teyla/Trip. Title is from the Killers' song by the same name. Spoilers for: Similitude, First Flight, Andorian Incident, To Boldly Go, Divergence, Michael.
All These Things That I've Done
The Enterprise is the shinning light of the fleet, a beacon in the darkness; while the Atlantis is a creature of the dark itself, sweeping in behind while the crowd is momentarily dazzled.
Archer may be soulfull and brash, stubborn and courageous. He stands proud in front of the masses and sets hearts ablaze with the passion behind his words and the sparkle in his eyes. He is Starfleet's darling boy, the so-called architect of the Federation. But there's so much the adoring crowds don't know.
Whispered behind closed doors at the highest level, in vieled code and in the shadowy dark of space, there is another name. If Jonathan Archer is the Federation's architect, then John Sheppard is the carpenter. Sweat and tears and secrets make up its walls, and blood welds it all together.
Archer negotiated a final peace with the Xindi, but it was Sheppard who razed their cities to the ground and made sure it would be decades before the were ever heard from again.
Archer may have won the favor of a few key Andorians, but Sheppard earned their vote with even more well placed kidnappings.
And the Vulcans, the poor trusting Vulcans, if only they knew the things brewing in Carson Beckett's laboratory. On Sheppard's order, their precious logic could be gone in an instant, their entire homeworld lost to civil war in the blink of an eye.
When you meet him, John Sheppard can fool you with his charm and his boyish good looks. He can dazzle you with his honest love for exploration or his fierce loyalty to the crew he considers a family. But don't, even for second, forget the brutal iron fist beneath the soft velvet exterior.
Idiots, idiots, Rodney McKay is surrounded by idiots. And the worst part of it is that these bright eyed young engineers think that just because the passed a physical and a psych screening along with their engineering degree, they're somehow better than the contractors that have been in this business since they were in diapers. Unfortunately, as his Starfleet liason, Captain Elizabeth Weir, has pointed out on multiple occasions, firing one every time they make a boneheaded move will leave Rodney training recruits until the day he dies.
And Rodney does need them. One of the reasons he's not an officer (along with his asthma, citrus allergy, sensitivity to sunlight,and supposed hypochondria and narcissistic complex) is the fact that he'd rather take something apart than build it any day. He deconstructs alien technology, reverse engineers it, and the idiots in the monkey suits build it. It's a lucrative arrangement, and a fun one. It's enough to keep him occupied at least, when he's definitely not thinking about the stars, the hum of the engines all around him, the great void in all its glorious potential. Any cargo freighter would take him in heartbeat, one of the colonies, too, but frontier life is just like Earth, but with a rationed supply of coffee. No, what Rodney wants is the one thing you need that uniform to have.
So he doesn't think about it, no matter how many times he sees those bright blue jumpsuits, or creates another piece of one of their fabled ships. He doesn't even think about it when he drags his heels out the door, away from Starfleet headquarters and the frat house that is the 602 club, catching a public transport over to Castro street and the historic bars still standing to this day. He knows the days of the gayborhood are long past, but the millennial architecture and the many painted rainbows are the opposite of Starfleet and its stainless hypermodernity.
The night is cool and Rodney's nerves more fragile than usual. Reading through Vulcan schematics always manages to tire him out - as though they can actually transmit their superior little lectures and their technicolor monotony directly from the page. So, even though he frowns on paranormal superstitions and the associated voodoo, Rodney makes for the Haunt.
He's not sure what the club used to be called, but now it's half lounge, half memorial service, the polished black walls covered with picture frames - black and white photos of men lost to AIDS who are said to still haunt its grounds. It's loonier than an albino Rigellian space moth, of course, but Rodney finds that he enjoys the atmosphere of hushed reverence the place provides. Not to mention the high quality of the escorts that tend to linger there.
The first thing Rodney notices (after the millennial style blacklit surface of the bar), is the man seemingly holding court on one of the black velvet chase lounge in the far corner. He's wearing black slacks and a tight black t-shirt that clings in a way that lets you see the outline of his pecs, the strength of his biceps, and his perfect narrow waist. His hair is black, too, and tousled looking, that just rolled out of bed look that others make look forced. He pulls it off with ease. Serious hazel eyes are offset by delicate features and pale, almost vulnerable looking skin.
Other than space, Rodney has never looked at anything else like this. He just wants plain and simple. Unfortunately, so do about a dozen others, ranging from barely legal tweasies to distinguished refined gentlemen who could pass for an Admiral if given the right uniform. And this man sits, simultaneously smiling at everyone and at no one. Rodney doesn't need to deal with this plebeian hoard, so he plans to pass right on by and up the spiral staircase to the top level and the VIP bar and private rooms, where the escorts tend to hang out.
But he can't help but look, drawn in as though this man were himself a siren. For a second, their gazes lock and Rodney can read promise in that look, like the void between the stars themselves might be lurking there. It's almost painful to continue on his way, but he manages somehow, wishing all the while that he'd just gone home and sat down for Dr. Who. The twenty fifth doctor wasn't exactly an eyesore and it was better than this - so close and yet a million lightyears away.
"Martini, please, and I'm deathly allergic to citrus, so--"
"I know, Dr. McKay," the bartender replies (a forgettable young tweasy, among a thousand young tweasies). At least this place still serves voldka, instead of all those new alien drinks that are constantly in vogue.
"Make that two." The voice is like silk, but a thousand times as soft, low and husky like sex distilled.
A whole swarm of flies could have entered Rodney's mouth, it's hanging open so wide. "Um, er, it's you."
The man in black from downstairs smiles seductively back. Rodney's offputting awkwardness seems not to even put a dent in him. "You can call me John." In a strange twist of formality, he holds out his hand for Rodney to shake. His grip is firm and his hands rougher and more calloused than Rodney would have expected.
"I'm Rodney. Um, Rodney McKay. Doctor Rodney McKay."
"Nice to meet you, Doctor."
John doesn't just slouch back, he seems to meld into the scenery, like someone painted him onto the smooth surface of the bar.
"So, your, er, your adoring fans won't be missing you?"
John shrugs, like the ten people he could have bedded with the snap of a finger were nothing more than air, forgotten on the exhale. "They'll live. I saw what I wanted. And what I want, I'm not afraid to take." His voice is sex itself, and Rodney's grateful for the sturdy surface of the bar in front of him, the liquid courage of a voldka martini sliding down his throat.
John beats Rodney to give his thumbprint on the tab. "So you're a Doctor, huh? Care to give me a checkup?" It's an awful line, but it's as though John knows that no one would dare to call him on it. Rodney's certainly not that stupid.
"I'm not the kind of Doctor, unfortunately." He gives John an appreciative once over, just in case he might've missed the fact that its impossible for anyone not to want him.
"Too bad. What kind of Doctor are you, then?"
"Astrophysics, though I've moved out of the theoretical field into Starfleet R&D."
"I would say, you can research me, but that'd be a little corny."
"More than a little. What do you charge?" Rodney feels that there's no shame in it. He's under no illusions that he's here for anything but sex. And when he takes the time to look, he doesn't usually have trouble finding someone genuinely interested. He pays men like John for their expediency and skill, not for their pick up lines.
John chuckles. This time it's deep and throaty, almost a moan. "I'm not for sale, McKay. And if I was, you definitely couldn't afford me. Now, do you want to rent out a room, or would you rather head back to your place?"
Rodney lets his mouth hang open for just a second. It's not that he's not perfectly attractive, only that if he'd had his pick out of John's little fan club, he wouldn't have gone off to find someone like himself. "You want to-- With me?"
"Don't see anybody else around here," John replies, completely ignoring the veritable hoard watching them from the wings. "Unless you don't want to."
"Oh, I want--" Rodney doesn't even get to finish before John is leaning forward and kissing him, practically fishing for his tonsils with the raunchiest, most possessive kiss that Rodney has ever experienced.
John finishes it off with one last nibble to Rodney's lower lip. "So what are we waiting for?"
Four hours later, Rodney wakes, sore and sated, to a soft chirping sound. John is whispering quietly into some wrist communicator Rodney hadn't even know was beneath his black sweatband, while pulling up his pants (no underwear) with the other hand.
"Huh?"
John smiles at him, almost fondly, before slinking over and giving Rodney a solid kiss on the lips. "I'll see you around," he says, before stepping onto the balcony, the silver shimmer of the transporter left in his wake.
Rodney doesn't expect that he'll actually see the man again, of course. If not for slight pull in his shoulder muscles, it might've been easy to chalk the whole thing up to a particularly vivid wet dream. But as Rodney stumbles out of the hangars (or rather, is unceremoniously kicked out by Commander Jefferies and the rest of the work team), there's a familiar figure looking out over the bay. Later, Rodney will realize that this is when he should have known. John looks too deadly beautiful in the shadows.
"Rodney!" he practically shouts. "I was wondering when you'd get out of here. C'mon." John pulls him into a sleek black shuttle, custom designed by the look of it.
"You're right. I really couldn't afford you." Was that a personal transporter huddled in the back there?
"Aw, this puddle jumper's just my company car. Wait until I can take you out in my personal transport. Vintage millennial fighter jet, pristine condition. Had to sponsor about a thousand acres to score the carbon credits to run her." John grins.
"Sounds, erm, death defying?"
"Exactly. So, you like Italian?"
With a transport like John's so called puddle jumper, Rodney's surprised when they don't end up in Italy, but in a little hole in the wall in Palo Alto. "This was my favorite place in college," John explains, digging in to his fettuchine alfredo.
Over desert they get into a passionate argument about the physics behind the Star Wars movies, and before he knows it, Rodney is being dragged towards John's transport and up into the air. "Stop it, you -- you insane adrenalin junkie. I admit it, you can do it without the power of the force, now for the love of god, please don't kill us!" he shouts as the twist and through the narrow openings of some canyon, John whooping and hollering at his side.
And just when Rodney's positive they're going to go splat into the canyon wall like some fly on the windshield of a flitter, Rodney peeks out from behind his hands in time to see John fire at the small practice drone he'd dropped there before this exercise in insanity. He pulls up fast, practically rocketing Rodney out of his seat, setting the transport to hover with nothing but the bright desert sky and a million unexplored stars above them.
John lets Rodney fuck him right there, braced against the main steering console. Maybe it's the adrenaline of just almost dying or maybe it's true love, but when John kisses him and pulls him down to rest on the cool metal of the transport floor, Rodney swears that he feels hope, tangible and true for the first time ever.
Three days later, after spending every spare moment with John (who somehow always materializes the second Rodney's off shift), those hopes are pretty well crushed by Elizabeth Weir's pale features and the shocked look on her face when Rodney waves to John from the balcony of Starfleet Headquarters.
"Do you have any idea who that is, Rodney?!" Elizabeth whispers, her voice low and harsher than Rodney has ever heard it.
"It's John. My boyfriend. You know the one I just finished telling you about."
"Oh, Rodney," Elizabeth sighs. She sounds as though she personally aches for him. "That's John Sheppard, the most dangerous man in the fleet."
Rodney stares at her blankly.
"The clandestine charter, the people you're dissembling Suliban cloaking technology for!" At Rodney's blank look, she sighs. "Please tell me you're not this politically oblivious. I know it's a well kept secret, but everything you do in the division is monitored by these people! They're dangerous, Rodney. They do the dirty work that Forrest and the Starfleet brass couldn't possible admit to. You don't want to involve yourself with John Sheppard. If you do, we'll probably never hear from you again."
Rodney retreats out the back entrance, finding a quiet table at the 602, where nobody would think to look for him. He remembers the promise of John's skin sliding against his, the man's goofy smile, the light of exploration in his eyes that spoke nothing of the darkness that Elizabeth talked about. And even if he might disappear one day, Rodney doesn't want to give that up.
So, when John comes sauntering in half an hour later, looking as perfect and delicious as the first time they met, Rodney lets him take a seat. He lets John take him to the stars.
John Sheppard is the first known student to beat the supposedly unbeatable Kobayashi Maru battle scenario at the Academy, though there is no record of his trial. In fact, there will eventually be no record of Cadet John Sheppard at all. Where everyone else tried battle scenarios or negotiation tactics, John Sheppard bribed the captain of the unidentified alien vessel with promises to split the plunder from the downed ship, then transported over a live torpedo the second their shields were down. The scenario was later redesigned from unknown alien vessel to mortal enemy specifically to thwart students like John.
Teyla Emmagen is the shame of the Third House, an inconvenient heir born out of an even more inconvenient marriage to the Athosian diplomatic minister, Tagan, a man of no particular telepathic ability. Raised by her father on the Athosian homeworld, surrounded by emotions so beautiful and complex and terrifying, she learns to be strong and wield her gift like the weapon that it truly may be.
And yet, no matter how they bow down to her power and how it keeps them safe from the constant threat of the Wraith, she is not one of them. She senses it in every careless thought, in the distrust that follows her like a mist. Even Halling, her greatest friend and the council's leader, cannot hide his occasional washes of fear. Everyone has a secret, Teyla soon learns, and though they only come to her in snatches like whispers, their hang in the air around her like a tangible weight, obliquely oppressive.
Teyla doesn't even realize she has been living all her life among shadows until the day John Sheppard steps into their midst. He has come to them from Betazed, where they looked into his thoughts and did not like what they saw. His ship, the Atlantis, is captained by the fierce and calm Samantha Carter, who protects her loneliness with all she is. The science officer who never seems to leave Sheppard's side cloaks fear with pride, but his secret is simply denied, and Teyla will later tell him so. He need not worry that Sheppard will stop loving him, there is not even a doubt.
But Sheppard's thoughts, his emotions, are exquisite. His secrets are marvelous in their serpentine complexity, a veritable fortress of thorns that protect the simple elegant truth beneath. He wants to do the right thing. He'll do it, no matter what the costs. So when he opens his hand and asks her to join him, to do what must be done to create this beautiful complex thing, a federation where Teyla's people and her ancestry will be treated as equal, regardless of culture or level of technology, she has no trouble joining him.
She does not enjoy the interrogations she is asked to perform along the way, but every time she touches John's soul, she feels it, her first love: equality.
Aiden Ford is the first of Sheppard's recruits from within the fleet. Serving two years on interstellar commerce's guardship, Cheyenne, he has more deep space experience that Sheppard when they first meet. Sheppard isn't an officer at this point. He's been officially out of the service since that training disaster in Afghanistan. Nobody knows exactly what happened, only that Sheppard took eight men into that desert and only he came out. Some say that they somehow betrayed him, and he had taken his revenge out in the wilderness. Others insist that there was an attempt on Sheppards life, and he'd sacrificed them to save himself. But others, like Aiden, believe something much different. Sheppard, who spent seven years of his childhood on Vulcan, was said to have been imitating the kahs-wan coming of age ritual. He was obviously the only one to pass. Aiden could respect that. He could even come to admire it.
The Wraith homeworld is Sumner's mission. Their objective is a clear one: break in, download the database, get some samples and get out. The Wraith are a plague to this part of the galaxy, one of the few spacefaring species whose dealings are apolitical. No beings are more to them than food, and yet Starfleet's charter prevents attacking them unprovoked. Captain Sumner and the newly minted Atlantis have no problem in that regard.
Aiden runs into Sheppard in the gear up room. He doesn't look like the guy everyone talks about. Aiden was expecting a huge muscle bound man in a trenchcoat. Or maybe someone like James Bond. But Sheppard is surprisingly narrow in the shoulders, lanky and casual like he's just one of the guys. The only thing that gives him away is the sparkle of intelligence in his gaze, the way that even when he's laughing or messing around, he's always watching, calculating, and scrutinizing.
"At ease, Lieutenant," Sheppard smirks.
Aiden forgets himself and salutes even though he knows that Sheppard doesn't have a rank. "Will you be going on the strike team, Sir?" he asks. While Sheppard's combat skills are legend, he doesn't exactly look made for a fight. The stories say that when he was in the service, he was a pilot.
Sheppard shrugs. "If Sumner will have me." His eyes say otherwise, however. There's something down there that Sheppard wants, and even Sumner, commissioned by the highest levels of the organization himself, doesn't know about it.
The Wraith hives are dank and dark. There's a musty, thick smell to the air that reminds Aiden simultaneously of herbal medicine shops and decomposition. There are only about fifty Wraith settlements on this planet. The rest is stockyards filled with blank faced and unresisting humanoids modeled on various species. When Aiden asked about it, Sheppard's personal science officer, McKay, snapped something about predator/prey ratios. Also, there was some discussion of veal.
The cattle, as McKay has taken to calling them (his face hidden in his scanner and his hands shaking just slightly), wear loose white robes of a stretchy material that clings to their perfect bodies. Aiden hasn't seen a single overweight individual, or even a particularly short one. The sections with the reptilian species weren't as bad, but he's beginning to feel his gag reflex coming on, walking among village after village of vacant beings who, excepting their baldness, could pass for humans. They stare at the team with an absent curiosity that Aiden can tell is making Sumner and Bates nervous. None of them approaches.
They're nearing the towering mountain of the Wraith complex when Aiden glimpses it. They have seen other children on their way in, working in the fields or simply just standing and staring. But this one is clutching something in her arms. At first it looks like a muddy, worn rag, but Aiden spots two patches, coal black, and a red line curved up into a smile. It's a doll and these cattle are intelligent enough to create that much. There's a spark of creativity and originality there, and suddenly Aiden is stumbling, stuttering to a halt.
He doesn't react until Sheppard already has his arm clasped in his hand. His eyes are as charcoal dark as the dolls, but intense, almost frightening. "This is what we're fighting for," he growls, low and feral.
That's why, when Sumner and Bates turn one way down the corridor to what Commander Jackson assures them should be the computer core, Aiden follows Sheppard, McKay, and Teyla in the opposite direction.
Aiden doesn't know much about Betazoids other than the fact that he shouldn't think about porn in their presence, but Teyla is different than he imagined. Instead of blurting out all of Aiden's secrets, responding to his simple intention, she's quiet, almost serene. It's hard to imagine that she has all of their thoughts and their emotions swirling around in that head of hers.
It takes him several moments, twisting and turning down these creepy pulsing corridors, before he notices it. She's barely giving off any signals, just slight shifts in body movement, but Sheppard is following her, dragging McKay behind him as he takes readings. "But if I could just get--" he protests.
"No," Sheppard commands, yanking McKay to him forcefully enough to drag his attention away from scanner.
Teyla steps up to a wall that opens before her, revealing a small room with two computer terminals and barely enough space for the four of them to stand. McKay goes to work like he was meant for it, all the nervous shakes of early gone. Sheppard turns toward Teyla, though he leaves a possessive hand on the back of McKay's neck.
Teyla doesn't physically sigh, but Aiden feels it anyway, reading the weariness coming off of her in waves.
"Teyla?" Sheppard asks.
"It is unlike any mind I have ever felt," she admits. "They are separate, and yet this place binds them together as a whole. They are telepathic, but unlike anything on Betazed. The Queen, she moves throughout, weaving a mind from many."
"Is the package delivered?" Sheppard asks.
"Almost. Yes, she can almost sense it. We must hurry."
"No," Sheppard stops her. "We'll go. You stay here with Rodney."
"But--"
"Tell me where."
She almost seems to blink and he nods, taking off out the door without even waiting to see if Aiden will follow him.
The chamber is vast. A long table runs down its center stacked with butcher's shop horrors, postmodern interpretations of human food. For a second, the woman that stands there holding Captain Sumner to his knees seems beautiful. Her body is graceful and sensuous, her long hair a pretty contrast to the smooth pale surface of her skin. But her teeth and her eyes and the wickedness in her smile betray what she is. So does the pain in Sumners features as she steals the years from him.
Aiden is frozen, choked and sick with this moment of ultimate human suffering. But Sheppard is a great man. He is a man of action and he doesn't hesitate, not even for a second, before he raises his weapon and fires. Aiden comes awake to the sick crunch of a sack of bones hitting the strangely springy floor.
He doesn't have time to expel the taste of bile from his mouth, because Sheppard is already running for the cage that holds Bates and the rest of the MACOs. It opens on its own before Sheppard can even set the charge. "Teyla," he explains, simply. "They'll meet us at the beam out site."
Later, after Sheppard and McKay have disappeared into their quarters and Aiden has debriefed their acting captain, Carter, he finds Teyla down in the mess. After the events of today, he wonders why she hasn't sought out solitude, for even her usually serene features are tightly drawn and pained.
Aiden forgets himself for a moment, standing at the corner of her vision, debating whether or not to join her.
"You are welcome to sit with me, Lieutenant," she states, without looking up.
"Sorry. I forgot. I should keep my thoughts down, huh?"
"No need to apologize. I am used to it. Please." She gives the barest of nods, but Aiden takes it as a command to sit. "You are troubled?"
"You sure like to cut to the chase. Don't you?"
She smiles. "It is only fair. If I can know what you are thinking directly, should you not be similarly informed about me?"
"Makes sense." Aiden only wishes it were that simple. As much as she might value honesty, being able to see his thoughts would allow her to come up with the most convincing lie.
"You are at a disadvantage and it makes you uncomfortable. I understand. But, as John thinks most highly of you, I hope we will be able to get along."
It's not getting along he's worried about. That much should be easy for her. He catches himself too late, forcing words that he hopes will distract her. "He thinks highly of me?" What could he possibly have done to earn that? Not save Sumner, that's for sure.
"John is a good judge of character. Or in the very least, he thinks himself so."
"You'd be a better one."
"Perhaps, but in this case, I agree with him."
Aiden finds that strangely hilarious. As though she can find anything redeeming in all this confusion. "Really? Because I have no idea what went on today."
"You were not meant to. But, as John would like you to work more with him in the future, I will do my best to inform you."
"What was he after? Did Dr. McKay find something the strike team missed?" He knows he sounds overeager, but he can't help it.
"I do not know. I may be able to hear some of Dr. McKay's thoughts, but my ability does not guarantee the ability to decipher them."
It takes Aiden a second to realize that this is her subtle way of joking. He laughs a little too loudly when he finally gets it. "So, he wasn't after some intel?"
She shakes her head. "Anything Rodney has found is a bonus. John's plan was to deliver a package and he delivered it."
"But I was with him, the only thing the Wraith got was--" No, it can't be.
"Captain Sumner. I would have preferred it be Sergeant Bates, but we hardly had control over the Wraith. And Captain Sumner's replacement will certainly bode well for John. Captain Sumner attached too much merit to rank. He looked through me as though I were not there."
Aiden's mouth is dry. He can barely swallow. Sheppard was delivering a person. One of their own.
Once again Teyla does that thing where she seems to sigh, but with the utmost economy of movement. "You are right to think, at first, that he is a monster. But it helps to keep in mind that John was raised on Vulcan. Though he did not succeed in repressing the great majority of his emotions, he did absorb many of their key values, such as the fact that the good of the many outweighs the good of the one."
"So in his book, it's okay to just sacrifice someone like that?"
Teyla shakes her head. "I do not suggest that it will not pain him. He will carry that death, along with many others, to his grave. He would have been the one to sacrifice himself, if I had allowed it. But, after the Wraith have gained the knowledge of a rich new feeding ground, they will not hesitate. First they will strike Andoria. Then Vulcan. There are many territories between here and Earth, but the Federation will have mobilized by then. Nothing brings planets together like uniting against a common enemy, and nothing brings attention to a great injustice more than having it arrive in your back yard."
"And you're okay with this?"
Her smile is baleful, but it is still a smile. "My people have been victims of the Wraith for generations."
It's not the right answer. Maybe it's not even a good one. But Aiden is a kid who joined the fleet for explosions and adventure. He never figured he'd understand the politics, or need to. He knows himself well enough to know that he couldn't say whether or not the Vulcans are right when it comes to the logical nature of sacrifice, but he can say one thing with absolute certainty: what he feels in his gut is that John Sheppard is a leader to follow and Teyla Emmagen is a woman to trust. And even though he came into this looking for adventure and explosions, he wants to be more. With John and Teyla and Rodney, he can make history.
There are myths about John Sheppard that range from super human to not human at all. He has been called a shapeshifter, capable of infiltrating any group and charming any individual. Some say that he is a blank slate onto which anything can be written. What is in question is not his changeability but the why behind it. Some say it's about power, others about protecting his true self, or maybe even finding that self. But few know of his younger years, running around among children much brighter and more disciplined than him, trying to get them to play when already they were told to stay away from emotions and all that bring them. Few remember the night he got a hold of his mother's laser scalpel, and even fewer think to ask if his ears were always that way or if, like most things about him, he created them.
Doctor Carson Beckett wants little to do with John Sheppard and his men. And while they work together under the auspices of the same organization, he's barely comfortable calling them colleagues. Carson is a doctor, first and foremost. It is his job to heal. Humans, at least. He took the hippocratic oath and he believes it, but despite all the medical ethics classes, he sees no reason why it should naturally apply to other species. He believes in minimizing suffering in all living things, yes. And he'll do his best to save as many alien lives as he can, but the true fact of the matter is that he has to value his own kind first, and the promise of research on other species is just too valuable to humanity to stop at a few pesky ethical issues.
Like his mum always used to say, if you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs.
So, while he understands the people like Sheppard are sometimes necessary, Carson admits that he doesn't want to be involved at that scale. With medicine, the benefits to humankind far outweigh any harm done to a few test subjects. He doesn't understand politics well enough that he could say the same about what Sheppard does.
Carson had always let the other doctors take care of Sheppard, except for one emergency surgery that the man was unconscious for. That is, until the retrovirus incident. Sheppard wasn't even supposed to be anywhere near the test subject. He just happened to be in the hallway when Ellia broke out.
Carson doesn't remember much of that week of genetics and very little sleep, but he does remember Sheppard, looking up at him with those very alien eyes. His team was off on some harebrained scheme to search for the illusive Iratus stem cells that not even the shadow agencies within Starfleet would authorize a search for. Carson would've told them not to bother (the chances of saving Sheppard were slim), except for the benefit those kinds of samples could provide his research.
But Sheppard had looked at him, yellow eyes as deadly and mesmerizing as a cobras, and said, "You have to kill me."
"What?"
"I said you have to kill me. Before you let any more people go down there, you have to kill me."
"No," Carson had said, because first, do no harm.
"You did this, Carson. And you will take responsibility for it."
Luckily, Carson doesn't have to. He gets the stem cells and finds a cure, just in the nick of time too. Guilt is a strange and terrifying thing, he thinks as he spends the next few weeks hovering at Sheppard's bedside or kicking out the men and women who were so ready to risk their lives to find Sheppard a cure.
The sad thing is that, no matter how you try to separate yourself from that next step, the one that will cross the line, it's not your ideals (if you ever had any) that ultimately pull you over. It's people. Because what Sheppard really meant by responsibility is that Carson owes him one. And John Sheppard is not a man you want to be indebted to.
The last thing he remembers is lying down, Phlox above him, his captain at his side. He remembers both loving and hating the both of them. Phlox, in a strange way, was his father and also his executioner. And Jon was in one life his best friend, in another a monster, a stern teacher, and the judge who sentenced him to death.
This doesn't look like heaven, not with the soft sounds of medical equipment humming around him. Maybe this isn't it. Maybe they found a way to save both him and Trip. He pushes himself up, looking around for Phlox and Archer. He's in some kind of great big metal box, with golden panels that part for him as he rockets upwards, panting.
"I told you it would work," a slim woman with a strange accent exclaims, poking the man standing next to her in the chest. If it weren't for the leopard spots running along her hairline and down her neck, they could be brother and sister, both tall and slim with hazel eyes and thick black hair.
The man sighs, uncurling from where he's slouching against the wall and sauntering over. "We'll see about that."
There's a doctor floating around too, with the same dark hair, pale eyes, and sharp jaw. They all look human enough, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything out here. "All the tests are coming back positive so far," the doctor pronounces. "It seems that the sarcophagus has been successful at slowing the rapid aging process."
It couldn't be? They've found a cure? "The Velandran Circle?" he asks.
"No, just some good old fashioned alien tech. Thanks to Vala, here," the man wearing black replies. "I'm John Sheppard. And you are Trip?"
"Sim."
"Same difference. You have his memories, don't you? His body? You're him." And wouldn't it have been wonderful to hear those words coming out of Jonathan Archer's mouth. Sheppard says it like it's to most simple and obvious thing in the world.
But there is a difference, a big one. Or at least so he's been taught his entire 'life.' "No. I'm not him. If you're looking for Commander Tucker, I assume he's still onboard the Enterprise, saving the day, as predicted."
"Commander Tucker is dead." Sheppard sounds almost stern about it.
"That's why you bothered to save me?"
"I would've saved you either way. Couldn't step on the great Jonathan Archer's toes by stealing his chief engineer right out from under him. Could I?"
He gets the feeling that Sheppard's just taunting him now. "Who are you? Where am I? What do you want?"
"Funny, I thought those would be the first words out of your mouth. We're aboard the SS Atlantis, constructed about a year after you were declared dead. We were on our way back from a little mission with your good friends the Xindi and we picked up on your torpedo floating in space. Lieutenant Siller is doing a bang up job with the engine, but I thought I could do better."
"You're Starfleet?" There isn't anything about form fitting black pants in the handbook, so far as he knows.
"In a manner of speaking. C'mon. The more you sit in that thing, the more you're going to start thinking I'm some kind of evil alien impersonator. Better get you up and about and around the ship. You're going to love the engine. McKay's been tweaking her after a few of our more interesting encounters. We've had her up to warp seven, you know." Sheppard reaches down to grab his hand, Sheppard's grip firm but still gentle somehow.
The engine is every bit as amazing as Sheppard says it is, though that McKay guy is damn annoying. He'd prefer T'Pol's infuriating calm over McKay's mixed bag of emotions any day. Everything Sheppard says seems legitimate, however. If this is a hoax, it's a spectacular one. They have everything right from the uniforms to the database entries, to random bits of Earth movies and culture. He even recognized a couple of the crew members from briefing rooms or training. He's especially surprised to find Jon's old girlfriend, Samantha Carter, not just a captain, but the captain of this ship. "Trip!" she exclaims, almost running forward to hug him. "It's good to see you."
"I'm not," he starts, but she barrels right over any objections. "I'm looking forward to working with you, Commander."
He's saved by the bell when Sheppard pulls him aside to introduce Lieutenant Aiden Ford, apparently his escort until he familiarizes himself with the ship. "She was at the funeral. She knows you're not him," he says later.
"Then why does she--"
"You remember each other. There's no point in pretending you just met."
"I'm still not him."
"You've told me enough times, believe me, I know. Just, reading Archer's report about what they did to you, I can't imagine you like being treated as just a simbiote, spare organs in a nicely wrapped bag of bones."
He knows Sheppard is manipulating him. He can feel it, like all those rebel rousing ministers back home. But he can't help himself. There's something about this guy. Strangely, he's a lot like Malcolm.
"No, I guess I'm not Sim, either."
Sheppard nods. "Then who are you?"
He takes a long minute to think. Sheppard stares at him, like he doesn't know the answer either. "You can try to go back to Enterprise if you want. I can't guarantee anything, but I'm sure Archer would be glad to have you back."
"Not me."
"With the kind of stakes we're dealing with out here, we all make compromises."
He can imagine it, though. He hated how Jon treated him like some kind of tool, no more alive than the ship around them, when all of Trips memories cried out for his best friend. If he'd felt like ghost then, who knows what it would be like now, with Trip actually dead and gone? What John Sheppard is offering here is a fresh start. "I don't want to go back."
"I didn't think so." Sheppard pats him on the back. "I'm going to head out, now, give you some more time to think things over. Teyla will be by to bring you to dinner." Sheppard's half way out the door when he stops, not turning. "So, what do you think about the name Michael?"
"It's good," he replies. That was Trip's maternal grandfather's name. He wonders if Sheppard knows that. He seems like the kind of man who might know things. Or maybe not.
"All right, Michael. I'll see you tomorrow."
Michael barely has time to collect himself in these barren personality-less quarters. He could get a diving helmet and some photos and some other things. The photos, maybe. He wants one of Lizzie. But this is going to be different. He's going to start anew.
He's in the middle of reviewing the engine specs Sheppard left him when the door chimes. "Come in," he calls, as though that would stop anyone at this point. He still feels a bit like a prisoner, but from what little Sheppard has told him about the Atlantis and its missions, it's probably just to protect him should he ever want to rejoin Enterprise. Plausible deniability, that's what it's called.
"Hello, Michael." The woman standing before him is a vision. Her skin is a gorgeous copper tone and flawless, her hair pale in exotic contrast, but even though her body is nothing to disparage, what really gets him is the warm intelligence in her eyes. And when she smiles at him, he finally gets the Mona Lisa.
Before the Virus, Sateda had been a flowering, beautiful, modern world - the far flung jewel of the Empire. But then the virus came, and the Wraith. Ever since Kathless, the Empire had not hesitated to defend it's own, especially the colonies - revered for their bravery, stretched so far away from the relative safety of home.
But defense was not the word the ever governed the loud shifting rages of the Chancellor and the high council. It was offense, and did it truly offend to attack a word full of ridgeless weaklings, too devastated by the Virus to fight back? The question had nothing to do with costs and benefits, like so many other species, but with apathy. Were those affected by the Virus still Klingon? Did attacking them call forth the dogs of war?
No. And there was a part of Ronon, a festering weakness, like the smooth expanse of his once-ridged forehead, that agreed. The fact that he even doubted that the Empire should go to war against the Wraith agression betrayed his weakness.
It was for the good of all Klingons that the weak ridgeless ones died and only the strong survived. There were rumors of happenings in the heart of the Empire - quarantine and extermination, thousands dead upon their own swords to stop the weakness in its tracks, millions plunging themselves into the front lines of the most brutal wars, hoping that in death, at least, they might reclaim their honor.
If not for the Wraith, Ronon might have gone that way too - but the Wraith were the worst of enemies - cold and clinical, not fighting but capturing, feeding. The very idea disgusted him and if the Chancellor would not act to stop them, then Ronon would.
And if, when he was his old, ridged self, he had imagined that he might one day meet the man who had brought the Virus on Sateda, and thus the Wraith, he would have him impaled on his sword before the traitor had the time to blink. And, yet, now, meeting John Sheppard, covered in blood in the middle of jungle, their backs pressed together as an army of Wraith close in from both sides, he can almost say he's comfortable here, more so than he has ever been since his transformation.
"Hey, you're pretty good at this," Sheppard gasps out. He's cradling his right arm to his chest, strange red blood dripping down from his temple and mixing with the black spatter from an army of decapitated Wraith, but there's a desperate pride in his smile. John Sheppard is loving this, like the best of Klingon warriors.
"Shouldn't be surprised," Ronon replies. Sheppard's not as big as legend - the silent black figure that presided in the shadows over the tests of the few subjects that survived the research. By Klingon standard he's not much of a fighter either, but what he lacks in skill, he certainly makes up for in enthusiasm.
He's slicing the head off the last Wraith drone with Ronon's battle'eth when he looks up, grinning beneath the strange midnight haze of this forgotten planet, "so, wanna join my team?"
Ronon has to laugh at this, shething a few knives and throwing his head back, drunk on Wraith blood and the audacity of this man, standing half-broken and defenseless before him, a complement like an insult on his tongue.
"Our peoples are practically on the brink of war. After what you've done--"
"Your people," it's Sheppard's turn to laugh. "Your people have abandoned you for what you are."
"Because of a disease you set loose."
Sheppard shrugs. "Water under the bridge. Fight the Wraith with me. Or do you think I'm too weak to win?"
Ronon advances on him and Sheppard doesn't flinch, even when Ronon rips his own weapon out of Sheppard's broken arm and brings it to the man's neck. No fear, Ronon remembers that. "You are weak. Your ways - viruses and secrecy and politics. They are weak."
"But do you think I'll win?"
Sheppard looks brilliant in this light, stunningly malevolent covered in blood as he is. The old ways, the ways of the Empire are no longer, not out here. Ronon is a new breed, a weaker one, perhaps, but he will triumph. If the Wraith are killed, is that not enough?
"I don't doubt it."
Sheppard grins wildly back at him, limping forward and slinging an arm around Ronon's shoulder in a way he knows humans consider to be friendly. "Great. We have a lot of people to meet. I can use you in combat training, that's for sure. And as a member of my diplomatic team so long as you promise to behave. Senator Weir can push through the papers and you can even get through to Earth, if you'd like, maybe work with our geneticists on a compromise, for when your people are ready to see reason. I don't leave my people behind."
The thing is, Ronon thinks much later, sitting across from a pretty blonde doctor watching his blood drip red into a collection vessel, he doesn't think he ever agreed to any of this.
"Congratulations," John says, slipping an arm around Cam's shoulder like a familiar lover returning to the room, not sneaking up from behind specifically to startle and intimidate.
Except Cam hasn't been startled by John in years. All the whispered questions about his former friend, the rumors. He doesn't add to them, certainly, but he never bothers to respond either. John is what he is and Cam has stopped being appalled by it.
"Hey, stranger." Cam lets John slide up to the bar next to him, breath warm in his ear. "Was wondering when you'd pop up again."
John laughs. "Not every day a man's buddy gets promoted to the fleet's flagship."
Cam pulls away, scowling. "That would be the Enterprise, and last time I checked, I'm not Jonathan Archer."
"No, you're a much better pilot, not to mention more attractive. Besides, the Sierra Gulf One isn't just some pretty little diplomatic vessel. It's a ship that can go out there and do things." It's a warship, that much, Cam knows.
"You only say that because you think you've got me in your pocket. But you don't, John. You haven't in a long time." Cam remembers those days at the academy, that final offer from Admiral Forrest - if he'd just stop hanging around Sheppard and fucking up, he'd be on the fast track to his own command. Ironic that it's Sheppard's hand, not Forest's that got him here.
"I've had you in more things," John replies meaningfully, as if a few misplaced fumblings in a storeroom somewhere could account for unending loyalty.
Cam is growing tired of this. He's done the press conferences, taken his photo ops and his cabinet meetings and the last minute meetings with engineers all in stride, but Sheppard and all the associated baggage are the last straw. John is shiny and beautiful, sparkling with temptation and power, but the truth is that those things are tangible objects for him, and they are jealous mistresses. Cam has kept John's secrets and helped bail him out when his back is to the wall and he knows that Shep will do the same, but the man didn't send so much as a comunique when the Goa'uld war left Cam in the hospital or when his fiancee left him. Those things are water off Shep's back and Cam has stopped bothering to wonder where that leaves them.
"What do you want, John?" he sighs.
Sheppard shrugs, petulantly. He hates it when people disrupt his bullshit and ruin his little games.
"Fine. Change of subject - so what really happened in Afghanistan?" Cam asks. He's trying to make it casual, but he knows that Sheppard sees right through him, always has, even before he managed to pull this cloak of myth around himself.
"An accident." Shep seems to be doing his best at casual, too. Cam wishes that he'd just remember how they used to goof around back at the Academy. Cam isn't some politician or enemy. They might not be friends in the traditional sense, but they're better friends than that.
"An accident or an accident?"
"Somebody misaligned the drive pods on our transport. Mitch was at the helm. Holland and I were in the back trying to make manual adjustments. Everyone in the forward compartment died on impact. Captain Holland didn't survive for long out in the desert. I barely did. All the power brokering in the world wouldn't've saved me from the elements."
"Rumor has it that you walked out of the desert and into the base a Kanadar without a scratch on you."
John laughs, mirthlessly. "I got picked up heading the wrong way from the crash site by a group of Afghani war reinactors, then spent two weeks in a local hospital recovering from heat stroke and internal injuries, before I dared show up on the base to kill the sonofabitch in charge of satellite monitoring. You can't take a piss on this planet without someone recording it from space. Do you think a crash in the middle of a training zone can really go undetected for eight days?"
"You're saying someone tried to kill you?"
"No. I'm pretty sure the mechanical problems were an accident. Someone noticed that we'd gone down and thought maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if I didn't come back. I wouldn't have blamed them, if their late reaction hadn't condemned Holland to death."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Like I said, I wouldn't blame them for wanting me dead, after all the things that I've done." Sheppard looks tired all-of-a-sudden, for the first time showing all of his forty years. It's a tough life, Cam knows
"But you killed them anyway."
"Enemies are enemies, Cam, even if you dress them up with a smile."
Cam's used to Sheppard's paranoia by now. That doesn't make it any easier. "And who are your enemies now, Shep?"
Sheppard grins at that, like a cat that's just eaten the canary. "You'll know when you find them." He has something small and smooth and glowing in his hand. Cam barely stops himself from screaming when it sinks painlessly into the skin of his arm where Sheppard presses it against him.
"What the hell?"
"When you find those enemies, give me a call."
Before he knows it, Sheppard is gone, as suddenly as he appeared.
When Cam does finally locate those enemies, he's not happy with what he finds.
"We can't simply eliminate him, Mr. Woolsey," Elizabeth Weir states calmly. Bureaucrats, their naivety is always astounding, never amusing. "No one knows what he's gotten his hands into. To borrow an old corporate term, we don't want to be stuck swallowing a poison pill."
Woolsey is not amused by Elizabeth's cute little historical references. "But he's in violation of so many parts of the charter. I don't even know where to begin."
"He wants us to write him into the charter." Elizabeth remembers that meeting - John Sheppard sitting before her, flanked by a telepath, a former Klingon, and the smartest man on the planet, making veiled threats with a casual smile.
"Surely you're not considering it."
Elizabeth schools her features to not laugh at Woolsey's righteous indignation. "Men like Sheppard are necessary, Mr. Woolsey. They are part of the political process itself. Yes, the rules send an important message, but there has never been a successful government that gave up the freedom to extend it's will beyond the apparent."
"The rules were created for a reason, Senator Weir. They are created to protect us from ourselves. Sheppard is too powerful. Even Captain Carter has lost control over him."
Elizabeth flexes her right arm, trying to feel the hard press of the communications device Sheppard had slipped beneath her skin. He could be listening, even now. But Elizabeth feels brash, defiant after her nomination to the federation diplomatic corps. "Perhaps. But you wouldn't be the first who tried to kill him, and certainly not the most skilled."
"Then what do you suggest, Senator? Grant him even more, legitimate power?"
"Sheppard may not be easily killed, Mr. Woolsey, but that doesn't mean he's not easily contained." She reaches into her purse, removing a slim datapad.
"What's this?"
"If you had been following Sheppard's most recent activities, you'd notice an increasing obsession with the little problem of the Wraith."
"An obsession that is certainly warranted, considering the current state of affairs."
Elizabeth curbed the desire to roll her eyes - as though any of the mere reactionary bureaucrats like Woolsey and his IOA could even wrap their minds around the idea that nobody would be focused on the Wraith if Sheppard didn't wish it. "Nevertheless, Sheppard does not invite people into his inner circle lightly. He may be a rogue to the rest of us, but a look at his starfleet psych screening shows a deep loyalty to others, and ideological loyalty to the right cause."
"Sheppard was in Starfleet?"
Elizabeth does not dignify Woolsey's ignorance with a response. "Yes. Those files have been wiped now, of course. Only those of us who saw them at the very beginning know the contents. But that's my point. Despite appearances, he is human. And humans can all be properly motivated."
"So you're saying we trap him? Let the Wraith take care of him for us?"
"Please, Richard, nothing so obtuse. Creatures like the Wraith do not arise out of nothing. Think about it. How could a species that feeds off humanoids evolve in independence of humanoid species, accessible only by space flight. What you have in your hand," she gestures to the benignly glowing datapad that Woolsey is gripping tight, "is the work of Dr. Daniel Jackson, the linguist aboard Sierra Gulf One."
Woolsey looks down at the strange markings scrawling across the screen, eight symbols, repeating. "He's a linguist and he didn't bother to translate it?"
"He didn't translate it because there's no translation. Those are coordinates, Mr. Woosley. The homeworld of the Wraith's creators and possibly the origins of the human race itself."
"Interesting," Woolsey says, though his tone indicates that he doesn't think so. "But no matter how metaphysically titilating, what does this have to with the Atlantis and the federation charter?"
"Everything, Mr. Woolsey, because we're going to send Sheppard there."
Elizabeth finally lets her sly smirk loose as she shakes Woolsey's hand and walks out of his Starfleet headquarters office onto the bustling streets of San Francisco. She presses down on the hard surface lurking beneath the skin of her arm, watching the skin glow subtlely. "John, this is Elizabeth, we have a go."
The End