Rodney found it when he was sorting through the contents of Carson's quarters. Elizabeth had said something about arranging for some of the Marines to box up Carson's life, get it ready for shipping back to Earth on the Daedalus, but Rodney had insisted on doing this himself; partly because this was something he could do for Carson, and partly because it was something mindless, something that kept him away from the kind look in Elizabeth's or Kate Heightmeyer's eyes.

Most of Carson's things were easy to pack up—clothes and shoes and DVDs piled haphazardly into boxes—or to stack by the door for redistribution throughout the city; Rodney worked through them on autopilot. Some things took longer: photos of Carson and Cadman that Rodney placed in an envelope to send back to her; a stack of personal journals that Rodney flicked through, half curious and half ashamed; notebooks full of theories and speculations that Carson had kept about his research. Much as Rodney was loath to admit it, he had no idea what parts of Carson's research were worth keeping; still, there was bound to be something here that Keller could use, buried deep in the desk's drawers.

Rodney was just about to toss the last journal he'd flicked through back onto the pile when a mention of his name caught his eye. In between notes taken from the Ancient database on which planets furnished herbs for treating respiratory disease, and which planets grew a particular species of hallucinogenic fungus, there was his name, next to a block of painstakingly transcribed Ancient. "PASS THIS ON TO RODNEY??" was underlined next to it in chunky capitals.

Rodney frowned, wondering what Carson could possibly have found in a medical database that would interest him; he settled back on the bed with the notebook on his lap, packing forgotten for the moment. He parsed through the Ancient, frowning over the places where the phrasing was obscure, or the meaning made uncertain by that pesky habit of not including vowels in written Ancient. He made it to the end, then re-read it from the beginning twice more, just to make sure that it said what he thought it said. Then he tapped his head-set, and said "Elizabeth? Yes, it's going fine, I—no, no, there's something I want you to translate for me from Carson's notes. No, I wouldn't like to speak to Kate."

Elizabeth had a working translation ready in a couple of hours, one which filled in the blank spaces and seemed to confirm his theory. That was as much as Rodney needed; he snatched the paper from her hand and all but ran from her office, heading down two levels and bursting in on Radek in the lab, pointing and gesticulating, running the hypothesis by him, to be doubly sure before presenting it at the mid-afternoon staff meeting.

"It is not certain, Rodney," Radek said, looking slowly from Elizabeth's translation to the original text and back again. "You do realise that."

"Yes, yes," Rodney said, "but what else could it be? Nothing else makes sense—and before you say anything about it being in a medical database, you were the one who was theorising that the outer casing was organic, not manufactured. Gave the botanists quite the collective swelled head for a while, as I recall."

"It does seem persuasive," Radek said finally, slowly.

Rodney grinned, delighting in the feel of the snap and push of his ideas, his words, against the force of another's after so many days of silence. "And really, even if I'm wrong, there still has to be something in this outpost, and I don't think there's be any harm in checking it out, is there?"

Radek pushed his glasses up to rub at his eyes. "You know that I am no believer in fate or luck, McKay—still, I wish you hadn't said that."

Rodney paused and winced. "Hmm, yes, in this galaxy, that wasn't perhaps... but regardless, I've got your backing, right?"

"Of course," Radek said, settling his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, "Of course."

Radek passed photocopies of both the text and its translation around the room while Rodney laid out his hypothesis. "It's written in a dialect of Ancient that's even more obtuse and pointlessly lyrical than normal," he said, "but Elizabeth's come up with a pretty complete translation. It references a 'Keeping Place' where 'that which is drawn from elsewhere' is stored, on a planet that Radek and I have identified from charts in the database as M4X-411. Now, the pronoun that was used to refer to the stored material is one which in Ancient is used specifically to refer to non-corporeal objects or abstract ideas."

Rodney paused and looked around at the rest of the room, anticipating some measure of enthusiasm or interest in their expressions. Radek and Elizabeth were certainly all attention; Sheppard, Teyla and Lorne, however, looked no more than politely interested, and Ronon looked flat out bored.

"This a linguistics lesson, McKay? Or is there a translation for the people who aren't up to speed on the obtuse and lyrical Ancient?" John asked, doodling idly on the writing pad in front of him.

"I would have thought that it was startlingly obvious, Colonel," Rodney said, ignoring the eyeroll Sheppard directed at him, and the way Elizabeth quirked her lips and looked down at the table as if suppressing laughter. "But if you can't keep up, I would suggest you re-read carefully—a storage place or device for a non-corporeal object, such as for example energy," he said, speaking slowly enough to make his impatience clear, "which is drawn from 'elsewhere', a word which we've seen used in the past used as an Ancient euphemism for a pocket of subspace—"

John looked up sharply at that, both eyebrows raised. "You're saying that there's a ZPM on M4X-411?"

"No," Rodney said with exaggerated care, "I'm saying that it's quite likely that there are ZPMs, plural, on M4X-411."

Now he had their interest.

The MALP showed them images of a desolate landscape, flat and dry; one of the worlds that was so uninviting not even the need to flee from the Wraith, to seek out untouched places to live, had induced people to settle there. No matter what direction Rodney turned the machine, the camera showed them only drifts of blue-grey sand and patches of scrub. M4X-411 wouldn't have tempted them into an exploratory mission, ordinarily, but this was no ordinary trip; those in the command centre greeted the restrained report of "breathable air, temperature in the mid thirties celsius, no signs of life, some kind of structure within four klicks of the gate" with smiles as broad as if they already had the ZPMs in their hands.

"You have a go," Elizabeth said, "good luck," the crisp tone of her voice and her tightly folded arms at odds with the sparkle in her eyes, the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Teyla nodded up at her as the gate came to life, Sheppard touched two fingers to his forehead in an informal salute, and then they walked out of the cool morning-blue of the city to the harsh light of another world.

The sand underneath their feet was fine and light, shifting and moving as they walked, enough that even Teyla lost her footing occasionally, and Ronon's easy lope became slightly laboured. It was tough going, and by the time they reached the building that the MALP had shown them was there, the planet's twin suns were edging towards midday. Rodney's thighs and calves were aching from the extra effort, and he'd long since stopped wasting his energy on complaining.

He perked up, though, as they closed in on the building. It looked deserted, a low, stone structure which showed no signs that anyone had been there for years, for centuries, ageless as Atlantis; and like their city, it gave no signs of what it might hold within. Sand had piled up against its walls, pale against the dark basalt; thorn bushes were trying and failing to insinuate themselves into the thin cracks between the slabs of stones. Rodney scanned it with the life signs detector before they approached, picking up nothing—no signs of booby-traps or signal transmissions, no harmful radiation—reassuring, if not conclusive. Ronon still insisted on checking everything out visually before they went any further, peering carefully through the windows which were scattered at irregular intervals around the building, pulse pistol drawn and head cocked to one side, listening; probably justified, Rodney conceded mentally, but it took a full five minutes, time that he could have spent in there gathering ZPMs, and he was hurrying forward almost before Ronon grunted the all-clear.

Once they got closer, Rodney realised that all they could see were narrow, deep-set windows. This must have once been the top floor of the building, he thought, running one hand over the smooth walls, letting its heat bleed into his palm; time and wind had buried at least a couple of floors beneath the pale, shifting sand. It wouldn't stop them from getting inside, though, not once they'd negotiated the seven foot drop from where they were standing, through the window to the floor below. Sheppard, Teyla, and Ronon took it with ease, Rodney scrambling after them, slow and wary of the laptop and scanner he carried in his backpack; he scowled when Ronon rolled his eyes at how long he took to make the drop, but there was no way he was risking either yet another computer, or a broken leg, no matter what might be waiting inside. "What?" Rodney said, hopping on one foot to shake some sand out of his boot, "That's a big drop! Do I look like, like, some kind of space gazelle to you?"

"Honestly?" Ronon said, and Sheppard ducked his head, as if Rodney couldn't see him snickering; Rodney made a firm point of ignoring them both, examining the room around them instead.

It took him a minute to let his eyes adjust to the dim quiet of the room, some kind of ante-chamber where dark tile reflected dark ceiling and everything was a little cooler than the midday furnace outside. There was nothing there at all, the room empty in a way that Ancient outposts rarely were; for some reason, as much as Rodney was eager to push on further, he was a little uneasy, though he couldn't have said why—maybe it was that an absence, in the Pegasus Galaxy, was rarely so threatening as the presence of something new.

Corridors branched off from the room in three directions—straight ahead, to the right, and to the left. Whatever was in this building, wherever those ZPMs were, they were surely to be found at the end of one of those dark tunnels. Rodney keyed up his scanner again, hurriedly looking for some indication of that distinctive, constant harmonic which meant that a ZPM was nearby, though clearly not fast enough for Sheppard's liking.

"Where to from here?" he asked, one hand resting on his P-90 and a waiting kind of tension in the set of his shoulders. "Rodney? Rodney. Rodney."

"What, what?" Rodney snapped, eyes still focused on the readouts his scanner was giving him. "Can't you see I'm—wait, wait!" He tapped at a few more keys, then hummed in satisfaction and pointed straight ahead. "Down that corridor a couple hundred metres, hang a left. I'm getting energy readings from there, not positive whether they're from ZPMs, but trust me when I say that these readings are strong, they're really strong." He beamed at Sheppard, certain that they'd found it, they'd done it; here were full shields and a working cloak and repowered puddlejumpers for the taking, and god, he'd even be magnanimous and let the botanists fully power up that hydroponics bay they'd found.

"Strong like 'the Force is strong with this one' or 'eh, you'll do for a padawan' kind of strong?" Sheppard asked, mouth quirking.

Rodney saw Teyla roll her eyes; she was no longer under the illusion that Jedi was an ancient and venerable, if somewhat schismatic, Earth religion, but a careful explanation of the intricacies of both trilogies to her had made her no more patient when she had to listen to his and Sheppard's running battles about midichlorians.

He ignored her, waving his scanner at Sheppard instead. "I thought we'd agreed not to bring up Lucas and his works for a while, but to answer your question, neither, really. It's more like 'strong in the sense of four, maybe five, fully-charged ZPMs.' Do you realise what we could do with a guaranteed power source of that magnitude?"

Sheppard rocked back on his heels, made a great show of looking at the ceiling as if he was seriously considering the question. "Make a lot of lightsabers?" he suggested, laughing when Rodney snorted and kicked up a shower of sand at him. "Okay, okay," he grinned, "no need to get riled up. Shall we?"

Sheppard walked over to the point where the tunnel slanted away and down from the room they were in, switching on his P-90's light so as to penetrate the gloom a little. "Hope you guys brought some flashlights," he said as he stepped forward into the passageway.

"Sure," Rodney said, "and I—"

And then there was a sound like the sky rending itself apart, and all the world went black.

There was no light anymore, just sound and a sudden, awful drop in temperature, and Rodney was blind, he was deafened and he was shaking and shaken, he couldn't remember which was way was up; and he was sure, later, that if Ronon hadn't reached out just as the noise reached a crescendo, if one big hand hadn't fisted itself in the material of Rodney's collar and yanked, that he would have been crushed as heavy stone shook itself loose from heavy stone, as the ceiling came crashing down and the walls sagged inwards. Rodney and Ronon jumped just free of it, scrambling up the loosening sand to curl beneath the window's lintel, which sagged but stayed in place, bore the weight, protected them.

When the noise died away and the sand began to settle, Rodney could hear Ronon cursing in rapid Satedan next to him; could see Teyla who, cat-like, had managed to fling herself even further up the sand than they had. But he couldn't see the Colonel, he realised—shaking his head which was ringing with noise, trying to get rid of the fog of adrenaline in his brain, the shudder and skip in his pulse—he couldn't see Sheppard, who had been further in there, who had been... Oh god, and then Rodney was forcing himself to his feet, yelling "Sheppard! Colonel Sheppard, John!", voice hoarse in a throat made raw with fear.

There was no answer, but he tried to go back inside anyway, back into the still shuddering dark. Ronon's hand was on his shoulder before he could go more than a step or two, pulling him back, and Teyla was saying quickly "Rodney, it's no use—it is too unstable still, you cannot risk yourself, Rodney."

And Rodney stopped, body going suddenly limp in Ronon's grasp; all he could hear was their breathing, ragged, and the last creaking subsidence of stone against sand. The sun was still bright and white-hot overhead, but Rodney felt like his insides had turned to water, like every point of colour and warmth had been leached from the world around him; there was no way, no way Sheppard could have survived that; they had lost Sheppard, he had lost him, and Rodney couldn't remember a time when he'd felt quite so helpless, so hopeless, before.

Luckily, the contents of Rodney's backpack had made it through unscathed, and he dumped them out on the sand. The remote dialler that he'd cobbled together from some Asgard tech and pieces of a partially fried DHD was there at the bottom of the pile, right where he'd stashed it for emergencies like this. Never field-tested before, and with a small power supply that would probably only give him one chance at dialling out—but it worked first time, the device glowing blue in his hands, telling him that the gate had connected, his IDC had been accepted, that he had a radio signal.

He got Elizabeth's voice first, her expectant tone giving way to anxiety as he told her what had happened, requesting back up, urgently, a med team, a puddlejumper, all the heavy lifting and excavation equipment that Zelenka and the engineers could put together and get through the gate on short notice.

"Rodney?" she said, "What's happened? Are you all right? John, Teyla, Ronon?"

"I'm fine," Rodney said, ignoring how his voice cracked a little, "I'm... Teyla and Ronon are, we're fine, but Sheppard—the Colonel, he's..." Over the past couple of years, Rodney had had more experience than he'd ever wanted to acquire in saying the words dead and I'm so sorry, but none of it could prepare him for this, for telling Elizabeth that John was gone; he squeezed his eyes shut against the stunning and private pain of it.

"He's what?" said a voice from behind him, familiar and entirely unexpected, interrupting Rodney before he could even begin to speak. His heart stopped and started in the same instant, that painful weight lifting from his chest as air rushed into his lungs once more.

"John!" Teyla said, breathless; "Sheppard?" Ronon said; and Rodney whipped around to see Sheppard standing there, seemingly unscathed, sunglasses and smirk securely in place.

"How did you get free?" Teyla said, "We thought we had lost you."

"We thought you were squashed," Rodney blurted out, regretting the words as soon as he had uttered them, regretting them even before Ronon stuck a sharp and pointy elbow into his ribs. "Ow," he muttered, rubbing at his side, "barbarian."

"Nah," Sheppard said, jerking a thumb backwards at the building. "I ran down the corridor when it looked like the roof was caving in, found another passageway that led outside. No big deal," he said, smirk growing wider when he saw how that assessment made Rodney splutter. "Why, McKay, did you miss me?"

"I—we thought you were in danger, you, you..." Rodney couldn't find the words—or at least not the words that wouldn't result in Ronon cuffing him; Ronon was weirdly prudish when it came to obscenities—and settled for throwing his hands up instead, appealing to the deep blue sky for some help to set against the horror that was Sheppard being Sheppard, for something to weight against the light, weirdly giddy happiness that he felt because Sheppard was still alive, still here with him.

The colonel tipped his head to one side, as if considering. "I did get some sand down my pants?" he offered. "Kind of itches."

"Incorrigible!" Rodney came up with in the end, spluttering and pointing an accusatory finger at Sheppard; Sheppard just laughed.

The remote dialler's power supply lasted long enough for Rodney to tell Elizabeth that they were okay, it was fine, false alarm, and that they were heading straight back to Atlantis to fill her in on what had happened. Even if there had been an easy way for them to get back into the central chamber of the building, none of them were in any mood to go exploring right now, the bright edge of their adrenaline blunted by exhaustion and shock. The trip back took them nearly an hour longer than the original one had; Teyla's head was bowed, and even Ronon's usual loping pace was lagging a little.

Sheppard was the only one of them who seemed at all energetic, Rodney thought as he swiped miserably at the sweat that was beading on the back of his neck. The colonel had taken point, moving on ahead of all of them, with every sign of great enthusiasm for a forced march in blistering heat. Sunglasses off, Sheppard looked up at the cloudless sky above them, the shifting sand below them, as if he had never seen them before.

Rodney supposed it was one of those consequences of a near-death experience: new respect for nature, new lust for life, yadda yadda, all that stuff that Heightmeyer liked to suggest he was feeling in their weekly sessions. He shivered again at the thought of a death like that, the pressure and weight of stone pushing you down so suddenly, no time to prepare or to say goodbye; shivered again when Sheppard looked back at him and grinned suddenly, his smile sharp and uncomplicated, like that of a younger man; shivered, and didn't know why.

Elizabeth was waiting for them at the foot of the main staircase when they gated back to the city, her face wearing that pinched, worn look that Rodney had become all too familiar with; her arms were wrapped tightly around her body. His radio transmission clearly hadn't reassured her, because there was a tension in her shoulders which lessened only when she saw all four of them walk through the gate, whole and unharmed. Not that Rodney could blame her; each mission that he went on, there was a background hum of worry in his mind until he stepped back through the gate in as intact a form as this galaxy would allow, when the cool blues and greens of the gateroom around him were a welcome and tangible relief, quieting that noise enough to let him breathe. Even the city seemed happy to have them back this time, the lights dimming a little before flaring up all the brighter at Sheppard's presence, a notch or two above normal.

While Keller fussed over Sheppard in the infirmary, checking for bruises or stoically concealed internal injuries, Rodney and Teyla told Elizabeth that everything was fine, and that there was nothing which couldn't wait until the debriefing. Well, Teyla reassured her, mostly; Rodney just stood by and rolled his eyes and made impatient noises until he'd worn her down enough that she raised her hands and said "Fine, Rodney, fine, we can debrief at the afternoon staff meeting, if that's okay with you." Rodney saw no reason for such sarcasm.

In the couple of hours between then and the debriefing, Rodney managed to cram in a shower (brief and hot and thoroughly welcome, ridding his body of fine-grained sand and clammy, cold sweat), a meal (rough-cut sandwiches and syrupy coffee) and some time in the labs, all while brain-storming with Radek on how best to convince Elizabeth that they needed to return to M4X-411, how to impress on them all that this wasn't an opportunity they could afford to pass up.

Rodney knew that what had happened was just a minor setback, that the structural collapse couldn't be total; that with the proper preparation, the proper equipment, there was still every chance that they could retrieve the ZPMs from their chamber with a minimum of effort. First in the labs and then in the debriefing, Rodney sketched out his plan with wide loops of green ink on a whiteboard, words tumbling out fast and sure, hands describing ever bigger arcs in the air; calling up all the energy and possibility and potential that was there for the taking, if only they would agree with him.

At first, he didn't know if he'd succeeded; the way Elizabeth leaned forward in her seat, hands clasped, the furrow between her eyebrows, made him think sickeningly of Doranda, of all the faith and trust she'd lost in him there. Rodney had to bite his lip to keep from blurting out something stupid. But then she sat back, brow clearing and said "This seems reasonable, given the potential pay-off."

Rodney stood straighter at that, tapping out a quick tattoo on the back of his hand with his whiteboard marker, and flashed a quick and confidential grin at Radek. Adrenaline sang bright and furious in his blood as it did with every victory, every time he'd managed to prove himself, refracting to a greater sharpness at the thought that they would get to go back, that Elizabeth would give him this.

"I can't let you sink too much of our available resources into it, of course," she continued, "but I don't think that one more trip to the planet is too much to ask. Provided, of course, that we take appropriate safety precautions this time." Her tone was wry, mouth quirking upwards, but she looked tired; Rodney would bet good money that today had taken more out of her than she was letting on. "Colonel, I trust you can begin arranging matters, tomorrow perhaps? We can schedule the mission to begin in three days' time, and hopefully have it out of the way before the Penallan delegation arrives next week."

Rodney nodded and had begun to gather up his papers, satisfied that the meeting had come to a close, when Sheppard spoke up. He'd been drumming his fingers quietly against the table for the past twenty minutes, and that drumming now stopped abruptly. "I don't know that it's such a good idea," Sheppard said slowly, raising his voice a little so that he could be heard over Rodney's sudden squawk of outrage. "I think it'd be a waste of time."

Elizabeth held up a hand in Rodney's direction. "Could you tell us why?"

"I just don't think there's anything there for us to go back to. If there was any Ancient tech in the building, let alone a ZPM, I would have felt... something." Sheppard made a little gesture with one hand, and Rodney knew he was trying to convey that feeling of presence which a gene carrier had when near Ancient tech—nothing that could be felt with any of the five senses or described with any words, but an awareness, like a weight at the back of the skull, which told of a world that was deeper and wider than the one they could see around them.

"But—"

Sheppard shrugged. "Rodney, maybe there was something there once, could even have been a ZPM, but it's been at least ten thousand years. Things are bound to have... moved around a bit."

Rodney could feel his jaw tighten; whatever opposition he had expected to his plan, he hadn't expected it to come from Sheppard. Perhaps he should have—it wasn't like they always saw eye-to-eye on things like this, not at first—but he hadn't, and to be confronted with this when he knew he was right stung sharply, an oddly personal betrayal. "Oh, please. You should know as well as I do that there's no way that your, your feelings can be conclusive evidence that there's nothing there. We can't rule anything out until we've investigated thoroughly and—"

Another shrug. "I'm just saying, McKay. I'm pretty sure that whatever might have been there once, it's long gone by now. That building felt empty when I left it."

"There is absolutely no way you can state that definitively!"

Rodney harrumphed his way through a lecture on just how useless Sheppard's crackbrained version of a Spidey sense was; the longer he talked, the more Sheppard seemed to subside in his seat and the steadier Rodney felt. Here was surer ground, here was a place he knew how to defend, his ideas against Sheppard's grin, white and dryly amused; here was a Sheppard who pushed just enough to brace him up, to move with him, but never enough to unsteady him. By the time he'd talked himself to a standstill, he was sure that he'd convinced everyone in the room, not just Sheppard; and Elizabeth's voice was indulgent as she marshalled them all into some kind of order—made Rodney admit that the expedition could wait a couple of days, pending further examination of the site by Radek's engineers, and got Sheppard to agree that he would lend his support to it, no matter what his thoughts on the likelihood of ZPMs might be.

By the time they finished, there was only just enough time left for Rodney to grab a late dinner in the mess. Still, he lingered in the conference room, discussing possible timetables with Elizabeth and Radek, parcelling out the engineers and the Marines who might be needed to make a collapsing building safe, to remove tonnes of rock from what could potentially be their greatest discovery in the Pegasus galaxy—there was no doubt in Rodney's mind that even if there weren't ZPMs concealed somewhere on that planet, there had to be something else important, something which the Ancients had considered worth the effort of constructing a hiding place for, something worth stowing away on an isolated, unpopulated planet.

Rodney glanced up only once, briefly, to see Sheppard leave the room, trailing his fingers along the wall as he went. It was a curiously childlike gesture, tentative, like John was getting used to Atlantis again after a long absence, or meeting it for the first time: like the way their reaction to the city had been in their first few weeks here, when every wall, every ceiling, every stained-glass shatter of sunlight on the floor had been unexpected, bright, inspiring the urge to reach out and touch, to learn this place around them. Rodney wasn't sure whether the gesture was truly strange, or whether it was just Sheppard; or whether, more to the point, this was just another example of the perplexing curiosity Sheppard inspired in him at times, the way Rodney felt that if he looked at Sheppard for long enough, something would resolve itself, be made clear.

Curiosity kept him watching as Sheppard caught up with Teyla in the hallway, touched her on the shoulder, asked her something—probably to see if she would let him spar with her this evening, despite all of Keller's strictures on the need to rest. It kept him watching as Sheppard spoke with her, and then looked back at Rodney for one quick moment before they left.

Curious, Rodney thought, shaking himself and attending once more to what Radek was saying; curious what tiredness could to him, because for a moment, he almost hadn't recognised Sheppard's face.

There was still some food left in the mess by the time Rodney got there. He'd anticipated nothing more than a stale sandwich and a gallon or two of the thick, black coffee that the mess produced; but when Rodney sat down at the table, Ronon pushed over the second tray he had in front of him. It was loaded with a big bowl of pasta, fresh, crusty bread, and some of the sweet purple bahavi fruit that the botanists grew; there was even a tall glass of water to go with the coffee. Almost empty in comparison to the amount of food on Ronon's plate, but still more than enough for Rodney to be going on with.

"Oh," he said as he eyed first the tray, then Ronon, "I didn't expect..."

Ronon shrugged. "Long day. You need to keep your strength up."

"Yes," Rodney said, "Well. It was certainly exciting, hmm?" Ronon shrugged again, either not interested in conversation or too jaded by seven years running from psychic vampires to feel that mere boulders held much of a threat, so Rodney dug into his food with a will. For his own part, even with all that this galaxy had thrown at them, Wraith and falling stone and rampaging nanovirii, he hadn't yet found anything that would diminish his appetite, and certainly nothing that would affect it when Ronon, of all people, was providing him with food.

Rodney had just come back to the table with seconds when Teyla arrived. She'd obviously come straight from the gym; her hair was pulled back from her face in a messy ponytail, damp strands framing her face, and her bantos sticks were poking out of the top of the bag slung over her shoulder. Rodney slid some of the remaining bread over to her; he'd seen the way Teyla ate after an intensive work-out, and he'd learned long ago not to get between her and her exercise-fuelled need for carbs.

Teyla didn't eat much, though, just sat there, brow furrowed, and tore up the bread into smaller and smaller pieces, little white pellets dotting the plate. It was unusual to see Teyla fidget—it was rather unsettling, as a matter of fact, like a child seeing its parent cry for the first time—so Rodney cleared his throat and asked "Is there something up?"

"I'm sorry?" Teyla said, looking up at him, startled, as if she had forgotten that there was anyone else at the table; the line of her mouth was unhappy. "Oh. No, I am well, Rodney, thank you." Rodney wasn't convinced.

Neither was Ronon, who arched an eyebrow at her as he swallowed the last of his food. "Bad practise? Your knee still stiff?"

"A little," Teyla said, "though it's not of great concern—Dr Keller assures me that ligament damage can take some time to heal, and I am no longer experiencing any pain." Rodney doubted that, too; over the past two months or so, he'd seen Teyla wince when climbing the stairs at the end of a long day, or grimace at an unexpected stretch when she thought no one was looking. It made him worry a little, afraid that that fall when they were escaping from the Arsevi had taken more out of her than she wanted to admit, even to herself.

"Teyla?" Ronon said, and folded his arms; he reminded Rodney suddenly, awfully, of his maiden aunt, the one who could inspire truly incredible levels of guilt in a young Rodney with just a look, before he even knew why he should be feeling guilty in the first place.

Teyla blew out a breath, then looked up at them. "It's John," she admitted. "There was something about him during our practice—I cannot say what it was, precisely; there was nothing he said, nothing in his mood, and yet..."

"Well, he was almost crushed by several metric tonnes of rock on a planet which seemed specifically designed to give you an equivalent amount of sand down your pants," Rodney said, "you can't expect him to be all sunshine and roses or, or happy to have you beating his ass with sticks in front of his Marines." Rodney tilted his head, considering; who knew what kind of weird stuff Sheppard was into? "Then again..."

"But that is just it," Teyla said slowly, as if only figuring out what she thought as she said it, "He didn't seem unhappy, or tired, or anything of the sort. Not happy, either, but different. In his movements, also."

"Moved differently?" Ronon said flatly. Rodney couldn't make out if he was curious or disbelieving.

"His fighting style was not at all controlled," Teyla said. Ronon let out a little snort of dismissal, but she shook her head. "No, not as if he were out of practice or distracted, but as if this were all new to him again. As if... and then there was the way he touched me."

"Touched you?" Ronon and Rodney said simultaneously, an in-stereo echo of shock and anger, Rodney's voice skewing higher, Ronon's lower; Ronon was halfway out of his seat before Teyla could reach out a hand to tug him back down.

"There was nothing inappropriate or hurtful about John's actions," she said firmly, "and let me remind you, Ronon, that I would have been perfectly capable of taking care of myself if there had been. It was something else entirely." Ronon took his seat again, somewhat grudgingly, but clearly unwilling to defy Teyla.

"No," Teyla continued, "it was nothing like that. It was just that his manner... he held himself differently. He did not seem so concerned about holding himself back. And when we were leaving the gym, he hugged me." She spoke almost apologetically, as if aware just how silly her concerns seemed when voiced—how silly to be unsettled by Sheppard touching her during the course of a sparring match, to be unsettled by a good friend showing affection towards her. And yet... And yet Rodney thought of Sheppard's face earlier, that curious blankness, like there was nothing there, or maybe as if those features—those eyes, those lips, that curious, once-broken nose—rested on top of something too enormous for them to reveal.

"Sheppard hugged you?" Rodney said. "Voluntarily?"

"Huh," Ronon said, settling back in his seat.

"It is nothing very important," Teyla said hurriedly, "and I am sure that I'm overreacting. It was a stressful day, after all."

"True," Rodney said. "He did almost die in an unpleasantly semi-liquid way. I'm sure that that can inspire acts of a, uh, demonstrative nature."

"Huh," Ronon said again.

"Maybe we should get him to go see Heightmeyer tomorrow?" Rodney suggested. "Talk about whatever's causing the, you know. Hugging. It could be a sign of, uh. Things. Or I could talk to him? Buddy to buddy, so to speak."

Ronon was eyeing him dubiously.

"What?" Rodney said. "What?"

They agreed that Rodney should be the first to try to talk to Sheppard, to see if there really was something troubling him. Either Rodney would get him to open up, or he would provoke him into an argument on a large enough scale that Elizabeth would prescribe a mandatory session with Heightmeyer for the both of them. "It's a win-win situation, regardless," Rodney told Ronon and Teyla as they parted for the night.

He meant to talk to Sheppard first thing the next morning, but the man proved surprisingly elusive: not that he seemed to be avoiding Rodney on purpose, but Sheppard was sticking more closely to his schedule than was usual for him. He stayed behind after the morning staff meeting to discuss rotas with Elizabeth, supervised a training session for the Marines in the gym, ran through some paperwork with Lorne; a dozen different things that were required of the military commander of a base, and not a one that brought him anywhere near Rodney.

Rodney kept an eye on Sheppard's whereabouts while he worked, taking an eye off his simulations every now and then to track Sheppard's movements on the lifesigns detector; he wasn't quite worried enough to go drag Sheppard away from what he was doing for a manly chat, whatever Teyla's hunches were, but he was concerned enough to keep an eye on him. He watched Sheppard move from room to room, along corridors, lingering in offices and taking his time over lunch in the mess. Rodney ate a powerbar or three, and kept working.

A little after five, Atlantean time, the little dot that was Sheppard took off from his quarters; from the speed and the direction, Rodney guessed that he must have been going on a run. He watched idly, for a minute, as Sheppard's route took him deeper into the bowels of the city; not his usual route, which Rodney knew took him out along the east pier in a great, wide loop, but it was raining outside, the heavy driving rain of the Atlantean winter. He might have kept watching, too, just to see where Sheppard was going, if he was going anywhere at all; but then Radek brought some unusual power spikes to his attention, clusters of surges that were building up and then seemingly dissipating into nothingness, something worrying enough to command all of his attention for the next couple of hours while they ran diagnostics.

On the lifesigns detector, the dot that was Sheppard stayed somewhere deep in the heart of the city, unnoticed, for many hours; outside, it kept on raining.

The disruption died away after a couple of hours—a abrupt cessation which privately had Rodney almost more worried than the surges' sudden appearance. There was still a hell of a lot that they didn't know about Ancient technology, its applications and its construction, but that didn't mean that Rodney knew nothing about how it worked. He had a feel for the tech by now, knew instinctively how it should flow, how it should feel beneath his fingertips, even if he didn't understand all the whys of it. He knew enough to know that something wasn't right.

He mulled over the problem in his head on the way to the mess, as he picked up one of the pre-packed meals that the cooks left out for those who kept odd hours; turned it over and examined it from every angle he could think of while he ate his stodgy macaroni and cheese. Rodney was absorbed enough in his thoughts that he didn't notice Sheppard come into the mess until he pulled out the chair opposite him, slouching down into it with an easy grin and a "Hey."

"Oh, Colonel," Rodney said, slowly lowering a loaded fork from his mouth. The sight of Sheppard, of his grin, made Rodney unaccountably nervous; all of Teyla's words to him, all her strictures, came flooding back, and he settled his fork clumsily back down onto his plate. "I, uh, trust you've fully recovered from the events of yesterday?" he said, in what he hoped was a suitably carefree, laidback manner; his respect for Teyla was healthy enough to make him want to get this right first time around, regardless of what Sheppard might say or do. "No residual side-effects? Bumps, bruises, things to keep Keller practising her bone trade?"

"Like I said, Rodney. I'm fine." One of Sheppard's hands moved across the table in a constant, loose arc, the palm of his hand making no noise against the smooth plastic. "I got out in time, not a scratch. Not like much else could have happened to me, right?" His smile was even, constant.

Rodney swallowed. "Right, right. No, it was just that Teyla—that is Teyla and I, we were—we were a little concerned that maybe there were some side-effects which were not exactly physical in nature?" he said tentatively.

Sheppard raised an eyebrow, but said nothing at first; his hand stilled on the tabletop, but his fingers started drumming, that off-beat staccato rhythm which Rodney remembered Sheppard had tapped out on the table during the briefing yesterday, too. It was a disconcerting reminder, and distracting, like having someone hum a tune just that little bit too softly for you to pick up on the melody; Rodney had to fight to stop himself from frowning. "Not exactly physical?" Sheppard said finally.

"Well, you know. Post-traumatic stress disorder, delayed shock, the constant and paralysing fear that a series of very large rocks is about to fall on your head..." Rodney waved a hand around, as if trying to encompass the entire field of psychiatry, the vagaries of the human mind, in a single gesture.

"I am not suffering from PTSD, or shock," Sheppard said. His smile was back, a slower, slyer version of the one his face had worn just a few moments ago; his voice was wry, rough and warm. "And I can pretty much guarantee you that whatever's keeping me up nights, it's not because I'm Chicken Little and think the sky's about to fall on my head."

Rodney didn't know why he flushed at that, but he could feel his cheeks heating up. "Well, that's, that's good? If you don't think you're—but obviously, you know that if there was something up with you, uh, chicken-related or otherwise, that you could talk to me? Or to Teyla if, you know, you wanted some advice that isn't, well. From me."

"I'll bear that in mind," Sheppard said. His fingers rattled out a steady rhythm on the tabletop.

"Great," Rodney said, and beamed at him, digging back into his slightly congealed plate of pasta. Duty done, all was well, and he could report back to Teyla and Ronon in the morning with a clear conscience. Or at least with a conscience sullied only by the knowledge that he was the person who had taken the muffin from Ronon's tray at breakfast the other morning, and not even wild horses was going to get him to confess to that particular misdemeanour.

"So Zelenka's got his hands on the full run of Farscape," Rodney said, speaking around the wad of food in his mouth, "and the bastard's refusing to share. Wanna help me finagle it out of him?"

"Gee," Sheppard said, "A show about pilots, leather-wearing aliens who can kick their ass, and a race of Ancients who control the secret to wormhole technology—you know how much I love escapist TV, McKay."

"Your enthusiasm thrills me," Rodney said dourly.

"No, seriously," Sheppard said, leaning back in his seat, "how about a marathon session of Wormhole X-Treme after that? I can count to see if it gives you more or fewer facial tics than Back to the Future."

"You know," Rodney said, flipping him the bird, "contrary to popular belief, this really is my happy face, Colonel."

Rodney couldn't persuade Sheppard to help him launch some kind of stealth raid on Radek's quarters that night, much as he tried. Still, he thought he had Sheppard committed to helping him with some plan of bribery, so Rodney left him at the door to his quarters that night with a smile on his face and a promise to meet up for some quasi-legal activities the next day.

By the time Rodney reached his own quarters and stripped down to his boxers and t-shirt, it was late, far into the long night of the Lantean winter. He flipped on the small light box that Heightmeyer insisted they all keep in their quarters during these months—a remedy against depression for those from Earth who weren't used to keeping twenty-six hour days where only five of those hours got any kind of useful light—and sat down at his desk. He pulled the results of the diagnostics that he and Radek had run down off their shared server, and ran through them again. There was a pattern there, he was sure of it. Something that could tell him what was going on, if this was something that he needed to worry about.

Rodney made notes on it until he fell asleep at his desk, overcome by exhaustion and the steady, lulling sound of the rain outside; the off-beat, staccato rhythms of the raindrops against the glass was something that was curiously, unconsciously familiar to him. He didn't make it to his bed, or even manage to close the curtains on the window which looked across to the bank of quarters opposite his, to where Sheppard and most of the Marines lived. He didn't look out across the city to see how the lights blazed, strong and sodium-white, in Sheppard's rooms all night, or see the dark figure which sat on Sheppard's balcony in the rising wind and the strengthening rain, head tilted back to stare at the bruising sky. Rodney didn't see anything; he slept, but his dreams were uneasy, unnerving, of things that were inconstant and formless, shifting in the dark. He couldn't remember any of them come morning.

He reassured Teyla about Sheppard over breakfast, the two of them sitting at one of the small tables which were arranged against the windows in the mess; outside, rain spat and shattered against the glass. "I think he's fine," Rodney said, mouth full of toast, "Just sleep deprived, maybe. Bad dreams. Which, let's face it, isn't an unexpected side-effect of living here. He promised he'd go talk to Heightmeyer or you if something was up. Give him a couple of days, and I'm sure he'll be back to normal; or at least whatever passes for normal with Sheppard."

Teyla looked dubious. "John said that he would voluntarily speak with Doctor Heightmeyer?"

"Yes," Rodney said, "and you know that if something were wrong, he'd flat out refuse to go to see her, and he'd be off in the gym sulking and having his ass kicked by Marines."

"Mmm," Teyla said, non-commital, spreading a thick layer of resna-berry jam onto her own toast. "I would be happier if John felt he could confide in us, though. We are his team. Perhaps if I spoke to Kate and arranged a group therapy session, that might be beneficial."

Rodney's mouth twisted wryly. "Even Ronon?"

"Yes, even Ronon."

"Do you think that's wise? After what happened the last time..."

"Ronon apologised," Teyla said sedately, "and the hair grew back in time."

"True," Rodney said, and shrugged. "Well, if you can arrange it, I'll be there. It can be one of those bonding... things."

"Good," Teyla said, and beamed at him. She passed him over the coffee pot, and they finished their meal in friendly silence.

Rodney left for the labs straight after breakfast and stayed there until late into the evening, pausing only for toilet breaks and to bark the occasional order for someone to bring him sandwiches and jello. He kept working even while the rest of the department went for a late dinner; it wasn't as if there was any huge emergency for him to solve, but it had been a while since he'd had a day to spend solely on his own research, without the interference of missions offworld, or disasters in the city, or Sheppard, or disasters caused by Sheppard.

Like the proverbial... something, of course, thinking about Sheppard tended to make him appear—which meant that it wasn't very surprising for Rodney to look up from his work, blink, and see the colonel standing on the other side of the lab. Sheppard was leaning against the wall and looking over at him with arms folded and an amused expression on his face.

"Can I help you?" Rodney said, aiming for waspish; his words came out hoarse, voice raw from a day where the only liquid to pass his lips was coffee.

"Nah," Sheppard said, "Just came to see how you were. You didn't show up for dinner."

"And this is unusual how?"

"Eh." Sheppard shrugged. "But normally when you pull an all-nighter, you've got the rest of the science team down here with you, scurrying to do your bidding. And Zelenka and Simpson are up in the mess having a really vicious game of Parcheesi. I was just wondering what you were up to."

"I am not 'up to' anything," Rodney snapped, "I'm just taking advantage of the first full day I've had in the lab in what, four weeks?" He held up a hand when Sheppard made to speak. "And no, before you say anything, what happened three weeks ago does not count, two days spent working flat-out on a way to stop the Vynari moon from exploding is not fun, it's not interesting, it's a race to stop twenty million people from dying a death of many small pieces. This, this," he said, flinging his arms out to encompass the quiet labs, the idling computers and the dimmed lighting, "this is downtime for me, this is relaxation, and I would appreciate it if you could get back to whatever passes for Happy Fun Time for you and leave me in peace."

"Okay," Sheppard said, but he made no attempt to leave, just stayed where he was, leaning against the wall. Behind him, the wall shifted colour constantly, from blue to copper to green and back again, quickly enough that Rodney could almost entertain the thought that it was picking up on his mood, his irritation.

"You were leaving, I believe?" Rodney said, making little dismissive gestures in the direction of the door, already turning back towards his work. He knew there was a pattern to these energy fluctuations, if he could only find them; Radek was theorising that perhaps it had something to do with the amount of Earth-sourced technologies which they had hooked up to the Ancient power systems, and ha, he wouldn't be surprised if there was some measure of truth to that, because whichever idiot in the Defence Department had given the contract to Dell... and yet, no, he didn't think...

"No, I wasn't."

"Huh?"

"I said," Sheppard said with a patient sigh, staring up at the ceiling, "that no, I wasn't leaving, because I came down here for the express purpose of asking you if you wanted to come to team movie night. You know, the one we haven't had the chance to have in what, four weeks? I've got a brand new copy of the Fantastic Four movie for you to mock while Ronon clucks and says that Jessica Alba needs to eat a sandwich. And I'm pretty sure that that counts for Happy Fun Time in Rodney McKay Land."

Rodney hated it when Sheppard mocked him. He hated it even more when Sheppard was right.

"Just give me a few minutes to shut down these simulations, okay?" he said, switching off the lights at his desk before hurrying over to the bank of super-computers and to turn off some of the simulations he had running there, the non-critical ones which could be left til tomorrow.

"Working on something big?" Sheppard said, leaning against the desk Rodney had just vacated.

"No," Rodney said, peering at one of the displays—and that was just great, that was fantastic, who'd set this up? He'd have to fix this before they could... "Just... working on some pet projects of mine. Analysing some power surges we've had lately in the lower levels of the city, that sort of thing. Oh, and helping Radek with that algorithm he's developed to search through the Ancient databases." He flapped a hand in the direction of the laptop still powered up and running on Radek's worktable; its screen was covered with a display of letters and numbers, scrolling past almost too quickly for the human eye to process.

"I thought that you couldn't search them properly without that neural interface?" Sheppard said, drifting over to look more closely at the laptop. He peered at the screen, eyes moving backwards and forwards rapidly.

"Well, this method is still hardly as precise as the neural interface would be, if we could find a way to repair it. Not as fast, either. But with some refinements, I think it could be quite effective." Rodney's words were muffled as he squirmed between two of the banks of computers in an attempt to find which cable had come loose. "The trial run should be finished by tomorrow, let us know what refinements we need to make to the code. We're testing it by looking for more information on those possible ZPMs on M4X-411; we figured there has to be something else about them in there somewhere, and it would be definitely useful to have before we risk going back."

He gave a little grunt of triumph when he finally managed to resecure the cable at the back of the computers, and wriggled his way back out again. "There," Rodney said, "done." He dusted off his hands unnecessarily, feeling that it added satisfactorily to his aura of righteous accomplishment, of a day's work well done, then said, "Hmm, are you ready? Time and popcorn wait for no man. Not while Ronon's around, at any rate."

Sheppard's mouth quirked upwards. "Well, lay on, McKay," he said, gesturing at the door and laughing when Rodney reminded him—loudly—that he had at no time lifted the moratorium on Sheppard abusing quotations, Shakespearian or otherwise. Sheppard followed on after him, talking to him and distracting his attention enough that Rodney didn't notice that the search program on Radek's laptop was still working, nor that the search parameters had been changed, tweaked just enough that the results the next morning would be meaningless, useless; noticed nothing which would tell them the next morning that they still weren't looking for the right thing, nothing like it at all.

Rodney walked back to Sheppard's quarters with him, talking about the green jello the mess had taken to serving and the progress he'd made on some of the equations describing the power exponentials of ZPMS and Radek's new deodorant. His steps were quick and light, his hand movements expansive, fuelled by the thoughts of popcorn, mockable sci-fi entertainment, and the prospect of a full day tomorrow spent organising a return trip to a planet which could still very well provide them with their very own cache of ZPMs.

All of which were enough to ensure that he was distracted when he stepped across the threshold into Sheppard's room; distracted enough that he kept talking, looking back over his shoulder at Sheppard, for as long as it took Sheppard to close the door behind them. Only then did Rodney look around them, and realise that there was no DVD set up and waiting to be projected onto the wall, no Ronon and Teyla monopolising the space on Sheppard's tiny bed and waiting for the movie to begin, no popcorn—

"Hey," Rodney said, "Where's—" And then Sheppard had him backed up against the wall; and Sheppard was pressed up against him, shockingly warm and hard, all that long, lean length of him; and Sheppard was kissing him, really kissing him, mouth so soft and so insistent that Rodney's lips were parting, his head tilting back to allow Sheppard greater access before he had any real idea of what was going on.

"Wait," he said, dazed, when Sheppard pulled away just enough to let them breathe, to let Rodney feel how Sheppard's ribcage stuttered and heaved next to his, so close; how his fingertips were ten points of heat, poised on Rodney's hips, how his breath rasped so loudly in Rodney's ears. "Wait," he said, "I..."

Rodney couldn't stop looking at Sheppard's lips.

"No," Sheppard said, "no, Rodney—" and they were kissing again, harder this time, and Rodney's arms came up of their own accord, to wrap around Sheppard, pull him closer still, because this was unexpected and scarcely hoped for; this was startling and new and not a thought Rodney had ever dared do more than think of obliquely, from the corner of his mind's eye; this was probably some horrible, twisted, adrenaline-fuelled response to a near-death experience, to a life lived right here—but god, oh god, this was Sheppard, and Rodney had wanted him for so long, and he wasn't going to push him away.

Sheppard kissed him again, and Rodney kissed back, his arms tightening around Sheppard, palms splayed across the warm length of his back. Rodney couldn't remember the last time someone had kissed him like this, couldn't remember if someone had ever kissed him like this, with such intent, such fine-honed focus, treated him as if every touch of Rodney's in return, every caress, were new and precious to them.

Sheppard undressed him slowly, bit gently at the curve of his jaw, ran hands that trembled only a little down the length of Rodney's thighs, over and over; his touch was so careful, Rodney thought, wondering, and it made his breath rasp rough and shallow against the sweat-sticky skin and the stubble of Sheppard's neck, made him shake and shudder and fall apart on the too-small bed—and later, afterwards, with the moon high in a bruised and clouded Lantean sky, Sheppard's body opened up for Rodney, moved on and over him, and Rodney held on, arched up beneath him, kissed him through it when Sheppard gasped and said "I want, I want—let me feel," and Rodney said "Yes, John, John," and spread his palms wide.

Rodney half-expected to wake up alone, for Sheppard to slip out even earlier than usual for his morning run, or for Sheppard to poke him in the shoulder in the small hours of the morning and make some polite but firm suggestions about Rodney heading back to his own room. But that didn't happen; they slept together, and they woke up together, Rodney blinking awake to sunlight filtering pale through the curtains, Sheppard's arms tight around him, one leg flung over his, and the sound of Radek's voice a distant, tinny chatter coming from his earpiece, which had ended up on the floor at some stage during the night.

He'd absolutely expected it to be awkward, in the few bleary moments between coming and falling asleep, in those few moments he'd had for repentance—and yet it wasn't, not at all. Sheppard didn't seem overly talkative, true, but it wasn't like he'd been a shining example of verbosity to begin with, and Rodney had never figured either of them for guys who'd be good at the whole morning after thing; but when Rodney woke, shifting on the bed to retrieve his earpiece from the floor, Sheppard made only a tiny, plaintive noise and wrapped himself all the tighter around Rodney, one hand smoothing up and down the length of Rodney's thigh.

"Uh huh," Rodney said to Radek, "No, right, right, yes, I said I'd be there shortly, didn't I?" He rolled his eyes before closing the comm channel, then tried to wriggle out from underneath the heavy warmth of Sheppard's limbs. "No," Rodney said, "no, seriously, stop, I have to go down to the labs," when Sheppard started to suck at the delicate skin over his collarbone, coaxing bruises into life where they'd be just visible beneath the collar of his shirt, "no, god, I—" For the first time in his life, Rodney silently cursed the work ethic that made him force himself out of Sheppard's arms, away from the seeking heat of his mouth; or, to be more accurate, cursed the possibility that even the slightest fault in the too-old, too-long neglected Atlantean systems could prove to be fatal if left unattended.

He struggled into yesterday's clothes, hoping that no-one would notice, or that if they did, they would assume that he'd pulled an all-nighter at the desk in his room instead of in the labs, as he did every now and then when he got so caught up in an idea that he just couldn't sleep. Sheppard watched him from the bed where he still lay, a sprawl of long limbs, face slack and eyes watchful; Rodney shivered at the weight of that gaze on his bare skin, the heat in Sheppard's eyes that Rodney wanted to answer with mouth and hands and a full day's abandon in tangled sheets, heat that Rodney wanted to give back with a force that almost scared him. He pulled his clothes on all the quicker, turning his face away.

He paused at the door, just as Sheppard pushed himself upright in the bed; his hair was even crazier than usual, Rodney saw, first thing in the morning, and he had the oddest desire to cross back over to the bed, to tame it into a better wildness with his fingers, to touch all that raw silk again; but then his earpiece chirped again, Radek wanting to know where he was, and Sheppard stretched and stood up and said, "I'll see you later, McKay."

"Oh," Rodney said, confused. He'd had just enough dismal mornings after to know when an "I'll see you later" meant "by which I mean, never again" and when it was sincere; Sheppard's tone seemed genuine, but there was something just a little off about the way he held himself, something just a little strange, a little blank in his eyes, and Rodney didn't know what he felt, not at all. "Um, yes," Rodney said, hand hovering just below the door release button, "Maybe I'll see you at lunch?" He wasn't at all fond of the way his voice sounded when he said that, how strangely high-pitched it was.

"Maybe," Sheppard said, squinting out the nearest window; from this angle, Rodney could see nothing more than a glimpse of a far city tower, a sky that was slate grey and roiling, promising nothing but more rain. "Might be out running with Ronon, if you're looking for me."

"In that?" Rodney said; he couldn't imagine anyone voluntarily following Sheppard and Ronon's usual path out along in the east pier in the kind of weather that was promised for late morning.

Sheppard shrugged, a swift roll of bare shoulders. "Maybe. I'll see you, okay?" His tone wasn't quite exasperated enough to make Rodney worry that he'd seriously messed things up by letting Sheppard kiss him last night, so all he said was "Yes," and "okay," and "yes, later", turning and heading down the hall to the nearest transporter, with the sound of Radek's voice mingled with Sheppard's ringing in his ears.

The labs weren't exactly busy when he got down there, which surprised Rodney a little. He knew his team's sleeping habits, that Simpson was probably in bed only an hour or so by now, that it would be another half an hour at least before Miko came in, clutching a cup of coffee as if it were truly precious; but Radek's tone when he messaged him had been urgent enough to make him think that something serious was wrong; not, perhaps, serious enough to rouse the entire city or to alert Elizabeth, but serious enough to rouse the science team from their beds.

"Radek," he grumbled as he approached the man's desk, "This had better be good, I was—" Sheppard's arms warm around him; every shift, every movement of bare skin against his still a bright burst of unfamiliar pleasure; steady breathing stirring the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, the surprisingly fine bones of Sheppard's wrist beneath his fingertips "—I was in the middle of a very deep sleep."

"Of course," Radek said, eyeing Rodney's rumpled clothing as if he were privately thinking that Rodney had just been defying Keller's ban on all-nighters again. "There was something bothering me about the way our sensor logs were reporting those power surges we spotted? So I stayed up to work on them, and found this." He swivelled his computer's monitor around so that Rodney could see the readings on it. Rodney scanned the screen quickly, parsing the numbers and digits as quick as he could into some explanation for the circles under Radek's eyes, the utter wildness of his hair. He was frowning by the time he reached the bottom of the screen, and that frown only grew deeper when he read back through the information for a second time, more slowly.

"Alternating power drains and surges of this magnitude—exponential growth at this rate! How did we not notice this? How did I not—this must have been going on for weeks! The damage to the ZPM's containment system by now must be—"

"But that is what is truly worrying," Radek interrupted him, turning his glasses over and over in restlessly fidgeting fingers, "this is why I brought you here before bringing this up at this morning's staff meeting—this data only covers the last three days."

Rodney blinked at him. "But what the hell could be drawing on a ZPM like that?"

Radek sighed. "That, I do not know. I have found one thing, though, which is... odd. The timing of the first power surge—it coincides almost exactly with the moment your team returned from M4X-411, to the nanosecond. Either the wormhole initiated some kind of freak subspace connection on a quantum level the likes of which we have never contemplated before, or, more likely..."

"... we brought something back with us." Which was so absolutely, infuriatingly typical of life around here that Rodney wasn't sure he could be shocked by it. Every time that they thought they were safe, that here was a space to breathe in, it was all Asurans, Wraith, and mind-squatting aliens, oh my, and Rodney would have to pick himself up, dust himself off, and come up with some last-minute plan to save the city. "Great."

Radek nodded, polishing his glasses furiously with the hem of his shirt. "Given some of our past experiences, we cannot rule out the possibility that something—or some things, plural—came through the gate at the same time as you without our knowledge. It is not necessarily intentionally malevolent, but..." He shrugged expansively.

"Yes, yes," Rodney snapped his fingers, "I remember that energy being the Ancients cooked up perfectly well, thank you very much, I don't need to be reminded of what harm something like that could do unintentionally. If—those numbers," he said, jabbing a finger at Radek's computer screen, "make it quite clear that if we don't figure out what is causing this, and soon, the containment field around the ZPM's core will breach, and then it's boom! Subspace rift, tear in the fabric of space-time, and goodbye to this corner of the galaxy."

"Not to sensationalise, of course," Radek said dryly. Rodney rolled his eyes.

Between the two of them, Radek and Rodney managed to rouse the science team from their beds and hustle them to the conference room in short order; most of them were grumbling, Perez had thrown his uniform jacket on over his pyjamas, and Simpson's hair was in curlers, but life in the city had taught them all very quickly that summons like these couldn't be ignored.

Elizabeth was a little slower to appear, her hair scraped back into an uncharacteristic, untidy ponytail and the dark circles under her eyes visible beneath hastily applied make-up. She looked professional and composed, expectant, sitting at the top of the table with her hands clasped in front of her, waiting for Radek and Rodney to deliver whatever news had gathered them all here; and for a moment, Rodney wished that he could tell her that it was all okay, that they could solve this without her, that she could go back to her bed, because he had the strong suspicion that she got even less sleep than he did, at the best of times.

Instead, he took a deep breath, grasping for that calm which Elizabeth always seemed able to reach for, and began to go through exactly what they'd found: a quick précis of Radek's findings and their extrapolations from it, lines of text and numbers on the projector screen which meant that they would be in a lot of trouble very soon if they didn't work out some way to fix this.

"Why didn't we pick up on this sooner?" Elizabeth said once Rodney stopped for breath; she sounded much like he felt, tired and worried and a little angry with herself, with themselves, for once more letting something get into their city, under their skin, unbeknownst to them.

Radek picked up on the explanation, saving Rodney from having to go through the obvious all over again. He called up a three-dimensional map of the city to show how most of the power disruptions had occurred in the small hours of the Atlantean morning, when the majority of the systems were shut down or on stand-by and very little would have been affected by them. "We only run checks on non-critical power systems about once a month, and those were the ones which were being alternately drained and over-loaded," Radek said, pushing his glasses up his nose as he spoke. "It was only those handful of surges which impacted directly on the ZPM and the shield power system which Rodney and I picked up on over the last few days, and which led me to investigate more thoroughly. At first, we thought it was just the interfacing between the ZPM and Earth-based technology, but this is clearly not the problem here."

"I see." Elizabeth dropped her head a little, rubbing at her forehead with one hand. "All of which makes it much less likely that this is something unintentional, or caused by a creature which is not fully sentient, like with the energy being that the Ancients had trapped?"

Rodney and Radek exchanged an uneasy look. "It's possible," Rodney said, "but to be honest, looking at the timing of these power drains—there's no pattern to them beyond the apparent desire not to be noticed. That doesn't look encouraging to me."

"No," Elizabeth said with a sigh, "it doesn't." Then her spine stiffened, her head came up, and she said, "Well then, Dr McKay, Dr Zelenka, I'll want your recommendations on how to proceed with this, what resources and allocation of staff you'll need, on my desk within the hour. Access to the gate and to all vital or networked systems is restricted as per standard emergency protocols. Is there anything else?"

She looked around the table, but no one seemed to have anything to add. "Dismissed."

The room emptied quickly, people scattering to take up posts and fill duties which they knew by heart, something which Elizabeth had insisted on practising in case of a foothold situation since the Genii invasion; Radek herded out the stragglers with muttered invective in Czech, and louder suggestions to the engineers in English that he wanted them all in his lab in five minutes, and that they'd better bring coffee with them.

Soon, only Rodney and Elizabeth were left, seated at opposite ends of the long table. "This is as serious as I think it is?"

Rodney sighed. "Elizabeth—"

She held up a quelling hand. "No, no, I know, Rodney. I'm sorry. I was just hoping that just for once, we could go for a week without something like this happening."

"The odds of that happening—"

"Yes, Rodney," Elizabeth said wryly, "you've run those statistics for me before. Anyway," she said, standing up, "I am going to go grab a shower and some breakfast before we make a start. Maybe you could find some way to rouse Colonel Sheppard in time to join us at around, say, 0700 in my office?"

Rodney hadn't known that it was possible to choke on thin air. "What?"

"He's not answering his comm," Elizabeth said obliviously as they walked to the door, "I was able to contact Major Lorne without any difficulty, but perhaps the power glitches are affecting parts of the network?"

"I, uh." Rodney cleared his throat. "Actually, I think he was going running with Ronon this morning. They're probably somewhere out on the east pier at the moment, being, uh." He made a vague shape in the air with one hand. "You know, manly men."

He stopped talking, flushing slightly when he saw the odd look that Elizabeth was giving him. "What?" he said, hoping like hell that something in his tone hadn't given him away, that there wasn't some virtual neon sign flashing over his head saying 'I just had sex with Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard; ask me how!'

"You must be mistaken," she said, "John can't be out running with Ronon."

"I'm not," Rodney said, "Colonel Sheppard told me hims—wait, how do you—Elizabeth?" Elizabeth ducked her head, flushing crimson enough to match Rodney, colour heating the high points of her cheeks. "With Ronon? Seriously?"

For once, Elizabeth neither had a word nor a look as comeback for him, and Rodney was never above a little slightly hypocritical gloating. "No wonder you look tired this morning," he said smugly, chin tilting upwards, before belatedly remembering to tug the collar of his shirt higher in the hopes that the hickeys Sheppard had left behind wouldn't show.

"Rodney," Elizabeth snapped, a little bit of bite back in her voice, but before she could remind him once more of expected standards of social interaction, she stopped abruptly, forehead crinkling. "Rodney," she said again, much more slowly, "if the Colonel isn't contactable, and he's not where he told you he would be..."

"Well," Rodney said weakly, "perhaps he just got delayed by, uh, things?" Then he realised what Elizabeth was implying. "Wait, are you saying that—"

"Perhaps not directly, or consciously?" Elizabeth said. "I've not seen anything in his actions which would imply that John is anything other than himself. But a virus perhaps, or the influence of some kind of Ancient technology? You can't deny that we've come across things far stranger than that; and if we're facing not only the loss of our only viable ZPM, but also the loss of millions of lives? It's certainly worth considering the Colonel—and you, Rodney, or Teyla or Ronon—might be compromised."

Something twisted a little in Rodney's gut at what she said, because how could she think—and yet Sheppard had been—but before he could open his mouth to deny, or refute, tell her that there had to be some other answer, some other solution, to what was going on, the floor shook beneath beneath their feet, lights flickering overhead, their voices lost in a grinding roar that sounded like continents colliding. Rodney could have sworn that he was back on M4X-411 with the roof caving in on top of them, dark stone threatening to blot out the sun forever, and he made to tug Elizabeth down with him underneath the conference table, hoping that the heavy metal would help preserve them from the worst of the impact—but then it was over as soon as it had begun, the lights coming back to full-strength and that horrible rending noise replaced instead by the sound of the emergency klaxon.

Before Rodney had a chance to utter more than a very heartfelt "What the fuck," Radek came running back into the room. "The explosion was centred on the ZPM containment room," he said, bewildered and as breathless as if he had run a mile, rather than from the control room, "and we had a report from Simpson before the comms went down—it was the Colonel."

None of the transporters could be brought back online, not with so much of their power supply inaccessible, but the Ancients had shown some measure of forethought, at least, in building a staircase which gave emergency access from the rear of the gate room right down to the ZPM chamber. It was nowhere near so fast as the transporters, of course, but Rodney still thought they made good time, with him borne along in the middle of a swift-moving group of Marines, Lorne and Teyla taking point while Ronon brought up the rear.

Nothing interfered with them on their way down, no attempt was made to block their progress, which almost worried Rodney more than a direct attack would have. He kept his gaze locked on the life signs detector in his hand as they worked their way downwards; Sheppard showed no signs of moving from the ZPM chamber, or going near the other two life signs which remained motionless in one corner of the room, little white dots which Rodney assumed—hoped—were Simpson and Zhang, sitting it out, or at the very worst, knocked out by the force of whatever had caused that blast.

The ZPM, at the centre of the room, seemed to be holding Sheppard's attention; Rodney could only hope that it was holding it enough that either he wasn't aware of their approach, or if he was, thanks to his sparkly ATA gene, that he wasn't trying to actively draw them in to the room. Rodney wasn't certain of what would happen if he set half a dozen Marines against Sheppard, even a Sheppard who wasn't under the influence of some kind of alien mojo, but he had the strong feeling that he wouldn't like it.

Entering the room after that seemed slightly anti-climactic; true, the ZPM was glowing faintly blue, a colour which Rodney had never seen it turn outside of the most hypothetical of simulations, and Simpson and Zhang, sent down here by Radek to secure the room in the first place, were slumped against the far wall, quite clearly unconscious; but Sheppard seemed calm, even blank, one hand on the ZPM's console, the other curved around the ZPM itself, and his voice when he said, "Hey, guys," was no more tense than it usually was when he greeted them in the mornings in the mess.

"Colonel Sheppard, sir," Lorne said, his stance and voice carefully neutral, his sidearm unholstered in his hand but pointedly not aimed at Sheppard, "I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the console, and advise you that you are relieved of command until further notice."

"Major, I'm afraid that's just not gonna work," Sheppard said, without turning to face Lorne. Rodney edged a little closer, and now he could see that the blankness on Sheppard's face was tinged with a strange kind of strain, a concentration beyond anything he could recall seeing on the other man's face before, not even when he was trying to pull the jumper out of the steepest of dives in the middle of battle; the fine lines around his eyes were more noticeable than ever, his jaw tight.

"John," Teyla said, stepping forward, "We are only trying to help you. If you would pause for just a moment, and explain to us what is troubling you, we could—"

"Teyla," Sheppard said, interrupting her, looking up from the ZPM for the first time, "you remember that horror movie with the hotel and the blood and the possessed kid saying 'Redrum, redrum!'?"

"Yes?" Teyla said, voice uncertain.

Sheppard looked over at Rodney, and there was no more doubt in Rodney's mind; whoever was talking to them, it wasn't Sheppard; his Sheppard had never looked at anyone with eyes that were so flat, so inhuman. Rodney wondered vaguely how he could have missed that, if that absence had been there for days without his noticing, hiding in plain sight while Rodney looked for something else behind Sheppard's eyes. "Well," Sheppard said, lifting his left hand off the console and crooking his index finger, "Johnny isn't here anymore." Out of the corner of his eye, Rodney could see Teyla flinch.

"That is not funny, Colonel," Rodney said past the lump in his throat; Jesus, if this wasn't Sheppard... He'd slept with this thing, fucked it, pressed his mouth to a throat where its pulse thrummed just beneath the skin; he'd been kissed by a thing that wasn't even remotely human, he'd kissed it back, pulled it to him, and just the thought of it made Rodney's bowels turn to ice.

Sheppard tilted his head to one side. "Why not? It's true."

"Sir," Lorne said more firmly, "I'm going to ask you one more time to step away from the ZPM, with your hands away from your body and your sidearm." He made some kind of hand gesture towards the Marines, impossible for Rodney to parse, and as one, they shouldered their P-90s. Sheppard just shrugged and turned back to the console, a slow and insolent roll of the shoulders that could almost have been a gesture the real Sheppard would have made but wasn't quite; the difference was almost imperceptible, but Rodney could see it now, and it made his skin crawl.

Teyla said "John!" and Lorne said "Sir, I will shoot to kill" and Rodney said "Wait, wait, what are you doing? You'll—", because Sheppard's hands were suddenly flying over the console, almost too fast to see, but Rodney could still see what he was doing, could see that he was initiating a feedback loop that would surely be catastrophic, would kill Sheppard where he stood with the force of the energy discharged in the moments before the resonance built up enough to destroy the entire solar system.

"Don't!" Rodney said, moving forward involuntarily; at the edge of his vision, he was aware of Teyla doing the same, instinctively and futilely attempting to stop one of their own from doing themselves harm, to stop John from hurting himself. He almost thought he could hear the sound of gunfire, Lorne shouting something frantic and incoherent at the Marines, when everything stopped.

At first, he thought that he'd been shot—friendly fire, didn't they call it?—and if he looked down he'd find, in true Hollywood fashion, a crimson, damp gush of blood darkening the front of his t-shirt, the growing pain that came with the realisation of imminent death. But though the sound of the gunfire and the impact of bullets against the walls and floor had vanished, though Lorne's voice couldn't be heard, Rodney realised that he was okay, he was still here.

For certain values of okay, given, since he was trapped within what he realised, as he looked around, had to be some kind of forcefield—a containment field created by the Ancients against something like this happening, against some kind of catastrophic meltdown?—with a possessed, homicidal Sheppard and Teyla, whose right leg was caught in the shield. She must have been standing right at the edge of where the force-field sprang up, and it looked sickeningly like an amputation, her leg stopping just above the knee, not letting her move forward or backwards, much as she tried. Her leg must still have been there, though, Rodney realised; he could see through the shield, see Lorne and his team, their outlines tinged with a faint, orange corona, as they gestured at Teyla's leg. He could see Ronon trying to force his way through, first with his hand, and then with the force of his whole body, throwing his weight into it as if that could have any influence on a mechanism with the power of a ZPM behind it.

"If you're thinking it's a containment field," Sheppard said behind him—said the thing wearing his face, Rodney reminded himself, "then you're right. If you're thinking you're going to be able to use it to trap me, or in some kind of last-ditch effort to take all of us out before I can do anything to your city, you're not." He didn't seem to have been affected by the sudden appearance of the force-field; of course, Rodney couldn't rule out that he'd been the one to activate it in the first place.

He seemed to have reached the final phase of whatever it was he was doing; the ZPM was glowing a strong and steady blue now, and Sheppard placed it back into its socket with something like reverence, with one last caress of his hand over its surface. Rodney could see something spark, blue and green and neon, beneath his touch. He didn't know what it was, exactly, but he could guess, and he was betting that drawing particles from who knew what pocket of subspace couldn't be a good thing.

"And what if I'm thinking," Rodney said, hoping like hell that his voice wouldn't crack or waver, "that I should just shoot you in the head, right now, and save myself the trouble of having to fix whatever the hell it is you're doing?" He didn't remember when, exactly, he'd reached for his gun, but it was right there in his hand, and oh shit, oh shit, he was pointing it right at Sheppard, his gut twisting and roiling, head buzzing with noise and the low, insistent murmur of Teyla's voice behind him, Teyla who was urging him to do something that he couldn't quite make out. Rodney swallowed.

"If you were thinking it," Sheppard said, stepping back from the console, "I'd think that that was an impressive piece of military-style bravado. I think even John himself would be impressed, because that would show that you'd learned something over the past couple of years. But you're not going to shoot," Sheppard said, "you're too fond of Sheppard. You're too fond of this body, remember, Rodney?" Sheppard didn't leer, but the blank look on his face was far worse.

"Don't—"

"Don't what?" Sheppard stuck his hands into his pockets. "It's true. I'm in every neuron of his, every memory, I can follow him down every neural pathway in here. There's not a thing you don't spark off in him that I don't feel. It's quite a rush, really. You know him, and he knows you better, and he knows you're not going to shoot me."

Rodney frowned. His knowledge of biology and neurochemistry was, admittedly, not so good as it could be, but he'd done some reading after the whole Cadman thing, and that didn't sound... "You're in—how is that possible? There's no way a shared consciousness could—"

"This isn't like Thalan or Phoebus or Cadman," Sheppard said. "I'm not in control of him. I am him, for the moment, in every way that counts."

"You're not," Rodney spat, "You're nothing like him."

Sheppard looked like he was contemplating it, then shrugged. "I could spend time debating that with you, but really, I'd rather not." He reached out and tapped another couple of buttons on the console with one hand, then nodded tersely when when a series of lights began to flash on and off around the ZPM.

"Rodney?" Teyla asked quietly.

He recognised the sequence, the flicker of the Ancient equivalent of binary code. "A countdown?" he said. "You're actually going to do this, you're really and truly going to blow up a ZPM, knowing what that could do? What kind of half-assed excuse for a plan is that?"

"One that will work."

Rodney couldn't argue with that, really; the countdown was proceeding inexorably towards zero, and in a little under three minutes, something that looked like white light would arc out from that ZPM and wipe out everything within the force-field, if he was being optimistic. "Okay, let me rephrase that—why are you doing this? Why go to all this trouble, taking over the Colonel's body, infiltrating the city, just to kill yourself? Are you just the most suicidally stupid terrorist we've run across in this galaxy, or is there something else you'd like to share with the class? Trust me when I say that Teyla and I are all ears." A soft snort came from behind him, which indicated that either Teyla was as impatient and as pissed off as he was, or she recognised his attempt to implement Elizabeth's suggestions about drawing information out of opponents or hostage-takers, and was trying her best not to laugh.

Sheppard tilted his head to one side. "You think I'm about to kill myself?" he said, sounding almost amused.

Rodney snorted. "You're about to tear a hole in space-time and have the contents of another dimension spill through, how could that not... how could that not kill you, unless..." He snapped his fingers. "There never was a ZPM on M4X-411, was there? There was just you."

He turned around to look at Teyla. "We got it wrong, we read it wrong. All that stuff about keeping something taken from subspace? We thought it was the energy used to power a ZPM, but that'll teach me to listen to Radek's suggestions in future." Rodney whipped back around to face Sheppard, to face it. "What were you, the product of some kind of experiment? An early ZPM gone wrong?"

"Ascension, actually." Its voice was still a drawl, but it was looking down at the console, at that slowly decreasing number, with an expression like greed on its face. "They went looking for another plane of existence, and they ripped through and found us instead."

"Us?"

"Oh yeah. And they didn't like what they found. So many of us, you see, so hard to put us back once we're through, so hard to contain us once we're here. And we like your universe. You've got light and warmth and shape, do you know what it is to have shape? Form and feeling and touch. It's addictive. The more we get, the more we want, the more real it makes us."

Rodney had a sudden rush of remembering, all that power taken from the system and given back to it a little twisted, a little unbalanced; Sheppard—it—spread out beneath him last night, begging for feeling and touch, him kissing it, running his hands the length of its thighs, giving it what it wanted. All of it in the service of making the thing in front of him more human. "So that's why."

"That's why," it said calmly, its hands hovering over the ZPM; it spoke as if what had happened were nothing at all, as if it had every right to use him like that, as if his body really were just a thing for it to take from. Rodney had to clench his fists against the trembling in his hands, the acid-bright nausea in his stomach; how had he ever thought that this thing in front of him was Sheppard? "And just a little more, a little more, and I'll be free, and so will all the rest of us. We're not going to kill you, Rodney. We're going to join you. We're going to be just like you."

"Forgive me if I'm less than enthused at that prospect," Rodney said, aiming for bite in his voice and failing, distracted by the leaden weight in his stomach, by the possibility that maybe, just maybe, if he gave the thing what it wanted, he could work it to his advantage. He moved one hand behind his back, hoping that Teyla could see and understand the gesture he made, the one that the real Sheppard had long ago taught him meant "when I go, get down."

A soft noise from behind him, like agreement, and then Rodney was moving forward, hands stretched out to hit the combination of buttons which should, if this worked, send out a directed burst of energy just before deactivating the force-field. Sheppard moved to grapple with him, but his hands only grazed Rodney's shoulders before the beam hit him; Rodney could feel the glancing shockwaves of it, how it was so hot it almost felt cold, the shuddering of its body against him.

"Yes, that's it, that's it..." Sheppard fell to the ground, one hand still reaching out to try to touch the ZPM, but whatever the tipping point was, Sheppard's body had already reached it. All that energy, all that potential stored up inside him and it flooded over into kinetic, body shuddering and shaking on the floor as if he was having a fit. Rodney wanted to kneel down, to touch, to hold him together, but he couldn't, he knew he couldn't. He reached out blindly behind him, pressed the one emergency key which would recognise his gene and shut off the countdown; behind him, the console slowly powered down, and he knew that if he turned around, he would see the ZPM begin to shade back from blue to amber; but all his gaze was fixed on the body on the floor in front of him.

Or rather, on the bodies, plural, because Sheppard was coming apart, literally, in front of him, one leg becoming two, five grasping fingers spreading apart into ten. It was like looking at the world through tears, or through the blurry vision that came with being too long awake—except that when Rodney blinked, there were still two Sheppards lying on the floor, gasping and naked and newborn.

"Oh god," Rodney said, because how could they choose, how could they know which one to stop—dimly, he could hear Lorne saying "What the hell?", could hear Ronon shouting "Sheppard!", terse and fearful—but then Teyla said "John!", and Rodney saw her toss her sidearm with unerring aim to one of them, the one on the left. Rodney tensed, because how could she know—but then that one, Sheppard, John, Rodney realised, it had to be him, rolled upright, and aimed the firearm squarely in the thing's face.

For just a moment, it seemed like the room was perfectly still; no one moved, no one spoke, and Rodney's lungs burned from the effort not to breathe. For just a moment, it seemed like everything could stay poised like this, right on the cusp of decision: John breathing heavily, deeply, like he'd just run an impossible marathon, his gun aimed straight and steady at the thing's face; it looking up at Sheppard, spine curved and fingers splayed wide against the floor, an obscenity fashioned into solid bone and muscle and thundering, rushing blood; Rodney standing and watching, not breathing, not breathing—

And then John cocked the gun and leaned forward; just before he fired, he said, loud enough for Rodney to hear, loud enough for the thing to comprehend if it could, "You want to know what it's like to feel? You're welcome to it." The thing grinned up at him and John didn't hesitate and—oh, Rodney thought vaguely, funny; funny that it looked so human as it died.

John found him, later; Rodney wasn't surprised by that, only that it had taken so long for him to do so. It had been three days, three days since Rodney had turned away from the faceless body on the floor and vomited, flinching away from the shaking hand John had stretched out towards him; three long days and longer nights of Keller keeping John in the infirmary, running all the tests she could think of to confirm that his mind, his body, were his again, while Heightmeyer tried to ask him questions that were kind.

Rodney had spent those days in the lab, mostly; he'd worked on small, mindless problems, quietly grateful for the way Radek didn't expect him to respond much, for the way Teyla seemed to show up every couple of hours, strong hands curving warm around coffee and compassion in equal measure. Evenings, he kept to the quieter parts of the city; his quarters seemed too empty now, the mess too busy, even at the times when it was just Elizabeth sitting there over a cup of coffee, one hand white-knuckled in Ronon's gentle grip.

"Yes?" he said when John stepped out onto the balcony. The weather had cleared up almost as soon as the thing had gone, whatever atmospheric disturbances it had conjured up dying along with it; it was warm and dry enough now that Rodney could sit outside with only a light jacket on him, but the wind was still high this far up the tower, whipping the words out of his mouth.

"Last place I'd've thought to look for you," John said, slipping down to sit next to him. Not too far away, but not too close, either; his feet stuck out over the edge of the balcony, and Rodney knew that if he turned his head a little, he could see just how they were dangling over so much empty space, such a startling drop.

"Yes, well," Rodney said, "if people weren't anxious to enter Carson's quarters before now, I—"

"I'm sorry," John interrupted him suddenly; when Rodney looked over at him, he could see how his hands were clenched into fists, resting on the ground, how his eyes were trained out at the wavering, pale horizon. "About what happened."

"That wasn't you, Colonel," Rodney said stiffly, remembering the push of those hands against his hips, the weight of that gaze on his skin. "Believe me, I'm perfectly aware that that wasn't you. You don't owe me an apology."

"I was there," John said quietly. "I saw. I felt it happen. It used you, and it used how I feel—how I feel about my team. I know what happened, and I owe you an apology."

Rodney didn't quite know what that meant; didn't know if he wanted to know, or to talk about it, if he did. He didn't know how to talk about the things he did know—that he was so sorry he'd ever opened that notebook in the first place; so angry that John had walked into that place first, just like he always had to, angry that the sensation of his ATA gene, his life, had woken something that even the Ancients had thought best left hidden; so sick and tired of being left raw and open by things he couldn't control. He thought he knew what John meant.

"Do we have to talk about this?" Rodney said. "I know what Heightmeyer said, but—"

"No," John said, "No. We don't, we're okay," glancing over at him and then out and away, looking out across the unchanged and unchanging spires of the city, the skies that seemed as if they had never been touched by any storm. Rodney watched his profile, the tight line of his mouth, the set of his jaw, closed his eyes and breathed in deep, lungs full of that sea-bright air that always rolled in after a storm. They weren't okay, Rodney knew, either of them, not with themselves and not with one another, but they could be; on the ground, John's hand rested, so close to Rodney's, and their fingers weren't quite touching, not yet.

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